the only form of love which is positive is complete love, which gratifies both the physical and the mental aspects of the organism and which, besides, is human and, hence, recognises and admits the relativity of all things human.
any form of love which excludes either the physical or the mental relationship of male and female, is incomplete and, therefore, abnormal.
all the puritanical rant to the contrary notwithstanding, platonic love and prostitution are on the same biological level, as morbid and unnatural one as the other.
prostitution only gratifies the body more or less completely and starves the mind, causing the mental aspect of the love craving to become stunted or perverse.
platonic love gratifies the intellect more or less completely, rather less than more, for it offers few egotistical rewards, but it starves the body and leads[pg 264] it into adopting morbid forms of craving gratification.
a clean life. many a patient has declared proudly to me that he led a "clean life." a few days later, after losing his selfconsciousness in my presence, he would gradually confess to a terrible "struggle" against his "animal" instincts. which meant, that at irregular intervals, self-gratification would give him, in a morbid day dream, the woman whose love he craved; or a pollution dream would allow him, in the unconsciousness and ethical irresponsibility of sleep, to make up for his privations by indulging in imaginary promiscuous cohabitation.
this is in too many cases, the seamy side of a platonic love affair, when one or both of the mates is not naturally unsexed but unsexes himself thru what he or she calls will-power and which analysis reveals to be conscious or unconscious fear.
this is the meaning of love plus continence. in the majority of cases its damage stops there. in a few cases, however, especially when the sex cravings of one of the mates have been so successfully repressed that they are no longer experienced consciously, symbolical nightmares of the most exhausting kind, hysterical disturbances during the waking hours, compulsions and obsessions of all sorts, re[pg 265]veal to the psychoanalyst that lava is boiling under the apparently extinct cone of a safe volcano.
the platonic individual, like the puritan, is either oversexed or undersexed.
the oversexed must surround themselves with protective measures lest their violent cravings may lead them into socially punishable acts. the simplest neurotic expedient is to utter a complete denial, whenever possible a public one, of the existence of sexual cravings, and then to be forced by one's statements into living up to an absurd self-imposed standard.
utterances and conduct. this at times results in most grotesque conflicts between utterance and conduct. we see for instance the much married mrs. eddy who as the witty theodore schroeder remarked, had many more husbands than children, stating that the pleasures of the flesh "are always wrong unless the physiologic factor can be excluded from consciousness" (a rather cryptic sentence) and also that "generation rests on no sexual basis."
thy hysteric whose volcanic outbursts supply her with a morbid sexual relief for which she rejects all responsibility, for she is unconscious at the time is generally in her private and public life a woman[pg 266] of great repressions and perfect behavior, likely to sneer at every mention of a sex urge.
in other cases, platonic love is an attempt at creating an artificial value thru destroying a natural, biological human function.
oracles and prophecies. in ancient times it was observed that people deprived of any sexual gratification made at times mysterious utterances which were considered as an emanation of some divine intelligence.
those utterances were nothing but hysterical ravings, accepted as oracles, prophecies, etc.
our praise of continence, practiced even when it is unnecessary, (as in the case of lawfully married mates), is, after all, a survival of such superstitious beliefs based on misunderstood morbid phenomena.
modern science, especially the new science of endocrinology, has shown that to every display of sexual activity corresponds an outpouring of hormonic secretions which benefits the entire system.
can we save our vital force? once upon a time it was assumed that continence enabled people to save their "vital force," to preserve the "resources of their body."
we know now that the gonads produce two secretions, one which would pass out of the body in[pg 267] any event, and one which flows directly in the blood and is the only one which can benefit the organism.
the various puritanical theories as to the great value of continence had been shaken many times by evidence from the biography of all the great writers, artists, philosophers, inventors and other men and women who have left the world much enriched by their creative labor and at the same time indulged freely in the pleasures of the flesh.
sublimation. endocrinology strikes now the last blow at those theories, one of which by the way, was freud's romantic hypothesis of the "sublimation."
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"[pg 268] 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[pg 269] 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."
i will not deny that in rare cases this may be considered a perfectly valid reason, pointing to no morbid disposition on the part of the unwillingly single person. marriage might have implied mating with a member of an erotically indifferent race, african or asiatic; isolation in a remote farming community where a refined woman could only select[pg 270] a mate from among primitive laborers, or in mining regions like some alaska camps, where the only women available at times are prostitutes.
barring such "legitimate" exceptions, which to my mind, imply however, a suspicious indifference to securing a mate, the seeker for an ideal mate is almost always neurotic.
protective measures. by setting his goal very high, he is protected against the danger of finding a mate and assuming life's responsibilities, increased as they would be by normal sexual activities.
this is done in various ways, thru exaggerated social expectations, or thru unreasonable economic demands, or through morbid criticism of the possible mate.
a working girl may set her heart on marrying none but a prince charming who could by no chance whatsoever be attracted by her appearance or her manners, unless he himself were a neurotic seeking safety in a union with a socially inferior mate (students marrying waitresses, etc.). newspapers publish enough news of such matches to supply the neurotic woman with a reasonable rationalisation of her fear of matrimony.
some poor, unattractive young man may likewise decide never to marry unless he may secure as his[pg 271] bride a woman whom her social position makes unattainable. here again, unions of heiresses with menials supply the rationalisation.
some unattractive women may make such financial demands on the man seeking their affection that no one will have the courage to tempt them away from their single-blessedness.
lovers of the absolute. there are individuals of a much more pathological type still, who refuse to recognise and accept the relativity of all things human, who seek absolute beauty, perfection, intelligence, understanding, sympathy in their future mate and who grow discouraged and depressed when they unavoidably discover flaws in every companion of the opposite sex.
in certain cases that obsession of the perfect detail is a symptom of insanity.
cartoonists have often amused themselves and us by representing famous men and women with their features so distorted that their distant likeness to some animal is emphasized.
i have observed the same distortion in neurotics to whom that delusion brought no humorous enjoyment but on the contrary deep suffering.
a troublesome patient. one of my patients a handsome young man of twenty-six, had had very[pg 272] ephemeral affairs with several women and left them abruptly when he suddenly discovered in their features a likeness to certain animals, pigs, dogs, monkeys, etc. after which he could never be prevailed upon to see them again.
one morning he called on me, announcing coolly that he had decided to shoot me. i invited him to sit down and discuss his plans more fully before carrying them out, and also to mention some of his reasons for that somewhat radical decision.
he explained to me, with his right hand annoyingly buried in his coat pocket, that he had been in love for a few weeks, with a very attractive girl. recently, he had noticed something in her profile which distantly resembled a pig's snout. the night before, while he was in her company, he suddenly saw her head transformed into a pig's head. he fled from her rooms in terror and disgust and, attributing his "clear insight into her true nature" to my psychoanalytic teachings, had decided to save others from my baneful influence by killing me.
as is usually the case with maniacs, a quiet conversation cast doubts in his mind. i told him that i did not approve of his plans which might, however, be excellent, but that, as i was really a biased ad[pg 273]viser in that matter, he should discuss them with an impartial third party. he then decided to call on dr. everett dean martin who advised him to take a rest cure and escorted him to bellevue hospital.
the poor boy's transfer to the state asylum has put an end to his search for the ideal love. that search was a disguised flight from women and love, his delusion was an effective measure of protection against temptation.
nothing but the absolute could satisfy him in a woman. relativity was abhorrent to him.
every seeker for the ideal love has gone a few steps along the road which led my poor patient into the house of the living dead.
higher aspirations. neurotics of that type are plausible for they compensate for their fear and their inferiority with a pride based upon "higher aspirations," "greater delicacy of feelings," "an aristocratic nature" or the tell-tale statement that "their mother's beautiful character," "their father's noble nature" makes every man or woman appear very inferior in their eyes.
proud of certain characteristics of theirs which they cannot help having, they childishly display an egotism and selfishness which makes them at times[pg 274] very ridiculous, for it says indirectly: "nobody is quite good enough for me."
when the search for ideal love results in nervous states due to egotistical starvation, psychoanalysis can help greatly by giving the neurotic insight into the fear of life or the parent-fixation which is at the bottom of his romantic aspirations.
