Sex and the High Command Read Online Free PDF

Now, get the picture, Captain. When McCormick finds libidinal expression, symbolically he’s seducing his mother and thereby taking a backhanded swipe at his father.”
    “His parents are dead,” Hansen reminded the doctor.
    “Parents never die, Captain: We merely bury their bodies… So, McCormick’s made this marvelous adjustment on a sado-masochistic level; because incest is frowned upon by his Puritan ethic, he’s punishing himself. In short, he’s whipping and getting whipped, simultaneously.”
    “Are you saying he’s abnormal. Doctor?”
    “ ‘Abnormal’ is a loaded word. In the sense you use it, definitely not! McCormick is the super, all-time, ail-American boy. Now, take his job, water tender, down where those liquids drip, gurgle, and blurp—the genito-urinary tract of the ship. And he loves it. Notice that three point nine professional aptitude? But wait. Captain! He’s a water tender, not an oiler. Water’s the fluid of life, symbolically drawn from the breasts of Mother Earth. Remember, in all probability he was breast-fed, coming as he does from a mountain area. This points to a double drive, anal and oral, fixated on the sado-masochistic level. Incredible, Captain! Eros charged with the memories of mother love. Spanked at one end, fed at the other. The gamut. Imagine the richness, the texture, of this libido. For it, the act of love is nursing, punishment, revenge, sinning, expiation of sin, plus the job-oriented joy of blowing tubes. This libido has so many plus factors that it reaches spiritual levels of anal-oral eroticism and, heed my words. Captain…”
    As commanding officer of a floating scientific laboratory, Hansen had known intellectuals, had learned to tolerate their enthusiasms, but this egghead was a hummer. His owl’s eyes glowed, and his mole’s nose twitched. Listening, Hansen felt sympathy for all landlubbers at sea on a raft in a hurricane.
    “For this man, love is an apotheosis. He punishes sinners, particularly the authoritarian figure of his father, whom he subconsciously identifies with God, and the mother he loves. One who punishes God achieves brotherhood with God. Moreover, Captain, God is also fixated on a sadistic erotic level, spiritually speaking, and only He and McCormick punish sinners because they love them. Thus, McCormick becomes a saint in the boudoir. At the explosive moment when his libidinal urge is released, the marmoset soars on the wings of an eagle right into Abraham’s bosom.”
    “He’s a Protestant,” the captain said.
    “That’s the point. Captain. In this area, terms lose their meaning. McCormick’s experience cannot be defined in the lexicon of the sex psychologist. It is supercharged, hypercarbureted, sixteen-cylinder whoomph! What does he look like. Captain?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Immaterial. He’s probably tall, rawboned, blue-eyed, possibly red-haired, with a protruding Adam’s apple.”
    “We’ll find out… Orderly, pass the word for Chief Water Tender McCormick to lay up to the captain’s quarters, on the double.”
    “We must beware of his sense of humor, Captain, because he has the subtle wit of an abstract reasoner.”
    “How could you analyze his reasoning power?” Captain Hansen’s question was punctuated by the bosun’s whistle followed by the summons to McCormick.
    “How did the orderly get to the quarterdeck so fast?” the doctor asked.
    “He telephoned.”
    “Ah, I see… McCormick’s reasoning power. He’s Anglo-Saxon, and abstract reasoning is the British national genius. Something to do with their fogs and mists. The French genius is for painting. In their brilliant sunlight, they respond to color and clarity of line. Anglo-Saxons are more literary minded. They breed the Shakespeares, the Miltons, the Johnsons…”
    “Ben Jonson?”
    “I was thinking more of Samuel Johnson… Your antecedents were Scandinavian, I take it. They have a dual national genius—for breeding and for