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 Chapter 1

PARADISE LOST

Happiness between men and women has never had such a radiant outlook as it has in this decade. Perhaps for the first time in the history of man the two sexes find themselves in a position to explore together the infinitely varied and rich potentialities of real love.

I am not being a blind optimist in making such a statement. In my profession as a psychiatrist I see enough of daily misery and destructive misunderstanding between men and women to keep a healthy skepticism very much alive in my mind about all human relationships, particularly those that depend for their continued existence, at least in part, on sexual love.

I can make such a statement about the potentialities of modern love for one reason—that women today have, beyond the shadow of any doubt, achieved complete equality with men. Above all, this equality can be observed as fully operative in the realm of love, sexual love. In the past thirty-odd years, and particularly in the last ten, the taboos, ignorance, and misunderstanding which had obscured our