Psychosexual material in the stories told by children: the fucker

The spontaneously reported narrative fictions collected from 5- to 11-year-old children were examined for the presence of overt psychosexual elements. Two developmental hypotheses were advanced: (1) that the children's expressions would become more inhibited and therefore more indirect with age (Wolfenstein) and (2) that their expressions would not be more inhibited with age but simply more complex and wide ranging (Legman). The data are interpreted as supporting the latter proposition. The older children in the present sample give a wide-ranging display of psychosexual material stated just as directly as is the case with the narrower array for the younger children. Freud's dictum that the higher a joke rises in polite society the more indirect must be its form of expression is thus not supported in the present elementary school. The cultural relativity of the hypothesis is suggested. A folktale analysis of these materials shows that they are most appropriately described as typical of the "trickster" figure in folkloric genre. The Fucker appears to be a subcategory of this genre as well as an enduring folk figure.