There is the case of the young woman who not only had an incessant and excessive sexual craving, but who desired any and every man she met. It took all her strength to hide her feelings, for she was well-bred, sensitive, and with a high standard. She went to a noted analyst who discovered that she was the rare case of a woman who belonged to the thinking type. But thinking in her circle was not favored when it came to women. She had therefore neglected to develop her intellect, and as soon as she began to do so, the symptom disappeared and she became quite normal. It should be clear from these cases that wherever perverse sexuality appears, there is need of an investigation. It is necessary to discover if it isn’t a case of misplaced energy. Indeed, one may say offhand, that all _excessive_ cases are of this nature, as for instance, a marked sadism (sexual cruelty), a marked homosexuality, a too great sexual desire. Such cases need the treatment of a psycho-analyst. However, if energy may be misplaced _to_ the sexual zone, it may also be misplaced _from_ the sexual zone. This is particularly true in this country, because of our Puritan tradition. It was no longer ago than my own childhood that a vast array of American children were taught that sex is a bad thing; that to think in sexual terms was evil, that to commit sexual acts was wicked; and that sexuality existed solely for the purpose of propagating the species. It was whispered about that auto-erotism led to insanity or loss of manhood. Words like gonorrhea and syphilis were not mentioned, and ignorance in sexual matters was not only disastrous, but, one might say, criminal. There were women who came to marriage without any inkling of how children were born; there were boys who doubtless did go insane from the practice of auto-eroticism, not because the practice hurt them, but because of the shame and fear attached to their “secret sin.” This darkness has not wholly vanished yet, though much light has appeared. It is natural that many sensitive people, growing up in such an atmosphere, should _repress_ their sexuality. In certain cases this might do no harm; an intuitive woman, for instance, might be all the better for it. But since sexuality is a powerful instinct which needs in the end its own natural expression, the repression of it, in many cases, would mean that sexual energy was misplaced away from the sexual zone, and produced a symptom. Perhaps the simplest way of saying it is this, that whatever we attempt to repress in ourselves we tend to repress in others. If we have cut off the glow of life in ourselves, we come under a compulsion sometimes to cut off others in the same way. This is where the misplaced sexual energy goes. We become crusaders, we go out and fight vice wherever it shows its head, we censor art, we bring about prohibition. We become persecutors, driven by a kind of madness, thus poisoning our own lives and the lives of others.