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

PSYCHOLOGY OF SEXthat the outlook on life of the adjusted was more objectivethan that of the maladjusted; they were less self-centeredand less troubled by mental conflicts. Yet he found a maladjustedgroup of one hundred wives "socially normal,"with ''better than the average educational and economicstandard/' and in typical cases they were fine, well-dressed,sometimes beautiful or brainy women; 13 of them haddefinitely undesirable characters, and 19 came near to"profound total disturbance/' They do not, however,greatly vary from the adjusted group in social and educationalstanding or in health, while the general externalsof personality and environment are the same. The prevalenceof auto-erotic practices before marriage had beenalmost the same, and sex was by no means always the beginningof the maladjustment, which was often due toincompatibility. The chief difference in the groups wasthe presence or absence of "mental conflict." We see hereinstructively how complexis often this question of"adjustment."G. V. Hamilton among his smaller number of subjects,but of both sexes and all presumably normal, one hundredmarried men and one hundred married women,made a most elaborate investigation into their degree ofsatisfaction in marriage, with fourteen grades of happiness,according to the number of points to be assigned toeach person. He found that husbands are definitely moresatisfied with marriage than are wives. In the highestgrades (7 to 14) there were 51 men and only 45 women,leaving 49 men but 55 women in the lower grades ofsatisfaction. Hamilton states that the result correspondswith his definite impression from personal contact that"the women, taken as a whole, had been more seriouslydisappointed with their marriages than had the men/'It cannot be said that this conclusion should cause sur-[276]