Felix Platter relates in his autobiography that when as a boy verging on
maturity he had already chosen his future profession as a medical man,
he came to the conclusion that he ought to accustom himself to the sight
of disagreeable things; with this end in view, to habituate himself to
see without emotion the heart and other viscera, he frequented the
slaughter-house. Subsequently he experimented on a little bird, to
ascertain if it had blood-vessels, and if it could be "bled"; he opened
a vein with a penknife, and the little bird died. He did the same thing
with various insects--stag-beetles, cock-chafers, and the like. Actions
of this kind performed by children have, of course, no connexion with
the sexual life. When a child tears off the feet of an insect, or
mutilates any other animal, the motive is often simply that with which
the same child will pull a watch to pieces. The same act may result from
various motives; and for this reason we must guard against the
misconception which might lead us, from every cruel act performed by a
child, to diagnose the existence of sadism, or the certainty of a
subsequent sadistic development.

In a case of rose-fetichism, which I have published elsewhere, the
subject was a philologist, thirty years of age, who had never
masturbated during his school days, and until he was nineteen or twenty
had remained sexually neutral, experiencing sexual inclination neither
towards females nor towards members of his own sex. But he had from an
early age exhibited a very great interest in flowers, and while still a
child used to kiss them. He is unable, however, to recall the existence
in this connexion of any sexual excitement. When about twenty-one years
old he was introduced to a young lady who at the time was wearing a
large rose fastened into the front of her jacket. Henceforward, in his
sexual sensibility, the rose assumed extraordinary importance. Whenever
he was able, he bought roses, kissed them, and took them to bed with
him. The act of kissing a rose induced an erection of the penis. In his
seminal dreams, the image of the rose always played a leading part.

This case is extremely instructive. A great love for flowers, leading to
the act of kissing, occurs in many children without any subsequent
association, when these children have grown up, of sexual sentiments
with flowers. Such persons will lay little stress on their memories of
such occurrences in childhood--indeed, in adult