Page:The Power of Sexual Surrender.pdf/194

 to prove that they are invalid. These deep and hidden convictions are shaped early in a woman's life, primarily by her relationships with her parents and secondarily through her relationships with her brothers and sisters. They are basically irrational feelings, erected as defenses against childhood and girlhood fears and misunderstandings. They have no real basis in fact; they do not pertain to the male as he is.

It is of very great importance to know this when you begin to uncover your most secret convictions. No matter how real these negative attitudes appear to be, remember that they are only feelings, not reality. As long as you keep that fact in the forefront of your mind you will increasingly dare to let these feelings up into your awareness, into your conscious mind.

I counsel women to be remorseless with themselves in this search for any negative feelings they might possess toward their husband and toward all men. Do not stop when you have seen one or two details that indicate an amount of feeling you had not clearly known you possessed. Press onward and inward fearlessly until you have exposed every last hostile and irrational emotion and attitude you have.

One woman who came to me had worked very hard for five sessions on her negative feelings toward men. We had started our mutual investigation when she confessed that any slight irritability on her husband's part caused her to feel extremely anxious, often resulted in actual nausea.

We pursued the matter and soon found a great store of antagonism toward men hidden just beneath the surface of an apparently gentle person. She had, we discovered, the common, classical conviction that men wish to exploit women, to bend them to their wills. She soon realized she had been interpreting many everyday happenings in the light of this belief. Her husband, an editor, sometimes had to work at home in the evening and had asked her to keep the