f we
observe between two boys, or between two girls, an unduly intimate
friendship at an age which corresponds to the period of the
undifferentiated sexual impulse, it will be as well to modify the
children's education accordingly. A girl with such inclinations should,
for example, be thrown as much as possible into the society of lads of
an appropriate age. In the case of those who are still quite young,
there is no doubt that by the proper measures we can in part check the
development of perverse manifestations, and in part completely repress
them; notwithstanding the fact that interested agitators, whose
principal aim is to secure the repeal of Section 175 of the German
Imperial Criminal Code, maintain the contrary, and assert that
homosexual tendencies appearing in the child necessarily indicate the
future development of permanent homosexuality. Parents, tutors,
schoolmasters, and physicians, must not allow themselves to be led
astray by these agitators, who falsify the data of science. In the
interest of truth, in the interest of the children endangered by these
perversions, and in the interest of civilisation, these misstatements
must be contradicted.

The chief danger associated with the appearance of sexual perversions
lies in the fact that the child thus affected, whether boy or girl,
endeavours again and ever again to revive these pleasurably-toned
sensations; and above all in the fact that as soon as the genital organs
are sufficiently mature, the boy or girl obtains sexual gratification
by masturbating simultaneously with the imaginative contemplation of
perverse ideas. Such perverse psychical onanism, accompanied or
unaccompanied by physical masturbatory acts, is eminently adapted to
favour the development of the perversion. Obviously, the actual
performance of the corresponding perverse sexual act will be just as
dangerous as is perversely associated masturbation. Thus, a boy who is
homosexually inclined may masturbate while allowing his imagination to
run riot upon homosexual ideas; or he may take to homosexual acts with
one or more other male persons. Every sort of gratification that is
associated with perverse images, is dangerous; and no less dangerous is
the spontaneous cultivation of such perverse sexual images.

A very real and serious danger to children is to be found in my opinion
in the risk of the progressive cultivation of homosexuality, if they
become victims of a paedophile. The adult homos