How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #10
It is, I may say, a matter of daily experience that sexual intercourse between adults strikes any children who may observe it as something uncanny and that it arouses anxiety in them. I have explained this anxiety by arguing that what we are dealing with is a sexual excitation with which their understanding is unable to cope and which they also, no doubt, repudiate because their parents are involved in it, and which is therefore transformed into anxiety. (7.5.21)
Freud thought of the sexual instincts as basic bodily drives that were just as practical and ordinary as hunger, and he saw no reason to deny that children experience sexual "excitation" as well. On the other hand, Freud didn't assume that children were capable of understanding adult sexuality and sexual practices. In fact, in his view, childhood confusion about adult sexuality was a formative part of psychical (or psychological) development.