Concluding Thoughts and Potentials for Future Thinking

Abstract

The leitmotiv of this history of ideas is the multifarious and contradictory forms ascribed to the sexual child. Arriving at any conclusion about this constellation of ideas would appear at first to be a futile task. However, constructions of “the sexual child” are highly reflective of the social context in which they were constructed. It was the cultural entrenchment of these ideas in the Anglophone West that led to our retrospective and reconstructive approach. Accordingly, our engagement with the history of ideas entailed three dimensions: historical, discursive, and theoretical that together provided a more informed framework for unpacking the complexities of this story.

Man spends his time devising techniques of which he afterwards remains more or less a willing prisoner.

Bloch (1944/1992)