e will has to be set aside, and strong suggestive means are
used; and in both cases the appeal is not of the conflict type, but of an
intimate, sympathetic and pleading kind. In the effort to make a moral
adjustment it consequently turns out that a technique is used which
was derived originally from sexual life, and the use, so to speak,
of the sexual machinery for a moral adjustment involves, in some
cases, the carrying over into the general process of some sexual
manifestations."[390]

The relationship of the sexual and the religious emotions--like so many
other of the essential characters of human nature--is seen in its nakedest
shape by the alienist. Esquirol referred to this relationship, and, many
years ago, J.B. Friedreich, a German alienist of wide outlook and
considerable insight, emphasized the connection between the sexual and the
religious emotions, and brought forward illustrative cases.[391] Schroeder
van der Kolk also remarked: "I venture to express my conviction that we
should rarely err if, in a case of religious melancholy, we assumed the
sexual apparatus to be implicated."[392] Regis, in France, lays it down
that "there exists a close connection between mystic ideas and erotic
ideas, and most often these two orders of conception are associated in
insanity."[393] Berthier considered that erotic forms of insanity are
those most frequently found in convents. Bevan-Lewis points out how
frequently religious exaltation occurs at puberty in women, and religious
depression at the climacteric, the period of sexual decline.[394]
"Religion is very closely allied to love," remarks Savage, "and the love
of woman and the worship of God are constantly sources of trouble in
unstable youth; it is very interesting to note the frequency with which
these two deep feelings are associated."[395] "Closely connected with
salacity, particularly in women," remarks Conolly Norman, when discussing
mania (Tuke's _Dictionary of Psychological Medicine_), "is religious
excitement.... Ecstasy, as we see in cases of acute mental disease, is
probably always connected with sexual excitement, if not with sexual
depravity. The same association is constantly seen in less extreme cases,
and one of the commonest features in the conversation of an acutely
maniacal woman is the intermingling of erotic and religious ideas."
"Patients who believe," remarks Clara Barrus, "that they are the Virgin
Mary, the bride of Christ, the Church, 'God's wife,