§ 90
The right of woman to experience such stirring up of unconscious depths of soul as is caused by the erotic acme of the love episode, and the advantage to her health and general welfare coming from such stirring are two separate questions. Havelock Ellis has admitted that the woman’s right to love and all it can include is not a right in a political or even an ethical sense, any more than the right to be happy.
But for the existence of the relation of a higher type of erotism to health of body and mind physiological science is piling up proof every year. There is a positive relation, a direct connection, of cause and effect. Only the fullest use of all the faculties makes the fullest and therefore the happiest life.
Response as an actual manifestation on the wife’s part may be absent while there is a repressed response present. In other words the desire and gratification of it may both occur in her, but below the level of consciousness. A previous attraction which drew her toward her husband when he was her lover may have been repressed by some gauche behaviour of his. Desire, even after conscious passion has cooled, may nevertheless remain in the unconscious. If consciously accepted, desire is accompanied by a perceptible physical condition of tumescence. If not consciously accepted, either the tumescence does not enter consciousness or it is not in the same organs it would be in if one were consciously entertaining desire.
In the absence of the proper or suitable substitute gratification, the increase of blood supply to specific organs gradually diminishes and the desire gradually subsides; but there is still left a nerve tension that is closely bound up with various ideas, images and other predominantly mental states.
Sex desires may be aroused and even if not appropriately gratified, will subside of themselves. An automatic relaxation of all tensions regularly takes place in children, who also are much more facile than adults in the acceptance of substitute gratifications.