Dreams, Fantasies, and Myths   
      
   One way to ascertain the extent of sexual knowledge and sexual   
   experience of children is to look at content in their fantasy world as   
   revealed in their dreams, stories, and myths. Fantasy activity per se is   
   universal in human life, representing the ongoing baseline mental   
   activity of humans. Attending to this internal mental activity is   
   behavior learned early in childhood (Rosenfeld et al. 1982). Dreams   
   occur during sleep, while fantasies occur during waking hours; they are   
   similar enough that fantasies are also called daydreams. It is assumed   
   that sometime in the first year of life, before they begin to speak,   
   children begin to fantasize (Gardner 1969). In studies of child play it   
   has been found that young children are very comfortable with fantasy and   
   are able to move quickly and easily from reality to fantasy and back   
   again (Martinson 1992). Children's styles of fantasy are remarkably   
   similar to those of adults, except that fanciful daydreaming appears   
   mostly unique to children (Rosenfeld et al. 1982).   
      
   Fantasy was very often practiced, at any time of mental inactivity. When   
   my actual sexual knowledge was lowest, sadistic ideas and perversions   
   were often fantasized, replaced in time by a more accurate and   
   acceptable fantasy content. As far as fantasy is concerned, the ideas I   
   devised were usually far worse without knowledge than my fantasy   
   developed through knowledge towards actions that married couples usually   
   practice. I would say that before the age of 13, fantasy was either very   
   innocent of erotic concepts, or very sadistic and violent through ignorance.   
      
   During or subsequent to genital self-stimulation in the second year of   
   life, both girls and boys frequently make affectional gestures toward   
   their mothers and touch their mothers' bodies. But such open affection   
   begins to disappear after a few weeks and is replaced by an "inward gaze   
   and a self-absorbed look" that soon begins to occur, indicating that a   
   fantasy feeling- state now becomes a regular part of genital stimulation   
   (Roiphe and Galenson 1981:252).   
      
   One might expect that the fantasy feeling-state accompanying genital   
   play would show up in the stories young children tell, but it does not   
   appear to do so, not for American children, for American children learn   
   very early that they must not talk about sex, at least not in the   
   presence of adults. That is one reason why the subject of sex does not   
   commonly appear in their stories. An inability or unwillingness to use   
   words referring to sex was one of the most striking findings of Conn's   
   play interview study of 200 children four to fourteen years of age (Conn   
   and Kanner 1947; see also Kanner 1939).   
      
   In his play interviews, Conn found that sexual fantasies accompanying   
   masturbation-imagining the sight or touch of genitals, buttocks, or   
   breasts, and thoughts of coitus-were reported by a very small number of   
   boys below nine years and by no girls of any age. For instance, in play   
   interviews, the children even as young as four years of age spoke   
   hesitatingly and without embarrassment of the boy's "thing" and the   
   girl's "thing," but other distinctions had something secret or hidden   
   about them. It was not so much that they did not know names for the   
   genitals; in fact, Conn found no less than sixty-one different names for   
   genitals among the 200 children. But the children regarded these names   
   as bad, nasty, or dirty and hence not to be uttered in the presence of   
   adults. Children with such inhibitions can hardly be expected to report   
   stories they make up or dreams they have had about sex and sexual   
   activity. Another reason for the lack of stories about sex is limited   
   information and lack of sexual experience. With more information and/or   
   experience, children's fantasy life changes. This is evident in some of   
   the cases reported later in this chapter.   
      
   There have been two major studies of the stories told by young children   
   (Ames 1966; Pitcher and Prelinger 1963). Ames found that in children two   
   to four years of age, the predominant theme at every age for both boys   
   and girls was violence. Of fifteen two-year-old boys (mean age 2.5), 60   
   percent of die stories dealt with violence, and for fifteen girls the   
   figure was 68 percent. Other themes in the stories to two-year-olds   
   were: food and eating (boys 14%, girls 27%); sleep (boys 77%, girls   
   28%); good and bad (boys 0%, girls 21%); possible sibling rivalry (boys   
   21%, girls 7%); possible castration (boys 14%, girls 0%); and   
   reproduction (boys 0%, girls 7%). None of the group of thirty   
   two-year-olds described stories overtly concerned with anal activity.   
      
   Of Pitcher and Prelinger's 137 two- to five-year-olds, eight main themes   
   were found: aggression, death, hurt or misfortune, morality, nutrition,   
   dress, sociability, and crying. Aggression appeared most often- 124   
   times in 360 stories; hurt and misfortune was the next most frequent   
   theme, appearing eighty-nine times. For boys, aggression tended to be   
   much more violent than for girls. Even at two and three years of age,   
   the boys' calamities involved much violence. Boys reported to Ramsey   
   (1943) on dream content in which they found themselves with erections on   
   awakening. The dream content contained non-erotic but potentially   
   violent stimuli-fighting, accidents, wild animals, falling from high   
   places, giants, or being chased or frightened. Among Pitcher and   
   Prelinger's two-year-olds, the theme was largely concerned with violence   
   of body intactness-some part of the body was broken or severed. The   
   interest in this theme, especially among boys, would appear to be   
   consistent with fears of castration. This theme was almost absent in the   
   stories of three-year-old boys, however. Gardner (1969), based on   
   clinical experience, does not believe that castration anxiety is a   
   significant concern for the normal boy, nor is penis envy a   
   preoccupation in the well-adjusted girl. Rather, the healthy child   
   accepts his or her sex and has pride both in the sexual and nonsexual   
   aspects of the self   
      
   For Ames (1966), the number of stories featuring some kind of violence   
   ranged from a low of 63 percent for boys at two years to a high of 8 8   
   percent of boys at three and a half years. The next most common theme   
   was aggression. Ames also found boys to be much more violent in their   
   expression than were girls. In general, Ames found spanking to be strong   
   in the early age as well. Ames concluded, "If it should be that they   
   absorb the violence from the culture, then such absorption must be   
   considered a rather universal phenomenon expressing itself as early as   
   two years of age" (Ames 1966:390).   
      
   The following case is an interesting self-analysis of the fantasizing of   
   aggression with some sexual feeling mixed in.   
      
      
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