<<<"We must not forget," Freud said in one of his lectures, "that a part of the suppressed sexual cravings has a right to direct satisfaction and should find it in life. Exaggerated sexual repression simply hastens our flight from reality and into a neurosis without assuring any cultural gain.

"We must not neglect the animal part of our nature. The elasticity of sex may lure some of us to attempt a more and more complete sublimation destined to promote high cultural aims. But even as our modern machines can only transform a part of the heat applied to them into useful mechanical work, sublimation can only use for other aims a part of the sexual energy.

"If the repression of sexuality is pu...

<<<"We must not forget," Freud said in one of his lectures, "that a part of the suppressed sexual cravings has a right to direct satisfaction and should find it in life. Exaggerated sexual repression simply hastens our flight from reality and into a neurosis without assuring any cultural gain.

"We must not neglect the animal part of our nature. The elasticity of sex may lure some of us to attempt a more and more complete sublimation destined to promote high cultural aims. But even as our modern machines can only transform a part of the heat applied to them into useful mechanical work, sublimation can only use for other aims a part of the sexual energy.

"If the repression of sexuality is pushed too far it amounts to a robbery committed against the organism."

And he concluded his lecture with a story which left no doubt as to his opinion in the matter.

A village community kept a horse that could do an enormous amount of work. The wiseacres of the community thought, however, that he consumed too much fodder. They decided, therefore, to train him to subsist on smaller and smaller rations of fodder. The horse was apparently none the worse for his scanty diet. He finally was able to subsist on one stalk of hay a day. The next day, he was to be put to work without any fodder at all. On the morning of that day, however, he was found dead in his stall. The sublimation of his craving for food was complete.

The constantly increasing repression to which sexual cravings are submitted, owing to the growing complexity of community life, compel every thinking human being to give the subject the earnest consideration it deserves.

A mere denial of the possibility of sublimation as understood by Freud or a convenient assertion of its possibility by well meaning, though irresponsible moral zealots, will not solve the problem.

The problem, however, has not been formulated properly.

The question is not as to whether we can sublimate the sexual craving as understood biologically,

<<<.....but as to whether we can sublimate the sexual craving as complicated by modern civilization.

Sexual desire at the present day has been completely exiled from polite society, from conversation, from literature, from pictorial representation, and relegated to the bedroom.

Many of its more or less unavoidable consequences, love, affection, tenderness, admiration, etc., have been given an undue prominence for the purpose of drawing a veil over the gross physical phenomena of sex.

As we are too often the victims of the vocabulary we use, many rely upon the vocabulary of polite society to assist them in their flight from gross reality.

A woman unable to voice publicly her desire for se...

<<<.....but as to whether we can sublimate the sexual craving as complicated by modern civilization.

Sexual desire at the present day has been completely exiled from polite society, from conversation, from literature, from pictorial representation, and relegated to the bedroom.

Many of its more or less unavoidable consequences, love, affection, tenderness, admiration, etc., have been given an undue prominence for the purpose of drawing a veil over the gross physical phenomena of sex.

As we are too often the victims of the vocabulary we use, many rely upon the vocabulary of polite society to assist them in their flight from gross reality.

A woman unable to voice publicly her desire for sexual gratification declares that she seeks a companion. And she probably means that, too. And if her lack of gratification should be the cause of a neurosis, it would be most important to know that her sexual craving is complicated by a craving for companionship.

Almost any craving can be easily gratified in our modern world so long as it remains dissociated from other cravings. The sexual craving being frowned upon by our hypocritical civilization, is constantly associated with many other cravings which the normal man, as well as the neurotic, imagine to be inseparable components of "love." >>>