Less well understood by the lay worker are actual maladjustments, both physical and mental (or spiritual), which prevent the complete satisfaction of one or both.  Some of these are curable by medical care, others by instruction and education.  This instruction should be given, needless to say, by the physician and not by the case worker.  If uncorrected such maladjustments are apt to result in marital shipwreck.

No attempt can be made here to discuss actual sex perversions in their relation to desertion.  Their effect is obvious; and the social worker should be sufficiently well informed, not only from a few standard books on the subject,[13] but from a knowledge of the phrases which are used in the tenements, to understand them, so that significant symptoms are not overlooked.  So intimately are sex difficulties connected with the neuroses that the lay social worker should consult the psychiatrist freely wherever one is available, before attempting to deal with them.

12.  Vicious Habits.—­Sexual immorality, through its degenerative effect on personality and the lowered ideals of marriage it induces, has a real effect in bringing about desertion.  The “other man” and the “other woman” type of desertion, however, is often itself only a consequence of a previously existing state of temperamental or sexual incompatibility.  If these underlying causes can be attacked and changed such a desertion may be “repairable.”

A young man deserted his wife and three children and eloped with an eighteen-year-old girl who had made his acquaintance in a street car flirtation.  He had been “an obedient boy with good principles,” and his later record showed steadiness and ability; but he and his wife had been drifting apart—­their marital relations had not been “quite the same” as formerly.  Arrested and brought back, he did not impute any blame to her, however, but said he “must have been crazy.”  In spite of the circumstances, the judge decided to give him six months in the penitentiary; and a man visitor from the family social agency interested began at once to try to secure an influence over him.  On his release the couple again went to housekeeping.  The wife had been cautioned on how to receive him; but things went badly at first, and the man began again insisting that they were mismated. (He “had the other girl still considerably on his conscience and heart.”) Tangles continually arose which the society’s visitor was hard put to it to straighten out.  Once the wife found a letter from the girl; but finally, after the charity organization society in the city where he had left the girl reported that she was doing well and not breaking her heart about him, the man decided to “cut out” the correspondence.  A little later the girl eliminated herself by marrying.  A year after the reconciliation the wife told the friendly visitor that the trouble was gone between them, and “it was just like a new life.”  For another year efforts were continued to strengthen