This article will review Sigmund Freud's written work on children and sexuality and will compare his theoretical position with recent criticism of psychoanalytic practice and its impact on children's sexuality. The context for this discussion will include an analysis of the body as a sacred psychophysical entity. Freud identified sexual abuse. He first venture into the public world in Vienna was marked by his accusation that sexual abuse was at the core of the commonly discussed phenomenon of female hysteria. In the midst of an uproar that rejected his thesis and threatened his ability to feed his family, Freud changed his mind. I will unravel both his first theory and his recanting of it to ask questions about the relationships between sexual experience and the notion of the body as sacred. The idea of the sacred will be garnered from biblical texts (Christian scriptures) that appear to place special significance on the relationship between spirituality and sexuality. In the past, the relationship between spirit and sex has been translated into a view that sexual 'sin' is a worse form of missing the mark than other types of sin. I think this implication for sex and spirit is misguided and something important about the sacredness of sexual intimacy is lost in the prudery that follows this view. The energy that drives this inquiry is fuelled by a desire to consider anew what we mean by sexual intimacy and what we might hold as a sexual ideal. Freud provides an excellent framework for this inquiry given the significance of his work in the formation of our current sexual ideals, practices and aspirations.