Record of a Friendship

Summerhill School

Leiston, Suffolk

Dear /lse,

1949

January I, 1949

Zoe tiresome at bedtime, keeps getting up. Ena suggests owing
to her genitality not breaking through. Since there has been absolutely
no repression and her genital interest hasn't awakened, I wonder if it is
due to the fact that Ena's milk gave out after three weeks, so that she
missed the oral orgastic phase. There is no boy her age or a little older
for her to make play with. I am so ignorant about babies that I simply
don't know when a girl reaches genital interest. A boy earlier surely,
for his apparatus is so outstanding.
I hope you will all enjoy a Happy New Year. Personally I feel a bit
dull. After the great stimulus of talk in U.S.A. I feel so lonesome with a
staff and visitors who have nothing to say... Ena says I miss the
applause of audiences. Very likely. Love to you all.

• I •

Forest Hills, New York
January 5, 1949
My dear Neill:
I was so occupied with big and petty things during the past
two weeks that I could not answer your letter sooner. I could easily
prove to you that the question of children's genitality is a basic question
of the theory of human disease. With it everything that pertains to the
main body of knowledge that I have created stands or falls. The genital

(^237)