ABSTRACT
By ridding the organism of sexual cravings and concentrating these in the genital, the level of efficiency of the organism is definitely raised and its adaptation to difficult situations—to catastrophes, even—made possible. Psychoanalytic experience has established that the acts preparatory to coitus likewise have as their function the bringing about of an identification with the sexual partner through intimate contact and embraces. Kissing, stroking, biting, embracing serve to efface the boundaries between the egos of the sexual partners, so that during the sex act the man. In the phraseology of the natural sciences we should have to say of the sex act that it purposes and attains a simultaneous gratification as regards both the soma and the germ-plasm. For the soma, ejaculation signifies being rid of a burdensome secretory product; for the sex cells entry into the milieu most favorable to them.
