A Young Girl’s Diary / Sigmund Freud

PREFACE
THE best preface to this journal written by a young
girl belonging to the upper middle class is a letter
by Sigmund Freud dated April 27, 1915, a letter
wherein the distinguished Viennese psychologist
testifies to the permanent value of the document:
”This diary is a gem. Never before, I believe, has
anything been written enabling us to see so clearly
into the soul of a young girl, belonging to our social
and cultural stratum, during the years of puberal
development. We are shown how the sentiments pass
from the simple egoism of childhood to attain maturity;
how the relationships to parents and other members
of the family first shape themselves, and how
they gradually become more serious and more intimate;
how friendships are formed and broken. We
are shown the dawn of love, feeling out towards its
first objects. Above all, we are shown how the mystery
of the sexual life first presses itself vaguely on
the attention, and then takes entire possession of the
growing intelligence, so that the child suffers under
the load of secret knowledge but gradually becomes
enabled to shoulder the burden. Of all these things
we have a description at once so charming, so serious,
and so artless, that it cannot fail to be of supreme
interest to educationists and psychologists.

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