ic
symptoms in order to escape the difficulties of the situation. After the
marriage ceremony, the man's life goes on much as before, so far as his
social activities are concerned, but woman takes up the new duties
connected with the care of the home and her child-bearing functions.
Moreover, the sexual life of woman is in many ways more complex than
that of man. She has been subjected to more repressions and inhibitions,
and as a result there has been more modification of her emotional
reactions in the field of love. This greater complexity of her love life
makes adaptation to marriage more problematical in the case of woman.

Although the neurotic tendencies of modern women have been an important
factor for the production of disharmony in the family life, there are
certain variations of the individual sex life which are more universally
significant. The conditioned emotional reactions which environmental
influences have built up around the sexual impulse of each member of
society invariably determine the choice of the mate and give rise to
extremely complicated problems by the very nature of the selective
process. It is largely a matter of chance whether the mate chosen in
accordance with the ideals of romantic love and because of some
fascinating trait which acts as an erotic fetish or in conformity with a
parental fixation will prove a congenial companion through life.

But the complexity of the situation lies in the fact that the erotic
impulses may become conditioned to respond to an indefinite number of
substituted stimuli. For example, the parental fixation may become
reconditioned by focussing upon some special characteristic of the
father or mother, which becomes an erotic fetish. If the mate is
selected on the basis of this fetishistic attraction, he (or she) may
prove to be so unlike the parent in other respects as to lose all the
affection which was originally inspired. A concrete illustration of
these conflicting emotional reactions is the case of the girl who
declared that she feared her fiance as much as she loved him, but felt
that she must marry him nevertheless. An investigation showed that her
almost compulsive feeling about her lover was due to the fact that his
gestures and manner of regarding her, in fact his whole bearing,
reminded her of her dead father, while in other respects he was totally
repugnant to her because his character traits were so far removed from
those of her father ideal.

Th