The psychology of marriage / by Walter M. Gallichan.

  • Walter M. Gallichan
Date:
[1917]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The psychology of marriage / by Walter M. Gallichan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    think that this emotional appeal is the principal point of attack in the forewarning and training of young people in a correct view of the sexual life.”* It is well to counsel purity, but it is also well to understand at the outset that irreflective and uninquiring persons, and those lacking in powerful feeling, tend to underrate, and even to ignore, the immense variation of the sexual impulse among both men and women. One man’s inclina¬ tion may be normally almost at zero, while another's is very frequently, and sometimes quite spontaneously, aroused. It is well known by sexual physiologists that indulgence in extreme moderation may be actually excess for some men. The overworked student of sedentary habits may find the striving for restraint an easy discipline, but his athletic, more vitally-functioning, brother may have to exert a very high degree of control. Dr. F. W. Mott, the experienced mental pathologist, has pointed out the profound psychical influence of the sexual glands, by reason of their internal secretions during the period of ripening of the germ cells.” In normal vigorous young men this process must at one time or another affect con¬ scious thought, and produce at least some disquietude. Shakespeare’s eulogy of man who is not passion’s slave instances plainly enough that which almost, if not all, the great minds have thought upon the battle of control. Luther makes no secret of the fact that he underwent a very severe conflict with his desires. Dr. Johnson laments that his strong passion led to lapses in his youth. Many religious zealots in sheer despair of suppressing vehement instinct, have resorted to physical mutilations as a drastic means of protection. The complete annihilation of the erotic instinct is a biological impossibility, as Professor Bigelow says, and no sane person would propose that the reproductive impulse can be, or should be, eradicated from the human race. It is the existence, and the enormous potency of this instinct, that gives to mankind the highest as well as the lowest incentives. It would be better, and altogether more helpful, if, instead of mere violent denunciation of unchastity, or suggestions that repression is entirely easy, some of the would-be counsellors of virtue were to point the way of * “Rational Sex Ethics.
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