“threatened with chorea.”  Is subject to tonsillitis and a stubborn though not severe form of indigestion, induced by sedentary habits.  He is of quick, nervous temperament.  Has an aversion from most outdoor sports, but a great esthetic attraction to nature.  Highly educated.

As far back as he can remember, he lived in a house from which his parents removed when he was 4 years old.  Before this removal, he remembers two distinctly sexual experiences.  A cousin five years older was in the bathroom, seated, and M.O. was feeling his sexual organs; his mother called him out.  On another occasion he was in a wagonhouse with a girl of his own age.  They were lying on a carriage-seat attempting intercourse.  The girl’s older sister came in and found them.  She said:  “I am going to tell mamma; you know she said for you not to do that any more.”  With each of these clear memories comes the strong impression that it was but one among many.  Five years ago M.O. met a man of his own age who had lived in that neighborhood at the same time.  Comparing notes, they found that nearly all the small children in it had been given to such practices.  The neighborhood was a thoroughly “respectable” middle-class one.

From it, M.O. removed to another of just about the same character, and lived there until he was 11 years old.  Of this period his memories are very fresh and abundant.  With a single exception, all the children between 5 and 14 years of age appear to have indulged freely in promiscuous sexual play.  In little companies of from four to twelve they went where trees or long grass hid them from observation, and exhibited their persons to one another; sometimes, also, they handled one another, but not in the way of masturbation.  Of this last, M.O. was wholly ignorant.  Sometimes when but two or three were together, intercourse was attempted.  In M.O.’s case there was eager sexual curiosity, and a more or less keen desire, but actual contact brought no great satisfaction.  On two or three occasions girls practised fellatio, and he then reciprocated with cunnilinctus, but without pleasure.  In all these plays he is sure that girls took the initiative as often as boys did.

During all this period, M.O. had now one girl sweetheart and now another.  This was conventional among the children, and was fostered by the banter of older persons.  M.O.’s sexual curiosity was certainly greater in regard to the opposite sex.  At this time, however, his homosexual interests appeared.  With a boy two or more years older he frequently went to some hiding-place where they looked at each other’s organs and handled them.  He and another boy were once in an abandoned garden, and they took off all their clothes, the better to examine each other.  The other boy then offered to kiss M.O.’s fundament, and did so.  It caused a surprisingly keen and distinctly sexual sensation, the first sexual shock that he can remember experiencing.  He refused