[2] Used in technical sense explained in § 141. [3] BERMAN: _The Glands Regulating Personality_, N. Y., 1921, p. 96. [4] _Erotism_ is defined in the dictionaries as a medical word meaning “abnormal sexual desire.” But that is simply because the doctors got hold of it first. There is no Greek word _erotism_ nor yet _eroticism_, but “erotism” has resulted from being the common element in autoerotism and allerotism and being shorter than eroticism was adopted by the present writer to name the highest type of the combination of body and soul mating. He never suspected till he looked up the word that it had a bad sense in the minds of others. (See also p. 82.) [5] As will appear in the following chapters (especially § 43), egoistic-social impulses or instincts are those which include the trends toward self-maintenance and self-magnification—practically all impulses that are not truly erotic. [6] The “playmate” is a new term for an old thing, which does not, however, imply that present conditions are exactly the same as those of Sheridan’s day who, in _The School for Scandal_, makes Lady Teazle say: “You know I admit you as a lover no farther than fashion sanctions,” to which Joseph Surface replies: “True—a mere Platonic cicisbeo, what every wife is entitled to.” And the Century Dictionary defines _cicisbeo_ as “In Italy, since the 17th century, the name given to a professed gallant and attendant of a married woman; one who dangles about women,” and shows that the word is derived from _chiche_, little, and _beau_. “Tame cats” and “house friends” are also names given today, by these discontented women, to the persons who engage in this form of cicisbeism. [7] Havelock Ellis, who coined the word autoerotism, defines it as follows (_Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, Vol. I, page 161): “By ‘autoerotism’ I mean the phenomena of spontaneous sexual emotion generated in the absence of an external stimulus proceeding, directly or indirectly, from another person.” The present writer calls autoerotic those husbands who, in the love episode, secure their own erotic acme, in which their sexual, if not their erotic, tension is relaxed; but either do not know or do not care whether their wives reach a corresponding relaxation. The opposite of autoerotism is allerotism, where the husband places on the wife’s erotic relaxation a value at least equal to that which he places on his own. [8] Hologamy, however (see §§ 187 to 198), depends on a direct and not an alternating current. [9] See § 43. [10] Derived ultimately from _cano_, sing or utter in impassioned tone and rhythm. Women are more erotically impressed by men’s singing than men are by women’s. [11] In § 44. [12] See § 65. [13] Further discussed in §§ 100-106. [14] For a more detailed explanation of mother imago, see the chapter on Hologamy and Prostitution.