How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
335/400
- Publication/creation
- London : George Routledge, 1932.
- Physical description
- xiv, 374 pages ; 22 cm
- Contributors
- Wolfe, W. Béran 1900-1935.
- Notes
-
This edition was reprinted in 1933, 1934, 1935, 1937, 1942, 1944, 1945, 1946 and 1948.
Copy 1 Note: 1937 reprint. X158203
- Attribution and usage
-
Wellcome Collection
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The image contains the following text:
Sex Appeal and the Dangerous Age
Sexual competition leads to restlessness and neurosis
because there is no natural satisfaction1 to teasing beyond
the temporary experience of power. The woman who
uses her natural “ it ” only to make men fall for her,
sooner or later herself falls for a neurosis. It is common
to see women who have been very beautiful and eminently
successful in the exploitation of their sexual charms as a
means of attaining significance and power, becoming
melancholic and depressed when nature robs them of
their charms, and they have no more permanent tools
with which to make their old age interesting and worth¬
while.
Occasionally we see the most perverse behaviour on the
part of older women who wish, just once more, to prove
that they have not lost their “ it ”. Usually they seduce
some young boy, and although the youngster's attention
in the beginning is an immense satisfaction to them,
they soon become cramped in their relations and seek to
hold the boy against his natural inclination to find a
sexual mate of his own age. The tragedy of the deserted
woman follows this fallacious technique.
The multiplicity of neuroses which occur at the time
when men and women are passing through the period of
sexual senescence has given rise to the term “ dangerous
age ” to describe this period. Men who have fixed all
their hope of personal significance in the continued
expression of their sexual potency have a dangerous age
when potency wanes, just as women do. When a couple
who harboured a feeling that sex is the only real expression
of power, approach the dangerous age, tension and conflict
within their private lives, and dissatisfaction and restless¬
ness in their outer relations are certain to follow. Many
divorces occur at this time, where a little patience and
the re-estimation of values would pave the way for a
happy and mature old age.
The problem of adultery is almost exclusively a problem
of sexual competition. There are, no doubt, cases in