Thumb-sucking (sensual sucking) in children as a sexual expression
Freud’s second presumption on sexuality provides exhaustive information on why human beings must consider sexuality during the upbringing stage. I have realized the essence of educating children about their sexuality during their tender years. This circumstance is possible when the child begins to attend school. It is noteworthy that a child finds it difficult to interpret whatever he is taught until he gets to school. Thus, in my opinion sexual edification in children is limited to the age bracket.
There is a part of Freud’s text that I seem not to recognize, Freud says for reasons which he will deduce later; he considers thumb-sucking or sensual sucking as a sign of sexual expression in children. I seem not to understand why Freud interprets thumb-sucking as a sexual expression in children.
I personally interpret it as conduct in children as a result of the propensity to suck their mothers’ breasts. He further divulges the emergence of a grasping-instinct in kids that extend into pulling of the ear lobes or touching body parts of other individuals. In my opinion, this is hard to understand, since a child will always grasp anything that is placed before it. This is because they are developing their individual senses.
In this context, I interpret the simultaneous sucking of another person’s ear lobes by the children as a stage in advancement of three senses. These are; sight, touch and taste. Thus, Feud’s view is distant, in comparison to my own. Freud introduces another concept, when he says sensual sucking comes with an inclusive attentiveness which results either in a nap; furthermore, he equates the feeling to an orgasm.
He further acknowledges that this rarely comes with rubbing some receptive section of the body such as the breasts or the genitals. He concludes that a lot of kids go on with this path from sucking to masturbation. I realize that he has introduced the concept of sensual sucking, which he says, involves distraction of attention that leads to sleep. He further relates this feeling to the nature of orgasm.
This further distorts my understanding. This is because I can not relate the process of a child going to sleep due sensual sucking with orgasm. I believe this child has not yet acquired the appropriate sexual hormones. As a result, there is no sexual correlation between the child’s actions and sexual feeling.
Freud further insists that this behavior in children carry on until the child starts to masturbate. Earlier I interpreted thumb sucking as a childhood behavior that is brought forth by the tendency to suck the mother’s breasts. It is not forgotten that this concept also applies to sensual-sucking.
He also says that, in nursery, sucking is habitually categorized with other forms of sexual defiance in children. With this, he confirms his interpretation of sucking in children by telling us the relevance of sucking in nursery. Still I can not relate sucking with sexual manifestation in children.
As I find it rather weird that a child with no sexual feeling and knowledge can actually experience an orgasm without realizing it. In the end, I still do not understand Freud’s relation of sucking and sexual manifestation in children. This does not dispute the fact that his essay increases the level of awareness consequently empowering the readers.