Psychology of sex - Total No. of Records in System :: 2032

PSYCHOLOGY OF SEXshould always bear in mind, that it is in the presence of adisposition to neurosis that abstinence proves most troublesome,especiallyas leading to anxiety neurosis, whilein his later Introductory Lectures he states that "we mustbeware of over-estimating the importance of abstinencein affecting neurosis; only a minority of pathogenic situationsdue to privation and the subsequent accumulationof Libido thereby induced can be relieved bythe kind ofsexual intercourse that isprocurable without any difficulty."Since Freud has never under-estimated the importanceof the sexual impulse in life his testimony onthis point is of peculiar value. Reference may also bemade to the fact that, as has been pointed out by Lowenfeld,who has studied the matter in a judicial spirit on abasis of wide experience, Catholic priests usually enjoyexcellent health in nervous respects and seldom suffer fromabstinence, this being probably due, Lowenfeld remarks,to being brought up to their profession from youth.We have always to remember that the whole art ofliving lies in a fine balance of expression and repression.For repression understood in the wide sense and notmerely in the special sense sometimes given to it byispsycho-analystsas central a fact of life as expression.We are constantly at the same time both repressing someimpulses and expressing other impulses. There is nonecessary penalty in the repression, for it is essential toexpression. It is far from being an unfortunate influencepeculiar to civilization; it is equally marked in primitivestages of human life. It is even easily to be observedamong animals. So natural a process can be nothing butwholesome in the main, even althoughit must be frequentlyliable to maladjustments, especially in those individualswho are not constitutionally organized for thetask of attaining harmonious balance.C25&]