SEX BIOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY 153 



the psyche, because the conscious mind has less than 

 it ought to have upon which to fall back. 



The opposite extreme is equally unsatisfactory. 

 If individuals of the first type are trying to build high 

 without adequate foundations, those of the second 

 are mistaking the foundations for a complete building, 

 A dissociation of a different type occurs in them — 

 a dissociation due to lack of use, to a mere failure 

 to connect up that part of the mind concerned with 

 sexual emotion with a great many of the mind's 

 other activities. Thus the sexual side has few and 

 lower values associated with it than it might, and 

 other possibilities of thought and feeling and action 

 remain as mere possibilities, never realized in actuality. 

 The result is a definitely incomplete personality of 

 a more or less arrested or rudimentary type. 



Those are the extremes : of course there are all 

 intermediates between them. They may crop up 

 with apparent spontaneity, determined more by the 

 hereditary constitution of the man or woman than 

 by external happenings : or they may be mainly or 

 at least largely determined by the accidents of the 

 environment during the period before maturity. 

 One of the most potent factors in the environment 

 will be the attitude of the parents towards sexual 

 matters. On the one hand they may adopt the 

 common horror-stricken attitude towards sex, hushing 

 it up, making it clear to the sensitive mind of child- 

 hood that there is something thoroughly bad about 



