§ 99
Ellis (op. cit., III, 251) remarks that the sexual impulse tends to involve, to a greater extent in women than in men, the higher psychic region. Therefore sex, tending in men to be exclusively physical, needs in them to be raised to the erotic level of the psychical, in order to give man the master key to the situation. Thus the rapport (which is psychical and not physical) can be established. The greater psychic diffusion of love instincts in woman gives man the opportunity for a complete dominance over her erotism as soon as he learns to exercise it. In woman’s sexuality “lies the earth, all Danaë to the stars,” symbolizing the direction from which man should approach woman, from a psychically more exalted position, and not from below, like mephitic air from a cave.
As one cannot put a finger into a ring, unless a ring is there, so in the love episode the husband must be sure that his emotional power will not, like a blow wasted in the air, fall upon a situation most inappropriate, unreceptive and unproductive of the end sought. A blacksmith must be sure the anvil is in place before he takes up his hammer.
It is obvious that, if the relaxation of erotic tension on the man’s part is to do the work, which it certainly has to do, it must have a condition which is appropriate for the most telling effect of this work. One of the best ways in which this condition can be produced in some women is outlined in the following section.