How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
62/400

sexual act, and those women who say “ No ! to the sexual life in terms of the “ organ jargon ” of frigidity, incompatibility, vaginismus, extreme dyspareunia or dysmenorrhcea. Men and women who make sex a game or an arena of combat in which they strive for supremacy over the other sex, paradoxically signify a disinclination to make a courageous adjustment to sex. Don Juan and Casanova, patron saints of this type of male, are the virtuosos of sexual conquests who remain bunglers in the finer art of holding a woman’s love for a reasonable period of time. Their feminine counterparts are to be found in women like Catherine the Great of Russia, Messalina, the famous French courtesans, and our modern flapper “ vamps ”. A favoured evasion of sexual adjustment which bespeaks the inferiority complex is to be found in the perversions which consist in the elevation of some single aspect of the sexual relation to a rdle of supreme importance. We call this perversion of sex, fetishism. Hair, gloves, shoes, breasts, lingerie, the smell of the body, the sight of the beloved and similar substitutions of a part for the whole may be the objects of fetishistic love, capable of evoking ejaculation or orgasm. The circum¬ scription of all sexual interest to thin women, fat women, blonde or brunette women, or even in some cases, to lame or cross-eyed women, is a variety of fetishism which bespeaks lessened courage and social adjustment. Finally, the complex phenomena of homosexuality are expressions of the inferiority feeling. Contrary to common belief, homosexuality is never an inborn quality, but probably always the result of vicious conditioning influences in childhood reinforced by self-inflicted mental training. The examination of all homosexuals reveals a deep-seated, often entirely unconscious, fear of the opposite sex or of the responsibilities of marriage or pregnancy, but this fear is frequently so well masked by a specious superstructure of rationalization and tradition that the individual is completely unaware of its existence.