Love Without Fear [antikvár]

PrefaceThere are scores of books on sex. Many of them are well worth reading. But this volume has not been written merely to be read. It is intended for use.You see, this book demands something of the readernot merely attention, but action. Herbert Spencer once defined the aim of education as 'not knowledge, but action'. Most books about sex impart knowledge, but they are rarely of much use except to medical students. They may tell the reader 'all there is to know about sex', if some of the publishers' blurbs are to be believed, though I should say that all the books ever written since printing began could not do that!But the point is that knowing a lot about sex is not enough. The works on sexology tell the reader almost everything except what to do. And it is that practical aspect which concerns me, because experience has convinced me that thousands of people whose sex life is deplorably unsatisfactory have read and re-read work after work about sex. What such volumes fail to teach is techniquethe one thing needed by the plain man and his wife, and by the young unmarried persons who hope to build better than they can see their parents have done.In this book warnings are fewer than in most volumes on the sexual relationship. The reason is that the only way to conquer bad habits is to substitute good ones for them. Thus the best way in which to oppose perverted or foolish practices is to teach sound love technique and to show its numerous advantages.I have avoided needless descriptions of the unsavoury. But I have called a spade a spade where necessary. The usual method, which, in effect, describes the spade as an 'agricultural implement', renders many sex books largely useless to those who need them most. Far better to use the expressions which are used, and therefore understood, by the masses. To warn women against the dangers of abortion instruments is not nearly so effective as to name them.It is the same with those diversions of the basic sexual impulse which are generally calledand often miscalled'perversions', the devices used in contraception, and various practices, normal and abnormal, which possess perfectly good names given them by the masses. 'Withdrawal', for coitus interruptus, is an example. There seems to be no sound reason why the doctor who is friendly and human in the surgery should, as soon as he begins to write, use terms which are meaningless to many readers.Whether this book succeeds in its purpose or not depends entirely upon the extent to which it is used, its guidance followed, its message applied. It points the path to happiness. But the reader must follow that path for himself. The publishers, the critics and reviewers, cannot ensure that. So may I request, right at the start, the reader's co-operation ?eustace chesser