Livets Bog, vol. 3
In the forecourt of abnormality
846. But within prostitution there is yet another significant area. This area is based on individuals who "sell" and "buy" sexual satisfaction among their own sex. The "sellers" consist mainly of individuals belonging to the previously mentioned group of the "chronically unemployed", within which swindling and other mental obscenity have to a large extent special possibilities for development. It is, of course, to be taken for granted that an existence of this kind in which an individual sells himself at every opportunity, possibly several times a day, is going to bring down a handsome, young being to the level of being both physically and morally defective. These beings as a rule have also squandered their sexual energy or find themselves totally impotent even before they have reached the peak of their sexual maturity in their late twenties. Their normal desire and capacity for work has also long ago been dissipated. And with the cessation of this good and healthy guardian of moral behaviour, the individual's final, natural, mental restraints more or less break down. From now on he is to a large extent knocking at the gates of obscenity, swindling and begging, behind which prisons and detention centres for psychopaths, with punishment and internment respectively, stand ready to receive him. The sphere of sexuality presented here is thus in a way a forecourt of abnormality. And from here the total darkness that we call "mental illness" is but a single threshold away. And unless something occurs that can once again lead the individual back to the use of the talent kernels of morality, in both the physical and the mental areas, the development of the talent kernels of obscenity will become so overwhelmingly dominant that the individual will totally lose the ability to see, grasp or understand normal reality, and will thereby eventually lose all contact with all other living beings, becoming a danger to society and completely helpless with regard to his own behaviour and the maintenance of his life. He will be the plaything of his own mental stormy winds. He will be a roof tile wrenched out of its place among the other tiles that now hurtle through space with furious speed and energy, dangerously striking all living things that cross its path. For a long time, it has become clear that a hospital straitjacket or a padded cell is the only temporary safe haven or salvation for this wild, mad, senseless being. It is, however, not such a widely held view that a loving and superlatively appropriate treatment of the patient, working with a high-intellectual, full understanding of the situation, constitutes the best and most rapidly effective factor in his healing. But untiring scientific research and human beings' development in morality and "cosmic knowledge" will eventually become a solidly reliable, divine support for the unfortunate I's or the prodigal son's return to his father, to normality and to life.