[12]
Pedagogical Seminary, July, 1897, p. 121.
[13]
See, for instance, the case reported in another volume of these Studies ("Sexual Inversion"), in which castration was performed on a sexual invert without effecting any change.
[14]
Guinard, art. "Castration," Dictionnaire de Physiologie.
[15]
M. A. Colman, Medical Standard, August, 1895; Clara Barrus, American Journal of Insanity, April, 1895; Macnaughton-Jones, British Gynæcological Journal, August, 1902; W. G. Bridgman, Medical Standard, 1896; J.
M. Cotterill, British Medical Journal, April 7, 1900 (also private communication); Paul F. Mundé, American Journal of Obstetrics, March, 1899.
[16]
See Swale Vincent, Internal Secretion and the Ductless Glands, 1912; F. H. A. Marshall, The Physiology of Reproduction, 1910, ch. ix; Munzer, Berliner klinische Wochenschrift, Nov., 1910; C. Sajous, The Internal Secretions, vol. i, 1911. The adrenal glands have been fully and interestingly studied by Glynn, Quarterly Journal of Medicine, Jan., 1912; the thyroid, by Ewan Waller, Practitioner, Aug., 1912; the internal secretion of the ovary, by A. Louise McIlroy, Proceedings Royal Society Medicine, July, 1912. For a discussion at the Neurology Section of the British Medical Association Meeting, 1912, see British Medical Journal, Nov. 16, 1912.
[17]
Since this was written I have come across a passage in Hampa (p. 228), by Rafael Salillas, the Spanish sociologist, which shows that the analogy has been detected by the popular mind and been embodied in popular language: "A significant anatomico-physiological concordance supposes a resemblance between the mouth and the sexual organs of a woman, between coitus and the ingestion of food, and between foods which do not require mastication and the spermatic ejaculation; these representations find expression in the popular name papo given to women's genital organs. 'Papo' is the crop of birds, and is derived from 'papar' (Latin, papare), to eat soft food such as we call pap. With this representation of infantile food is connected the term leche [milk] as applied to the ejaculated genital fluid." Cleland, it may be added, in the most remarkable of English erotic novels, The Memoirs of Fanny Hill, refers to "the compressive exsuction with which the sensitive mechanism of that part [the vagina]
thirstily draws and drains the nipple of Love," and proceeds to compare it to the action of the child at the breast. It appears that, in some parts of the animal world at least, there is a real analogy of formation between the oral and vaginal ends of the trunk. This is notably the case in some insects, and the point has been elaborately discussed by Walter Wesché, "The Genitalia of Both the Sexes in Diptera, and their Relation to the Armature of the Mouth,"
Transactions of the Linnean Society, second series, vol. ix, Zoölogy, 1906.
[18]
Näcke now expresses himself very dubiously on the point; see, e.g. , Archiv für Kriminal-Anthropologie, 1905, p.
186.
[19]
Untersuchungen über die Libido Sexualis, Berlin, 1897-98.
[20]
Moll adopts the term "impulse of detumescence" ( Detumescenztrieb) instead of "impulse of ejaculation," because in women there is either no ejaculation or it cannot be regarded as essential.
[21]
I quote from the second edition, as issued in 1881.
[22]
This is the theory which by many has alone been seen in Darwin's Descent of Man. Thus even his friend Wallace states unconditionally ( Tropical Nature, p. 193) that Darwin accepted a "voluntary or conscious sexual selection,"
and seems to repeat the same statement in Darwinism (1889), p. 283. Lloyd Morgan, in his discussion of the pairing instinct in Habit and Instinct (1896), seems also only to see this side of Darwin's statement.
[23]
In his Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, Darwin was puzzled by the fact that, in captivity, animals often copulate without conceiving and failed to connect that fact with the processes behind his own theory of sexual selection.
[24]
Beaunis, Sensations Internes, ch. v, "Besoins Sexuels," 1889. It may be noted that many years earlier Burdach (in his Physiologie als Erfahrungswissenschaft, 1826) had recognized that the activity of the male favored procreation, and that mental and physical excitement seemed to have the same effect in the female also.
[25]
It is scarcely necessary to point out that this is too extreme a position. As J. G. Millais remarks of ducks ( Natural History of British Ducks, p. 45), in courtship "success in winning the admiration of the female is rather a matter of persistent and active attention than physical force," though the males occasionally fight over the female. The ruff ( Machetes pugnax) is a pugnacious bird, as his name indicates. Yet, the reeve, the female of this species, is, as E.
Selous shows ("Sexual Selection in Birds," Zoölogist, Feb. and May, 1907), completely mistress of the situation.
"She seems the plain and unconcerned little mistress of a numerous and handsome seraglio, each member of which, however he flounce and bounce, can only wait to be chosen." Any fighting among the males is only incidental and is not a factor in selection. Moreover, as R. Müller points out ( loc. cit. , p. 290), fighting would not usually attain the end desired, for if the males expend their time and strength in a serious combat they merely afford a third less pugnacious male a better opportunity of running off with the prize.
[26]
L. Tillier, L'Instinct Sexuel, 1889, pp. 74, 118, 119, 124 et seq. , 289.
[27]
K. Groos, Die Spiele der Thiere, 1896; Die Spiele der Menschen, 1899; both are translated into English.
[28]
Prof. H. E. Ziegler, in a private letter to Professor Groos, Spiele der Thiere, p. 202.
[29]
Die Spiele der Thiere, p. 244. This had been briefly pointed out by earlier writers. Thus, Haeckel ( Gen. Morph. , ii, p. 244) remarked that fighting for females is a special or modified kind of struggle for existence, and that it acts on both sexes.
[30]
It may be added that in the human species, as Bray remarks ("Le Beau dans la Nature," Revue Philosophique, October, 1901, p. 403), "the hymen would seem to tend to the same end, as if nature had wished to reinforce by a natural obstacle the moral restraint of modesty, so that only the vigorous male could insure his reproduction."
There can be no doubt that among many animals pairing is delayed so far as possible until maturity is reached. "It is a strict rule amongst birds," remarks J. G. Millais ( op. cit. , p. 46), "that they do not breed until both sexes have attained the perfect adult plumage." Until that happens, it seems probable, the conditions for sexual excitation are not fully established. We know little, says Howard ( Zoölogist, 1903, p. 407), of the age at which birds begin to breed, but it is known that "there are yearly great numbers of individuals who do not breed, and the evidence seems to show that such individuals are immature."
[31]
A. Marro, La Puberté, 1901, p. 464.
[32]
Lloyd Morgan, Animal Behavior, 1900, pp. 264-5. It may be added that, on the esthetic side, Hirn, in his study ( The Origins of Art, 1900), reaches conclusions which likewise, in the main, concord with those of Groos.
[33]
It may be noted that the marriage ceremony itself is often of the nature of a courtship, a symbolic courtship, embodying a method of attaining tumescence. As Crawley, who has brought out this point, puts it, "Marriage-rites of union are essentially identical with love charms," and he refers in illustration to the custom of the Australian Arunta, among whom the man or woman by making music on the bull-roarer compels a person of the opposite sex to court him or her, the marriage being thus completed. (E. Crawley, The Mystic Rose, p. 318.)
[34]
The more carefully animals are observed, the more often this is found to be the case, even with respect to species which possess no obvious and elaborate process for obtaining tumescence. See, for instance, the detailed and very instructive account—too long to quote here—given by E. Selous of the preliminaries to intercourse practised by a pair of great crested grebes, while nest-building. Intercourse only took place with much difficulty, after many fruitless invitations, more usually given by the female. ("Observational Diary of the Habits of the Great Crested Grebe," Zöologist, September, 1901.) It is exactly the same with savages. The observation of Foley ( Bulletin de la Société d'Anthropologie de Paris, November 6, 1879) that in savages "sexual erethism is very difficult" is of great significance and certainly in accordance with the facts. This difficulty of erethism is the real cause of many savage practices which to the civilized person often seem perverse; the women of the Caroline Islands, for instance, as described by Finsch, require the tongue or even the teeth to be applied to the clitoris, or a great ant to be applied to bite the parts, in order to stimulate orgasm. Westermarck, after quoting a remark of Mariner's concerning the women of Tonga,—"it must not be supposed that these women are always easily won; the greatest attentions and the most fervent solicitations are sometimes requisite, even though there be no other lover in the way,"—adds that these words "hold true for a great many, not to say all, savage and barbarous races now existing." ( Human Marriage, p. 163.) The old notions, however, as to the sexual licentiousness of peoples living in natural conditions have scarcely yet disappeared. See Appendix A; "The Sexual Instinct in Savages."
[35]
In men a certain degree of tumescence is essential before coitus can be effected at all; in women, though tumescence is not essential to coitus, it is essential to orgasm and the accompanying physical and psychic relief.
The preference which women often experience for prolonged coitus is not, as might possibly be imagined, due to sensuality, but has a profound physiological basis.
[36]
Stanley Hall, Adolescence, vol. i, p. 223.
[37]
See Lagrange's Physiology of Bodily Exercise, especially chapter ii. It is a significant fact that, as Sergi remarks ( Les Emotions, p. 330), the physiological results of dancing are identical with the physiological results of pleasure.
[38]
Groos, Spiele der Menschen, p. 112. Zmigrodzki ( Die Mutter bei den Volkern des Arischen Stammes, p. 414 et seq. ) has an interesting passage describing the dance—especially the Russian dance—in its orgiastic aspects.
[39]
Féré, "L'Influence sur le Travail Volontaire d'un muscle de l'activité d'autres muscles," Nouvelles Iconographie de la Salpêtrière, 1901.
[40]
"The sensation of motion," Kline remarks ("The Migratory Impulse," American Journal of Psychology, October, 1898, p. 62), "as yet but little studied from a pleasure-pain standpoint, is undoubtedly a pleasure-giving sensation.
For Aristippus the end of life is pleasure, which he defines as gentle motion. Motherhood long ago discovered its virtue as furnished by the cradle. Galloping to town on the parental knee is a pleasing pastime in every nursery.
The several varieties of swings, the hammock, see-saw, flying-jenny, merry-go-round, shooting the chutes, sailing, coasting, rowing, and skating, together with the fondness of children for rotating rapidly in one spot until dizzy and for jumping from high places, are all devices and sports for stimulating the sense of motion. In most of these modes of motion the body is passive or semipassive, save in such motions as skating and rotating on the feet. The passiveness of the body precludes any important contribution of stimuli from kinesthetic sources. The stimuli are probably furnished, as Dr. Hall and others have suggested, by a redistribution of fluid pressure (due to the unusual motions and positions of the body) to the inner walls of the several vascular systems of the body."
[41]
Anatomy of Melancholy, part iii., sect. ii, mem. ii, subs. iv.
[42]
Sadger, "Haut-, Schleimhaut-, und Muskel-erotik," Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische Forschungen, Bd. iii, 1912, p. 556.
[43]
Marro ( Pubertà, p. 367 et seq. ) has some observations on this point. It was an insight into this action of dancing which led the Spanish clergy of the eighteenth century to encourage the national enthusiasm for dancing (as Baretti informs us) in the interests of morality.
[44]
It is scarcely necessary to remark that a primitive dance, even when associated with courtship, is not necessarily a sexual pantomime; as Wallaschek, in his comprehensive survey of primitive dances, observes, it is more usually an animal pantomime, but nonetheless connected with the sexual instinct, separation of the sexes, also, being no proof to the contrary. (Wallaschek, Primitive Music, pp. 211-13.) Grosse ( Anfänge der Kunst, English translation, p. 228) has pointed out that the best dancer would be the best fighter and hunter, and that sexual selection and natural selection would thus work in harmony.
[45]
Féré, "Le plaisir de la vue du Mouvement," Comptes-rendus de la Société de Biologie, November 2, 1901; also Travail et Plaisir, ch. xxix.
[46]
Groos repeatedly emphasizes the significance of this fact ( Spiele der Menschen, pp. 81-9, 460 et seq. ); Grosse ( Anfänge der Kunst, p. 215) had previously made some remarks on this point.
[47]
M. Kulischer, "Die Geschlechtliche Zuchtwahl bei den Menschen in der Urzeit," Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1876, p. 140 et seq.
[48]
Sir W. R. Gowers, Epilepsy, 2d ed., 1901, pp. 61, 138.
[49]
Guyon, Leçons Cliniques sur les Maladies des Voies Urinaires, 3d ed., 1896, vol. ii, p. 397.
[50]
See, e.g. , Féré, L'Instinct Sexuel, pp. 222-23: Brantôme was probably the first writer in modern times who referred to this phenomenon. MacGillicuddy ( Functional Disorders of the Nervous System in Women, p. 110) refers to the case of a lady who always had sudden and uncontrollable expulsion of urine whenever her husband even began to perform the marital act, on which account he finally ceased intercourse with her. Kubary states that in Ponape (Western Carolines) the men are accustomed to titillate the vulva of their women with the tongue until the excitement is so intense that involuntary emission of urine takes place; this is regarded as the proper moment for intercourse.
[51]
Thus Pitres and Régis ( Transactions of the International Medical Congress, Moscow, vol. iv, p. 19) record the case of a young girl whose life was for some years tormented by a groundless fear of experiencing an irresistible desire to urinate. This obsession arose from once seeing at a theater a man whom she liked, and being overcome by sexual feeling accompanied by so strong a desire to urinate that she had to leave the theater. An exactly similar case in a young woman of erotic temperament, but prudish, has been recorded by Freud ( Zur Neurosenlehre, Bd.
i, p. 54). Morbid obsessions of modesty involving the urinary sphere and appearing at puberty are evidently based on transformed sexual emotion. Such a case has been recorded by Marandon de Montyel ( Archives de Neurologie, vol. xii, 1901, p. 36); this lady, who was of somewhat neuropathic temperament, from puberty onward, in order to be able to urinate found it necessary not only to be absolutely alone, but to feel assured that no one even knew what was taking place.
[52]
H. Ellis, "The Bladder as a Dynamometer," American Journal of Dermatology, May, 1902.
[53]
Sir W. Gowers, "Minor Epilepsy," British Medical Journal, January 6, 1900; ib. , Epilepsy, 2d ed., 1901, p. 106; see also H. Ellis, art. "Urinary Bladder, Influence of the Mind on the," in Tuke's Dictionary of Psychological Medicine.
[54]
Sérieux, Recherches Cliniques sur les Anomalies de l'Instinct Sexuel, p. 22.
[55]
Emil Schultze-Malkowsky, "Der Sexuelle Trieb in Kindesalter," Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, vol. ii, part 8, p.
372.
[56]
Féré, "Note sur un Cas de Periodicité Sexuelle chez l'Homme," Comptes-rendus Société de Biologie, July 23, 1904.
[57]
It is a familiar fact that, in women, occasionally, a violent explosion of laughter may be propagated to the bladder-center and produce urination. "She laughed till she nearly wetted the floor," I have heard a young woman in the country say, evidently using without thought a familiar locution. Professor Bechterew has recorded the case of a young married lady who, from childhood, wherever she might be—in friends' houses, in the street, in her own drawing-room—had always experienced an involuntary and forcible emission of urine, which could not be stopped or controlled, whenever she laughed; the bladder was quite sound and no muscular effort produced the same result. (W. Bechterew, Neurologisches Centralblatt, 1899.) In women these relationships are most easily observed, partly because in them the explosive centers are more easily discharged, and partly, it is probable, so far as the bladder is concerned, because, although after death the resistance to the emission of urine is notably less in women, during life about the same amount of force is necessary in both sexes; so that a greater amount of energy flows to the bladder in women, and any nervous storm or disturbance is thus specially apt to affect the bladder.
[58]
"Every pain," remarks Marie de Manacéine, "produces a number of movements which are apparently useless: we cry out, we groan, we move our limbs, we throw ourselves from one side to the other, and at bottom all these movements are logical because by interrupting and breaking our attention they render us less sensitive to the pain.
In the days before chloroform, skillful surgeons requested their patients to cry out during the operation, as we are told by Gratiolet, who could not explain so strange a fact, for in his time the antagonism of movements and attention was not recognized." (Marie de Manacéine, Archives Italiennes de Biologie, 1894, p. 250.) This antagonism of attention by movement is but another way of expressing the vicarious relationship of motor discharges.
[59]
Joanny Roux, Psychologie de l'Instinct Sexuel, 1899, pp. 22-23. It is disputed whether hunger is located in the whole organism, and powerful arguments have been brought against the view. (W. Cannon, "The Nature of Hunger," Popular Science Monthly, Sept., 1912.) Thirst is usually regarded as organic (A. Mayer, La Soif, 1901).
[60]
If there is any objection to these terms it is chiefly because they have reference to vascular congestion rather than to the underlying nervous charging and discharging, which is equally fundamental, and in man more prominent than the vascular phenomena.
LOVE AND PAIN.
I.
The Chief Key to the Relationship between Love and Pain to be Found in Animal Courtship—Courtship a Source of Combativity and of Cruelty—Human Play in the Light of Animal Courtship—The Frequency of Crimes Against the Person in Adolescence—Marriage by Capture and its Psychological Basis—Man's Pleasure in Exerting Force and Woman's Pleasure in Experiencing it—Resemblance of Love to Pain even in Outward Expression—The Love-bite—In what Sense Pain may be Pleasurable—The Natural Contradiction in the Emotional Attitude of Women Toward Men—Relative Insensibility to Pain of the Organic Sexual Sphere in Women—The Significance of the Use of the Ampallang and Similar Appliances in Coitus—The Sexual Subjection of Women to Men in Part Explainable as the Necessary Condition for Sexual Pleasure.
The relation of love to pain is one of the most difficult problems, and yet one of the most fundamental, in the whole range of sexual psychology. Why is it that love inflicts, and even seeks to inflict, pain? Why is it that love suffers pain, and even seeks to suffer it? In answering that question, it seems to me, we have to take an apparently circuitous route, sometimes going beyond the ostensible limits of sex altogether; but if we can succeed in answering it we shall have come very near one of the great mysteries of love. At the same time we shall have made clear the normal basis on which rest the extreme aberrations of love.
The chief key to the relationship of love to pain is to be found by returning to the consideration of the essential phenomena of courtship in the animal world generally. Courtship is a play, a game; even its combats are often, to a large extent, mock-combats; but the process behind it is one of terrible earnestness, and the play may at any moment become deadly. Courtship tends to involve a mock-combat between males for the possession of the female which may at any time become a real combat; it is a pursuit of the female by the male which may at any time become a kind of persecution; so that, as Colin Scott remarks, "Courting may be looked upon as a refined and delicate form of combat." The note of courtship, more especially among mammals, is very easily forced, and as soon as we force it we reach pain.[61] The intimate and inevitable association in the animal world of combat—of the fighting and hunting impulses—with the process of courtship alone suffices to bring love into close connection with pain.
Among mammals the male wins the female very largely by the display of force. The infliction of pain must inevitably be a frequent indirect result of the exertion of power. It is even more than this; the infliction of pain by the male on the female may itself be a gratification of the impulse to exert force. This tendency has always to be held in check, for it is of the essence of courtship that the male should win the female, and she can only be won by the promise of pleasure. The tendency of the male to inflict pain must be restrained, so far as the female is concerned, by the consideration of what is pleasing to her. Yet, the more carefully we study the essential elements of courtship, the clearer it becomes that, playful as these manifestations may seem on the surface, in every direction they are verging on pain. It is so among animals generally; it is so in man among savages. "It is precisely the alliance of pleasure and pain," wrote the physiologist Burdach, "which constitutes the voluptuous emotion."
Nor is this emotional attitude entirely confined to the male. The female also in courtship delights to arouse to the highest degree in the male the desire for her favors and to withhold those favors from him, thus finding on her part also the enjoyment of power in cruelty. "One's cruelty is one's power," Millament says in Congreve's Way of the World, "and when one parts with one's cruelty one parts with one's power."
At the outset, then, the impulse to inflict pain is brought into courtship, and at the same time rendered a pleasurable idea to the female, because with primitive man, as well as among his immediate ancestors, the victor in love has been the bravest and strongest rather than the most beautiful or the most skilful. Until he can fight he is not reckoned a man and he cannot hope to win a woman. Among the African Masai a man is not supposed to marry until he has blooded his spear, and in a very different part of the world, among the Dyaks of Borneo, there can be little doubt that the chief incentive to head-hunting is the desire to please the women, the possession of a head decapitated by himself being an excellent way of winning a maiden's favor.[62] Such instances are too well known to need multiplication here, and they survive in civilization, for, even among ourselves, although courtship is now chiefly ruled by quite other considerations, most women are in some degree emotionally affected by strength and courage. But the direct result of this is that a group of phenomena with which cruelty and the infliction of pain must inevitably be more or less allied is brought within the sphere of courtship and rendered agreeable to women.
Here, indeed, we have the source of that love of cruelty which some have found so marked in women. This is a phase of courtship which helps us to understand how it is that, as we shall see, the idea of pain, having become associated with sexual emotion, may be pleasurable to women.