A cultural complex of overtly emotional religiousness existed from the twelfth to eighteenth centuries in Europe, led by mystics who were women or effeminate men. The central feature of such expression was a striving for union with the divine combined with asceticism and long-lasting depression. The imagery and language of the relation to the divine was most personal and unmistakably sexual. The Eucharist was used as a smelling, tasting, and eating of Him. There was preoccupation with blood and wounds, body secretions and suffering, with regression to infantile behavior in order to become beloved by the divine parent as the infant fused to the breast. This type of religiousness may not be as extinct as the author states; for example, Pentecostal groups. A case history would have been appropriate.