Record of a Friendship

individual. Your point is that, given freedom from repression and
muscular cramping, the Reflex should be perfect. I agree, but not on all
occasions. But perhaps you believe that it depends on the partner. Yes,
you hold that without love the Orgasm Reflex will be incomplete.
My point is, taking the point of view of the man, that unless he meets a
woman with the power of attracting strongly his sex impulse, his orgasm
will be unsatisfying. In other words a man can be without sex repres­
sion, but unless he meets the girl whose touch thrills him, his satisfaction
will not be nearly complete.
I can count on my fingers the number of girls I have met in life whose
touch even when shaking hands gave me a tremendous thrill. Sex
appeal isn't nearly so common as the film fans would have us believe.
You would say that, given absence of repression and wrong moral ideas,
everyone would have this sex appeal. I believe it, but in a world of un­
conscious hate of sex there are so many without the sex appeal that
gives out, that it is difficult to find a true mate. You remember how
you always said: "Give yourself, let go." Sex repression keeps the great
majority of girls (and boys ) from giving out anything.
All this simply amounts to this : that to be sexually free in an unfree
world isn't so easy as it sounds. You are so right in your attitude to
promiscuous sexual intercourse: it couldn't live in a free sexual educa­
tion.
I wonder what you think of the age question. At nineteen I could
have been promiscuous. At 57 I wouldn't want to go away for the week­
end with the most beautiful film star, unless of course I knew her and
was much attracted to her. The temptation isn't likely to arise, but I am
curious about the effect of years on the sex impulse. My own experience
is that the pleasure does not lessen; what lessens is the phantasy side
and the frequency.
I have a theory that in a war the soldiers should have their women
with them at the front. Since starved sex so easily turns into anxiety,
wouldn't an army fight more bravely if its sexual urge was satisfied? An
old pupil, now on a ship, was telling me how the lack of sex affected a
crew, how some got introverted, others irritable and so on. This aspect
of war is important. Millions of men cooped up in barracks with only
their own sex. The old idea was that women had no place in danger,
but with the bombing of towns that idea no longer holds. Think of what
the clerics would say if some bold man proposed that the army should
have its women with it!
I am afraid that our friends in Oslo may be having a bad time under