, for she had a normal appetite. But she had an
idea; she was anxious to be slim and to attain this end she cut down her
meals to the smallest size, merely a little soup and a few eggs. She
suffered much from the abstinence she thus imposed on herself, and was
always hungry, though sometimes her hunger was masked by the inevitable
stomach trouble caused by so long a persistence in this _regime_. At
times, indeed, she had been so hungry that she had devoured greedily
whatever she could lay her hands on, and not infrequently she could not
resist the temptation to eat a few biscuits in secret. Such actions caused
her horrible remorse, but, all the same, she would be guilty of them
again. She realized the great efforts demanded by her way of life, and
indeed looked upon herself as a heroine for resisting so long.
"Sometimes," she told Janet, "I passed whole hours in thinking about food,
I was so hungry. I swallowed my saliva, I bit my handkerchief, I rolled
on the ground, I wanted to eat so badly. I searched books for descriptions
of meals and feasts, I tried to deceive my hunger by imagining that I too
was enjoying all these good things. I was really famished, and in spite of
a few weaknesses for biscuits I know that I showed much courage."[96]
Nadia's motive idea, that she wished to be slim, corresponds to the
abstinent man's idea that he wishes to be "moral," and only differs from
it by having the advantage of being somewhat more positive and personal,
for the idea of the person who wishes to avoid sexual indulgence because
it is "not right" is often not merely negative but impersonal and imposed
by the social and religious environment. Nadia's occasional outbursts of
reckless greediness correspond to the sudden impulses to resort to
prostitution, and her secret weaknesses for biscuits, followed by keen
remorse, to lapses into the habit of masturbation. Her fits of struggling
and rolling on the ground are precisely like the outbursts of futile
desire which occasionally occur to young abstinent men and women in health
and strength. The absorption in thoughts about meals and in literary
descriptions of meals is clearly analogous to the abstinent man's
absorption in wanton thoughts and erotic books. Finally, Nadia's
conviction that she is a heroine corresponds exactly to the attitude of
self-righteousness which often marks the sexually abstinent.

If we turn to Freud's penetrating and suggestive study of the problem of
sexua