An ever-recurring question is: Does sexual deprivation inevitably give rise to all or any of the many effects of frustration, e.g., aggression, sublimation, etc.? It is now well known that many cases are found in which celibacy has no psychopathological effects. In many other cases, however, it has inaiìy bad effects. What factor determines which shall be the result? Clinical work with nonneurotic people gives the clear answer that sexual deprivation becomes pathogenic in a severe sense only when it is felt by the individual to represent rejection by the opposite sex, inferiority, lack of worth, lack of respect, isolation, or other thwarting of basic needs. Sexual deprivation can be borne with relative ease by individuals for whom it has no such implications (of course, there will probably be what Rosenzweig (408) calls need-persistive reactions, but these, though irritating, are not necessarily pathological).
The unavoidable deprivations in childhood are also ordinarily thoughtof as frustrating. Weaning, elimination control, learning to walk, in fact every new level of adjustment, is conceived to be achieved by forcible pushing of the child. Here, too, the differentiation between mere deprivation and threat to the personality enjoins caution upon us. Observations of children, who are completely assured of the love and respect of their parents have shown that deprivations, disciplines, and punishments can sometimes be borne with astonishing ease. There are few frustration effects if these deprivations are not conceived by the child to be threatening to his fundamental personality, to his main life goals, or needs.
From this point of view, it follows that the phenomenon of threatening frustration is much more closely allied to other threat situations than it is to mere deprivation. The classic effects of frustration are also found frequently to be a consequence of other types of threat-traumatization, conflict, cortical damage, severe illness, actual physical threat, imminence of death, humiliation, or great pain.
This leads us to our final hypothesis that perhaps frustration as a single concept is less useful than the two concepts that crosscut it: (I) deprivation of nonbasic needs and (2) threat to the personality, i.e., to the basic needs or to the various coping systems associated with them. Deprivation implies much less than is ordinarily implied by the concept of frustration; threat implies much more. Deprivation is not psychopathogenic; threat is.
