If all goes well with the anal stage, anal interests and pleasures slowly become secondary to phallic pleasures, around the age of three years. This is the phallic stage. In this stage the clitoris or penis increasingly becomes the predominant source of body pleasure. More or less deliberate masturbation usually starts now. Most parents say either that their child did not masturbate or, if the child did so, that they accepted it. Clinical evidence suggests that this is usually not true.

The phallic stage is in one sense the start of heterosexual love and an early childhood step towards independence from the parents but it is nearly always suppressed, if not by direct prohibition and punishment then by disapproval and distraction. Very few parents are sufficiently at ease with their own sexuality to be able to watch their young child play with his or her genitals. In some families the genitals are never mentioned or even acknowledged as existing. Anything without a name probably does not exist for a child of this age, so simply by not talking about a child’s genitals as you would about any other part of the body you are expressing a negative attitude which undoubtedly influences the child’s future feelings and behaviour. This is unmentionable sex and girls particularly suffer in this way.

In most families the genitals are given names — often of a comic type. Playing with the genitals can be condemned in the same way as was the interest in bowel motions and sex then becomes dirty sex. Religiously inclined families may suggest that God does not like this genital play and sex becomes sinful sex. Direct punishment can associate the phallic stage with fear and so sex becomes fearful sex. Some children are still warned of physical ill effects from genital touching and so sex can become unhealthy sex. Girls especially are rebuked on the basis that such practices are not ‘nice’ in girls and so sex becomes nasty sex.

Similar techniques are sometimes used to turn sex into a matter of shame, extreme privacy and embarrassment. This is shameful sex. To a greater or lesser extent everyone in our culture encounters all these reactions, if not from their parents then from other sources, and if not in the phallic stage, then later. These attitudes are continuously reinforced, however unconsciously, throughout childhood and adolescence in most families.

Somewhat surprisingly, clinical evidence strongly suggests that most of these suppressions are put over to the child in unconscious ways by parents, who are therefore not being consciously untruthful when they say they did not suppress their child’s sexuality. What was taught to them, the parents, in this way in childhood they in turn pass on to the next generation. The child stores the information away, mainly in the unconscious mind, so the transaction is between the unconscious of the parents and the unconscious of the child. This accounts for our cultural conservatism over sexual matters.

The results of sexual suppression in the phallic stage seem to be more serious for girls. This may be because they are more heavily suppressed. Mothers are generally much more indulgent towards genitality in boys than in girls. This subject is considered in more detail. Here it suffices to say that clinical experience seems to prove that the difficulties of a wide section of the adult female population in experiencing full sexual pleasure originates at this stage.

Before the phallic stage is reached a child has learned to distinguish between mummy and daddy and later between women and men. When very young he or she will have seen both parents and any brothers or sisters naked because few adults think such matters register on a young child. The young child may even have been present in the room when his or her parents were having intercourse and if so, according to some people, his or her behaviour over the next few days may show signs of disturbance. Later, witnessing or hearing intercourse can lead to the notion that sex is an aggressive and sadistic act and many children fear that their father is hurting their mother, especially if she is noisy when she has an orgasm. This is why it is probably best in our culture not to let children of any age see their parents having intercourse. Some phobias are thought to be triggered off in susceptible children who repeatedly witness or overhear parental sexual acts after the age of about two or three.

Parental nudity, which has always been more widespread amongst

the better educated, is of much less significance, especially if the child’s friends are being reared in the same sort of way, though a few psychosexual experts think that it is best for a boy not to see his mother naked after the age of four or so and for a girl not to see her father naked from about a year. Children whose friends are used to seeing their parents naked will probably be unaffected but children can be very cruel, even this young, and will tease children who seem to be brought up in ways that are contrary to the way they know. As children discuss this sort of thing at school it is probably best not to subject your child to experiences at home that will make them feel odd among their friends. They may believe that they have odd parents if their friends say so and this could be harmful to them.

A practical aspect of this stage in relation to boys is that only about 4 per cent of boys have a fully retractable foreskin at birth and 50 per cent by one year. Forcible attempts at retraction by some mothers, to clean underneath, to see whether circumcision is necessary or just to stretch it, may account for some late adolescent boys and men with tight foreskins who react with great alarm at any attempt at retraction. Their reluctance leads them to masturbate with the foreskin in the forward position and its development does not keep pace with the increase in size of the penis at puberty.

Little boys’ penises need nothing done to them at all. If the foreskin will not pull back completely by the age of five, see your doctor for advice.

As children begin to look at the genitals of children (and adults) of the opposite sex, boys may come to see girls as being boys who have had their genitals removed, perhaps as a punishment for touching them. Some fear a similar punishment themselves. Girls sometimes conjure up the idea that they really have a secret penis or seem, perhaps, to blame their mothers because they have not got one. The difficulty in such speculation is that children rarely say how they feel and their reactions can only be guessed at from their behaviour.

*9\164\2*

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• GAMES FOR HYSTERICAL COUPLES – GAME 5: TALK DIRTY TO ME (INTRODUCTION)
• GAMES FOR DEPRESSED COUPLES – GAME 4: HOPELESS SEX (PART 3)
• GAMES FOR PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE COUPLES – GAME 3: NUDE HAMLET (PART 1)
• GAMES FOR BORED COUPLES – GAME 1: SEDUCTION SURPRISE (BY THE WIFE) (PART 3)
• JUNK SEX VS. LOVING SEX – INTRODUCTION
• PROSTATITIS
• GENITAL ANATOMY: SCROTUM
• PROSTATE CANCER
• MALE ANATOMY: PENIS
• BENIGN PROSTATIC HYPERPLASIA (BPH)

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