DADDY'S GIRL, MAMA'S BOY

Sex without marriage is unhampered by the confining restrictions of law, society, and custom. Odious comparisons between those who marry and those who do not have almost vanished from our contemporary world of meaningful relationships. Yet upon examination, we find that beneath the perfunctory interpretation lie unconscious reasons and explanations for the popularity of the single life style."" What are they? Mama and Daddy. Homosexuality? Mama and Daddy. June/January relationships? Mama and Daddy. Selfishness? Frigidity? Feelings of inadequacy? You guessed it. Somewhere we've heard this before. Freud, maybe? But he left out the literary allusions. One example here is that of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her father; another, Scan O'Casey and his much-younger wife, Eileen. There's a quiz at the back to determine the extent of your own ties to you-know-who. Simplistic ideas and overcomplicated language combine here to make this a genuinely feeble addition to psychoanalytic lore. Also, homosexuality is spoken of in terms of ""cure."" We happen to find that offensive.