rgetic emotional woman, not
usually beautiful, will perhaps be devoted to another who may have found
some rather specialized lifework, but who may be very unpractical, and who
has probably a very feeble sexual instinct; she is grateful for her
friends's devotion, but may not actively reciprocate it. The actual
specific sexual phenomena generated in such cases vary very greatly. The
emotion may be latent or unconscious; it may be all on one side; it is
often more or less recognized and shared. Such cases are on the borderland
of true sexual inversion, but they cannot be included within its region.
Sex in these relationships is scarcely the essential and fundamental
element; it is more or less subordinate and parasitic. There is often a
semblance of a sex-relationship from the marked divergence of the friends
in physical and psychic qualities, and the nervous development of one or
both the friends is sometimes slightly abnormal. We have to regard such
relationships as hypertrophied friendships, the hypertrophy being due to
unemployed sexual instinct.

The following narrative is written by a lady who holds a
responsible educational position: "A friend of mine, two or three
years older than myself (I am 31), and living in the same house
with me, has been passing through a very unhappy time. Long
nervous strain connected with this has made her sleep badly, and
apt to wake in terrible depression about 3 o'clock in the
morning. In the early days of our friendship, about eight months
ago, she occasionally at these times took refuge with me. After a
while I insisted on her consulting a doctor, who advised her,
amongst other things, not to sleep alone. Thenceforth for two or
three months I induced her to share my room. After a week or two
she generally shared my bed for a time at the beginning of the
night, as it seemed to help her to sleep.

"Before this, about the second or third time that she came to me
in the early morning, I had been surprised and a little
frightened to find how pleasant it was to me to have her, and how
reluctant I was that she should go away. When we began regularly
to sleep in the same room, the physical part of our affection
grew rapidly very strong. It is natural for me generally to
caress my friends, but I soon could not be alone in a room with
this one without wanting to have my arms round her. It would have
been