My point in this portion of our text is simple. I am not interested in being a quack, or claiming therapeutic efficacy or anything of that sort for imaginative sex. It would surely be no substitute for competent medical attention. On the other hand I do suspect that imaginative sex, in many cases, perhaps conjoined with other techniques, etc., would have definite therapeutic value. What value, if any, it might have, of course, would have to be scientifically established.

All I would like to claim for imaginative sex is that it is delightful and exciting, that it can be fun, that it can be, under appropriate circumstances, very pleasurable. Beyond this I would invite the medical community to consider its possible use in alleviating certain forms of psychosexual distress. Sexual excitement is often anterior to, and necessary for, adequate or superior sexual performance. If imaginative sex can produce these sexual excitements, if it can set the system in operation, that is surely of therapeutic relevance. Any dynamite powerful enough to blow apart walls is worth thinking about. On the other hand, imaginative sex, as I propose it in this book is intended only as what it seems to be, an art of erotic expression and pleasure. It needs no values beyond these, but if it should have them, then the more felicitous it is.

V. Marriage And The Ventilation Of Emotion

I have suggested, and truthfully, that imaginative sex tends to deepen and consolidate marriages, and that it can produce not only intense emotional involvement, but love. I should like, however, here to note that it is also possible that it could bring about the termination of certain marriages. For example, if it becomes obvious to one partner or the other, or both, in the self-expressions of these games, that a truly deep-seated, ugly hostility, beyond the ordinary sorts of disgruntlements we all accrue with one another, is being expressed, that is a definite danger signal. If a man truly hates his wife, or she him, they should not be married. That marriage is a crime. If in the context of sex games not love and play, but genuine, deep cruelty or emotional antipathy is expressed, then this is symptomatic of a tragic relationship.

On the other hand, people who truly hate one another are not likely to engage in imaginative sex. If they do so, it might be merely to hurt or humiliate the other. That sort of thing is immediately recognizable. That is a perversion of the games. Hurting and humiliating human beings, genuinely and with malice, is morally wrong. This is very different from pretending to hurt and humiliate.