EGO AND SEX
If the course of love was regulated solely by sexual factors its
study would be a comparatively simple matter. Sexual cravings find
themselves, however, in conflict with many other manifestations of the
life force. For the _sexual libido_ is not the life force as certain
psychoanalysts believe. It is only one of the manifestations of the
electric stream produced in the brain and seeking an outlet.
In fact, sex is only a _temporary_ manifestation of the life force,
late to appear, early to disappear. Embryonic life begins several
months before sex becomes observable in the fetus. Actual extrauterine
life is in full swing before sex is ripe, that is, capable of
fulfilling its biological destiny. Life continues sometimes many years
after sex has ceased to serve its reproductive purpose.
The most powerful urge to which sex has to adapt itself in the life of
the human animal is the ego urge, the craving for food and power, the
selfish urge par excellence. At times, sex and ego work in perfect
accord as they should, considering the close relationship of the
nervous divisions carrying power to them.
=Neurotic Complications=, however, due to the necessary repressions of
modern civilisation, throw them too often into conflict.
We might say that there is a natural source of conflict between them,
for the ego urge is selfish, aiming as it does at the conservation of
the individual and its personal upbuilding, while the sex urge, whose
aim is to assure the continuance of the species, is altruistic.
By altruistic I mean that one human being must, before finding the
complete gratification of his sex urge, join his body to that of
another human being of the opposite sex, whose sex urge he helps
gratify, the result of that cooperation being the creation of a third
human being.
From this we may see clearly how the neurotic temperament, unusually
self-centered, is likely to exacerbate whatever conflicts may exist
between ego and sex.
Even in the so called normal human being, that is, the human being
who in spite of life's repressions, manages to live at peace with his
environment and himself, the will-to-power, the desire for possession
and domination expresses itself constantly in what is generally
considered as typically sexual manifestations of love.
Do not lovers say that they "possess" each other. Was not the Biblical
God power before he became creation? In the beginning there was the
Word, that is the expression, the utterance of the divine ego.
Does not the unmated God of the Western nations symbolise the absolute
supremacy of power over sex? And when people pray to God, what do they
ask for, in the majority of cases, if not power (help)?
=Self-Love.= Yet we often consider the craving for power as a form
of love, self-love. When Jesus said "Love thy neighbor as thyself" he
testified to the fact that our self-love is the most powerful human
feeling and he presented it as a goal which our love for others _might_
reach.
He admitted that we all love ourselves first and he was too world-wise
to advise men, as some of his followers have done, to repress their
self-love. He only advised men to try and love others as much as they
loved themselves.
All the great conflicts between nations have been precipitated by ego
rather than by love. Love and sex were responsible, we are told for
the most famous war in history and legend, the Trojan war. I am quite
sceptical about it in spite of the "evidence" presented by a poet who
probably never existed as an individual, Homer.
I know, however, that the most atrocious war ever fought, the world
war, was unchained, not by sexual jealousy, but by the most sordid, the
grossest form of predatory ego cravings, the will-to-commercial-power.
In innumerable cases, ego overpowers sex and compels it to suit its
purposes. It masquerades in the guise of sex and deceives many as to
its true nature. Prostitution, in its last analysis, is the enslavement
of sex by ego, sex working to feed the ego and supply it with
necessities or luxuries.
=Ego in Sex Guise.= Certain customs of ages past are sexual
in appearance but the egotistical motive back of them is easily
discovered. Take the right of the first night, which in several parts
of the world survived until modern times.
The tribal chief or the lord of the manor had the right to spend a
night with every bride within his jurisdiction before the rightful
husband was allowed to enjoy his marital privileges. That custom made
the first born of every family the putative descendent of the chief
and fostered a deeper loyalty to him among his followers.
Even as economic exhibitionism prompts people to spend at show
eating places sums in no way commensurate with their hunger, or to
buy diamonds which are not in any way beautiful but only symbolical
of the wearer's indifference to returns on his investments, egotism
causes many men to pretend sexual cravings which they do not feel.
Many stage women, actresses, singers, dancers, etc., are kept by men
whose sex life is at low ebb but who parade their "conquest" before
their associates or perfect strangers to demonstrate their sexual and
financial powers.
=Fatherhood.= A constant craving for fatherhood is not infrequently a
neurotic symptom, an egotistical desire to compensate for low sexual
potency.
Physicians and druggists dispensing aphrodisiacs can testify to the
prevalence of large families in the homes of almost impotent men.
The man who can fulfill his sexual duties once a year for fifteen years
and foils his mate's attempts at contraception, is quite able to raise
a very large family and to pass among his associates for a very virile
man. The sight of his numerous progeny silences any scepticism as to
his sexual vitality.
Some of the most astonishing vagaries in the choice of a mate are
traceable to purely egotistical cravings. Neurotic women married to a
superior man may refuse to express any sexual joy in his arms. They
remain frigid in his company and then give themselves to some rather
inferior individual to whom they feel superior and in whose arms
they show the most complete abandon. The medical and lay press very
often relates cases of fine looking and apparently normal women who
marry idiots or morons. Their sense of inferiority and their fear of
ego-defeat makes them seek inferior mates unlikely to dominate them in
any respect. Some young women conceal their morbid desire to mate with
a degenerate under a philanthropic mask. They pretend, when marrying a
drunkard or a thief, that their aim is to regenerate him.
And so do some young men with an inferiority complex explain to their
family and friends that they have married a menial or a prostitute to
reclaim her.
=War Prisoners.= German newspapers mentioned several times during the
war that war prisoners were treated too cordially by the women, many
of whom had affairs with the defeated enemies. In several cities, it
became necessary for the military authorities to issue proclamations on
the subject, berating the offenders for their "shameless behavior." The
same facts were observed in France and in Italy altho they were given
less prominence in the American newspapers.
Why was it that those women idolised men they were supposed to hate
as enemies and accorded sexual favors to them? Why was it that they
did not enjoy more completely the victory of the males of their race
and jeer at the defeated foes? Those women were neurotics who, unable
to enjoy the embraces of victorious, superior males, felt themselves
superior in the arms of defeated and humiliated men.
=Neurotic Motherliness.= A patient of mine who had always shown herself
rebellious in her attitude to her sexually potent lover, became all
tenderness and submissiveness one day when sickness almost cut off his
potency.
"I never loved him as much as I did yesterday," she told me, "for I
felt then that I could really mother him." Which translated into honest
parlance meant, to use Adler's vocabulary, that on that occasion he was
"below" and she was "above."
=When Ego and Sex do not Conflict=, a combination of the two gives
results which stamp human love as distinctly superior to animal
sexuality. Just as higher egotism has created cooperation, which
eliminates individual fights and establishes in their place group
fighting, healthy egotism added to sex has introduced cooperation and
altruism into love. The egotistical desire to please and dominate the
female thru vigorous caresses has thrown into the shade the primitive
cavemanlike ways. Man no longer strikes the female unconscious in order
to satisfy his sex cravings on her prostrate body. His aim is rather
to satisfy his mate first. This of course carries sexuality far away
from its primal aims. Love's byplays, in many cases, replace love's
specific functions, the road from sensuality to sterility being a short
one. When the goal of sterility is attained, we see sex willingly
relinquishing its biological aims to egotism. In the plays of sex and
ego as in the conflicts between the two urges, ego is more frequently
victorious than sex.