Studies on the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 by Havelock Ellis. - HTML preview

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degrees of pressure on the child within, so that the apparently active

movements of the foetus may be really consecutive on unconscious maternal

excitations.[197] We may also believe that, as suggested by John Thomson,

there are slight incoördinations _in utero_, a kind of developmental

neurosis, produced by some slight lack of harmony of whatever origin, and

leading to the production of malformations.[198] We know, finally, that,

as Féré and others have repeatedly demonstrated during recent years by

experiments on chickens, etc., very subtle agents, even odors, may

profoundly affect embryonic development and produce deformity. But how the

mother's psychic disposition can, apart from heredity, affect specifically

the physical conformation or even the psychic disposition of the child

within her womb must remain for the present an insoluble mystery, even if

we feel disposed to conclude that in some cases such action seems to be

indicated.

In comprehending such a connection, however at present

undemonstrated, it may well be borne in mind that the

relationship of the mother to the child within her womb is of a

uniquely intimate character. It is of interest in this

connection to quote some remarks by an able psychologist, Dr.

Henry Rutgers Marshall; the remarks are not less interesting for

being brought forward without any connection with the question of

maternal impressions: "It is true that, so far as we know, the

nervous system of the embryo never has a direct connection with

the nervous system of the mother: nevertheless, as there is a

reciprocity of reaction between the physical body of the mother

and its embryonic parasite, the relation of the embryonic nervous

system to the nervous system of the mother is not very far

removed from the relation of the pre-eminent part of the nervous

system of a man to some minor nervous system within his body

which is to a marked extent dissociated from the whole neural

mass.

"Correspondingly, then, and within the consciousness of the

mother, there develops a new little minor consciousness which,

although but lightly integrated with the mass of her consciousness, nevertheless has its part in her consciousness

taken as a whole, much as the psychic correspondents of the

action of the nerve which govern the secretions of the glands of

the body have their part in her consciousness taken as a whole.

"It is very much as if the optic ganglia developed fully in

themselves, without any closer connection with the rest of the

brain than existed at their first appearance. They would form a

little complex nervous system almost but not quite apart from the

brain system; and it would be difficult to deny them a

consciousness of their own; which would indeed form part of the

whole consciousness of the individual, but which would be in a

manner self-dependent." It must, if this is so, be said that

before birth, on the psychic side, the embryo's activities "form

part of a complex consciousness which is that of the mother and

embryo together." "Without subscribing to the strange stories of

telepathy, of the solemn apparition of a person somewhere at the

moment of his death a thousand miles away, of the unquiet ghost

haunting the scenes of its bygone hopes and endeavors, one may

ask" (with the author of the address in medicine at the Leicester

gathering of the British Medical Association, _British Medical

Journal_, July 29, 1905) "whether two brains cannot be so tuned

in sympathy as to transmit and receive a subtile transfusion of

mind without mediation of sense. Considering what is implied by

the human brain with its countless millions of cells, its

complexities of minute structure, its innumerable chemical

compositions, and the condensed forces in its microscopic and

ultramicroscopic elements--the whole a sort of microcosm of

cosmic forces to which no conceivable compound of electric

batteries is comparable; considering, again, that from an

electric station waves of energy radiate through the viewless air

to be caught up by a fit receiver a thousand miles distant, it is

not inconceivable that the human brain may send off still more

subtile waves to be accepted and interpreted by the fitly tuned

receiving brain. Is it, after all, mere fancy that a mental

atmosphere or effluence emanates from one person to affect

another, either soothing sympathetically or irritating

antipathically?" These remarks (like Dr. Marshall's) were made

without reference to maternal impressions, but it may be pointed

out that under no conceivable circumstance could we find a brain

in so virginal and receptive a state as is the child's in the

womb.

On the whole we see that pregnancy induces a psychic state which is at

once, in healthy persons, one of full development and vigor, and at the

same time one which, especially in individuals who are slightly abnormal,

is apt to involve a state of strained or overstrained nervous tension and

to evoke various manifestations which are in many respects still

imperfectly understood. Even the specifically sexual emotions tend to be

heightened, more especially during the earlier period of pregnancy. In 24

cases of pregnancy in which the point was investigated by Harry Campbell,

sexual feeling was decidedly increased in 8, in one case (of a woman aged

31 who had had four children) being indeed only present during pregnancy,

when it was considerable; in only 7 cases was there diminution or

disappearance of sexual feeling.[199] Pregnancy may produce mental

depression;[200] but on the other hand it frequently leads to a change of

the most favorable character in the mental and general well-being. Some

women indeed are only well during pregnancy. It is remarkable that some

women who habitually suffer from various nervous troubles--neuralgias,

gastralgia, headache, insomnia--are only free from them at this moment.

This "paradox of gestation," as Vinay has termed it, is specially marked

in the hysterical and those suffering from slight nervous disorders, but

it is by no means universal, so that although it is possible, Vinay

states, to confirm the opinion of the ancients as to the beneficial

action of marriage on hysteria, that is only true of slight cases and

scarcely enables us to counsel marriage in hysteria.[201] Even a woman's

intelligence is sometimes heightened by pregnancy, and Tarnier, as quoted

by Vinay, knew many women whose intelligence, habitually somewhat obtuse,

has only risen to the normal level during pregnancy.[202] The pregnant

woman has reached the climax of womanhood; she has attained to that state

toward which the periodically recurring menstrual wave has been drifting

her at regular intervals throughout her sexual life[203]; she has achieved

that function for which her body has been constructed, and her mental and

emotional disposition adapted, through countless ages.

And yet, as we have seen, our ignorance of the changes effected by the

occurrence of this supremely important event--even on the physical

side--still remains profound. Pregnancy, even for us, the critical and

unprejudiced children of a civilized age, still remains, as for the

children of more primitive ages, a mystery. Conception itself is a mystery

for the primitive man, and may be produced by all sorts of subtle ways

apart from sexual connection, even by smelling a flower.[204] The pregnant

woman was surrounded by ceremonies, by reverence and fear, often shut up

in a place apart.[205] Her presence, her exhalations, were of extreme

potency; even in some parts of Europe to-day, as in the Walloon districts

of Belgium, a pregnant woman must not kiss a child for her breath is

dangerous, or urinate on plants for she will kill them.[206] The mystery

has somewhat changed its form; it still remains. The future of the race is

bound up with our efforts to fathom the mystery of pregnancy. "The early

days of human life," it has been truly said, "are entirely one with the

mother. On her manner of life--eating, drinking, sleeping, and

thinking--what greatness may not hang?"[207]

Schopenhauer observed, with

misapplied horror, that there is nothing a woman is less modest about than

the state of pregnancy, while Weininger exclaims: "Never yet has a

pregnant woman given expression in any form--poem, memoirs, or

gynæcological monograph--to her sensations or feelings."[208] Yet when we

contemplate the mystery of pregnancy and all that it involves, how trivial

all such considerations become! We are here lifted into a region where our

highest intelligence can only lead us to adoration, for we are gazing at a

process in which the operations of Nature become one with the divine task

of Creation.

FOOTNOTES:

[169] See, e.g., Groos, _Æsthetische Genuss_, p. 249.

"We have to admit,"

Groos observes, "the entrance of another instinct, the impulse to tend and

foster, so closely connected with the sexual life. It is seemingly due to

the co-operation of this impulse that the little female bird during

courtship is so often fed by the male like a young fledgling. In man

'love' from the biological standpoint is also an amalgamation of two

needs; when the tender need to protect and foster and serve is lacking the

emotion is not quite perfect. Heine's expression, 'With my mantle I

protect you from the storm,' has always seemed to me very characteristic."

Sometimes the sexual impulse may undergo a complete transformation in this

direction. "I believe there is really a tendency in women," a lady writes

in a letter, "to allow maternal feeling to take the place of sexual

feeling. Very often a woman's feeling for her husband becomes this (though

he may be twenty years older than herself); sometimes it does not,

remaining purely sex feeling. Sometimes it is for some other man she has

this curious self-obliterating maternal feeling. It is not necessarily

connected with sex intercourse. A prostitute, who has relations with

dozens of men, may have it for some feeble drunken fool, who perhaps goes

after other women. I once saw the change from sex feeling to mother

feeling, as I call it, come almost suddenly over a woman after she had

lived about four years with a man who was unfaithful to her. Then, when

all real sex feeling, the hatred of the woman he followed, the desire he

should give her love and tenderness, had all gone, came the other feeling,

and she said to me, 'You don't understand at all; he's only my little

baby; nothing he does can make any difference to me now.' As I grow older

and understand women's natures better, I can see almost at once which

relation it is a woman has to her husband, or any given man. It is this

feeling, and not sex passion, that keeps woman from being free." Not only

is there a sexual association in the impulse to foster and protect, there

would appear to be a similar element also in the response to that impulse.

Freud has especially insisted on the partly sexual character of the

child's feelings for those who care for it and tend it and satisfy its

needs. It is begun in earliest infancy; "whoever has seen the sated infant

sink back from the breast, to fall asleep with flushed cheeks and happy

smile, must say that the picture is adequate to the expression of the

sexual satisfaction of later life." The lips, moreover, are the earliest

erogenous zone. "There will, perhaps, be some opposition," Freud remarks

(_Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie_, pp. 36, 64), "to the

identification of the child's feelings of tenderness and appreciation for

those who tend it with sexual love, but I believe that exact psychological

analysis will place the identity beyond doubt. The relationship of the

child with the person who tends it is for it a continual source of sexual

excitement and satisfaction flowing from the erogenous zones, especially

since the fostering person--as a rule the mother--

regards the child with

emotions which proceed from her sexual life; strokes it, kisses it, rocks

it, and very plainly treats it as a compensation for a fully valid sexual

object." Freud remarks that girls who retain the childish character of

their love for their parents to adult age are apt to make cold wives and

to be sexually anæsthetic.

[170] Esbach (in his _Thèse de Paris_, published in 1876) showed that even

the finger nails are affected in pregnancy and become measurably thinner.

[171] C.H. Stratz, _Die Schönheit des Weiblichen Körpers_, Chapter VI.

[172] Iron appears to be liberated in the maternal organism during

pregnancy, and Wychgel has shown (_Zeitschrift für Geburtshülfe und

Gynäkologie_, bd. xlvii, Heft II) that the pigment of pregnant women

contains iron, and that the amount of iron in the urine is increased.

[173] Vinay, _Maladies de la Grossesse_, Chapter VIII; K. Hennig,

"Exploratio Externa," _Comptes-rendus du XIIe. Congrès International de

Médècine_, vol. vi, Section XIII, pp. 144-166. A bibliography of the

literature concerning the physiology of pregnancy, extending to ten pages,

is appended by Pinard to his article "Grossesse,"

_Dictionnaire

Encyclopédique des Sciences Médicales_.

[174] Stratz, op. cit., Chapter XII.

[175] W.S.A. Griffith, "The Diagnosis of Pregnancy,"

_British Medical

Journal_, April 11, 1903.

[176] J. Mackenzie and H.O. Nicholson, "The Heart in Pregnancy," _British

Medical Journal_, October 8, 1904; Stengel and Stanton,

"The Condition of

the Heart in Pregnancy," _Medical Record_, May 10, 1902

and _University

Pennsylvania Medical Bulletin_, Sept., 1904 (summarized in _British

Medical Journal_, August 16, 1902, and Sept. 23, 1905.)

[177] J. Henderson, "Maternal Blood at Term," _Journal of Obstetrics and

Gynæcology_, February, 1902; C. Douglas, "The Blood in Pregnant Women,"

_British Medical Journal_, March 26, 1904; W.L.

Thompson, "The Blood in

Pregnancy," _Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin_, June, 1904.

[178] H.O. Nicholson, "Some Remarks on the Maternal Circulation in

Pregnancy," _British Medical Journal_, October 3, 1903.

[179] J. Morris Slemans, "Metabolism During Pregnancy,"

_Johns Hopkins

Hospital Reports_, vol. xii, 1904.

[180] B. Wolff, _Zentralblatt für Gynäkologie_, 1904, No. 26.

[181] Tridandani, _Annali di Ostetrica_, March, 1900.

[182] R. Barnes, "The Induction of Labor," _British Medical Journal_,

December 22, 1894.

[183] See, e.g., Havelock Ellis, _Man and Woman_, fourth edition, pp. 344,

et seq.

[184] Arthur Giles, "The Longings of Pregnant Women,"

_Transactions

Obstetrical Society of London_, vol. xxxv, 1893.

[185] Ploss and Bartels, _Das Weib_, Chapter XXX.

[186] Thus, in Cornwall, "to be in the longing way" is a popular synonym

for pregnancy.

[187] The apple, wherever it is known, has nearly always been a sacred or

magic fruit (as J.F. Campbell shows, _Popular Tales of West Highlands_,

vol. I, p. lxxv. et seq.), and the fruit of the forbidden tree which

tempted Eve is always popularly imagined to be an apple.

One may perhaps

refer in this connection to the fact that at Rome and elsewhere the

testicles have been called apples. I may add that we find a curious proof

of the recognition of the feminine love of apples in an old Portuguese

ballad, "Donna Guimar," in which a damsel puts on armour and goes to the

wars; her sex is suspected and as a test, she is taken into an orchard,

but Donna Guimar is too wary to fall into the trap, and turning away from

the apples plucks a citron.

[188] A. Pinard, Art. "Grossesse," _Dictionnaire Encyclopédique des

Sciences Médicales_, p. 138. On the subject of violent, criminal and

abnormal impulses during pregnancy, see Cumston,

"Pregnancy and Crime,"

_American Journal Obstetrics_, December, 1903.

[189] See especially Ploss and Bartels, _Das Weib_, vol.

i, Chapter XXXI.

Ballantyne in his work on the pathology of the foetus adds Loango negroes,

the Eskimo and the ancient Japanese.

[190] In 1731 Schurig, in his _Syllepsilogia_, devoted more than a hundred

pages (cap. IX) to summarizing a vast number of curious cases of maternal

impressions leading to birth-marks of all kinds.

[191] J.W. Ballantyne has written an excellent history of the doctrine of

maternal impressions, reprinted in his _Manual of Antenatal Pathology: The

Embryo_, 1904, Chapter IX; he gives a bibliography of 381 items. In

Germany the history of the question has been written by Dr. Iwan Bloch

(under the pseudonym of Gerhard von Welsenburg), _Das Versehen der

Frauen_, 1899. Cf., in French, G. Variot, "Origine des Préjugés Populaires

sur les Envies," _Bulletin Société d'Anthropologie_, Paris, June 18, 1891.

Variot rejects the doctrine absolutely, Bloch accepts it, Ballantyne

speaks cautiously.

[192] J.G. Kiernan has shown how many of the alleged cases are negatived

by the failure to take this fact into consideration.

(_Journal of American

Medical Association_, December 9, 1899.)

[193] J. Clifton Edgar, _The Practice of Obstetrics_, second edition,

1904, p. 296. In an important discussion of the question at the American

Gynæcological Society in 1886, introduced by Fordyce Barker, various

eminent gynæcologists declared in favor of the doctrine, more or less

cautiously. (_Transactions of the American Gynæcological Society_, vol.

xi, 1886, pp. 152-196.) Gould and Pyle, bringing forward some of the data

on the question (_Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine_, pp. 81, _et

seq._) state that the reality of the influence of maternal impressions

seems fully established. On the other side, see G.W.

Cook, _American

Journal of Obstetrics_, September, 1889, and H.F. Lewis, ib., July, 1899.

[194] _Transactions Edinburgh Obstetrical Society_, vol.

xvii, 1892.

[195] J.W. Ballantyne, _Manual of Antenatal Pathology: The Embryo_, p. 45.

[196] W.C. Dabney, "Maternal Impressions," Keating's _Cyclopædia of

Diseases of Children_, vol. i, 1889, pp. 191-216.

[197] Féré, _Sensation et Mouvement_, Chapter XIV, "Sur la Psychologie du

Foetus."

[198] J. Thomson, "Defective Co-ordination in Utero,"

_British Medical

Journal_, September 6, 1902.

[199] H. Campbell, _Nervous Organization of Man and Woman_, p. 206; cf.

Moll, _Untersuchungen über die Libido Sexualis_, bd. i, p. 264. Many

authorities, from Soranus of Ephesus onward, consider, however, that

sexual relations should cease during pregnancy, and certainly during the

later months. Cf. Brénot, _De l'influence de la copulation pendant la

grosseisse_, 1903.

[200] Bianchi terms this fairly common condition the neurasthenia of

pregnancy.

[201] Vinay, _Traité des Maladies de la Grossesse_, 1894, pp. 51, 577;

Mongeri, "Nervenkrankungen und Schwangerschaft."

_Allegemeine Zeitschrift

für Psychiatrie_, bd. LVIII, Heft 5. Haig remarks (_Uric Acid_, sixth

edition, p. 151) that during normal pregnancy diseases with excess of uric

acid in the blood (headaches, fits, mental depression, dyspepsia, asthma)

are absent, and considers that the common idea that women do not easily

take colds, fevers, etc., at this time is well founded.

[202] Founding his remarks on certain anatomical changes and on a

suggestion of Engel's, Donaldson observes: "It is impossible to escape the

conclusion that in women natural education is complete only with

maternity, which we know to effect some slight changes in the sympathetic

system and possibly the spinal cord, and which may be fairly laid under

suspicion of causing more structural modifications than are at present

recognized." H.H. Donaldson, _The Growth of the Brain_, p. 352.

[203] The state of menstruation is in many respects an approximation to

that of pregnancy; see, e.g., Edgar's _Practice of Obstetrics_, plates 6 6

and 7, showing the resemblance of the menstrual changes in the breasts and

the external sexual parts to the changes of pregnancy; cf. Havelock Ellis,

_Man and Woman_, fourth edition, Chapter XI, "The Functional Periodicity

of Woman."

[204] Thus the gypsies say of an unmarried woman who becomes pregnant,

"She has smelt the moon-flower"--a flower believed to grow on the

so-called moon-mountain and to possess the property of impregnating by its

smell. Ploss and Bartels, _Das Weib_, bd. I, Chapter XXVII.

[205] This was a sound instinct, for it is now recognized as an extremely

important part of puericulture that a woman should rest at all events

during the latter part of pregnancy; see, e.g., Pinard, _Gazette des

Hôpitaux_, November 28, 1895, and _Annales de Gynécologie_, August, 1898.

[206] Ploss and Bartels, op. cit., Chapter XXIX; Kryptadia, vol. viii, p.

143.

[207] Griffith Wilkin, _British Medical Journal_, April 8, 1905.

[208] Weininger, _Geschlecht und Charakter_, p. 107. I may remark that a

recent book, Ellis Meredith's _Heart of My Heart_, is devoted to a

seemingly autobiographical account of a pregnant woman's emotions and

ideas. The relations of maternity to intellectual work have been carefully

and impartially investigated by Adele Gerhard and Helena Simon, who seem

to conclude that the conflict between the inevitable claims of maternity

and the scarcely less inevitable claims of the intellectual life cannot be

avoided.

APPENDIX.

HISTORIES OF SEXUAL DEVELOPMENT.

HISTORY I.--The following narrative has been written by a

university man trained in psychology:--

So far as I have been able to learn, none of my ancestors for at

least three generations have suffered from any nervous or mental

disease; and of those more remote I can learn nothing at all. It

appears probable, then, that any peculiarities of my own sexual

development must be explained by reference to the somewhat

peculiar environment.

I was the first child and was, naturally, somewhat spoiled--a

process which tended to increase my natural tendency to

sentimentality. On the other hand, I was shy and undemonstrative

with all except my nearest relatives, and with them as well after

my seventh or eighth year. And here it may be well to describe my

"mental type," as this is probably the most important factor in

determining the direction of one's mental development. Of mental

types the "visual" is, of course, by far the most common, but in

my own case visual imagery was never strong or vivid, and has

constantly grown weaker. The dominant part has been played by

tactual, muscular and organic sensations, placing me as one of

the "tact