"This fact is in no way affected when repressed sexual stimuli come to light as the present source of the checks of aggression. They are similarly arranged and have the purpose of enhancing the fear of the partner and of permitting the retreat decided upon in the plan of life, to be entered upon with certainty; they are therefore acts of foresight. The neurotic had already in childhood laid the foundation of this foresight and in it is reflected the feeling of shame as the guiding line of reassuring modesty and the prudery of civilisation.
"The previous history of the patient reveals an exaggerated modesty and this is true at times of those who in other respects show a boyish nature; the anxiety of nervous children on being exposed may be observed in their conduct. They exclude every one from the room and lock the door when they are going to undress. This conduct is also observable in boys who have grown up among girls. In the prognosis of neurosis, this expedient of cowardice is a bad symptom. It is the equivalent of later castration thoughts and neurotic wishes, the wish to be a woman, for instance, which expresses itself as soon as the fear of the life mate becomes actual or a decision has to be avoided."
=Lack of Modesty=, when it assumes a morbid form, has, according to Adler, the same meaning as prurient modesty.
"The very shameless, obscene talker," Adler writes, "is trying to demonstrate to his listeners the fact of his great manliness of which he is not very sure himself, the very immodest woman merely demonstrates her inability to adapt herself to her feminine role.... In the analysis of such women, at times only in their dreams, is observed the childish expectation of a metamorphosis into a male, an attempted substitute for the will-to-power, the will-to-be-above."
Jealousy has been subjected to the distortion which every sexual manifestation suffers under the influence of our modern puritanical civilisation. It has to be concealed and lied about and derives from that fact an immense obsessional power. It becomes a mask for other feelings and, in its turn, may masquerade in the guise of other feelings.
Both its presence and its absence may denote normality or abnormality. Intense jealousy may be the projection of our feelings into another individual and be a symptom of paranoia. On the other hand, the entire lack of jealousy of a husband who enjoys the sight of his wife caressed by another man, certainly reveals a most morbid masochism.