[Footnote 263: That some such factors as these are probably really operative in addition to the more specific sexual inhibitions that compose the incest barrier proper, is shown by a consideration of cases in which no such specific inhibition exists, _e. g._ that of husband and wife. In spite of the fact that sexual relations between husband and wife are not only permitted but enjoined and that mutual sexual attractiveness has usually played some considerable part in bringing about the union, there can be little doubt that in very many cases a husband and wife, after a certain period of married life, tend to find--superficially at any rate--greater sexual attractiveness in strangers than in one another. The reasons for this (in the absence of any other adequate cause) are often fairly clearly of the kind described--first, the fact that their associations with one another are largely connected with the "humdrum" activities of everyday life in which non-sexual instincts are principally concerned (whereas with strangers the sexual feelings may constitute the predominant, or perhaps the only, bond); secondly the fact that through the very intimacy of their connection there are (as in the case of blood relatives) a number of matters as regards which the husband and wife are competitors or have conflicting interests, thus leading to a certain degree of (usually more or less repressed) hostility on either side.] [Footnote 264: The reasons for the existence of a general sexual repression, over and above the incest inhibition, and the psychological mechanisms by which this repression is brought about, form a vast and highly important theme on which there exists at present but little general agreement and which, being only indirectly connected with our subject, need fortunately not be entered into here. It is perhaps worth while to point out however in passing, that some of the factors which are responsible for the more general sexual repression are, in all probability, similar to those which we have considered in connection with the production of incest inhibition. Thus there would seem to exist an antagonism between a highly developed and intensive sexuality and those wider social bonds in virtue of which alone the larger human communities are possible. It is on the basis of the manifestations of this antagonism that some writers--as already mentioned--hold that the chief motive forces which are active in sexual repression are to be found in the instincts of the herd. Still more marked perhaps is the antagonism between sex and individuation. It has long been recognised, and modern psychological researches have pretty definitely proved, that many of the more complex desires and activities of the individual--desires and activities upon which human culture ultimately depends--are built up upon sublimations of the sexual tendencies. All these sublimations involve a deflection of sexual energy from its original and primitive direction--a deflection