Freud believed that sexual energy could be diverted towards social ends
of greater value and non-sexual in character. This is scientifically
absurd, as it disregards the dualism of glandular secretions. The
outward secretions cannot be "saved" and the inner secretions which are
beyond our control flow directly into the blood stream.
I have shown in another book, "Sex Happiness" that the platonic man
is either the victim of his ignorance of sex matters and of ascetic
superstitions which modern physiology can no longer countenance, or a
physiologically deficient individual.
The heroes of Beresford's "God's Counterpoint" and of May Sinclair's
"The Romantic" whom I analised in "Sex Happiness" correspond to the
first and the second of those types, respectively.
=The Sexless.= There are men and women, of course, of the hypogonadal
type, undersexed or sexless, who are capable of deep affection for a
person of the opposite sex. That such an affection never culminates
in complete physical communion is easily understood. Sexual failures
discourage the weaker friend from risking any more experiments likely
to result in humiliation.
The sexless man is practically a woman, and like certain homosexuals,
treats women as members of his own sex. He may make a pleasant,
delicate, safe companion, but no woman should allow herself to care for
him.
=Frigid Women= who never experience any thrill in their husband's
embrace and hence consider the physical communion as an indecent
act forgivable in a husband only, as it is a part of the marriage
arrangement, may love a man very deeply and yet never feel the urge to
surrender their body to him.
Here again we have to deal with ignorance or neurosis or both.
The frigid woman, as I explained elsewhere is generally a neurotic,
(perhaps made so by unpleasant first sexual experiences and her mate's
failure to awaken her normal erotism), who is afraid of life, of its
biological duties, of responsibility, of submission to a man's will,
etc., and burdened with some unconscious incest fixation on her father,
or homosexual fixation on her mother, etc.
Her platonic attitude in love is due to numberless unconscious fears
which are a strong bulwark against temptation.
=Ideal Love.= Another form of negativism in love which receives no
little amount of praise at the hands of the romantically silly and of
the ill-informed, is the quest of the ideal love.
We meet men and women, sometimes of mature years, who tell us with a
great deal of pride that they never married because they could not find
the "right mate."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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