Part 2

On the other hand the repression of the sexual instinct may be a dangerous thing, in this connection the dream of an introvert is illuminating. He was a man highly developed along mental lines, a man, in fact, of some prominence; but he experienced great difficulty in his sexuality. It was characterized as over-impulsive and more or less passive. He wanted to play a more or less feminine part toward the women.

Because of his high integrity he felt that this was wrong, and so attempted to suppress his sexuality altogether. Then he developed symptoms; strange feelings in his head, a sense of weakness in his legs. He had the following dream:

He and his wife were at Coney Island, going about with three people of a cruder type. Two of these were men, and one a woman. The woman fainted on the street, and no one knew what to do for her. A man then rushed out of the building, took hold of her, and began an infantile stimulation. She revived at once.

The dream is easily understood. He and his wife stood for the higher side of himself, the developed or introverted side; the three low-brows and rough-necks were the undeveloped side. Coney Island suggests some attempt at expressing the lower and undeveloped side. Since this undeveloped side was the extraverted, or sexual, the two men and the woman represented this side; and the woman suggests that part of his sexuality which is more or less feminine and passive.

She faints. That is, he develops the symptoms. The man who rushes out to help he connected with an uncle of his who was noted for his common sense. In other words, his common sense tells him: Cure her by any means possible. See, if I do this for her, she revives. Better that than to be sick, to develop symptoms.

No code of morality could have helped this man. He had as an introvert to realize and accept the fact that his sexuality was still childish, and to realize also that he had to begin with it at the point where it actually was if he ever wanted to develop it to something higher and better.

I do not mean to imply here that all introverts are so infantile in their sexuality. There are those introverts who began early to develop this side also, and have reached a fair maturity. However, it is more often the other way round.

But if there is this distinction to be made, there are yet others to show how individual a matter sexuality may be.

For while we have the two main types of introvert and extravert based on the two major instincts, we have also the four types based on the functions. In other words, a man may not only be an extravert or introvert, but also a thinking type, a feeling type, an intuitive type or a sensational type.

According to Jung, these four functions of _thinking_, _feeling_, _intuition_ and _sensation_ constitute the make-up of the psyche; and each of us tends to accent one of them at the expense of the others.

The _thinking type_ is one of the most easily discernible. He takes thought, he thinks things out; he thinks before he acts. He is apt to be logical, deliberate, fairly sure of himself, even dogmatic. He usually lives by a system of thought he has worked out, and which he tries to force upon others. He has strong opinions, because he has arrived at them by sure-footed thinking. If he is extraverted he is the good executive, the engineer, the lawyer; if introverted, the philosopher and certain types of scientist. The thinking type is found mostly among men; in Jung’s opinion thinking is a masculine function.

The _feeling type_ is usually found among women; though there have been men, and great ones, who were of this type: notably Goethe, Wagner and Walt Whitman. The feeling type, normally, is not good at thinking, is, in fact, opposed to thinking, since thinking a thing out is the opposite of feeling it out. Feeling, itself, is a reaction of _like_ and _dislike_ and is a delicate adjustment to the _fitness of things_. The values of the extraverted feeling woman are almost purely external. In choosing a husband she aims rather at the correct thing than at the deeper qualities. The man who has wealth, position, and who dresses according to the style, who has good company manners and is worldly is apt to appeal to her. Her feelings are appeased by him; she isn’t “jarred” or made to feel his unfitness for the world she lives in. She “likes” him. Her opinions on things are according to the styles of the moment. She desires everything to move along harmoniously, without any unpleasantness. She is not deep, but she keeps society afloat by her ease and attempt to bring everything into harmony.

The _introverted feeling woman_ is one of the silent women. Her feelings form into long moods, which persist sometimes for days. She suffers quietly and cannot express herself. She has no language for these moods.

Feeling, by the way, must not be confused with _emotion_. Emotion, as Jung points out, is a _feeling-sensation_; that is, it is at the same time both mental and physical; something instinctive, which we share with the animals. An emotion of joy, for instance, not only is perceived mentally, a state of happiness, but also is felt physically: the pulse goes faster, the cheeks become flushed, etc. But feeling is something separated more or less from sensation and developed into an independent function.

The developed feeling person feels her likes and dislikes, or her moods, as something mental, which no more affect the body than developed thinking in the thinking type. Thinking, as we know, can be very cool and detached where it is pure and mature.

Thinking and feeling then are developed and consciously controlled functions; where, on the other hand, _intuition_ and _sensation_ are inborn and uncontrollable by consciousness.

The _intuitive type_, works by those instantaneous flashes of insight which we call intuitions. These may be in the nature of hunches, or in the nature of an ability to see the hidden character of others; or it may have to do with far off things. Intuitives sometimes know events happening at a distance; as the sickness of a relative, or something even more startling. Though Goethe was a feeling type, he was also very intuitive. One summer night he called his man-servant into his room. The weather was sultry, brooding and ominous. Goethe said: “At this moment there is an earthquake taking place far off.” Some weeks later came the news of the great Lisbon earthquake. He had known it to the minute. An intuitive I know was in Virginia when he dreamed vividly that his brother in Texas had been killed by a Negro and that a messenger had come with a telegram bidding his return to Texas. The next morning the messenger came. It is by intuition that the painter sees the soul of the sitter, and reveals the hidden nature in his picture.

The intuitive type is the noble, or what has been called, the spiritual type. Just as the two conscious functions of _thinking_ and _feeling_ are in opposition to each other, so the two unconscious functions of _intuition_ and _sensation_ are in opposition; for intuition is the least earthy function, sensation (the senses, sexuality) the most earthy or animal.

The intuitive, because he sees into the core of things, sees better than anyone else the possibility of things. He can see the man in the child; the growth of a new movement in politics or science or labor or business; the development of new ideas and their importance for the human race. If such a man is extraverted, he hurls himself into new tendencies, and then as soon as they are about to come to harvest, he is no longer interested, and turns to new possibilities. He is the pioneer who opens up the wilderness, but does not stay to enjoy the cities that spring up. He sows, but he rarely reaps.

If he is introverted he brings forth out of himself great new ideas or works of art. A good example is Nietzsche.

The _sensational type_ is of the earth, earthy. His main function is sensation; the taste, the scent, the sound, the touch and the look of things. He is highly sensuous, and is constantly seeking new sensations. He is very realistic, and opposed to anything noble or idealistic. He is often the actor, the acrobat, the sensualist.

If he is introverted he gets his sensations through imagining strange pictures of an inverted world, such as the world depicted in the prose and poetry of Edgar Allan Poe.

This is, of course, not a complete setting forth of the types; but merely enough to come to some understanding of their differing sexual reactions.

If a man or woman is an extraverted thinking or feeling type, the sexuality is apt to be normal. It is apt to be governed by what the world considers good form. That is to say, it is probably monogamous, done at regular intervals, and often without glamor.

But when we come to the intuitives and the sensationals, everything is quite otherwise. The intuitive is usually in strong opposition to the sensational. To him sexuality is apt to appear as something low, animal and disgusting. He himself is often without desire, and cannot understand the need of it in others.

It is true that sometimes an individual by deep development transcends the groove of his type, and in this way some intuitives are able finally to develop their sexuality; but, on the contrary, it is sometimes dangerous doctrine to ask an intuitive to be sexual. Intuitives who do this often violate their natures, and so produce symptoms or become ill. They are apt to oscillate between periods of intuition and that of sensation, and when they are on the sensational side they are tempted to make an orgy of it. Sensitive intuitive artists get drunk and go on debauches: women of this type behave somewhat like prostitutes.

The Freudians err therefore in their doctrine that sexuality is good for everyone. It is not good for certain of the intuitives. In fact, many men and women of this type live on in the full bloom of their power without knowing a sexual life.

On the other hand, since sexuality permeates the life of the senses and is all bound up with them, the sensational usually needs and has a full sexual life. The men are apt to be Casanovas and flit from woman to woman. Sensations, as we know, if repeated, soon tire us. We long for new ones. So in a life that depends on sensations and sensational happenings, soon an appetite develops for something still more strange, more unexpected, more flavorous. Ordinary sexuality may, to the sensational, soon lose its zest, and he hungers for things abnormal and unheard of. In this way, he may develop from one stage to another of the perversions, not because of a fixation on the mother, or even, in his case, because of an undeveloped function (since sensation is his developed function), but merely because sensation itself demands more and different sensations, and the ordinary round is soon exhausted.

It is said of the sensational that if he can’t get a good sensation, he will get a bad one; if he can’t get one of pleasure, he will take one of pain. It is like the poet Keats putting pepper in his mouth so that the wine would taste the cooler.

There is not much to say about it. In every civilized country certain classes of people are looked upon as outside the general code, as in a class apart. Thus we have the conceptions of Bohemia, of Red Light districts, and we even exempt from the usual censure certain types of actors and actresses in a recognition that what we call morality means little to them.

What stands out clearly in noting these differences of reaction, is that no one type should legislate the morality of the other types. If it is perfectly clear to anyone that a code erected by the extraverted sensational type would be ruinous to the rest of the population, it should also be clear by inference that the thinking type can’t legislate for the sensational, nor the extravert for the introvert.

What we come down to finally is that sexuality, like religion, is an individual matter, and must be found by the individual according to his needs and his nature.

MISPLACED ENERGY

However, it should not be taken for granted that perverse sexuality is, in itself, good. Nothing that is raw and undeveloped is as good as that which is strong and mature. On the other hand, a seed cannot by magic suddenly become a beautiful flower. It must pass through the dark stage of being in the muck and manure, and only painfully and slowly, step by step, will it develop to the flower. This appears to be a law of nature, and we can say of the development of man, that his evolution began in the “mud and slime of things,” and that in the myriad ages that have passed, he has not yet attained full manhood.

When we look at some of the dark things that the race has gone through, we cannot call them “good,” but often we must admit that they were necessary. So, too, with this matter of sexuality: it cannot always be arranged according to what we think is best.

Nevertheless, there are many cases of what might be called sick or false sexuality. It would appear, according to Jung, that anyone who neglects a function or gift which he should be developing, is apt to go astray sexually. In other words, our energy craves the outlets provided for it by our innate character. If a man, for instance, was born an artist, that is not something he can escape. Art is the natural outlet of much of his energy. But if, because of his training, or say, his belief that art is an idle matter and not manly enough, he should turn from this gift, then a certain amount of his energy goes idle.

Idle energy, so Jung has found, usually descends to the sexual zone; and the young man finds himself with an unnatural and excessive sexual craving. Since this is more than the normal sexual desire, it is apt to take abnormal form; and the man becomes by an irresistible compulsion, a homosexual.

His homosexuality is not an innate thing; it is a _symptom_. It is _misplaced energy_. The cure, of course, is for him to take up his art. His sexuality then will become quite normal.

There is the case of the young woman who not only had an incessant and excessive sexual craving, but who desired any and every man she met. It took all her strength to hide her feelings, for she was well-bred, sensitive, and with a high standard. She went to a noted analyst who discovered that she was the rare case of a woman who belonged to the thinking type. But thinking in her circle was not favored when it came to women. She had therefore neglected to develop her intellect, and as soon as she began to do so, the symptom disappeared and she became quite normal.

It should be clear from these cases that wherever perverse sexuality appears, there is need of an investigation. It is necessary to discover if it isn’t a case of misplaced energy. Indeed, one may say offhand, that all _excessive_ cases are of this nature, as for instance, a marked sadism (sexual cruelty), a marked homosexuality, a too great sexual desire. Such cases need the treatment of a psycho-analyst.

However, if energy may be misplaced _to_ the sexual zone, it may also be misplaced _from_ the sexual zone. This is particularly true in this country, because of our Puritan tradition. It was no longer ago than my own childhood that a vast array of American children were taught that sex is a bad thing; that to think in sexual terms was evil, that to commit sexual acts was wicked; and that sexuality existed solely for the purpose of propagating the species. It was whispered about that auto-erotism led to insanity or loss of manhood. Words like gonorrhea and syphilis were not mentioned, and ignorance in sexual matters was not only disastrous, but, one might say, criminal. There were women who came to marriage without any inkling of how children were born; there were boys who doubtless did go insane from the practice of auto-eroticism, not because the practice hurt them, but because of the shame and fear attached to their “secret sin.”

This darkness has not wholly vanished yet, though much light has appeared. It is natural that many sensitive people, growing up in such an atmosphere, should _repress_ their sexuality. In certain cases this might do no harm; an intuitive woman, for instance, might be all the better for it. But since sexuality is a powerful instinct which needs in the end its own natural expression, the repression of it, in many cases, would mean that sexual energy was misplaced away from the sexual zone, and produced a symptom.

Perhaps the simplest way of saying it is this, that whatever we attempt to repress in ourselves we tend to repress in others. If we have cut off the glow of life in ourselves, we come under a compulsion sometimes to cut off others in the same way. This is where the misplaced sexual energy goes. We become crusaders, we go out and fight vice wherever it shows its head, we censor art, we bring about prohibition. We become persecutors, driven by a kind of madness, thus poisoning our own lives and the lives of others.

But since sexuality is a social instinct, and is at the root of love, its repression may lead to something equally fanatic, but of a different nature. The crusading spirit, instead of being prohibitive, calls the world to salvation. The revivalist appears, or the bringer of a new religion, or the founder of a sect. There is a feverish attempt to convert and to “save the world.”

America is full of it. Great waves of sexualized religious fervor sweep over the country. Any means may be used: the revivalist may use jazz bands and slang, do the Charleston on his platform, paint primitive pictures of hellfire and damnation, broadcast his violent sermons, shame people into conversion, and arouse a whole community to hysteria.

To anyone with a discerning eye, the performance is false on the face of it. It is a lot of misplaced sexual energy gone wrong and running like a high fever.

A mild case of it which came under an analyst’s observation shows the trouble clearly enough. The man in question felt that he had a message to broadcast to the people, which would bring them to a better life. The scheme, however, was actually of a cheap nature, which he admitted, on criticism, but could not give up nevertheless. It was as if he had to do it. The key-dream which showed the situation was as follows:

An advertising man of his acquaintance had set out to put up the highest advertising sign in the world. This was being built on a prairie, so that it could be seen from immense distances. It was already so high that the dreamer could not see the top of it. On rope-hung scaffoldings many men were at work on the sign. At the bottom of the sign was a moat of water. Closing time came, and the men immediately leaped from their scaffoldings like frogs into the water below.

His scheme is shown up as not a real attempt to help others, but as a matter of self advertising, a stunt. More than this, the energy which put up the sign, namely, the men at work on it, leaps down like frogs. Frogs, as a rule, have a sexual significance; and sometimes mean auto-erotism.

In short, the energy behind his attempt to save the world is misplaced sexuality, and that sexuality of an infantile nature. His compulsion left him when he gained the proper sexual expression.

However, if repression of sexuality is a bad thing, temporary abstinence is sometimes good. Not only are men and women able, at times, to go without sexuality for relatively long periods but, in certain cases, and at certain times, this has the highest value.

In many savage tribes, on the night before the warriors went out to battle, the men were not allowed to have any contact with women. Doubtless this was done that their energy might remain unimpaired, and that their warlike fervor might not be softened with any of the feelings of love.

In fact, in times of crisis, it would appear that there can be a displacement of sexual energy which is beneficial. When men are under the unusual strain of a great task, abstinence often seems to help. Their whole energy becomes transformed into the task, which they can now do with greater freedom. Naturally, this is a detour, a forced march, and not a way of living.

We find often in the case of great artists, that before beginning work on their masterpieces, they withdraw from sexual experience. Balzac, for instance, always cut himself off from society, put on a monk’s robe and secluded himself until the task was accomplished. It is obvious what the monk’s robe meant: it was a temporary renunciation of love as well as of the world.

THE COMMON SENSE OF IT

We now come to the common sense of it. Undoubtedly in a great number of cases of perversion and other sexual trouble, we need not search for the cause in a mother-attachment, an incest-wish, or an undeveloped function. The cause is often of a relatively simple nature.

Perhaps at the top of the list we may put woman’s fear of being impregnated, of conceiving and bearing a child; a fear which a man who loves his wife often shares with her. Such fears are sometimes morbid, and are part of a general fear of life. Women who are made, as it were, to be mothers, may be evading their life-work and refusing pain and responsibility. That is quite possible.

But, on the other hand, if we look at the matter in the light of common sense, we see, first, that to an imaginative person, the fear is perfectly natural, just as a perfectly natural fear may spring up in a man as he goes into battle; and that, second, circumstances may justify and deepen the fear to a point where it becomes a deterrent to normal sexuality. For instance, poverty might make it impossible for the parents to support children, or more than the one or two already born. Or the woman’s health or structure may be such as to make child-bearing a grave danger.

Of course “birth control” is urged for such people; the use of contraceptives. However, not only are such things sometimes unreliable, but certain types of people find their use exceedingly unpleasant, turning what should be a joyous union, a spontaneous act, into something mechanical and self-conscious. Besides that, if the fear of impregnation is great, the use of contraceptives does not abolish it.