a matter of indifference whether a certain
stream appears earlier or later than its counterstream, for the effect
of a repression cannot be made retrogressive; a temporal deviation in
the composition of the components regularly produces a change in the
result. On the other hand impulsive feelings which appear with special
intensity often come to a surprisingly rapid end, as in the case of the
heterosexual attachment of the later manifest homosexuals. The strivings
of childhood which manifest themselves most impetuously do not justify
the fear that they will lastingly dominate the character of the
grown-up; one has as much right to expect that they will disappear in
order to make room for their counterparts. (Harsh masters do not rule
long.) To what one may attribute such temporal confusions of the
processes of development we are hardly able to suggest. A view is opened
here to a deeper phalanx of biological, and perhaps also historical
problems, which we have not yet approached within fighting distance.

*Adhesion.*--The significance of all premature sexual manifestations is
enhanced by a psychic factor of unknown origin which at present can be
put down only as a psychological preliminary. I believe that it is the
_heightened adhesion_ or _fixedness_ of these impressions of the sexual
life which in later neurotics, as well as in perverts, must be added for
the completion of the other facts; for the same premature sexual
manifestations in other persons cannot impress themselves deeply enough
to repeat themselves compulsively and to succeed in prescribing the way
for the sexual impulse throughout later life. Perhaps a part of the
explanation for this adhesion lies in another psychic factor which we
cannot miss in the causation of the neuroses, namely, in the
preponderance which in the psychic life falls to the share of memory
traces as compared with recent impressions. This factor is apparently
dependent on the intellectual development and grows with the growth of
personal culture. In contrast to this the savage has been characterized
as "the unfortunate child of the moment."[15] Owing to the oppositional
relation existing between culture and the free development of sexuality,
the results of which may be traced far into the formation of our life,
the problem how the sexual life of the child evolves is of very little
importance for the later life in the lower stages of culture and
civilization, and of very great importance