The author traces the theme of replacement by a double in sexual encounters in Hindu myths and folk tales, the Old Testament, and Western drama, opera, and cinema. She shows important variations of the theme, particularly the different functions the doubling serves for men and for women. For women, the doubling tends to lead to a wished-for integration of sensuality and social commitment; for men, it often serves to split off sexuality from relationship. Doniger, a professor of the history of religion, gives a brief structuralist explanation of the function of myth as mediating between the opposing truths of nature and culture. She makes passing reference to psychoanalytic perspectives on these enduring fantasies, which Harry Trosman expands upon in his brief discussion of Doniger's paper. In his reading, Doniger's analysis highlights sexual wishes and defenses in a heterosexual matrix; he would also emphasize, among other themes, the role of unconscious homosexual wishes in the fantasy of replacement by a substitute.