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Page 8
11. Sex Incompatibility.--There comes under this heading a wide range
of causative factors which play an important part in marital discord.
Some of them are better understood by the social worker than was
formerly the case; but many of them are obscure even to the practitioner
of mental medicine, to whom their results come daily. Distasteful as the
task may be, the social worker should familiarize herself, through
reading or through instruction by a qualified physician, in the commoner
forms of these maladjustments. This is not urged because it is part of
the social worker's task to make detailed inquiry into such matters or
to pass judgment upon them, but because they often clamor for attention
and need to be recognized by the first responsible person to whose
notice they are brought. Unless she knows, for instance, what
constitutes excess in sex relations, a worker may misunderstand the
situation described to her and condemn a man for being a selfish brute,
when the trouble is really sexual an�sthesia in the wife. It is well
known that this single cause operates disastrously to disrupt many
marriages or else to render them insupportable. The warning should be
added, however--and it cannot be added too emphatically--that the social
worker must scrupulously refrain from making diagnoses in these cases,
even tentatively; she must refer such data as come to her either to the
general practitioner or to the psychiatrist, selecting one or the other
as the symptoms presented may indicate.
Less well understood by the lay worker are actual maladjustments, both
physical and mental (or spiritual), which prevent the complete
satisfaction of one or both. Some of these are curable by medical care,
others by instruction and education. This instruction should be given,
needless to say, by the physician and not by the case worker. If
uncorrected such maladjustments are apt to result in marital shipwreck.
No attempt can be made here to discuss actual sex perversions in their
relation to desertion. Their effect is obvious; and the social worker
should be sufficiently well informed, not only from a few standard books
on the subject,[13] but from a knowledge of the phrases which are used
in the tenements, to understand them, so that significant symptoms are
not overlooked. So intimately are sex difficulties connected with the
neuroses that the lay social worker should consult the psychiatrist
freely wherever one is available, before attempting to deal with them.
12. Vicious Habits.--Sexual immorality, through its degenerative
effect on personality and the lowered ideals of marriage it induces, has
a real effect in bringing about desertion. The "other man" and the
"other woman" type of desertion, however, is often itself only a
consequence of a previously existing state of temperamental or sexual
incompatibility. If these underlying causes can be attacked and changed
such a desertion may be "repairable."
A young man deserted his wife and three children and eloped with an
eighteen-year-old girl who had made his acquaintance in a street car
flirtation. He had been "an obedient boy with good principles," and
his later record showed steadiness and ability; but he and his wife
had been drifting apart--their marital relations had not been "quite
the same" as formerly. Arrested and brought back, he did not impute
any blame to her, however, but said he "must have been crazy." In
spite of the circumstances, the judge decided to give him six months
in the penitentiary; and a man visitor from the family social agency
interested began at once to try to secure an influence over him. On
his release the couple again went to housekeeping. The wife had been
cautioned on how to receive him; but things went badly at first, and
the man began again insisting that they were mismated. (He "had the
other girl still considerably on his conscience and heart.") Tangles
continually arose which the society's visitor was hard put to it to
straighten out. Once the wife found a letter from the girl; but
finally, after the charity organization society in the city where he
had left the girl reported that she was doing well and not breaking
her heart about him, the man decided to "cut out" the
correspondence. A little later the girl eliminated herself by
marrying. A year after the reconciliation the wife told the friendly
visitor that the trouble was gone between them, and "it was just
like a new life." For another year efforts were continued to
strengthen the attachment and make the home more attractive, at the
end of which time it was felt that the home was stable enough to
need no further supervision.
For reasons of convenience we may include here the causal relations
between venereal disease and desertion. In so far as syphilis brings
about mental and physical deterioration, the relation between the two is
obvious. The presence of the disease in the man, if known to his wife,
may lead her to sever relations with him in self-protection, and this
severance, in turn, may lead ultimately to desertion or complete
separation. Often separation is desirable, but the syphilitic who is on
the whole a good family man raises some of the most difficult questions
with which the social worker has to deal. Whether to try to force him
out of the home and thus make an unwilling deserter; whether to violate
the diagnosis given in confidence by passing it on to the wife for her
protection--these are only two of the puzzles that may arise.
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