First, let us think of the expression ‘normal sex’. ‘Normal’ commonly has two uses, rather different. The expression can be used, rather neutrally, to designate a commonly encountered, statistically frequent form of behavior. For example, the normal sexual relation, in this sense, consists of a husband, tired from the efforts of the day, kissing his wife a bit, caressing her a little if he is really a terrific lover, and then, before she can be aroused to more than a friendly attitude, crawling on top of her, ejaculating, crawling out, washing, and going to sleep. It’s no wonder that millions of women are of the opinion that sex is not all that great. For them it isn’t. There are, apparently, literally millions of women who have never experienced orgasm. This is a tragedy of lost pleasure. Unless a woman has trained her body it will usually take her about a third of an hour to be readied for orgasm. The normal sexual relation lasts probably from between five to fifteen minutes. This should make clear one sense of ‘normal’. In this sense, normal sex is obviously not very desirable. It is surely a flop for the girl and, for the man, it is hard to see how it could be more than masturbation with a clear conscience. On the other hand, ‘normal’ is often used, sometimes without notification, as a device for commending a certain form of behavior.

In the first sense ‘normal’ is primarily descriptive, reportive; in the second sense, it is primarily prescriptive, persuasive. That the same word is used in both senses is occasionally useful to the propagandist. For example, if the propagandist approves of mindless sex he will designate imaginative sex as not normal. In one sense, of course, it is not normal. Most people do not use their minds when engaging in sex. In the second sense, of course, the implication is that there is something iniquitous, unhealthy, undesirably deviant, sick, etc., about mentally enhancing sexual experience. There is no agreed-upon definition, incitally, in the psychological or psychoanalytic community on what constitutes mental health. It is not so much that they just do not know yet, as that any such definition would reflect a choice, a decision, on the part of the definers. It would, in effect, incorporate a value judgment.