ve questioning of the examiner, or that sufficient care has not
been taken to guard against illusions of memory. The impression produced
in my mind is that the theory of Freud and his followers suffices to
account for the clinical histories, not that the clinical histories
suffice to prove the truth of the theory. Freud endeavours to establish
his theory by the aid of psycho-analysis. But this involves so many
arbitrary interpretations, that it is impossible to speak of proof in
any strict sense of the term. Dreams are interpreted symbolically at
will, and other definite objects are arbitrarily assumed to be symbolic
representatives of the genital organs. I detect the principal source of
fallacy in this arbitrary interpretation of alleged symbols.

However this may be, there is no justification for the assumption that
hysteria or other neuroses are always, or even in the great majority of
instances, to be regarded as dependent upon masturbatory or other sexual
acts during childhood. We must on no account forget that an illness
often has a dozen causes or more; and although one or another of these
may have had a preponderating influence in the causation, we have no
right arbitrarily to select one of them as the efficient cause. I do not
deny that occasionally the sexual life during childhood plays a part in
inducing a subsequent neurosis; but this applies only to a comparatively
small proportion of cases, and we must guard against exaggeration in the
matter.

This is all I have to say concerning the relationships of the sexual
life of the child to the occurrence of nervous diseases. The sexual life
has, of course, important bearings on health in other ways. The venereal
diseases, in most cases, result from sexual intercourse; and it will
readily be understood that since early sexual intercourse is rendered
more likely by a premature awakening of the sexual life, an increased
danger of venereal infection will thus arise. Although infection in
children occurs comparatively seldom in consequence of spontaneously
practised sexual intercourse, and more frequently as the result of the
mishandling of children by perverted or criminal adults, still cases are
from time to time observed in which infection with venereal disease
arises in children from spontaneously sought sexual intercourse. In
Jullien's work[94] we find a striking chapter on gonorrhoea in
children, illustrated with appropriate cases. He writes. "In other
cases, l