[Sidenote: The liability of women to a corresponding dissociation]
There can be little doubt that women are, on the whole, less liable to suffer from this kind of dissociation than are men. With women the directly sexual elements of love are more frequently aroused together with the elements of tenderness and esteem, than is the case with men. Thus many women experience sexual desire or gratification _only_ in relation to men to whom they are bound also by feelings of deep affection, admiration or respect. This difference between the sexes is perhaps to some extent a constitutional one, the elements in question being by nature more intimately fused and integrated in one sex than in the other[132]. Some part of the difference is however due, beyond all reasonable doubt, to environmental and educational factors.
Of the three principal factors we have enumerated as liable to bring about a high degree of dissociation between sexual attraction and esteem in men, it seems probable that the first--that due to the child's contempt for the (otherwise) loved parent for yielding to the sexual advances of the hated parent--is almost if not quite as potent with women as with men. The subsequent reinforcement of the dissociation by the two remaining factors is however to a considerable extent inoperative with women. The influence of masturbation is in nearly all respects less marked in women than in men, partly perhaps because at the important age, at or about the time of puberty, the practice is less frequent with girls than with boys, but principally because for a variety of reasons it meets with less violent psychic opposition, arouses less violent moral conflicts and is to a much lesser extent liable to become the cause of self-contempt or self-reproach[133]. Nor again is the association of sexual activity with prostitution (although the act of prostitution itself may be regarded with considerable repulsion) so deeply ingrained in women as in men.
In spite, however, of the lesser operation of these factors in the case of women and in spite of any possible closer connection (through innate organization) of the elements of the love impulse which are liable to dissociation, it is nevertheless true that a very considerable number of women do suffer from some degree of this dissociation[134].