SEX BIOLOGY AND SEX PSYCHOLOGY 169 



not necessary to digest well — so long as we go on di- 

 gesting well: it is only necessary when we digest 

 badly. In that case the processes involved are auto- 

 matic: but even in processes which require a great 

 deal of learning, we find a similar state of affairs. A 

 man can become expert at, say, a game requiring the 

 most delicate adjustments of hand and eye without 

 analysing the processes he employs, but by practis- 

 ing them, as finished articles, so to speak; and it is 

 equally obvious that Shakespeare and Shelley and 

 Blake and other great writers produced their works 

 without the least analytical knowledge of the obscure 

 and rather unpleasant processes which, if we are to 

 believe the critics who psycho-analyse dead authors 

 in the pages of Freudian journals, were "really" at 

 work below the surface. Analysis constitutes a se- 

 rious surgical operation for the mind, and, as one of 

 the leading Austrian psycho-analysts has recently 

 said, we do not want to perform this operation on 

 healthy people any more than we want to open their 

 abdomens merely for the sake of seeing that their 

 viscera are normal. 



If matters concerning sex are treated properly dur- 

 ing a child's development and education, the neces- 

 sity for psycho-analysis and any extension of ana- 

 lytic knowledge of the foundations of one's own mind 

 that it may bring is done away with. If it can be 

 ensured that there is no obvious avoidance of the 

 subject leading to repression in the child's mind, 

 and on the other hand no undue prominence given to 



