After the massage, the husband asks the wife to speak about her thoughts and feelings during the massage, encouraging her to be honest about any negativity that might have crept in.

This game can be repeated many times, with as many variations as the imaginations and inhibitions of the lovers allow, with ever-increasing results. However, because depressed couples are likely to be quite sexually blocked, results will be gradual. If done with caring, though, the game will be beneficial to both giver and receiver, the former getting in touch with his or her creative energy and learning to truly care about and give to his or her spouse (toward whom he or she may have been resentful or emotionally distancing), and the latter getting in touch with his or her body tension and emotional blocks (which kept him or her captive to depression). (Note: When the female is the massage-giver, she follows the same procedure.)

*74/196/1*

Activist: Wife, without husband’s cooperation or knowledge.

Setting: Home.

Aim: Prod husband out of his defensive posture and rekindle sexual passion and emotional involvement.

Game Plan: The husband comes home from work to find the house in darkness. When he flicks the light switch, nothing happens—the fuse has been disconnected. There is just enough light from flickering candles so that he can make his way to the living room.

There in the middle of the living room, lying languorously on the floor, is his grinning wife. She has made a nest in the middle of the floor by piling up comforters, pillows, or rugs, giving the room the appearance of a harem boudoir. Perhaps she has even hung some diaphanous material, something akin to pink chiffon, from a makeshift rafter—and she lies within this mysterious, tentlike shroud. On each side of the nest are candles or lanterns (Japanese lanterns are nice), and the smell of incense wafts through the air. From somewhere comes the sound of exotic music on strange instruments.

*24/196/1*

The incidence of transvestism is unknown. There are no public health statistics, nor are there satisfactory statistics of transvestites arrested by the police, nor of those seen by psychiatrists. There are some transvestite organizations with their own magazines or newsletters. The syndrome is probably more frequent than is generally assumed.

Etiology

The precise etiology of transvestism cannot be formulated on the basis of today’s knowledge. Most evidence points to the early years when gender identity/role is being differentiated as critical to the beginnings of transvestism. A few transvestites recall being dressed in girls’ clothes as a punishment—the so-called petticoat punishment of the older literature.

Diagnosis

The diagnosis is made primarily from the patient’s account of his chief complaint and its history. As in the case of transexualism, it is necessary to get corroborative evidence from family members or others and from available records. The physical examination is a routine necessity, even though it can generally be counted on as being noncontributory.

Differential Diagnosis

The diagnoses to be ruled out parallel those for transexualism. There may be some confusion with transexualism in the case of the patient who wears women’s clothes, but with a full unshaven beard, with or without taking estrogen, and with no demand whatsoever for genital surgery. Until the last few years this variant of transvestism was unknown, through lack of public disclosure. A corresponding female condition is that of the woman who wears men’s clothes and who requests only a mastectomy, but no other treatment.

A tricky problem of differential diagnosis occurs in those cases of transvestic transexualism that sit on the fence, so to speak, of both diagnoses. Typically the patient is fortyish, and has been a covert transvestite throughout adulthood. Finally the compulsion for public appearance as a woman and for total sex change demands expression, despite personal commitments to wife and family. Without a real-life test of two years or longer, such a patient cannot get his affairs in order and himself rehabilitated. Some of them, however, are past masters at clinic shopping. They maneuver from one doctor to another, editing the information given to each, until they finally implement their plans, despite contradictory advice. Some of them become adequately rehabilitated. The burden imposed on their dependents may be excessive.

*197/187/5*

None of these studies takes into account issues related to the psychosexual development of children, especially the role of infantile anxieties, the nature of the child’s relation to significant individuals in his or her life, and motivational factors. This is unfortunate, because most research on cognitive styles suggests that a difference between the sexes in this area might be related to the nature of the child’s relation to important individuals in his or her life. Investigation of the relation between cognitive style of reflection versus impulsivity suggests a greater impulsivity among boys than among girls, although the difference is not significant and is variable (Ward; Wright). In breadth of categorization, which is based on the child’s pattern of sorting when asked to group objects according to some differentiating attributes, there is a developmental shift away from finding perceptual attribute differences toward finding conceptual differences based on abstraction and synthesis. Furthermore, there seems to be a developmental pattern that shifts from over-discrimination (narrow) to breadth of categorization (Saltz and others). The question is whether the breadth, consistency, and accuracy of categorization bear any relation to the child’s observable behavior in the nursery school. Teachers’ ratings of children’s behavior in the classroom in Block’s and Block’s study indicated that four-year-old girls who characteristically “stretch limits” also were broad in their categorization. They also were described as having a number of psychological and interpersonal difficulties such as reacting poorly under stress, feeling jealous, displaying low resiliency, and being undependable. The study did not discriminate significantly for boys. This suggests that the breadth of categorization is inversely related to consistency-accuracy (ego resiliency) in girls at the four-year age level. However, Nelson and Bonvillian studying eighteen-month-olds, found the reverse pattern. In this study, girls generalized concept words to previously unnamed examples, indicating a much advanced functional level. The same proved true when the style of conceptualization was studied. In this study the child is asked to select from among a few pictures one that is like or “goes with” a standard picture. Evaluation is based on whether the child’s style of conceptualization is descriptive part-whole, descriptive-global, relational-contextual, or categorical-inferential (Siegel). The results of these studies suggest that there is a correlation between the child’s style of conceptualization and the child’s sex. Boys who score high on descriptive part-whole conceptualization also score high on emotional control. In contrast, girls scoring high on descriptive part-whole, score high on items such as carelessness, daydreaming, and inattentiveness. These differences also were true for boys and girls who scored high on relational-contextual style of conceptualization.

It is clear that the research on cognitive styles during the early period of life generally and on cognitive style and sexual development specifically, has a long way to go and needs conceptual and methodological clarification. The little that has been done has given us a glimpse of its potential and possibilities.

The field is burdened by controversy and emotionality and is colored by the current cultural trend toward redefinition and re-evaluation of long-accepted stereotypic sexual roles in Western societies. We may predict with some confidence that future patterns of child-rearing, their emphases, and values will be modified as a result of this trend. We also should be mindful that the hierarchy of values, the division of responsibility, and the modes of social and familial participation are defined not only by social and economic forces, but also by biological necessities nourished by genetic, hormonal, and biological roots, whose value is inspired by the survival of the individual and its species. For this reason, overlooking the individual differences between sexes or insisting that equality means an absence of difference, is not productive to our long search to understand ourselves.

*123/187/5*

The mucous membranes of the genital organs in a healthy woman normally secrete lactic acid, which prevents the development of harmful bacteria. But if the production of lactic acid is insufficient, resistance against micro-organisms is considerably diminished, and it is easy for an inflammation to develop.

In this respect it is important to watch your diet, since inadequate nutrition may slow down and weaken the growth of lactic acid bacteria. As a result, invading bacteria soon gain a foothold and the body has to adopt a different defence strategy. It will secrete mucus and dispatch leucocytes and lymphocytes to combat the foreign invaders, all in an effort to expel them from the body. And that is the so-called ‘whites’, a white or yellowish discharge of mucous material from the vagina.

*140/28/1*

Blindness constitutes an extremely heavy loss. Amongst all the other wonders of Creation, the eyes are a miracle and the lacrimal glands, despite their negligible size and apparent unimportance, are a convincing symbol of a carefully thought out design to smooth the necessary but involuntary processes of our daily existence.

*118/28/1*

A good illustration of the human brain is that of the walnut. The hard shell can be compared to the cranium. The two-lobed seed resembles the cerebrum, and the skin, which peels off easily in freshly picked nuts, may be likened to the meninges. At the back of the head, between the spinal cord and the brain, lies the cerebellum, which is approximately the size of an orange.

*95/28/1*

Since children with eczema also tend to suffer from calcium deficiency, taking Urticalcin will prove helpful. This calcium preparation in powder form, if applied externally, will prevent harmful bacteria from from entering through the pores of the skin. Instead of steroid ointments, use a lanolin cream such as Bioforce Cream. In the end, the doctor will be delighted with his little patient’s progress.

Obviously, the child’s diet is another important factor. Since milk proteins are to be left out completely, the inclusion of vegetable protein is vital. In this regard soy protein or almond protein, as provided in almond cream, have proved of great value. Special attention should also be paid to providing a salt-free diet. The speakers at the paediatric convention in Munich, however, made no mention of these factors whatsoever.

*73/28/1*