c. 1912: surrey
j. r. ackerley meets
the birds and the bees
child psychology is a tedious subject, and if i ad-
vance one or two facts about my early childhood,
i do so in no seriously scientific spirit or belief in
their significance. i was a persistent bed-wetter.
My aunt Bunny told me that, like my brother,
i was an accident and a “little unwanted” and
that some attempt was made to prevent my ar-
rival also. possibly it was more perfunctory, pos-
sibly my instinct for self-preservation preserved
me; at any rate, i emerged a robust and healthy
child, but became a persistent bed-wetter. psy-
chology, i believe, has abandoned a theory it
once held that bed-wetting is a kind of uncon-
scious revenge mechanism; i am sorry if that is
so, for it seems to me an amusing notion that i
might have been pissing upon a world that had
not accorded me the wholehearted welcome
my ego required. But whatever may be thought
of that theory now, my parents could hardly
have known of it then, for child psychology
was not invented, nor would my father, i hope,
have had the impudence to beat me for my be-
havior, which he eventually did. a good deal of
patience, it is true, must have been expended
upon me for years, and many a good mattress
did i ruin until i slept permanently upon rub-
ber sheets. Then came a time when the practice
ceased, then it began again in my early teens. i
myself, of course, knew nothing about it, only
that at first it was pleasantly warm, then un-
pleasantly cold, and in the resumed cycle i used
to dream, i recollect, that i was standing in a
urinal—a devilish dream, for what more natu-
ral than to pee? at any rate, when i began once
more to ruin the new and unprotected mat-
tresses with which i had at last been entrusted,
my father denounced it as “sheer laziness,” to
