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Sex as a Sublimation for Tennis
128 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1986
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January 22, 2023Quotes
THE TENNIS MADNESS that confronts us today is perhaps best illuminated by a story I heard from an analyst friend of mine. The time is January 1983. A woman patient tells her doctor about a trip to the urologist's office with her husband, who was considering a vasectomy. The woman had remained in the waiting room, sitting quietly as she contemplated the kindness and understanding she would lavish on her husband to help calm his castration anxiety. From behind the closed door of the consulting room she could hear the doctor's soft, supportive voice, suggesting years of experience in handling the typical sexual insecurities aroused in men who undergo such
an operation. The woman's imagination took on a protective, motherly aspect as she visualized her husband's concern over how much time they would have to wait before intercourse was possible, how his erection would be affected, whether he would have trouble ejaculating…
Suddenly the door opened and the husband walked out with a horrified expression, his face ashen. Solicitously his wife stepped forward, took his arm and led him to the privacy of their car, where she began to draw him out so that she could ease the pain.
“What did you talk about for so long, darling?” she asked. “You were in there for over half an hour.”
The husband was plunged into gloom. “First the doctor spelled out all the things that could go wrong. You know, swelling, infection, the irreversibility factor. I told him I wasn't worried about that simple stuff. All I wanted to know was how long it would be before I could play singles. He said it should take a couple of weeks and that I shouldn't overdo it. So I said, ‘Jesus Christ, how can I wait that long?’”
At this point his bewildered wife asked, “But
didn't you say anything to him about our sex life?”
“I never even thought of that,” the husband replied. “All I kept wondering was, how the hell can I enjoy my vacation without tennis?”
Most researchers agree that the introduction of indoor courts, designer outfits and bigger rackets is significantly correlated with the low birth rate, seriously jeopardizing the survival of the family unit as we know it. Moreover, even the more enjoyable aspects of wet dreams have been affected by the increasing use of wristbands.
sex is not a natural activity. It cannot even be called a perversion; worse than that, it is now scientifically proven to be nothing more than a nervous habit, a compulsion at best.
Most authorities agree that if he had not been
preoccupied with his other interests, Freud could have been a high intermediate.
* Oskar Pfister was a pastoral counselor who became an early supporter of Tennis Instinct Theory. He is perhaps best known for his inspirational book, God Is My Doubles Partner.
* Wilhelm Fliess was Freud's closest friend and confidant in the pioneering days (1894-1905). In 1902, Fliess published his classic On the Causal Connection Between the Nose and the Sexual Organ, in which he suggested that painful or irregular menstruation is due to masturbation (“In such cases, removal of the nose is the only known cure”). For a while, Freud entertained the incredible notion that the persuasive charlatan Fliess had indeed discovered an unrecognized truth.
Then he realized that Fliess's mind had deteriorated and that the man was a dangerous influence. The final straw was Fliess's 1904 publication, The Evils of Celery.
* There was one excess that Freud himself halted. In 1922 a necrophilic interest in tennis cremation swept through Austria. Deluged by hundreds of requests from tennis melancholies to have their ashes scattered on the tennis courts, the Austrian government, with Freud's support, put a clamp on this practice on the grounds that the courts were becoming lumpy, causing
bad bounces.
If an individual has been immersed in his work, stressed by his family obligations or put upon by extensive sexual activity to the point where he is prevented from playing sufficient tennis, this is not good. The resulting tension is subcortically transformed into anxiety.
* One of Freud' greatest successes during this period involved the case of Werner von O., a man tortured by the terrible sexual symptom of invariably missing his wife and entering the pillowcase. Dipping deep into his tennis wisdom, Freud recollected that the net is at its lowest in the middle and suggested that his patient fantasize a dipped net every time he performed.
“This will not only excite you,” Freud told the
astounded Prussian, “it will also improve your aim.”
Wonder of wonders, the symptom immediately disappeared-except for the fact that Von O.'s legs kept getting tangled up.
** In Aladdin Wasn't Rubbing His Lamp, for example, Freud shifted his emphasis from the relatively harmless correlation between the backswing and masturbation in his first draft (1897) to a more serious inquiry into a popular Victorian fetish, the perverted use of racket covers with zippers and big teeth (1922).
the only way to know one's patients is to play tennis with them
about the act of intercourse, "Once you've had it, what
do you have?"
Anna Freud was an avid tennis player. When Austro-Hungary ran out of tennis balls during World War I, Freud dealt with his daughter's deprivation depression by playing imaginary games with her without tennis balls. The photo above, taken during one of these matches, clearly indicates Anna's weakness for shots hit down the middle (which, symbolically speaking, may account for her remaining virginal for the longest time).
I have never done anything mean or malicious, nor have I felt any temptation to do so. The only exception is that whenever I get a setup at the net, I smash it at that bastard Jung, for obvious reasons…
regarding whether the vaginal or clitoral orgasm is preferable. “Neither truly exists except in the imagination of overstimulated females,” he noted.
“There is no 'sweet spot' in tennis and there is no 'G spot in women. There is only the void that is filled by fantasy.”
The Freud Cup, awarded annually to the patient who
underwent the most radical transformation as a result of Tennis Therapy. Eva von R. won the cup for five consecutive years, 1903-1907, but she was finally disqualified in 1908 on the grounds that she was already cured and remained in treatment solely to win the prize. A huge international debate ensued over whether anyone who was truly healthy would go to such absurd lengths to win a prize. Freud solved the problem by terminating the award and instead distributing I ❤️ FREUD buttons to those he most admired.
The cunning competitor plays on the other party's
guilt. Continuously praise your opponent's shots, and
you'll notice how he begins to press. Self-beratement also serves to balance a guilty conscience for being
successful and makes your opponent disturbed for up setting you so. If on occasion you call one of your opponent's “out” shots “in,” then later on you can innocently call an “in” shot “out” on a crucial play. Practice saying “Good try,” sincerely; then you can call a lot of close shots “out” and get away with it.
-Psychological Warfare Between
the White Lines, 1936
Mostly women…cavort in their designer outfits, make juvenile noises and generally act like a bunch of adolescents. One feels uneasy thinking that these are adults who carry little black books in which they list their weekly tennis dates that take priority over their rightful duties to their children and mates. Cooking and cleaning have become secondary to tennis lessons. I fear for the fate of modern man.
AN AUSTRIAN TRAGEDY. Of the many theories on why Freud's attractive daughter Anna never married, the most plausible is that she was too strongly attached to her famous father and thus never able to build a personal life of her own. The severe rashes that broke out on the eve of her participation in the Father-Daughter Tennis Tournament at Innsbruck each year clearly reveal some of her inner conflicts. Perhaps Theodor Reik put it best when, in a thinly veiled anecdote, he tells of a young girl who plaintively says to her mother, “You're so lucky. You married Daddy. I have to marry a stranger.”
THE TENNIS MADNESS that confronts us today is perhaps best illuminated by a story I heard from an analyst friend of mine. The time is January 1983. A woman patient tells her doctor about a trip to the urologist's office with her husband, who was considering a vasectomy. The woman had remained in the waiting room, sitting quietly as she contemplated the kindness and understanding she would lavish on her husband to help calm his castration anxiety. From behind the closed door of the consulting room she could hear the doctor's soft, supportive voice, suggesting years of experience in handling the typical sexual insecurities aroused in men who undergo such
an operation. The woman's imagination took on a protective, motherly aspect as she visualized her husband's concern over how much time they would have to wait before intercourse was possible, how his erection would be affected, whether he would have trouble ejaculating…
Suddenly the door opened and the husband walked out with a horrified expression, his face ashen. Solicitously his wife stepped forward, took his arm and led him to the privacy of their car, where she began to draw him out so that she could ease the pain.
“What did you talk about for so long, darling?” she asked. “You were in there for over half an hour.”
The husband was plunged into gloom. “First the doctor spelled out all the things that could go wrong. You know, swelling, infection, the irreversibility factor. I told him I wasn't worried about that simple stuff. All I wanted to know was how long it would be before I could play singles. He said it should take a couple of weeks and that I shouldn't overdo it. So I said, ‘Jesus Christ, how can I wait that long?’”
At this point his bewildered wife asked, “But
didn't you say anything to him about our sex life?”
“I never even thought of that,” the husband replied. “All I kept wondering was, how the hell can I enjoy my vacation without tennis?”
Most researchers agree that the introduction of indoor courts, designer outfits and bigger rackets is significantly correlated with the low birth rate, seriously jeopardizing the survival of the family unit as we know it. Moreover, even the more enjoyable aspects of wet dreams have been affected by the increasing use of wristbands.
sex is not a natural activity. It cannot even be called a perversion; worse than that, it is now scientifically proven to be nothing more than a nervous habit, a compulsion at best.
Most authorities agree that if he had not been
preoccupied with his other interests, Freud could have been a high intermediate.
* Oskar Pfister was a pastoral counselor who became an early supporter of Tennis Instinct Theory. He is perhaps best known for his inspirational book, God Is My Doubles Partner.
* Wilhelm Fliess was Freud's closest friend and confidant in the pioneering days (1894-1905). In 1902, Fliess published his classic On the Causal Connection Between the Nose and the Sexual Organ, in which he suggested that painful or irregular menstruation is due to masturbation (“In such cases, removal of the nose is the only known cure”). For a while, Freud entertained the incredible notion that the persuasive charlatan Fliess had indeed discovered an unrecognized truth.
Then he realized that Fliess's mind had deteriorated and that the man was a dangerous influence. The final straw was Fliess's 1904 publication, The Evils of Celery.
* There was one excess that Freud himself halted. In 1922 a necrophilic interest in tennis cremation swept through Austria. Deluged by hundreds of requests from tennis melancholies to have their ashes scattered on the tennis courts, the Austrian government, with Freud's support, put a clamp on this practice on the grounds that the courts were becoming lumpy, causing
bad bounces.
If an individual has been immersed in his work, stressed by his family obligations or put upon by extensive sexual activity to the point where he is prevented from playing sufficient tennis, this is not good. The resulting tension is subcortically transformed into anxiety.
* One of Freud' greatest successes during this period involved the case of Werner von O., a man tortured by the terrible sexual symptom of invariably missing his wife and entering the pillowcase. Dipping deep into his tennis wisdom, Freud recollected that the net is at its lowest in the middle and suggested that his patient fantasize a dipped net every time he performed.
“This will not only excite you,” Freud told the
astounded Prussian, “it will also improve your aim.”
Wonder of wonders, the symptom immediately disappeared-except for the fact that Von O.'s legs kept getting tangled up.
** In Aladdin Wasn't Rubbing His Lamp, for example, Freud shifted his emphasis from the relatively harmless correlation between the backswing and masturbation in his first draft (1897) to a more serious inquiry into a popular Victorian fetish, the perverted use of racket covers with zippers and big teeth (1922).
the only way to know one's patients is to play tennis with them
about the act of intercourse, "Once you've had it, what
do you have?"
Anna Freud was an avid tennis player. When Austro-Hungary ran out of tennis balls during World War I, Freud dealt with his daughter's deprivation depression by playing imaginary games with her without tennis balls. The photo above, taken during one of these matches, clearly indicates Anna's weakness for shots hit down the middle (which, symbolically speaking, may account for her remaining virginal for the longest time).
I have never done anything mean or malicious, nor have I felt any temptation to do so. The only exception is that whenever I get a setup at the net, I smash it at that bastard Jung, for obvious reasons…
regarding whether the vaginal or clitoral orgasm is preferable. “Neither truly exists except in the imagination of overstimulated females,” he noted.
“There is no 'sweet spot' in tennis and there is no 'G spot in women. There is only the void that is filled by fantasy.”
The Freud Cup, awarded annually to the patient who
underwent the most radical transformation as a result of Tennis Therapy. Eva von R. won the cup for five consecutive years, 1903-1907, but she was finally disqualified in 1908 on the grounds that she was already cured and remained in treatment solely to win the prize. A huge international debate ensued over whether anyone who was truly healthy would go to such absurd lengths to win a prize. Freud solved the problem by terminating the award and instead distributing I ❤️ FREUD buttons to those he most admired.
The cunning competitor plays on the other party's
guilt. Continuously praise your opponent's shots, and
you'll notice how he begins to press. Self-beratement also serves to balance a guilty conscience for being
successful and makes your opponent disturbed for up setting you so. If on occasion you call one of your opponent's “out” shots “in,” then later on you can innocently call an “in” shot “out” on a crucial play. Practice saying “Good try,” sincerely; then you can call a lot of close shots “out” and get away with it.
-Psychological Warfare Between
the White Lines, 1936
Mostly women…cavort in their designer outfits, make juvenile noises and generally act like a bunch of adolescents. One feels uneasy thinking that these are adults who carry little black books in which they list their weekly tennis dates that take priority over their rightful duties to their children and mates. Cooking and cleaning have become secondary to tennis lessons. I fear for the fate of modern man.
AN AUSTRIAN TRAGEDY. Of the many theories on why Freud's attractive daughter Anna never married, the most plausible is that she was too strongly attached to her famous father and thus never able to build a personal life of her own. The severe rashes that broke out on the eve of her participation in the Father-Daughter Tennis Tournament at Innsbruck each year clearly reveal some of her inner conflicts. Perhaps Theodor Reik put it best when, in a thinly veiled anecdote, he tells of a young girl who plaintively says to her mother, “You're so lucky. You married Daddy. I have to marry a stranger.”
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