Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume V Part 3

He had an abnormally small opening in the prepuce, making the uncovering of the glans almost impossible. (At the age of about 37, he himself slit the prepuce by three or four cuts of a scissors at intervals of about ten days. This was followed by a marked decrease in desire, especially as he shortly afterwards learned the importance of local cleanliness.) While in college at about the age of 19 he began to have nocturnal emissions occasionally and once or twice a week when at stool. Alarmed by these, he consulted a physician, who warned him of the danger, gave him bromide and prescribed cold bathing of the parts, with a hard, cool bed. These stopped the emissions.

He never had connection with women until the age of about 25, and then only three times until his marriage at 30 years of age, being deterred partly by conscientious scruples, but more by shyness and convention, and deriving very little pleasure from these instances. Even since marriage he has derived more pleasure from s.e.xual excitement than from coitus, and can maintain erection for as long as two hours.

He has always been accustomed to torture himself in various ingenious ways, nearly always connected with s.e.x. He would burn his skin deeply with red hot wire in inconspicuous places. These and similar acts were generally followed by manual excitation nearly always brought to a climax.

He considers that he is attracted to refined and intellectual women. But he is without very ardent desires, having several times gone to bed with attractive women who stripped themselves naked, but without attempting any s.e.xual intercourse with them. He became interested in the "Karezza" theory and has tried to practice it with his wife, but could never entirely control the emission.

He has hired a ma.s.seur to whip him, as children are whipped, with a heavy dog whip, which caused pleasurable excitement. During this time he had relations with his wife generally about once a week without any great ecstasy. She was cold and s.e.xually slow, owing to conventional s.e.x repression and to an idea that the whole thing was "like animals" and to fear of child-bearing, usually necessitating the use of a cover or withdrawal. It was only eight years after their marriage that she desired and obtained a child. During these years he would often stick pins through his mammae and tie them together by a string round the pins drawn so short as to cause great pain and then indulge himself in the s.e.xual act. He used strong wooden clips with a tack fixed in them, so as to pierce and pinch the mammae, and once he drove a pin entirely through the p.e.n.i.s itself, then obtaining o.r.g.a.s.m by friction. He was never able to get an automatic emission in this way, though he often tried, not even by walking briskly during an erection.

In another cla.s.s of cases a purely ideal symbolism may be present by means of a fetich which acts as a powerful stimulus without itself being felt to possess any attraction. A good ill.u.s.tration of this condition is furnished by a case which has been communicated to me by a medical correspondent in New Zealand.

"The patient went out to South Africa as a trooper with the contingent from New Zealand, throwing up a good position in an office to do so. He had never had any trouble as regards connection with women before going out to South Africa. While in active service at the front he sustained a nasty fall from his horse, breaking his leg. He was unconscious for four days, and was then invalided down to Cape Town. Here he rapidly got well, and his accustomed health returning to him he started having what he terms 'a good time.' He repeatedly went to brothels, but was unable to have more than a temporary erection, and no e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n would take place. In one of these places he was in company with a drunken trooper, who suggested that they should perform the s.e.xual act with their boots and spurs (only) on. My patient, who was also drunk, readily a.s.sented, and to his surprise was enabled to perform the act of copulation without any difficulty at all. He has repeatedly tried since to perform the act without any spurs, but is quite unable to do so; with the spurs he has no difficulty at all in obtaining all the gratification he desires. His general health is good. His mother was an extremely nervous woman, and so is his sister. His father died when he was quite young. His only other relation in the colony is a married sister, who seems to enjoy vigorous health."

The consideration of the cases here brought forward may suffice to show that beyond those fetichisms which find their satisfaction in the contemplation of a part of the body or a garment, there is a more subtle symbolism. The foot is a center of force, an agent for exerting pressure, and thus it furnishes a point of departure not alone for the merely static s.e.xual fetich, but for a dynamic erotic symbolization. The energy of its movements becomes a subst.i.tute for the energy of the s.e.xual organs themselves in coitus, and exerts the same kind of fascination. The young girl (page 35) "who seemed to have a pa.s.sion for treading upon things which would scrunch or yield under her foot," already possessed the germs of an erotic symbolism which, under the influence of circ.u.mstances in which she herself took an active part, developed into an adequate method of s.e.xual gratification.[23] The youth who was her partner learned, in the same way, to find an erotic symbolism in all the pressure reactions of attractive feminine feet, the swaying of a carriage beneath their weight, the crushing of the flowers on which they tread, the slow rising of the gra.s.s which they have pressed. Here we have a symbolism which is altogether different from that fetichism which adores a definite object; it is a dynamic symbolism finding its gratification in the spectacle of movements which ideally recall the fundamental rhythm and pressure reactions of the s.e.xual process.

We may trace a very similar erotic symbolism in an absolutely normal form. The fascination of clothes in the lover's eyes is no doubt a complex phenomenon, but in part it rests on the apt.i.tudes of a woman's garments to express vaguely a dynamic symbolism which must always remain indefinite and elusive, and on that account always possess fascination. No one has so acutely described this symbolism as Herrick, often an admirable psychologist in matters of s.e.xual attractiveness. Especially instructive in this respect are his poems, "Delight in Disorder," "Upon Julia's Clothes," and notably "Julia's Petticoat." "A sweet disorder in the dress," he tells us, "kindles in clothes a wantonness;" it is not on the garment itself, but on the character of its movement that he insists; on the "erring lace," the "winning wave" of the "tempestuous petticoat;" he speaks of the "liquefaction" of clothes, their "brave vibration each way free," and of Julia's petticoat he remarks with a more specific symbolism still,

"Sometimes 'twould pant and sigh and heave, As if to stir it scarce had leave; But having got it, thereupon, 'Twould make a brave expansion."

In the play of the beloved woman's garment, he sees the whole process of the central act of s.e.x, with its repressions and expansions, and at the sight is himself ready to "fall into a swoon."

[13]

G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence, vol. ii, p. 113. It will be noted that the hand does not appear among the parts of the body which are normally of supreme interest. An interest in the hand is by no means uncommon (it may be noted, for instance, in the course of History XII in Appendix B to vol. iii of these Studies), but the hand does not possess the mystery which envelops the foot, and hand-fetichism is very much less frequent than foot-fetichism, while glove-fetichism is remarkably rare. An interesting case of hand-fetichism, scarcely reaching morbid intensity, is recorded by Binet, Etudes de Psychologie Experimentale, pp. 13-19; and see Krafft-Ebing, Op. cit., pp. 214 et seq.

[14]

Memoires, vol. i, Chapter VII.

[15]

Among leading English novelists Hardy shows an unusual but by no means predominant interest in the feet and shoes of his heroines; see, e.g., the observations of the cobbler in Under the Greenwood Tree, Chapter III. A chapter in Goethe's Wahlverwandtschaften (Part I, Chapter II) contains an episode involving the charm of the foot and the kissing of the beloved's shoe.

[16]

Schinz, "Philosophie des Conventions Sociales," Revue Philosophique, June, 1903, p. 626. Mirabeau mentions in his Erotika Biblion that modern Greek women sometimes use their feet to provoke o.r.g.a.s.m in their lovers. I may add that simultaneous mutual masturbation by means of the feet is not unknown to-day, and I have been told by an English shoe-fetichist that he at one time was accustomed to practice this with a married lady (Brazilian)-she with slippers on and he without-who derived gratification equal to his own.

[17]

Jacoby (loc. cit. pp. 796-7) gives a large number of references to Ovid's works bearing on this point. "In reading him," he remarks, "one is inclined to say that the psychology of the Romans was closely allied to that of the Chinese."

[18]

R. Kleinpaul, Sprache ohne Worte, p. 308. See also Moll, Kontrare s.e.xualempfindung, third edition, pp. 306-308. Bloch brings together many interesting references bearing on the ancient s.e.xual and religious symbolism of the shoe, Beitrage zur aetiologie der Psychopathia s.e.xualis, Teil II, p. 324.

[19]

Jacoby (loc. cit. p. 797) appears to regard shoe-fetichism as a true atavism: "The s.e.xual adoration of feminine foot-gear," he concludes, "perhaps the most enigmatic and certainly the most singular of degenerative insanities, is thus merely a form of atavism, the return of the degenerate to the very ancient and primitive psychology which we no longer understand and are no longer capable of feeling."

[20]

Moll has reported in detail (Untersuchungen uber die Libido s.e.xualis, bd. i, Teil II, pp. 320-324) a case which both he and Krafft-Ebing regard as ill.u.s.trative of the connection between boot-fetichism and masochism. It is essentially a case of masochism, though manifesting itself almost exclusively in the desire to perform humiliating acts in connection with the attractive person's boots.

[21]

Krafft-Ebing goes so far as to a.s.sert (Psychopathia s.e.xualis, English translation of tenth edition, p. 174) that "when in cases of shoe-fetichism the female shoe appears alone as the excitant of s.e.xual desire one is justified in presuming that m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic motives have remained latent.... Latent masochism may always be a.s.sumed as the unconscious motive." In this way he hopelessly misinterprets some of his own cases.

[22]

Krafft-Ebing goes so far as to a.s.sert (Psychopathia s.e.xualis, English translation, pp. 159 and 174). Yet some of the cases he brings forward (e.g., c.o.xe's as quoted by Hammond) show no sign of masochism, since, according to Krafft-Ebing's own definition (p. 116), the idea of subjugation by the opposite s.e.x is of the essence of masochism.

[23]

Her actions suggest that there is often a latent s.e.xual consciousness in regard to the feet in women, atavistic or pseudo-atavistic, and corresponding to the s.e.xual attraction which the feet formerly aroused, almost normally, in men. This is also suggested by the case, referred to by Shufeldt, of an unmarried woman, belonging to a family exhibiting in a high degree both erotic and neurotic traits, who had "a certain uncontrollable fascination for shoes. She delights in new shoes, and changes her shoes all day long at regular intervals of three hours each. She keeps this row of shoes out in plain sight in her apartment." (R. W. Shufeldt, "On a Case of Female Impotency," 1896, p. 10.)

III.

Scatalogic Symbolism-Urolagnia-Coprolagnia-The Ascetic Att.i.tude Towards the Flesh-Normal basis of Scatalogic Symbolism-Scatalogic Conceptions Among Primitive Peoples-Urine as a Primitive Holy Water-Sacredness of Animal Excreta-Scatalogy in Folk-lore-The Obscene as Derived from the Mythological-The Immature s.e.xual Impulse Tends to Manifest Itself in Scatalogic Forms-The basis of Physiological Connection Between the Urinary and Genital Spheres-Urinary Fetichism Sometimes Normal in Animals-The Urolagnia of m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.ts-The Scatalogy of Saints-Urolagnia More Often a Symbolism of Act Than a Symbolism of Object-Only Occasionally an Olfactory Fetichism-Comparative Rarity of Coprolagnia-Influence of Nates Fetichism as a Transition to Coprolagnia-Ideal Coprolagnia-Olfactory Coprolagnia-Urolagnia and Coprolagnia as Symbols of Coitus.

We meet with another group of erotic symbolisms-alike symbolisms of object and of act-in connection with the two functions adjoining the anatomical s.e.xual focus: the urinary and alvine excretory functions. These are sometimes termed the scatalogical group, with the two subdivisions of urolagnia and Coprolagnia.[24] Inter faeces et urinam nascimur is an ancient text which has served the ascetic preachers of old for many discourses on the littleness of man and the meanness of that reproductive power which plays so large a part in man's life. "The stupid bungle of Nature," a correspondent writes, "whereby the generative organs serve as a means of relieving the bladder, is doubtless responsible for much of the disgust which those organs excite in some minds."

At the same time, it is necessary to point out, such reflex influence may act not in one direction only, but also in the reverse direction. From the standpoint of ascetic contemplation eager to belittle humanity, the excretory centers may cast dishonor upon the genital center which they adjoin. From the more ecstatic standpoint of the impa.s.sioned lover, eager to magnify the charm of the woman he worships, it is not impossible for the excretory centers to take on some charm from the irradiating center of s.e.x which they enclose.

Even normally such a process is traceable. The normal lover may not idealize the excretory functions of his mistress, but the fact that he finds no repulsion in the most intimate contacts and feels no disgust at the proximity of the excretory orifices or the existence of their functions, indicates that the idealization of love has exerted at all events a neutralizing influence; indeed, the presence of an acute sensibility to the disturbing influence of this proximity of the excretory orifices and their functions must be considered abnormal; Swift's "Strephon and Chloe"-with the conviction underlying it that it is an easy matter for the excretory functions to drown the possibilities of love-could only have proceeded from a morbidly sensitive brain.[25]

A more than mere neutralizing influence, a positively idealizing influence of the s.e.xual focus on the excretory processes adjoining it, may take place in the lover's mind without the normal variations of s.e.xual attraction being over-pa.s.sed, and even without the creation of an excretory fetichism.

Reflections of this att.i.tude may be found in the poets. In the Song of Songs the lover says of his mistress, "Thy navel is like a round goblet, wherein no mingled wine is wanting;" in his lyric "To Dianeme," Herrick says with clear reference to the mons veneris:-

"Show me that hill where smiling love doth sit, Having a living fountain under it;"

and in the very numerous poems in various languages which have more or less obscurely dealt with the rose as the emblem of the feminine pudenda there are occasional references to the stream which guards or presides over the rose. It may, indeed, be recalled that even in the name nymphae anatomists commonly apply to the l.a.b.i.a minora there is generally believed to be a poetic allusion to the Nymphs who presided over streams, since the l.a.b.i.a minora exert an influence on the direction of the urinary stream.

In Wilhelm Meister (Part I, Chapter XV), Goethe, on the basis of his own personal experiences, describes his hero's emotions in the humble surroundings of Marianne's little room as compared with the stateliness and order of his own home. "It seemed to him when he had here to remove her stays in order to reach the harpsichord, there to lay her skirt on the bed before he could seat himself, when she herself with unembarra.s.sed frankness would make no attempt to conceal from him many natural acts which people are accustomed to hide from others out of decency-it seemed to him, I say, that he became bound to her by invisible bands." We are told of Wordsworth (Findlay's Recollections of De Quincey, p. 36) that he read Wilhelm Meister till "he came to the scene where the hero, in his mistress's bedroom, becomes sentimental over her dirty towels, etc., which struck him with such disgust that he flung the book out of his hand, would never look at it again, and declared that surely no English lady would ever read such a work." I have, however, heard a woman of high intellectual distinction refer to the peculiar truth and beauty of this very pa.s.sage.

In one of his latest novels, Les Rencontres de M. de Breot, Henri de Regnier, one of the most notable of recent French novelists, narrates an episode bearing on the matter before us. A personage of the story is sitting for a moment in a dark grotto during a night fete in a n.o.bleman's park, when two ladies enter and laughingly proceed to raise their garments and accomplish a natural necessity. The man in the background, suddenly overcome by a s.e.xual impulse, starts forward; one lady runs away, the other, whom he detains, offers little resistance to his advances. To M. de Breot, whom he shortly after encounters, he exclaims, abashed at his own actions: "Why did I not flee? But could I imagine that the spectacle of so disgusting a function would have any other effect than to give me a humble opinion of human nature?" M. de Breot, however, in proceeding to reproach his interlocutor for his inconsiderate temerity, observes: "What you tell me, sir, does not entirely surprise me. Nature has placed very various instincts within us, and the impulse that led you to what you have just now done is not so peculiar as you think. One may be a very estimable man and yet love women even in what is lowliest in their bodies." In harmony with this pa.s.sage from Regnier's novel are the remarks of a correspondent who writes to me of the function of urination that it "appeals s.e.xually to most normal individuals. My own observations and inquiries prove this. Women themselves instinctively feel it. The secrecy surrounding the matter lends, too, I think, a s.e.xual interest."

The fact that scatalogic processes may in some degree exert an attraction even in normal love has been especially emphasized by Bloch (Beitrage zur aetiologie der Psychopathia s.e.xualis, Teil II, pp. 222, et seq.): "The man whose intellect and aesthetic sense has been 'clouded by the s.e.xual impulse' sees these things in an entirely different light from him who has not been overcome by the intoxication of love. For him they are idealized (sit venia verbo) since they are a part of the beloved person, and in consequence a.s.sociated with love." Bloch quotes the Memoiren einer Sangerin (a book which is said to be, though this seems doubtful, genuinely autobiographical) in the same sense: "A man who falls in love with a girl is not dragged out of his poetic sphere by the thought that his beloved must relieve certain natural necessities every day. It seems, indeed, to him to be just the opposite. If one loves a person one finds nothing obscene or disgusting in the object that pleases me." The opposite att.i.tude is probably in extreme cases due to the influence of a neurotic or morbidly sensitive temperament. Swift possessed such a temperament. The possession of a similar temperament is doubtless responsible for the little prose poem, "L'Extase," in which Huysmans in his first book, Le Drageloir a Epices, has written an attenuated version of "Strephon and Chloe" to express the disillusionment of love; the lover lies in a wood clasping the hand of the beloved with rapturous emotion; "suddenly she rose, disengaged her hand, disappeared in the bushes, and I heard as it were the rustling of rain on the leaves." His dream has fled.

In estimating the significance of the lover's att.i.tude in this matter, it is important to realize the position which scatologic conceptions took in primitive belief. At certain stages of early culture, when all the emanations of the body are liable to possess mysterious magic properties and become apt for sacred uses, the excretions, and especially the urine, are found to form part of religious ritual and ceremonial function. Even among savages the excreta are frequently regarded as disgusting, but under the influence of these conceptions such disgust is inhibited, and those emanations of the body which are usually least honored become religious symbols.

Urine has been regarded as the original holy water, and many customs which still survive in Italy and various parts of Europe, involving the use of a fluid which must often be yellow and sometimes salt, possibly indicate the earlier use of urine. (The Greek water of aspersion, according to Theocritus, was mixed with salt, as is sometimes the modern Italian holy water. J. J. Blunt, Vestiges of Ancient Manners and Customs, p. 173.) Among the Hottentots, as Kolbein and others have recorded, the medicine man urinated alternately on bride and bridegroom, and a successful young warrior was sprinkled in the same way. Mungo Park mentions that in Africa on one occasion a bride sent a bowl of her urine which was thrown over him as a special mark of honor to a distinguished guest. Pennant remarked that the Highlanders sprinkled their cattle with urine, as a kind of holy water, on the first Monday in every quarter. (Bourke, Scatalogic Rites, pp. 228, 239; Brand, Popular Antiquities, "Bride-Ales.")

Even the excreta of animals have sometimes been counted sacred. This is notably so in the case of the cow, of all animals the most venerated by primitive peoples, and especially in India. Jules Bois (Visions de l'Inde, p. 86) describes the spectacle presented in the temple of the cows at Benares: "I put my head into the opening of the holy stables. It was the largest of temples, a splendor of precious stones and marble, where the venerated heifers pa.s.sed backwards and forwards. A whole people adored them. They take no notice, plunged in their divine and obscure unconsciousness. And they fulfil with serenity their animal functions; they chew the offerings, drink water from copper vessels, and when they are filled they relieve themselves. Then a stercoraceous and religious insanity overcomes these starry-faced women and venerable men; they fall on their knees, prostrate themselves, eat the droppings, greedily drink the liquid, which for them is miraculous and sacred." (Cf. Bourke, Scatalogic Rites, Chapter XVII.)

Among the Chevsurs of the Caucasus, perhaps an Iranian people, a woman after her confinement, for which she lives apart, purifies herself by washing in the urine of a cow and then returns home. This mode of purification is recommended in the Avesta, and is said to be used by the few remaining followers of this creed.

We have not only to take into account the frequency with which among primitive peoples the excretions possess a religious significance. It is further to be noted that in the folk-lore of modern Europe we everywhere find plentiful evidence of the earlier prevalence of legends and practices of a scatalogical character. It is significant that in the majority of cases it is easy to see a s.e.xual reference in these stories and customs. The legends have lost their earlier and often mythical significance, and frequently take on a suggestion of obscenity, while the scatalogical practices have become the magical devices of lovelorn maidens or forsaken wives practiced in secrecy. It has happened to scatalogical rites to be regarded as we may gather from the Clouds of Aristophanes, that the sacred leathern phallus borne by the women in the Baccha.n.a.lia was becoming in his time, an object to arouse the amus.e.m.e.nt of little boys.

Among many primitive peoples throughout the world, and among the lower social cla.s.ses of civilized peoples, urine possesses magic properties, more especially, it would seem, the urine of women and that of people who stand, or wish to stand, in s.e.xual relationship to each other. In a legend of the Indians of the northwest coast of America, recorded by Boas, a woman gives her lover some of her urine and says: "You can wake the dead if you drop some of my urine in their ears and nose." (Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1894, Heft IV, p. 293.) Among the same Indians there is a legend of a woman with a beautiful white skin who found on bathing every morning in the river that the fish were attracted to her skin and could not be driven off even by magical solutions. At last she said to herself: "I will make water on them and then they will leave me alone." She did so, and henceforth the fish left her. But shortly after fire came from Heaven and killed her. (Ib., 1891, Heft V, p. 640.) Among both Christians and Mohammedans a wife can attach an unfaithful husband by privately putting some of her urine in his drink. (B. Stern, Medizin in der Turkei, vol. ii, p. 11.) This practice is world-wide; thus among the aborigines of Brazil, according to Martius, the urine and other excretions and secretions are potent for aphrodisiacal objects. (Bourke's Scatalogic Rites of All Nations contains many references to the folk-lore practices in this matter; a study of popular beliefs in the magic power of urine, published in Bombay by Professor Eugen Wilhelm in 1889, I have not seen.)

The legends which narrate scatalogic exploits are numerous in the literature of all countries. Among primitive peoples they often have a purely theological character, for in the popular mythologies of all countries (even, as we learn from Aristophanes, among the Greeks) natural phenomena such as the rain, are apt to be regarded as divine excretions, but in course of time the legends take on a more erotic or a more obscene character. In the Irish Book of Leinster (written down somewhere about the twelfth century, but containing material of very much older date) we are told how a number of princesses in Emain Macha, the seat of the Ulster Kings, resolved to find out which of them could by urinating on it melt a snow pillar which the men had made, the woman who succeeded to be regarded as the best among them. None of them succeeded, and they sent for Derbforgaill, who was in love with Cuchullain, and she was able to melt the pillar; whereupon the other women, jealous of the superiority she had thus shown, tore out her eyes. (Zimmer, "Keltische Beitrage," Zeitschrift fur Deutsche Alterthum, vol. x.x.xii, Heft II, pp. 216-219.) Rhys considers that Derbforgaill was really a G.o.ddess of dawn and dusk, "the drop glistening in the sun's rays," as indicated by her name, which means a drop or tear. (J. Rhys, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Ill.u.s.trated by Celtic Heathendom, p. 466.) It is interesting to compare the legend of Derbforgaill with a somewhat more modern Picardy folk-lore conte which is clearly a.n.a.logous but no longer seems to show any mythologic element, "La Princesse qui p.i.s.se par dessus les Meules." This princess had a habit of urinating over hay-c.o.c.ks; the king, her father, in order to break her of the habit, offered her in marriage to anyone who could make a hay-c.o.c.k so high that she could not urinate over it. The young men came, but the princess would merely laugh and at once achieve the task. At last there came a young man who argued with himself that she would not be able to perform this feat after she had lost her virginity. He therefore seduced her first and she then failed ign.o.bly, merely wetting her stockings. Accordingly, she became his bride. (???pt?d?a, vol. i. p. 333.) Such legends, which have lost any mythologic elements they may originally have possessed and have become merely contes, are not uncommon in the folk-lore of many countries. But in their earlier more religious forms and in their later more obscene forms, they alike bear witness to the large place which scatalogic conceptions play in the primitive mind.

It is a notable fact in evidence of the close and seemingly normal a.s.sociation with the s.e.xual impulse of the scatalogic processes, that an interest in them, arising naturally and spontaneously, is one of the most frequent channels by which the s.e.xual impulse first manifests itself in young boys and girls.

Stanley Hall, who has made special inquiries into the matter, remarks that in childhood the products of excretion by bladder and bowels are often objects of interest hardly less intense for a time than eating and drinking. ("Early Sense of Self," American Journal of Psychology, April, 1898, p. 361.) "Micturitional obscenities," the same writer observes again, "which our returns show to be so common before adolescence, culminate at 10 or 12, and seem to retreat into the background as s.e.x phenomena appear." They are, he remarks, of two cla.s.ses: "Fouling persons or things, secretly from adults, but openly with each other," and less often "ceremonial acts connected with the act or the product that almost suggest the scatalogical rites of savages, unfit for description here, but of great interest and importance." (G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence, vol. i, p. 116.) The nature of such scatalogical phenomena in childhood-which are often clearly the instinctive manifestations of an erotic symbolism-and their wide prevalence among both boys and girls, are very well ill.u.s.trated in a narrative which I include in Appendix B, History II.

In boys as they approach the age of p.u.b.erty, this attraction to the scatalogic, when it exists, tends to die out, giving place to more normal s.e.xual conceptions, or at all events it takes a subordinate and less serious place in the mind. In girls, on the other hand, it often tends to persist. Edmond de Goncourt, a minute observer of the feminine mind, refers in Cherie to "those innocent and triumphant gaieties which scatalogic stories have the privilege of arousing in women who have remained still children, even the most distinguished women." The extent to which innocent young women, who would frequently be uninterested or repelled in presence of the s.e.xually obscene are sometimes attracted by the scatalogically obscene, becomes intelligible, however, if we realize that a symbolism comes here into play. In women the more specifically s.e.xual knowledge and experience of life frequently develop much later than in men or even remains in abeyance, and the specifically s.e.xual phenomena cannot therefore easily lend themselves to wit, or humor, or imagination. But the scatalogic sphere, by the very fact that in women it is a specially intimate and secret region which is yet always liable to be unexpectedly protruded into consciousness, furnishes an inexhaustible field for situations which have the same character as those furnished by the s.e.xually obscene. It thus happens that the s.e.xually obscene which in men tends to overshadow the scatalogically obscene, in women-partly from inexperience and partly, it is probable, from their almost physiological modesty-plays a part subordinate to the scatalogical. In a somewhat a.n.a.logous way scatalogical wit and humor play a considerable part in the work of various eminent authors who were clergymen or priests.

In addition to the anatomical and psychological a.s.sociations which contribute to furnish a basis on which erotic symbolisms may spring up, there are also physiological connections between the genital and urinary spheres which directly favor such symbolisms. In discussing the a.n.a.lysis of the s.e.xual impulse in a previous volume of these Studies, I have pointed out the remarkable relationship-sometimes of transference, sometimes of compensation-which exists between genital tension and vesical tension, both in men and women. In the histories of normal s.e.xual development brought together at the end of that and subsequent volumes the relationship may frequently be traced, as also in the case of C. P. in the present study (p. 37). Vesical power is also commonly believed to be in relation with s.e.xual potency, and the inability to project the urinary stream in a normal manner is one of the accepted signs of s.e.xual impotency.[26] Fere, again, has recorded the history of a man with periodic crises of s.e.xual desire, and subsequently s.e.xual obsession without desire, which were always accompanied by the impulse to urinate and by increased urination.[27] In the case, recorded by Pitres and Regis, of a young girl who, having once at the sight of a young man she liked in a theater been overcome by s.e.xual feeling accompanied by a strong desire to urinate, was afterward tormented by a groundless fear of experiencing an irresistible desire to urinate at inconvenient times,[28] we have an example of what may be called a physiological scatalogic symbolism of s.e.x, an emotion which was primarily erotic becoming transferred to the bladder and then remaining persistent. From such a physiological symbolism it is but a step to the psychological symbolisms of scatalogic fetichism.