This, however, is not to say that the genesis of our attitude towards
sex, our sexual behaviour, and our general mental organization in so
far as modified by sex, is not normally determined for the most part
by purely psychological causes. If there is a physical abnormality,
this will react upon the mental; but in the vast majority of cases
the physical variation will not take the individual beyond the limits
of normality, and when the normal physical limits are not exceeded,
the wide range of mental variation still observable is to be ascribed
to psychological causes. In other words, abnormal sexual behaviour
and instinct may be due either to physiological or psychological
abnormality, and the latter is probably the commoner cause.
I am not competent to attempt to treat of the vast and complex
psychological aspect of the sex-problem which the analytical
psychologists have opened up to such an extent within the last few
years; I can only deal with it in the broadest way, and content myself
rather with stating than with solving problems.
As regards the place of sex in our mental organization, there are two
contradictory extremes possible. Either all ideas connected with the
physical side of sex may be repressed with great vehemence, and the
sexual contribution to various emotions ignored or dismissed, while a
constant attempt is made at sublimation; or else there is little or no
repression beyond that necessitated by convention and custom, sexual
matters are taken at their physical face value, and sublimation is not
consciously attempted and exists only to a negligible amount.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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