sycho-analysts insist that the process of liberating the individual from
outer and inner influences that repress or deform his energies and
impulses is effected by removing the inhibitions on the free-play of his
nature. It is a process of education in the true sense, not of the
suppression of natural impulses nor even of the instillation of sound
rules and maxims for their control, not of the pressing in but of the
leading out of the individual's special tendencies.[20] It removes
inhibitions, even inhibitions that were placed upon the individual, or
that he consciously or unconsciously placed upon himself, with the best
moral intentions, and by so doing it allows a larger and freer and more
natively spontaneous morality to come into play. It has this influence
above all in the sphere of sex, where such inhibitions have been most
powerfully laid on the native impulses, where the natural tendencies have
been most surrounded by taboos and terrors, most tinged with artificial
stains of impurity and degradation derived from alien and antiquated
traditions. Thus the therapeutical experience of the psycho-analysts
reinforces the lessons we learn from physiology and psychology and the
intimate experiences of life.

[20] See, for instance, H.W. Frink, _Morbid Fears and Compulsions_,
1918, Ch. X.

Sexual activity, we see, is not merely a bald propagative act, nor, when
propagation is put aside, is it merely the relief of distended vessels. It
is something more even than the foundation of great social institutions.
It is the function by which all the finer activities of the organism,
physical and psychic, may be developed and satisfied. Nothing, it has
been said, is so serious as lust--to use the beautiful term which has been
degraded into the expression of the lowest forms of sensual pleasure--and
we have now to add that nothing is so full of play as love. Play is
primarily the instinctive work of the brain, but it is brain activity
united in the subtlest way to bodily activity. In the play-function of sex
two forms of activity, physical and psychic, are most exquisitely and
variously and harmoniously blended. We here understand best how it is that
the brain organs and the sexual organs are, from the physiological
standpoint, of equal importance and equal dignity. Thus the adrenal
glands, among the most influential of all the ductless glands, are
specially and intimately associated alike with the brain and the sex
organs. As w