CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BEQUEST OF GEORGE JEAN NATHAN Class of 1904 Cornell Univ 3 1924 021 843 184 SEX HAPPINESS SEX HAPPINESS By ANDRE TRIDON Psychoanalyst, author of “Psychoanalysis, its History, Theory and Practice,” “Psycho- analysis and Behavior,” “Psychoanalysis, Sleep and Dreams,” “Introduction to Freud’s Dream Psychology,” “Easy Lessons in Psychoanalysis,” “Psychoanalysis and Love,” etc. “Live joyfully with the woman thou lovest” ECCLESIASTES, IX, 9. pee, 9 Heh ay BONI anv LIVERIGHT PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 1922 Copyright, 1922, by Boni and Liveright, Inc. New York FOREWORD Books on the sexual life can be divided up into two categories: some filled with moraliz- ing platitudes which only becloud the hazy notions the average reader entertains on that subject; others written for those who enjoy suggestive obscenity. The present book simply states without prudery and without pruriency what every man and woman should be taught about sexual intercourse in order to lead a normal, happy life. Sexual ignorance and sexual maladjust- ments are responsible for ninety-five per cent of the married unhappiness which sometimes finds its termination in the divorce court, but which more often drags on for years in house- holds made hideous by nagging, scenes and hatred. The family physician now and then receives confessions revealing more or less directly that Vv FOREWORD state of affairs and then prescribes some sooth- ing medicine which allows one of the victims to carry the burden another day. The gynecologist and the specialist in ve- nereal diseases are only consulted when the extent of the physical damages makes it too late for prevention of any sort. The psychoanalyst, on the other hand, is consulted by those who feel that something must be done to save a situation which is growing dangerous. His patients, in the course of long heart-to-heart talks extending sometimes over several months, allow him to gain a detailed and intimate knowledge of their life and of their sexual difficulties which not even a father confessor is able to acquire. Until medical schools come to recognize the tremendous importance of sex in human life, physicians will have to rely on data fur- nished by analysts for knowledge of the dis- turbances arising from thousands of cases of mismating, most of which, fortunately, can be vi FOREWORD adjusted with a little good will and under- standing on all sides. Clergymen, who are so frequently called upon to give advice in such matters, must con- sider it their duty to study that side of their parishioners’ life, if their advice is to be more than perfunctory and academic. Lawyers and magistrates who must prepare and settle cases of domestic conflict upon the strength of evi- dence which, owing to our modern hypocrisy, is practically worthless, should be able to read between the lines and uncover the hidden tragedies which should lead either to a new attempt on the part of the hostile mates at find- ing happiness or to a complete and speedy separation. The author of this book is well qualified to offer to the various professions valuable ad- vice. André Tridon is the best-known psycho- analyst, writer and lecturer on psychoanalysis in the United States. In the exercise of his profession as ‘lay confessor he has been asked vil FOREWORD many definite questions and has had to suggest definite solutions to his patients. This is really a summary of his talks with his patients, talks which from their very na- ture could not be theoretical but must be in- tensely practical. He has viewed sex unhappi- ness from many different angles; the restless and dissatisfied husband or wife, the nervous wreck, terrorized by sexual manifestations which are biologically normal, but around which puritanism has thrown a veil of mys- tery, the neurotic whom lack of normal grati- fication has upset mentally, the insane who has suppressed normal cravings and expresses them abnormally, have shown him in all its aspects the infinite misery that comes from sex ignorance and from the absurd optimism which relies on blind nature as a teacher of sex lore. Viil CHAPTER II. III. IV. VI. VIL. VIII. IX. XI. XII. XIII. XIV. XV. XVI. XVII. XVIII. XIX. CONTENTS PAGE Foreword Preface The Danger of Sexual Ignorance Love and Life Love in Ancient Times The Purpose of Sexual inkeraearee The Sexual a and Their Functions . Positions Favorable ia Semual Thee course . The Normal Hrequancy of itencouise Ideal Conditions for Intercourse Mental and Physical Hygiene Is Prematrimonial Experience Necessary? Problems of the ‘Bridal Night The Tragedy of the Unsatisfied Wife Premature Ejaculation es at Frigidity in Women The Truth About Sexual Peevemions Fetishism do LS Maladjusted Types . Advice to Married People The Ethics of Divorce in the Light of Sex Study . : 17 36 — 44 52-7 62 76 85 94 106 115 128 142 158 173 184 -- 199 — . 2147 230 - 239 PREFACE Freud and his followers deserve much credit for their study of the sexual life in its relation to mental and physical health. They are guilty of a certain exaggeration when they attribute every neurotic ailment to some disturbance of the sexual life, although to Freud, sexual activities are not synony- mous with genital functions, but include all hedonist, pleasure-seeking activities. Regardless of what school of psychology to which one may belong, however, one can no longer deny the cause-effect relation which ex- ists between a lack of complete sexual gratifi- cation and a large number of neurotic disturb- ances. I do not accept Freud’s dictum that in a normal sex life, neurotic ailments are im- (111. PREFACE possible, but I have never met a neurotic whose sex life was normal and happy. The courageous study of sex phenomena initiated by the Freudians has thrown much light upon feminine psychology which the old- fashioned layman, physician and psychologist insisted on considering as “puzzling,” “mys- terious,” etc. The man of yesterday liked to believe that woman only existed for two purposes: pro- creation and the dispensation of sexual hap- piness to man. The human, but man-made, institution of matriage, by granting to the man “rights” upon the female’s body has gradually led too many men to disregard the teachings of biol- ogy, and to assume that woman’s sexuality is rudimentary, and that, as long as the hus- band is satisfied sexually, everything is as it should be. The new psychology corrects that error, and makes it plain that while woman is the only [12] PREFACE dispenser, not only of sex happiness, but of any real happiness, man’s happiness is very precarious and incomplete unless he assures woman’s sex happiness before thinking of his own. 121 Madison Avenue New York Clty, April 15, 1922. [131 SEX HAPPINESS CHAPTER I THE DANGER OF SEXUAL IGNORANCE An appallingly large number of husbands and wives cheat their mates out of the sexual gratification to which they are entitled and thereby forfeit the greater part of their own sexual enjoyment and domestic happiness. Let neither husband nor wife bear the blame for this regrettable condition of affairs. Ignorance of sexual facts and methods which causes them to adopt faulty means of attaining lawful pleasure and the wrong at- titude toward sex which prevents them from attempting justified experiments are responsi- ble for the widely spread sexual misadapta- tion which is wrecking thousands of homes. The Anglo-Saxon nations often boast of their unusual reticence on sexual subjects. We [17] SEX HAPPINESS see the result of that puritanical attitude in their crowded divorce courts. “Cruelty,” “incompatibility,” the decrees say in so many cases. Read instead of this, “sexual igno- rance,” two words which are at the bottom of all the misunderstandings, bickering, anger, spite, hatred, that destroy the mental and physical health of husbands and wives and jeopardize the future happiness of their chil- dren. Two words that would, if the truth were told, explain thousands of tragedies, beatings or murders, as well as neuroses and cases of insanity. Woman to-day is the most pitiful victim of sexual ignorance. The most unenlightened male boor always succeeds in relieving, through intercourse, his sexual cravings. Mil- lions of wives, on the other hand, are left completely unsatisfied and find neither social sympathy nor legal or moral redress for their plight. However well-bred, polite or “re- pressed” a wife may be, she will gradually [18] DANGER OF IGNORANCE come to hate the man who makes her only yearn for a complete gratification without ever granting it to her. He, on the other hand, will, according to his insight or intelli- gence, consider himself or her as hopelessly imperfect and dismiss the matter with a silly, fatalistic “it can’t be helped.” It can be helped, but neither of them knows how,.and our monstrous hypocrisy, which al- lows neurotics of the oversexed or undersexed type to censor our reading matter, removes from the reach of normal people all sources of information on such a vital subject. Education, which magnifies so many trifles, is a profound failure when it comes to pre- paring human beings for the most important act of life, the act of creation. In childhood we learn from our playmates a few nasty untruths about sex, which gener- ally represent our genitals as handy toys. In adolescence we gather a few whispered ab- surdities which create a morbid atmosphere of [19] SEX HAPPINESS romance and secrecy about sex. Later, some disconnected information about the functions of husbands and wives, about pregnancy and infidelity round up our course of sexual in- struction. The only person who could save us from harrowing doubt or senseless experiments would be the family physician. Unfortun- ately, the majority of physicians are either too puritanical to study sexual phenomena and discuss them, or too superficial or indifferent to discover the tremendous influence they have on human health and happiness. In fact, their puritanical turn of mind often causes them to cast a slur on those members of the medical profession who have specialized in the study and treatment of sexual disturb- ances. Medical colleges offer no instruction re- garding the act to which human beings owe their existence. Until they do so, sexology will remain an Ishmaelite in the scientific field. (20] DANGER OF IGNORANCE Printed information about sex matters is not easily secured by laymen, for organized puritanism has thus far made the distribution of such books almost impossible. Even a book endorsed by the Dean of Teachers’ College of Columbia University, a prominent Jesuit father, a well-known profes- sor of the Union Theological Seminary, and other men most unlikely to countenance sala- cious or even slightly indecent literature, fell foul of the censorship a few months ago. The recent action of the police in stopping a meeting at the Town Hall, New York City, where a discussion was to have been held on the subject of birth control by Margaret San- ger and other distinguished women and men, is an example of this kind of persecution and interference on the part of the public authori- ties. The only person demanding the suppres- sion of this meeting was a clergyman of this city. Mrs. Sanger and a friend were arrested, the meeting broken up by a force of: police, [21] SEX HAPPINESS though the case against the speakers was dis- missed the following day by a city magistrate. The list of the patrons of that debate included many distinguished women in New York. Fortunately the courts have rebuked sev- eral times in the past year the men responsi- ble for this suppression of essential facts, men who should not have been allowed to establish themselves as the guardians of a nation’s morals, but who, in many cases, should be treated in the psychopathic ward of a hospital. A person who objects to every mention of the sex life is either stupid, hypocritical or neurotic. There are stupid persons who, even in these days of popular science and general enlighten- ment, fail to realize that sex is the most impor- tant phenomenon in the world, for it is the root of all life. There are hypocrites who realize keenly the importance of sex, but who, bent on always saying and doing the popular thing, side, in [22] DANGER OF IGNORANCE their fear of sex, with the old-fashioned and the ignorant. Finally there are neurotics who, oversexed and too easily tempted, go forth suppressing thoughts and destroying things which to them are formidable temptations, although to a nor- mal man they are practically unnoticeable. Whoever prides himself upon his ignorance of sexual facts and over his children’s or his mate’s ignorance, is willing to take his place among one of the three groups mentioned above. Puritanism of this character breeds decep- tion. Many a wife, silent and motionless in her husband’s arms, sexless as he terms it, changes, in a lover’s arms, into an insatiable, abandoned bacchante. Mothers have brought their “pure” daughters to me to analyze and warned me cautiously not to use any word that might tarnish their virgin minds. After which I could easily peer into little messa- linian souls used to many corruptions. [23] SEX HAPPINESS What a husband conceals from his wife she is likely to find out from a lover; and if moth- ers knew, they could save their daughters from many pitfalls by planting red flags of danger over those pitfalls, instead of covering them up with flowery explanations. For this puritanism also breeds much suffer- ing. The mother whose daughter has been seduced deserves very little sympathy, and yet it is she whom the world pities and her daughter who is condemned. The adulterous wife could never plead be- fore the world’s court that her husband had starved her life emotionally, sentimentally or sexually, in his fear of corrupting her “pure” mind. He, like the idiotic mother, receives boundless sympathy. Mothers and husbands of the so-called pure type are absurdly ignorant of human nature. Mystery makes for curiosity. The pure wife and daughter are a hundred times more easily attainable for the Don Juan than the sophis- [24] DANGER OF IGNORANCE ticated woman. The latter has, or thinks she has, very little to learn and is not so easily carried off her feet by the lure of the un- known. Puritanism in certain cases even breeds in- sanity. One of the most pitiful examples I have been called upon to examine was that of a patient whose lack of sexual information led her into a very severe psychosis: A woman of fifty-five was once brought to me by her son and daughter. I hesitated to accept her as a patient, for she seemed very far gone. Frightened glances, a neglected ap- pearance indicated a great deal of deteriora- tion. I finally consented to see her for two weeks before making a decision. From the very first, however, I could diagnose a case of sexual ig- norance causing a terrific mental disturbance. The patient, a very puritanical Jewish widow, ceased menstruating at the age of forty-five, and resumed her menstruation at fifty-two. [25] SEX HAPPINESS Sexual talk had always been taboo in her family. She had brought up her several sons and daughters very strictly. When her second change of life occurred she considered the event a catastrophe. Fed upon the Mosaic superstitions relative to menses, she regarded herself as impure, as vicious, as a prostitute. She concealed the fact from her daughters and from the family physician. She lived in constant terror of being “found out.” Delusions soon appeared, followed by definite hallucinations. She thought people looked at her strangely; then they spoke about her and finally “voices” be- gan to come to her out of water pipes, electric wiring, flying machines, which said: “There goes the old prostitute.” At the same time she was very erotic, and her sexual desires left her no peace. She re- pressed them, sleeping fully dressed, with the lights burning and one of her daughters [26] DANGER OF IGNORANCE watching her, that she might not yield to mas- turbatory cravings. She attempted suicide twice and once at- tempted to asphyxiate her whole family by closing the windows and turning on the gas jets in the middle of the night. Her justifica- tion was that being a “degenerate” she must have necessarily brought forth a family of de- generates and it would be better for all of them to die. The task of enlightening a woman of that age and of such a disposition appeared tre- mendous. However, with the help of one of her daughters I undertook it, and after some eight months of hard work we finally led her to consider herself as normal and “clean,” to accept her sexual cravings as natural and bio- logical, although inconvenient. Remarriage was suggested, although being an old-fash- ioned Jewess she refused to consider the pos- sibility of her remarrying as long as some of her daughters were single. Thoughts of a sec- [27] SEX HAPPINESS ond marriage, however, proved a convenient vehicle for sexual thoughts which she had, until then, repressed as sinful. Hopes of re- juvenation were held out to her if she would only engage in various activities and social diversions. ; The last time I saw her she had become rather coquettish in her manner of dressing, attended an afternoon school for old women of her faith, solicited funds for a charitable society and had danced at several weddings. She had accepted life and herself as they were and not as she imagined they should be. Only recently a very handsome and distin- guished woman called at my office and told me that she was going insane. She had lived all her life among neurotic relatives, with an invalid brother and a crazy aunt. When at the age of thirty-nine her men- struation became irregular, she grew fright- ened at the thought of the mysterious climac- teric about which she knew very little except [28] DANGER OF IGNORANCE that “most women went insane” when affected by it. There was her neurotic chance to “join the crowd,” to become helpless like so many other members of her family, a secure opportunity, for, while there was nothing the matter with her physically or mentally, she could uncon- sciously yield to many a tabooed whim in which civilized people of adult age do not in- dulge and win everyone’s sympathy. “Poor woman, she was wrecked by the dan- gerous age,” people would have said. Sexual instruction and the frank expression of many half-repressed sexual cravings which had disturbed her, as well as a good training in self-psychoanalysis which revealed to her the origin of her attempts at becoming insane, drove off the ghosts. Instead of being an old, gray-haired, spent person, she has gathered new youth unto her. Her complexion has cleared, her ‘hair is no longer gray (although this result was not due [29] SEX HAPPINESS to mental treatment), and her natural attrac- tions will undoubtedly enable her to realize in a lover’s arms that her life, instead of be- ing ended, has just begun. I wish that all the old-fashioned objectors to sexual enlightenment could be allowed to listen to the pitiful confessions which the lay confessors known as psychoanalysts receive in the course of the long talks they have with their patients, talks which last.one hour and which, repeated several times a week, often extend over many months. They would real- ize a truth which even physicians seldom sus- pect, while looking hurriedly at a patient’s tongue, taking his pulse and scribbling a pre- scription. Those confessions have convinced me that mental and physical health are hardly ever found in human beings whose sexual life is maladjusted. They have also shown me that many maladjustments are due to the patient’s wrong attitude to sex and love. [30] DANGER OF IGNORANCE Whenever fear, shame or flippancy charac- terize a man’s or woman’s attitude to love, a lack of gratification is observable. In other words, when love is held to be beautiful, its results are health and power. Whenever it is regarded with mistrust or scorn, its consequences are restlessness, bitter- ness and weakness. This book is a plea for a revival of the worship of love. It is not written with the aim of satisfying the erotically curious, nor those in search of new and picturesque perversions. It is meant to correct the errors of husbands and wives who, owing to their ignorance of biology and physiology, cannot derive from their sexual communion the complete gratification which alone insures health, peace and harmony in the home and self-confidence and efficiency in one’s dealings with the world. With that end in view we shall explain the real nature of the sexual organs and their vari- [31] SEX HAPPINESS ous functions, divesting sex information of all superstitions which too many physicians and scientists of the present day affect to counte- nance in order to cater to their patients’ preju- dices and not to offend Mrs. Grundy. We shall explain the true biological mean- ing of the act of intercourse which is so vitally different from copulation among animals. In- stead of the mere fertilization of an egg by a germ, human mating has come to mean the harmonization of a thousand varying tenden- cies, the stimulation of man’s and woman’s deepest sources of energy and vitality. This form of union is no longer stereotyped in human beings as it is in animals. Individ- ual variations, physical and mental, have re- sulted in variegated forms of intercourse which are adapted to changing conditions and to different human types. It will be necessary to study every one of those forms from the point of view of whether they hasten the consummation of the act or [32] DANGER OF IGNORANCE prolong it, thus affording complete satisfac- tion and pleasure, not only to the man, but also to the woman. Special attention must be paid also to the critical stage of human relationship reached in the bridal night when, either ignorance of the proper sexual procedure or unjustified fears may blight the mates’ hope of sexual happiness for the rest of their married lives. One of the most frequent errors committed by married people is to allow their sexual life to degenerate into a state of relationship de- void of all the premarriage romance and ten- derness and which no longer vouchsafes any stimulation of the mental or physical type. The connection between that unwise be- havior and many unpleasant disturbances of the sex life will be pointed out and suggestions offered whereby an adjustment may be ef- fected. We shall also dwell on many disturbances due in the overwhelming majority of cases to [33] SEX HAPPINESS mental factors. Impotence generally proves to be “conditioned potency” in men, frigidity in women should be called “conditioned pas- sion,’ In other words, the will-to-sexual- power in either sex has been impaired by cer- tain obsessions which can easily be removed by proper treatment. The search for those obsessional ideas in- variably leads us far back into the patient’s childhood. It is there that we can locate the origin of innumerable fears. In many cases we find patients absolutely unsexed by the strife between their parents. In other cases we find perversions in the off- spring due to lack of sexual reserve on the part of the parents in the presence of their children. Judged from this new angle, sexual happi- ness assumes a new importance. It is from this new point of view also that the problem of divorce must be reconsidered. Thousands of divorces could be avoided if [34] DANGER OF IGNORANCE the prospective mates were properly in- structed in matters of sex and if apparently ill-mated couples were helped to readjust their differences. In other cases, although there might not be any legal grounds for a separation, such as in- fidelity or cruelty, judges, juries and attorneys should yield to specialists and psychologists, and biology should take precedence over custom. A lay confessor for many years, I have noted the questions which my patients have asked me most frequently. This book is merely an epitome of the answers I have given to those questions. My patients have presented to me many problems. This book contains only the solu- tions which have proved acceptable by the pragmatic standard according to which truth is that which works. [35] CHAPTER II LOVE AND LIFE The two great instincts which drive man- kind forward are the Ego urge and the Sex urge. The ego urge drives us to seek food, better food, cheaper food, more plentiful food, hence to extend our dominion over as large a territory as possible, that our food sup- ply may never fail, and over as many other human beings as possible that our search for food be less tiresome. If mankind was not endowed with any other urge, however, its existence would end with the dying off of the present generation. There must be an urge which drives human beings to reproduce themselves. It is the sex urge. Without the sex urge, the ego urge would avail us little; nor would the sex urge [36] LOVE AND LIFE keep the world alive with human beings if the ego urge should fail them. The modern world renders due homage to the ego urge. Directly or indirectly the ego is worshipped by the millions. To keep the individual alive, that is, pri- marily, fed, the ingenuity of the world is ex- erting itself continually. To be independent, that is, to secure one’s own food supply, is considered the most praiseworthy aim of every young male and female. For that purpose schools and uni- versities are devising new courses of training. Thousands of books are written every year, showing us the road to success. The press rings with the names of the successful. The successful rule the world, mainly because they have succeeded. “Nothing succeeds like suc- cess” is a common saying. Even the more hideous phases of egotistical pursuit, those which involve the killing of hu- [37] SEX HAPPINESS man beings in the relentless search for a food supply, invasion of other people’s lands, com- monly called conquest of “markets,” conflicts of a tragic character between individuals fighting for the control of some source of power, appear to us admirable or thrilling. The urge which is meant to conserve life can be so distorted as to mean destruction and death. And yet whenever presented in art, literature, at the movies, it meets with little reprobation. The ego urge at its best only conserves life, something which it has not created, something without which it could not come into being. Life, however, is something more tremen- dous which cannot exist without sex. Sex is, therefore, infinitely more important than egotism, love infinitely greater than food or success. And those of us who are not abso- lutely hypocritical would have to confess that if given the choice of reading about the most successful enterprise on earth or about a real [38] LOVE AND LIFE love story, they would read the love story first. Yet how does the modern world treat sex and love? They are outcasts who can only peep in the gates of the modern world when disguised as romance, the most nefarious mask they could have ever adopted. What is romance? Romance is life as pic- tured by some young, ignorant man or woman whom his or her sex promptings, misunder- stood and mysterious, lure toward some ab- surd goal. Romance is the most poisonous element in our mental life, for it leads to thousands of pitfalls, to disease, to undesired motherhood, to jail or death. Sex, the origin of all created things, that leads male and female to seek a union which will add another human being to the race, must not be mentioned in polite society. It must not be represented pictorially in any of its activities and books dealing with it hon- [39] SEX HAPPINESS estly, scientifically, must be sold surrep- titiously. Egotism, healthy or morbid, is welcome everywhere. Murder and death may occupy the front page of the dailies. Sex and life are things to be ashamed of. And yet, how inconsistent we are. Even in our Puritanical age, what are the tales which we read and whose reading we consider as a sign of culture? Sex stories: the sex story of Adam and Lilith, of Adam and Eve, the Greek legends of the love of Paris for Helen, of Odysseus for many women and in- cidentally his wife Penelope. The only As- syrian work which has survived is the love story of Doozi and Ishtar. The Pheenicians have left us little besides the romance of Ash- toreth and Adoni. Remember Semiramis, Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. We may have no knowledge of Greek poetry, but we all know of Sappho. The man most ignorant of Roman history knows of Messalina. Kings [40] LOVE AND LIFE have passed into oblivion, but we remember the sweet names of the women who loved them and were loved of them, Lucretia Borgia, Diana of Poitiers, Madame de Maintenon, Agnes Sorel, etc. Some of us could hardly name any of Ra- phael’s canvasses, but we know of his love affair with Fornarina; we know of Laura of Nova, even if we have not read Petrarch’s sonnets; of Dante and Beatrice, if we have never opened the Vita Nuova. And who was Don Juan, the secret model that every swain wishes to emulate, except the man in whose life, sex played an overwhelmingly important part, the man who dedicated himself to the conquest and love of beautiful women? For a thousand years our psychological mis- understanding of the founder of Christianity and His ideas has moved us to pretend a shame and disgust of sex which no normal human being actually experiences, but which every- one of us under the penalty of social ostracism [41] SEX HAPPINESS must voice strongly or feebly when the occa- sion arises. Few of us ever dare to rise against that hypocritical dictate and those who do often fare badly at the hands of so-called purity fanatics. Lovers of life are called lovers of the obscene, a word which, after all, has very little meaning. In modern times few have spoken out their love of sex and their worship of the sublime act of creation as frankly as Walt Whitman, whom the terrible irony of fate caused to be born amidst the most bigot-ridden nation of modern times: Sex contains all, bodies, souls, Meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations, Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the seminal milk, All hopes, benefactions, bestowals, all the pas- sions, loves, beauties, delights of the earth, [42] LOVE AND LIFE All the governments, judges, gods, follow’d persons of the earth, These are contained in sex as parts of itself and justifications of itself. Without shame the man I like knows and avows the deliciousness of his sex. Without shame the woman I like knows and avows hers. {43 ] CHAPTER ITI LOVE IN ANCIENT TIMES The sex taboo, due to the influence of the Christian and Hebrew Churches, was an un- heard-of thing in ancient civilizations, and has not been accepted, except superficially, in lands which are not directly submitted to the Christian and Hebrew influences. Even the Christian Church at one time rec- ognized the power of sexual desire and its right to expression and gratification. The Church Council held at Toledo, Spain, in 400 A. D., permitted married men to keep concubines and to consort with other women “when their temperaments demanded it.” As late as 1059 the Council of Rome ad- mitted the right of married men to keep a [44] LOVE IN ANCIENT TIMES mistress “if they needed one.” More recently, Luther, the great reformer, wrote very frankly: \ “Tt is just as impossible for woman to do without man as for man to do. without woman,” and he added that if a man becomes impotent, his wife should write him a polite letter stating that she had decided to enter a “secret marriage” with some other man. While the Hebrew Church has become as puritanical in its treatment of sex as the Chris- tian churches, we must not forget that the col- lection of religious, historical and legal docu- ments of Hebrew origin known as the Bible contains the wonderful love poem called the Song of Songs, which has ever been a thorn in the flesh for Bible commentators. They have imparted to it a degree of re- spectability by declaring that it represents the love of Jesus and the Church, but it is in reality a burning love duet in which the lovers [45] SEX HAPPINESS exhaust all the poetical comparisons in their mutual outpourings: Her eyes, he says, are as the pools of Hesh- bon, her neck as a tower of ivory, her stature as a palm tree, her breasts as clusters of grapes, her navel as a rounded wine cup and her belly as a mound of wheat set about with lilies. His eyes, she retorts, are as those of doves by the rivers, his cheeks as beds of spices and flowers, his legs as pillars of marble. And they exchange a thousand caresses which the Shulamite openly invites from her lover, until “his left hand is under her head and his right hand embraces her.” And at intervals there rise the voices of the daughters of Jerusalem, like the chorus of a Greek tragedy adding a symphonic finish to this literary gem. For it is worthy of notice that instead of the grossness which, modern purity advocates tell us, debases all the things touched by sex, we constantly find in the so-called obscene books [46] LOVE IN ANCIENT TIMES of the past a feeling for beauty, be it the beauty of nature or the beauty of art, which the modern world seems to have lost. Even the fleshly and indelicate lovers of the Arabian Perfumed Garden interrupt their las- Civious pastimes to recite to each other or to improvise poetry. In Egypt during the time of Alexandria’s glory, the Goddess of love Aphrodite-Astarte was the object of a special cult much more elaborate even than the worship which was accorded to Aphrodite in Greece and to Venus in Rome. _ Prostitues were not considered low characters, but as priestesses of the god- dess of love, and girls preparing themselves for “the career of love” were trained officially in all the arts which would make them fasci- nating charmers of men. Some two thousand of them were taught in the great school ad- joining the temple and called the Didascalion. For Alexandria was only one of the great cities, ancient and modern, in which one al- [47] SEX HAPPINESS ways found side by side the greatest artistic and cultural development and unbridled sex worship: Babylon, Athens, Rome, Venice, Paris. Ancient art was infinitely more sexual than modern art. In fact, archaic sculptors and draftsmen delighted particularly in represent- ing sexual organs. The modern wave of puri- tanism has compelled curators of museums to exile such relics of the past to secret cham- bers or to destroy them. Ancient philosophers were not at all afraid of discussing sex and the sexual communion in their writings. Men like Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, devoted pages, for instance, to dis- cussions of the nature of sperm, which Pythag- oras considered as the flower of the blood, Plato as an outflow of spinal marrow, and Aristotle as an agglomeration of small brains. Ancient physicians of all lands prescribed the form and frequency of sexual intercourse, [48] LOVE IN ANCIENT TIMES a question which legislators also were at times called upon to decide in the open court. Arabian sages, whose books partook of the character of religious, medical and legal doc- uments, went as far as prescribing the parts of the body which lovers should kiss, touch, stroke or smell to arouse themselves. Some sacred Hindoo books even prescribe the cries and moans which lovers should utter to better gratify each other. T have not cited the customs of any so-called primitive peoples to avoid the possible charge of preaching a return to savagery. Intellec- tually and artistically, the classic days of Greece and Alexandria were a match for our times, if not superior to them in several re- spects. ; Their sex worship did not in any way con- tribute to the downfall of those civilizations. This was due to purely economic causes or to invasions of ruthless barbarians. On the other hand, sex and love never [49] SEX HAPPINESS seemed to inspire any but beautiful thoughts in those days. To man and to woman alike, the sexual communion was a beautiful act un- marred by shame, concealment and hypocrisy. It is doubtful whether the modern man in- dulges in coition less frequently than the an- cients did. “Morality” has probably made very little progress. The only visible and tangible difference between sexual life now and sexual life thousands of years ago is that the sublime act of physical union is now desig- nated by filthy monosyllables, and that the priestess of love is now called a whore and too often lives down to the scorn which bigots express of her calling. The final result is the same, but we have smeared love with mud instead of decorating it with wreaths. The sun of a new paganism, however, is rising. The terrific spread of sex diseases has com- pelled medical men to break the silence of 150] LOVE IN ANCIENT TIMES centuries. The school of Freud has shown the utter impossibility of understanding and treating certain mental disturbances without a profound knowledge of sex. The public is being gradually accustomed to the sound of the dreaded word. And enlightenment is coming from the worthiest source, from sci- entists, who respect whatever they study. [51] CHAPTER IV THE PURPOSE OF INTERCOURSE Among animals intercourse has only one purpose, the impregnation of the female and the reproduction of the species. This has led many primitive souls to con- clude that this was also the sole purpose of sexual intercourse among human beings. We must beware of such analogies. If those people were logical they would preach a form of behavior which is repugnant to civ- ilized men and women. In the animal world we behold, for instance, every variety of in- cestuous union, father and daughter, mother and son, sister and brother, the very old con- sorting with the extremely young, not forget- ting many forms of brutality. Whatever the social and economic reasons [52] PURPOSE OF INTERCOURSE may be which have compelled the human ani- mal to adopt the incest barrier, that barrier stands and is only ignored by an insignificant minority. That alone makes the human animal dif- ferent from the other animal. But there are other more striking points of dissimilarity. In the animal world there is a rutting or mating season, before and after which ani- mals seldom if ever, manifest or seek to gratify any sexual desires. The sexual craving leads in certain animals to temporary unions, sometimes of very short duration. In other animals there is only a brief encounter followed by copulation, after which the mates become once more total strangers. In fishes, a female may lay eggs and swim away, after which some male, any male, in fact, of the same species, will pour out on the eggs a fecundating secretion and go on his way, having never even seen his “mate.” Only in very rare exceptions, as, for in- [53] SEX HAPPINESS stance, in elephants, does the companionship of male and female last longer than the rutting season. While sexual desire is apt to manifest itself more keenly in the spring, human males and females experience the craving for physical union at all seasons. Normal men and women experience after sexual gratification a tender craving for com- panionship which, even in cases where no marriage tie holds them together, often leads to beautiful associations lasting for years. Only abnormal individuals feel disgust for their sexual mate after an embrace, and the Latin poet who wrote that “every animal is sad after coition” only revealed his own neurotic dis- position. Finally, sexual desire does not die out in the human female after she has been impregnated nor after the climacteric or change of life, when her menstruation ceases and she loses the power to conceive and bear children. [54] PURPOSE OF INTERCOURSE Even castration, through the removal of her ovaries, does not destroy in her the desire for intercourse. There must be in the human sexual act, therefore, an element which is lacking in mere animal copulation. Preachers are constantly repeating that chastity is not harmful. Yet we seldom asso- ciate in our daily life the idea of continence with the idea of health. Whether old bachelors and old maids are devitalized by their abnormal mode of life, or whether they remain single owing to their sexual disabilities, whether neurotic troubles are due to sexual deficiencies or sexual de- ficiencies to neuroses, the fact remains that married people show more vitality and power in middle age than unmarried people. Their working capacity is greater and so is their re- sistance to disease. The reason for this is that the regular ac- tivity of the sex glands results in a beneficial Las! SEX HAPPINESS stimulation of almost all the glands of the body, those which regulate the outflow of energy, those which safeguard the rhythm of the body and give it its well-balanced appearance in health, those which disinfect the gastric and intestinal tracts and ward off infection, and last, but not least, those that promote the activities of nutrition and diges- tion. This, someone may remark, is only the phys- ical or chemical side of intercourse. What of its mental or psychic significance? I am one of those who hold that nothing physical was ever known to take place which did not correspond to some mental or psychic phenomenon. A pleasant meal, eaten in nice surroundings, on a well-set table, with fine linen and lovely flowers, not only sharpens one’s appetite, but induces a great deal of ex- hilaration. The same food, served by a slovenly cook in gloomy surroundings, amid acrid discussions, [56] PURPOSE OF INTERCOURSE would not only spoil one’s appetite but act as a deep depressant. The man who is a victim of fear or anger is unable to digest a meal, and, conversely, the man who is tortured by gastric pangs is a most unpleasant person to deal with. Although I reject absolutely the division of life phenomena into mental and physical, I will, for the sake of convenience, dwell a while on what might be termed the mental side of intercourse. Among animals, intercourse is very little more than a physical process through which the male’s sperm is allowed to reach and to fecundate the female’s egg. Among civilized human beings it is primarily the most com- plete blending of the personality of both mates, the most satisfying process through which they may reach an absolutely complete union, physical and mental. That such a union often culminates in preg- nancy and childhood does not invalidate my [57] SEX HAPPINESS statement. For the child born of a loving em- brace is, after all, the living symbol of the wonderful unity of desire and purpose which animates the man and the woman during the sexual communion. Sexual communion would indeed be a much more fitting word to designate the sexual act than all the expressions used by scientists or laymen, such as coitus, intercourse, copulation, fornication, etc., not to mention some atrocious monosyllables in which the vulgar revel. For it implies so many things: absolute confidence, an infinite mutual attraction, a desire, not only to receive the supreme caress from a loved mate, but to give that loved mate more pleas- ure if possible than can be expected from him or her, the joy and pride of being desired, finally the inexpressible bliss of feeling one with one’s mate, of feeling one’s personality doubled. The intimate contact of the mucous surfaces of the genitals and of the lips, and of the two [58] PURPOSE OF INTERCOURSE bodies closely pressed, gives the mates the il- lusion (which is to a great extent a reality) that they are each other, that a miracle has been performed, that all the incompleteness of limited human life has been done away with, that the perfection of a complete existence has been at last attained. That such a marvelous feeling experienced regularly and frequently is likely to increase one’s sense of power and to make every new day a goal to be eagerly pursued instead of a danger to be avoided, can be easily imagined. To those who can enjoy that communion to the fullest extent, the past is a treasure house of blissful memories, the present is the reali- zation of happiness itself, the future is replete with romantic possibilities. Whether nature has endowed the happy mates richly or has proved niggardly to them, whether they dwell in a palace or on a humble farm, they who know the perfection of the [59] SEX HAPPINESS complete human communion will go through life with a victorious smile. Even defeat will only appear to them as an incident in the conqueror’s progress. For they will never lack the self-confidence which, in a large measure, is the key to success. The sexual communion is not only the great- est mental and physical stimulant that was ever known. It accomplishes even more. It is the great Lethe in which all the weary, the nervous, the harassed find oblivion from their temporary discomfort. Behold the lovers whom the great climax of the sexual communion has left helpless and apparently bereft of all strength in each other’s arms. Their apparent exhaustion means solely that all restraint has disappeared, all the muscular tensions have been released. The lovers have attained absolute peace and rest. Their lips are too weak for any more kisses [60] PURPOSE OF INTERCOURSE but they wear a beatific smile, revealing the marvelous visions that linger in their mind. The world, with all its miseries, is forgot- ten. All the things that were doubtful have been made certain. Neither of them would flinch if death were near. Many lovers have craved to be overtaken by death in that bliss- ful languor, for none of the things which that world offers them is a match for those bliss- ful minutes, barring the hope of their return. [61] CHAPTER V THE SEXUAL ORGANS AND THEIR FUNCTIONS Uncertainty concerning the meaning of the various parts of the genital system and many erroneous beliefs as to their proper location, shape, size, etc., are responsible for a good deal of married misery. How many neurotics have I known who considered themselves ab- normal, and were making themselves abnor- mal, because their penis seemed to them smaller than it should have been, because one of their testicles hung much lower than the other, because their crop of pubic hair seemed to them too thick or too thin, because, in one case, one of the testicles had. not descended into the scrotum, etc. Until the anatomy and physiology of sex organs occupies a prominent place in the cur- [62] ORGANS AND FUNCTIONS riculum of every school, that kind of fear and worry will keep many men and women from sharing in the pleasures of sex or, in the case of married couples, create distrust in the mind of either one of the mates.* The male organs consist of the penis and the testicles. The penis consists of two parallel cylin- drical bodies called cavernous bodies, under which is the spongy body through which runs the urethra or duct supplying a passage for urine and sperm. When the penis is in a condition of rest its: length may vary from two to four inches, while its diameter is about one inch. When the temperature is low or after a cold bath, it may shrink to an unusually small size. *A young woman whose husband ejaculated a little too soon on their bridal night was unable afterwards to en- joy the marital embrace, for she thought that his sperm, which, owing to his withdrawal, had fallen partly on her and partly on the bed sheets, was “evidence of some aw- ful disease.” [63] SEX HAPPINESS When ‘erected or tumescent it may attain six or seven inches in length; in certain cases, eight or nine, and its diameter increases to sometimes over two inches. It is then almost cylindrical, straight and rigid. The head or glans of the penis is usually larger, especially in the erect condition, than the root of the organ. It is covered with a mucous membrane and ensheathed by the fore- skin or prepuce. ‘The foreskin must be wide enough to be rolled back easily from the glans in a state of erection. The reader must bear in mind that the shape and size of the penis are as varied and indi- vidual as the shape and size of any other part of the body, for instance, the nose or the ears. Short noses, and long noses, hooked noses and pug noses, thin noses and fleshy noses, nar- row noses and wide noses may be normal noses. Also the most normal nose may turn red if exposed to intense cold or intense sun- light, and yet remain normal. The ideally [64] ORGANS AND FUNCTIONS regular penis is quite as rare as the ideally regular nose. Also the penis may, when erect, be slightly flexed to the right or to the left and yet be a normal penis. The testicles are two egg-shaped glands which hang in a bag called the scrotum. The testicles are contained in the abdomen of the fetus up to the eighth month of its life, after which they descend through the inguinal canal into the scrotum. In rather rare cases there is only one testicle, or the testicles have not descended into the scrotum, but neither irregularity necessarily leads to impotence. The region of the lower abdomen, where the genitals are located, is covered both in men and in women with hair, the texture and thick- ness of which are extremely variable, differing at times greatly from the hair which covers the head. No suspicion of abnormality should [65] SEX HAPPINESS necessarily attach to its exaggerated scarcity or thickness. The woman’s sexual organs are the vagina or vulva, the clitoris, the uterus or womb and the ovaries. The vagina is a slit of varying width, rather narrow in the virgin and the childless woman, rather wide after repeated childbirth. In length and diameter it corre- sponds roughly to the average penis, but it is capable of considerable extension so as to ac- commodate itself to a penis of any size, from the smallest to the largest. The clitoris is a small body analogous to the penis, but much smaller, located at the anterior angle of the vulva. It may be buried more or less deeply in the lips of the vulva, and its size is extremely variable. Like the penis, it is erectile, that is, it can, under the in- fluence of erotic excitement, become consider- ably larger than it is when at rest. The womb is a pear-shaped sack connected [66] ORGANS AND FUNCTIONS with the vulva by the cervix or neck, a con- tracted opening. The ovaries are located right and left of the womb in the region of the upper groins. They are small, flat, oval-shaped bodies, con- nected with the womb by the Fallopian tubes or oviducts, which convey the eggs from the ovary to the womb. In the virgin, the entrance to the vulva is generally closed by a membrane of varying thickness called the hymen. The primary, but not by any means the sole, function, nor (as we shall see in another chapter) the most important-function of the sexual organs is to assure the reproduction of the species. This is accomplished through the follow- ing process: The ovaries are made up of a mass of vesi- cles, or small bags, called Graafian vesicles, each of which contains an ovum or egg. The human egg is very much like a bird’s egg, ex- [67] SEX HAPPINESS cept that it is infinitely smaller, being only about one hundred and twentieth of an inch in diameter, and having no hard shell. Each human ovary contains between twenty-five thousand and thirty thousand eggs. Those eggs begin to appear in the ovaries about the time more or less inaccurately des- ignated as the period of puberty. The fact that a female has begun to pro- duce eggs and hence is capable of bearing chil- dren is indicated by the first menstrual flow. Every twenty-eight days some of the eggs mature or ripen, and when reaching that con- dition pass out of the ovaries, enter the Fallo- pian tubes and gradually reach the womb. While the egg is on its way from the ovaries to the womb, a certain amount of blood flows also from the ovaries, carrying the eggs down the tubes. The process takes about five days, although in perfectly normal cases, it may last longer or terminate quicker. The egg remains in the womb for about [68] ORGANS AND FUNCTIONS ten days, after which, unless it has been fer- tilized, it generally passes out of the womb into the vulva and hence out of the body. But there are exceptions to this rule, and the egg may remain much longer in the womb. To be fertilized, the egg must be brought into contact with a spermatozoon, one of the small live organisms which float in the man’s sperm. Let us see now where the spermatozoa come from and how they reach the egg. The spermatozoa, which are shaped like microscopic tadpoles, form in the testicles and are released from them at the climax of the sexual act known as ejaculation. They follow small ducts called the seminal ducts, which lead into a pocket located under the root of the penis and filled with prostatic fluid. The prostate is a gland shaped like a ring, and which surrounds the root of the penis. It secretes a liquid which resembles the white of an egg. In times of sexual excitement or under [69] SEX HAPPINESS the influence of erotic thoughts a little of that liquid runs out of the penis and has been mis- taken by many for sperm. Sperm is made up of this liquid into which between thirty and five hundred million sper- matozoa have flowed from the testicles. When the man has inserted his penis into the woman’s vulva and performed for a while the motions of coitus described elsewhere, the nervous excitement caused by the act causes the sperm to be ejected in large drops with a cer- tain force out of the prostate pocket, through the urethra of the penis and into the vulva of the woman. There the sperm mixes with a fluid pro- duced by the woman and which has about the same composition as saliva; the spermatozoa swarm about the vaginal cavity seeking the mouth of the womb; they enter the womb, and if one of them comes in contact with the ovum resting there it penetrates the ovum, which becomes fertilized. The woman is then [70] ORGANS AND FUNCTIONS pregnant, and after growing in the womb for two hundred and eighty days, the egg, assum- ing gradually an animal, then a human shape, will come out as a child. Unless the woman is naturally sterile, due to lack of development of the ovaries, or has been made sterile by sickness and a surgical operation, the introduction of sperm from a normal, potent man into any part of the vulva during menstruation or during the ten days which follow the end of the menstrual flow, generally results in pregnancy. One spermatozoon is sufficient to bring about the impregnation of the egg resting in the womb and as the spermatozoa are ex- tremely active organisms and as, furthermore, ejaculation throws millions of them into the woman’s vulva, intercourse performed in a normal way by a normal man and a normal woman soon after menstruation invariably means the procreation of a human being. But I repeat, impregnation can only take [71] SEX HAPPINESS place if an ejaculation has taken place in the male. The penetration of the vulva by the penis, even if a quantity of prostatic fluid should flow into the vulva in the course of such a caress, is absolutely insufficient to cause pregnancy. As we said in the preceding chapter, the sexual act is not complete unless ejaculation by the male has taken place. It cannot be said that the act is complete even when the male’s sperm has been poured into the female’s vulva. It is only biologically complete in the sense that it can insure the impregnation of the fe- male and the continuance of the race. Men and women are compelled to perform the sexual act by a craving which can only be satisfied by the union of their genitals. That union, far from satisfying their sexual craving, makes it only more acute and almost akin to pain. And indeed when their genital organs are congested by blood rushing into them they experience not a little discomfort. [72] ORGANS AND FUNCTIONS That discomfort can only be relieved when a climax of excitement is reached, in which the man ejaculates and the woman expe- riences an orgasm. After which the pleasur- able ache of desire subsides, the congestion of the organs is relieved and a wave of well-being suffuses their bodies. The pleasurable sensations derived from ejaculation and orgasm and which are un- doubtedly the strongest a human being can ex- perience are identical, but the results are dif- ferent in the man and the woman. As stated before, the man’s ejaculation brings sperma- tozoa from the testicles into the woman’s gen- itals, and is therefore necessary for the im- pregnation of the egg. The woman’s orgasm merely increases the quantity of fluid produced by her genital glands. Those fluids simply add to the pleas- ure of the sexual caress as they lubricate all the parts of her vulva and flood the man’s penis, thus eliminating friction and overheat- [73] SEX HAPPINESS ing, but their presence or absence does not modify in any way the final result. A woman can be impregnated regardless of whether the sexual act has given her pleasure or pain or has left her entirely indifferent. Certain authors claim that at the time of the orgasm, the mouth of the womb gapes and makes sucking motions likely to draw the sperm more quickly towards its destination, but this is only guesswork, for no observation of that phenomenon is possible. The only thing that can be stated is that at such a time the man can feel the woman’s vulva contracting itself spasmodically as if intent on squeezing the last drop of sperm out of the man’s penis. Those spasms prob- ably contribute to forcing sperm into the mouth of the womb, but the activity and speed of motion of the spermatozoa is such that they reach the womb even when no such con- tractions have taken place. Another great difference between ejacula- [74] CHAPTER VII THE NORMAL FREQUENCY OF INTERCOURSE Estimates of what the proper frequency of intercourse should be vary greatly. In ancient Greece, one of Solon’s decrees provided that husbands should have intercourse with their wives at least three times a month. Luther suggested that twice a week was a reasonable average. In this particular matter as in many others it is the individual and not the race which should be considered. Disposition, health and age should be al- lowed to settle the problem, the woman’s needs being of course paramount in whatever de- cision is to be taken. One of the first points to be discussed is this: Is frequent intercourse detrimental to the [85] SEX HAPPINESS body or the mind? Unfortunately all sorts of misconceptions are current and a large ma- jority of people who aim at being thought re- spectable feel compelled to hold the opinion that even continence is preferable to over-in- dulgence. The fanatical partisans of continence at any price are fond of mentioning “the terrific losses” sustained by the body every time a seminal discharge takes place. Between thirty and five hundred million spermatozoa are ejected every time the man has an ejaculation. On the layman who does not realize the infinitesimal size of those or- ganisms such figures are bound to make a pro- found impression. We should remember, for the sake of a com- parison, that a small dose of bacterial vaccine may contain ten times that number of micro- organisms. Nature, however, is prodigal and wasteful, and those who are fond of praising nature’s [86] NORMAL FREQUENCY ways should realize that from the point of view of biology any saving on her part seems to be an anomaly. Academic discussion, however, is out of place in a book of practical intent, and we must hence look at actual facts before reach- ing a decision. The partisans of continence tell us that ejaculation means a loss of valuable fluids, which in a continent life would be preserved and used by the body or the mind. If we could save and absorb our sexual products by leading a continent life there might seem to be some advantage to be derived from foregoing sexual pleasures. Continent or gratified men and women, however, lose the same amount of sexual prod- ucts, year in and year out. The man who shuns intercourse and refrains from mastur- bating, passes as much sperm in the course of pollution dreams (wet dreams) as he who leads a normal sexual life. Month after [87] SEX HAPPINESS month eggs descend from every woman’s ovaries into. her womb, and if not fertilized pass out of the body with other secretions. The reserves of the woman’s body espe- cially appear inexhaustible. A woman bear- ing twins every year from 15 to 60, an obvi- ously absurd suggestion, would only use up about ninety eggs. Curiously enough, sexual activity seems to conserve the body’s resources instead of ex- hausting them. For a chaste woman would, in the same period of time, pass between 270 and 540 eggs. (Remember that her ovaries contain between twenty-five and thirty thou- sand eggs.) Such is nature’s liberal way. The average woman who seldom needs more than twelve eggs in all her life is supplied with over two thousand times as many as she could ever use. One spermatozoon alone is sufficient to fe- cundate the woman’s egg, and yet, to make the operation sure, hundreds of millions of those [88] NORMAL FREQUENCY organisms are thrown into the vulva at the time of ejaculation. The same process is observable whenever reproduction is at stake. Billions of fish’s eggs are wasted in the sea to one which is fer- tilized. The summer winds carry billions of particles of pollen to every flower that will mature and bring seed. Why is it then that continence is so highly praised by certain people? Paradoxical as it may seem, it is precisely the baneful effects of continence which have led people to consider it beneficial. The very mental disturbances it causes have created the impression that con- tinence endowed people with special mental powers. In ancient times, the ravings of hysterics, a disturbance caused by sexual starvation, were considered as inspired by the gods. Many churches have held that men and women de- prived of sexual intercourse are capable of greater concentration or of loftier thinking [89] SEX HAPPINESS than those who gratify normally their biolog- ical cravings. The names of thinkers or artists, however, whose greatness was due to chastity, would not constitute an important list. And among those we would find many neurotics whose chastity was not voluntary but due to some mental or physical disturbance. The ascetics who went into the desert or into cloisters to avoid the temptations of the flesh encountered those temptations in a much more dangerous form. Instead of being occupied with pure, noble, ethereal thoughts, their minds were obsessed by delusions and hallu- cinations of a sexual nature. Remember Saint Anthony. This work is not in any sense a plea for sexual license. In our complex civilization, which makes the possibility of marriage de- pendent ‘upon so many economic :prerequi- sites, the minds of the unmarried should not [90] NORMAL FREQUENCY be permitted to become inflamed by porno- graphic writings or pictures. Cravings should not be stimulated which have to be repressed afterwards or vouch- safed only scanty and abnormal satisfaction. The fact remains, however, that many men and women, whose lives have been character- ized as “impure” have given the world more thought or beauty and morality than the great- est apostles of continence. Greece, in her classical period, the France, Italy and Germany of the Renaissance en- dowed the world with masterpieces of all arts and with philosophical products with which the sere writings of the ascetics of the Middle Ages cannot bear comparison. The morals of men like Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Phidias, and others are hardly fit for public discussion. ‘The Renaissance, to many, is synonymous with moral corruption. In more recent times inexhaustible writers like Goethe, Voltaire and other men, women [91] SEX HAPPINESS like Madame De Staél, George Eliot, George Sand, etc., were far from being paragons of virtue; yet their output compares rather favor- ably with the illiterate tracts put forth by so-called ascetics. Rodin, the greatest of French sculptors; Wagner, the greatest of German composers, were not renowned for their continence. Wagner at 57 married a young woman of 29, who bore him a son, himself a composer of talent. In spite of what the ill-informed would call the “drain” on his physical resources caused by that belated match, which was the culmination of a passionate affair, Wagner’s creative powers showed no decline. Parsifal was the result of that period of his life, to- gether with innumerable works of musical criticism. It goes without saying that young boys whose bodies are immature and old men whose bodies are spent, would court exhaus- tion if they allowed themselves recklessly to [92] NORMAL FREQUENCY be constantly aroused to intercourse by ob- scene writings or pictures or by the clever caresses of prostitutes. Between artificial excitement and natural desire, however, there is a far cry. And it can be safely stated that in man, natural erection, in woman, sexual tension and vaginal mois- ture, not induced by any clever artifices, but by the sight or touch of a loved life partner, are indications that sexual intercourse is needed. The absence of such natural symp- toms or the fact that they must be induced artificially is proof that the limit of the body’s resources has been reached. [93] CHAPTER VIII THE IDEAL CONDITIONS FOR INTERCOURSE The large majority of married couples are as ashamed of their sexual relations as they would be of something forbidden, unlawful or unnatural. They may discuss or allude to any act of their lives but the sexual act. Ex- cept in the few minutes preceding or follow- ing intercourse, few married people speak of it, and if they do so it is with genuine or af- fected embarrassment. While a certain reserve is expected when dealing with the most intimate relation which can exist between a man and a woman, that reserve, when exaggerated, has baneful re- sults. The act which is never to be mentioned to others becomes easily identified with a socially [94] IDEAL CONDITIONS tabooed, function of the body, such as urina- tion and defecation. It partakes of the scorn with which such functions are generally treated, and it is too often considered in the same light, as a more or less unavoidable phys- ical evil, as something low and animal, in a word, unmentionable. That attitude in itself is very bad. It causes the sexual act to be neglected, postponed or hurried for the sake of other activities which are far less important to mental, bodily or social welfare. A young couple in the ecstacy of the first months of married life, constantly goaded toward each other by natural desire, must, in too many cases, express and satisfy that desire with the secrecy, the sense of guilt, the fear of indecency that would obsess the members of a thieving expedition. Let us suppose they have decided to enter- tain at their house a group of friends. See what elaborate preparations they will go [95] SEX HAPPINESS through in order to make the affair a success. The time will be set in advance, so as to suit the convenience of all the invited guests. Provisions will be secured and the menu de- cided upon with regard to their guests’ pref- erences in the matter of food and drink. The dining-room and parlor will be, if not decor- ated, at least cleaned and arranged with very special care. All engagements that would con- flict with the party are refused. Acquaint- ances are diplomatically warned of the im- pending event and no one who had not re- ceived a personal invitation would presume to call that night. Husband and wife make themselves as attractive as possible. They wear their best clothes and their most engag- ing smile. No worries of any kind are al- lowed to mar the festivity. I remember a New Year’s Eve party at the house of a well-known man, which was one of the gayest functions I ever attended. In the small hours, my host, with whom I was very [96] IDEAL CONDITIONS intimate, remembering that I was a lay con- fessor, unburdened himself to me. A few minutes before the dining-room door opened, he had been served with papers in a suit for a very large amount. He and his wife had been shocked deeply by that untoward inci- dent. But, perfect hosts that they were, they had not allowed any of their guests to even suspect that there was the slightest cloud of ‘unpleasantness hovering over their minds. Such are the exertions which some married people impose upon themselves willingly to receive their friends in a worthy fashion. And yet in the majority of cases the guests thus entertained are strangers, whose pleasure or displeasure would not determine the fu- ture happiness or unhappiness of the pair. Think now of the ways in which the aver- age husband and the average wife proceed to entertain the human being who is dearer to them than anything on earth, who shares their [97] SEX HAPPINESS life, their thought, their happiness, their future.* A hurried embrace in the morning, per- haps, with thoughts of the time, of the day’s tasks, of a train to catch, of a breakfast to pre- pare, intruding into their consciousness. Or a perfunctory embrace, late at night, when the callers have gone, when the children are asleep, when the theater is over, in a word, when everything else, important or not, has received its due or undue share of attention. Too often the act is performed with the fear of possible interruption, of a knock at the door, the ringing of a bell, a telephone call, etc. Sometimes the bedroom is too close to some other bedroom or to the living room where *The Hindoo books on the art of love stress that point. “Choose the largest and finest and airiest room in the house, purify it thoroughly with whitewash and decorate its spacious walls with pictures and other objects upon which the eye may rest with delight. Scatter about the room musical instruments, also re- freshments, bottles of rose water and various essences, etc.’ [98] IDEAL CONDITIONS parents, relatives, children, neighbors might be listening. Words of love must then be hushed up, physical abandonment must not be allowed to reach too high a point, the lights must be turned off. The same old story of fear and shame. Some couples commit the sad mistake, not to say crime, of letting their young children sleep in their bedroom. This places still more restrictions upon their sexual enjoyment. However quiet they may keep, they neverthe- less run-the risk of being spied upon by the children, who often retain deplorable impres- sions from watching the parental coitus which they totally misunderstand. Any old time, any old conditions seem good enough to most married people for indulgence in the “shameful,” “animal” pastime of prov- ing to each other their mutual love and desire, of giving to each other a form of happiness which nothing on earth can equal or fe- place. [99] SEX HAPPINESS And the temptation besets sorely many men and women to make or accept clandestine trysts in hotel rooms or houses of assignation where, after the door has been locked, they are alone and absolutely secure against any in- trusion or interruption; where their words of endearment cannot be overheard and where no limitation is placed on any display of pas- sion. Custom wisely decrees that bridal couples shall leave their usual haunts on the first night of their union and seek some love shelter where all those ideal conditions can be real- ized. Later, however, they allow their sexual activities to be crowded out by thousands of social duties which could easily be shirked and they let hundreds of intruders disturb their intimacy. Husbands and wives should, out of respect for each other’s happiness, plan their love meetings as lovers do, as they themselves plan the entertainments they prepare for their [100] IDEAL CONDITIONS friends, letting nothing and nobody interfere with such plans. The early morning is not a propitious time for love. One of the mates may not be suf- ficiently wide awake. Both are at their worst physically. The most Apollo-like man is not at his best, unshaven and with his hair rum- pled up; nor is even a Venus very attractive, with her hair in curl papers. A night’s sleep has imparted to their hair, skin and breath a certain staleness. The very late evening hours mean mostly fatigue and a desire for rest and sleep. Bodily vigor and mental activity have been depleted and dulled by the day’s tasks. Arrangements should be made whereby the early evening, and sometimes the late morn- ing hours, or afternoons, on Sundays, for in- stance, could be set aside for the purpose of leisurely love-making. In various cases of sexual maladjustment, I have advised those consulting me to start all [1011 SEX HAPPINESS over again, from a second bridal night spent at a comfortable hotel, from a second honey- moon in unfamiliar surroundings inaccessible to their friends and acquaintances. In such ideal surroundings, apparently mis- mated couples were able to express their de- sire and their pleasure over its gratification in a measure which the absurd routine of their mismanaged home life had not permitted in previous years. This proved very successful in several cases and the craving for extra-con- jugal experiments, which was simply a desire for fuller sexual satisfaction and might have wrecked the happiness of, after all well- matched, mates, was successfully led back into its proper channels. When all the ideal conditions have been realized, let husband and wife prepare for the act of love as he would if he was to go and meet a mistress, as she would if she had a tryst with a lover. As I said before, Apollo un- {102 ] IDEAL CONDITIONS shaven, and Venus with her hair in curling pins, would not be very bewitching. A visit to the bathroom and the dressing table should always precede intercourse. Cleanliness, in love, is at times more impor- tant than bodily beauty. The man who comes home from his club, his hair reeking of smoke, his breath laden with the smell! of strong to- bacco, his clothes and his body redolent of perspiration; the woman who from a short or prolonged stay in the kitchen carries about her person olfactory impressions of frying fat, sliced onion or dishwater, will dampen their mates’ amorous ardor and deprive them- selves of many caresses. Hair that is not washed very frequently, daily in the case of a man, at least weekly in the case of a woman, emits, especially in the summer time, objectionable odors. Men should always wash their penis in the morning bath, pushing the foreskin as far back as it can go and dislodging every particle of [103] SEX HAPPINESS matter which may be held under the ridge of the glans. The pubic hair and the skin of the scrotum should be soaped thoroughly once a day. Women should take a lukewarm douche morning and evening, as the vaginal, vulvalar and urinary secretions, if not removed fre- quently, may become unpleasantly pungent. A douche should always be taken before inter- course, and the atomizer used freely about the genitals. It goes without saying that brushing the teeth and washing the mouth and throat with a pleasant, delicately perfumed mouth wash are absolute prerequisites, for nothing deadens sexual desire more quickly than a fetid breath, be it due to imperfect teeth, to pungent foods or liquids, or to a disordered stomach. I have heard husbands and wives remark that married people should not be so particu- lar about such intimate details. On the contrary, married people should be [ 104] IDEAL CONDITIONS infinitely more particular, as continued inti- macy excludes the romance of novelty which would, in certain cases, lead one of the lovers to overlook, in the excitement of a new adven- ture, certain imperfections of his mate. Finally, when both man and woman have made themselves as clean, sweet and appetiz- ing physically as they can, they should denude themselves entirely before giving each other the supreme caress. The love union presupposes the utmost freedom, mental and physical, the greatest abandonment and an entire absence of shame. Underwear that may wrinkle up, bind and pull, buttons that bruise or scratch, may at times build between desire and possession in- superable barriers. Every part of the lovers’ bodies should be allowed to yield its full share of pleasing sen- sations, visual or tactile. Draperies should never be resorted to in order to beautify the body’s appearance, un- [105] SEX HAPPINESS less the results of accident, disease or surgical operation have to be concealed. The thin woman and the overstout, however, should not rely upon such artifices to hide their physical inferiority. Instead of pretending that they are beautiful, they should, with the help of the proper diet and exercise, make themselves beautiful. Bodies remain young and beautiful if well cared for, long after faces grow old. Men and women should remember the fact that they may, when nude, still remind their mate of Apollo or Venus. [106] CHAPTER IX MENTAL AND PHYSICAL HYGIENE Husband and wife should not share the same bed, nor, if possible, the same bedroom. Ardent lovers will consider such advice as silly and coming from a very unsentimental person. They will remark that they could not fall asleep if they did not feel the reassuring presence of a dear body next to theirs, if they could not exchange the last good-night kiss just before closing their eyelids. But the years of ardent love are few and the more ardent the love is at first the fewer those years will be. The lover will remember his intense ex- citement the first time his girl allowed him to enjoy the sight of her body; the touch of that bare body was another cause of great ex- [107] SEX HAPPINESS citement and he became almost frenzied when he could fill his nostrils with the pure fra- grance of her childlike skin. Even perfect beauty, however, palls on the beholder, and constant familiarity with every detail of our sexual mate’s body gradually dulls the keenness of enjoyment which it once brought to every one of our senses. The husband of a very beautiful wife may, after a number of years, remain cold in her arms while being thrilled by the mere hand- clasp of another woman vastly inferior to her in looks. One well-known short story writer told the world recently that she and her husband would not live together, but that they would meet by appointment as unmarried lovers do, so as to preserve the physical and mental thrill which married life often kills. Perhaps this is going too far, but there was some wisdom in that decision. Sight, touch and smell are the three senses {108 ] HYGIENE which play the most important part in pre- paring the organism for satisfying intercourse. It is a platitude to state that we get tired of seeing the same thing constantly, regardless of how fascinating it may be. Students in art schools grow completely indifferent to the sight of naked models. Repetition of the same contact causes it to lose all its stimulation. Lovers tire of hold- ing hands. The sense of touch, however, does not lead to unpleasant sensations in the long run as the senses of sight and smell do. This is what I mean: Regardless of how often one of the mates can touch and caress the body of the other mate, the sensation de- rived from it will never become unpleasant. It will lose most of its intensity, become en- tirely neutral, but never, I repeat, grow re- pellent. Not only do too intimate lovers, on the other hand, miss, after a while, the thrill which the sight of each other’s body once gave [109] SEX HAPPINESS them, but the too frequent occasions on which the human body becomes unbeautiful, hair disarranged by sleep, skin made sallow by fatigue, obvious sanitary measures, etc., will gradually replace memories of beauty with memories of ugliness. The same remark applies to the sense of smell. In many human beings, as in the ma- jority of animals, odors are the most powerful sexual stimulants known. I mean, of course, bodily odors, of the fresh, young and healthy type, the fragrance which clings to a fine head of hair after a shampoo, to a healthy body af- ter a bath. Everyone of us has his personal odor which he is unable to sense, but which may affect some other person very strongly, constituting either an attraction or a repellent element. A good deal of old-fashioned repression has made the discussion of such odors a taboo subject. In olden times, however, writers were less timid. Homer frankly mentioned [110] HYGIENE the fragrant breasts of Aphrodite; the Song of Songs has numberless allusions to the pleas- ant odors of a woman’s body; Shakespeare speaks in “Venus and Adonis” of smells that breed love, etc. As I said before, we are unable to detect our own odor because our nose has grown too accustomed to it. Users of perfume no longer enjoy the delicate scent they may have poured on their handkerchief and hence must fre- quently change their favorite perfume. The same applies to the fragrance of the woman we love. If we are constantly near her body we grow “odor-blind” to her. Her pure breath may once have been a de- light. A little mouth breathing during the night befouls the odor of her mouth by caus- ing thickened saliva and tartar to be deposited on her teeth. The use of the same bed has many other dis- advantages. [111] SEX HAPPINESS Seldom do man and wife fall asleep simul- taneously. Nor is their awakening ever per- fectly synchronized. The result is that, whoever is the first to slumber off, is likely to disturb the more wakeful one through his snores or to be dis- turbed by his restlessness. I have cured several cases of sleeplessness by simply prescribing twin beds or two bed- rooms for fidgety mates. The restless sleeper, if at all thoughtful, feels doubly nervous, fearful as he is of dis- turbing the peace of his tired mate. He cannot, however, help envying her and he more or less consciously manages to dis- turb her through tossing about, sighing, coughing. After which she will not feel very kindly toward him. I treated once a sleepless husband who would wake up about two o’clock in the morn- ing and remain awake for two to three hours unless he had intercourse with his wife. [112] HYGIENE In that case his desire for physical union was mainly a desire to get even with his wife for her sound sleep. He would wake her up, to her great indig- nation and pester her with his attentions till she yielded in order to be allowed to rest after- ward. It goes without saying that such caresses were equally unsatisfactory: to both. She resented his selfish action and he resented her coldness, which irritated his masculine ego- tism. Separate bedrooms speedily solved this problem. Very often one of the mates, harboring a more or less unconscious grudge, develops a slightly neurotic symptom, such as getting up several times in the course of the night to urinate. This is especially noticeable in unsatisfied wives, in whom that symptom serves two ends, supplying a slight sexual pleasure, a weak substitute for the missed orgasm, and punish- ing the awkward or weak sexual mate. [113] SEX HAPPINESS The punishment part of it is not an exag- geration on my part, for in several cases under my observation the frequent urination disappeared as soon as the wife slept in a different room. A distinction must be drawn between copi- ous and frequent urination. If too much urine is passed at night a physician should be con- sulted. When, on the other hand, a restless sleeper arises a number of times, passing only a few drops at a time, we are in the presence of a mental conflict, and in the case of married people, of a conjugal conflict of some sort. (114) CHAPTER X IS PRE-MATRIMONIAL SEX EXPERIENCE NECESSARY After one of my lectures a young girl sent me a written question which read: “Would you advise a young girl to marry a man who had never had any sexual experience?” I an- swered by asking her another question: “Would you hire a chauffeur who had never driven a car in his life?” Even when hiring an office boy at $7 a week the first question every one asks is, “Have you had any experience?” What would the world think of the young woman who would ask her suitor: “What sexual experience have you had?” And yet anyone can lick postage stamps, sweep the office floor, take a card and pass it [115] SEX HAPPINESS to the manager, deliver letters or small pack- ages; nor would miscarriage of directions in the performance of’such simple duties result in permanent injury to anyone or in life-long misery to one or two generations. When hiring a green office boy, we see to it that he is properly coached by an experienced office worker for a week or two. Any young man, on the other hand, who presents a good, clean appearance and who seems able to make a decent living, is sup- posed to know intuitively the physiology of that complicated: part of the body called the genitals. His intuition is supposed to have prepared him to deal properly with some- thing he has never seen, a woman’s sex organs. He is supposed to know intuitively all the phenomena which take place not only in him- self during coition, but in his bride. If he is a “pure-minded” young man, he is not supposed to have discussed those things with anyone, except his father or mother, who, [116] PRE-MATRIMONIAL EXPERIENCE in spite of their age and “experience,” may be almost as ignorant as he is himself, and beset with many sex superstitions. I wish every young woman contemplating marriage could read Beresford’s striking novel “God’s Counterpoint.” She would find in that book a vivid picture of the tragedies which may confront the wife of a “pure-minded” male virgin, afraid of words he does not understand, afraid of actions whose purpose he hardly suspects, and restrained by mock ideals based on unpardon- able ignorance. Philip Manning, the “hero” of that novel, has been brought up “carefully,” which means that he is profoundly ignorant of all sexual facts and considers all sexual manifestations as unutterably filthy and low. On the eve of his marriage to a fine young woman, Evelyn, he seeks enlightenment on matters pertaining to the married life and to his deep horror, learns that. some married [117] SEX HAPPINESS people actually indulge in some sort of sexual relationship. This discovery plunges him into a dismay akin to despair. ;He makes up his mind, however, that his marriage shall be different from that of ordinary, brutish, animal people, and for a while it remains so. Finally one night he yields to the lure of sex and becomes Evelyn’s husband in fact as well as in name. After the birth of a child, however, he discontinues what he considers repellent practices, and lives with his wife in absolute continence. She is not in the least satisfied with that arrangement, and when a dashing, sensuous relative of hers blows into her home for an extended stay, she is quite willing to let the siren try her wiles on her husband. The fascinating and sinful Helen has judged Philip with more insight than his wife has. Philip is not indifferent to women. On the contrary he is so terribly upset by the [118] PRE-MATRIMONIAL EXPERIENCE thought of them that he avoids them as deadly temptation. Working on that theory she proceeds to seduce him and he at once yields to her blandishments. He leaves his wife who, by the way, had just at that time made up her mind to leave him, and runs away with Helen. They soon tire of each other, but when they part, Philip is no longer the silly, ignorant boy ‘who saw nothing in sex but an indecent means of insuring the continuance of the species. He has learned in Helen’s arms the glamor, the intoxication, the beauty of love, and he real- izes, although a little late, that he loves and desires his beautiful Evelyn. He seeks her, finds her, explains and is for- given, and they probably lead a happy and normal sexual life ever afterward. A bridegroom’s “purity” was, strangely enough, responsible for an incident which al- most wrecked the life of one of my patients. [119] SEX HAPPINESS Mrs. R. married at twenty-four a man of twenty-eight, who had the reputation of hav- ing always led a “clean” life. On their bridal night he was impotent and for two weeks afterward was unable to per- form the sexual act. He then consulted a physician who told him that his masturbatory habits had probably weakened him, prescribed some tonics and advised him to make a full confession to his wife. Six months later his sexual strength seemed to improve and they finally became husband and wife. She submitted to his caresses with a trepidation which always prevented her from experiencing an orgasm. She could not rid herself of the obsessing thought that he probably was ignorant of the proper proce- dure, might hurt her, etc. She finally met a very virile, rather loud- mouthed boaster who made no secret of his love adventures and, although he was in some ways repellent to her, she felt irresistibly at- [120] PRE-MATRIMONIAL EXPERIENCE tracted to him on account of his experience in sexual matters. She gave herself to him and was passion- ately happy in his arms, enjoying all the caresses which an experienced lover can give to an attractive mistress. Only he soon tired of her and transferred his affections to another woman. The “breakdown” which resulted brought her to my office, and once more I realized that in most cases of sexual nervousness it is the wrong person we are called upon to minister to. It was her husband who was in dire need of instruction, and whose incredible ignorance of a woman’s sexual desires had almost precipitated a tragedy. “How about the bride?” some one may ask. Shouldn’t she also acquire some sexual experience before marriage? It is difficult to answer such a question negatively without running the risk of being charged with pro- pounding a double standard. [121] SEX HAPPINESS I would simply say that at tie present day, considering that the consequences of inter- course are far more dangerous for the woman than for the man, owing to the idiotic legis- lation which seeks to make pregnancy un- avoidable and considering also the fact that the girl-mother is treated brutally and sub- mitted to all sorts of humiliation, if not starved to death, woman cannot conveniently acquire sexual knowledge before marriage. The more ignorant she is and the more fatal her search for practical knowledge may be for her, the more easily she may be taken advan- tage of by conscienceless men seeking solely their own physical gratification at the expense of someone’s future, perhaps of someone’s life. The man, on the other hand. may make many experiments and, with a certain amount of carefulness, come out of the laboratory un- scathed. A single standard of sexual freedom is not practicable yet, for it would result in too [122] PRE-MATRIMONIAL EXPERIENCE many tragedies as far as the woman is con- cerned. Nor is a single standard of purity practical, for this, too, would result in num- berless tragedies for the woman. In the first case, the woman would be ex- posed to disease, pregnancy and destitution; in the second, to a life-long lack of sexual gratification. I am not bigoted enough, however, to sug- gest that a young man should secure all his sexual knowledge through experience. Anyone attempting to study botany in the fields exclusively, without teacher or books, would repeat the mistakes and the wastage of time from which the fathers of the botanical science have saved us through their writings. Classes in botany must be supplemented by field work, but field excursions alone cannot replace study classes. The heroine of a French novel expressed the wish that every young man of twenty or [123] SEX HAPPINESS thereabout could be enlightened sexually by a young woman of thirty or thereabout, much as young Rousseau was enlightened by the more mature Madame de Warens. _ Fortunate indeed is the youth who has been led into the land of love by the kind and ex- perienced hand of one whom he could neither suspect nor despise, whom he could only adore and to whom he could only give thanks. Barring such beautiful exceptions, there is only one door through which a young man may enter the field of sex knowledge, the fre- quentation of prostitutes. The knowledge thus acquired is far from being accurate, and the impressions retained from intercourse with public women are far from pleasant. In ancient civilization, prostitution was a profession recognized as necessary and even dignified and was considered as a form of worship of certain deities. Nowadays it is the last resort of a female failure or the outlet for the passions of oversexed women. Sordid- [124] PRE-MATRIMONIAL EXPERIENCE ness, disease, simulation are constantly asso- ciated with it in everyone’s mind and in reality. The prostitute accepts anyone who pays her price, and unless she is unutterably stupid, pretends to be highly satisfied with her pur- chaser’s appearance or his manner. She need not be wooed, and the sooner her customer ends the sexual act, the better pleased she is. And too many husbands imagine that all women are like the few miserable creatures who lent them their body for a consideration. Their wives do not have to be wooed and are, being their wives, at their constant dispo- sal when they require sexual relief. And as soon as that relief is obtained by the husband, the sexual act is terminated and the wife should be satisfied. Intercourse with prostitutes may also leave in some men’s mind the impression that the sexual act is something indecent and unclean, possibly leading to some contamination. [125] SEX HAPPINESS But even the men who have acquired their knowledge of the sexual relation through mat- ing with public women, are likely to commit fewer blunders than the young optimists who think that nature will solve their problems at the last minute. If they will then resolve to complete their education through intelligent reading, they may from their early sexual observations re- tain only the necessary physiological informa- tion, forgetting all the unpleasant and mis- leading impressions which may have im- pressed themselves on their nerves. If they will remember that a prostitute in the sexual union is no more to be compared to the average woman than a corpse in the dis- secting room is to be compared to a live, blooming body; that the human body is a thing of beauty instead of being, as in the case of the public woman, a possible focus of in- fection; that in the mind of the average wife, giving herself for love, there never enters the [126] PRE-MATRIMONIAL EXPERIENCE sordid idea of profit which is the only motive back of the hetaira’s smile; finally that love is not indecency or filth, but life—Life’s ori- gin and Life’s goal, their pre-matrimonial ex- perience will save them and their future life mate much misery and much suffering. Some day, when the process of reproduction in human beings is considered as important a study in schools as algebra or basket weaving, and taught with the seriousness and the dig- nity it deserves, young men may not have tq run the risk of contracting gonorrhea or syphilis, or both, to find out what the sexual act is like. Until we rid ourselves of the hideous, neu- rotic, perverse attitude which began to force itself upon the world in the Middle Ages, but which is slowly yielding to modern science, there will not be any other means for them to acquire the information lacking which they are fairly certain to be unsatisfactory hus- bands. [127] CHAPTER XI PROBLEMS OF THE WEDDING NIGHT All the problems of intercourse and sexual adjustment confront the newly married pair in their wedding night. And in the majority of cases, both husband and wife find them- selves in the worst possible mental and physi- cal condition to cope with those problems. Unless their union is the result of a roman- tic elopement, unless they have decided to seek happiness without first proclaiming their in- tention to the community, it will be a very tired and harassed pair that will reach the bridal chamber and sigh: “Alone at last!” Nerve-racking preparations, extending sometimes over several weeks, absurd discus- sions about what “is done” and what “is not done” on such occasions, have kept bride and [128] THE WEDDING NIGHT groom in a state of useless excitement. The ceremony, the endless platitudes which must be said and listened to, the luncheon or din- ner, the rush to a railroad station and many other details of a modern wedding, would wear out seasoned athletes. Then comes the journey which puts upon that torture the fin- ishing touch of dust and added weariness. He and she are alone at last. In many cases, the only thing they really crave for, be- sides a few affectionate caresses, is rest and sleep. And if silly pride did not intrude, they would indeed give themselves up speedily to rest and sleep. Unfortunately, the average bridegroom feels that he will forfeit the respect of his young wife unless he at once takes possession of her body. The average bride would sus- pect either the physical powers or the ardor of a man who would spend that night at her side without making her a woman. And thus they rush into the first sexual en- [129] SEX HAPPINESS counter which, if unsatisfactory, may leave very distasteful impressions in the nervous system of both participants. The first piece of positive advice I would give to the bridal pair is to repress the silly pride which would drive them to a hasty con- summation of the sexual act and to wait until the next morning. Refreshed by rest and sleep, more accustomed to each other’s pres- ence by a night spent together, they would not consider the physical union as the last duty of an exhausting day. Awakening in each other’s arms, they would make the first morning union a symbol of the dawn of their love life. The many fears which beset the tired and nervous would fail to disturb them, strong and ardent, after the night’s relaxation. And there are many fears indeed which conspire to make the first intercourse a por- tentous occasion for both bridegroom and bride. (1301 THE WEDDING NIGHT posited close to the lips, may run out, and I have known young women who stated that they experienced a great deal of disgust when they found their genitals soiled by the viscous fluid whose existence they did not even sus- pect before the first embrace. In many European countries one can still observe the rather indelicate and highly dan- gerous custom of the pre-bridal spree. The bridegroom and his friends spend the night preceding the wedding day in revels of all sorts, drinking and even consorting with pros- titutes. The only redeeming feature of the compli- ance with such a tradition is that it brings to the bridal bed a man whose sexual cravings have been recently gratified, who is slightly exhausted by a sleepless night, and hence who © is more likely to hold his desire in check when the time comes for the bride to surrender her- self to him. The procedure, on the other hand, cannot [135] SEX HAPPINESS but appear revolting to a much-enamored bridegroom, owing to the risks he runs of ac- quiring an infection, gonorrhea or syphilis, which he is sure to transmit to a pure and innocent girl in the unavoidable excesses of the honeymoon period. Such a possibility should appear fearful to any thoughtful man. A simpler and safer procedure can be sug- gested. If an hour or two before retiring with his bride, the bridegroom will relieve the nat- ural congestion of his genital organs and his mental excitement through masturbation, he will attain the same results which are ex- pected from the pre-nuptial debauch, without danger for his and her health and without be- ing guilty of infidelity, for the thought of her, at such a time, would be sufficient to bring about an ejaculation. I have known several men who.had been annoyed greatly, when consorting for the first time with their wives, by a premature ejacula- [136] THE WEDDING NIGHT tion, due to their exaggerated desire. The method I have indicated would have saved them and their consorts from much disap- pointment. . The case with which I close this chapter illustrates well some of the annoyances due to sexual ignorance which might have cast a lasting shadow on the first married expe- riences of a couple otherwise very happily matched. Mrs. B., a former patient, called to see me to report a distressing occurrence. Her brother had been married three days before to a young woman who seemed to be greatly in love with him. The morning after the wed- ding, however, she had left him and returned to her parents’ home, declaring that nothing in the world would cause her to live with “that man.” She was absolutely reticent about her reasons. Mrs. B. justly suspected some sexual complication. I agreed with her and suggested that the young woman be prevailed [137] SEX HAPPINESS upon to come and consult me. A week later she was announced at my office. After much hesitancy she finally blurted out: “Would you have me live with a man af- fected with an awful disease?” “What diseaser” “T don’t know.” I asked for her evidence as to his physical handicap and gradually drew from her the following story: She considered herself a very modern young woman, and had read several sex books before her wedding day. All of them, how- ever, were of the “uplifting,” moralizing type, and only offered very vague information as to the sexual act. Being anxious of appearing up-to-date, she had never asked any questions from her married friends; her mother, con- sidering her highly sophisticated, had OF fered no advice. On the fateful night she made up her mind not to play the prude, allowed her husband to [138] THE WEDDING NIGHT undress her and to lavish on her all the ca- resses he desired. The defloration was not es- pecially painful, nor did the intromission give her any special pleasure, but she was fright- ened when he suddenly withdrew his penis and moved away from her, to feel what she described as a disgusting secretion fall on her body. She arose at once, saw her pubic hair covered with it and the bed sheets stained. She had once read a book on venereal dis- ease, in which the white gonorrheal discharge was mentioned. She came at once to the con- clusion that her husband must be “one of those men,” that he must have led “‘a terrible life.” Her disgust and her indignation made her speechless. She dressed herself and sat on a chair the rest of the night, first beseeched and then watched anxiously by the bewildered young man, who thought she had lost her mind. In the morning she took a train for New York. [139] SEX HAPPINESS It did not take me long to explain to her that the suspicious secretion was simply sperm and that her husband’s curious behavior was due to his desire to save her from early moth- erhood, not, as she thought, to violent pain or to a convulsion caused by his diseased con- dition. A reconciliation took place, and I did not hear from the presumably happy couple for two years. After which the young wife con- sulted me again for nervous disturbances, which I could easily diagnose as due to lack of sexual satisfaction. Patient questioning elicited the information that she hardly ever experienced an orgasm. The reason for this condition was the follow- ing: She could not, at the time of the sexual act, help thinking of her husband’s ejacula- tion and of what was to her a disgusting with- drawal, which would cause her pubic regions to be flooded with sperm. Modern as she was, she “would have died” [140] THE WEDDING NIGHT rather than to discuss “such a horrible sub- ject” with her husband. I accordingly asked the husband to come and see me and he very willingly promised to spare her sensibilities in the future through a cleaner technique. Her sexual life has been untroubled ever since. {141] CHAPTER XII THE TRAGEDY OF THE UNSATISFIED WIFE A sexually unsatisfied wife does not lead a pleasant life, and she is seldom a pleasant per- son to live with. She becomes restless, fidgety, nervous, irritable, given to frequent fits of an- ger or tears; sometimes she goes into pro- tracted periods of depression. The world cruelly misunderstands her, and she gradually grows to misunderstand her own environment. She is not allowed to explain her misery to anyone and the world, with its lack of insight and sympathy, characterizes as a shrew or a nag a woman who is only craving an opportunity to give and to receive love. When she is of the submissive type, she gradually “lets go,” neglects her social activi- [142] THE UNSATISFIED WIFE ties, her appearance, her home, gives up all ambition and grows mentally and physically sluggish. The opposite type will plunge into a thou- sand activities, join numberless “movements,” fight for one “cause” after another, séizing upon a new hobby every month or every week, trying through a multiplicity of diversions to forget her discontent. Other discontented women, gifted with lit- tle imagination, seem to be rearranging con- tinually the home which does not afford them complete gratification. They are moving the furniture about, finding every day a new and more harmonious combination for the parlor, bedroom or library, which soon becomes dis- tasteful and leads to more reshifting of the piano, sofa, bookcases and other objects. Others attempt to make up for what is lack- ing in their life, by shopping all day, and pur- chasing a hundred useless things which lose their interest almost as soon as they have been [143 } SEX HAPPINESS brought from the stores and most of which are “backed” within forty-eight hours. The depressed as well as the manic type, the household fuss as well as the inveterate shop- per very often manage to lead a peaceful home life, provided their husband does not antag- onize them and can afford to be unmoved by their financial vagaries. Instances are not rare in which a sexually deficient husband resigns himself to his de- feat and assumes a neutral role in the house- hold, a wall of polite indifference rising be- tween him and his wife. Not infrequently the wife seeks happiness in the arms of a lover, and if she finds it peace reigns in the home until some untoward acci- dent reveals the complication and precipitates a scandal. In most cases, however, things are more complicated. The unsatisfied wife, whose hus- band also remains unsatisfied, resigns herself more easily to her fate. When intercourse, on [144] THE UNSATISFIED WIFE the other hand, seems to gratify the husband, but leaves the wife either disgusted or a prey to unsatisfied sexual cravings, unpleasant psychological developments may be expected. An embarrassing silence seems to settle upon all sexual matters, a silence which neither of the mates dares to break for fear of letting the problem they have failed to solve intrude upon them. Both experience a secret shame, due to an obscure sense of im- perfection and also a secret dislike for each other. “With another woman,” the husband thinks more or less unconsciously. “I would be more potent or another woman would be more easily satisfied.” ‘Another man,” the wife thinks, “would satisfy me or inspire me so that I would be satisfied more quickly.” A young woman who consulted me had de- veloped a terrible hatred of her husband. She was to a great extent at fault, for she was un- usually slow in reaching an orgasm. But he [145] SEX HAPPINESS was at fault, too, for his ejaculation was gen- erally too hasty. She felt humiliated at the thought that her physical beauty was not enough to produce repeated erections in her husband, which would have enabled him finally to satisfy her And she also felt that if he had lavished on her all the tenderness she craved, if he had wooed her more ardently before each attempt at intercourse, if, after satisfying himself, he had made efforts to remain awake a little longer and, by passionate caresses, kept her emotionally keyed up, she would have ended by enjoying at least one orgasm in his arms. On a few occasions he actually made such efforts, but he soon let her see too clearly that he was “exerting” himself, “sacrificing” him- self, instead of eagerly availing himself of the privilege a lover would have begged for. The dissatisfaction, which she could not ex- press to him over this state of affairs, trans- lated itself into a critical, censorious attitude 1146] THE UNSATISFIED WIFE toward all his actions. Nothing that he did or said ever pleased her, and in every attempt he made at showing her some attention, she discovered a sordid or hypocritical meaning. Jealousy often plays havoc in such families. “Tf he did not have a mistress he would be more potent with me,” the wife thinks. “If she did not find satisfaction elsewhere she would not be so frigid in my company,” the husband thinks. One of them, if not both, may fear that the sexual maladjustment from which they are suffering may drive their mate into some ex- tra-matrimonial entanglement. The result is constant worry, anxiety and spying. The large majority of sexually unsatisfied women rely on masturbation for the satisfac- tion of their sexual desire. This form of self- gratification, incomplete as it is, has the advantage of re-establishing a normal blood circulation in the wife’s sexual organs. After the husband’s caresses have caused [147] SEX HAPPINESS the parts to become congested, nothing but an orgasm can enable the excitement to subside. Unfortunately, overindulgence in that prac- tice may unfit the wife more and more for ex- periencing an orgasm in a normal way with her husband. Each part of our body has a tendency to follow the line of least effort. The simplest way to produce an orgasm in a woman is to rub her clitoris. This, of course, the husband’s penis does not do, and the sensi- tiveness of the clitoris is, gradually, in normal intercourse, transferred to the lips of the vulva. After the husband has failed often enough to give his wife an orgasm by stimulating her vulva with his penis and she, on the other hand, has never failed to gratify her own sex- ual desire by friction exerted on her clitoris, the latter organ becomes the only pleasure- producing part of her genitals. That form of sexual gratification, however, is seldom satis- fying. A feeling of incompleteness, a sense of guilt [148] THE UNSATISFIED WIFE often attaches to it which may cause remorse in Certain sensitive women. Unjustified as that feeling may be, it nevertheless can be found in many sexually unsatisfied women and does a good deal of harm. States of nervousness and anxiety may result which sometimes lead to complete frigidity. The dreams of the sexually unsatisfied wife represent symbolically her unpleasant state of mind and body. She is a prey to frequent nightmares, in which she runs breathlessly to catch a train, a trolley, a ship. At the last minute, she is left behind and awakes completely exhausted, filled with fear and energy, conditions which keep her awake for hours. Or she may wake up after a few hours of disturbed sleep, let us say, at two or three in the morning, and be kept awake the rest of the night by obsessive thoughts. ‘Those obsessive thoughts refer to tasks, sometimes of a very trivial character, in- significant and easily performed or postponed, [149] SEX HAPPINESS and which will confront her during the day. Those tasks appear then endless and terribly burdensome. A patient of mine would wake up suddenly about three, and remember that she had a luncheon appointment about one o’clock the following afternoon. How could she keep that appointment with all the things she had to do in the course of the morning—bathe, do her hair, breakfast, dress, send the children off to school, give the maid directions, do some shopping, write letters, etc.? Every one of those duties seemed to require hours, and she knew that she would have to postpone that luncheon; but then, would she be able to catch her friend by telephone before she left her house? Should she not get up now and at- tend to some of those things? But the family was asleep and would adjudge her insane. And yet there were so many things . . . and soon... . She would reason with herself and tell her- [150] THE UNSATISFIED WIFE self a hundred times that she should sleep in- stead of making plans. She would roll over, close her eyes, use all the mental devices offered to the sleepless for tiring their “brains,” she would get out of bed and take either a drink of alcohol or a dose of veronal, and, behold! one more task she had forgotten to list loomed large before her mind and set her once more reckoning and worrying and calling herself a fool at the same time. One can find in those night visions or those early morning calculations an echo of the nerve-racking coitus in which the husband satisfies himself too quickly and the wife, struggling to reach an orgasm before her hus- band ejaculates, has found herself time and over again disappointed, her sexual hunger aroused to the highest degree, with nothing to assuage it. Another patient woke up night after night, shrieking in terror after a dream which vis- ualized well her life of sexual disappoint- [151] SEX HAPPINESS ments. She was hurrying home to meet her husband. She entered the elevator, which seemed to be very old, rickety and desperately slow. It stuck between floors, started again and consumed an unconscionable time to reach the floor on which she lived. Then the door would not open. Then she had forgotten the number of her apartment and by the time she reached it her husband had gone. She shouted for help and awoke. Too often those night terrors linger in the unsatisfied wife’s mind during her waking hours. Who has not met the harassed house- wife who transforms every molehill into a mountain, who is constantly worrying about tasks which to an outsider seem unimportant enough, who is “rushed to death,” who is never able to go anywhere because she is con- stantly endeavoring to finish things which could be very well postponed until some other day, who never goes to bed nights because [152] THE UNSATISFIED WIFE socks have to be darned or the paper on the pantry shelves changed. Her husband may have a dozen pairs of socks to wear the next day and the paper on the shelves could last another week, but she will not have it. She couldn’t sleep, she says, unless she finishes those tasks then and there, and she probably wouldn’t sleep. She will not sleep, anyhow, regardless of how many chores she performs before bedtime. Some women who have almost completely succeeded in repressing their desire for inter- course by using the “sour grape” form of rea- soning are often tortured by another night- mare which also wakes them up and fills them with fear: Burglars are trying to force their way into the house. This is the symbolical fulfilment of a desire to be raped, or forced, which a faithful wife should repress with all her energies. Women who have associated in their minds orgasm and pregnancy, but who do not care [153] SEX HAPPINESS to become pregnant, often dream that they are pregnant. The dream means: “I am pregnant, hence I have had an orgasm.” But the obvious part of the dream, the preg- nancy, appears infinitely stronger than the concealed wish for an orgasm and the result is again the same nervous, agitated awakening. No wonder women having such dreams feel exhausted the next day, even when they man- age to sleep between nightmares. No wonder their temper is rather annoying for their environment, no wonder they easily lose patience with everybody, especially with their husbands who, through physical weak- ness, or awkwardness or ignorance or selfish- ness, are responsible for their suffering. No wonder such women join the ranks of man-haters and are constantly heard deliver- ing themselves of absurd, exaggerated dia- tribes against the male sex. No woman whose husband satisfies her sex- [154] THE UNSATISFIED WIFE ually ever goes about stating that men are no good, are treacherous, deceiving, material- istic, brutal, filthy minded, etc. Such statements serve two purposes: They relieve the unsatisfied woman’s mind by ex- pressing her grudge against one certain man and protect her against the temptation of giv- ing herself another. If all men are bad, why not remain faithful to one, however bad he may be? One sees at a glance what a deplorable mother and educator such a woman would make, how she would poison her children’s minds with absurd notions touching sex and married relations. As a further protection against desires which she cannot gratify, she often becomes a bigoted puritan, branding sex as unutterably filthy. Her daughters may de- velop later into unsexed or homosexual women, her sons into women-haters. A normal sex life is a blessing. An abnor- mal sex life a curse, not only to the generation [155] SEX HAPPINESS directly affected, but to the coming genera- tion as well. Many of the disorders which short-sighted psychologists and psychiatrists attribute to the crisis known as the change of life, when men- struation becomes more and more irregular and then ceases entirely, can be easily traced to lack of sexual satisfaction. Women reaching the menopause, whose life has been sexually wasted, often turn to gluttony in their search for some substitute en- joyment of a physical type. Thus they uncon- sciously serve two ends. The pleasure they de- rive from constantly absorbing food can be compared to onanism, as it is a solitary pleas- ure, of a selfish type, requiring no one else’s co-operation, and is easily, much too easily, attained. Secondly, by overfattening their bodies they gradually cause one organ after another to degenerate. That degeneration finally reaches the sexual organs whose activ- ity is then reduced to a minimum. Gluttony [156] cd THE UNSATISFIED WIFE begins as a gratification and ends as a protec- tion against the desire for gratification. Other women of a more passionate type, re- strained by social or family taboos from seek- ing sexual gratification out of wedlock, deaden their desire through drink or drugs. Whisky and morphine are their substitutes for normal sex happiness. The usual sanitarium treatment of such patients appears in this light as a gruesome farce, as it simply brings back the desire which alcohol or drugs were meant to assuage. To some readers this pen picture of the un- satisfied woman may appear to be overdrawn. The day will arrive when all physicians who are confronted with mysterious ailments in women, especially in those crossing the line that separates middle age from old age, will inquire into their sexual life and attempt to re- adjust it. As a result of this, there will be fewer operations and fewer chronic invalids. [157] CHAPTER XIII PREMATURE EJACULATION Literally speaking, any ejaculation taking place in the man before the woman has had time to enjoy an orgasm is a premature ejac- ulation. In this, as in almost every other hu- man phenomenon, however, the border sepa- rating the normal from the abnormal cannot always be traced very accurately. It goes without saying that any ejaculation taking place before the penis has been intro- duced into the vulva is abnormal. Biologically, any ejaculation taking place after the penis has entered the vulva is nor- mal, for the impregnation of the female is as- sured thereby. But, as stated in another chap- ter, the sex communion in human beings has not for its sole purpose the impregnation of [158] PREMATURE EJACULATION the woman, but the equal gratification of the man and woman through the union of their genitals. Any coition, then, which leaves the woman unsatisfied is abnormal. Not every man, how- ever, who leaves his mate unsatisfied is ab- normal, The woman may be abnormal. She may be either frigid or so slow in reaching an orgasm, that only a man who was also ab- normally slow in ejaculating, could lead her to the climax of the sex act. Some women may have six or eight or- gasms within twenty minutes, some may re- quire twenty minutes before they reach the first orgasm. Some may be perfectly satisfied when having one or two orgasms. Some may only begin to enjoy the sex communion after having had one or two orgasms. As our civilization does not tolerate trial marriages in the course of which some cases of absolute sexual incompatibility could be discovered and relieved by prompt separation [159] SEX HAPPINESS of the mates, the problem of sexual adaptation is a very serious one, the more serious as few people suspect its existence and fewer yet dare to discuss it or to seek solutions for it. - Fortunately, physiology, neurology and psychology of the analytical type have brought forth much information as to sexual phenomena, whereby adjustments can be per- formed in many, not too severe, cases. By which I mean that if a man is unable to postpone his ejaculation longer than fifteen minutes and his wife is unable to have an or- gasm in less than thirty minutes, no solution can be offered, and no advice can be given except to secure, as speedily as possible, a final separation. In the great majority of maladjustment cases, fortunately, the discrepancy is far from being as radical as that. If every man knew what mental and phys- ical factors accelerate his ejaculation and what means can be resorted to in order to [160] PREMATURE EJACULATION postpone it, he could gradually train himself to wait until his beloved mate had experienced in his arms the pleasure which she cannot enjoy after his ejaculation, but which he can enjoy after her orgasm. I may state at once that in some men the penis does not become limp immediately after ejaculation, and also that some women are extremely roused sexually by the man’s ejacu- lation. So that in certain cases the husband, who ejaculates and, through passionate words and gestures conveys the fact to his wife, may, by continuing the motions of coitus a few sec- onds longer, enable her to enjoy an orgasm. This procedure, on the other hand, is not safe when pregnancy is to be avoided. In the majority of cases, then, the problem can be posited as follows: how can the wife’s orgasm be accelerated and the man’s ejacu- lation postponed? To understand clearly the mechanism of [161] SEX HAPPINESS premature ejaculation and the means sug- gested in order to prolong the act of inter- course, one must bear in mind a few facts about nerves and nervousness. The nerves producing an erection and those responsible for the ejaculation are constantly opposed in their action. In other words, the ejaculation is not the logical result of excite- ment and erection (for it may take place with- out any erection), but a process whereby the organism puts an end to the erection. The erection is caused by the nerves of the autonomic system which upbuild the body, give us a fine appetite and a good digestion, peaceful heart beats, a regular rate of breath- ing. The ejaculation is brought about, on the other hand, by the nerves which, in the pres- ence of danger, make us experience fear, stop our digestive activities, make our heart pal- pitate wildly, give us choking sensations, etc. £162] PREMATURE EJACULATION From this it will be easily seen that any ex- citement, feverish hurry, anxiety, worry, or any stimulant which makes us “nervous,” will be likely to hasten ejaculation. Unpleasant discussions, jealous scenes, fear of being overheard during intercourse, phys- ical fatigue, etc., are some of the most dan- gerous factors in the case. Any unpleasant physical sensation expe- rienced during intercourse may cause prema- ture ejaculation. The dryness of the wife’s vulva, for instance, may produce an annoying feeling of friction which may have disastrous effects. The premature husband should never begin intercourse until the vulva is well flushed by vaginal secretions. If that result is not easily attainable, the penis should be smeared liber- ally with vaseline. Substances like coffee, tea, cocoa and choco- late should be eliminated entirely from the diet of the premature husband. They are [163] SEX HAPPINESS commonly considered stimulants and their stimulation is harmless to the very normal man, especially if he leads a strenuous out- door life. Their stimulation consists in ex- aggerating the keenness of visual, auditory and other sensorial impressions with the result that those sensations create in the organism a certain degree of fear. After a cup or two of strong coffee, a sudden light or sound which, under ordinary circumstances would pass un- noticed, may cause us to jump, to “fidget,” in other words, to feel frightened. Stimulants create the impression of some vague danger which demands all our attention that we may either flee or fight. In active natures, they create for a few min- utes or a few hours a certain alertness which costs the body a great amount of energy ma- terial and is followed by a natural depression. In less athletic men and women they simply cause nervousness and exhaustion. On the other hand, alcohol, wine or beer (1641 PREMATURE EJACULATION remove many inhibitions, that is, allay fear and nervousness, the direct products of the nerves causing ejaculation. Their sexual effects have been greatly mis- understood and misrepresented by temperance advocates and by puritans who credit alcoholic beverages with aphrodisiac properties. Alcohol does not stimulate sexual desire, but it weakens the nerves which repress sex- ual desire and its manifestations. Therefore, its use in small quantities delays ejaculation and should be prescribed by physicians for premature husbands. All sedatives, cold or lukewarm baths, all moderate forms of physical exercise prolong the act of intercourse by delaying the ejacula- tion. A full bladder may induce a feeling of great restlessness, hence the bladder should be emptied before coitus. Morning erections are not due, as commonly supposed, to the accumulation of urine in the bladder, [165] SEX HAPPINESS for erection and desire to urinate are mutually suppressive. (A sleeper awakened by a crav- ing for micturition can go to sleep again with- out satisfying that craving if he induces an erection by concentrating his thoughts on erotic subjects.) The same precautions should be taken as far as feces are concerned. Abdominal ten- sions preceding the passing of stools may keep us awake at night, and anything which may keep us awake is also likely to shorten unduly the sexual connection. Mild cathartics or, better yet, plenty of fruit, preferably of the citrus variety, oranges, tangerines, grape fruit (and if necessary, an enema) will be found extremely helpful in the majority of cases. é In premature ejaculation as in impotence, cold enemas and bathing the penis in cold water are very beneficial. The use of a condom, which prevents a too close contact between penis and vulva and the [166 ] PREMATURE EJACULATION resulting friction, helps to delay the ejacula- tion, especially if the condom-clad penis is liberally smeared with vaseline. When the husband feels that he can no longer control his ejaculation he must en- deavor to fasten his thoughts on some object or idea entirely foreign to the sexual act. Counting certain recurring patterns of the woodwork of the bed, or possibly of the wall paper, making rapid, mental calculations, trying to remember, facts, dates, figures, will serve the purpose. At such times the husband must avoid kiss- ing his wife on the lips, looking at or touch- ing any part of the body which usually pro- duces or enhances in him sexual excitement. (See chapter on Fetishism.) The wife should also beware of manifesting her enjoyment of coitus too openly. A too tender gesture, a too ecstatic expression, a vo- luptuous moan, a suggestive motion of the hips, may bring the husband’s erection to an [167] SEX HAPPINESS untimely end by precipitating the ejaculation. It is only when the wife feels herself on the verge of the orgasm that she may give free and unbounded expression to her feelings of sexual gratification. She may by losing her head, lose her pleasure as well. Besides physical causes there may be mental causes affecting the husband’s sexual endur- ance in coitus. In many men the very fear of being unable to delay the ejaculation till the wife has expe- rienced an orgasm may impair their self-con- trol. The situation could in almost every case be adjusted through a frank talk between hus- band and wife. Many a wife, made a neurotic by her hus- band’s shortcomings, was horrified at first when I suggested such a family explanation. More than once I have appealed to the hus- band’s sense of fair play and many a time I have held a serious conference with a contrite, well-meaning man, more or less ignorant sex- [168] PREMATURE EJACULATION ‘ually, but in every case only too willing to try all sorts of experiments in the hope of gratify- ing properly his wife’s desires. Only in very rare cases did some selfish male respond to my appeal by indignation of the puritanical type, by a refusal either to dis- cuss the case with me or to let his wife consult me any longer. His puritanism may have been a cloak for his indifference to his wife’s comfort and health. It may have been in certain cases due to his wrong training. Not infrequently men suffering from pre- mature ejaculation have been found in the course of a psychoanalysis to be obsessed by the idea that intercourse is something sinful, disgusting, a sort of “animal” indulgence to which not even the lawful married status could impart dignity or purity. What such men are most in need of is sex- ual education. They must be led to abandon [169] SEX HAPPINESS their distorted notions by the study of biology and of the physiology of sex. The fear that their behavior may appear too gross or “indecent” to their wives, whose sexual ignorance they may greatly exaggerate, could be removed through frank talks with their family doctor or an analyst. The best cure for all the sexual disturbances which leave the wife unsatisfied is, after. all, perfect frankness on the subject between hus- band and wife. Defeat breeds the fear of de- feat in the premature husband’s mind. The shame and humiliation experienced by an un- satisfactory husband are enhanced by the stealthy efforts he makes to conceal them or to repress the thought of them. This gradually transforms the sexual act into something annoying, to be performed as quickly as possible and at once forgotten. As a result it becomes then something purely ani- mal, gross and disgusting, a sort of refined masturbation, in which a man uses the body of [170] PREMATURE EJACULATION a woman as a tool of his lust, while she waits for the torture to end with indignant submis- siveness. Husbands and wives should be made to realize very forcibly that intercourse is a sci- entific procedure requiring training, not a haphazard act to be left to the direction of blind and wasteful nature. Sexual endurance, like physical endurance, is a matter of patient training. The untrained man who joins a gymnasium and exercises without any system, soon pays for his lack of discretion through an organic fear which betrays itself through violent pal- pitations of the heart, difficulty in breathing, muscular weakness or soreness, etc. Gradual training, however, will soon re- move those distressing symptoms and a man may, after a few weeks or a few months, be able to run around the track several miles without experiencing any discomfort besides (171) SEX HAPPINESS a slight acceleration of his heart beats and of his respiration. The premature husband who will put him- self, with his wife’s co-operation and sym- pathy, through a course of training in sexual endurance, will gradually eliminate all the fears and uncertainty surrounding the act of coitus and acquire the poise and self-control without which his mate will be cheated of her lawful share of sexual gratification. But I repeat once more that this result will never be attained through mock-modesty, whispered allusions, covered expressions and the like. Both parties must be conscious of their aim and seek it frankly and openly as is their right and their duty. [172] CHAPTER XIV FRIGIDITY IN WOMEN To laymen, frigidity means woman’s lack of desire for sexual intercourse. To the psychologist, it means woman’s inability to ex- perience an orgasm in a normal manner as the climax of sexual intercourse. No woman is averse from the sexual act when she knows that it will invariably lead to her enjoying once or several‘ times the overpow- ering sensation which some describe as akin to death and which drives even the most sedate human beings to utter the most abandoned moans of joy and gratitude. Barring unusual cases of women whose genitals are undeveloped, frigidity is never a natural, congenital condition but an abnormal, acquired one. [173] SEX HAPPINESS Many men assume that women are natur- ally less passionate than men. They are sim- ply deceived by the fact that women cannot, with safety, express their feelings frankly. The great majority of women experience sexual desire as keenly as men do, and most of them are capable of gratifying their craving for the sexual act more frequently than men. Women who can enjoy from five to ten or- gasms in a couple of hours are not rare, even in middle age, while very few men above twenty-five are able to ejaculate more than twice or three times in the same period of time. This is quite reasonable, if one thinks of it, for the sexual life of the female is fraught with much suffering and danger. After a ‘sometimes burdensome pregnancy, she must go through the torture of parturition and the slavery of lactation. A man’s sexual activi- ties may entail duties and burdens, but no physical suffering. It is biological justice and [174] FRIGIDITY IN WOMEN a necessity that the female should be led to the act on which life relies for its continuation by an unusual premium of physical and men- tal enjoyment, making up for the many risks she takes. At the same time the absurd masculine domination, which once was the universal tule and which, in civilized countries is now giving way to equality, has tended to enslave the female by unsexing her. Weak, lazy or jealous husbands have tried, sometimes suc- cessfully to make their wives consider sexual activities as unwomanly and “unworthy of a lady.” The result of such hypocritical pressure is that it is now very difficult, if not impossible, for any woman, unless she be a prostitute, to give honest expression to her sexual cravings even in the intimacy of the bedroom. Another result is that man, trying to fool woman, has fooled himself as well, and that [175] SEX HAPPINESS both sexes are deceived by the woman’s com- pulsory pretence of indifference. Many women, ignorant of the fact that their sex hunger is in no way abnormal or perverse, frightened as they are by the taboo placed on sex talk and sex facts, make frantic efforts to repress their desires, to refuse them every form of expression and every outlet, to deny even their existence. Puritanical training or punishment re- ceived in childhood or infancy for some form of sexual misbehavior, curiosity, exposure, onanism, indecent play, etc., is usually respon- sible for such an abnormal state of mind. Some newly married women remain frigid in their husbands’ arms for a few days or a few weeks following the first sexual union. This condition, however, usually disappears when the various barriers of embarrassment, false modesty and ignorance have been over- come by caresses, pleasure and the resulting confidence. ! [176] FRIGIDITY IN WOMEN Others who experienced pleasure from the very first union become frigid after a few months or years of married life. The husband’s ignorance or mental attitude is generally responsible for this deplorable condition. Some wives, misunderstanding the psychol- ogy of the average normal man, are so afraid of revealing to their husbands their sexual de- sire and their enjoyment of sexual caresses that they repress all outward signs of that craving and of its gratification. They fear the orgasm because, in its vio- lence, it may cause them to cast off their mask of indifference and to betray their true nor- mal nature. No normal man, however, re- sents a display of passion which, after all, is a proof of his physical attractiveness. Clever prostitutes exploit many men by feigning in their lovers’ arms a passion they do not really experience, and hence flattering the men’s [177] SEX HAPPINESS egotism by leading them to consider them- selves irresistible. Sexual ignorance in the man, on the other hand, may cause him to inflict upon the woman a wound that nothing can heal. One husband brought up in the sexual igno- rance characterized in certain circles as purity of mind, was quite shocked when, after a few nights of indifference, his wife suddenly ex- perienced her first orgasm. Her moans, her convulsive motions, which would have given to a real lover infinite joy, were to him merely the evidence of her sinful disposition. He reproved her severely for her lack of re- straint, delivering himself of the incredible remark: “I hope, my dear, that you will not behave like a woman of the streets.” The poor victim was so terribly humiliated that on the following occasions she not only took special pains not to reveal to her stupid husband the enjoyment she derived from his [178] FRIGIDITY IN WOMEN caresses, but gradually grew unable to expe- rience any orgasm. Many women who, in the first weeks of their married life, fail to experience an or- gasm in their husband’s arms, are too reserved to inform him of the fact. Night after night they are left unsatisfied and relieve the con- gestion of their genital organs by masturbat- ing. Some women are so inexperienced in mat- ters of sex that they enjoy their husband’s ca- resses merely as a preparation for the orgasm which they give themselves through masturba- tion. In spite of their ignorance or perhaps, thanks to their ignorance, they manage to as- sure themselves a certain amount of slightly abnormal satisfaction. When their previous training, however, has led them to consider masturbation as something very shameful and very dangerous, they make frantic efforts not to allow themselves to become aroused by their husband’s caresses. They know that to [179] SEX HAPPINESS yield to temptation means for them to suffer the tortures of Tantalus. They direct their thoughts toward some unsexual, unphysical subject, and they finally succeed in avoiding the emotional response which would cause an onrush of blood to fill their genitals. Sexual desire, which has only led them to disappointment, becomes suppressed con- sciously, hardly ever manifests itself normally after that and apparently dies. Consciously, such women are indifferent to their husbands or to all men. Unconsciously, their repressed desire runs riot and satisfies itself through various neurotic expedients, the most frequent being hysterical attacks, the painful neurotic equivalent of an orgasm. Finally, many women imagine that the en- joyment of an orgasm either increases the dan- ger of pregnancy or is a necessary condition of impregnation. To avoid that eventuality they prefer not to let themselves go during in- tercourse and rely on masturbation after the (180) CHAPTER XV THE TRUTH ABOUT SEXUAL PERVERSIONS Several times in my career I have been con- sulted by distressed women who informed me that their husband was a pervert and that they could not live with “such a disgusting type of man.” I am glad to say that all those women, whose subsequent life I have been able to watch, are now living with the man they once thought so repellent and to. whose idiosyn- crasies they have gradually managed to adapt themselves. The word perversion is terribly misunder- stood by the majority of laymen and by old- fashioned physicians. Experiments made on pigeons will open the reader’s eye at once to the real meaning of a perversion. [185] SEX HAPPINESS If you take a young male pigeon and, with- out ever letting him see another male, keep him caged for a year or so with female pigeons, that young male pigeon will, at the next rutting or mating season, offer himself to males as though he were a female and wait for a male in the attitude of coition of a female. Take a female and raise her with males exclusively and at the first rutting season she will try to copulate with females, acting as though she were a male. Keep a young male pigeon away from all other birds, male or fe- male, and at rutting time he will try to copu- late with the hand of the person feeding him or with his water trough or any large object placed in his cage. The first male has been made homosexual and does not care for females, the female does not care for males, and the last-mentioned male has been made a pervert, who seeks intercourse with inanimate objects. [186] SEXUAL PERVERSIONS Shall we call them vicious, filthy, disgust- ing, or any other opprobrious epithets? We shall simply say that they are the victims of a laboratory experiment, that they have been made abnormal by the wrong kind of training. No one, however, would suggest punishing the poor beasts for a distortion of their sexual instinct for which they are in no way respon- sible. The human pervert is as irresponsible as the animal pervert. If he is endowed with enough will power he may repress his abnor- mal desires and lead a solitary, chaste life. If he is lacking in will power and yields to temp- tation, as homosexualism cannot be accepted in our modern social system, he must be taken in hand by the authorities and treated, not punished, and if found incurable confined to an institution where all his human rights are preserved and respected, but where he will not be in danger of corrupting other human beings, who may be like him, [187] SEX HAPPINESS by tempting them and weakening their will. Here again we must warn the reader that there are many degrees in homosexualism. The man who cannot be attracted by a woman and is always attracted by a man is frankly ab- normal, but the man who is never attracted by a man, but is always seeking, however, women with decidedly mannish traits, can be classified as normal. A woman is not necessarily abnormal be- cause she is attracted by weak, feminine-look- ing men. One can have a slight homosexual streak and yet to all purposes be normal. Some people are bisexual. In ancient Greece men of distinction had relations with both men and women, and bisexualism was not considered a perversion. The women of Greece and Alexandria also had sexual rela- tions with women as well as with men and the poems of Sappho and Bylitis show that no shame attached in those days to such practices. There are people who possess the sexual [188] SEXUAL PERVERSIONS characteristics of both sexes, women with more or less rudimentary penis and testicles besides a vulva, men who besides the male genitals have well-marked feminine character- istics. ‘They are known as hermaphrodites. It has not been observed that they are bisex- ual, except physiologically. As they are very rare, however, no conclusion can be drawn as to their normality or abnormality. The man or woman married to a frankly homosexual mate is in a tragic predicament, and the only solution for the problem is a divorce. Men are more frequently the victims of such unions than women. The purely homosexual man seldom enters a union which would hold nothing but humiliation for him. His earlier sexual experience leaves him no illusion as to his actual sexual tendencies. A girl, on the other hand, deeply ignorant of sexual facts, may be absolutely homo- sexual without even knowing it. It is only when sexual embraces are forced upon her [189] SEX HAPPINESS that she realizes her loathing for a man’s ca- resses, which to her appear as repugnant as they would to a normal man. Homosexualism does not mean coarseness or lewdness, and the following incident will illustrate the feelings of some of those unfor- tunates when placed in a position which to others would be simply amusing. A young homosexual man who consulted me had been invited to a reception and dance. When the affair was over the hostess asked him to take a young married woman home. The woman was a decided flirt, and made up her mind to provoke the youth, who was very handsome, to some more or less daring love- making. When he absolutely failed to notice her advances, which were very objectionable to him, she took the offensive and kissed him. He opened the door of the taxicab and jumped out, “feeling,” as he expressed it to me the next day, “defiled from head to foot.” My young Joseph, running away from the [190] SEXUAL PERVERSIONS bewitching wife of a Potiphar, was not a puritanical pretender, nor a silly fellow. He possessed female characteristics in a male body and advances from a person of his own “real” sex were disgusting to him. He reacted to the bold lady’s love-making as a modest girl would have to that of a too aggressive man. It is to be hoped that this young man will never marry, although now and then we find a homosexual who, anxious to change his con- dition and to avoid social ostracism, resorts to marriage as a desperate last experiment, one usually bound to fail. In the case of a bisexual mate, on the other hand, the problem which the normal mate has to face is simply to keep the abnormal one so completely satisfied sexually that no tempta- tion will be strong enough to make him devi- ate from the proper line of sexual behavior. The question for the normal mate to an- swer in such cases is: “(Do you care enough for your mate to make decided efforts which [191] SEX HAPPINESS may appear slightly humiliating, but which may probably be rewarded by success?” If not, divorce is the only solution. If a wife’s love is strong enough to make a sacrifice easy, she should find out what are the masculine traits which, adopted by her, would make her more attractive to her husband; a man should find out what feminine attitudes he should cultivate, at least in the intimacy of the bedroom, to arouse in his wife the desire which some other woman might cause to flame up. A bobbed-haired woman affecting mascu- line fashions and mannerisms might anchor safely on her person the wandering libido of a slightly bisexual husband. I know of a husband who is almost entirely impotent with his wife unless she wears a sailor blouse and bloomers during intercourse. I know of another married woman who can- not experience an orgasm unless her husband wears a woman’s nightgown. Both are bisex- [192] SEXUAL PERVERSIONS ual with a strong homosexual trend, but with the help of a loving and devoted mate, they manage to satisfy in a lawful way cravings which might involve them seriously. A confession of homosexualism or bisexual- ism on the part of the “perverse” mate re- quires a good deal of courage, and its success presupposes a good deal of intelligence and sympathy on the part of the normal mate. Psychoanalysis which leads the most reti- cent and puritanical people to face in a sci- entific way all the facts of life, instead of camouflaging them, can do much for those whom their training has not frankly directed at puberty into the normal path of hetero- sexual love. At the time of the climacteric or change of life, a deep modification of all the inner sccre- tions of the body which both men and women experience between the ages of forty and fifty, we observe not infrequently [193] SEX HAPPINESS the outcropping of homosexual tendencies in men and women. Those ‘tendencies repressed in all the pre- ceding years, and almost invariably uncon- scious, cause many women reaching what Karin Michaelis has termed the Dangerous Age, to turn away from men, many men to turn away from women. Those whose life habits are such that per- verse practices would be unthinkable to them, repress the strange cravings which trouble them, and frequently merge into neurotic dis- turbances. Others, unable to reveal those cravings to their life mate, resort to sexual self-gratifica- tion; that is, they masturbate while letting perverse scenes occupy their minds. This easily transforms itself into a habit which un- fits them for normal intercourse in later years, when the upset coincident with the climacteric has been replaced by quieter moods and a more secure mental and physical balance. £194] SEXUAL PERVERSIONS I do not consider masturbation as a perver- sion. It is simply an incomplete, primitive, childish form of sexual gratification which, when excessive, is always a symptom of men- tal disturbance. The masturbator is trying to be sufficient unto himself. He is withdrawing from the world of reality and embracing phantoms. At the bottom of that habit we always find a pow- erful feeling of inferiority which must be re- moved by mental treatment before the mas- turbator can conquer his habit. It must be realized, however, that mastur- bation, while it does not necessarily lead to impotence, makes the enjoyment of sexual in- tercourse more and more difficult for the men and women indulging in it. The masturbator seeks the line of least ef- fort, skips all the preliminary stages leading to intercourse, acquaintance, wooing, etc., and jumps at once into a visualization of the act which is represented as invariably pleasant, [195] SEX HAPPINESS harmless, devoid of consequences, the man al- ways embracing a Venus, the woman giving herself to an Apollo. Actual love-making is far from presenting so many perfect details. Hence it gradually becomes unattractive to the masturbator. Furthermore, in the production of the or- gasm by mechanical means, the masturbator, especially the woman, does not reproduce the physical conditions obtaining in the normal sex act. The man can vary the pressure of his hand and fingers to suit his desire. He can con- tinue the motions or interrupt them at will, without taking into account the wishes or physical condition of a sexual partner. While in actual intercourse the pressure of the fe- male genitals bears mainly upon the glans or head of the penis, in masturbation, the pres- sure is exerted exclusively on the body of the male organ. The result is that the contact of the woman’s [196] SEXUAL PERVERSIONS vulva on the sensitive head of the penis is likely to bring about in habitual masturbators a premature ejaculation, the evil results of which are described in another chapter. In the woman, the effects of masturbation are even worse when that practice has been kept up too long in life. The orgasm is gen- erally attained by the woman through rub- bing her clitoris with one of her fingers, less frequently through inserting some object into the vulva. In actual intercourse, it is the in-and-out motions of the penis rubbing against the walls of the vulva which bring about the orgasm. When all the pleasure-producing sensations have always been centered, as it were, in the clitoris, normal intercourse is likely to leave the woman unsatisfied. Very little of a practical value can be said about the perversions designated as sadism and masochism. The sadist cannot enjoy the sexual act unless he can inflict some physical [197] SEX HAPPINESS suffering upon his sexual partner. Some ex- treme sadists actually experience orgasm or ejaculation by merely torturing some human being or animal. The masochist is the oppo- site. His sexual enjoyment is enhanced when his sexual partner inflicts some suffering upon him. There are also extreme masochists who need no sexual contact in order to experience gratification. Being hurt by their sexual part- ner is sufficient to give them an ejaculation or orgasm. Some sadists, for instance, expe- rience sexual gratification when whipping someone, and some masochists only experience a pleasurable sexual feeling when whipped. Sadism and masochism in one of the mates makes life a nightmare for the normal mate, and if psychoanalysis does not succeed in re- ducing the manifestations of those perversions, absolute separation is imperative to save the health, mental and physical of the normal mate. {198 } CHAPTER XVI FETISHISM The words fetish and fetishism are gener- ally misunderstood by the majority of people. I remember a few years ago the curious ex- pression with which a rather naive man re- ceived a statement to the effect that I admired a certain woman’s hair. ‘ “Oh, you are a hair fetishist, eh?” and he showed me a book which described “hair fetishism” as a perversion. This is, of course, an extreme example of the absurdities which are propagated in print or by word of mouth on the subject of fetishism. Fetishism should be studied with as much care as any other physico-psychic phenomenon [199 ] SEX HAPPINESS for it plays an enormous part in the bex life of the modern man. Among savages a fetish is an object to which its owner attributes miraculous powers, such as making him invisible, invincible, ir- resistible, etc. Among modern men a fetish is a detail of the human body to which the be- holder attaches an exceedingly great impor- tance. For instance, we are all familiar with the young man who is “crazy for red hair,” with the young woman who “couldn’t love a man unless he were smooth shaven.” A cer- tain theater-going public is insatiable for the sort of performances called “leg shows.” Hair, eyes, teeth, neck, shoulders, arms, breasts, hands, legs, feet, hold for certain peo- ple a fascination which is not shared by oth- ers. Every individual has, in respect to them, preferences and dislikes which, in the majority of the cases, determines the craving, indiffer- ence or disgust which he experiences at the [2001 ' FETISHISM sight of an individual of the same or the op- posite sex. We admire on the street a woman whose stature is impressive, whose neck is firm and rounded, whose feet and ankles are gracefully shaped. We pass her and catch sight of her small eyes, or snub nose, or receding chin and at once dismiss her from our thoughts. We meet a beautiful woman and discover that her hands are huge and coarse, her feet flat or her ankles too thick and then again our interest dwindles away suddenly. She is not beautiful to us, although there probably is a man who worships her and to whom she is beauty incarnate. Some man will be held in bondage by the sight of a well-developed bust; another will never let his glance linger except on thin, boy- ish-looking girls. They have different fet- ishes. This is the real meaning of fetishism, con- sidered from a scientific way and the reader [201 ] SEX HAPPINESS can readily see that, within certain limits, it is perfectly normal. The continuance of racial traits is, after all, due to the fact that every species of animals and every branch of the human family seek certain physical fetishes in the sexual mate. The cow, lacking the physical characteris- tics of the horse, does not attract the horse sex- ually; curly hair, a flat nose and a black skin may arouse sexually a member of the colored race, although they would leave the average white man totally indifferent. Beyond certain limits, however, fetishism assumes an abnormal aspect. Especially when not only parts of the human body, but objects symbolizing them, become the too exclusive source of sexual excitation. When a man is aroused sexually by the sight of a woman’s shoes, and, worse yet, when noth- ing but the sight of women’s shoes can arouse him sexually, we have a bad case of morbid neurotic fetishism. [202 ] FETISHISM We read often of maniacs who go about armed with shears and clip off little girls’ braids. One man was arrested recently for slashing women’s clothes in a way which en- abled him to look at their backs. In such cases, fetishism reaches a degree which makes it necessary for the police to protect the com- munity from the fetishist. From what follows, however, it can easily be seen that punishment is not the remedy for such conditions. Jail does not reform the morbid fetishist. He is a sick man who re- quires treatment at the hands of a psychiatrist, and who should not be allowed at large until the proper treatment has enabled him to con- trol his morbid compulsion. ‘ On the other hand, branding as a fetishist with an insulting connotation the sentimental youth who raves over “her cute little hand” or cannot help kissing her hair and who treasures fondly the handkerchief she dropped or the [203 ] SEX HAPPINESS glove she gave him. would be perfectly absurd and an evidence of ignorance. : — The fetishist is not born a fetishist, nor does he in any way select his particular fetish or fetishes. Childhood habits and memories are responsible for our choice of fetishes, for they force them upon us at an age when the human organism is infinitely sensitive to impressions. - The reason why certain individuals are, strongly attracted by certain definite parts of the body is not in any way mysterious. Applied psychology of the psychoanalytic. type has shown that whatever creates an im- pression of fear in childhood creates a certain repugnance and distaste in later years. And inversely, whatever produces highly pleasur- able sensations in childhood creates a definite- attraction and appetite in mature life. - This is well evidenced by observations I have made personally on about five hundred men. Almost every man nursed at the breast, that [ 204 ] FETISHISM is for whom the breast symbolized life, food, the mother’s protection and care, etc., was found to be an admirer of well-developed busts. Most men brought up on the bottle, on the other hand, were indifferent to buxom women, if not actually repelled by them and profuse in their admiration of thin, boyish-looking girls. To them the breast had no meaning, except whatever it might have acquired in the course of their artistic education or what was in- stilled into them by the study of physiology. In about ten per cent of the cases only, did I find that the method of infant feeding had no influence on the grown-up’s breast fetish- ism. Other factors may have been at work— a dry nurse might have been of the buxom type and through her tenderness and care have made a deep impression on the nursling, etc. One of Ferenczi’s patients was obsessed in [205] SEX HAPPINESS his day and night dreams by fat feminine legs. It was brought forth in the course of an analy- sis that his older sister used to let him ride on her naked leg when he was a very smal! child, the contact of her skin having, even at that age, given him sensations of a distinctly pleas- ant sexual character. We know that a man constantly seeks as his mate a woman who reproduces a number of the characteristics observable either in his mother or nurse or older sister, generally speaking, in the woman who took care of him when he was an infant. Woman’s choice of a mate is swayed by the same considerations, the woman being attracted by details of the father image. What a man seeks then is one or several fet- ishes found in the mother image and based upon parts of the mother’s body which vouch- safed him the most pleasant sensation or made the deepest impression of a pleasurable type [ 206] FETISHISM on him. The same applies as well to women’s choice of a mate. Whatever the causes of this phenomenon may be, fetishism is a fact to be reckoned with. For the presence of a man’s fetish or fetishes in a woman increases or creates sexual desire in him for her. The absence of such characteristics may cause him to be absolutely indifferent to her. Here again we must rec- ognize that there are many degrees separating absolute normality from absolute abnormality. The absolutely normal man would be like the absolutely normal animal, in whom the presence of any individual of the same species, but of the opposite sex, is sufficient, at mating time, to produce sexual desire and make copu- lation possible. Man has excluded from his choice blood relations, mates who are either much older or much younger, individuals in certain degrees of sickness, deformation, etc. Considerations of social stratum, color of the skin, race, in- [ 207 ] SEX HAPPINESS tellectual development, etc., have in the course of ages gradually narrowed down a man’s or a woman’s selection of a mate. The more particular a man or a woman is in the choice of a life partner, the farther he or she is from being biologically normal, the more limitations are placed upon his sexual activity and the more dangers there are to his sexual potency. Civilization being as complicated as it is to- day, we can only hope to be relatively normal in this respect as well as in others. Husbands and wives should, through psy- choanalysis, find out what their fetishes are, for the disappearance of an important fetish very often creates sexual difficulties, regard- less of what attachment may exist otherwise between the mates. Let us take a simple and obvious example. A man marries a slim, dark-haired woman. Ten years later she may have let herself, out of pure stupidity, grow stout, and she may [208 ] FETISHISM have allowed her hair to turn gray. She will then, in all likelihood, resent the fact that her husband is easily attracted by other women who may not be as attractive in certain ways as she is, but who are dark-haired and slim. Either she is very fond of her husband or she is not. If she is not attached to him she should either seek a divorce or condone his unfaithfulness. If she is fond of him she should set herself the task of winning him back. Diet, massage and exercise would, in a few months, bring back to her the out- line which once fascinated him. A bottle of suitable hair dye would do the rest. This is infinitely more important a point for women to consider than for men. Lack of positive sexual desire disables a man more completely than it does a woman. A woman being passive and simply letting the man enter her vulva, can, generally speaking, have an orgasm with almost any man who has a good erection, who is not repellent to her and {209 } SEX HAPPINESS who can prolong the act of intercourse suf- ficiently. Unless the man is positively aroused, he has no erection and is unable to consummate the sexual act. This is one of the principal reasons for man’s inconstancy. His desire must be aroused by certain characteristics in a woman’s body or he feels weak and unmanly in her presence and, much as he may care for her in a senti- mental way, he is impelled by his egotism and his craving for virility to seek in other women fetishes which make him feel sexually potent. I need not multiply examples, but must re- peat emphatically that one of the secrets for insuring durable sex happiness consists in pre- serving the fetishes of both mates through natural means if possible, if not, then through artificial means. The man whose beautiful teeth attracted his wife should not let tobacco juice stain them, and if an accident damages them, should have [210] FETISHISM them replaced. The bearded bridegroom should not suddenly bloom up into a smooth- shaven husband, or vice versa. The woman whose opulent hair is a joy to her husband should not come home some day “bobbed,” or dyed in a different shade, unless it be to re- store its original appearance. And finally, married couples should be per- fectly frank about such matters in which, as I said previously, preferences are not a matter of capricious choice, but have been established gradually, irresistibly, by education and training. One man mentioned by Dr. Kempf was greatly disturbed by the fact that his bride had very hairy legs. Tracing the origin of his preference for smooth limbs to childhood impressions, helped him surmount that dif- ficulty, but the wife could have helped further by using a depilatory paste or bleaching the hair on her legs and making it practically in- visible. [211] SEX HAPPINESS In such unavoidable cases, that is, when bride or bridegroom discovers, after observa- tion of the mate’s naked body, that some psychic characteristic is unpleasant and de- creases the sexual potency, they should take measures to keep that “negative fetish” well concealed from view. The affected mate should also submit himself to psychoanalysis. Every object in life which has a disgusting or terrifying effect reminds us unconsciously of some terrifying or disgusting impression of our childhood which we have forgotten by re- pressing the thought of it from our mind. The thing to do is to make that memory conscious and thereby remove the fear which attaches to forgotten incidents of that sort. Psychoanalysis is of great value in cases of exaggerated abnormal fetishism due to uncon- scious neurotic impressions. The man or woman who is absolutely fasci- nated by hair, hands or feet or inanimate ob- jects, handkerchiefs, gloves, etc., and whose [212] FETISHISM sexual powers are decreased in the absence of such fetishes, should be analyzed, for such fet- ishes are generally symbolical of quite differ- ent unconscious things which, when recog- nized consciously, lose their tremendous influ- ence on human behavior. 1213] CHAPTER XVII MALADJ USTED TYPES There are two opposite human types which hold a great fascination for the sexually igno- rant of both sexes. The pure-minded young man and the blasé youth among men, the vio- let and the vamp among women. The male virgin appeals greatly to certain young women who hold that there should be a sin- gle standard of morality for both sexes. The heroine of Strindberg’s “The Glove” jilted her fiancé when she found out that he had not been as pure as he expected her to remain until her bridal night. Young women imagine that it is the man’s purity which kept him from all liaisons, or that he respected women too much to take any liberties with them, and that consequently he {214 ] MALADJUSTED TYPES will be a model husband, virile because he has not “squandered” his strength, faithful, because his ideals are too high for infidelity, chivalrous, because his past proclaims him a perfect gentleman. The poor naive creatures would be terri- bly shocked if anyone told them that the male virgin’s chastity was probably more theoreti- cal than real, for, instead of indulging in nor- mal intercourse with actual women he spent many hours in erotic day dreams in the course of which he possessed many shadow loves. Neither would they willingly receive the in- formation that he is probably homosexual or impotent. How many times have I been rebuked by young men whom I asked about their sexual activities and who answered indignantly: “I have led a clean life.” After which they had to confess to constant masturbation. One theo- logical student I treated had also led a “clean” life, as far as women were concerned, but had [215] SEX HAPPINESS had homosexual relations with several men. In a charming novel called “The Roman- tic,” which among other qualities has that of brevity, May Sinclair strips of its halo a type which Anglo-Saxon fiction has glorified be- yond measure, the perfect gentleman, who makes “an ideal friend for a woman,” “who expects nothing,” who is “above all the low animal lusts,” etc. A young woman has an affair with a mar- ried man whom she adores, but who only seeks in her embraces a change in his sexual diet. As soon as family complications are threatened, he brutally discards her without evincing even mild sympathy. This harrow- ing experience gives her for a while a feeling that she is done forever with men and carnal lusts. At this juncture she meets a handsome, romantic, sentimental young fellow who is “done with lust,” too. The war breaks out and they go to Belgium with an ambulance sent out by the young fellow’s father. From the [216] MALADJUSTED TYPES very first minute it is quite evident that the romantic John will not bear very well the strain of war’s horrors. The sight of blood ». upsets him, the booming of the big guns throws him into a panic, and if a wounded man is too horribly mutilated, John just “forgets” him and leaves him to a horri- ble, lonely end. Finally his cowardice brings him death. He is running away from some wounded because shrapnel is falling alarm- ingly near and a private, who sees him desert- ing his captain, raises his rifle and shoots him through the back. An ambulance surgeon then explains as tactfully as possible to the disconsolate girl, who, in spite of her love, was beginning to loathe her cowardly lover, that the poor fel- low was more to be pitied than blamed. It was his very lack of virility that made him both so charming to women and such a miser- able coward. As modern physiologists would [217] e SEX HAPPINESS say, his glands were too weak to enable him to cope with life’s emergencies. poe, ~ That type of man makes a delightful escort for a woman going to a tea or to the theater. He can be trusted, for he is sexually harmless. But woe to her who is ignorant enough to tie herself to such a husband. In her arms, as in every crisis of life, he shall be as helpless as an infant. He is sexless, and only a puritan-rid- den civilization would grant him anything ex- cept sneers and expressions of pity. Some self-styled “modern” girls, with a rather jealous disposition, admire and marry the opposite type, who pretends to have had a wide experience and “knows” women too well to pay much homage to them. He has had his fling, they think, and will probably remain faithful to his wife. As a matter of fact, the blasé youth has generally had deplorable ex- periences with women, has been a sufferer from venereal disease, and his knowledge of [218 ] MALADJUSTED TYPES the feminine heart is mainly derived from un- satisfactory relations with prostitutes. He may have, on several occasions, been hu- miliated by his sexual deficiencies and he avoids women because he is not sure of him- self. His blasé attitude is a protective scheme, a disappointed mechanism. His kind supplies recruits for the ranks of the anti-feminists, of the trashy misogynists who go about repeat- ing that woman is inferior, cannot be trusted, is fickle, capricious, etc. His bluster is a cloak for his fear of woman whom he does not un- derstand and who might defeat him in the sexual embrace which he visualizes as a sex duel. Only a very experienced woman might lead a pleasant life with either of these types. She might cleverly develop the dormant sexuality of the male virgin and afford a safe outlet for the morbid fears which beset the “wise” fellow. Experienced women, however, would be [219 ] SEX HAPPINESS chary of experiments likely to result in failure or disappointment, should the male virgin’s attitude be due to impotence, the wise fellow’s scepticism be due to venereal infection or im- potence, or both. The feminine types corresponding to those two male types present also a great problem for the unexperienced man, who is likely to take them too tragically. The violet and the vamp neither receive nor give much happiness unless a man acquainted with the true meaning of their psychological “kinks” either brings insight into their minds or by the proper sexual treatment breaks down their protective mechanisms. The unsophisticated youth, however, is easily ensnared by them. In the lower classes and the middle class the average woman strives to give her envir- onment the impression that she is a Mid-Vic- torian violet. Her home, her clothes and her children, now and then a book of polite fic- [220] MALADJUSTED TYPES tion, and once a week a play or a concert, mark the boundaries of her interests. Gossip brings to her, and enables her to pass on to other women in her set, a slightly lurid sur- vey of what some men and women she knows, or knows of, are suspected of doing in the way of extra-matrimonial sex experiments. Those activities are reported to her with many disapproving remarks, and she retells them with the same condemnation. Now and then some feminine friend con- fides to her some bedroom details of her own biography, which generally exaggerate greatly either her husband’s insufficiency or his prowess. But she knows for a certainty that sex do- ings are a rather rare occurrence in this world, that in the life of nice people like her- self, they are not, or at least should not be im- portant, and that anyone who seems vitally in- terested in sex is probably a pervert, and that life is “not like that.” [221] SEX HAPPINESS What life is like, on the other hand, she has never taken the trouble of finding out. It might require mental exertion. She calls her fantastic lack of information “purity,” her gross misinterpretation of hu- man phenomena “her cherished illusions,” and whenever scandals break out which upset her fairy fancies of what life is like, she begs of you not to explain, for it might shatter her last illusions. “If I had as few illusions left as some peo- ple,” she is fond of saying, “I would not care to live.” She shuns accurate medical expressions, and either feigns indignation or ignorance (which may be genuine) when they are used in her presence. Her mother never whispered a word to her about sex matters, and she intends to keep her children as pure-minded as she was. (Which means that they shall receive their sexual en- lightenment at the hands of foul-minded [222 } MALADJUSTED TYPES urchins in school, or more or less conscience- less adults after school years.) The prostitutes to her are “those women,” and-if gossip attaches to a certain husband in her set, he becomes for her “that kind of a man.” If some day she yields to a lover, she will remind him to the last day of their affair that she was a good and pure woman when he met her, that she cannot imagine that such a thing could have happened to her, and that she feels cheap. If her lover is a man of the world, he will smile and say nothing. Words may conceal our sensuality, but our behavior betrays it every minute. This type is in great demand in the middle class. Small business men with their nose on the grindstone, cannot afford to be married to mentally keen and curious wives, who would compel them to use their brains after office hours. [223 ] SEX HAPPINESS They imagine fondly that their wife’s pre- tended lack of curiosity about sexual facts constitutes a great protection for her virtue, and they generally praise her for her igno- ance of life. They forget, however, that curiosity is al- ways active in every human being, and that taboo subjects are constantly forcing them- selves into consciousness seeking recognition. What they do not tell their wives someone else will eventually, and what they do not find in their wives they will seek in some “wise” girl in their business environment. They will derive infinite fun from a lunch- eon with a perfectly silly demi-virgin, whom they would never dare to introduce to their wives, and who delights them by telling in cold blood smutty stories, who uses the latest slang and poses as leading a terribly wicked life. They go back to their office after lunch, or later in the afternoon, with the feeling that [224] MALADJUSTED TYPES they have sounded the depths of romance and vice. Their wives’ purity is a convenient excuse for not taking them to some parties which they must attend for business reasons. The violet’s attitude of purity compels her husband to live up, officially, to her standards and to assume that she is different from other women (different in this case meaning better, though a little stupid). There is very little frankness and abandon- ment in a home presided over by a demure violet. ‘Sexual relations are to both a hygienic measure, unavoidable but unbeautiful. They may derive temporary relief from their or- gasm and ejaculation, but no definite happi- ness, no exultation of any kind, Both of them may at times feel sentiment- ally inclined, but both of them have an atti- tude to preserve and are afraid of being ridiculous to each other. I have advised cer- tain husbands to make calf love to their wives [225] SEX HAPPINESS and received the answer: “She would think I had something to be forgiven for.” From wives whom I advised to be more bewitching I heard the following: “He would make fun of me and say it was ridiculous at my age.” The violet dampens all enthusiasm—even her own. The vamp does not fare much better. The vamp is terribly cunning and gutter- wise, and cannot be surprised by anything. She knows life and the vanity of it all. She knows men and their vices. She carelessly bandies the latest surgical and sociological terms. She suggests, when it appears neces- sary, a purple streak in her past. A worldly lover could enjoy her, for he would soon puncture the little balloon of her pretence. If he could bear to hear phrases such as “TI never felt as I do, before I met you,” considering that he is not compelled to live with her, his fate would not be unpleasant. Her husband, on the other hand, forced to [226 ] MALADJUSTED TYPES share his home with her, would behave as un- sentimentally with her as the violet’s husband does. The light of the moon loses most of its intoxicating properties when one is in the company of a very wise woman. The vamp’s husband seeks relief from the excitement of his life partner’s presence by bemoaning his fate to some stodgy person who still “has faith in life and people.” The violet secretly despises her husband for not being more romantic, for not being ever like “that kind of men,” who, after all, fascinate her on the stage or at the movies. The vamp also de- spises her husband because he has not been clever enough to break her pretence and force upon her the sentimentalism which she rejects mainly because she is afraid of it and is at heart oversentimental. Every man is born with a certain amount of sentimentalism which he usually represses early in his married life, sometimes for fear of awaking similar tendencies in his wife, whose [ 227 } SEX HAPPINESS modesty he overestimates, or for fear of ap- pearing too much like a college boy to his wife through whose blasé pretence he is un- able or unwilling to see. Either he lives up to the supposedly violet- like modesty of his wife or he lives up to the cynicism of a vamp’s friends. In both cases he fails to be himself, and in life it is only personality that counts. Whether a man be pleasant or unpleasant, clever or stupid, if he only be himself, he can wield a great attraction, the attraction of personality. Pretence is also a repression, and a repres- sion, except in emergencies, is always harm- ful and intolerable. Translated into terms of the sexual life, the violet’s pretence leads to timid intercourse, the vamp’s to flippant intercourse. In neither case does the sexual act become the beautiful and overpowering physical com- munion which releases all the energies of mind and body, the satisfying draught which [228 ] MALADJUSTED TYPES refreshes those worn by the daily struggle and washes off the dust of sameness and monotony. Only those who meet love at once shame- lessly and respectfully shall receive its bless- ings. There is nothing to be ashamed of in the act which carries two human beings far over the boundaries of the mental and phys- ical world. And only those whose minds are tragically unable to grasp great phenomena will attempt to deride the infinite poetry of it. [ 229 | CHAPTER XVIII ADVICE TO MARRIED PEOPLE The majority of married people would fare infinitely better if they could realize that mar- riage is not just a habit and if they did not take the affection of their life mate for granted. The beautiful details of sentimental love are founded upon certain very prosaic phys- ical and chemical details of the human body and all physical and chemical phenomena are subject to a law from which no human being can escape: We become accustomed to cer- tain physical effects and no longer notice them. Chemicals (drugs, for instance) , lose their effect if we use them too frequently. After all, the basis for a man’s and a wom- an’s mutual affection is a set of physical facts {230} ADVICE-TO MARRIED PEOPLE which produce certain chemical reactions. We cannot expect physical facts or their chemical reactions to endure forever. You once made ardent love to a young woman and produced in her certain reactions which made her yours. After she has become yours the effect of your love-making will last for a few months or a few years, and then wear out. You must not take it for granted that it will endure forever, comfortable as that theory may prove to your laziness. Neither must she imagine that the effect which her prettiness once produced on you will be noticeable in your behavior ten years hence. Suitors instinctively know that they must entertain and amuse the woman of their choice and that they will master her better than their rivals if they devise a continuous round of pleasures for her benefit. After marriage, however, they abandon the [231] SEX HAPPINESS ' tactics which proved so successful. As a silly young wife said to her husband who asked why she no longer cared for her appearance: “Why keep on using bait when the fish is caught?” The human fish does not stay caught, and has to be captured over and over again. Nor can the identical bait that did the trick once be relied upon to work every time. Few husbands and wives dare to be pleasant to each other after the wedding cere- mony has been performed. I say dare on purpose, for so many of my patients have made to me the remark that it “would be funny for married people to act like lovers.” Many girls become slovenly after marriage, but if they were as dressy as they were at the time of their engagement, would their hus- bands manifest their admiration as freely as they used to? Many men neglect their ap- pearance after a few years of married life, but [232 ] ADVICE TO MARRIED PEOPLE how many wives take the trouble of compli- menting their husband on his good appear- ance? In fact, many young people imagine that it is “smart” or that “it looks well” to pretend before strangers a complete indifference to- ward their newly acquired life mate. They hope to appear wise and sophisticated. And, in that way, they very easily acquire an atti- tude which is retained in the intimacy of home life. I know many husbands and wives who would almost die of shame if they had to kiss each other before strangers, unless it be at the train gate. I also know several families, in which one of the mates, more impulsive or, let us rather say, more natural, in his or her display of affection, is often restrained by an absurd “Don’t be silly.” Too many people think that sentimentalism should depart as soon as the wedding bells ring. Although the human animal differs [233 ] SEX HAPPINESS mainly from other animals through the pres- ence in his make-up of egotism, few persons know how to cultivate a healthy egotism in their life partner. Too many confine their remarks about their life partner’s appearance or behavior to criticisms. Mutual flattery, which is not necessarily the overstatement, but the truthful statement, of a pleasant fact, is one.of the most vital ingre- dients of a happy married life. The craving for it has led many wives and many husbands into affairs which only satisfied their egotism, but vouchsafed them no other gratification. Wives, who were otherwise happy and con- tented, married to good providers of good av- erage sexual potency, have confided to me that they craved the praise for their good looks, the adoring glances, the extravagant expressions of tenderness, which only a lover could give them. Husbands married to handsome and clever wives have told me that a desire for [ 234 ] ADVICE TO MARRIED PEOPLE admiration had led them into liaisons with women, inferior mentally or even physically, but whose affection expressed itself more freely than their wives’ did. Men and women wish to be young, strong, attractive, and being told that they are so by someone who offers physical evidence of be- ing attracted to them, contributes to making them (or keeping them) young, strong and at- tractive. When we finally realize that most of our criticisms are negative displays of egotism, in- tended to belittle others and thereby aggran- dize us, we shall give and receive more happiness by lavishing praise upon others for their accomplishments, than by pointing out their failures to them. In too many homes the wife’s attractiveness and the husband’s wisdom are taken for granted and never mentioned when apparent, but whatever is ill-fitting about the wife’s get- [235 ] SEX HAPPINESS up, whatever is absurd in the husband’s be- havior is quickly commented upon. This creates a sort of negative atmosphere in which mistakes are feared, but accomplish- ments are not sought, for they would not bring any credit. When life in common has been brought down to this level, why should we wonder at the boredom which it exhales? And yet this is the tone prevailing in the great majority of households. Some parents may state that there should not be any display of affection between them in the presence of their children. And, if by affection they mean sexual intimacy or erotic- ism of any kind, I agree with them. Perfect frankness about affectionate feel- ings exemplified by the parents would, not only not harm their children, but in certain ways, insure their mental health and nor- mality. Apparent or actual lack of love, indiffer- [236] ADVICE TO MARRIED PEOPLE ence or hostility between the parents is for the children the most dangerous mental poison that can be imagined. All the so-called antagonistic personalities, in which there seems to be an even tendency to act and not to act, can be traced back to homes in which fathers and mothers were strangers, cold or inimical, homes in which the child, anxious to find a line of action, could never safely strike an average standard by combin- ing his father’s and his mother’s norm of be- havior. Parents should also see to it that the child of the opposite sex does not become their suc- cessful rival. Boys very generally try to displace their fa- ther in their mother’s affection, girls try to take the place of their mothers. In their search for the love and safety to be derived from the parent of the opposite sex, children very shrewdly adopt the methods of lovers and offer what their rival fails to give. [237] SEX HAPPINESS A girl will soon find out that her father ap- preciates forms of petting and flattery her mother does not trouble herself to give him. And a boy will lavish the more tenderness on his mother as he sees his father adopting a sterner attitude in the home. The result is often more tragic than the im- mediate participants in the drama ever sus- pect. Father and daughter, mother and son, form new groups within the family group, sufficient unto themselves. Father and mother become unconsciously separated. The mother most frequently imagines herself neglected and “seeks consolation in her children’s love.” The truth is that she is gradually, unknow- ingly, being victimized by her children’s conspiracy against whom a too settled, too prosaic, too matter-of-fact husband was no match. Love is the best means of self-protection for love. [238 ] CHAPTER XIX THE ETHICS OF DIVORCE IN THE LIGHT OF SEX STUDY There are few places on earth where more conscious falsehoods are uttered and where more hypocrisy is rampant than in a modern divorce court. Neither plaintiff nor defend- ant can tell the true story of their estrange- ment, in certain cases because they know it too well, in other cases because they do not understand it at all. The attorneys on both sides bring out men- dacious, or at least, highly colored, facts which have a legal, but hardly any psycholog- ical, meaning. Jurymen, bewildered by con- flicting evidence and generally moved by mid- dle-class prejudices, think of the case as some [ 239 ] SEX HAPPINESS personal misfortunes evoked by it compel them to think. However much of a psychologist the judge may be, he has to consider the so-called facts presented to him. And, in his charge to the jury, he must recommend untying bonds which, if slightly strengthened by expert hands, would last forever, or holding in mar- riage bondage one or two slaves who will never find happiness in that condition. The climax of grotesque illogicality is reached when a separation is refused to couples who are so completely agreed on the necessity of it that they resort to collusion, the husband generally agreeing to have himself surprised by detectives in the company of a prostitute so as to furnish the wife with grounds for a legal action. The average juror, attorney and judge are mainly concerned with the following ques- tions: has cruelty been inflicted by one of the parties upon the other or has one of them [240] ETHICS OF DIVORCE had sexual relations with another person? Hypocrisy which passes so easily for civili- zation does not allow anyone to ask the liti- gants in the open court or even in the judge’s chambers ‘Was one of the two concerned goaded into acts of brutality by the sexual be- havior of the other?” “Was one of them driven into adultery by sexual starvation?” Sexual starvation is not supposed to con- stitute an excuse for adultery. -Psychiatrists know, however, that it is at the bottom of thousands of cases of neurosis, some culminat- ing in what is called unscientifically by laymen insanity. Hypocrisy prevents judges and attorneys from inquiring publicly into the sexual knowl- edge or, rather, the sexual ignorance of the litigants. Yet an inquiry of that sort would reveal misunderstandings of the most appall- ing type. How can a woman state in court that soon after her marriage she discovered that a man’s [241] ion SEX HAPPINESS caresses were loathsome to her? How can a man admit that his bride could not make him forget his homosexual associates of old? Worse yet, how could either of them make such admissions when their inverted charac- teristics are not clearly conscious to them, when the only thing they are positive of in certain cases is a hatred of their mate which they cannot easily explain? And is the judge’s and jury’s action in re- fusing or granting a divorce a solution of the difficulty? Will it prevent future mistakes? By no means. I have known couples whose early married life had been blighted by cruelty or adultery or both, resuming life in common and making a success of it after light had been cast pro- fusely into sex processes they had never un- derstood. I have known couples between whom no angry word had ever passed and who had [242] ETHICS OF DIVORCE never broken their troth, merging gradually into a neurotic morbidity which nothing could allay. They were physically and sexually un- fit for marriage and sacrificed themselves to the fetish of conventionality, pretending that they did not care for “the coarse things of sex.” It would have been a crime to grant a divorce to the former, although all the neces- sary grounds could be found for such an action by jury, attorneys and judge. It was a tragedy that divorce could not be forced on the latter, although their life had been kindly and pure. The infinite complications that may grow out of sexual difficulties between a man and a woman should be studied and if possible, solved by trained psychologists and psychia- trists. I venture to say that the great majority of divorce court litigants could be reconciled through a readaptation and readjustment of their sexual life. [243 ] SEX HAPPINESS On the other hand, divorces would be granted speedily to couples, which modern judges would compel absurdly to eke out, in each other’s company, a life which could not but be baneful to their physical and their mental health. Such couples, however, con- stitute a very small minority. Many cases are settled very easily. When a neurotic wife, whom her husband hardly ever allows to reach the point of an orgasm, reveals an infinite hatred of the poor man (who may be at heart extremely kind), and is obsessed by more or less murderous ideas, the thing to do is to send for the hus- band, to point out to him the result of his sexual shortcomings and see whether or not he is able to outgrow them. If he is unwilling or unable to remedy the damage done and the wife thinks of applying for a divorce, no con- ventional platitude should be used in an effort to keep her tied to the wrong mate. The only alternatives would be neurosis or adultery. [244] ETHICS OF DIVORCE When a husband, convinced that his wife is indifferent to his caresses, becomes impotent in her arms or seeks consolation in the em- braces of prostitutes, the wife should be sent for. Sometimes things are not as simple as that and certain problems have to be solved, for which there is no ethical solution. Psychologists very often have to wrestle with problems which the average judge and jury are quite unable to solve, for which, at least, they would not dare and could not af- ford to give a frank and honest solution, as the proper solution would be extremely un- ethical. I was once consulted by a man and his wife who told me rather conflicting stories which I shall not reproduce here. The gist of the matter was this: at regular intervals the man became impotent with his wife, whom, how- ever, he loved very dearly. There followed a period of restlessness which usually culmin- [245] SEX HAPPINESS ated in a short-lived love affair with some young woman. After which he returned to his wife and for several months was again very potent and perfectly able to satisfy her sex Cravings. The situation was indeed complicated, and I defy anyone to find an ethical solution for it which would not entail useless suffering on both sides, or, rather, on the three sides of the triangle. Asked brutally whether she would prefer a faithful but impotent husband to a periodi- cally faithless but potent one, the wife was compelled to admit that her husband, in spite of his extramatrimonial experiments, aroused her sexual desires strongly, and that the fear of public opinion was, after all, at the bot- tom of her divorce threats. As there were sev- eral children and as bickerings between father and mother are the cause of more mental dis- turbances in the offspring than perhaps any other factor in the world, I finally convinced [ 246] ETHICS OF DIVORCE the wife that she should accept the strange sit- uation outlined above in preference to a dis- ~ ruption of the home with its attendant bitter- ness and publicity. I did not, of course, overlook the side of the third party in the triangle, whose part, piti- fully enough, was little more than that of a chemical stimulant of the man’s sexual pow- ers. Between a grown-up young woman, probably able to stand the shock, and several young children in the formative stage and in danger of being mentally upset by the wrong move, I did not hesitate. The presence of children complicates greatly the problem of divorce. It must be remembered, however, that incompatibility of humor of the parents translates in almost every Case into nervousness in the offspring. I do not believe in prenatal influences, but I at- tach an enormous importance to imitation. Children must imitate grown-ups in order to become grown-ups themselves. The chil- [247 ] SEX HAPPINESS dren, whose parents agree, acquire full, well- rounded personalities with enough of the mas- culine and feminine blended together to con- stitute a complete human being, capable of broad understanding and sympathies. ‘The children of warring parents, on the other hand, live in constant uncertainty as to matters of behavior. Whatever the mother does is criticised by the father, and vice versa. Imitation is not conscious, but purely un- conscious. Let anyone in the trolley car on which we are riding yawn a couple of times and the whole carful will yawn in imitation. Every mother knows that the stubborn baby who refuses to urinate will be compelled to do so if one of the bathroom faucets is allowed to run for a few seconds. “Smile and the world smiles with you,” expresses that physiological truth. Let there be a “split” in a marriage relation and the offspring will reproduce the result of this condition mentally. [248] ETHICS OF DIVORCE In cases when the differences can be healed through medical or psychoanalytic treatment no divorce should be granted. When the sexual conditions are hopeless it is kindness to the children to put an end to family disputes, even of the most camouflaged and courteous sort, for it invariably causes a rift in their tender nervous system. Tosum up: All applications for divorce should be re- ferred to a board of psychologists and psychia- trists, who would first of all find out whether an adjustment is possible. No divorce should be granted unless the board had, after a reasonably extended period of observations and experiments, declared itself in favor of it. On the other hand, the opinion of those experts should be considered as sufficient ground for a final separation even in cases when there had never been any cruelty or unfaithfulness. [249 ] SEX HAPPINESS No divorce decree should contain any clause forbidding one of the mates to remarry. When an oversexed disposition, for instance, has caused husband or wife to yield to tempta- tion, how hypocritical and absurd it is for a simple-minded judge to force a life of celib- acy on the culprit. This simply means a repression culminat- ing in neurosis or the hypocritical disobe- dience of the court’s orders. It means unlaw- ful intercourse instead of a new union of the lawful type which might possibly lead to greater happiness with a more suitable companion. [250 ] aeies