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Si, pour Freud, l’ignorance de l’enfant en matière sexuelle a valeur de traumatisme et constitue le complexe nucléaire de la névrose l’évolution des mœurs a montré comment l’inévitable inflation de l’information en matière sexuelle ne diminue en rien le risque névrotique. Quand son développement conduit l’enfant en cure, le psychanalyste fait alors l’épreuve de l’intensité du travail psychique nécessaire. L’élaboration d’une possible maitrise de la pulsion sexuelle est nécessaire en vue du développement harmonieux de l’enfant, sinon il y a entrave.

How Children Talk about Sexuality in the Psychoanalytical Cure Freud may well have argued that the child’s lack of knowledge about sex was a source of trauma and lay at the very heart of the nuclear complex of neurosis, changes in moral values and the increasing amount of information concerning sex now widely available have in no way limited the threat of neurosis. When a child’s psychical development necessitates a psychoanalytical cure, the analyst is immediately confronted with the full intensity of the psychical work necessary. If the child is not helped to find ways of controlling the sex drives, it is difficult for him or her to develop harmoniously and a serious stumbling block to their development is established.