It is no exaggeration then to say that the infantile sex life governs the psychology of the future writer and the nature and tendency of his work. CHAPTER XI SEXUAL SYMBOLISM IN LITERATURE I The repression of the libido includes the damming and clogging up of all the emotional concomitants that go with sexual attraction and make up the feeling called love. Whenever then sex or libido is referred to in psychoanalysis the word has the widest meaning. The man who loves a woman with the greatest affection and passion, without gratifying these, suffers a repression of the libido, as well as the man who satisfies certain proclivities without feeling any tenderness or love for the woman. In the emotion felt towards the other sex called love, in which admiration, respect, self-sacrifice, tenderness and other finer feelings play a great part, there is consciously or unconsciously, however, the physical attraction. If this is totally absent the emotion cannot be called "love." What differentiates our feelings towards one of the opposite sex from those felt for one of the same sex (assuming there are no homosexual leanings) is the presence of this sexual interest. Love then must satisfy a man physically as well as psychically. It is a concentration of the libido upon a person of the opposite sex, accompanied by tender feelings. Hence when we read the most chaste love poem, we see what is the underlying motive in the poet's unconscious. He may write with utter devotion to the loved one and express a wish to die for her, and though he says nothing about physical attraction, we all know that it is there in his unconscious. It is taken for granted that a man who writes a real love poem to a girl wants to enjoy her love. And when the poet complains because he is rejected or deceived, or of something interfering with the course of his love, we are aware also that his unconscious is grieved because his union is impeded or entirely precluded. The suffering is greater the more he loves, for his finer instincts, as well as his passion, are prevented from being fulfilled. Let us take at random a few innocent poems and test the theory. There is Ben Jonson's well known toast, "Drink to me only with thine eyes." He tells how he sent Celia a rose wreath, that she breathed on it and sent it back to him. "Since when it grows, and smells, I swear, Not of itself but thee." Odour is an important feature, it is well known, in sexual attraction. In this poem the poet, after having received the returned rose breathed upon by Celia, smells her perfume, which now submerges the natural fragrance of the rose. In other words the poet's unconscious says that he wishes to possess Celia physically. He is talking symbolically in the poem.