the resistance from external interference—the beginnings of social pressure—becomes more formidable, until at a quite unexpectedly early age a veritable condition of mental conflict is established—egoistic impulses fatally pressing for indulgence regardless of their acceptability to the environment, while environmental influences bear equally heavily against any indulgence unwelcome to surrounding standards of discipline, taste, or morality.
Of the two parties in this conflict—the instinctive {73} impulse and the repressive force—the first, according to Freud, is wholly the product of the sex instinct. This instinct is conceived of as being much more active and potent in the infant and child than had been suspected by any previous investigator. The normal sexual interest and activity as manifested in the adult are developed out of the sexual impulse of the child by a regular series of modifications, which appear to be regarded as due partly to a process of natural development and partly to the influence of external repressive forces. In the infant the instinct is egocentric and the object of its interest is the individual’s own body; with the increase