pper plane, and in the child, the
deeper sensual centers aroused, but finding no correspondent, no
objective, no polarized connection with another person. There they
are, the powerful centers of sex, acting spasmodically, without
balance. They must be polarized somehow. So they are polarized to the
active upper centers within the child, and you get an introvert.

This is how introversion begins. The lower sexual centers are aroused.
They find no sympathy, no connection, no response from outside, no
expression. They are dynamically polarized by the upper centers within
the individual. That is, the whole of the sexual or deeper sensual
flow goes on upwards in the individual, to his own upper, from his own
lower centers. The upper centers hold the lower in positive polarity.
The flow goes on upwards. There _must_ be some reaction. And so you
get, first and foremost, self-consciousness, an intense consciousness
in the upper self of the lower self. This is the first disaster. Then
you get the upper body exploiting the lower body. You get the hands
exploiting the sensual body, in feeling, fingering, and in
masturbation. You get a pornographic longing with regard to the self.
You get the obscene post cards which most youths possess. You get the
absolute lust for dirty stories, which so many men have. And you get
various mild sex perversions, such as masturbation, and so on.

What does all this mean? It means that the activity of the lower
psyche and lower body is polarized by the upper body. Eyes and ears
want to gather sexual activity and knowledge. The mind becomes full of
sex: and always, in an introvert, of his _own_ sex. If we examine the
apparent extroverts, like the flaunting Italian, we shall see the same
thing. It is his own sex which obsesses him.

And to-day what have we but this? Almost inevitably we find in a child
now an intense, precocious, secret sexual preoccupation. The upper
self is rabidly engaged in exploiting the lower self. A child and its
own roused, inflamed sex, its own shame and masturbation, its own
cruel, secret sexual excitement and sex _curiosity_, this is the
greatest tragedy of our day. The child does not so much want to _act_
as to _know_. The thought of actual sex connection is usually
repulsive. There is an aversion from the normal coition act. But the
craving to feel, to see, to taste, to _know_, mentally in the head,
this is insatiable. Anything, so that the sensation and experience
sha