§ 161
The hasty husband takes his own motions and his own erotic acme, which are but parts, for the whole. He takes the most physical aspect for the love episode. Naming the part for the whole is a sort of metonymy, which is a figure of speech and not literal truth. The hasty husband is in this sense unconsciously a liar. He cannot tell the truth because he cannot know it. If we say that this fragmentary performance of his is taken by him to be logically or intellectually like the whole, we must say that he rates low in discrimination. He ought to know that the fragment is no more like the whole thing than a hand is like the body.
Giving the physical side of the love episode too great a value is like connecting it too closely with the imagination, or with that part of the imagination that is bound up with the emotions. The factor in the sex life of most of the animal-like humans, that is, most closely connected with the strongest emotions, is the acme. In true human love, then, the strongest emotions are reassociated with other elements of the love episode than the acme. And the acme is the greatest desideratum only from the unconscious or instinctive point of view.
The imagination, the power of visualizing (and other forms of representations as well) then involves the power to affect, or to effect changes in the somatic reactions of the husband that render possible the prolongation of a sex act, and its transformation, into a love episode. The imagination of organic sensations in himself, in the normal husband, retards the progress of the love episode for the benefit of the wife. The hasty husband lacks just this imagination and the love episode is hurried through in the manner of an animal sex act.
The husband who reaches his acme of erotic relaxation even before actual contact with his love object has not in consciousness dwelt much upon the numerous preliminaries. Methods of retardation are methods of admitting into consciousness the different innate associations between emotions and the touch and movement sensations constituting the first stages.