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

CONCLUSIONponents of the instinct, i.e. with the various infantiletendencies that later on form the bases of erotic desire aswell as of many other (non-sexual) interests ... aspecific transference of energy from one given field ofinterest to another/' It is important, at the same time, toremember that it is not usually in early life that thisproblem arises. Matsumato pointed out that the fact thatthe interstitial cells of the testes pass into a resting stagesoon after birth, not to become active until after puberty,does not indicate the presence of strong sexual interestsin early life (though, it must be added, we do notpositively know all the sources of the sexual impulse),while in women such interests are frequently either latentor widely diffused, not to become acute sometimes untiltowards the age of thirty. Yet, sooner or later, we mayexpect this problem of sublimation to arise, and moreurgently in the best constituted natures.Plato said that love was a plant of heavenly growth.If we understand this to mean that a plant, havingitsroots in the earth, may put forth "heavenly" flowers, themetaphor has a real and demonstrable scientific truth.It is a truth which the poets have always understood andtried to embody. Dante's Beatrice, the real Florentine girlwho becomes in imagination the poet's guide in Paradise,typically represents the process by which the attraction ofsex may be transformed into a stimulus to spiritual activities.The precise formulation of this doctrine has been tracedback not only to Plato but to the more scientific Aristotle.Lessing understood that philosopher's doctrine of katharsisas "a conversion of passion or emotion in general intovirtuous dispositions." But that seems scarcely correct, forit was simply the alleviation brought by emotional dischargesof pity or fear which Aristotle seems to have had