must we be
cautious in our estimate of the significance of manual stimulations.
Children often stimulate various parts of the body. Some children will
rub the lobule of the ear, others will suck their fingers, or will
stimulate their mouths in other ways. Some children have the offensive
habit of picking their nose; and it is evident that many cases in which
children stimulate the genital organs manually are on the same footing
with nose-picking and numerous similar habits. In such cases we have not
to do with a specific genital sensation to which the child responds; but
with a stimulus which may be pathological, but is not necessarily
sexual. In many cases, indeed, the stimulus is not even pathological.
We have to take the following point into consideration. As soon as the
child begins to become conscious of the existence of its organs, it
fingers them. It does this with its nose and its ears, just as it does
with its feet; and it is obvious that the genital organs will receive
the same treatment. A gentleman who had grown up in the country related
to me that as a child he had often been present when cows were being
milked, and that in the evenings, after he had gone to bed, he performed
the milking movement on his penis, and was greatly astonished at the
fact that no milk flowed forth. He assured me that the like experience
had occurred to quite a number of boys who had been his playmates in the
country. It is certain that such manipulations of the genital organs,
entirely non-sexual in origin, may lead to the practice of masturbation.
But we must not immediately conclude that every manipulation of the
genital organs in a child is sexually determined.

It is true that many investigators regard numerous movements on the part
of children as sexual processes, even when the genital organs are in no
way involved. Freud[84] above all, discovers sexuality in the life of
the child in cases in which, I am convinced, sexual elements play no
part whatever. Sucking movements in children are regarded by Freud as
sexual phenomena. He considers that the lips and the fingers are
erogenic zones. With just as much reason, every movement might be
regarded as sexual--as, for instance, the clenching by a child of its
little fists. As long ago as 1879, Lindner,[85] of Budapest, published
an able essay about the movements made by children sucking their
fingers, lips, &c., and suggested that there was some connexion between
these sucking mo