The psychology of marriage / by Walter M. Gallichan.

  • Gallichan, Walter M. (Walter Matthew), 1861-1946
Date:
[1917]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The psychology of marriage / by Walter M. Gallichan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/202 (page 6)
    Thus, we encounter constantly the phenomenon of the darkest ignorance of the sexual life, and the singular loss of instinct, which Sir James Paget and other medical and scientific observers have noted in modern civilised people. I shall refer in these pages to the very curious anomaly of the arrest of intelligent thought upon a subject that so intimately concerns every human being, and attempt to provide the explanation. It is certain that the inevitable preoccupation with personal and normal manifestations of the sexual impulse is, in most cases, accompanied by a conspicuous ignorance of physiological and pyschological facts. There is, indeed, no sphere of human thought in which will be found such deep misunderstanding as in that of sex. This paradoxical ignorance provides a highly instructive theme for investigators in the problems of human behaviour. The way of safety, sanity, and well-being is in a knowledge of the order of Nature. Efforts of complete suppression of the life-force, and reckless gratification of desires are both opposed to the natural scheme and a sane social morality. The direction and proper use of the erotic craving is one of the duties and disciplines of life. Sex is a potentiality that cannot be underrated and trifled with, and still less ignored. There scarcely exists a man or woman who can assert complete immunity from emo¬ tional unrest, mental difficulties, ethical dilemmas, or physical signs related to the sex life. Whether we realise it or not, and even though we may resent it, the vital urge, as expressed in the pairing instinct, is always more or less active within us. According to temperamental conditions, inclination, power of control, and circumstance, this kinetic will impel us to wooing, marri ^e, and the founding of a family, or to dissolute sex relations, to perversities of instinct, to dishonour, to zeal in social reform, to philanthropy, or to refuge in monastic life. We are impelled by an irresistible power, sometimes tyrannous and alarming, to appease the universal prompting, either by the purely natural means, or by the method of sublimation and transference. Unquestionably, the right course for the vaster number of men and women, endowed with normal emotions and powers, is to obey the yearning for mating. In our com¬ plicated civilisation the pathway to marriage is often beset