Latest / The Power of Concentration / Is Sex Necessary or Why You Feel The Way You Do - James Thurber, E. B. White

Transcript

Is Sex Necessary or Why You Feel The Way You Do - James Thurber, E. B. White · The Power of Concentration

0:00
Speaker 1: Section zero of Is Sex Necessary Or Why You Feel
0:04
Speaker 1: the Way You Do? This is a LibriVox recording. All
0:07
Speaker 1: LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
0:11
Speaker 1: or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Is Sex
0:15
Speaker 1: Necessary or Why You Feel the Way You Do? By
0:17
Speaker 1: James Thurber and E. B. White A prograph. Note for
0:21
Speaker 1: word and preface. Things look pretty bad right now. Major
0:25
Speaker 1: General Briggs at Shiloh A need reader who has already
0:29
Speaker 1: begun to be confused. But the drawings in this book
0:31
Speaker 1: should turn to page one ninety five, where they are
0:33
Speaker 1: explained forward. During the past year, two factors in our
0:38
Speaker 1: civilization have been greatly overemphasized. One is aviation. The other
0:43
Speaker 1: is sex. Looked at calmly, neither diversion is entitled to
0:47
Speaker 1: the space that has been recorded. Each has been deliberately promoted.
0:51
Speaker 1: In the case of aviation, persons interested in the sports
0:54
Speaker 1: allow the problem most to simplify it and make it
0:56
Speaker 1: seem safer. They introduced stabilizers and emergency lending forels. Even so,
1:01
Speaker 1: the plain fact remained that very few people were fitted
1:03
Speaker 1: for flying with sex. The opposite was true. Everybody was
1:07
Speaker 1: fitted for it, but there was a lack of general interest.
1:10
Speaker 1: The problem in this case was to make sex seem
1:12
Speaker 1: more complex and dangerous. This task was taken up by sociologists, analysts, gynecologists, psychologists,
1:19
Speaker 1: and authors. They approached it with a good deal of
1:22
Speaker 1: scientific knowledge and an immense zeal. They joined forces and
1:26
Speaker 1: made the whole matter of sex complicated beyond the wireless
1:28
Speaker 1: dreams of our fathers. The country became flooded with books. Sex,
1:33
Speaker 1: which had hitherto been a physical expression, became largely mental.
1:36
Speaker 1: The whole order of things changed. To prepare for marriage,
1:40
Speaker 1: young girls no longer assembled the hope chest. They read
1:43
Speaker 1: books on abnormal psychology. If they finally did marry, they
1:46
Speaker 1: found themselves with a large number of sex books on hand,
1:49
Speaker 1: but almost no pretty underwear. Most of them, luckily never
1:53
Speaker 1: married at all, just continued to read. It was because
1:56
Speaker 1: we observed how things were going with marriage and love
1:58
Speaker 1: that we set out ourselves to prepare a sex book
2:01
Speaker 1: of a different kind. In this venture, we were goodly
2:04
Speaker 1: encouraged by our many friends of both sexes, most of
2:06
Speaker 1: whom never thought we could do it. Our method was
2:09
Speaker 1: the opposite of that used by other writers on sex.
2:12
Speaker 1: We saw clearly in what respect. They failed, and we
2:14
Speaker 1: profited by their example. We saw chiefly that these writers
2:18
Speaker 1: expended their entire emotional energy in their writing and never
2:21
Speaker 1: had time for anything else. The good length of their books,
2:25
Speaker 1: some of them ran into two volumes that came in
2:27
Speaker 1: a cardboard box, testified to their absorption with the sheer
2:30
Speaker 1: business of writing. They clearly hadn't been out much, They
2:33
Speaker 1: had been home writing. And meanwhile, what was sex doing?
2:36
Speaker 1: Not standing still? You can better believe. So we determined
2:40
Speaker 1: that our procedure would be to approach sex bravely and frequently.
2:43
Speaker 1: Approach the subject in a lively spirit, we told ourselves,
2:46
Speaker 1: and the writing will take care of itself. It is
2:49
Speaker 1: only fair to say that the writing didn't take care
2:51
Speaker 1: of itself. The writing was a whole lot of work
2:53
Speaker 1: and gave us the usual pain in the neck while
2:55
Speaker 1: we were doing it. At any rate, we gathered about
2:58
Speaker 1: as host of congenial people of all types, mostly girls, gay, somber, petulant,
3:03
Speaker 1: all kinds. We also got a lot of dogs, mostly
3:06
Speaker 1: Scotch Terriers, a breed noted for stoicism, bravery, and humor.
3:10
Speaker 1: Thus equipped, we set about the work with a good spirit,
3:13
Speaker 1: and by dint of a rather unusual energy, were able
3:15
Speaker 1: to prepare the book for publication and see it through
3:17
Speaker 1: the press without giving up any social engagements or isolating
3:20
Speaker 1: ourselves from the sexual world. Furthermore, all the time we
3:23
Speaker 1: were writing the book, we continue to earn our living
3:26
Speaker 1: in itself no easy matter. We early resolved to keep
3:29
Speaker 1: alive our curiosity about things. Wherever we went, we asked questions.
3:33
Speaker 1: Aware the tangled sexual thread running through the pattern of
3:36
Speaker 1: people's lives, we continually ask the question, why is it
3:39
Speaker 1: that you never got straightened out? The answers begot that
3:42
Speaker 1: this question helped us immeasurably, although most of our research
3:45
Speaker 1: was in life's laboratory, so to speak. We wish also
3:47
Speaker 1: to express our detonness to those authors whose writing from
3:50
Speaker 1: the subject inspired us. How can we forget in this connection?
3:54
Speaker 1: Such men as Will Durant, Samuel D. Schmalhausen, doctor Joseph Collins,
3:58
Speaker 1: Joseph Would Crutch and gardener Murphy most particularly, are desirous
4:03
Speaker 1: of acknowledging a debt to those true, remarkable men who,
4:06
Speaker 1: more than any others, gave us the courage to go on,
4:09
Speaker 1: two men without whose example we could never have found
4:11
Speaker 1: in Sex and Daily inspiration those two geniuses whom it
4:14
Speaker 1: is our pleasure to call the Deans of American Sex,
4:16
Speaker 1: Walter Tithridge and Karl's Honor preface. Men and women have
4:22
Speaker 1: always sought, by one means in another, to be together
4:25
Speaker 1: rather than a part. At first, they were together by
4:27
Speaker 1: the simple expedient of being unicellular, and there was no conflict.
4:31
Speaker 1: Later the cell separated or began living apart, for reasons
4:34
Speaker 1: which are not clear even today, though there is considerable talk.
4:37
Speaker 1: Almost immediately the two halves of the original cell began
4:40
Speaker 1: experiencing a desire to unite again, usually with the half
4:43
Speaker 1: of some other cell. This urge has survived down to
4:46
Speaker 1: our time. Its commonest manifestations are marriage, divorce, neuroses, and
4:51
Speaker 1: a little less frequently, gunfire. When society decided it would
4:55
Speaker 1: have to set up laws to govern these polymorphous manifestations
4:58
Speaker 1: of a once simple urge which had gone out of hand,
5:01
Speaker 1: it did so without a very clear notion of sex
5:03
Speaker 1: as we know it today. It did not realize that
5:05
Speaker 1: direction of the love urge by outside forces of law
5:08
Speaker 1: and order must be subversive of the complete flowering of
5:10
Speaker 1: the individual. And is there anything in life more wonderful
5:13
Speaker 1: than a completely flowered individual man or woman. Yet under
5:17
Speaker 1: all the weight of social regulation, the ancient desire to
5:19
Speaker 1: unite and to separate, and to unite again, usually with
5:22
Speaker 1: someone else, has survived for the simple reason that it
5:25
Speaker 1: is stronger than men made law, and because cells, as
5:28
Speaker 1: now constituted, are more astute than the police they have
5:31
Speaker 1: to be. Thus we find men and women being consistently together,
5:35
Speaker 1: even against the rigorous dictates of our prescribed behaviorism, to
5:37
Speaker 1: whose institutional coldness the warmth of their emotional natures is
5:40
Speaker 1: irrevocably opposed. And so on. As far as I can
5:44
Speaker 1: make out, the authors of this remarkable book subscribe to
5:46
Speaker 1: the modern ideal of freedom in sex, but do not
5:49
Speaker 1: believe that marriage has yet been proved a failure in
5:51
Speaker 1: every case, nor that sex can profitably be examined entirely
5:54
Speaker 1: apart from that old institution. In this viewpoint, the authors
5:58
Speaker 1: and myself are at one, which is probably the reason
6:01
Speaker 1: I was asked to write an introduction. Marriage as an
6:04
Speaker 1: instrument is a well l perfect thing. The trouble is
6:07
Speaker 1: that it cannot be successfully applied to the present day
6:10
Speaker 1: emotional relationships of men and women. It could much more
6:13
Speaker 1: easily be applied to something else, possibly professional tennis. As
6:17
Speaker 1: they now stand, marriage and sex militate against each other.
6:20
Speaker 1: If marriage is to be retained, it must be perfected
6:22
Speaker 1: to meet the new demands and intricacies of sex. There
6:25
Speaker 1: is doubtless a discoverable plain on which marriage and sex,
6:28
Speaker 1: the institutional and the emotional, could meet, And as who
6:31
Speaker 1: should say, become friends. Not only marriage, however, but sex
6:35
Speaker 1: as well, would have to make certain concessions. Tempered by
6:39
Speaker 1: this balanced viewpoint, one must find it then logically impossible
6:42
Speaker 1: to pose only the question what is wrong with marriage?
6:45
Speaker 1: It becomes necessary also to pose the question what is
6:48
Speaker 1: wrong with sex? For if it is plausible to assume
6:51
Speaker 1: that something may be so radically wrong with a boneligh
6:53
Speaker 1: perfect institutional device, then might be well for society to
6:56
Speaker 1: abandon it. One must, in all fairness, entertain the suspicions
7:00
Speaker 1: something may be so wrong with the well nigh perfect
7:02
Speaker 1: emotional relationship that it might be well for society to
7:04
Speaker 1: obey innit too. People have never been satisfied with marriage.
7:09
Speaker 1: If the contracting parties are satisfied with it, some one
7:11
Speaker 1: else isn't. How often one hears the expression I don't
7:14
Speaker 1: know what she sees in him. As a matter of fact, however,
7:18
Speaker 1: we hear the expression less frequently to day than be
7:20
Speaker 1: used to because psychology has enabled us to know what
7:22
Speaker 1: she does see in him. There is, however, still considerable
7:25
Speaker 1: doubt as to what he sees in her. Some authorities
7:28
Speaker 1: claim that no man can see all that there is
7:29
Speaker 1: to see in a woman, because she is too complicated
7:32
Speaker 1: and mysterious for him. This notion that woman is more
7:35
Speaker 1: incomprehensible than man has persisted for centuries. It is of
7:39
Speaker 1: a piece with the legend that woman is deserving of
7:41
Speaker 1: a certain form of idolatrous worship, a legend that grew
7:44
Speaker 1: up in the early ages of the world. When man
7:46
Speaker 1: first came into being, he did not think that the
7:48
Speaker 1: female was extraordinary. He did not think that anything was extraordinary.
7:53
Speaker 1: The world was unattractive physically and a little dull. There
7:56
Speaker 1: was no vegetation, and without vegetation there can be no fancy.
8:00
Speaker 1: Then trees came into existence. It was trees that first
8:03
Speaker 1: made men begin to brood. In pondering their leafy intricacies,
8:07
Speaker 1: he got his first crude concept of beauty. He used
8:09
Speaker 1: to tear great branches of her trees and take them
8:12
Speaker 1: home to his cave. Woman here, he would say, to her,
8:15
Speaker 1: lie on these. The man then reclined in a corner
8:18
Speaker 1: of the cave and watched the woman's hair mngle with
8:20
Speaker 1: the leaves and her eyes shine through them, until he
8:22
Speaker 1: fell asleep. His dreams were troubled. Woman came into his
8:26
Speaker 1: dreams as a tree. Then a tree came into his
8:28
Speaker 1: dreams as a woman. He also got her eyes shining
8:31
Speaker 1: through the leaves, all mixed up with the moon. Out
8:34
Speaker 1: of this curious and lamentable confusion grew the tendency in
8:37
Speaker 1: man's mind to identify women with the phenomena of the
8:39
Speaker 1: burgeoning earth and the mysteries of the illimitable heavens. As
8:43
Speaker 1: time went on, men rather enjoyed cultivating this idea. It
8:46
Speaker 1: was something to think about. It wasn't much, but it
8:49
Speaker 1: was something. Thus was the subconscious born with all this
8:52
Speaker 1: strange mixture of fact and symbol. As the vegetation of
8:56
Speaker 1: the earth grew more luxuriant, man grew more moody. Each
8:59
Speaker 1: knew place it represented something that he could not easily
9:01
Speaker 1: fit into his practicable scheme of things. The tomato, for example,
9:05
Speaker 1: wasn't fitted in until late in the nineteenth century. For
9:08
Speaker 1: the first wild iris, man saw no conceivable use. However,
9:12
Speaker 1: he plucked it it had he noticed that curious color
9:15
Speaker 1: or pigmentation, which he associated with only two other things,
9:18
Speaker 1: the sky and woman's eyes. He brooded upon this extounding
9:22
Speaker 1: coincidence over long. Often he got wet through standing in
9:26
Speaker 1: a bog contemplating a blue flag. Then he would take
9:29
Speaker 1: it home and give it to his mate. All these
9:31
Speaker 1: things operated to bring about in man's mind an inclination
9:34
Speaker 1: to identify the wonders of the earth and sky with
9:36
Speaker 1: the physical fact of his mate's existence. He decided they
9:39
Speaker 1: must have a great deal in common, these wonders and
9:42
Speaker 1: this woman. What that was he determined to find out.
9:46
Speaker 1: Too proud at first, too male to take his mate
9:48
Speaker 1: into his confidence in the matter of his uncertainties, he
9:51
Speaker 1: got tramping the bogs and woods at night, seeking the answer.
9:54
Speaker 1: He bade questions at the moon, he beseeched the trees
9:57
Speaker 1: to speak. He shouted at the wild iris. There was
10:00
Speaker 1: no answer. It was then that it occurred to man that,
10:03
Speaker 1: since these things could not tell them the answer to
10:05
Speaker 1: the riddle of the universe, the only possible source of
10:08
Speaker 1: that information must repose in the living creature which he
10:10
Speaker 1: identified with them, the woman with sky ye eyes and
10:13
Speaker 1: leafy hair. Then came that important night when one of
10:16
Speaker 1: the early men resolutely rose from his knees under the
10:18
Speaker 1: moon and started back to his cave to demand from
10:20
Speaker 1: his maten explanation of all these mysteries. On the way
10:23
Speaker 1: a star fell. Those ages were notable for falling meteors.
10:27
Speaker 1: This one frightened the man as it crashed, sizzling through
10:29
Speaker 1: the trees and buried itself with a moan in the ground.
10:32
Speaker 1: He ran the rest of the way home, arriving breathless
10:34
Speaker 1: and white. Wah is that, he croaked, pointing behind him
10:39
Speaker 1: his mate, something but the waving of fern fronds in
10:42
Speaker 1: the wind, the form of some animals slicking into the woods.
10:45
Speaker 1: It is nothing, she said, and smiled, and ran her
10:48
Speaker 1: hand through his hair. Right then and there man conceived
10:51
Speaker 1: the notion that woman was so closely associated, so inextricably
10:55
Speaker 1: entwined with the wonders and terrors of the world, that
10:57
Speaker 1: she had no fear of them. She was in quiet
11:00
Speaker 1: league with the forces of life. She was an integral
11:03
Speaker 1: part of the stars and the moon. She was one
11:05
Speaker 1: with the trees and the iris in the bog. He
11:07
Speaker 1: fell down on his knees, the pitiable idiot, and grasped
11:10
Speaker 1: her about the waste. It is inconceivable that a mythos
11:14
Speaker 1: strong at this belief in the ineffability of woman, as
11:16
Speaker 1: deeply rooted in the soils of time, can ever be
11:19
Speaker 1: completely eradicated. However fantastical, however untrue, crotchet or whim, fancy
11:25
Speaker 1: or foible, there it is, and there it has always been.
11:28
Speaker 1: To destroy it would be to put the female properly
11:30
Speaker 1: at her place, as a plain, unadorned unit in the
11:33
Speaker 1: senseless but unending pattern of biological continuity. Romantic love would disappear,
11:38
Speaker 1: life would be simplified, eurosies would vanish. But man clings
11:42
Speaker 1: to his ancient and silly value what it has done
11:45
Speaker 1: to him, as quite easy to see it has subordinated
11:48
Speaker 1: him to woman, for one thing. The emotional nature of
11:50
Speaker 1: the males ever been overlooked altogether or goodly disparaged. Isn't
11:54
Speaker 1: that just like a man? Is not so glib and
11:56
Speaker 1: common expression. It implies that one can virtually screw to
12:00
Speaker 1: all myn the simple reactions which in a number of
12:02
Speaker 1: men inexpertly observed have proved likely to take place the
12:06
Speaker 1: italic is mine. Observers have been too prone to hold
12:10
Speaker 1: that the male was negligible and to overemphasize the importance
12:12
Speaker 1: of the female. Thus we find such keen analysts as
12:15
Speaker 1: Ira Asks Whyle and Merry day Win footnote one, Marriage
12:20
Speaker 1: and the Modern Manner, asserting that anyone who wishes to
12:22
Speaker 1: understand modern marriage must center his attention on woman and
12:25
Speaker 1: find out what she thinks of it and what she
12:27
Speaker 1: intends to do about it. This is the old bridegroom fallacy.
12:31
Speaker 1: The notion the paraphrase mislose that the bride is divine,
12:34
Speaker 1: but that the bridegroom is just nothing unless more stress
12:37
Speaker 1: is laid, and pretty quickly too. Upon the complexity of
12:40
Speaker 1: the male and the importance of what he is thinking
12:41
Speaker 1: about and what he intends to do, or at least
12:43
Speaker 1: what he would like to do, we are never going
12:45
Speaker 1: to arrive at a norm. How often do you hear
12:47
Speaker 1: it said that the little whims and desires of a
12:49
Speaker 1: man should be cherished or even listened to. You don't
12:52
Speaker 1: hear it said at all? But you do hear is
12:54
Speaker 1: that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach.
12:56
Speaker 1: I thing like that hardens a man. He may eat
12:59
Speaker 1: his spinach and say nothing, but he is being hardened
13:01
Speaker 1: just the same. The American male, because of the remarkable
13:05
Speaker 1: strasslate upon women in this country, has been understood least
13:07
Speaker 1: of all males. There has been no completely successful attempt
13:11
Speaker 1: to state his case until the authors of this extraordinary
13:13
Speaker 1: book came along. I do not know who they are
13:16
Speaker 1: in places they did not seem to be themselves, but
13:18
Speaker 1: they've got something. A lot of what they have they
13:21
Speaker 1: seem to have got from his honor and Tithridge, which
13:23
Speaker 1: is all right with me at any rate. They state
13:25
Speaker 1: the case for the American man clearly and plausibly. At
13:28
Speaker 1: the same time they have by no means neglected the female.
13:31
Speaker 1: It takes two to make a neurosis, and nobody knows
13:34
Speaker 1: that any better than white and thrber, unless its honor
13:36
Speaker 1: and Tithridge herein are examined. Therefore, both men and women,
13:40
Speaker 1: male and female, man and woman, not only in themselves,
13:44
Speaker 1: but in their curious reactions to each other. The term
13:47
Speaker 1: reaction seems to be used in this book to include
13:50
Speaker 1: not only those quick, unpremeditated reflexes which cause so much trouble,
13:53
Speaker 1: but also those slowly formulated prejudices, doubts, and suspicions which
13:57
Speaker 1: cause even more trouble. If this book does anything all
14:00
Speaker 1: towards straightening out the lamentable mass that things have gotten
14:02
Speaker 1: into in America, and I certainly think it will, the
14:05
Speaker 1: authors will feel imply repaid for their pains, which consist
14:08
Speaker 1: in large part they tell me of insults. Lieutenant Colonel H. R. L.
14:12
Speaker 1: Lebertillier Cie Schlagenslav's House, King's Byway, bassi la due ser sinne,
14:20
Speaker 1: July fifteenth, nineteen twenty nine, end of section zero. Chapter
14:31
Speaker 1: one of Is Sex Necessary? Or Why You Feel the
14:34
Speaker 1: way You do? By James Thurber and E. B. White,
14:36
Speaker 1: does LibriVox recordings in the public domain. Chapter one, The
14:41
Speaker 1: Nature of the American Male, a study of pedestalism. In
14:45
Speaker 1: no other civilized nation are the biological aspects of love
14:48
Speaker 1: so distorted and transcended by emphasis upon its sacredness as
14:51
Speaker 1: they are in the United States of America. In China,
14:54
Speaker 1: it's all biology. In France to the mixture of biology
14:57
Speaker 1: and humor. In America it's half or two thirds psyche.
15:02
Speaker 1: The Frenchman's idea, by and large is to get the
15:04
Speaker 1: woman interested in him as a male. The American idea
15:07
Speaker 1: is to point out, first of all, the great and
15:10
Speaker 1: beautiful part which the stars and the infinite generally play
15:13
Speaker 1: in man's relationship to women. The French, Dutch, Brazilians, Danes,
15:17
Speaker 1: et cetera can precede their remoors on a basis entirely
15:20
Speaker 1: divorced from the Psyche. The Chinese given no thought at all,
15:23
Speaker 1: and never have given it any thought. The American would
15:26
Speaker 1: be lost without the Psyche, lost and a little scared.
15:29
Speaker 1: As a result of all this, there is more confusion
15:31
Speaker 1: about love in America than all the other countries put together.
15:35
Speaker 1: As soon as one gets the psychical mixed up with
15:37
Speaker 1: the physical, a thing which is likely to happen quite
15:39
Speaker 1: easily in a composing room, but which should not happen
15:42
Speaker 1: anywhere else at all, one is almost certain to get
15:44
Speaker 1: appetite mixed up with worship. This is a whole lot
15:47
Speaker 1: like trying to play golf for the basketball, and is
15:49
Speaker 1: bound to lead to maladjustments. The phenomenon of the American
15:52
Speaker 1: male's worship of the female, which is not so pronounced
15:55
Speaker 1: now as it was, but is still pretty pronounced, is
15:57
Speaker 1: of fairly recent origin. It developed in fact or reached
16:01
Speaker 1: its apex anyway in the early years of the present century.
16:05
Speaker 1: There was nothing like it in the preceding century. Throughout
16:07
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, the American man's inmatory instincts had been
16:10
Speaker 1: essentially economic. Marriage was basically a patriotic concern, the idea
16:15
Speaker 1: being to have children for the sake of the commonwealth.
16:18
Speaker 1: This was bad enough, but nevertheless, it is far less
16:20
Speaker 1: dangerous to get the commonwealth mixed up with love than
16:22
Speaker 1: to get the infinite mixed up with love. There was
16:25
Speaker 1: not a single case of never's breakdown or neurosis arising
16:28
Speaker 1: from invatory troubles in the whole cycle from eighteen hundred
16:31
Speaker 1: to nineteen hundred, or as flight flaptus before the Mexican
16:33
Speaker 1: and Civil Wars. This was because love and marriage and
16:37
Speaker 1: children stood for progress, and progress is or was a calm,
16:40
Speaker 1: routine business. Missus Hopkins, a man would say to the
16:44
Speaker 1: lady of his choice she was a widow. In this case,
16:47
Speaker 1: Missus Hopkins, I am thinking now that George footnote one,
16:51
Speaker 1: the late George Hopkins, has been dead a year. You
16:54
Speaker 1: and I should get married and have offspring. They are
16:57
Speaker 1: about to build the Union Pacific, you know, and they
16:59
Speaker 1: will need men because parents can't always have men children
17:02
Speaker 1: while they want them. This led to almost as many
17:04
Speaker 1: women as men working on the Union Pacific, which in
17:07
Speaker 1: turn led to the greater status of women in the
17:08
Speaker 1: present Northwest than any other part of the nation. That
17:11
Speaker 1: is somewhat beside the point. The point is that men
17:14
Speaker 1: and women, husbands and wives, suitors and sweethearts, in the
17:17
Speaker 1: last century lived without much sentiment and without any psychophysical
17:20
Speaker 1: confusion at all. They missed a certain amount of fun,
17:23
Speaker 1: but they avoided an even greater amount of pother see glossary.
17:27
Speaker 1: They did not worry each other with emotional diados. There
17:30
Speaker 1: was no hint of a pleasure principle. Everything was empiric,
17:33
Speaker 1: almost semitic. Footnote one. The word semitic has been left
17:37
Speaker 1: out of the glossary because of the confusion was The
17:39
Speaker 1: dictionary it self seems to be in over the meaning
17:41
Speaker 1: of the term pretending to the wall of the bodies
17:43
Speaker 1: as close as the new international coast of what we
17:45
Speaker 1: have in mind here, But it goes right on to
17:47
Speaker 1: use parietal as a synonym, and parietal means pretending to
17:50
Speaker 1: order within the buildings of a college. Then again the
17:53
Speaker 1: word goes back to the Old Indian or East Indian
17:55
Speaker 1: root soma, which means a god, a liquor and an
17:57
Speaker 1: asclepiadaceous clamming shrub sarcostoma acidym. Furthermore, if your eyes tree
18:03
Speaker 1: even affection of an achent looking up somitic, you were
18:05
Speaker 1: in Salzburgite, which includes the feldspars Agerite, Grurudite, and Tinguite.
18:11
Speaker 1: And footnote. This direct evasion of the lover urge on
18:14
Speaker 1: the part of Americans of the last century was the
18:16
Speaker 1: nuclear complex of the psycho neurosis as we know it
18:19
Speaker 1: today and the basis for that remarkable reaction against patriotic
18:22
Speaker 1: sex which was to follow so soon after the Spanish
18:24
Speaker 1: American War. At the turn of the century, the nation
18:27
Speaker 1: was on a sound economic basis, and men had the
18:29
Speaker 1: opportunity to direct their attention away from the mechanics of
18:32
Speaker 1: life to the pleasures of living. No race can leap lightly, however,
18:36
Speaker 1: from economic value to an emotional value, there must be
18:39
Speaker 1: a long period of ubertrugung. Long and tedious. Men were
18:42
Speaker 1: not aware of this thirty years ago because the science
18:45
Speaker 1: of psychology was not far advanced, but nature came to
18:48
Speaker 1: their aid by supplying a temporary substitute for an emotional
18:50
Speaker 1: sex life to tide them over. During the period of Ubertraugung,
18:54
Speaker 1: this substitute to the form of games, baseball assumed a
18:57
Speaker 1: new and enormous importance, Prize fighting reached its heyday, horse
19:01
Speaker 1: racing became an absorption basicling a craze. Now women, naturally introverts,
19:06
Speaker 1: could not easily identify themselves with baseball or prize fighting.
19:09
Speaker 1: They admired Christy Mathewson and Terry McGovern, but that was
19:12
Speaker 1: about all. They took but slowly to horse racing and
19:15
Speaker 1: the giggle that acted the fool when they first tried
19:17
Speaker 1: to balance themselves on a bicycle. They drew away from
19:20
Speaker 1: men and from men's concerns. Therefore, there was no more
19:23
Speaker 1: of the old union Pacific camaraderie, and began to surround
19:26
Speaker 1: the mere fact of their biological destiny with a nimbus
19:28
Speaker 1: of ineffability. It got so that in speaking of birth
19:32
Speaker 1: and other natural phenomena, women seemed often to be discussing
19:34
Speaker 1: something else, such as the Sistine Madonna or the Aurora borealis.
19:39
Speaker 1: They became mysterious to themselves and to men. They became
19:42
Speaker 1: suddenly in their own eyes as capable of miracle and
19:45
Speaker 1: as worthy of worship as Druno and her sisters. This
19:48
Speaker 1: could not go on. The conflict was ineluctable. When men
19:52
Speaker 1: worried of games turned to women with that urgency so
19:55
Speaker 1: notable in the American male for its simplicity and directness,
19:58
Speaker 1: they found them unprepared for acceptance and surrender. The process
20:02
Speaker 1: of adjustment in courtship and in marriage became more involved
20:04
Speaker 1: than it had ever been before in the history of
20:06
Speaker 1: the country, if not in the history of the world.
20:09
Speaker 1: The new outdoors type of American man, with all his
20:11
Speaker 1: strength and perpetuosity, was not easily to be put off.
20:14
Speaker 1: But the female, equipped with a defense far superior in
20:17
Speaker 1: polymorphous ingenuities to the rather simple attack of the male,
20:21
Speaker 1: was prepared. She developed and perfected the diversion subterfuge. Its
20:25
Speaker 1: purpose was to put man in his place. Its first
20:28
Speaker 1: manifestation was fudge making. The effectiveness of fudge making and
20:32
Speaker 1: fending off the male and impressing him with the female's
20:34
Speaker 1: divine on approachability cannot be overestimated, neither can its potentiality
20:38
Speaker 1: as a nuclear complex. The flitting from tables a stove,
20:41
Speaker 1: the constant necessity of stirring the boiling confection, the running
20:44
Speaker 1: out of doors to see if the KNDy had cooled
20:46
Speaker 1: and hardened, served to rewort any objective demonstrations at all
20:49
Speaker 1: on the part of the male. He met this situation
20:52
Speaker 1: with a strong masculine protest. He began to bring a
20:55
Speaker 1: box of candy with him when he called, so that
20:57
Speaker 1: there would not be any more fudge making. These years,
21:00
Speaker 1: due to the great lamnis era in this country, brought
21:03
Speaker 1: back to where she had started, face to face with
21:05
Speaker 1: the male's simple desire to sit down and hold her.
21:07
Speaker 1: The female, still intent upon avoidance of the textual, retaliated
21:10
Speaker 1: by suggesting indoor pastimes, one of the greatest of all
21:13
Speaker 1: delay mechanisms. All manner of parlor games came into being
21:17
Speaker 1: at this period, notably charades footnote one see glossary definition
21:22
Speaker 1: number one, which calls for the presence of other persons
21:24
Speaker 1: in the room numerical protection. The American male's repugnance to charades,
21:29
Speaker 1: which is equaled perhaps by his repugnance to nothing else
21:32
Speaker 1: at all, goes back to those years. The masculine protest
21:36
Speaker 1: in this case was a countra suggestion of some games
21:38
Speaker 1: of his own in which there was a greater possibility
21:40
Speaker 1: of personal contact. His first suggestions were quite primitive, such
21:44
Speaker 1: as that it would be fun to cut up to
21:46
Speaker 1: a hundred by kissing. The female's response was the famous
21:49
Speaker 1: one of osculatory justification. There must be she decreed more
21:53
Speaker 1: elaborate reasons for kissing than a mere exhibition of purposeless
21:56
Speaker 1: or arithmetical virtuosity. Thus, post office and pillow were finally
22:00
Speaker 1: devised as a sort of compromise. Neither was satisfactory to
22:04
Speaker 1: either sex. Situation became considerably strained, and relationships finally trailed
22:08
Speaker 1: off into even less satisfactory expedient of going for long
22:11
Speaker 1: rides and attendem bicycle, which has had its serious effects
22:13
Speaker 1: upon the nature of the American man. He liked, for
22:16
Speaker 1: one thing, to do tricks on a bicycle. The contraption
22:19
Speaker 1: was new to him, and he wanted to do tricks
22:21
Speaker 1: on it. One trick that he liked especially was riding backwards.
22:25
Speaker 1: But there wasn't one woman in ten thousand riding frontwards
22:27
Speaker 1: on the rear seat of a tendom wheel who would
22:29
Speaker 1: permit her consort to ride backwards on the front seat.
22:32
Speaker 1: The result of all. This was not adjustment but irritability.
22:35
Speaker 1: Men became frustrated. Frustration brought its inevitable results. Men began
22:40
Speaker 1: to act jumpy and strange. They were getting no word
22:43
Speaker 1: at all with women. The female gradually assumed in men's eyes,
22:47
Speaker 1: as she had in her own, the proportions of an
22:49
Speaker 1: unattainable deity, something too precious to be touched. The seed
22:53
Speaker 1: deaf pedestalism was sown. The male, in a sort of
22:56
Speaker 1: divine discontent, began to draw apart by himself. Was produced
23:00
Speaker 1: that separation of the physical and the psychic, which causes
23:02
Speaker 1: the adult to remain in a state of suspended love,
23:05
Speaker 1: as if we were holding a bowl of goldfish and
23:06
Speaker 1: had nowhere to put it. This condition nowadays would lead
23:09
Speaker 1: directly to a neurosis, but in those days men were
23:12
Speaker 1: unable to develop a neurosis because they didn't know how.
23:15
Speaker 1: Men withdrew therefore quietly and morosely to their dens. It
23:19
Speaker 1: was the epoch of the den In America, some marvelous
23:22
Speaker 1: ones sprang into being. Their contents were curiously significant. Deprived
23:26
Speaker 1: of possessing the female, the male worked off his possessive
23:29
Speaker 1: complex by collecting all manner of bibelows and bric a brac.
23:32
Speaker 1: The average den contained a paperweight from Lookout Mountain, a
23:35
Speaker 1: dragged shell from Chickamauga, a piece of wood from the main,
23:38
Speaker 1: pictures of baseball players with beards, pictures of bicycle champions,
23:42
Speaker 1: a yellowing full page photograph of Admiral Schleigh, a letter
23:45
Speaker 1: opener from Niagara Falls, a lithograph of Bob Fitzsimmons, a
23:49
Speaker 1: musket badge from the ger Parade, a red tumbler from
23:52
Speaker 1: the state fair, a photograph of Julia Marlowe, a monk's
23:56
Speaker 1: head match holder, a Malay Chris, five pipe bracks, a
23:59
Speaker 1: shark's tooth, a starfish, a snapshot of the owner's father's
24:02
Speaker 1: bowling team, colored pictures of a natural bridge and balanced rock,
24:06
Speaker 1: a leather table runner with an Indian chief on it,
24:08
Speaker 1: and the spangled jacket of a masquerade costume softly shedding
24:11
Speaker 1: its sequence. The den was the beginning of male sublimation
24:15
Speaker 1: in this country, but the fruits of that sublimation were
24:17
Speaker 1: slow and ripening at the start. In fact, they were
24:20
Speaker 1: in a state of absolute suspension. Men began to preoccupy
24:23
Speaker 1: himself with anything, no matter how trivial, which might help
24:26
Speaker 1: him to forget. As the lay expression has it, he
24:29
Speaker 1: thought up childish diversions at which one person can amuse himself,
24:33
Speaker 1: and to justify his absorption in these futile pastimes, he
24:36
Speaker 1: exaggerated their importance. As we shall see. These diversions included
24:40
Speaker 1: the diabolow, the jigsaw puzzle, linked nails and linked keys,
24:43
Speaker 1: which men took a part put back together again, and
24:46
Speaker 1: most important of all, pigs in clover. During this period,
24:49
Speaker 1: almost no achievements of value when art, science, or engineering
24:52
Speaker 1: were forthcoming in the nation. Art indeed consisted chiefly of
24:56
Speaker 1: putting strange devices on boxes with the aid of a
24:58
Speaker 1: wood burning set, the as device with a swastika, whose
25:01
Speaker 1: curiously distorted confirmation bears no deservable relationship to any known
25:05
Speaker 1: phallic symbolism. Those years were blank idol lost. Years outside
25:10
Speaker 1: affairs of all kinds were neglected. When retired to their dens,
25:13
Speaker 1: were not seen for days. The pandic of nineteen o
25:16
Speaker 1: seven was a direct result. It might be interesting to
25:18
Speaker 1: examine into a typical case history of the period. Case
25:22
Speaker 1: history George Smith, aged thirty two, real estate operator, unmarried,
25:27
Speaker 1: lived with mother. No precocious mother fixation had freed his
25:31
Speaker 1: libido without difficulty from familial objects, and was eager to marry.
25:35
Speaker 1: Had formed an attachment in eighteen ninety nine, at the
25:37
Speaker 1: age of twenty nine, with a young virgin. Her protective
25:40
Speaker 1: reactions into an immediate had lasted over a period of
25:43
Speaker 1: three years, during which he had never even held her hand.
25:46
Speaker 1: Defense devices usually eucher fore handed or pedro definite and
25:51
Speaker 1: frequent fudge making, subterfuge, post office and pillow, both with
25:55
Speaker 1: low degree of success. Smith's separation between the physical and
25:59
Speaker 1: the psychic occurred in Night You Know two, the direct
26:01
Speaker 1: stimula presenting themselves on June sixth of that year. The
26:03
Speaker 1: examination by doctor Matheson showed on that day Smith ran
26:08
Speaker 1: frightened from a barber shop in Indianapolis where he lived.
26:12
Speaker 1: Inside the shop, on the floor, a middle aged man
26:15
Speaker 1: named Herschel Queper had thrown a fit. Queper had been
26:18
Speaker 1: trying for two days to get three little balls under
26:20
Speaker 1: a glass in a tiny round box to roll into
26:22
Speaker 1: an opening made for them common pigs in clover puzzle.
26:26
Speaker 1: But no sooner would he get the third one in
26:28
Speaker 1: than one or perhaps both of the others would roll out.
26:30
Speaker 1: As as Squeper was beginning to wonder where he was.
26:33
Speaker 1: Smith withdrew to his den and pondered and fiddled around
26:36
Speaker 1: and made unconscious drawings c F Plates one, two, three,
26:40
Speaker 1: and four. He turned his attention from the object of
26:43
Speaker 1: his imbresus affections to a consideration of the problem of
26:45
Speaker 1: pigs in clover. The usual justification of occupation occurred. It
26:50
Speaker 1: took the form of exaggerating the importance of finding out
26:52
Speaker 1: whether the puzzle could possibly be solved, and of working
26:54
Speaker 1: out a methodology of sulvagate more readily if it could
26:57
Speaker 1: be solved at all. The Kiss procured one of the
26:59
Speaker 1: little boxes and began to roll the balls toward the opening.
27:03
Speaker 1: At first he said about it quite calmly, there were
27:05
Speaker 1: no immediate science of mental deterioration, either malignant or benign.
27:09
Speaker 1: But although the case got all the balls into the opening,
27:12
Speaker 1: thus proving that it could be done, he never got
27:14
Speaker 1: them all in at the same time. In the second
27:17
Speaker 1: month he threw a brief fit. This today would ordinarily
27:20
Speaker 1: prove the first step toward complete physico psychic breakdown, but
27:23
Speaker 1: in those days neuroses were staved off longer owing to
27:26
Speaker 1: the general ignorance of psychology and spit not only calmly
27:29
Speaker 1: examined the effect of the fit upon himself without calling
27:32
Speaker 1: an any scientists, but determined to go on and examine
27:35
Speaker 1: the effects of fits upon others. He decided, however, that
27:38
Speaker 1: it would be difficult to examine the effects of puzzle
27:40
Speaker 1: fits upon men, because men brooked no examination when they
27:43
Speaker 1: were intent upon puzzles, And so he hit on the
27:45
Speaker 1: idea of having his dog. An animal named Dewey, played
27:48
Speaker 1: with the little round box until it threw a fit.
27:51
Speaker 1: But when he called in his dog, he found, after
27:53
Speaker 1: several experiments, that the dog could not hold the box
27:56
Speaker 1: in either its right or left paw footnote one. This
27:59
Speaker 1: presented a different culty that has not been overcome to
28:01
Speaker 1: this day. Furthermore, the animal was profoundly incurious about the
28:05
Speaker 1: puzzle footnote two. This disinterest held the good up until
28:09
Speaker 1: the day of the dog's death. Undismayed, Smith decided that
28:12
Speaker 1: somewhere in Indianapolis there must be a dog ad writ
28:15
Speaker 1: enough to handle the box and sagacious enough to grasp
28:17
Speaker 1: the idea behind it, And with a viewed finding such
28:19
Speaker 1: an animal, he determined to get all the dogs in
28:21
Speaker 1: town and all the pigs and clover puzzles in town
28:24
Speaker 1: into one room and see what would happen apotheosis complex
28:28
Speaker 1: with plurality fallacy. Smith was able, however, to round up
28:31
Speaker 1: only about eighty five percent of the dogs of the city,
28:34
Speaker 1: because there were many who were too busy to get
28:35
Speaker 1: away at the time. Even so, eighty five percent of
28:39
Speaker 1: the dogs in Indianapolis was more than I had heard
28:41
Speaker 1: been got together in one room before. The case attempted
28:44
Speaker 1: to explain the problem to the dogs in short, one
28:46
Speaker 1: syllable talks, but the bedroom was too loud and to
28:49
Speaker 1: prolong for him to make himself heard. Fifty or more
28:52
Speaker 1: Saint Bernards and a few dozen Chesapeake Spaniels listened half heartedly,
28:55
Speaker 1: but the others made holiday. Furthermore, eighty four bulldogs would
28:59
Speaker 1: not permit themselves to be muzzled, and this added Smith's difficulties. Thus,
29:04
Speaker 1: on the fifth day of the singular experiment, Smith, hearing
29:07
Speaker 1: a remarkable hullaballoo below stairs, he rooked in the attic,
29:11
Speaker 1: descended to the parlor, where he discovered the bulldogs and
29:13
Speaker 1: gaged in a sort of tug of war, using a
29:15
Speaker 1: body Brussell's carpet as a rope. The case his mother
29:18
Speaker 1: had several days before retreated to French lick in a
29:21
Speaker 1: run down condition. Smith grasped the carpet firmly, with some
29:25
Speaker 1: idea resting it away from the dogs, whereupon all of
29:27
Speaker 1: them save three, began to pull against him Footnote one.
29:30
Speaker 1: These three had closed their eyes to hang on and
29:33
Speaker 1: did not see Smith. The exaggeration complex under which the
29:36
Speaker 1: case was laboring gave him strength enough to meet with
29:38
Speaker 1: some small success in his first efforts to take the
29:40
Speaker 1: carpet away from the dogs. He pulled them as far
29:43
Speaker 1: as the bay window in the parlor, largely because they
29:45
Speaker 1: had not settled down seriously to winning. When they did. However,
29:49
Speaker 1: the total of three hundred and twenty four soullidnly implanted
29:52
Speaker 1: feet and the virtually immeasurable tugging potentiality were too much
29:55
Speaker 1: for Smith. He was slowly pulled out into the hall,
29:58
Speaker 1: through the front door, and into the street. He stubbornly
30:00
Speaker 1: contested every inch of the way toward drug store three
30:03
Speaker 1: blocks away. Was reached. Here some one had the presence
30:05
Speaker 1: of mind to call out the fire department. Doctor Matheson,
30:10
Speaker 1: who took the case at about this period in its development,
30:12
Speaker 1: attempted to reduce the magnification of objective, first by analytic
30:16
Speaker 1: reasoning and then by cold applications. Neither was successful. Mathieson
30:21
Speaker 1: could not divert the libido. Smith declined to resume his
30:24
Speaker 1: interest to the feminine object of his affections, and insisted
30:27
Speaker 1: that his experiment with puzzles was a glorious project for
30:29
Speaker 1: the benefit of mankind. It was sheer accident that saved
30:33
Speaker 1: the patient, not doctor Matheson. Smith finally refused doctor matheson
30:36
Speaker 1: admittance to his house nor were to go to the
30:38
Speaker 1: doctor's office, claiming that he did not believe in psychology.
30:41
Speaker 1: But one day he dropped one of the little pigs
30:43
Speaker 1: and Clover puzzles and broke the glass in it. He
30:45
Speaker 1: then found that he did not have to roll the
30:47
Speaker 1: balls into the opening, but could push them in with
30:49
Speaker 1: his finger. He got a hammer and broke the glass
30:52
Speaker 1: and all the thousands of puzzles he had brought to
30:53
Speaker 1: his home for the dogs, and solved every one of
30:56
Speaker 1: the puzzles by pushing, not rolling. This instantly released him
30:59
Speaker 1: from his complex by the Gordian knot principle of complex release.
31:03
Speaker 1: He thus gained the necessary confidence and sense of power
31:06
Speaker 1: to feel worthy of the woman with whom he was
31:07
Speaker 1: in love, and he finally married her. The marriage was
31:10
Speaker 1: of average success. Marriages, however, were frequently delayed, much longer
31:15
Speaker 1: than in the case of George Smith, and it was
31:17
Speaker 1: not indeed until nineteen o nine that the usual norm
31:19
Speaker 1: was restored. Meanwhile, in between the time of the first
31:22
Speaker 1: general separation of the physical and the psychic in this
31:24
Speaker 1: country and the final combination in marriages, a period of
31:27
Speaker 1: sublimation set in. This followed directly on the heels of
31:31
Speaker 1: the remarkable and lamentable era of preoccupation with trivial diversions,
31:34
Speaker 1: and was characterized by an extraver interest in truly important
31:37
Speaker 1: projects and activities. The airplane was brought to a high
31:40
Speaker 1: stage of development, the telephone transmitter was perfected. Tuxton replaced
31:45
Speaker 1: carbon as a filament for incandescent lamps. Better books were written,
31:49
Speaker 1: art progressed. There was a cultural advance generally, and the
31:52
Speaker 1: birth of a new esthetic, and people began to get
31:54
Speaker 1: at the real facts in the Thaw case. Nevertheless, pedestalism
31:59
Speaker 1: has left it seriously. It is doubtful that they will
32:02
Speaker 1: fully wear off for another fifty or seventy five years.
32:05
Speaker 1: End of chapter one, Chapter two of is Sex necessary
32:15
Speaker 1: or why you feel the way you do? By James
32:17
Speaker 1: Thurber and E. B. White. This Libervox recording is in
32:20
Speaker 1: the public domain. Chapter two, How to Tell Love from Passion.
32:25
Speaker 1: At a certain point in every person's amours, the question arises,
32:29
Speaker 1: Am I in love? Or am I merely inflamed by passion?
32:32
Speaker 1: It is a disturbing question. Usually it arises at some
32:35
Speaker 1: inopportune moment, at the start of a letter, in the
32:38
Speaker 1: middle of an embrace, at the end of a day
32:40
Speaker 1: in the country. If the person could supply a direct, simple,
32:43
Speaker 1: positive answer, if you could say convincingly I am in
32:46
Speaker 1: love or this is not love, this is passion, he
32:49
Speaker 1: would spare himself many hours of mental discomfort. Almost nobody
32:53
Speaker 1: can arrive at so simple a reply. The conclusion a
32:56
Speaker 1: man commonly arrives at after tossing the argument about is
32:59
Speaker 1: something after this fashion. I am in love, all right,
33:02
Speaker 1: but just say I don't like the way I looked
33:04
Speaker 1: at Miriam last night. Mirabel is a tindy little wench.
33:08
Speaker 1: And in that case, why do I waste time composing
33:10
Speaker 1: a quatrain for her to be centrally crossed the spray
33:12
Speaker 1: of lilac? Why don't I just go right over. One
33:16
Speaker 1: reason a man has trouble telling love from passion is
33:18
Speaker 1: because neother term has been clearly defined. Even after one
33:21
Speaker 1: has experienced love, one finds difficulty defining it. Likewise, one
33:25
Speaker 1: may define it and then have all kinds of trouble
33:27
Speaker 1: experiencing it. Because one's having defined it, one is into
33:31
Speaker 1: pompous a frame of mind, ever again, to submit to
33:33
Speaker 1: its sweet illusion. By and large, love is easier to
33:36
Speaker 1: experience before it has bud explained, easier and cleaner. The
33:40
Speaker 1: same holds true of passion. Understanding the principles of passion
33:44
Speaker 1: is like knowing how to drive a car. Once mastered,
33:46
Speaker 1: always smoothed out. No more does one experience the feeling
33:49
Speaker 1: of perilous adventure, the misgivings, that diverting little hesitancies, the
33:53
Speaker 1: wrong turns, the false starts, the glorious insecurity. All this
33:57
Speaker 1: smoothed out, and all, so to speak, is law us.
34:00
Speaker 1: The word love is used loosely by writers, and they
34:03
Speaker 1: know it. Furthermore, the word love is accepted loosely by readers,
34:07
Speaker 1: and they know it. There are many kinds of love.
34:09
Speaker 1: But for the purposes of this article, I shall confine
34:11
Speaker 1: my discussion to the usual hazy interpretation, the strange bewilderment
34:15
Speaker 1: which overtakes one person on account of another person. Thus,
34:18
Speaker 1: when I say love in this article, you will take
34:20
Speaker 1: it to mean the pleasant confusion which we know exists.
34:23
Speaker 1: When I say passion, I mean passion. I have mentioned
34:27
Speaker 1: that the question of deciding whether feeling be love or
34:29
Speaker 1: passion arises at inopportune moments, such as at the start
34:32
Speaker 1: of a letter. Let us say you have set down
34:34
Speaker 1: to write a letter to your lady. There has been
34:36
Speaker 1: a normal amount of preparation for the ordeal, such as
34:39
Speaker 1: clearing a space on the desk, in doing which you
34:41
Speaker 1: have become momentarily interested in a little article in last
34:44
Speaker 1: month's Scribners called plumbing the Savage, and have stood for
34:47
Speaker 1: a minute, reading the first page and deciding to let
34:49
Speaker 1: it go. And the normal amount of false alarms, such
34:52
Speaker 1: as sitting down and discovering that you have no cigarettes.
34:55
Speaker 1: If you think you can write the letter without cigarettes,
34:57
Speaker 1: it is not love, it is passion. Finally you get
35:00
Speaker 1: settled and you write the words Ann darling. If you
35:04
Speaker 1: like a comma, as you put a comma after darling,
35:06
Speaker 1: if you like colon's a colon, if dashes a dash.
35:10
Speaker 1: If you don't care what punctuation mark you put after
35:12
Speaker 1: a darling, the tenses are you are in love, although
35:15
Speaker 1: you may just be uneducated. Who knows? Now you have
35:18
Speaker 1: written the words Anne darling and have put a punctuation
35:21
Speaker 1: mark there. You pause for just a second, and in
35:24
Speaker 1: that second you are lost darling. You say to yourself,
35:27
Speaker 1: darling is true my darling? Or isn't she? And if
35:30
Speaker 1: she is my darling? As I have so brisonly set
35:32
Speaker 1: down in the street of paper, what caused me to
35:34
Speaker 1: take such a long critical look at the girl of
35:36
Speaker 1: the redden brown scarff this morning when I was breakfasting
35:38
Speaker 1: in the Brevort. If I can be all aglow about
35:40
Speaker 1: a girl on a written brown scarf in the early morning,
35:43
Speaker 1: is Anne my darling? Or am I just kidding myself?
35:45
Speaker 1: Then follows a brief estimate of the comparative beauty of Anne,
35:48
Speaker 1: with the girl and the scarf, with the girl and
35:50
Speaker 1: the scarf coming out half a length ahead. This is
35:52
Speaker 1: followed by a short dialogue which you hold with yourself.
35:55
Speaker 1: What if she was prettier? You say, what does that
35:58
Speaker 1: amount to? I am not a child. I know this
36:00
Speaker 1: is more to the story than mere physical beauty. What
36:03
Speaker 1: more is there, you quietly demand, testing yourself out. Oh,
36:06
Speaker 1: there's quality of mind, and community of interest and chemical attraction.
36:10
Speaker 1: Chemical attraction is a term you've picked up recently from
36:12
Speaker 1: reading books on sex and life. When I get read
36:15
Speaker 1: down to it, if I don't meet that girl on
36:16
Speaker 1: the scarf, I probably wouldn't like her. No, but you
36:19
Speaker 1: want to meet her all the same, dout you. Well,
36:21
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean can't, I mean, yeah, you know
36:24
Speaker 1: you want to meet her. Ah, shut up. Having got
36:27
Speaker 1: nowhere with that theme, you again bend to the mighty
36:30
Speaker 1: task of writing the first sentence of the letter. A
36:33
Speaker 1: minute or two of quiet brooding, and the truth comes
36:35
Speaker 1: to you that you have nothing to say. That you
36:37
Speaker 1: were told the news yesterday, that you consider it pretty
36:39
Speaker 1: silly to be writing a letter letter so soon, and
36:41
Speaker 1: that if anyone were to ask you, you don't really
36:43
Speaker 1: want to write Anne a letter at all. Well, so
36:46
Speaker 1: that's the way the wind blows, you say to yourself contemptuously.
36:50
Speaker 1: So that's the way things are between Anne and you,
36:52
Speaker 1: not wanting to write her. So it's come to that, Well,
36:55
Speaker 1: it's about time you got wise to yourself. If you
36:57
Speaker 1: don't love Ann, it's certainly high time you found it
36:59
Speaker 1: out justice to both Anne and yourself. In other words,
37:02
Speaker 1: you never loved Anne at all. You really gave in
37:04
Speaker 1: to an infatuation. You were thinking about the physical side
37:07
Speaker 1: of the affair. Yes, sir, you desired Anne. That's what
37:10
Speaker 1: you did. You desired her. Why you dirty, low down,
37:13
Speaker 1: two faced old voluptuary. You the utter shame of this
37:16
Speaker 1: situation breaks your spirit, and you lay down your pen,
37:19
Speaker 1: laid up a cigarette, and pace up and down the room.
37:22
Speaker 1: Suddenly you dashed to the desk with a look of
37:24
Speaker 1: woeful determination, seize the pen and write after the words Anne, Darling,
37:28
Speaker 1: which are good and dry. By this time, I have
37:31
Speaker 1: been wanting to tell you something for a long time.
37:33
Speaker 1: We must look things straight in the face. Anne. You
37:36
Speaker 1: then look things straight in the face for ten minutes,
37:38
Speaker 1: during which you don't write a word, and end by
37:40
Speaker 1: tearing the letter up a quickly dashing off another which reads,
37:43
Speaker 1: and I'm awfully tired, tonight, nervous, et cetera. And if
37:46
Speaker 1: I wrote you it will just be a bunch of hui.
37:48
Speaker 1: So I think I will wait till tomorrow before writing
37:50
Speaker 1: Love Bert. This you mail out the corner and spend
37:53
Speaker 1: the rest of the evening trying to read, plumbing the savage,
37:56
Speaker 1: which results finally in sleep, sleep troubled by dreams of
37:59
Speaker 1: savages wearing life wine clothes of a familiar red and
38:01
Speaker 1: brown material. This vexing disbelief in one's own illusion of
38:05
Speaker 1: love is experienced most alarmingly by persons of literary inclinations.
38:09
Speaker 1: Yet with them the reaction comes in quite the opposite manner.
38:12
Speaker 1: Writing is a form of sexual expression. His honor goes further.
38:15
Speaker 1: He says writing is sex, and it takes just as
38:17
Speaker 1: much out of a person. Thus, a person with the
38:20
Speaker 1: bent for creative literature approaches the task of writing a
38:23
Speaker 1: love letter with an excitation of the spirit, suppressing anything
38:25
Speaker 1: in the realm of pure eroticism. He anticipates it for hours,
38:30
Speaker 1: mulling over in his mind the possible material and larger
38:32
Speaker 1: on ennicodotes, rounding off pledges of affection, sharpening similes, sharpening pencils.
38:37
Speaker 1: He comes to the writing of it with immense zeal
38:39
Speaker 1: and of oother nice control of lyrical prose. He ends
38:42
Speaker 1: on a splendidly poised and correctly by its notn of
38:44
Speaker 1: tenderness and faith and love, And then having signed, sealed,
38:48
Speaker 1: and posted. The missive is suddenly overcome by the realization that,
38:51
Speaker 1: by the very active composition he has on all of
38:53
Speaker 1: the alrd subject herself cares no more about her for
38:56
Speaker 1: the moment than he does for an old piece of
38:58
Speaker 1: Butcher's twine, which all is so alarming a discovery that
39:01
Speaker 1: he usually gets a little bit sick thinking about it,
39:03
Speaker 1: and has to go out somewhere and hear some music.
39:06
Speaker 1: I have seldom at an individual of literary tastes or
39:08
Speaker 1: propensities in whom the writing of love was not directly
39:10
Speaker 1: attributable to the love of writing. A person of this
39:13
Speaker 1: sort falls terribly in love, but in the end it
39:16
Speaker 1: turns out that he is more amused by a sheet
39:17
Speaker 1: of white paper than a sheet of white bed linen.
39:20
Speaker 1: He would rather leap into print with his lady than
39:22
Speaker 1: leap into bed with her. This first pleases the lady
39:24
Speaker 1: and then annoys her. She wants him to do both
39:27
Speaker 1: and with virtually the same impulse. Uncertainly, in the middle
39:31
Speaker 1: of an embrace. There is no more disturbing experience in
39:34
Speaker 1: the rich gamut of life than on a young men
39:35
Speaker 1: discovers in the midst of an embrace that he is
39:37
Speaker 1: taking the episode quite calmly, and is taking the kiss
39:40
Speaker 1: for what it is worth. His doubts and fears struck
39:42
Speaker 1: from this point, and there is no end to them.
39:45
Speaker 1: He doesn't know whether it's love or passion. In fact,
39:48
Speaker 1: in the confusion of the moment, he is not quite sure.
39:50
Speaker 1: Isn't something else like forgery? He certainly doesn't see how
39:53
Speaker 1: it can be love. Let us examine this incident. He
39:56
Speaker 1: has been sitting, will say, on a porch with his beloved.
39:59
Speaker 1: They have been talking of this and that with the
40:01
Speaker 1: quiet intimacy of lovers. After but he takes her in
40:04
Speaker 1: his arms and kisses her, not once, but several times.
40:08
Speaker 1: It is not a new experience to him. He has
40:10
Speaker 1: had other girls, and he has had plenty of other
40:12
Speaker 1: kisses from this one. This time, however, something happens. The
40:16
Speaker 1: young man, instead of losing himself in the kiss, finds
40:19
Speaker 1: himself in it. What's more, the girl to him loses
40:21
Speaker 1: her identity. She becomes just anyone on whom he is
40:24
Speaker 1: imposing his masculinity. Instead of his soul being full of
40:28
Speaker 1: the ecstasy which is traditionally associated with love's expression, his
40:31
Speaker 1: soul is just fiddling around. The young man is thinking
40:34
Speaker 1: to himself say this is pretty nice. Now, well, that
40:37
Speaker 1: scares him. Up to this point in the affair, he
40:39
Speaker 1: has been satisfied that his feeling was that of love.
40:42
Speaker 1: Now he doesn't know what to think. In all his life,
40:45
Speaker 1: he has never come across a character in a book
40:46
Speaker 1: of a movie who, embracing his beloved was heard to
40:49
Speaker 1: say this is pretty nice, except that character was a villain.
40:53
Speaker 1: He becomes a massive conflicting emotions and is so thoroughly
40:56
Speaker 1: skeptical and worried about the state of his heart that
40:58
Speaker 1: he will probably take the readings sociological books to find
41:01
Speaker 1: out that it's okay to go ahead, or whether as
41:03
Speaker 1: a gentleman it se his duty to step out before
41:05
Speaker 1: he further defames a sweet girl and soils her womanhood.
41:09
Speaker 1: The medical profession recognizes two distinct types of men, first,
41:13
Speaker 1: the type that believes that to love a woman is
41:15
Speaker 1: not to desire her. Second, the type that believes that
41:18
Speaker 1: to desire a woman is not to love her. The
41:20
Speaker 1: medical profession rests this young man, who have just mentioned
41:24
Speaker 1: the rogue, found himself having a good time in the
41:26
Speaker 1: midst of a kiss, now takes seriously to books. Matters
41:30
Speaker 1: go from bad to worse. Hoping to find in sexology
41:34
Speaker 1: some explanation for his conduct which should indicate that, if
41:36
Speaker 1: not decent, it was at least not without precedent. He
41:39
Speaker 1: searches relentlessly until he comes upon a chapter on the
41:42
Speaker 1: theory of the libido. It makes any young man a
41:45
Speaker 1: little mad to discover that he has a pleasure principle,
41:47
Speaker 1: But there it is just the same. On page four
41:50
Speaker 1: sixty four he finds this paragraph. The ideal healthy outcome
41:54
Speaker 1: is to find the child that whom the process of
41:56
Speaker 1: repression has been accomplished with no fixations of interest at
41:59
Speaker 1: lower stages at it, patient, in whom the Oedipus complex
42:02
Speaker 1: has passed into a normal phase of the castration complex inhibition,
42:05
Speaker 1: and in whom a free, movable libido as developing sublimation
42:08
Speaker 1: and active interests, free from paralyzing inhibitions or antisocial tendencies.
42:13
Speaker 1: This brings the young man to the point where he
42:14
Speaker 1: thinks maybe he'd better lay off altogether. He just wasn't
42:17
Speaker 1: cut out for kissing, he guesses. So he writes his
42:20
Speaker 1: girl that her apologizing for having been a beast, breaks
42:22
Speaker 1: the engagement and goes out to Oregon, where he raises
42:25
Speaker 1: fruit fairly successfully and with no antisocial tendencies. I have
42:29
Speaker 1: taken up the question of man's uncertainty about love and
42:32
Speaker 1: passion in two different circumstances, at the start of a
42:34
Speaker 1: letter and in the middle of an embrace. It was
42:37
Speaker 1: originally my intention also to show how this uncertainty overcomes
42:40
Speaker 1: one at the end of a day in the country,
42:42
Speaker 1: when a man is so tired that not only can
42:43
Speaker 1: distinguish love from passion, but has all he can do
42:46
Speaker 1: to distinguish one station on the New Haven Railroad from another,
42:49
Speaker 1: and often gets out at one hundred and twenty fifth
42:51
Speaker 1: Street by mistake. I say this was my intention, but
42:54
Speaker 1: thus far I have been so unsuccessful in explaining the
42:56
Speaker 1: difference between love and passion that to go on would
42:59
Speaker 1: be to lay myself open to criticism. The fact of
43:02
Speaker 1: the matter is it's very difficult to tell love from passion.
43:05
Speaker 1: My advice to anyone who doesn't feel sure of the
43:06
Speaker 1: difference between them is either to give them both up
43:09
Speaker 1: or quit trying to split hairs. And of chapter two
43:18
Speaker 1: Chapter three of Is Sex Necessary? Or Why You Feel
43:21
Speaker 1: the Way You Do? By James Thurber and E. B. White.
43:24
Speaker 1: This Liberox Recordings in the public domain. Chapter three, a
43:28
Speaker 1: discussion of feminine types. In speaking of the weaker sex
43:32
Speaker 1: in this book, the authors usually confine themselves to the
43:35
Speaker 1: generalization women, women, and the female. For the larger discussion
43:40
Speaker 1: of sex. These comprehensive terms suffice. Yet, no examination of
43:44
Speaker 1: the pitiable problem of men and women would be complete
43:46
Speaker 1: without some effort to define a few and more important
43:49
Speaker 1: types of the female. One cannot say, oh, well, you
43:52
Speaker 1: know how women are, and let it go at that.
43:54
Speaker 1: Many truths apply, and many foibles are common to the
43:57
Speaker 1: whole sex, But the varieties of the female of the
44:00
Speaker 1: species are as manifold as the varieties of the flower
44:02
Speaker 1: called the cineraria. Successfully, to deal with a woman, a
44:06
Speaker 1: man must know what type she is. There have been
44:08
Speaker 1: several methods of classification, none of which I hold thoroughly satisfactory.
44:13
Speaker 1: Neither the glandular categories the gonoid, thyroid, et cetera, nor
44:17
Speaker 1: the astrological Sagittarius, Virgo, Pisces, and so on. One must
44:21
Speaker 1: be pretty expert to tell a good gonoid when he
44:23
Speaker 1: sees one. Personally, I know but very little about them.
44:26
Speaker 1: Nor if I had a vast knowledge, would I know
44:28
Speaker 1: what to do with it. It is even more difficult
44:31
Speaker 1: and just as unimportant to arrive at a zodiacal classification,
44:34
Speaker 1: because that is altogether dependent upon determining the yard woman
44:38
Speaker 1: was born, and because even if you should ascertain her
44:40
Speaker 1: date of birth, the pishtash of analysis prediction which derives
44:43
Speaker 1: there froms a what a medieval guesswork, or so it
44:46
Speaker 1: seems to me, and choose honor Blypho, Gorly Peshkar, Brittenhouse
44:51
Speaker 1: and methicine. How much greater importance is the classification of
44:54
Speaker 1: females by actions? It comes out finally the nature of
44:58
Speaker 1: a woman in what she does for a little bag
45:01
Speaker 1: of tricks, as one might say. A type of which
45:03
Speaker 1: one hears a great deal, but which has never been
45:06
Speaker 1: very ably or scientifically analyzed for the guidance of men
45:09
Speaker 1: is the quiet type. How often one hears the warning
45:12
Speaker 1: look out for the quiet type. Let us see if
45:15
Speaker 1: we should look out for it, and why the element
45:18
Speaker 1: of menace in the quiet type is commonly considered very great.
45:21
Speaker 1: Yet if one asks a man to professes knowledge of
45:23
Speaker 1: the type, why one should look out for it, one
45:25
Speaker 1: gets but a vague answer. Just look out, That's all
45:28
Speaker 1: he usually says. When I began my research as I was,
45:32
Speaker 1: in spite of myself somewhat inhibited by an involuntary subscription
45:35
Speaker 1: to this legendary fear. I found it difficult to fight
45:38
Speaker 1: off a baseless alarm in the presence of a lady
45:40
Speaker 1: of subdued manner. Believing, however, that the best defense is
45:43
Speaker 1: an offense, I determined to carry the war, as it were,
45:46
Speaker 1: into the enemy's country. The first quiet type or q
45:49
Speaker 1: T that I isolated was a young woman whom I
45:51
Speaker 1: encountered at a Sunday tea party. She sat a little
45:54
Speaker 1: apart from the rest of the group in a great
45:56
Speaker 1: glazed chintz I believe it was chair. Her hands rested
45:59
Speaker 1: quietly on the chair arms. She kept her chin rather
46:02
Speaker 1: down than up, and had a way of lifting her
46:04
Speaker 1: gaze slowly without disturbing the set of her chin. She
46:07
Speaker 1: moved but twice, once to put by a cup of tea,
46:10
Speaker 1: and once to push back a stray lock from her forehead.
46:13
Speaker 1: I stole glances at her from time to time, trying
46:15
Speaker 1: to make them appear ingenuous and friendly rather than bold
46:18
Speaker 1: or suggestive, and achievement rendered somewhat troublesomewhat unfortunate. Involuntary winking
46:22
Speaker 1: of the left eyelid, which I want happily subject. I
46:25
Speaker 1: noted that her eyes, which were brown, had a demure
46:28
Speaker 1: light in them. She was dressed simply and was quite pretty.
46:31
Speaker 1: She spoke but once or twice, and then only when
46:34
Speaker 1: spoken to in a chantz. Shifting of the guests to
46:36
Speaker 1: an adjacent room to examine I believe some watercolors. I
46:39
Speaker 1: was left quite alone with her, stealing myself for an
46:42
Speaker 1: ordeal to which I am unused, or was at the time.
46:45
Speaker 1: I moved directly to her side and grasped her hand. Hallo, baby,
46:49
Speaker 1: some fun hah, I said, a method of attack which
46:52
Speaker 1: I had devised in advance. She was obviously shocked and
46:55
Speaker 1: instantly rose from her chair and followed the others into
46:57
Speaker 1: the next room. I never saw her again, nor have
47:00
Speaker 1: I been invited to that little home since. Now. For
47:03
Speaker 1: some conclusions, patently, this particular q T, probably due to
47:07
Speaker 1: an individual variation, was not immediately dangerous in the sense
47:10
Speaker 1: that she would see an opportunity such as I offered
47:12
Speaker 1: her to break up the home of or at least
47:14
Speaker 1: commit some indiscretion with a man who was obviously I believe,
47:17
Speaker 1: I may say, a dependable family man with the average
47:20
Speaker 1: offhand attractions. Doctor White has criticized my methodology in this
47:23
Speaker 1: particular case, a criticism which I may say now in
47:27
Speaker 1: all good humor, since the danger is pasted once threatened
47:29
Speaker 1: to interpose in superable obstacles of a temperamental nature in
47:33
Speaker 1: the way of this collaboration. It was his feeling that
47:36
Speaker 1: I might just as well have removed one of the
47:37
Speaker 1: type's shoes as approach of the way I did. I
47:39
Speaker 1: cannot hold with him there, neither I am gratified to
47:43
Speaker 1: say kind's honor. But in fairness to White, it is
47:45
Speaker 1: only just to add the tithridge can However, the next
47:48
Speaker 1: q T that I encountered I placed under observation more gradually.
47:52
Speaker 1: I used to see her writing on a Fifth Avenue
47:54
Speaker 1: bus almost at a certain hour. I took to writing
47:56
Speaker 1: on this bus also, and had discreetly managed to sit
47:59
Speaker 1: next to her on some occasions. She eventually noticed that
48:02
Speaker 1: I appeared to be cultivating her, and I am me
48:04
Speaker 1: quite kindly with a look that I could not at
48:06
Speaker 1: once decipher. I could now, but at that time I couldn't.
48:10
Speaker 1: I resolved to put the matter to her, quite frankly,
48:12
Speaker 1: to tell her in fine that I was studying her type,
48:14
Speaker 1: and that I wished to place her under closer observation. Therefore,
48:17
Speaker 1: one evening I doffed my hat and began, Madam, I said,
48:21
Speaker 1: I would greatly appreciate making a leisurely examination of you
48:24
Speaker 1: at your convenience. She struck me with the palm of
48:27
Speaker 1: her open hand, got up from her seat, and descended
48:30
Speaker 1: at the next even numbered street, thirty sixth I believe
48:33
Speaker 1: it was I may as well admit here and now
48:35
Speaker 1: that personally I enjoyed at no time any great success
48:38
Speaker 1: with q teas. I think one may go as far
48:41
Speaker 1: as to say that any scientific examination of the quiet
48:43
Speaker 1: type as such is out of the question. I know
48:46
Speaker 1: no psychologist who has ever got one alone long enough
48:48
Speaker 1: to get anywhere. Titheridge has averred that he began too
48:51
Speaker 1: late in life, his honor that he does not concur
48:53
Speaker 1: in the major premise the quiet type was not amendable
48:56
Speaker 1: to the advinces of scientific man with the advices of
48:58
Speaker 1: a scientific nature, and also when they are of any
49:00
Speaker 1: other nature. Indeed, it is one of the unfortunate handicaps
49:04
Speaker 1: to psychological experimentation that many types of women do not
49:07
Speaker 1: lend themselves readily to purposeful study. As one woman said
49:10
Speaker 1: to me, it all seems so mapped out. Kind of,
49:14
Speaker 1: I am a little reluctant to report one other adventure
49:16
Speaker 1: with the quiet type, and that is why I seem
49:18
Speaker 1: to have summed up in the preceding paragraph without mentioning it. However,
49:22
Speaker 1: I now feel some brief outline of the case I
49:23
Speaker 1: have alluded to should be set down here, especially after
49:26
Speaker 1: all this illusion. This young lady was a guest at
49:28
Speaker 1: the weekend party bar I was also a guest On
49:31
Speaker 1: Saturday evening. It began to appear quite early that there
49:34
Speaker 1: was going to be considerable drinking, and to be sure,
49:37
Speaker 1: there was among those who became, as the fellow said,
49:40
Speaker 1: a little bit uncertain of themselves, with a young q T.
49:43
Speaker 1: And myself. It was, in all truth, largely her fault
49:47
Speaker 1: that I reached a state of abandon from which, at
49:49
Speaker 1: her further solicitation, it was but an easy step to
49:51
Speaker 1: a feeling of sheer devil may care. This condition, it
49:54
Speaker 1: is perhaps unecessary to say, notates against that fine precision
49:57
Speaker 1: of mind so essential to the best results than any
49:59
Speaker 1: scientific investigation. I do not remember all that ensued one
50:03
Speaker 1: half so clearly as I should like to. I have
50:05
Speaker 1: often thought deeply on the matter, striving to reconstruct the
50:08
Speaker 1: complete scene as it were, But my efforts had been
50:10
Speaker 1: hampered by the lamentable fact that I found dwelling upon
50:12
Speaker 1: the more easily remembered scenes so delightful that I simply
50:15
Speaker 1: dwelt on them. I remember, for example, that I was
50:18
Speaker 1: at the piano, or more exactly on it, standing on it.
50:21
Speaker 1: The quiet type, fearing that I might fall, grasped me
50:24
Speaker 1: firmly about the knees, and I did fall. I was
50:27
Speaker 1: not only uninjured, but I got to my feet. Laughing
50:30
Speaker 1: At this, she began to laugh. I had lost my
50:33
Speaker 1: glasses in the fall, and began hunting for them. In
50:35
Speaker 1: bending over. However, I was assailed by a slight touch
50:38
Speaker 1: of vertigo, which runs in my family, and fell again.
50:41
Speaker 1: The next that I remember is sitting on the edge
50:43
Speaker 1: of a cliff or falaise as the French call it,
50:46
Speaker 1: looking out over a lake. The young lady was beside me. Well,
50:50
Speaker 1: she said, what shall we do next? I asked her
50:52
Speaker 1: how I'd reached the cliff, if I had walked there partly?
50:56
Speaker 1: She said, This set me to thinking I have lost
51:00
Speaker 1: my glasses, I said, and began hunting from them again.
51:03
Speaker 1: She again seized me by the knees, and I fell
51:06
Speaker 1: in falling. Both of us became enormously involved. I instantly
51:09
Speaker 1: arose and was about to step into the lake, which
51:11
Speaker 1: he grasped me about the waist. We both sat down.
51:14
Speaker 1: You have gone as far as you can, she said,
51:17
Speaker 1: and tittered. I should like to go a little farther,
51:20
Speaker 1: said I. She arose. You are a funny man, she said,
51:24
Speaker 1: and laughed again. I grasped her, much to my surprise,
51:27
Speaker 1: by one ankle, and she began topple toward the lake.
51:30
Speaker 1: I fell heavily backward, pulling her with me, and this
51:32
Speaker 1: doubtless saved her life. You must be more careful, I
51:36
Speaker 1: told her. We sat up. Don't you think you better
51:39
Speaker 1: take me home? She said, in a singular voice, low
51:42
Speaker 1: and awed, Rather, I responded and arose. I took her
51:46
Speaker 1: back to the house, which was some half mile distant.
51:49
Speaker 1: We joined the others, and that is all I remember.
51:52
Speaker 1: I shall always regret, of course, that I did not
51:54
Speaker 1: have full possession of my faculties during the walk to
51:56
Speaker 1: the cliff's edge, for there might have been in the
51:58
Speaker 1: ten or fifteen minutes must taken an excellent opportunity to
52:02
Speaker 1: get at the young woman. There is nothing quite so
52:04
Speaker 1: pervocative of pleasant revulatory talk as a quiet walk with
52:07
Speaker 1: someone at night. However, the episode ended as I have said,
52:11
Speaker 1: and a golden opportunity was lost. In my very failures
52:15
Speaker 1: I made I believe certain significant findings in regard to
52:18
Speaker 1: the quiet type. It is not dangerous to men, but
52:21
Speaker 1: to a particular man. Apparently it lies in wait for
52:23
Speaker 1: some one individual and gets him. Being got by this
52:26
Speaker 1: special type, or even being laid in wait for woul
52:29
Speaker 1: seemed to me in some cases not without its pleasurable compensations.
52:33
Speaker 1: Wherein exactly the menace lie as I have no means
52:35
Speaker 1: of knowing. I have my moments when I think I
52:38
Speaker 1: see what it is, but I have other moments when
52:40
Speaker 1: I think I don't. The button hole twister type is
52:43
Speaker 1: much easier to come at. A girl of this persuasion
52:45
Speaker 1: works quite openly. She has the curious habit of insinuating
52:49
Speaker 1: a finger, usually the little finger of the right hand
52:51
Speaker 1: must she be left handed into the lapel button hole
52:54
Speaker 1: of a gentleman, and twisting it. Usually she picks out
52:57
Speaker 1: a man who is taller than herself, and usually she
52:59
Speaker 1: gets some quite publicly in parks, on street corners and
53:03
Speaker 1: the like. Often, while twisting, she will place the toe
53:06
Speaker 1: of her right shoe on the ground with the heel elevated,
53:08
Speaker 1: and will swing the heel slowly through an arc of
53:10
Speaker 1: about thirty or thirty five degrees back and forth. This
53:14
Speaker 1: manifestation is generally accompanied by a wistful, far away look
53:16
Speaker 1: on the woman's face, and she but rarely gazes straight
53:19
Speaker 1: at the man. She invariably goes in for negative statements
53:22
Speaker 1: during the course of her small writhings, such as it
53:25
Speaker 1: is not I am, not, I don't believe you do,
53:28
Speaker 1: and the like. This type is demonstrative in her affections
53:31
Speaker 1: and never lies in wait with any subtlety. She is
53:34
Speaker 1: likely to be restless and discontented with the married state,
53:36
Speaker 1: largely because she will want to go somewhere that her
53:38
Speaker 1: husband does not want to go, or will not believe
53:41
Speaker 1: he has been to the places that he says he
53:42
Speaker 1: just came from. It is well to avoid this type.
53:46
Speaker 1: A charming but altogether dangerous type is the don't dear type.
53:49
Speaker 1: By assuming a middle of the road this way and
53:51
Speaker 1: that way attitude toward a gentleman's advances, she will at
53:55
Speaker 1: once allure and repulse him. The man will thus be
53:57
Speaker 1: twice a lurd. He calls on her and they sit
54:00
Speaker 1: the porch swing. Let us say, when he slips his
54:02
Speaker 1: arm around her, she will say in a low tone,
54:04
Speaker 1: don't dear. No matter what he does, she will say,
54:08
Speaker 1: don't dear. This type is a home maker. Unless the
54:11
Speaker 1: man wants a home made for him within a very
54:13
Speaker 1: short time, it is better for him to observe the
54:15
Speaker 1: don't rather than the deer and depart. This type is
54:19
Speaker 1: common in the Middle West, particularly in the university towns,
54:22
Speaker 1: or was some few years ago. At any rate, any
54:25
Speaker 1: effort to classify a modern university types would be difficult
54:27
Speaker 1: and confusing. They change from year to year, and very
54:30
Speaker 1: with the region. I am told that one type has
54:33
Speaker 1: actually been known to get the men in her choice
54:34
Speaker 1: down and sit, as it were, side settle of him.
54:37
Speaker 1: I would not give even this brief mention in passing
54:39
Speaker 1: to college. Types of the female rathery not important, because
54:42
Speaker 1: they so frequently divert a man from his career and
54:44
Speaker 1: tie him down for his chance to begin working or
54:47
Speaker 1: even to say anything. The rest of the types of
54:49
Speaker 1: American women, such as the outdoors, the clinging vine, and
54:53
Speaker 1: so on and so on, are too generally known to
54:55
Speaker 1: need any special comment here. If a man does not
54:57
Speaker 1: know one when he sees it, or cannot tell one
54:59
Speaker 1: from another of these more common types, there is little
55:02
Speaker 1: that can be done for him. No man should contemplate
55:04
Speaker 1: marriage or even mingle with women unless he has a
55:07
Speaker 1: certain measure of intuition about these more obvious types. For example,
55:11
Speaker 1: if a man could not tell instantly that a woman
55:13
Speaker 1: was the sort that would keep him playing tennis or
55:15
Speaker 1: riding horseback all afternoon, and then expect him to ride
55:18
Speaker 1: back and forth all night on the ferry, no amount
55:20
Speaker 1: of description of the outdoors type would be of any avail.
55:23
Speaker 1: There is, however, one phenomenal modern type, a product of
55:27
Speaker 1: these strange post war years, which will bear a brief analysis.
55:30
Speaker 1: This is the type represented by the girl who gets
55:32
Speaker 1: right down to a discussion of sex on the occasion
55:34
Speaker 1: of her first meeting with a man, but then goes
55:36
Speaker 1: on to portray a great deal of alarm and diversion
55:38
Speaker 1: to the married state. This is the I can't go
55:40
Speaker 1: through with it type. Many American virgins fall within this classification. Likewise,
55:45
Speaker 1: it contains women who have had some strange and better
55:48
Speaker 1: experience about which they do a great deal of hinting,
55:50
Speaker 1: but which they never clearly explain. If involved with or
55:53
Speaker 1: merely presented to a woman of this type, no man
55:55
Speaker 1: in his right mind will do anything except reach for
55:57
Speaker 1: his hat. Science does not. No one is the matter
56:00
Speaker 1: with these women, or whether anything is the matter. A
56:03
Speaker 1: lot of reasons have been advanced for girls acting in
56:05
Speaker 1: this incredible dismayed manner, eleven reasons in all, I believe,
56:09
Speaker 1: but no one really knows very much about it. It
56:11
Speaker 1: may be their mother's teaching. It may have been some
56:13
Speaker 1: early childhood experience, such as getting caught under a gate,
56:16
Speaker 1: or suffering a severe jolting up by being let fall
56:18
Speaker 1: and a boy jumped off the other end of a
56:19
Speaker 1: teacher totter. Or it may simply be a whim. We
56:22
Speaker 1: do not know. One thing is sure. They are never
56:25
Speaker 1: the quiet type. They tuck your arm off end of
56:28
Speaker 1: chapter three Chapter four of Is Sex Necessary? Or Why
56:37
Speaker 1: You Feel the Way You do? By James Thurber and E. B. White.
56:41
Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter four
56:45
Speaker 1: The Sexual Revolution being a rather complete survey of the
56:48
Speaker 1: entire sexual scene. The sexual Revolution began with man's discovery
56:52
Speaker 1: that he was not attractive to woman as such. The
56:55
Speaker 1: lion had his mane, the peacock, his gorgeous plumage, but
56:58
Speaker 1: Man found himself in a three button sac suit. His
57:01
Speaker 1: masculine appearance not only failed to excite woman, but in
57:04
Speaker 1: many cases it only served to bore her. The result
57:07
Speaker 1: was that Man found it necessary to develop attractive personal
57:10
Speaker 1: traits to off such his dull appearance. He learned to
57:12
Speaker 1: say funny things. He learned to smoke and blow smoke rings.
57:16
Speaker 1: He learned to earn money. This would have been a
57:19
Speaker 1: solution to his difficulty, but in the course of making
57:21
Speaker 1: himself attractive to woman by developing himself mentally, he inadvertently
57:25
Speaker 1: became so intelligent an animal that he saw how comical
57:27
Speaker 1: the whole situation was. Thus, at the very start of
57:30
Speaker 1: the sexual Revolution, man faced one very definite problem. In
57:34
Speaker 1: becoming mentally aware. He had become intellectually critical and had
57:38
Speaker 1: discovered that it was increasingly difficult to make up his
57:40
Speaker 1: mind whether he really desired any one woman, however capable
57:43
Speaker 1: he was of getting her. It was the heyday of monogamy,
57:46
Speaker 1: and in order to contemplate marriage. It was necessary for
57:49
Speaker 1: a man to decide on one particular woman. This he
57:52
Speaker 1: found next to impossible, for the reason that he had
57:54
Speaker 1: unconsciously set up so many mental barriers and hazards. Let
57:57
Speaker 1: me mention a few. One, the fear that his fiancee
58:01
Speaker 1: might get fat inside of a few years. To any
58:04
Speaker 1: mentally alert man, that this thought was a strong deterrent.
58:07
Speaker 1: Quite often the man met the girl's parents, he would
58:10
Speaker 1: quickly assize up her mother and make a mental calculation
58:12
Speaker 1: as to how long it would be before the daughter
58:14
Speaker 1: was in the same boat. Somehow, it took the bloom
58:16
Speaker 1: off the romance. If he was not fortunate enough to
58:19
Speaker 1: meet the parents of the young lady, he was quite
58:21
Speaker 1: apt to note things about her own confirmation that seemed prophetic.
58:24
Speaker 1: A slight thickness in the neck, a trace of rotundity
58:27
Speaker 1: in the bosom, attached too much ankle. In these portents
58:30
Speaker 1: he found much discomfort and was quite likely to call
58:32
Speaker 1: the engagement off. Two. The use of a word phrase
58:36
Speaker 1: of punctuation marked by his fiancee that annoyed him. In
58:39
Speaker 1: these early days of the sex awakening, it was not
58:41
Speaker 1: at all uncommon to find examples of the girls using
58:43
Speaker 1: some slight phrase which had a greeting effect. It was
58:46
Speaker 1: often the case that the man was literarily inclined, because
58:48
Speaker 1: literary inclinations were early found to be advantageous in sex,
58:52
Speaker 1: almost as advantageous in fact as the peacock's tail. And
58:55
Speaker 1: this was the case, the man was doubly sensitive to
58:57
Speaker 1: the curious little crudities, niceties, womby and circumlocutions which women
59:01
Speaker 1: were afflicted with. I am thinking at the moment of
59:03
Speaker 1: the case of a young man who, in his junior
59:06
Speaker 1: year in college, had founded the girl he believed ideal
59:08
Speaker 1: for him to marry, and then one day learned quite
59:10
Speaker 1: by accident, that she was in the habit of using
59:12
Speaker 1: the word howdy as a form of salutation. He did
59:15
Speaker 1: not like howdy, although he did not know why. Days
59:18
Speaker 1: and nights he spent trying to reconcile himself to the
59:20
Speaker 1: idea of it, weighing the young lady's extreme beauty and
59:23
Speaker 1: affability against her one flaw. In the end, he decided
59:26
Speaker 1: he could not stomach it and broke the troth three
59:30
Speaker 1: difference in height. If men fell in love with a
59:32
Speaker 1: woman taller than himself, which sometimes happened, he became morose
59:36
Speaker 1: from dwelling on the objections to such an alliance. This
59:38
Speaker 1: particular situation usually had a way of settling itself automatically.
59:42
Speaker 1: There were so many reasons, real or imaginary, But the
59:44
Speaker 1: man felt that the marriage was impossible, that just the
59:46
Speaker 1: mere business of thinking about them broke him in health,
59:48
Speaker 1: and he died, leaving a merchant of several weeks before
59:51
Speaker 1: the date of the wedding four the suspicion that he
59:54
Speaker 1: waited twenty four hours or possibly less, he would likely
59:57
Speaker 1: find a lady even more ideally suited to his taste
59:59
Speaker 1: than his fearance. Every man entertained such a suspicion entertained
1:00:03
Speaker 1: it royally. He was greatly strengthened in his belief by
1:00:06
Speaker 1: the fact that he kept catching a fleeting glimpse of
1:00:08
Speaker 1: this imaginary person in restaurants, in stores, in trains. To
1:00:13
Speaker 1: deny the possibility of her existence would be he felt
1:00:16
Speaker 1: to do a grave injustice to her, to himself and
1:00:18
Speaker 1: to his fiancee. Man's unflinching desire to give to himself
1:00:22
Speaker 1: and everybody else's square deal was to cause much of
1:00:24
Speaker 1: his disturbance. Man had become, you see, a thinking being.
1:00:28
Speaker 1: He had come to know enough about permutations and combinations
1:00:31
Speaker 1: to realize that, with millions of Caucasian females to choose,
1:00:33
Speaker 1: from the chances of his choosing the idea made for
1:00:35
Speaker 1: almost zero. So matters went. Man, we have seen, had
1:00:40
Speaker 1: begun to develop himself so that he would be attractive
1:00:42
Speaker 1: to woman, and in doing so had made woman of
1:00:44
Speaker 1: doubtful attraction to him. He had become independent, He had
1:00:48
Speaker 1: become critical, He had become scared. Sex was awakening, and
1:00:52
Speaker 1: it was all man could do to keep from laughing. Woman,
1:00:55
Speaker 1: on her part, saw dimly what was going on in
1:00:57
Speaker 1: the world. She saw it through the sweet haze of dream.
1:01:00
Speaker 1: She caught glimpses of it in the mirror of her
1:01:02
Speaker 1: narcissistic soul. Footnote one. This is the first mention in
1:01:06
Speaker 1: this article of narcissism. You'll hear more about it. Don't worry.
1:01:10
Speaker 1: Woman was out of the cross roads. She had many
1:01:13
Speaker 1: ways open to her, but she chose one. She chose
1:01:15
Speaker 1: to imitate man. At a time when sex was in transition,
1:01:19
Speaker 1: she had the bad judgment to begin a career of
1:01:20
Speaker 1: independence for herself in direct imitation of her well meaning mate.
1:01:24
Speaker 1: She took up smoking. She began to earn money, not much,
1:01:28
Speaker 1: but some she drank. She subordinated domesticity to individuality, of
1:01:33
Speaker 1: which she had very little. She attained to a certain independence,
1:01:36
Speaker 1: a cringing independence, a wistful, half regretful state. Men and
1:01:41
Speaker 1: women both became slightly regretful. Men regretted that they had
1:01:44
Speaker 1: no purple tale to begin with, women that they had
1:01:46
Speaker 1: ever been fools enough to go to work. Women now
1:01:49
Speaker 1: understood life, But life had been so much more agreeable
1:01:52
Speaker 1: in its original mystery. And now we come to sex.
1:01:55
Speaker 1: Footnote one, Are you glad? Woman? Observing that her matement
1:01:58
Speaker 1: out of his way to make himself an entertaining, readily
1:02:00
Speaker 1: surmised that sex had something to do with it. From that,
1:02:03
Speaker 1: she logically concluded that sex was recreational rather than procreational.
1:02:08
Speaker 1: The small, hardy band of girls who failed to get
1:02:10
Speaker 1: this point were responsible for the popularity of women's field
1:02:12
Speaker 1: hockey in this country nineteen eleventh nineteen twenty one. As
1:02:16
Speaker 1: though in a vision, the right to be sexual came
1:02:18
Speaker 1: to women, they fell to with a will. For thousands
1:02:21
Speaker 1: of years they had contechrimarily to be amiable, and now
1:02:24
Speaker 1: they were going to be sexual. The transition from ambiability
1:02:27
Speaker 1: to sexuality was revolutionary Footnote one. Zeno claims it was
1:02:31
Speaker 1: also amusing. It presented a terrific problem to woman, because
1:02:35
Speaker 1: in acquiring and assuming the habits that tended to give
1:02:37
Speaker 1: her an equality with man, she discovered that she necessarily
1:02:40
Speaker 1: became a good deal like man. The more she got
1:02:42
Speaker 1: like him, the less he saw in her, or so
1:02:45
Speaker 1: if he liked to think anyway. Just as soon as
1:02:47
Speaker 1: she began to put her own sex on an even basis,
1:02:50
Speaker 1: she found that he lost interest. Her essential nurcissism pleasure
1:02:53
Speaker 1: of looking in a mirror was met by his beguniaism
1:02:56
Speaker 1: concept of the plotted plant. Things got so that women
1:02:59
Speaker 1: spent all her time admiring herself in mirrors, and man,
1:03:02
Speaker 1: discouraged devoted himself quietly to raising pegonias, which are fairly
1:03:05
Speaker 1: easy to raise. Sex atrophied, But as I say, sex
1:03:10
Speaker 1: was in the transition stage. Women soon began to outgrow
1:03:13
Speaker 1: her narcissism and was satisfied to snatch quick glimpses of
1:03:16
Speaker 1: herself in makeshift mirrors, such as the backs of watches,
1:03:19
Speaker 1: the shiny fenders of automobiles, click glass windows, subway weighing machines,
1:03:23
Speaker 1: and such convinced that sex was not sin, she set
1:03:26
Speaker 1: out joyously to study it. How hard she studied has
1:03:29
Speaker 1: recently been apparent even to persons who read only a
1:03:31
Speaker 1: few books a year. New York became the capital of
1:03:35
Speaker 1: a sexual revolution. It was conveniently located, had a magnificent
1:03:39
Speaker 1: harbor footnote one forew York has one of the finest
1:03:42
Speaker 1: harbors in the world, a high mortality rate, and some
1:03:45
Speaker 1: of the queerest shaped apartments to be found anywhere. There
1:03:48
Speaker 1: are apartments in New York in which one must step
1:03:50
Speaker 1: across an open bath tub and going from the kitchen
1:03:51
Speaker 1: to the bedroom. Any unusual layout like that arouses sexual
1:03:55
Speaker 1: desire and brings people pouring into New York from other cities.
1:03:58
Speaker 1: New York became the mecca for your ladies from the
1:04:00
Speaker 1: South and from the Middle West, whose minds were not
1:04:02
Speaker 1: quite made up about sexual freedom. But he thought that
1:04:04
Speaker 1: if they could once get to New York and into
1:04:06
Speaker 1: an irregular apartment, the answer might come to them. Their
1:04:10
Speaker 1: mothers were against it. Now, what can you get in
1:04:12
Speaker 1: New York that you can't get right here at home,
1:04:15
Speaker 1: their mothers said, Concerts, new plays of the opera. The
1:04:18
Speaker 1: daughters invariably replied, There was never, to my knowledge, but
1:04:22
Speaker 1: a case of a young lady telling her mother that
1:04:23
Speaker 1: she wanted to go to New York because she was
1:04:25
Speaker 1: seeking an outed for her erotic eagerness. It was always
1:04:28
Speaker 1: concerts that she wanted. Often it turned out to be
1:04:31
Speaker 1: concerts that she got. When she arrived in New York
1:04:33
Speaker 1: to secured her unfurnished apartment, usually in West fourth Street.
1:04:37
Speaker 1: Her mental elation was so great and her activity in
1:04:39
Speaker 1: making parchment lamp shades so undobating, that for the first
1:04:42
Speaker 1: couple of weeks she let sex go. Women are notoriously
1:04:45
Speaker 1: after to get off the track. No man, ever, was
1:04:48
Speaker 1: diverted from the gratification of his desires by a parchment lampshade.
1:04:52
Speaker 1: At any rate, the young lady was so tired at
1:04:54
Speaker 1: night that she could hardly keep her eyes open, much
1:04:56
Speaker 1: less her mind. Furthermore, she was beginning to have Schmallhouse
1:05:00
Speaker 1: in trouble. Schmallhausen trouble is a common ailment among girls
1:05:03
Speaker 1: in their twenties. It usually attacks girls who have taken
1:05:06
Speaker 1: a small apartment Schmaallhausen and are reading the behaviorism essays
1:05:10
Speaker 1: of Samuel D. Schmalhausen. The effect of Sitting within narrow
1:05:14
Speaker 1: walls and absorbing a wide viewpoint breaks down their health.
1:05:17
Speaker 1: The pain that they suffer during this period is caused
1:05:19
Speaker 1: by their discovery of the lyrical duality or too sidedness
1:05:22
Speaker 1: of life, a discovery that unbalances all sensitive young ladies
1:05:25
Speaker 1: in whom sex cries for expression, even in a New
1:05:28
Speaker 1: York apartment. There are two sides to everything, and this
1:05:31
Speaker 1: particularly applies to a girl's potential sexuality. Footnote one. Girls
1:05:36
Speaker 1: with a bad case of Schmalhausen sometimes saw as many
1:05:38
Speaker 1: as three sides to sex. Let me explain this duality.
1:05:42
Speaker 1: The very fact that the young lady had settled in
1:05:44
Speaker 1: the vicinity of Sheridan Square indicates that there was a
1:05:46
Speaker 1: strong vein of poetry in her. She saw life and
1:05:49
Speaker 1: sex through a lyrical haze which tended to accentuate its
1:05:52
Speaker 1: beauty by softening its truths. The whole purpose and scheme
1:05:55
Speaker 1: of poetry is to heighten the tenderness and essential goodness
1:05:57
Speaker 1: of life by the musical elaboration of its traditional worth. Well,
1:06:02
Speaker 1: when the young lady allowed the lyrical possibilities of love
1:06:04
Speaker 1: to work on her mind, it made her mad to
1:06:06
Speaker 1: remember how candid she had been the night before and
1:06:08
Speaker 1: discussing contraception with the commercial artists who lived downstairs. It
1:06:12
Speaker 1: could to be a big question in her own mind
1:06:14
Speaker 1: just what her emancipation ought to consist of, Whether it
1:06:17
Speaker 1: meant having lemon skins and gin stoppers in the wash
1:06:19
Speaker 1: basin and talking freely of exhibitionism and voyeurism, or whether
1:06:22
Speaker 1: it meant being the recipient of some overwhelmingly beautiful passion
1:06:25
Speaker 1: which her poetical soul still prescribed, but but she knew
1:06:28
Speaker 1: couldn't exist because she was so widely read. Just all
1:06:31
Speaker 1: for time she would make another lamp shade. Days slipped by.
1:06:35
Speaker 1: Always there was conflict in her soul. She had plunged
1:06:38
Speaker 1: into the kinder regime wholeheartedly. She could enter a room
1:06:42
Speaker 1: full of people and say almost anything at all. She
1:06:44
Speaker 1: also went in for nudity, another outlet for sex eagerness.
1:06:48
Speaker 1: She diallied in the bath, lay round the apartment without
1:06:51
Speaker 1: any clothes on, appeared scantily claud at her door when
1:06:54
Speaker 1: the laundrymen came to collect, and week ends went swimming
1:06:56
Speaker 1: naked in the moonlight with other young people. Incident when
1:07:00
Speaker 1: she saw what a man looked like without any clothes
1:07:02
Speaker 1: on the old smallhause in trouble came back stronger than ever.
1:07:06
Speaker 1: By and by because of this very uncertainty of soul,
1:07:09
Speaker 1: a kind of orderliness of habit crept into her life.
1:07:12
Speaker 1: Unable to decide whether sex was the poem she half
1:07:14
Speaker 1: believed it to be, or the casual episode she had
1:07:16
Speaker 1: schooled herself to think it was, she compromised her practically
1:07:19
Speaker 1: giving sex the air. She now held a good job
1:07:22
Speaker 1: and was earning well. Kinder and nudity, with an occasional
1:07:25
Speaker 1: bit of exhibitionism, began to satisfy her completely. She was
1:07:28
Speaker 1: growing older. The apartment was nicely decorated now and teeming
1:07:32
Speaker 1: with lampshades. She held some good industrial stocks, and had
1:07:35
Speaker 1: developed an ambition to write. She became content to be
1:07:38
Speaker 1: literary rather than sexual. She became, in other words, that
1:07:43
Speaker 1: most dangerous of all byproducts of the sexual revolution, a
1:07:46
Speaker 1: biological cultural type. She had a way of leading young
1:07:49
Speaker 1: men on into exhilarating topics and sitting with him in
1:07:52
Speaker 1: prerogative attitudes, and then putting on her hat and going
1:07:54
Speaker 1: quietly home to bed. In short, New York was now
1:07:58
Speaker 1: home to this girl, this biology go cultural lady, and
1:08:01
Speaker 1: she was in a fair way to step placidly into
1:08:03
Speaker 1: a good old fashioned marriage when the right man came along,
1:08:05
Speaker 1: and he usually did the poor yap and of chapter
1:08:09
Speaker 1: four Chapter five of Is Sex Necessary? Or Why You
1:08:18
Speaker 1: Feel the Way You Do? By James Stillber and E. B. White.
1:08:21
Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter five,
1:08:25
Speaker 1: The Lilies and Bluebird Delusion. The young bradgroom unexpectedly discovers
1:08:30
Speaker 1: that his wife has been brought up in extreme underwarness
1:08:33
Speaker 1: the true facts of life, and believes in some variant
1:08:35
Speaker 1: of the birds and flowers delusion, that is, that birds
1:08:38
Speaker 1: and flowers have something to do with the emotional life
1:08:40
Speaker 1: of persons. Is faced for the situation, calling for the
1:08:42
Speaker 1: greatest tact and tenderness. It won't do any good for
1:08:46
Speaker 1: him to get mad or to indulge in self pity, crying,
1:08:49
Speaker 1: oh how sorry I am for me? And only a
1:08:51
Speaker 1: coward would go directly into a psychooneurosis without first trying
1:08:54
Speaker 1: to win his wife over to acceptance of things as
1:08:57
Speaker 1: they are. I have in mind the case of a
1:08:59
Speaker 1: young lady whose sully mother had taught her to believe
1:09:01
Speaker 1: that she would have a little son three years old
1:09:03
Speaker 1: named Ronald as soon as her husband brought a pair
1:09:06
Speaker 1: of bluebirds into a room full of the lilies of
1:09:08
Speaker 1: the valley. The young woman, to say nothing of. The
1:09:10
Speaker 1: young man, was thus made the victim of one of
1:09:12
Speaker 1: the extremest cases of birds and flowers fixation which has
1:09:15
Speaker 1: ever come to my attention. I shall transcribe from doctor
1:09:19
Speaker 1: Titherridge's notes the first dialogue and the subject that took
1:09:22
Speaker 1: place between the young couple. This dialogue was carefully reconstructed
1:09:25
Speaker 1: by Tithridge from the account of the incident as given
1:09:27
Speaker 1: by the young husband, who sought his advice and counsel.
1:09:31
Speaker 1: On the evening of the twenty fifth of June, when
1:09:33
Speaker 1: the couple were married, the young husband entered their hotel
1:09:35
Speaker 1: suite to find it literally a garden of lilies of
1:09:37
Speaker 1: the valley. He was profoundly touched, but baffled, and asked
1:09:41
Speaker 1: his wife, who was dead, where are the bluebirds? She replied, coyly,
1:09:46
Speaker 1: What bluebirds? He demanded, The bluebirds, she said, blushing. Unfortunately,
1:09:51
Speaker 1: but not unnaturally, the bread group did not know what
1:09:54
Speaker 1: the bride was talking about. What was of the extremest
1:09:56
Speaker 1: importance to her was to her husband merely an idol
1:09:59
Speaker 1: whim shadowy fancy. Obviously, the young couple should have talked
1:10:03
Speaker 1: such matters over long before, but they hadn't, and that
1:10:05
Speaker 1: they were. He strove to change the subject, whistled, lighted cigarettes,
1:10:10
Speaker 1: for he was nervous enough the way it was, But
1:10:12
Speaker 1: she kept recurring to the bluebirds. His befolderment became tinged
1:10:16
Speaker 1: with some alarm, for during their courtship he had put
1:10:19
Speaker 1: forth their great effort to examine into her mental capacity,
1:10:21
Speaker 1: and he was now assailed by the excusable suspicion that
1:10:24
Speaker 1: she was perhaps not exactly bright. He talked rapidly, apprehensively
1:10:28
Speaker 1: of many things. Among the things he talked about for
1:10:31
Speaker 1: the Saint Louis Cardinals, a baseball club. From there, it
1:10:34
Speaker 1: was but an easy associative step for his wife to
1:10:36
Speaker 1: go back to the bluebirds again. Aren't you going to
1:10:39
Speaker 1: get any bluebirds? She persisted. I don't know where the
1:10:43
Speaker 1: how I'd get any bluebirds tonight, he said, rather irritably,
1:10:47
Speaker 1: me not being bowo peep. The nuclear complex was made
1:10:50
Speaker 1: right then and there there was a long tense silence,
1:10:53
Speaker 1: after which the bride burst into bitter tears. Now, dear,
1:10:57
Speaker 1: said her husband, more reasonably must trying to get these
1:10:59
Speaker 1: things fraightened out. What are you talking about anyway? Sex?
1:11:03
Speaker 1: If you want to know, she blurted out and swooned.
1:11:07
Speaker 1: Instead of getting her a glass of water, he excitedly
1:11:09
Speaker 1: phoned the room clerk, but became embarrassed once he had
1:11:11
Speaker 1: got him, and rarely asked a couple of blankets be
1:11:14
Speaker 1: sent up. It was, unfortunately, as I have said, June
1:11:17
Speaker 1: and warmish. Thus, when the wife revived sufficiently to become
1:11:21
Speaker 1: aware for surroundings, the husband was standing above her, holding
1:11:23
Speaker 1: a pair of blankets and looking pale and warm. What
1:11:26
Speaker 1: are those for, she demanded suspiciously, for the notion had
1:11:30
Speaker 1: now formed in her own mind. Doctor Tithridge feels and
1:11:33
Speaker 1: I agree that she very likely had married a dementia
1:11:36
Speaker 1: Praecock's case. These mutual suspicions of mental inadequacy are comme
1:11:40
Speaker 1: under the first year of any marriage, but rarely are
1:11:42
Speaker 1: they aggravated by factors so clearly calculated upset the mental
1:11:45
Speaker 1: equilibrium as bluebirds at midnight and blankets in June. This
1:11:49
Speaker 1: husband and wife were drifting farther and farther apart. The
1:11:52
Speaker 1: solution to their problem was becoming more and more remote.
1:11:54
Speaker 1: What with this setting up of involved artificial barriers is
1:11:57
Speaker 1: almost fantastical beclouding of the issue. Doctor Tuthridge tells me
1:12:01
Speaker 1: that he believes the young man's reason would have been
1:12:03
Speaker 1: permanently dethroned had he Doctor Tythridge tweeted or tripped like
1:12:07
Speaker 1: a bird on the occasion of the husband's first visit
1:12:09
Speaker 1: to him footnote one. Experiments of this sort calculated to
1:12:13
Speaker 1: determine the possible effects of tweeting or chirping in the
1:12:16
Speaker 1: case of a bird's fixation, fall of course outside the
1:12:19
Speaker 1: province of the psychoanalyst, and not only is the legality
1:12:21
Speaker 1: of their practice questionable, but the value of the results
1:12:24
Speaker 1: obtained is highly doubtful. When the wife beheld her husband
1:12:27
Speaker 1: standing there with the blankets, she demanded, again, what are
1:12:29
Speaker 1: you doing with those blankets? I get called, he mumbled,
1:12:34
Speaker 1: and he proceeded to put the blankets on the shelf
1:12:35
Speaker 1: of a closet, which already held several extra pair. He
1:12:39
Speaker 1: was furthermore decidedly warm, and kept patting his brow with
1:12:42
Speaker 1: a handkerchief. Let's go out and take a walk, suggested
1:12:46
Speaker 1: his wife apprehensively. To this, her husband very readily agreed.
1:12:50
Speaker 1: They were getting afraid to stay in the same room
1:12:52
Speaker 1: with each other than which there is no other condition
1:12:54
Speaker 1: than the world more certain to break up a marriage.
1:12:56
Speaker 1: Out in the street among people, they both felt safer,
1:12:59
Speaker 1: and they won to a bench a fully crowded park
1:13:01
Speaker 1: and sat down. Where did you get the idea that
1:13:04
Speaker 1: bluebirds have anything to do with us? Demanded the breadgroom.
1:13:08
Speaker 1: My mumsy, she said. Footnote one. Young women who allude
1:13:12
Speaker 1: to their mothers as mumsy almost invariably present difficult problems
1:13:15
Speaker 1: and adjustment. The word is a sentimentalization of the more
1:13:18
Speaker 1: common mamma and indicates the greater dependence upon maternal direction
1:13:21
Speaker 1: and supervision than may be expected in the kids of
1:13:23
Speaker 1: young women who use the more familiar term. Well, he said,
1:13:27
Speaker 1: she deceived you about What about what you're talking about? Sex?
1:13:33
Speaker 1: She asked. That isn't sex, honey, he told her. Birds
1:13:37
Speaker 1: and flowers are simply they do not. That is because
1:13:40
Speaker 1: they've all our life without them. I couldn't, she said,
1:13:44
Speaker 1: And after a pause, I always feared you didn't want children.
1:13:48
Speaker 1: I do want children. I want you, you want me.
1:13:51
Speaker 1: Everything is going to be all right? How is it,
1:13:54
Speaker 1: she demanded. In the first place, he began pulling at
1:13:58
Speaker 1: his collar. It's this way. Now here's the way it is.
1:14:01
Speaker 1: Now you take me or you take you say in
1:14:03
Speaker 1: the first place, the girl that is woman? Why? Woman?
1:14:08
Speaker 1: He leaped into a profound silence. Footnote one. Explanations of
1:14:12
Speaker 1: natural phenomena in terms of the collective noun, particularly where
1:14:15
Speaker 1: the noun becomes capitalized in the mind of the person
1:14:17
Speaker 1: striving to explain, are almost never successful. Well go on,
1:14:22
Speaker 1: she prompted. Well, he said, you know how women are,
1:14:26
Speaker 1: don't you, Yes, she said, doubtfully. That's fine, he said, brightening,
1:14:33
Speaker 1: Now women are that way. Then what way? She asked?
1:14:37
Speaker 1: Why the way? You are from me than I am?
1:14:41
Speaker 1: I mean? He made a vague gesture. I don't see
1:14:44
Speaker 1: what you mean, She said, her husband to give a
1:14:47
Speaker 1: light laugh. Hal's bowels. It's simple enough, he cried, suddenly,
1:14:52
Speaker 1: giving the light laugh again. It's certainly simple enough. Now
1:14:55
Speaker 1: here we'll take Adam and Eve. There they were all alone.
1:14:59
Speaker 1: See there were two bluebirds, said his wife. Not till
1:15:03
Speaker 1: after the flood, there weren't, he corrected her. Well, he
1:15:06
Speaker 1: found out that there were certain essential differences what you
1:15:08
Speaker 1: might call on purpose. I mean, there must have been
1:15:11
Speaker 1: some reason you can count on it. Things like that
1:15:13
Speaker 1: just don't happen. Well, then he simply figured it out,
1:15:16
Speaker 1: figured out the reason for what, for all this discrepancy.
1:15:21
Speaker 1: Obviously it just didn't happen. It couldn't just have happened.
1:15:24
Speaker 1: It had to make some sense. Nature is like that,
1:15:27
Speaker 1: so he so he finally Ah. All he did was
1:15:30
Speaker 1: tell her, see I mean, he asked her. Asked her what?
1:15:34
Speaker 1: A simply asked her, said her husband, in call almost
1:15:37
Speaker 1: cold tones. He simply asked her why she thought this was?
1:15:41
Speaker 1: Is there anything wrong in that? And so gradually they
1:15:43
Speaker 1: understood why it was. It's as simple as that. He
1:15:47
Speaker 1: looked at her triumphantly. What are you talking about? She demanded, lessen,
1:15:52
Speaker 1: he said at last, firmly, both of us speak a
1:15:55
Speaker 1: little French, and we might try it that way. I
1:15:57
Speaker 1: think I could explain better in French. Even little children,
1:16:01
Speaker 1: tiny girls sink upraid them a blonde in France and
1:16:04
Speaker 1: think nothing of it. It's just a nice, wholesome idea
1:16:08
Speaker 1: upbraid them a blonda and it sounds like poetry. But
1:16:11
Speaker 1: take it in English and what do you get? Quite
1:16:13
Speaker 1: close to my blonde, answered his wife, Kofe bond Armire.
1:16:18
Speaker 1: Her husband hurried on how good it is to sleep.
1:16:22
Speaker 1: She translated, fine, now you're talking. Go on, She said,
1:16:26
Speaker 1: you're talking well, all right, but first I wanted you
1:16:29
Speaker 1: to see that there's no reason to get embarrassed because
1:16:32
Speaker 1: everything is lovely in French. So don't mind my frankness.
1:16:36
Speaker 1: I don't, said the bride. All right, he began again.
1:16:40
Speaker 1: Alor now ili aka keshose kevu of a cajepa neepa
1:16:47
Speaker 1: we she said, bon he said, alor sa se natrel
1:16:53
Speaker 1: ah sasebein natrel par example. Put in his wife a
1:16:58
Speaker 1: little illogically, is he said, and after a great pause, dites,
1:17:03
Speaker 1: donc ditel vou. You really should use two and twins,
1:17:08
Speaker 1: not vou, said his wife. It's more intimate, all right,
1:17:12
Speaker 1: he responded, Now to ask calcay shows to us tis command.
1:17:20
Speaker 1: She demanded. I just don't know enough words, said the
1:17:24
Speaker 1: bridegroom wretchedly. The bride put her hand on his arm.
1:17:28
Speaker 1: Let's try THEE and thou in English. She suggested. That's
1:17:32
Speaker 1: not a bad idea. He said, well, all right, now
1:17:36
Speaker 1: thee has hath. She corrected, the hath certain ah differences,
1:17:42
Speaker 1: she supplied, But isn't it thou half or is it
1:17:44
Speaker 1: thee hath da. How why that, cried her husband. And
1:17:49
Speaker 1: all thy life has never been around for Pitte's sake, certainly,
1:17:53
Speaker 1: and thou and you have no right to talk to
1:17:55
Speaker 1: me like that. I'm sorry, said the young man. I'm sorry.
1:18:00
Speaker 1: He rose to his feet. Ye gods to think this
1:18:03
Speaker 1: had to happen to me. Ah well, lesson, I tell
1:18:06
Speaker 1: you what, I'll write it out for you. How about that?
1:18:08
Speaker 1: And if you don't like the idea, why all right?
1:18:10
Speaker 1: I suppose. It was the next day that the young husband,
1:18:14
Speaker 1: who had sat up all night in the hotel lobby
1:18:16
Speaker 1: thinking and writing, visited doctor Titthridge. I am happy to
1:18:20
Speaker 1: report that, as not infrequently happens in such cases, a
1:18:23
Speaker 1: solution was finally arrived at. However, in a great number
1:18:26
Speaker 1: of cases the difficulty has never overcome. The home becomes
1:18:29
Speaker 1: a curious sort of hybrid with overtones of the botanical
1:18:32
Speaker 1: garden and the aviary. The husband grows morose and snappish,
1:18:36
Speaker 1: the wife cross and pettish. Very often she takes up
1:18:39
Speaker 1: la cross and he goes in for raising rabbits. If
1:18:41
Speaker 1: allowed to go on, the situation can become so involved
1:18:44
Speaker 1: and intricate that not all the interests from the time
1:18:46
Speaker 1: of Joan of arc Down could unravel it. The problem
1:18:49
Speaker 1: is by no means any simpler when the wife is
1:18:51
Speaker 1: cognizant of things as they are when the husband is ignorant.
1:18:54
Speaker 1: I know of one young man who every night tenderly placed,
1:18:56
Speaker 1: with much strange clucking, a basket near the hearth, into
1:18:59
Speaker 1: which she had some expectation that a baby would be
1:19:01
Speaker 1: deposited by a stork plait. One another young husband constructed,
1:19:05
Speaker 1: at considerable expense of water lily pond in his back yard,
1:19:08
Speaker 1: and fondly rode about in it twilight after twilight, searching
1:19:11
Speaker 1: for infants, flaying his finger to his lip, making ch
1:19:14
Speaker 1: chick noises at his wife, who watched him in profound amazement.
1:19:18
Speaker 1: In both these cases, the blaves were fine women, of
1:19:20
Speaker 1: strong character, that the background a sturdy pioneer stock, and
1:19:23
Speaker 1: they soon put a stop to such charades once they
1:19:25
Speaker 1: divined the craos the entangled wish motives behind them. It
1:19:28
Speaker 1: may be said, indeed, the young wives are more candid
1:19:31
Speaker 1: and direct in their explanations of natural phenomena than young
1:19:33
Speaker 1: husbands when they have to be the existence of such
1:19:36
Speaker 1: deplorable ignorance is a sad commentary and sentimentality. Of a
1:19:39
Speaker 1: nation which sets itself up to be frankly sexual, there
1:19:42
Speaker 1: is much reason to be hopeful. However, the future parents
1:19:45
Speaker 1: of the land will doubtless come straight to the point
1:19:47
Speaker 1: in matters of this sort when talking with their children.
1:19:50
Speaker 1: The children of to day will be the parents of tomorrow.
1:19:52
Speaker 1: And you know how the children of to day are
1:19:55
Speaker 1: and of chapter five Chapter six of Is Sex Necessary?
1:20:04
Speaker 1: Or Why You Feel the way you do? By James
1:20:06
Speaker 1: Thurber and E. B. White. This LibriVox recording is in
1:20:09
Speaker 1: the public domain. Chapter six, What should children tell parents?
1:20:15
Speaker 1: So many children have come to me and said, what
1:20:17
Speaker 1: shall I tell my parents about sex? My answer is
1:20:20
Speaker 1: always the same, tell them the truth. If the subject
1:20:23
Speaker 1: is approached in a tactful way, it should be no
1:20:25
Speaker 1: more embarrassing to teach a parent about sex than to
1:20:27
Speaker 1: teach them about personal pronouns, and should be less discouraging
1:20:31
Speaker 1: in discussing sex and enlightenment for parents. First of all,
1:20:34
Speaker 1: definitions are needed. What do we mean by parents? Do
1:20:37
Speaker 1: we mean all adults who have had children? Do we
1:20:39
Speaker 1: mean adults who have had children they knew not why?
1:20:42
Speaker 1: Or do we mean married people who have given birth
1:20:44
Speaker 1: to one or more offspring, but have never gone into
1:20:46
Speaker 1: the matter very thoroughly. For the purposes of this article,
1:20:49
Speaker 1: it will be assumed that by parents we mean all
1:20:51
Speaker 1: adult persons permeated with a strong sense of indecency. I
1:20:55
Speaker 1: have talked with hundreds of children about the problem of
1:20:57
Speaker 1: educating their parents along sex lines. So many of them
1:21:00
Speaker 1: have told me that they honestly try to give the
1:21:02
Speaker 1: elders the benefit of their rich experience in life, but
1:21:04
Speaker 1: that the parents usually grew flushed and read and would
1:21:07
Speaker 1: reply nice people don't talk about such things. It is
1:21:10
Speaker 1: true that great gap exists between generations. The fact that
1:21:13
Speaker 1: children are embarrassed how their parents along when they are
1:21:16
Speaker 1: attending certain movies or plays is indicative of how hard
1:21:18
Speaker 1: it is to overcome the old fear of allowing what's
1:21:20
Speaker 1: elders to learn anything. A child never knows at what
1:21:23
Speaker 1: point in a place is uninformed. Old father will start
1:21:25
Speaker 1: to giggle. It is hard for children to break through
1:21:28
Speaker 1: and really come in touch with their elders. Nice people
1:21:31
Speaker 1: don't talk about such things is the defense which old
1:21:33
Speaker 1: people put up against life itself when they feel it
1:21:36
Speaker 1: crowding in all around their heads. Parents hesitate to discuss
1:21:39
Speaker 1: things calmly and intelligently with their children for two reasons. First,
1:21:43
Speaker 1: they have a kind of dread of learning something they
1:21:44
Speaker 1: don't want to know, and second, they feel that if
1:21:46
Speaker 1: they must learn anything at all, they would like to
1:21:48
Speaker 1: be spared the humiliation of learning it from their offspring. Actually,
1:21:51
Speaker 1: middle age and even senescence is marked by a great
1:21:54
Speaker 1: curiosity about life. There is a feeling that life is
1:21:57
Speaker 1: slipping away quickly, and that it would be terrible to
1:21:59
Speaker 1: have the and come before everything in life has been revealed.
1:22:03
Speaker 1: The beauty of life always apparent implies a mystery which
1:22:06
Speaker 1: is disturbing right up to the bitter end. The spectacle
1:22:08
Speaker 1: of old men wistfully attending sex lectures, as they frequently do,
1:22:12
Speaker 1: suggests that the strong suspicion exists in them. The summary
1:22:14
Speaker 1: they will hear, the magic word by which human affairs
1:22:16
Speaker 1: will become clarified. Somewhere they will glimpse the ultimate ecstasy.
1:22:20
Speaker 1: Children who allow their fathers and mothers to whom they
1:22:23
Speaker 1: owe their very existence, to go on wondering about sex
1:22:25
Speaker 1: are derelicts to duty. If young folks lack the tact
1:22:28
Speaker 1: or intelligence requisite to a lightening their parents, the task
1:22:31
Speaker 1: should be entrusted to someone else. Yet it is hard
1:22:33
Speaker 1: to say whom a child should think twice before sending
1:22:36
Speaker 1: his father around to public schools to secure sex information
1:22:38
Speaker 1: from his teacher. Women teachers to borrow a phrase are
1:22:42
Speaker 1: apt to be emotionally illiterate. Many teachers have had no
1:22:45
Speaker 1: sex life and are just waiting for somebody like your
1:22:47
Speaker 1: father to show up. One's father and mother are never
1:22:50
Speaker 1: too old to be told facts. Indeed, it is most
1:22:53
Speaker 1: unkind to keep them in ignorance and allow them to
1:22:54
Speaker 1: nourish the doubts and horrors of their imagination. The majority
1:22:58
Speaker 1: of parents pick up their knowledge of the facts of
1:22:59
Speaker 1: life from smoking car conversations, bridge club teas, and after
1:23:03
Speaker 1: dinner speakers. They received it from their vicious adult companions
1:23:06
Speaker 1: were only slightly less ignorant than they are, and to
1:23:08
Speaker 1: give them hopelessly garbled version, they pick it up too,
1:23:11
Speaker 1: from the gutter. This matter picking up information from the
1:23:14
Speaker 1: gutter as an interesting topic in itself quite their. Most
1:23:17
Speaker 1: remarkable case history that has come to my notice is
1:23:19
Speaker 1: that of Francois de la Matter, apparent, thirty years of age,
1:23:22
Speaker 1: who went deliberately to the gutter for his sex education.
1:23:26
Speaker 1: He had heard as all people do here sometime or other,
1:23:29
Speaker 1: that sex can be learned from the gutter. So he
1:23:31
Speaker 1: set out to make a comprehensive survey of the gutters
1:23:33
Speaker 1: of eighteen large American cities. For a long time, he
1:23:36
Speaker 1: found out nothing, although it was a very curious man
1:23:39
Speaker 1: by a peculiar piece of fortune. However, he happened to
1:23:42
Speaker 1: be walking in Cincinnati one day and met a man
1:23:45
Speaker 1: who was leading a tame stork. The man was in
1:23:47
Speaker 1: the gutter. The stork carried in its bill alive baby
1:23:51
Speaker 1: in swaddling clothes. Smelling a rat, Mister dela Matter stopped
1:23:55
Speaker 1: the man and acquired where the baby came from. The
1:23:57
Speaker 1: man replied that he didn't know for that night, continued
1:24:00
Speaker 1: mister delo matter, where does any baby come from? The
1:24:04
Speaker 1: man shook his head. Then he relented and told mister
1:24:07
Speaker 1: Delamater that he had merely been hired to lead the
1:24:09
Speaker 1: stroke around the streets to advertise a moving picture called
1:24:12
Speaker 1: her Husband's First Born. The whole incident so confused the
1:24:15
Speaker 1: mind of the thirty year old parent that he eventually
1:24:17
Speaker 1: evolved the strange theory that babies are born within the father,
1:24:20
Speaker 1: an erroneous notion that dwarfed his emotions and modified his character.
1:24:24
Speaker 1: It is of the utmost importance in imparting sex knowledge
1:24:27
Speaker 1: to one's parents that it be done in such a
1:24:29
Speaker 1: way as not to engender fear or anxiety. The phraseology
1:24:33
Speaker 1: should be chosen carefully, and efforts should be made to
1:24:35
Speaker 1: explain everything clearly, but without the use of words which
1:24:37
Speaker 1: have a tendency to make old people nervous. The word
1:24:40
Speaker 1: erotic is such a word. When it is necessary to
1:24:43
Speaker 1: speak of man's erotic tendencies, it is best to substitute
1:24:46
Speaker 1: another word in the first place. An overwhelming majority of
1:24:50
Speaker 1: parents do not know the exact meaning of the word erotic,
1:24:52
Speaker 1: and to know an inexact meaning is worse than nothing
1:24:55
Speaker 1: wheny are apt to confuse it vaguely with exotic. I
1:24:58
Speaker 1: have known parents to go through whole books by authors
1:25:01
Speaker 1: like Havelock Ellis or merrywear Dunnet without understanding a single
1:25:04
Speaker 1: paragraph because they thought man's eroticism referred to his desire
1:25:07
Speaker 1: to be in some foreign place like Spain. Those parts
1:25:11
Speaker 1: that actually do detect the difference between the sound and
1:25:13
Speaker 1: the two words will immediately become nervous, inattentive, and dispirited.
1:25:17
Speaker 1: They will make some excuse to leave the room, and
1:25:19
Speaker 1: will wander out, probably to the icebox, to get themselves
1:25:21
Speaker 1: a cold snack, which they will lead to all in
1:25:23
Speaker 1: a sulky frame of mind. Later they will look up
1:25:26
Speaker 1: the word in the dictionary, but will forget it by
1:25:28
Speaker 1: the time they hear it again in conversation or read
1:25:30
Speaker 1: it in print. Furthermore, all their taste for sex will
1:25:33
Speaker 1: be gone. Just what to tell parents is, of course
1:25:36
Speaker 1: a vital question not to be answered dogmatically. Before a
1:25:40
Speaker 1: child can come to gentiously approach such subjects as pedestalism,
1:25:44
Speaker 1: the recessive knee begugnianism, rigidity in men, birth control, subslimation,
1:25:50
Speaker 1: and the swastika fixation, he must clear the boards. The
1:25:53
Speaker 1: simple phases of sex should be imparted in a direct manner.
1:25:56
Speaker 1: It is best to explain things in a matter of
1:25:58
Speaker 1: fact way, rather than to work to such cloudy analogies
1:26:01
Speaker 1: as birds and flowers. Strange to say, the habits of
1:26:04
Speaker 1: birds and flowers have done as little to clarify the
1:26:07
Speaker 1: human scene as almost any other two manifestations in nature.
1:26:10
Speaker 1: Further there was always the danger in setting up planet
1:26:12
Speaker 1: or animal life as an example that one's parents will
1:26:15
Speaker 1: place a literal interpretation on things. I am thinking, particularly
1:26:18
Speaker 1: of the case which all sociological students know about, of
1:26:22
Speaker 1: Nina Sembric, the fifteen year old high school girl who
1:26:24
Speaker 1: attempted to impart knowledge to her father by telling him
1:26:27
Speaker 1: about bees. Nina's mother was dead, or she would have
1:26:30
Speaker 1: told her too. She traced, in rather minute detail, the
1:26:33
Speaker 1: renascence of earth in spring, the blossoming of the trees,
1:26:36
Speaker 1: the activity of the bees and their function in distributing
1:26:38
Speaker 1: the pollen, the fertilization of the seed in its growth
1:26:40
Speaker 1: during the warm languor of summer days. Finally, the fruition
1:26:43
Speaker 1: and harvest. It was a beautiful story, redolent of orchards
1:26:47
Speaker 1: and sunny hillsides, instinct with life, a story that had
1:26:50
Speaker 1: a soporific effect on mister Sembric Lollingham as the buzz
1:26:53
Speaker 1: of a bee lulls when in hot daisy fields. The
1:26:56
Speaker 1: upshot of it was that he gathered a rather strange
1:26:58
Speaker 1: impression from the narrative and somehow got the idea that
1:27:00
Speaker 1: to have babies you had to keep bees. He bought
1:27:03
Speaker 1: several hives, installing them in the little sitting room on
1:27:05
Speaker 1: the second floor where missus Sembrick had kept her sewing
1:27:08
Speaker 1: machine when she was alive. The acquisition of the Apriary
1:27:11
Speaker 1: further complicated matters for mister Sembrick by reason to the
1:27:13
Speaker 1: fact that bees themselves enjoy a rather extraordinary sexual scheme.
1:27:17
Speaker 1: Theirs is a complex society, infinitely more diverting and harder
1:27:20
Speaker 1: to understand than our own. Observed by a slightly nervous
1:27:24
Speaker 1: person who was tried profit by a simple analogy, as
1:27:26
Speaker 1: mister Sembric was, bees are capable of causing the utmost confusion.
1:27:30
Speaker 1: If you will recall what you know about bees, you
1:27:33
Speaker 1: will readily understand what I mean. In a colony of bees,
1:27:36
Speaker 1: certain individuals have no sex whatsoever. These are the workers.
1:27:40
Speaker 1: The male bees are drones. The queen or mother bee,
1:27:43
Speaker 1: whiles her sexual character only after being arbitrarily chosen for
1:27:46
Speaker 1: the purpose, walled up and fattened on special food. Mister
1:27:50
Speaker 1: Sembrick marveled at these things. Pacing his hopes entirely on
1:27:53
Speaker 1: what he had seen. He made his first overt act,
1:27:55
Speaker 1: which was to go up his business. He was a
1:27:57
Speaker 1: merchant tailor, on the assumption that to be endowed of
1:28:00
Speaker 1: masculine characteristics one had to be a drone In this,
1:28:03
Speaker 1: of course, he was justified to some degree, for it
1:28:05
Speaker 1: is quite true that very busy men rarely are fully
1:28:07
Speaker 1: equipped for a complete or happy sex life. Business Men
1:28:11
Speaker 1: commonly find a vicarious gratification for their erotic nature and
1:28:14
Speaker 1: Cardandike's systems, often their satiable appetite for life, as dissipated
1:28:18
Speaker 1: in the process of dictating a single sales letter on
1:28:21
Speaker 1: the men who devote virtually their entire attention to love,
1:28:23
Speaker 1: ever a glimpse its full glory, will experience its bewildering intensity,
1:28:27
Speaker 1: and they make so little money they may just as
1:28:28
Speaker 1: well not. Mister Sembrick therefore was not without justification becoming
1:28:33
Speaker 1: a drone, since life was what he wanted to find
1:28:35
Speaker 1: out about. But it was when he undertook to fatten
1:28:37
Speaker 1: up a lady of his acquaintance into a mother that
1:28:39
Speaker 1: he ran into difficulties. He locked her in the kitchen
1:28:42
Speaker 1: and applied her with rich desserts. He even urged honey
1:28:46
Speaker 1: on her, a rather literal expedient even for a men
1:28:48
Speaker 1: in his mental condition. The lady not only failed to
1:28:51
Speaker 1: become a mother, but she took second and died surrounded
1:28:54
Speaker 1: by a group of mister sembricks workers whom he had
1:28:56
Speaker 1: hired to help feed her. With a dead woman in
1:28:59
Speaker 1: the kitchen and a lot of bees upstairs in the
1:29:00
Speaker 1: sitting room, the household became unbearable as a place to
1:29:03
Speaker 1: live and bring up his daughter Nina. So mister Sembrick fled,
1:29:06
Speaker 1: still ignorant of the essential knowledge of life, but not
1:29:09
Speaker 1: one sexually speaking. Another case, not exactly paralleling the Sembric affair,
1:29:15
Speaker 1: is the case of two parents who failed to learn
1:29:17
Speaker 1: something to their advantage because they happened to be at dinner.
1:29:19
Speaker 1: It happened this way. Charles Updegraf had sent his son
1:29:23
Speaker 1: Junior to spend the summer at a boys camp. There.
1:29:26
Speaker 1: In addition to learning how to swim, paddol and make fires,
1:29:29
Speaker 1: Junior learned about sex, so that he returned home fine
1:29:32
Speaker 1: and brown, and a credit to the updographs. The aptographs
1:29:35
Speaker 1: had swum paddles, made fires, and so on for generations.
1:29:39
Speaker 1: Now at Camp Whortleberry, that was the name of the camp,
1:29:41
Speaker 1: the authorities had adopted what is known as the pet
1:29:44
Speaker 1: method for imparting sex knowledge to the boys. Each boy
1:29:48
Speaker 1: was given charge of a pet of some kind, and
1:29:50
Speaker 1: the pets were given carte blanche. Junior Updograph drew a
1:29:53
Speaker 1: pair of sunfish to augment the actual pet study. The
1:29:57
Speaker 1: boys were also given lectures about the camp director, who
1:29:59
Speaker 1: knew an eternal away what he was talking about. Thus,
1:30:02
Speaker 1: when the summer was over, the boy's minds were full
1:30:04
Speaker 1: of a strange assortment of effects and oddments, some of
1:30:06
Speaker 1: them rather are amusing. Young Junior had hardly been home
1:30:09
Speaker 1: an hour when he thought he would do his old
1:30:11
Speaker 1: men a good turn by telling him what he knew
1:30:12
Speaker 1: about sunfish. The Uptographs were at table Pop. He said,
1:30:17
Speaker 1: do you want the lowdown on a sunfish? Missus Uptgraph
1:30:21
Speaker 1: hastily interrupted. Better wait until after dinner, son, she said.
1:30:27
Speaker 1: Note parents have always been held back with a superstitious
1:30:29
Speaker 1: idea that it is wrong to learn anything while eating.
1:30:32
Speaker 1: What's the matter with right now, asked Junior. I'm just
1:30:36
Speaker 1: going to tell Pop about our pet study course. I
1:30:38
Speaker 1: know a lot of things. Wait till we're through eating,
1:30:42
Speaker 1: said Missus Updgraf. Why should I A mouse is an
1:30:45
Speaker 1: embryo twenty days A lopsided apples that way because it's
1:30:48
Speaker 1: been formal last only on one side. We had animals
1:30:51
Speaker 1: grow bright colored in the mating season, and so it
1:30:53
Speaker 1: goes sunfish, Junior said, missus Upgraf, sharply not till after dinner.
1:30:58
Speaker 1: Sunfish can wait. No, they can't, cried Junior, roaming up
1:31:02
Speaker 1: to his subject. The father sunfish makes the nest. Then
1:31:06
Speaker 1: we don't want to hear about it, snapped Junior's mother.
1:31:09
Speaker 1: Tell us about your canoe trips. I never went on
1:31:12
Speaker 1: the canou trips. Why not all? What was watching the sunfish?
1:31:16
Speaker 1: The matter was dropped, and the meal continued in silence.
1:31:19
Speaker 1: After dinner, mister Uptregraf, secretly very much interested, hung around
1:31:23
Speaker 1: and hope that his son would again open up the
1:31:25
Speaker 1: subject of sunfish. The boy never did. He was only
1:31:28
Speaker 1: a child, and children easily discouraged. I suspect that the
1:31:32
Speaker 1: Church is responsible in large measure for the ideas of
1:31:34
Speaker 1: life now held by adults. Sex is still sinned the
1:31:37
Speaker 1: evangelical clergy. A kiss is thinkable only when sanctified by
1:31:41
Speaker 1: the Church. A child permits his parents to continue in
1:31:44
Speaker 1: the belief that the elevation of the soul depends on
1:31:46
Speaker 1: the renunciation of the flesh is hardly doing his duty
1:31:49
Speaker 1: by them. Sometimes it may be advisable to quote to
1:31:51
Speaker 1: your parents from Standard Rooks on the subject of sex.
1:31:54
Speaker 1: Great care must be taken, though, to avoid abruptness as
1:31:57
Speaker 1: far as possible. Thus there is some dot in my
1:32:00
Speaker 1: mind whether a child ought to approach its mother on
1:32:02
Speaker 1: a hot afternoon when she is tired and bedraggled, and
1:32:04
Speaker 1: say to her, mah, under favorable conditions, a husband and
1:32:07
Speaker 1: wife should remain sexually attractive to each other during the
1:32:10
Speaker 1: whole period of their sexual oppotency. That's no way for
1:32:13
Speaker 1: a child to talk. Some children have told me that
1:32:15
Speaker 1: instead of cooding from books, they've tried leaving the books
1:32:18
Speaker 1: lying around, opened at pertinent pages. Even this failed to work.
1:32:21
Speaker 1: In most cases. The mothers usually just picked up the book,
1:32:25
Speaker 1: dusted it, closed it, and fitted it neatly in some
1:32:27
Speaker 1: nearby shelf. They thought it was dusty and of chapter six.
1:32:37
Speaker 1: Chapter seven is sex necessary? Or Why you feel the
1:32:41
Speaker 1: way you do? By James Sturbur and E. B. White.
1:32:44
Speaker 1: This Little Broox recording is in the public domain. Chapter
1:32:48
Speaker 1: seven claustrophobia or whether her a young wife should know?
1:32:52
Speaker 1: There is an erroneous impression current nowadays this sex is everything.
1:32:57
Speaker 1: It is similar to the psychological delusion common during the
1:32:59
Speaker 1: Warrior year, as that the war would never end. Man
1:33:02
Speaker 1: is inclined to exaggerate the immensity of his chief preoccupation. Thus,
1:33:06
Speaker 1: when the World War was in progress, men convinced themselves
1:33:08
Speaker 1: that there would never be anything else but war. Then
1:33:11
Speaker 1: the war ended, and man was left, as it were, stranded,
1:33:14
Speaker 1: used to a tremendous preoccupation. He had to have another.
1:33:18
Speaker 1: He turned to sex under sheer momentum and overestimated its
1:33:21
Speaker 1: importance as he had magnified the immensity of war. Sex
1:33:24
Speaker 1: is by no means everything. It varies, as a matter
1:33:27
Speaker 1: of fact, from only as high as seventy eight percent
1:33:30
Speaker 1: of everything to as low as three point ten percent
1:33:33
Speaker 1: the norm, and a sane, healthy person should be between
1:33:35
Speaker 1: eighteen and twenty four percent. In these hectic days, however,
1:33:38
Speaker 1: it is not unusual to hear even intelligent persons say
1:33:41
Speaker 1: or imply that sex is everything. This, of course, leads
1:33:45
Speaker 1: to the mistaken idea that a couple who are, so
1:33:47
Speaker 1: to speak, emotionally compatible, are going to be compatible in
1:33:50
Speaker 1: every other way. Take care of sex, and the details
1:33:52
Speaker 1: will look after themselves as the rule. In a manner
1:33:55
Speaker 1: of speaking, nothing can be more stupid. A man and
1:33:58
Speaker 1: woman may be very very happy emotionally and not get
1:34:01
Speaker 1: anywhere at all. There are many reasons for this, but
1:34:04
Speaker 1: none is more important than the inability of many a
1:34:06
Speaker 1: husband otherwise normal, to become adjusted to a lack of freedom.
1:34:10
Speaker 1: Freedom is essential and as primary and urge for the
1:34:12
Speaker 1: man as the loss of it is with the woman.
1:34:14
Speaker 1: A man grows up with a desire to be free
1:34:16
Speaker 1: and unfettered. The boy of six wants to play outside
1:34:19
Speaker 1: the house all the time. He doesn't even want to
1:34:21
Speaker 1: come into the house for his meals. On the other hand,
1:34:24
Speaker 1: the little girls like to be in the house as
1:34:26
Speaker 1: much as they can when dusk falls. The little boys
1:34:29
Speaker 1: are restless under the urge to be several blocks away
1:34:31
Speaker 1: playing Go, Sheepy Go, But the little girls want to
1:34:34
Speaker 1: be home putting their dolls to bed. Usually at least
1:34:36
Speaker 1: one of the dolls is ill and needs constant attention,
1:34:39
Speaker 1: often as necessary to force little girls to go outside
1:34:42
Speaker 1: and get some air and exercise, just as it is
1:34:44
Speaker 1: frequently necessary to use forced to get little boys into
1:34:46
Speaker 1: the house. And even when girls do go outdoors, they
1:34:49
Speaker 1: have to be watched like a hawk, or they will
1:34:51
Speaker 1: be playing house in the dog box or under the
1:34:53
Speaker 1: cellar door. And yet, in spite of all this, women
1:34:56
Speaker 1: marry men without giving the serious cousin between their central
1:34:59
Speaker 1: natures a thought. They think that a man wants a home. Well,
1:35:02
Speaker 1: he does in a vague sort of way, not so
1:35:04
Speaker 1: much a home, however, as a house. He likes to
1:35:07
Speaker 1: be able to say where he lives when he goes
1:35:08
Speaker 1: to vote and things like that. But he doesn't want
1:35:11
Speaker 1: a home in the sense that a woman does to
1:35:12
Speaker 1: potter around in. He has neither the same urge nor
1:35:15
Speaker 1: the same talent for hanging pictures and rearranging furniture. A woman,
1:35:19
Speaker 1: no matter how opposed she may become to housework, still
1:35:22
Speaker 1: gets a small thrill out of shifting things. It never
1:35:25
Speaker 1: wears off. She may be too tired to cook and
1:35:27
Speaker 1: insist on going out to dinner, but before she goes,
1:35:29
Speaker 1: she would be willing, nay glad, to put the victroller
1:35:32
Speaker 1: where the davonport is and move the davenport over in
1:35:35
Speaker 1: front of the fireplace. One simple move like that is
1:35:38
Speaker 1: enough to a lumber man sufficiently to serve as the
1:35:40
Speaker 1: onset of a serious psychological or mental disturbance. Men don't
1:35:43
Speaker 1: stop to reason about individual moves as soon as a
1:35:46
Speaker 1: woman calls on her husband to help her change the
1:35:48
Speaker 1: position of a couple of pieces of furniture, he instantly
1:35:51
Speaker 1: thinks the house is going to be torn up as
1:35:52
Speaker 1: it was last spring, with carpets rolled up in the
1:35:55
Speaker 1: hall and step sliders and buckets everywhere. This gives him
1:35:58
Speaker 1: a strange, boxed in feel. If that feeling recurs too often,
1:36:02
Speaker 1: the husband may get claustrophobia. Claustrophobia is a dread of
1:36:06
Speaker 1: being in an enclosed space of living under conditions which
1:36:08
Speaker 1: would interfere with the speedy escape into the open. Every
1:36:12
Speaker 1: young wife should know the first symptoms of claustrophobia, because
1:36:15
Speaker 1: if taken in time, it can be cured, but if
1:36:17
Speaker 1: allowed to run on, deterioration sets in and may result
1:36:21
Speaker 1: in anything from benign stupor to complete paranoia. Once a
1:36:24
Speaker 1: husband gets into the outer rim of the paranoid and
1:36:26
Speaker 1: paranoia psychoses, he may easily run through all of them
1:36:29
Speaker 1: and in the end simply be no good at all.
1:36:31
Speaker 1: The first symptoms are usually innocuous enough and may consist
1:36:34
Speaker 1: in nothing more than a mere implification of personality without
1:36:37
Speaker 1: signs of conflict. The symptoms listed here ran are largely
1:36:40
Speaker 1: selected from Claude's table, but from there it is an
1:36:43
Speaker 1: easy step up to and including logical development of delusions
1:36:46
Speaker 1: upon false premises, fragmentation of personality, disimulation of egocentricity, looseness
1:36:51
Speaker 1: of systematization, exaggerated feelings of prejudice, polymorphic delusions, ingenious methods
1:36:57
Speaker 1: of defense, renascence, recourse to legal man, mere apathy, writing
1:37:01
Speaker 1: letters to the newspapers, and finally, diminution or total loss
1:37:05
Speaker 1: of neurovegetative reflexes. There is nothing sadder than the spectacle
1:37:09
Speaker 1: and once strong, firm minded man, the longer master of
1:37:11
Speaker 1: his neurrow vegetative reflexes, to say nothing of a hitherto
1:37:14
Speaker 1: well integrated fellow with the throes of fragmentation devoting this
1:37:18
Speaker 1: sad state. There are very simple way as to avoid
1:37:21
Speaker 1: this sad state of affairs. Of course, where a husband
1:37:24
Speaker 1: and wife have plenty of money to begin with and
1:37:26
Speaker 1: servants to take care of all the details of households management,
1:37:28
Speaker 1: there is very little danger of claustrophobia. There is always
1:37:31
Speaker 1: danger even with money and servants, of dual personality more
1:37:34
Speaker 1: than cholia and automatic writing, but not of claustrophobia in
1:37:38
Speaker 1: both the marriages, but usually made for other financial or
1:37:40
Speaker 1: social reasons. The husband and wife see little, if anything,
1:37:42
Speaker 1: of each other, and the husband need have no fear
1:37:44
Speaker 1: of being boxed in at all. She is free to
1:37:46
Speaker 1: come and go at any time. But I am dealing
1:37:49
Speaker 1: with the typical American marriage in which the wife runs
1:37:51
Speaker 1: her own home, builds it up around her husband, either
1:37:54
Speaker 1: because she has to or because she wants to, and
1:37:56
Speaker 1: one must desire to pot her about her own home
1:37:58
Speaker 1: goes back a long way, so far back that the
1:38:00
Speaker 1: urch often remains when economic necessity no longer exists. Women
1:38:04
Speaker 1: like to do their own work. They even built up
1:38:06
Speaker 1: ingenious excuses for doing it, such as claiming that the
1:38:08
Speaker 1: maid or the handyman didn't do it right. This desire
1:38:11
Speaker 1: may not last for longer than the first three or
1:38:13
Speaker 1: four weeks of marriage, but that is ample time for
1:38:15
Speaker 1: the onset of claustrophobia. During that period, a wife will
1:38:18
Speaker 1: concentrate on buying kitchen ware, painting chairs, selecting silver patterns,
1:38:21
Speaker 1: building bookshelves, et cetera, to the complete exclusion of everything
1:38:24
Speaker 1: else in life. The young husband, hearing all this tinkling
1:38:27
Speaker 1: and rattling and shoving going on around him, smelling paint,
1:38:30
Speaker 1: listening to hammering, et cetera, who began at once to
1:38:32
Speaker 1: have a fear of being trapped or a cat. He
1:38:34
Speaker 1: will strive to get out of the house and his
1:38:36
Speaker 1: wife should allow him to go, but she almost invariably does. However,
1:38:40
Speaker 1: is to stop him and ask him hold a piece
1:38:41
Speaker 1: of chintz or twil de joy up over the mantle
1:38:44
Speaker 1: so she can see whether she likes it there. She
1:38:46
Speaker 1: won't like it there, and he then has to hold
1:38:48
Speaker 1: it first highe then low then in between over a
1:38:51
Speaker 1: table and another part of the room. When this point
1:38:54
Speaker 1: is settled, he will likely be asked to hang a
1:38:55
Speaker 1: few pictures. Now, a curious thing happens to make sensitive
1:38:58
Speaker 1: husbands when they are hanging pictures are holding things against walls.
1:39:02
Speaker 1: They get the impression that the walls are being made
1:39:03
Speaker 1: thicker for the purposes of making it harder for them
1:39:05
Speaker 1: to get out, interfering with the speedy escape into the open.
1:39:09
Speaker 1: This is usually the beginning of the most dangerous of
1:39:11
Speaker 1: all hallucinations and claustrophobia cases, the persecution complex. The husband
1:39:16
Speaker 1: feels that he is not only being boxed in, but persecuted.
1:39:19
Speaker 1: If deterioration is allowed to set in, the delusion of
1:39:21
Speaker 1: persecution may attain stounding proportions such as that the masons
1:39:25
Speaker 1: of the piano makers are against him, or that former
1:39:27
Speaker 1: Vice President Charles G. Dawes is trying to get him.
1:39:30
Speaker 1: A case history will show how this happens. Case number
1:39:33
Speaker 1: twenty two Personal history, normal birth and development. Born June fourteenth,
1:39:38
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety four. Had the usual childhood diseases with no sequelee,
1:39:42
Speaker 1: no serious accidents or operations. Patient began school at the
1:39:45
Speaker 1: age of six, got along very well, graduating from high
1:39:48
Speaker 1: school at eighteen, graduated from college at twenty two, and
1:39:51
Speaker 1: became an architect. He always held good positions with good salaries,
1:39:54
Speaker 1: considered capable and efficient. Habits normal everything normal case married
1:39:58
Speaker 1: when he was twenty nine. General make up, all was
1:40:01
Speaker 1: considered keen, intelligent, amiable and trusting, liked outdoor activities, something
1:40:06
Speaker 1: of an athlete to the strong urge to get away
1:40:07
Speaker 1: by himself. Began to be suspicious shortly after his marriage.
1:40:11
Speaker 1: He equally showed the suspicion in his work by completing
1:40:13
Speaker 1: his associates that his ability was not recognized and intimating
1:40:16
Speaker 1: that he thought the elevators in the building had purposely
1:40:18
Speaker 1: quit stopping for him so that he could not get out.
1:40:20
Speaker 1: Nervous jumpy mental examination patient was very keen, alert, but
1:40:26
Speaker 1: suspicious when brought into observation. His demeanor was self assertive,
1:40:29
Speaker 1: but he was inclined to be anxious and restless. He
1:40:32
Speaker 1: demanded his immediate freedom of the physicians who were examining him,
1:40:35
Speaker 1: and was greatfully frightened. Let's get out of fear, he
1:40:38
Speaker 1: kept repeating to the doctor's he was allowed to depart.
1:40:41
Speaker 1: Commitment to an institution not being thought necessary on the
1:40:43
Speaker 1: occasion of this first examination. Later, the patient became violent,
1:40:47
Speaker 1: would jump up from dinner table and cry, let's get
1:40:50
Speaker 1: out of this causation. When examined for causation, the patient
1:40:54
Speaker 1: at first talked guardedly and then incoherently. Look out for
1:40:57
Speaker 1: the water, he would say, and again, you can't get
1:41:00
Speaker 1: out that way. His physicians, unable to correlate his statements
1:41:03
Speaker 1: and his apprehensions, called in doctor Damon Prill, the eminent
1:41:06
Speaker 1: of New York psychoanalyst. What have away here, said doctor Prill,
1:41:11
Speaker 1: patient explained one of the doctors. Look out for the water,
1:41:14
Speaker 1: cried the patient. Where did the water come from? Asked
1:41:18
Speaker 1: doctor Prill quietly rod the grip pen under the refrigerator,
1:41:22
Speaker 1: said the patient. Ah yes, said doctor Prill. You can't
1:41:25
Speaker 1: get out that way, cried the case. Oh why is
1:41:29
Speaker 1: it that we can't get out that way, asked doctor Prill.
1:41:32
Speaker 1: Because we are painted in, said the patient. Paint it in, eh,
1:41:37
Speaker 1: asked doctor Prill. You heard me, said the patient, painted
1:41:40
Speaker 1: in hammered in, pictured in davenported in hearsing me a
1:41:44
Speaker 1: strange twisting gesture with both hands leaned forward and ended
1:41:47
Speaker 1: in a confidential whisper rolled up in a rug. The
1:41:50
Speaker 1: reiteration of these incoherencies was all that Proe could get
1:41:53
Speaker 1: out of the patient, but it was enough to persuade
1:41:55
Speaker 1: him to question the man's wife. He made some interesting discoveries.
1:41:59
Speaker 1: It turned out that the life one day had asked
1:42:01
Speaker 1: her husband to keep his eye on the pan under
1:42:03
Speaker 1: the refrigerator and see that the water did not overflow
1:42:05
Speaker 1: while she went to a bridge tea. The husband was
1:42:07
Speaker 1: home going over some important plans. He forgot the pan,
1:42:11
Speaker 1: and the place was flooded. The ceiling in the apartment
1:42:14
Speaker 1: below fell. The woman in the apartment below went all
1:42:16
Speaker 1: to pieces. The patient's wife, returning from her tea, went
1:42:20
Speaker 1: all to pieces. The patient went all to pieces. Thus
1:42:23
Speaker 1: the hallucination formulated in his mind that being married and
1:42:26
Speaker 1: living in a house necessitated going to pieces. As for
1:42:29
Speaker 1: being rolled up in a rug, that it transpired, had
1:42:32
Speaker 1: actually happened to him. Also, one day, during the thorough
1:42:35
Speaker 1: cleaning of the house which his wife was superintending, she
1:42:37
Speaker 1: ordered two badly men to roll up a rug without
1:42:39
Speaker 1: noticing that her husband was on it at the time.
1:42:42
Speaker 1: It was accordingly rolled up in it and had considerable
1:42:44
Speaker 1: difficulty getting out. As for being painted in, Pearl established
1:42:48
Speaker 1: that the husband was also actually painted in. On one occasion,
1:42:51
Speaker 1: he was in the bathroom shaving and his wife did
1:42:53
Speaker 1: not know it. Thus, she had a man paint the
1:42:55
Speaker 1: floors outside the bathroom, and when the husband opened the
1:42:57
Speaker 1: door to emerge, he couldn't get out without stepping on paint.
1:43:00
Speaker 1: He was about to step on the paint anyway, when
1:43:02
Speaker 1: his wife saw him here here, she said, you can't
1:43:05
Speaker 1: get out that way. There was no other way out.
1:43:08
Speaker 1: You'll simply have to stay there till the paint dries,
1:43:10
Speaker 1: his wife told him, and he did. Pearl explained to
1:43:13
Speaker 1: the wife what of these inhibitions had done to her husband,
1:43:16
Speaker 1: and that his condition was precarious. He stressed the importance
1:43:19
Speaker 1: of allowing her husband his freedom at all times, paint
1:43:22
Speaker 1: or no paint. The husband was then brought back into
1:43:24
Speaker 1: the home and was allowed to live a free, unfettered existence,
1:43:27
Speaker 1: coming and going as he pleased always. However, under the
1:43:30
Speaker 1: discreet surveillance of doctor A. Prill, with that perspicacity of
1:43:33
Speaker 1: psychomental cases. However, that almost second sight, the patient became
1:43:37
Speaker 1: aware that someone was stooping around watching him, and one
1:43:39
Speaker 1: night he leap out of bed, pulled open the door
1:43:41
Speaker 1: of a little used closet, and there was doctor Prill watching.
1:43:44
Speaker 1: The patient, who otherwise might have been cured, went instantly
1:43:47
Speaker 1: into the last stages of the persecution complex footnote one.
1:43:51
Speaker 1: This discovery of doctor Prill in the closet is one
1:43:53
Speaker 1: of the few blots in the splendid record of psychoanalysis,
1:43:56
Speaker 1: and is most unfortunate. The husband patient began to the
1:43:59
Speaker 1: idea that he was being persecuted by the Detective Bureau
1:44:01
Speaker 1: of the Police Department, and gradually enlarged his apprehension field
1:44:05
Speaker 1: until he believed he was also being persecuted by the Navy,
1:44:07
Speaker 1: the towns of Indianapolis and Saint Louis, and the box
1:44:10
Speaker 1: Manufacturers Association. He whispered to doctors that a bearded man
1:44:14
Speaker 1: representing the box manufacturers was following him around the box
1:44:18
Speaker 1: and trying to catch him Footnote one doctor prol wore
1:44:21
Speaker 1: a small black beard, parted to avoid this imaginary menace,
1:44:25
Speaker 1: and also parted to stay off imaginary paint. The patient
1:44:27
Speaker 1: no longer walked on the floor, but on tabletops, mintals,
1:44:29
Speaker 1: and so on, leaping around the room like an oriole.
1:44:33
Speaker 1: Unless watched, he would jump for the window sills and
1:44:35
Speaker 1: try to get out. He wrote to the Department of
1:44:37
Speaker 1: Justice at Washington, and finally to the President of the
1:44:39
Speaker 1: United States, protesting against the activities of the Order of
1:44:42
Speaker 1: the Eastern Star, the Railway YMCA, A Reverend w and
1:44:46
Speaker 1: the New York Times. The case was to greet hopeless
1:44:49
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty six. Later, the wife got a divorce,
1:44:52
Speaker 1: and the husband seemed to improve. He was permitted to
1:44:54
Speaker 1: go to a ranch in Dakota, where he had a horse,
1:44:56
Speaker 1: a dog, and a pipe, and was allowed to come
1:44:58
Speaker 1: and go as he liked. Tut time us saw the patient,
1:45:00
Speaker 1: he was completely cured. Prevention of nuclear fears. Prevention of
1:45:05
Speaker 1: the nuclear fears which lead to such cases of claustrophobia
1:45:08
Speaker 1: should be quite simple. A wife should strive at all
1:45:11
Speaker 1: times to give her husband at least the illusion that
1:45:12
Speaker 1: he is free to come and go. She should remember
1:45:15
Speaker 1: that it is the little things that count, that claustrophobia
1:45:17
Speaker 1: is brought on by an accumulation of small details, that
1:45:20
Speaker 1: it is in fact a tragedy of the trivial. If
1:45:23
Speaker 1: a husband uses a guest towel, he should be quietly reprimanded,
1:45:26
Speaker 1: but under no circumstances, sent of his room. After pointing
1:45:30
Speaker 1: out briefly that the guest towels are not to be used.
1:45:32
Speaker 1: The wife might even give him a piece of bread
1:45:34
Speaker 1: and butter with sugar on it, or a kind word.
1:45:37
Speaker 1: Too many wives do not consider it important to explain
1:45:39
Speaker 1: the facts of the guest towels with their husbands. A
1:45:42
Speaker 1: wife expects a husband to pick up his knowledge in
1:45:44
Speaker 1: the gutter or from other husbands who know us little
1:45:46
Speaker 1: about the actual truth, as he does himself. If a
1:45:48
Speaker 1: husband uses a guest towel, he should be gently reproved
1:45:51
Speaker 1: and then told where guest towels come from in a clear,
1:45:54
Speaker 1: simple language. The wife should lead him to the drawer
1:45:56
Speaker 1: she keeps the guest towels and show him wherein they
1:45:58
Speaker 1: differ from ordinary towel, the kind he may use. The
1:46:01
Speaker 1: average guest towel can be identified by curious markings, either
1:46:04
Speaker 1: elaborate initials or picturesque designs in one corner or running
1:46:08
Speaker 1: all the way around the border. The husband should also
1:46:10
Speaker 1: be told that the use of such towels is not
1:46:11
Speaker 1: pleasurable because of the discomfort caused by the hemstaching, the
1:46:14
Speaker 1: rough embroidery, and the like. He should be made to
1:46:17
Speaker 1: understand that no man ever uses a guest towel, either
1:46:19
Speaker 1: in his own home or when he is a guest
1:46:21
Speaker 1: somewhere else, that they hung up for lady guests to
1:46:23
Speaker 1: look at, and are not to be disturbed. If he
1:46:26
Speaker 1: has told these simple truths in a calm, unexcited way,
1:46:29
Speaker 1: chances are that he will never use a guest towel again,
1:46:31
Speaker 1: and that he won't worry unduly over the consequences of
1:46:33
Speaker 1: his having used one once or twice. But as soon
1:46:36
Speaker 1: as he has given the idea that he has done
1:46:37
Speaker 1: something terrible that the old feeling of being boxed in
1:46:40
Speaker 1: comes over him. He begins to think that he will
1:46:42
Speaker 1: never do anything right around the house, and that his
1:46:44
Speaker 1: home is merely a laboratory which he has been trapped
1:46:46
Speaker 1: for the purpose of serving as the subject of strange
1:46:48
Speaker 1: experiments with towels and furniture. The same rules should apply
1:46:52
Speaker 1: to husbands when they leave things lying around, or track
1:46:54
Speaker 1: in dirt, or forget to shut the refrigerator door. None
1:46:57
Speaker 1: of these faults is, after all a very great importance,
1:47:00
Speaker 1: and they should be likely dismissed. If they are presented
1:47:02
Speaker 1: as heinous crimes. The husband is going to be liable
1:47:05
Speaker 1: to the exception of a persecution complex and the slow
1:47:07
Speaker 1: decurioration of mind and spirit incident upon claustrophobia. A wife
1:47:11
Speaker 1: is forever taking it for granted that her husband should
1:47:13
Speaker 1: know as much about a hushold as she does. If
1:47:15
Speaker 1: she would only realize that things which are easy and
1:47:17
Speaker 1: uncomplicated to her strange and mysterious to her husband, and
1:47:20
Speaker 1: explain the mysteries to him, adjustments could be rapped at
1:47:23
Speaker 1: very simply, and sex would then have a chance to
1:47:25
Speaker 1: mean something. As an instance of what I mean, take
1:47:27
Speaker 1: what happens during the average unpacking. A couple has just
1:47:30
Speaker 1: moved from one house to another, say, and the husband
1:47:33
Speaker 1: has been asked to help put things away. He should not,
1:47:35
Speaker 1: of course be asked for the danger of that Boxton feeling,
1:47:38
Speaker 1: with all of its awful consequences, is inherent in such
1:47:40
Speaker 1: a request. As the things are taken out of trunks,
1:47:43
Speaker 1: the wife knows instantly where they go. Not only the
1:47:45
Speaker 1: things she is going to use and once put where
1:47:47
Speaker 1: she can get at them, but the things for which
1:47:49
Speaker 1: she has no immediate use, which is to be stored
1:47:51
Speaker 1: away for the winter or summer, as the case may be.
1:47:53
Speaker 1: A woman can tell instantly whether our given article belongs
1:47:56
Speaker 1: in the attic or in the basement. All objects fall
1:47:58
Speaker 1: into one or other of these two categories. For example,
1:48:01
Speaker 1: while I myself am not an expert at it, I
1:48:03
Speaker 1: am more than anything framed or having wire attached to
1:48:05
Speaker 1: it goes to the attic, and the most containers and
1:48:07
Speaker 1: the like, especially those made of metal, or go to
1:48:09
Speaker 1: the basement. A woman comes naturally by this ability to discriminate.
1:48:13
Speaker 1: She knows most of it by intuition, and the rest
1:48:15
Speaker 1: she has alerted from her mother. But to suppose that
1:48:17
Speaker 1: a husband should know offhand whether a chest of drawers
1:48:20
Speaker 1: with bullows or dimity, and it goes to the attic
1:48:22
Speaker 1: or the basement is ridiculous. You might as well expect
1:48:24
Speaker 1: him to understand without long, careful instruction, why one tea
1:48:27
Speaker 1: towel is used for the china and another for the glassware.
1:48:30
Speaker 1: The thing for a wife to do, then, is not
1:48:32
Speaker 1: to upbraid or rebuff her husband when she finds him
1:48:35
Speaker 1: tired and worn in the attic, sitting among a lot
1:48:37
Speaker 1: of things that should have been taken to the basement,
1:48:38
Speaker 1: but simply to say nothing, or better yet, compliment him
1:48:41
Speaker 1: on his strength and agility, and then next day higher
1:48:44
Speaker 1: handyman to shift the things to where they belong. Adherence
1:48:47
Speaker 1: to a few simple rules of solicitude and understanding would
1:48:49
Speaker 1: prevent nine husbands out of ten, no matter how passionately
1:48:52
Speaker 1: dedicated to liberty they may be, from falling victims to
1:48:55
Speaker 1: the dread clusterphobia, which every year takes its heavy told
1:48:58
Speaker 1: of male minds as the result of the calessness or
1:49:00
Speaker 1: stupidity of wives. And of chapter seven Chapter eight of
1:49:10
Speaker 1: Is Sex Necessary? Or Why You Feel the Way You Do?
1:49:12
Speaker 1: By James Thurber and E. B. White, as LibriVox recordings
1:49:15
Speaker 1: in the public domain. Chapter eight Frigidity in men I
1:49:20
Speaker 1: hesitate to approach the subject of male unresponsiveness. Frigidity in
1:49:24
Speaker 1: men's The themed sociologists have avoided. Frigidity in women, on
1:49:27
Speaker 1: the other hand, forms a fast chapter the sex research
1:49:30
Speaker 1: of today. The part it plays in marital discord is
1:49:32
Speaker 1: known to the students of sociology as well as to
1:49:34
Speaker 1: the lay reader, although probably less well. It has occupied
1:49:38
Speaker 1: the attention of money noted writers and has taken the
1:49:40
Speaker 1: lives of such men as his honor On Tithridge, who
1:49:42
Speaker 1: cured some other experiments too far footnote one. Tithridge, especially,
1:49:47
Speaker 1: any discussion of frigidity in men calls for an unusual
1:49:50
Speaker 1: degree of frankness on the part of the writer, since
1:49:52
Speaker 1: they entail such factors as their recessive knee for there's retort,
1:49:55
Speaker 1: and the declination of the kiss. Further, before attacking this subject,
1:49:59
Speaker 1: it will be necessary to re evaluate some of the
1:50:01
Speaker 1: more fundamental hypotheses of man's erotic nature, and what a
1:50:04
Speaker 1: nuisance that is going to be. Let us go back
1:50:06
Speaker 1: a little way. There are two fundamental urges in nature,
1:50:09
Speaker 1: the desire to eat and the desire to reproduce one's kind.
1:50:13
Speaker 1: Which of these two impulses is stronger depends somewhat on
1:50:15
Speaker 1: the individual and somewhat on circumstances. Firming the individual, that is,
1:50:19
Speaker 1: is apt to vary with the quality of the food
1:50:21
Speaker 1: and of the women. There are, as honor shows, men
1:50:24
Speaker 1: who'd rather eat than reproduce, and there are isolated cases
1:50:26
Speaker 1: of men who'd rather reproduce than eat. But it is
1:50:28
Speaker 1: the less simple types to provide the important case histories
1:50:31
Speaker 1: for the student of masculine frigidity. And no broad conclusions
1:50:34
Speaker 1: can be drawn about the relative merits of eating and
1:50:36
Speaker 1: reproducing without a consideration of the contributing factors. Quick regardless
1:50:40
Speaker 1: of which urge comes first in Main's scheme of existence,
1:50:43
Speaker 1: it is safe to state dogmatically of the second urge,
1:50:45
Speaker 1: the sex urge, has caused more stir in the last
1:50:47
Speaker 1: few years than the first or nourishment urge. Sex is
1:50:51
Speaker 1: less than fifty years old, yet it has upset the
1:50:53
Speaker 1: whole Western world. The sublimation of sex, called love, is
1:50:57
Speaker 1: of course much older, although many purest will questions the
1:51:00
Speaker 1: existence of love prior to about eighteen eighty five on
1:51:02
Speaker 1: the grounds that there can be no sublimation of a
1:51:04
Speaker 1: non existent feeling. But I shall try to show without
1:51:07
Speaker 1: carping will be that there is a very good reason
1:51:09
Speaker 1: why the erotic side of man has called forth so
1:51:11
Speaker 1: much more discussion lately than his appetite for food. The
1:51:14
Speaker 1: reason is this that, while the urge to eat is
1:51:16
Speaker 1: a personal matter which concerns no one but the person hungry, or,
1:51:19
Speaker 1: as the German has it, the hungrig minsch, the sex
1:51:22
Speaker 1: urge involves, for its true expression another individual. It is
1:51:25
Speaker 1: this other individual that causes all the trouble. Except in
1:51:28
Speaker 1: rare instances, all of which have been dealt with by Sumner,
1:51:31
Speaker 1: the urge involves an individual of the opposite sex. That is,
1:51:34
Speaker 1: for a man, that involves a woman, and for a
1:51:35
Speaker 1: woman it involves a man. I use the word involve advisedly.
1:51:40
Speaker 1: Just a minute, another person is drawn into someone's life
1:51:42
Speaker 1: that begin to arise undreamed of complexities, and from such
1:51:45
Speaker 1: a simple beginning as sexual desire, we find both up
1:51:47
Speaker 1: such alarming it from oiliar phenomena as fates, diberty, simons,
1:51:51
Speaker 1: telephone conversations, arrangements, plans, sacrifices, train arrivals, meetings, appointments, tardinesses, delays, marriages, dinner,
1:52:00
Speaker 1: small pets and animals, calumny, children, music lessons, yellow shades
1:52:04
Speaker 1: for the windows, evasions, lethargy, cigarettes, candies, repetition of stories,
1:52:09
Speaker 1: and anecdotes. Infidelity, ineptitude, incompatibility, bunchial trouble, and many others,
1:52:14
Speaker 1: all of which are entirely foreign to the original urge
1:52:16
Speaker 1: and way off the subject, and all of which make
1:52:18
Speaker 1: the person's existence so strangely bewildering that if he could
1:52:20
Speaker 1: have foreseen these developments, his choice would have been the
1:52:23
Speaker 1: eating urge, and he would have just gone quietly out
1:52:25
Speaker 1: somewhere and ordered himself a stake in some French fried
1:52:27
Speaker 1: potatoes as being the easier way out. Still, that is
1:52:30
Speaker 1: just a hypothetical alternative. Life, as we know, is very insistent.
1:52:34
Speaker 1: Almost daily people become involved with other people, and that
1:52:37
Speaker 1: brings us to our real theme, namely frigidity and men.
1:52:41
Speaker 1: The recessive knee, the first symptom of frigidity in men's
1:52:44
Speaker 1: what I call the recessive knee. To the study of
1:52:47
Speaker 1: this phenomenon I have given some of my best years.
1:52:50
Speaker 1: My laboratory has been the laboratory of life itself. Probably
1:52:53
Speaker 1: I would never have discovered the recessive knee had I
1:52:55
Speaker 1: not noticed it some ten years ago in myself questioning
1:52:59
Speaker 1: my colleagues, I found to my amazement that they too
1:53:01
Speaker 1: had similar experiences which they were only able to account
1:53:03
Speaker 1: for and This led me to continue my investigations. Since then,
1:53:07
Speaker 1: I have gone into taxicabs, criminal lunch rooms, boat liveries,
1:53:10
Speaker 1: and all other places where it as possible or usual
1:53:12
Speaker 1: for a girl to let her need rush lightly against
1:53:14
Speaker 1: that of her companion. Have gained the confidence of the
1:53:16
Speaker 1: young men and women whom I was watching, and have
1:53:18
Speaker 1: accumulated a massive data showing that frigidity in men, instead
1:53:21
Speaker 1: of being almost a non existent characteristic, is one of
1:53:24
Speaker 1: the commonest attributes of our national sexual life. In as
1:53:27
Speaker 1: much as the juxtaposing of the knee by the female,
1:53:29
Speaker 1: which causes the recessive or pulled away knee in the mail,
1:53:32
Speaker 1: usually occurs fairly soon after dinner, my experiments and observations
1:53:36
Speaker 1: have had to be made largely in the evening. It
1:53:38
Speaker 1: has meant my custom to sleep late mornings to make
1:53:40
Speaker 1: up for this. Simply stated, the nie phenomenon is this.
1:53:44
Speaker 1: Occasions arise sometimes when a girl presses her knee ever
1:53:46
Speaker 1: so gently against the knee of the young man she
1:53:48
Speaker 1: is out with. The juxtaposing of the knee is brought
1:53:51
Speaker 1: about by any of a thousand causes. After the topic
1:53:54
Speaker 1: of conversation has something to do with it. The young
1:53:57
Speaker 1: people talking along pleasantly, will suddenly experience a sense of compatibility,
1:54:01
Speaker 1: or of friendliness, or of pity, or of community of interests.
1:54:04
Speaker 1: One of them will make a remark singularly agreeable to
1:54:06
Speaker 1: the other person, a chance word or phrase that seems
1:54:08
Speaker 1: to establish a bond between them. Such a remark can
1:54:12
Speaker 1: cause the knee as the girl to be placed against
1:54:13
Speaker 1: the knee of the young man, or if the two
1:54:15
Speaker 1: people that are in a cab, the turning of a
1:54:17
Speaker 1: sharp corner will do it. In canoes, the wash from
1:54:20
Speaker 1: a larger vessel will bring it about. In restaurants and
1:54:23
Speaker 1: dining rooms, it often takes place under the table, as
1:54:25
Speaker 1: though by accident. On de vans, sofas, cities, coaches, davenports,
1:54:29
Speaker 1: and the like. A slight twist to the young lady's
1:54:30
Speaker 1: body incident receiving a light for her cigarette will cause it.
1:54:34
Speaker 1: I could go on indefinitely, but there is no need.
1:54:36
Speaker 1: It is not a hard push to understand. Rather than
1:54:39
Speaker 1: merest touch of knee to knee, light is the brush
1:54:41
Speaker 1: of a falling blossom against one's cheek, and just as
1:54:43
Speaker 1: lovely now a normal mail in whom there are no
1:54:45
Speaker 1: traces of rigidity, will allow his knee to retain his
1:54:48
Speaker 1: original position, sometimes even exerting a very slight counter pressure.
1:54:51
Speaker 1: A frigid mail, however, will move his knee away the
1:54:54
Speaker 1: first suggestion of contact, denying himself the electric stimulus of
1:54:57
Speaker 1: love's first stirring. Why the That is what my research
1:55:00
Speaker 1: was conducted to discover. I found that in ninety three
1:55:03
Speaker 1: percent of all cases, the male was suspicious, in four
1:55:06
Speaker 1: percent he was ignorant, and in three percent he was tired.
1:55:09
Speaker 1: I have presented these figures to the American Medical Association
1:55:12
Speaker 1: and am awaiting a reply. It is the female subtlety
1:55:15
Speaker 1: in her laying on of the knee that annoys the male.
1:55:17
Speaker 1: I found his recession is for the purpose of reassuring
1:55:19
Speaker 1: himself of his own integrity and perspicacity. If the female
1:55:23
Speaker 1: were to juxtapose in a forthright manner, if she were
1:55:25
Speaker 1: to preface her gesture with the remark I am thinking
1:55:27
Speaker 1: of letting my knee touch yours for the fun of it, Mortimer,
1:55:30
Speaker 1: she might gain an entirely different response from the male.
1:55:33
Speaker 1: Many men with the recessive knees have confided to me
1:55:35
Speaker 1: they felt been capable of insuring the pressure because of
1:55:37
Speaker 1: the effect he might have on their minds when the
1:55:39
Speaker 1: accompanying loss of self respect. I have established the fact
1:55:42
Speaker 1: that no physical detriment is incurred by insert pressure. The
1:55:45
Speaker 1: only harmful effects are psychological. Some males admitted to an
1:55:48
Speaker 1: unwillingness to give any woman the satisfaction in believing that
1:55:51
Speaker 1: she was able to take her companion unaware. Still others
1:55:53
Speaker 1: told me that they feared the consequences of such an act.
1:55:56
Speaker 1: They were afraid that if they ever let down the
1:55:57
Speaker 1: bars and failed to turn away from the knee pressure,
1:56:00
Speaker 1: would likewise be unable to resist other duxpositions in life,
1:56:02
Speaker 1: and would continually be responding amiably to other amusing stimuli
1:56:06
Speaker 1: sales talks, stock promotion, and the like. It was a
1:56:09
Speaker 1: young Paterson, New Jersey girl by the name of Lilian
1:56:11
Speaker 1: Fuller who let drop the remark that has epitomized for
1:56:14
Speaker 1: the sociological and anthropological world the phenomenon of the recessive knee.
1:56:18
Speaker 1: Fuller's retort is now a common phrase in the realmal psychotherapy.
1:56:22
Speaker 1: Miss Fuller was an unusually beautiful woman, young, accurate, sensitive.
1:56:26
Speaker 1: She was give the attached to a man several years
1:56:28
Speaker 1: her senior in the buffing department, wanting to marry him.
1:56:32
Speaker 1: To this end, she had laiter knee against his innumerable
1:56:34
Speaker 1: times without a single return of pressure. His frigidity, she realized,
1:56:38
Speaker 1: was gradually becoming prejudicial to his mental health. And so
1:56:41
Speaker 1: one evening, after experiencing for the hundredth time the withdrawal
1:56:43
Speaker 1: of his knee, she simply turned to him, with a
1:56:45
Speaker 1: quiet smile playing on her face, and said, say, what
1:56:48
Speaker 1: is the matter with you? Anyway? Her retort somehow summed
1:56:52
Speaker 1: up the whole question of frigidity in men, the declination
1:56:55
Speaker 1: of the kiss Footnote one. Now we're getting down to business.
1:56:59
Speaker 1: Many men have told me that they would not object
1:57:00
Speaker 1: to sex were not for its contextual aspect. That is,
1:57:04
Speaker 1: they said they would be perfectly willing to express their
1:57:06
Speaker 1: eroticism if it could be done at a reasonable distance,
1:57:08
Speaker 1: say fifty paces. These men, the frigid plus type, found
1:57:12
Speaker 1: kissing intolerable. When they had an opportunity to kiss a
1:57:15
Speaker 1: young lady, they declined. They made it plain that the
1:57:18
Speaker 1: would be willing to blow a kiss across the room
1:57:19
Speaker 1: from their hand, but not execute it with their lips.
1:57:22
Speaker 1: I analyzed scores of these cases, questioning both women and
1:57:25
Speaker 1: the men. The women were mad as hornets. I found
1:57:29
Speaker 1: that a small number of the kiss declining men were
1:57:30
Speaker 1: suffering from a pathology of the eyes, either astigmatism or
1:57:33
Speaker 1: far sightedness, so that when they got really close to
1:57:35
Speaker 1: a girl she blurred on them footnote one. Incidentally, I
1:57:39
Speaker 1: might say that this blurring of the female before the
1:57:41
Speaker 1: eyes of the male was not entirely unpleasant. It's kind
1:57:44
Speaker 1: of fun. The vast majority of cases, however, were quite different.
1:57:47
Speaker 1: Their unwillingness had traced to a much subtler feeling than
1:57:50
Speaker 1: I strain. Your true anti contextual or kiss decliner is
1:57:53
Speaker 1: a very subtle individual. Indeed, in effact, he is a
1:57:56
Speaker 1: throwback to another period in history, specifically to the Middle Ages.
1:58:00
Speaker 1: Is he's a biological sport note this is very confusing
1:58:04
Speaker 1: calling him a sport, because the ordinary sport is not
1:58:06
Speaker 1: a kiss decliner at all. Anything. But please keep in mind, then,
1:58:09
Speaker 1: that when I use the term sport, I want the
1:58:11
Speaker 1: strict biological interpretation put upon the word. I want it,
1:58:14
Speaker 1: and I intend to get it. If there are any
1:58:16
Speaker 1: of you who think you are going to find the
1:58:17
Speaker 1: use of the word sport in this connection so confusing,
1:58:19
Speaker 1: guts to make the rest of the chapter on intelligible,
1:58:21
Speaker 1: I wish you would drop out, get something else to read, or,
1:58:24
Speaker 1: better yet, get some exercise. No one can quite comprehend
1:58:27
Speaker 1: the motives and the successes of a kiss decliner who
1:58:30
Speaker 1: does not recall his countrapart. In medieval history in the
1:58:33
Speaker 1: Middle Ages, when men were lusty and full of red meat,
1:58:35
Speaker 1: the woman expected as much. A baronial fellow finishing his
1:58:39
Speaker 1: meal made no ado about kissing a middle aged woman.
1:58:42
Speaker 1: He just got up from the table and kissed her bango,
1:58:44
Speaker 1: and she was kissed. Love had a simple directness which
1:58:47
Speaker 1: is not disturbed until the arrival in the land of
1:58:49
Speaker 1: the minisingers. It got so no baronial hall the Middle
1:58:52
Speaker 1: Ages was free from these menacingers. They kept getting in.
1:58:56
Speaker 1: They would bring their harps with them after dinner. They
1:58:58
Speaker 1: were trying a couple of notes, and then seeing a
1:58:59
Speaker 1: frowl could shim to the effect that woman should be
1:59:01
Speaker 1: worshiped from afar, rather than possessed to a baron who
1:59:04
Speaker 1: had just drunk a goblet of red wine. This new
1:59:06
Speaker 1: concept of womanhood was screamingly funny. While he was chuckling
1:59:10
Speaker 1: away to himself and cutting himself another side of beef,
1:59:12
Speaker 1: his wife, who had listened attentively to the song would
1:59:15
Speaker 1: step out into the alley behind the castle, and there
1:59:17
Speaker 1: the minisinger would join her, sing that one again. She
1:59:20
Speaker 1: would say, why joan that went about worshiping me from
1:59:24
Speaker 1: a little distance? I want to hear that one again.
1:59:27
Speaker 1: The minisinger would oblige that he would illustrate the theme
1:59:30
Speaker 1: by not kissing the woman, but danzing off lightly down
1:59:32
Speaker 1: the hill, throwing his harp up into the air and
1:59:34
Speaker 1: catching it again as he went. What a nice young man,
1:59:37
Speaker 1: the baron's wife would think, as she slowly turned and
1:59:40
Speaker 1: went into bed. The cass decliner of to day is
1:59:42
Speaker 1: a modern minacinger. He is a sport and that he
1:59:45
Speaker 1: has varied suddenly from the normal type, which is still baronial.
1:59:48
Speaker 1: Of course, the amusing thing about his conduct is that
1:59:51
Speaker 1: oftentimes a woman assumes that she is being worshiped from afar,
1:59:53
Speaker 1: but as a matter of fact, she is merely being
1:59:55
Speaker 1: ignored from afar. That is part of the trick of
1:59:58
Speaker 1: an anti contextual person. He takes a perverse delight in
2:00:01
Speaker 1: allowing the woman whose kiss he has declined to think
2:00:03
Speaker 1: of him as more lyrical than other men. When to
2:00:06
Speaker 1: leave her presence, she is apt to think of him
2:00:08
Speaker 1: as offswer by the bank of a stream, lying flat
2:00:10
Speaker 1: on his back, his shaggy head bird in the tall grasses,
2:00:13
Speaker 1: dreaming of something or other, probably of her. Whereas if
2:00:16
Speaker 1: she would take the trouble to go to the nearest
2:00:18
Speaker 1: leggot's drug store, she would probably find him there getting
2:00:20
Speaker 1: a Sunday by the mere gesture of declania kiss the
2:00:23
Speaker 1: bank is still make quite a lot of ground, even
2:00:25
Speaker 1: in these depleted days. The woman thinks he would not
2:00:29
Speaker 1: dream of embracing my body. Now that's pretty white of him.
2:00:32
Speaker 1: Of course, it would be wrong to his crab motives
2:00:33
Speaker 1: of sheer deliberateness, to the frigid mail. Often he is
2:00:36
Speaker 1: not a bad sort, merely as a fellow who prefers
2:00:38
Speaker 1: an imagined kiss to the real kind. An imagined kiss
2:00:41
Speaker 1: is more easily controlled, more thoroughly enjoyed, and less cluttery
2:00:45
Speaker 1: than an actual kiss. To kiss in dream is wholly pleasant. First,
2:00:49
Speaker 1: the woman is one of your selection, not just anyone
2:00:51
Speaker 1: who conferens to be in your arms at the moment. Second,
2:00:53
Speaker 1: the deed is garnished with a little sprig of glamour,
2:00:55
Speaker 1: which the mind and exquisite taste contributes. Third, to the lips,
2:00:59
Speaker 1: imagine latively are placed just so, the right hand is
2:01:02
Speaker 1: placed just so, the concurrent thoughts arrive just so. Except
2:01:06
Speaker 1: for the fact that the whole episode is a little
2:01:07
Speaker 1: bit stuffy, it is a superior experience all round. But
2:01:11
Speaker 1: a kiss becomes actual, anything is likely to happen. The
2:01:14
Speaker 1: lips feeling with the mark may strike lightly against the
2:01:16
Speaker 1: end of the lady's nose, causing the whole adventure to
2:01:19
Speaker 1: crack up. Whether the right hand may come in contact
2:01:21
Speaker 1: with the hard jugged part of the shoulder blade, or
2:01:23
Speaker 1: worst of all, the man's thoughts may not clothe the
2:01:25
Speaker 1: moment with the proper splendor. He may be worrying about something.
2:01:29
Speaker 1: So you see, frigidity in men has many aspects, many angles.
2:01:33
Speaker 1: To me, it is vastly more engrossing than frigidity in women,
2:01:36
Speaker 1: which is such a simple phenomenon, and you wonder anybody
2:01:38
Speaker 1: bothers about it at all. End of chapter eight, Section
2:01:47
Speaker 1: nine of Is Sex Necessary or Why You Feel the
2:01:50
Speaker 1: way you do? By James Timber and E. B. White.
2:01:52
Speaker 1: The Slimbrivox Accordings in the public Domain answers to hard questions.
2:01:57
Speaker 1: Note these questions have been selected from among the many
2:02:00
Speaker 1: thousand inquiries that are received by Doctor Carl's Honor during
2:02:03
Speaker 1: the past year. They come from people who are sexually inquisitive,
2:02:07
Speaker 1: people from every walk of life. The authors wish to
2:02:09
Speaker 1: thank Doctor's Honor for allowing them to have access to
2:02:12
Speaker 1: his sex files. It is with a sense of high
2:02:14
Speaker 1: adventures that we face the task of answering, to the
2:02:16
Speaker 1: best of our ability, these perplexing questions that deal so
2:02:19
Speaker 1: intimately with human lives. The authors Q. My youngest boy,
2:02:25
Speaker 1: aged twenty eight, turns against love because in a book
2:02:28
Speaker 1: he was reading, where the writer meant to say, a
2:02:29
Speaker 1: woman in love is sacred, there was a misprintant it
2:02:32
Speaker 1: came out a woman in love is scared. How would
2:02:34
Speaker 1: you go about this A. We did not regard the
2:02:38
Speaker 1: case as typical. Presumably your boy is badly frightened of himself,
2:02:41
Speaker 1: or he wouldn't be reading books. He would be out
2:02:43
Speaker 1: somewhere the way to overcome the syste bulup his general health. Q.
2:02:48
Speaker 1: Should a woman live with her husband if they are separated? A. Yes.
2:02:53
Speaker 1: There is nothing that brings to people so close together
2:02:55
Speaker 1: as separation. In situations of the sort, the woman's presence
2:02:58
Speaker 1: gradually becomes necessary on account of the condition of the
2:03:01
Speaker 1: man's shirts on rest. Being separated from his wife, the
2:03:04
Speaker 1: husband commonly will be found to neglect his dirty clothes
2:03:07
Speaker 1: from spiting from self indulgence. Instead of gathering them into
2:03:10
Speaker 1: a pile and sending them to a laundry, he will
2:03:12
Speaker 1: put on yesterday's shirt in the morning and stop in
2:03:14
Speaker 1: a gentleman's furnishing store to pick up a clean one
2:03:16
Speaker 1: on the way to the office. This procedure has a
2:03:18
Speaker 1: threefold allure for the man. First, he gets into the
2:03:21
Speaker 1: office half an hour late. Second, takes him into a
2:03:23
Speaker 1: furnishing store. And third, when he looks into his shirt
2:03:26
Speaker 1: drawer in the morning and finds no shirts, it assures
2:03:28
Speaker 1: him of the disorganized state of his life. To feel
2:03:31
Speaker 1: disorganized is to be perfectly happy. Things might go on
2:03:34
Speaker 1: this way indefinitely. Where not for the economic side of
2:03:36
Speaker 1: the question, at three dollars a shirt, which is a
2:03:39
Speaker 1: conservative figure for a man separated from his wife, the
2:03:42
Speaker 1: shirt bill runs at eighteen dollars a week, plus another
2:03:45
Speaker 1: six dollars for underwear and socks. Furthermore, there is not
2:03:48
Speaker 1: a contestant condition in the husband's office caused by the
2:03:50
Speaker 1: accumulation of dirty shirts which he has tucked into bottom
2:03:53
Speaker 1: drawers and filing cabinets. This shows up in his work.
2:03:56
Speaker 1: The impracticability of two people living apart becomes apparent too,
2:03:59
Speaker 1: in the matter of the old nineteen sixteen Cadillac touring
2:04:02
Speaker 1: car which they own. On separating, the Hosbit will generously
2:04:05
Speaker 1: give the car to his wife to use, but that
2:04:06
Speaker 1: doesn't alter the fact that he and he alone knows
2:04:09
Speaker 1: what you have to do when the car does that
2:04:11
Speaker 1: funny thing. Thus, the husband is apt at any time
2:04:13
Speaker 1: during the day to pick up the phone to hear
2:04:15
Speaker 1: his wife's voice, Dear, I'm on the merry road between
2:04:17
Speaker 1: Bellport and Pachogue and the car's doing that funny thing again.
2:04:21
Speaker 1: Is me is dropping whatever work he is doing, taking
2:04:23
Speaker 1: a cab to the Penn station, and a long island
2:04:26
Speaker 1: trained to the scene of the breakdown. This also shows
2:04:28
Speaker 1: up in his work. It never could happen if husband
2:04:30
Speaker 1: and wife are living together, because in that case they'll
2:04:32
Speaker 1: never be on cordial enough terms for him to let
2:04:34
Speaker 1: her use the car. There is another phase of separation
2:04:37
Speaker 1: that is perhaps more alarming than those we have mentioned,
2:04:40
Speaker 1: namely possible effect the news of it might have on
2:04:42
Speaker 1: the health of the wife's parents of the health of
2:04:43
Speaker 1: the husband's parents. I recall the case of a couple who,
2:04:46
Speaker 1: over a period of years, tried to live apart without
2:04:48
Speaker 1: telling the wife's mother, who had a frail heart, and
2:04:50
Speaker 1: to like to see young people together not a part note.
2:04:53
Speaker 1: Old ladies don't know why they like to see young
2:04:55
Speaker 1: people together. They can give no reason. Yet the thought
2:04:57
Speaker 1: of two young people separating excites them unduly, and with
2:05:00
Speaker 1: their heart is unreliable, is apt to carry them off.
2:05:03
Speaker 1: So this young pair, out of consideration, although separated, set
2:05:06
Speaker 1: a community Christmas presents to the parents that write letters
2:05:08
Speaker 1: describing durin experiences, until after three years and eight months
2:05:11
Speaker 1: of struggling along in scheming, they finally give up the
2:05:13
Speaker 1: battle and decided it would be simpler to take an
2:05:15
Speaker 1: apartment together somewhere. Sheer fatigue united to them. They are
2:05:18
Speaker 1: residing to this day in North Pelham, and the wife's
2:05:21
Speaker 1: mother is still alive and well, getting better every day.
2:05:24
Speaker 1: Doctors say, so our advice to any couple is just this,
2:05:28
Speaker 1: separate if you must, but by all means live together,
2:05:30
Speaker 1: no matter how your friends and neighbors talk. Q. I
2:05:34
Speaker 1: have an aquarium and I got a snail for it
2:05:35
Speaker 1: because they told me to keep the water clean, and
2:05:37
Speaker 1: is now unexpectedly bore young although it was in there
2:05:39
Speaker 1: all alone. I mean, there weren't any other snails in there,
2:05:42
Speaker 1: only fish. How can it have young? Very well? Ay,
2:05:46
Speaker 1: the snail in your aquarium is a mollusk. It is
2:05:48
Speaker 1: quite likely at her rephrodite, even though it came from
2:05:51
Speaker 1: a repeatable department store. For being her rephroditic, nobody can
2:05:54
Speaker 1: blame a snail. We cannot tell you everything we know
2:05:56
Speaker 1: about the gastropods, because we know possibly more than is
2:05:59
Speaker 1: good for us. In the absence of specific information. To
2:06:02
Speaker 1: the contrary, we would say that the snails in your
2:06:04
Speaker 1: aquarium have been going around a good deal with other
2:06:06
Speaker 1: snails before you got him her. Some mollusks, not many,
2:06:10
Speaker 1: can have children merely by sitting around and thinking about it.
2:06:13
Speaker 1: Others can have children by loving a state of reciprocity
2:06:15
Speaker 1: with other hermaphrodites. Still others are like us, dioecious, possessive
2:06:20
Speaker 1: only one sexual nature, but thankful for small favors. The
2:06:23
Speaker 1: shellfish and the snails are a great group, though it
2:06:25
Speaker 1: is opposed with many people to consider them dull. Usually
2:06:28
Speaker 1: the people who find mollusks dull are dull themselves. We
2:06:31
Speaker 1: have met molluscs in many parts of the world, in
2:06:33
Speaker 1: gardens in France, on the rocks at low tide, on
2:06:35
Speaker 1: Long Island Sound, in household aquaria, on the side box
2:06:39
Speaker 1: of suburban towns, in the early mornings, in restaurants, and
2:06:41
Speaker 1: in forests. Everywhere. We found them to be sensitive creatures, imaginative,
2:06:46
Speaker 1: and possessed of a lively sense of Earth's pleasant rhythm.
2:06:49
Speaker 1: Snails have a kind of nobility. Zoologists will tell you
2:06:52
Speaker 1: that they occupy in the animal kingdom a position of
2:06:54
Speaker 1: enviable isolation. They go their own way. We can understand
2:06:59
Speaker 1: your curiosity about sex in snails. Molluscs are infinitely varied
2:07:02
Speaker 1: in their loves, their hates, and their predilections. They have
2:07:06
Speaker 1: a way of carrying out ideas they get in their head.
2:07:08
Speaker 1: They are far from cold as many people suppose them. Indeed,
2:07:11
Speaker 1: one of the most fascinating love stories we ever read
2:07:13
Speaker 1: was in the Cambridge Natural History, in which was described
2:07:16
Speaker 1: the tryst kept by a pair of snails on a
2:07:18
Speaker 1: garden wall. We have never forgotten the first sentence of
2:07:21
Speaker 1: that romantic and idyllic tale, nor have we forgotten the
2:07:23
Speaker 1: name of the snail al Maximus. The story started al
2:07:27
Speaker 1: Maximus has been observed at midnight to ascend a wall
2:07:29
Speaker 1: or some perpendicular surface. Then then went on to relate how,
2:07:33
Speaker 1: after some moments spent greeting each other, calling round and round,
2:07:35
Speaker 1: the snails let themselves down on a little letter of
2:07:38
Speaker 1: their own devising, and there, suspended in the air ten
2:07:40
Speaker 1: inches or so from the top of the wall, they
2:07:42
Speaker 1: found love. Often very thickoned molluscs are rarely too busy
2:07:46
Speaker 1: to give attention to their children after birth, or to
2:07:48
Speaker 1: prepare for their coming. There is in Algeria a kind
2:07:52
Speaker 1: of mollusc whose young return for shelter to the body
2:07:54
Speaker 1: of their mother, somewhat in the manner of little kangaroos.
2:07:57
Speaker 1: There is in the Philippines a snail who is so
2:07:59
Speaker 1: sosie for her expected babies that she goes to the
2:08:01
Speaker 1: trouble of climbing, with infinite pains and no little discomfort,
2:08:04
Speaker 1: to the top of a tall tree, and there deposits
2:08:07
Speaker 1: her eggs in a leaf, folding the leaf droatly for protection.
2:08:10
Speaker 1: Another kind of mollusk, having laid her eggs upon a stone,
2:08:12
Speaker 1: amuses herself by arranging them like the petals of a rose,
2:08:15
Speaker 1: and hatches them by holding her foot on them. Mollusks
2:08:18
Speaker 1: tend to business. Sometimes different species intermarry, but this is rare.
2:08:22
Speaker 1: The interesting point about it is that such unions generally
2:08:25
Speaker 1: take place when the air is heavily charged with electricity,
2:08:27
Speaker 1: as before a storm, or when great rains have made
2:08:29
Speaker 1: the earth wet. The Luxembourg Garden in Paris is a
2:08:32
Speaker 1: place snails go to for clandestine matches of this sort.
2:08:35
Speaker 1: Each variabilis goes there and pisana. The moisture, the electricity,
2:08:40
Speaker 1: the fragrant loveliness of a Paris night stir them strangely. Probably,
2:08:44
Speaker 1: if you know so little of the articism of snails,
2:08:46
Speaker 1: you have not heard of the darts. Some of them
2:08:47
Speaker 1: carry tunny daggers, hard and sharp with which they prick
2:08:50
Speaker 1: each other from the excitement that affords. These darts are
2:08:53
Speaker 1: made of carbonate of lime. The Germans call them libs
2:08:56
Speaker 1: feel love shaft. Many British molluscs are without them. But
2:09:00
Speaker 1: that's the way it goes. We could tell much more.
2:09:04
Speaker 1: We could tell about mollusks that possessed the curious property
2:09:07
Speaker 1: of laying their eggs on the outside of their own shell,
2:09:08
Speaker 1: and are the strange phenomenon of the cephalopod, who, when
2:09:11
Speaker 1: he takes leave of his lady, leaves one of his
2:09:13
Speaker 1: arms with her, so that she may never lack for
2:09:15
Speaker 1: an embrace. But we feel we have answered your question
2:09:19
Speaker 1: end of section nine, Section ten of Is sex necessary?
2:09:28
Speaker 1: Or why you feel the way you do? By James
2:09:30
Speaker 1: Thurber and E. B. White. This the Baroxe recording, is
2:09:33
Speaker 1: in the public domain. Glossary Erin's disease put in here
2:09:38
Speaker 1: merely because it might confuse the reader if we started
2:09:40
Speaker 1: right off with Admiral Schley. Admiral Schley, American naval hero
2:09:45
Speaker 1: in whose splendid achievements meant took an interest when their
2:09:47
Speaker 1: absorption in love died down Circle nineteen hundred. Imatory instincts
2:09:53
Speaker 1: interest in sex, apathy almost total loss of interest in sex, atrophy,
2:09:59
Speaker 1: total loss of interest in sex. Attack man's method are
2:10:03
Speaker 1: showing interest in women so called because of his brusque
2:10:05
Speaker 1: desire to get the matter in hand and have done
2:10:07
Speaker 1: with it. Pegniaism tendency of the male to raise small
2:10:11
Speaker 1: potted plants and not to go out benign stupor alarming
2:10:15
Speaker 1: condition in a husband or lover, which causes him to
2:10:17
Speaker 1: sit round in his bathrobe and slippers brooding instead of
2:10:20
Speaker 1: working or anything. Biological cultural a feminine type one who
2:10:25
Speaker 1: expresses her erotic nature verbally. Bother annoyance frequently confused with pother,
2:10:31
Speaker 1: which means uncalled for interest in something, usually sex boxed in,
2:10:36
Speaker 1: caught or trapped as a husband by a wife with
2:10:38
Speaker 1: a delusion of being caught or trapped. Butcher's twine a
2:10:42
Speaker 1: kind of stout cord of no particular interest to anybody
2:10:46
Speaker 1: causation the factors backing the male's doubt or suspicion. Charades
2:10:51
Speaker 1: one parlor game deviced by women to fend off men
2:10:54
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred and nineteen o nine two, acting up in
2:10:57
Speaker 1: a skittish manner about the facts of life instead of
2:11:00
Speaker 1: getting right down to them. Twitching nervous twitching. Complex mental
2:11:05
Speaker 1: crack up caused by an emotional or physical inability to
2:11:08
Speaker 1: get away from or wind things up with a person
2:11:10
Speaker 1: of the opposite sex. Complex nuclear shock caused by discovery
2:11:15
Speaker 1: of a person of the opposite sex and his or
2:11:16
Speaker 1: her true colors, beginning of a general breakdown. Defense feminine excuses, tricks, devices,
2:11:23
Speaker 1: et cetera. Delay, mechanism, pother deterioration benign going quietly to
2:11:30
Speaker 1: pieces as the results of a marriage or a love affair,
2:11:33
Speaker 1: deterioration malignant going loudly to pieces under the same circumstances, fidgeting, bawling, berating,
2:11:39
Speaker 1: et cetera. Diversion, subterfuge track employed by women who keep
2:11:43
Speaker 1: men's minds on ethereal rather than physical matters. Empiric national
2:11:48
Speaker 1: viewpoint of sex erotic of or pertaining to sex, usually
2:11:53
Speaker 1: in a pretty far fetched manner. Exhibitionism going too far
2:11:57
Speaker 1: but not really meaning it. Exotic of an alarming nature,
2:12:02
Speaker 1: particularly to parents. Fixation too great dependence on one woman,
2:12:07
Speaker 1: fragmentation of personality, inception of general decline on the part
2:12:11
Speaker 1: of the male, frigidity in men, suspicion, ignorance or fatigue
2:12:16
Speaker 1: mostly suspicion, fudge making, feminine trick or device. Fuller's retort
2:12:23
Speaker 1: a remark made by a Paterson, New Jersey girl one
2:12:25
Speaker 1: night in Paterson, New Jersey, George Smith, a despondent Indianapolis
2:12:30
Speaker 1: real estate man pulling to George Smith, attempting to find
2:12:33
Speaker 1: something more important then and just as interesting as women.
2:12:37
Speaker 1: Julia Marlowe, actress, Libido pleasure principle, looseness of systematization, the
2:12:45
Speaker 1: going to pieces of a husband, love, the pleasant confusion
2:12:49
Speaker 1: which we know exists, loving being confused by or confusing someone.
2:12:55
Speaker 1: Masculine protest male disdain for things which does not understand. Racicism,
2:13:01
Speaker 1: attempt to be self sufficient, with overtones Neurovegetative reflexes a
2:13:06
Speaker 1: male was, particularly a husband's quick, unpremeditated reactions to stewed vegetables,
2:13:10
Speaker 1: especially spinach, and to certain salads. Neurosis the beginning of
2:13:15
Speaker 1: the end unless the husband can go away somewhere. Neurotic
2:13:19
Speaker 1: wanting something but she doesn't know what desires of something
2:13:22
Speaker 1: she hasn't got and probably can't or shouldn't have nineteen
2:13:26
Speaker 1: o seven. Panic of result of woman's in humanity to
2:13:29
Speaker 1: man nineteen hundred and nineteen o seven, no better than
2:13:33
Speaker 1: she ought to be. Woman's definitions one indiscreet, two charming, three,
2:13:39
Speaker 1: pretty and vivacious, four over sext five living in sin,
2:13:44
Speaker 1: norm all quiet, numerical protection other people in the room,
2:13:50
Speaker 1: Osculatory justification. Reasons for kissing, growing out of the early
2:13:54
Speaker 1: American creed of the kissing for kissing's sake would send
2:13:56
Speaker 1: one straight to hell. Pteranoia the last stage of what
2:14:00
Speaker 1: was once a bridegroom passion, expression of the sex principle
2:14:04
Speaker 1: without so much fuss. Pedestalism the American male's reverence for
2:14:08
Speaker 1: the female, or better yet, for insistence on being revered,
2:14:12
Speaker 1: which amounts to the same thing physico psychic state in
2:14:15
Speaker 1: which the physical gets tangled up with the spiritual, after
2:14:18
Speaker 1: the manner of a ceopopthor a huntsman by getting between
2:14:21
Speaker 1: his feet cluster principle see libido possessive complex innocent desire
2:14:27
Speaker 1: to kiss and fondle, sometimes to maul or wool pother
2:14:31
Speaker 1: uncalled for interest in something, almost always sex protective reaction,
2:14:36
Speaker 1: putting a man in his place. Psyche wings for the
2:14:39
Speaker 1: feet of clay. Psycho neeurosis same as neurosis, only worse. Psychosis,
2:14:46
Speaker 1: state of being beside oneself to such an extent that
2:14:48
Speaker 1: is doubtful if I can pull myself together. Pulled away
2:14:52
Speaker 1: refers to the knee of a man who is suspicious
2:14:54
Speaker 1: or tired. Recessive knee. The outstanding phenomenon of masculine frigidity
2:14:59
Speaker 1: may his refusal to answer the pressure. Schmahlhausen, Samuel D.
2:15:04
Speaker 1: Student of misbehavior. Schmalhausen trouble illness commonly found young ladies
2:15:10
Speaker 1: who read in cramped quarters. Smith George same as George
2:15:14
Speaker 1: Smith swastika symbol which distracted American suitors used to scrawl
2:15:18
Speaker 1: on desk pads, margin of books and so on. Trouble
2:15:22
Speaker 1: Schmaalhausen see Schmalhausen, Trouble uber Trugung. Period of transition during
2:15:28
Speaker 1: which the mail straft transmitt his order for women into
2:15:31
Speaker 1: the semblance of ardor for games, voyeurism, sex, kibbitzing. End
2:15:36
Speaker 1: of section ten, Section eleven of Is Sex Necessary? Or
2:15:46
Speaker 1: Why You Feel the Way You Do? By James S.
2:15:47
Speaker 1: Thurber and E. B. White. This LibriVox recording is in
2:15:51
Speaker 1: the public domain. A note on the drawings in this book.
2:15:55
Speaker 1: The inclusion in this volume of some fifty two drawings
2:15:58
Speaker 1: by James Thurber was on the whole intentional, because, however,
2:16:01
Speaker 1: of the strong feeling and suspicion which they will arouse
2:16:03
Speaker 1: in certain quarters. It may not be a mist to
2:16:05
Speaker 1: offer some explanation for this task. I feel peculiarly fitted,
2:16:09
Speaker 1: for it was I who, during those trying months when
2:16:11
Speaker 1: the book was in the making, picked up the drawings
2:16:14
Speaker 1: night after night from the floor under Thurber's desk picked
2:16:16
Speaker 1: them up, and I was so tired in body and
2:16:18
Speaker 1: sould that I could scarcely stoop. It was I who,
2:16:20
Speaker 1: by getting the confidence of the Charbomen, that they redeemed
2:16:23
Speaker 1: countless other thousands of unfinished sketches from the huge waste baskets.
2:16:26
Speaker 1: And finally, it was my incredible willingness to go through
2:16:29
Speaker 1: with the business of inking in the drawings, necessitated by
2:16:32
Speaker 1: the fact that they were done in such faint strokes
2:16:34
Speaker 1: of a broken pencil as to be almost invisible to
2:16:35
Speaker 1: the naked eye, that at last brought them to the
2:16:37
Speaker 1: point where they could be engraved and be produced. To
2:16:40
Speaker 1: understand even vaguely the Thurber's art, it is necessary to
2:16:43
Speaker 1: grasp the two major themes that underly all has drawings.
2:16:47
Speaker 1: The first theme is what I call the melancholy of sex.
2:16:50
Speaker 1: The other is what I can best describe as the
2:16:52
Speaker 1: implausibility of animals. These two basic ideas motivate subconsciously his
2:16:57
Speaker 1: entire creative life. Just how some of the animals show
2:17:00
Speaker 1: these pages come in is not clear even to me,
2:17:02
Speaker 1: except in so far as any animal must be regarded
2:17:05
Speaker 1: as sexually relevant. Because of our human tendency to overestimate
2:17:08
Speaker 1: what can be learned from watching it. But when studay
2:17:10
Speaker 1: is the drawing, it soon becomes a parent, and a
2:17:12
Speaker 1: strong undercurrent of grief runs through them. In almost every instance,
2:17:15
Speaker 1: the man in the picture is badly frightened or even hurt.
2:17:18
Speaker 1: These Thurber Men have come to recognized as a distinctive
2:17:20
Speaker 1: type of the world of art. They are frustrated, fugitive beings.
2:17:25
Speaker 1: At times they seem vaguely striving to get out of
2:17:26
Speaker 1: something without being seen, a room, a situation, a state
2:17:30
Speaker 1: of mind. At other times they are merely perplexed and
2:17:33
Speaker 1: too humble or weak to move. The women, you will notice,
2:17:36
Speaker 1: are quite different. Temperamentally, they are much better addstant to
2:17:39
Speaker 1: their surroundings than are the men, and mentally they are
2:17:41
Speaker 1: much less capable of making themselves uncomfortable. It would be
2:17:44
Speaker 1: foolish to attempt here a comprehensive appreciation of the fierce sweep,
2:17:47
Speaker 1: the economy, and the magnificent obscurity of Thurber's work. Nor
2:17:51
Speaker 1: can I adequately indicate the stark qualities and the drawings
2:17:54
Speaker 1: that have earned for him the title of the ugly Artist.
2:17:57
Speaker 1: All I, all anybody can do is to hint at
2:17:59
Speaker 1: the uncanny, faithless which she has caught, caught and thrown
2:18:02
Speaker 1: to the floor, the daily, indeed, almost momently severity of
2:18:05
Speaker 1: life's mystery, as well as the charming doubtfulness of its purpose. E. B. W.
2:18:11
Speaker 1: And of Section eleven and of his sex Necessary or
2:18:14
Speaker 1: Why You Feel the Way You do? By James Thibough
2:18:16
Speaker 1: and E. B. White,