Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume Iii Part 5

It is interesting to find that in the Indian art of love a kind of mock-combat, accompanied by striking, is a recognized and normal method of heightening tumescence. Vatsyayana has a chapter "On Various Manners of Striking," and he approves of the man striking the woman on the back, belly, flanks, and b.u.t.tocks, before and during coitus, as a kind of play, increasing as s.e.xual excitement increases, which the woman, with cries and groans, pretends to bid the man to stop. It is mentioned that, especially in southern India, various instruments (scissors, needles, etc.) are used in striking, but this practice is condemned as barbarous and dangerous. (Kama Sutra, French translation, iii, chapter v.)

In the story of Aladdin, in the Arabian Nights, the bride is undressed by the mother and the other women, who place her in the bridegroom's bed "as if by force, and, according to the custom of the newly married, she pretends to resist, twisting herself in every direction, and seeking to escape from their hands." (Les Mille Nuits, tr. Mardrus, vol. xi, p. 253.)

It is said that in those parts of Germany where preliminary Probenachte before formal marriage are the rule it is not uncommon for a young woman before finally giving herself to a man to provoke him to a physical struggle. If she proves stronger she dismisses him; if he is stronger she yields herself willingly. (W. Henz, "Probenachte," s.e.xual-Probleme, Oct., 1910, p. 743.)

Among the South Slavs of Servia and Bulgaria, according to Krauss, it is the custom to win a woman by seizing her by the ankle and bringing her to the ground by force. This method of wooing is to the taste of the woman, and they are refractory to any other method. The custom of beating or being beaten before coitus is also found among the South Slavs. (???pt?d?a, vol. vi, p. 209.)

In earlier days violent courtship was viewed with approval in the European world, even among aristocratic circles. Thus in the medieval Lai de Graelent of Marie de France this Breton knight is represented as very chaste, possessing a high ideal of love and able to withstand the wiles of women. One day when he is hunting in a forest he comes upon a naked damsel bathing, together with her handmaidens. Overcome by her beauty, he seizes her clothes in case she should be alarmed, but is persuaded to hand them to her; then he proceeds to make love to her. She replies that his love is an insult to a woman of her high lineage. Finding her so proud, Graelent sees that his prayers are in vain. He drags her by force into the depth of the forest, has his will of her, and begs her very gently not to be angry, promising to love her loyally and never to leave her. The damsel saw that he was a good knight, courteous, and wise. She thought within herself that if she were to leave him she would never find a better friend.

Brantome mentions a lady who confessed that she liked to be "half-forced" by her husband, and he remarks that a woman who is "a little difficult and resists" gives more pleasure also to her lover than one who yields at once, just as a hard-fought battle is a more notable triumph than an easily won victory. (Brantome, Vie des Dames Galantes, discours i.) Restif de la Bretonne, again, whose experience was extensive, wrote in his Anti-Justine that "all women of strong temperament like a sort of brutality in s.e.xual intercourse and its accessories."

Ovid had said that a little force is pleasing to a woman, and that she is grateful to the ravisher against whom she struggles (Ars Amatoria, lib. i). One of Janet's patients (Raymond and Janet, Les Obsessions et la Psychasthenie, vol. ii, p. 406) complained that her husband was too good, too devoted. "He does not know how to make me suffer a little. One cannot love anyone who does not make one suffer a little." Another hysterical woman (a silk fetichist, frigid with men) had dreams of men and animals abusing her: "I cried with pain and was happy at the same time." (Clerambault, Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle, June, 1908, p. 442.)

It has been said that among Slavs of the lower cla.s.s the wives feel hurt if they are not beaten by their husbands. Paullinus, in the seventeenth century, remarked that Russian women are never more pleased and happy than when beaten by their husbands, and regard such treatment as proof of love. (See, e.g., C. F. von Schlichtegroll, Sacher-Masoch und der Masochismus, p. 69.) Krafft-Ebing believes that this is true at the present day, and adds that it is the same in Hungary, a Hungarian official having informed him that the peasant women of the Somogyer Comitate do not think they are loved by their husbands until they have received the first box on the ear. (Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia s.e.xualis, English translation of the tenth edition, p. 188.) I may add that a Russian proverb says "Love your wife like your soul and beat her like your shuba" (overcoat); and, according to another Russian proverb, "a dear one's blows hurt not long." At the same time it has been remarked that the domination of men by women is peculiarly frequent among the Slav peoples. (V. Schlichtegroll, op. cit., p. 23.) Cellini, in an interesting pa.s.sage in his Life (book ii, chapters x.x.xiv-x.x.xv), describes his own brutal treatment of his model Caterina, who was also his mistress, and the pleasure which, to his surprise, she took in it. Dr. Simon Forman, also, the astrologist, tells in his Autobiography (p. 7) how, as a young and puny apprentice to a hosier, he was beaten, scolded, and badly treated by the servant girl, but after some years of this treatment he turned on her, beat her black and blue, and ever after "Mary would do for him all that she could."

That it is a sign of love for a man to beat his sweetheart, and a sign much appreciated by women, is ill.u.s.trated by the episode of Cariharta and Repolido, in "Rinconete and Cortadillo," one of Cervantes's Exemplary Novels. The Indian women of South America feel in the same way, and Mantegazza when traveling in Bolivia found that they complained when they were not beaten by their husbands, and that a girl was proud when she could say "He loves me greatly, for he often beats me." (Fisiologia della Donna, chapter xiii.) The same feeling evidently existed in cla.s.sic antiquity, for we find Lucian, in his "Dialogues of Courtesans," makes a woman say: "He who has not rained blows on his mistress and torn her hair and her garments is not yet in love," while Ovid advises lovers sometimes to be angry with their sweethearts and to tear their dresses.

Among the Italian Camorrista, according to Russo, wives are very badly treated. Expression is given to this fact in the popular songs. But the women only feel themselves tenderly loved when they are badly treated by their husbands; the man who does not beat them they look upon as a fool. It is the same in the east end of London. "If anyone has doubts as to the brutalities practised on women by men," writes a London magistrate, "let him visit the London Hospital on a Sat.u.r.day night. Very terrible sights will meet his eye. Sometimes as many as twelve or fourteen women may be seen seated in the receiving room, waiting for their bruised and bleeding faces and bodies to be attended to. In nine cases out of ten the injuries have been inflicted by brutal and perhaps drunken husbands. The nurses tell me, however, that any remarks they may make reflecting on the aggressors are received with great indignation by the wretched sufferers. They positively will not hear a single word against the cowardly ruffians. 'Sometimes,' said a nurse to me, 'when I have told a woman that her husband is a brute, she has drawn herself up and replied: "You mind your own business, miss. We find the rates and taxes, and the likes of you are paid out of 'em to wait on us."'" (Montagu Williams, Round London, p. 79.)

"The prost.i.tute really loves her souteneur, notwithstanding all the persecutions he inflicts on her. Their torments only increase the devotion of the poor slaves to their 'Alphonses.' Parent-Duchatelet wrote that he had seen them come to the hospital with their eyes out of their heads, faces bleeding, and bodies torn by the blows of their drunken lovers, but as soon as they were healed they went back to them. Police-officers tell us that it is very difficult to make a prost.i.tute confess anything concerning her souteneur. Thus, Rosa L., whom her 'Alphonse' had often threatened to kill, even putting the knife to her throat, would say nothing, and denied everything when the magistrate questioned her. Maria R., with her face marked by a terrible scar produced by her souteneur, still carefully preserved many years afterward the portrait of the aggressor, and when we asked her to explain her affection she replied: 'But he wounded me because he loved me.' The souteneur's brutality only increases the ill-treated woman's love; the humiliation and slavery in which the woman's soul is drowned feed her love." (Niceforo, Il Gergo, etc., 1897, p. 128.)

In a modern novel written in autobiographic form by a young Australian lady the heroine is represented as striking her betrothed with a whip when he merely attempts to kiss her. Later on her behavior so stings him that his self-control breaks down and he seizes her fiercely by the arms. For the first time she realizes that he loves her. "I laughed a joyous little laugh, saying 'Hal, we are quits'; when on disrobing for the night I discovered on my soft white shoulders and arms-so susceptible to bruises-many marks, and black. It had been a very happy day for me." (Miles Franklin, My Brilliant Career.)

It is in large measure the existence of this feeling of attraction for violence which accounts for the love-letters received by men who are accused of crimes of violence. Thus in one instance, in Chicago (as Dr. Kiernan writes to me), "a man arrested for conspiracy to commit abortion, and also suspected of being a s.a.d.i.s.t, received many proposals of marriage and other less modest expressions of affection from unknown women. To judge by the signatures, these women belonged to the Germans and Slavs rather than to the Anglo-Celts."

Neuropathic or degenerative conditions sometimes serve to accentuate or reveal ancestral traits that are very ancient in the race. Under such conditions the tendency to find pleasure in subjection and pain, which is often faintly traceable even in normal civilized women, may become more p.r.o.nounced. This may be seen in a case described in some detail in the Archivio di Psichiatria. The subject was a young lady of 19, of n.o.ble Italian birth, but born in Tunis. On the maternal side there is a somewhat neurotic heredity, and she is herself subject to attacks of hystero-epileptoid character. She was very carefully, but strictly, educated; she knows several languages, possesses marked intellectual apt.i.tudes, and is greatly interested in social and political questions, in which she takes the socialistic and revolutionary side. She has an attractive and sympathetic personality; in complexion she is dark, with dark eyes and very dark and abundant hair; the fine down on the upper lip and lower parts of the cheeks is also much developed; the jaw is large, the head acrocephalic, and the external genital organs of normal size, but rather asymmetric. Ever since she was a child she has loved to work and dream in solitude. Her dreams have always been of love, since menstruation began as early as the age of 10, and accompanied by strong s.e.xual feelings, though at that age these feelings remained vague and indefinite; but in them the desire for pleasure was always accompanied by the desire for pain, the desire to bite and destroy something, and, as it were, to annihilate herself. She experienced great relief after periods of "erotic rumination," and if this rumination took place at night she would sometimes m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e, the contact of the bedclothes, she said, giving her the illusion of a man. In time this vague longing for the male gave place to more definite desires for a man who would love her, and, as she imagined, strike her. Eventually she formed secret relationships with two or three lovers in succession, each of these relationships being, however, discovered by her family and leading to ineffectual attempts at suicide. But the a.s.sociation of pain with love, which had developed spontaneously in her solitary dreams, continued in her actual relations with her lovers. During coitus she would bite and squeeze her arms until the nails penetrated the flesh. When her lover asked her why at the moment of coitus she would vigorously repel him, she replied: "Because I want to be possessed by force, to be hurt, suffocated, to be thrown down in a struggle." At another time she said: "I want a man with all his vitality, so that he can torture and kill my body." We seem to see here clearly the ancient biological character of animal courtship, the desire of the female to be violently subjugated by the male. In this case it was united to sensitiveness to the s.e.xual domination of an intellectual man, and the subject also sought to stimulate her lovers' intellectual tastes. (Archivio di Psichiatria, vol. xx, fasc. 5-6, p. 528.)

This a.s.sociation between love and pain still persists even among the most normal civilized men and women possessing well-developed s.e.xual impulses. The masculine tendency to delight in domination, the feminine tendency to delight in submission, still maintain the ancient traditions when the male animal pursued the female. The phenomena of "marriage by capture," in its real and its simulated forms, have been traced to various causes. But it has to be remembered that these causes could only have been operative in the presence of a favorable emotional apt.i.tude, const.i.tuted by the zoological history of our race and still traceable even today. To exert power, as psychologists well recognize, is one of our most primary impulses, and it always tends to be manifested in the att.i.tude of a man toward the woman he loves.[73]

It might be possible to maintain that the primitive element of more or less latent cruelty in courtship tends to be more rather than less marked in civilized man. In civilization the opportunity of dissipating the surplus energy of the courtship process by inflicting pain on rivals usually has to be inhibited; thus the woman to be wooed tends to become the recipient of the whole of this energy, both in its pleasure-giving and its pain-giving aspects. Moreover, the natural process of courtship, as it exists among animals and usually among the lower human races, tends to become disguised and distorted in civilization, as well by economic conditions as by conventional social conditions and even ethical prescription. It becomes forgotten that the woman's pleasure is an essential element in the process of courtship. A woman is often reduced to seek a man for the sake of maintenance; she is taught that pleasure is sinful or shameful, that s.e.x-matters are disgusting, and that it is a woman's duty, and also her best policy, to be in subjection to her husband. Thus, various external checks which normally inhibit any pa.s.sing over of masculine s.e.xual energy into cruelty are liable to be removed.

We have to admit that a certain pleasure in manifesting his power over a woman by inflicting pain upon her is an outcome and survival of the primitive process of courtship, and an almost or quite normal const.i.tuent of the s.e.xual impulse in man. But it must be at once added that in the normal well-balanced and well-conditioned man this const.i.tuent of the s.e.xual impulse, when present, is always held in check. When the normal man inflicts, or feels the impulse to inflict, some degree of physical pain on the woman he loves he can scarcely be said to be moved by cruelty. He feels, more or less obscurely, that the pain he inflicts, or desires to inflict, is really a part of his love, and that, moreover, it is not really resented by the woman on whom it is exercised. His feeling is by no means always according to knowledge, but it has to be taken into account as an essential part of his emotional state. The physical force, the teasing and bullying, which he may be moved to exert under the stress of s.e.xual excitement, are, he usually more or less unconsciously persuades himself, not really unwelcome to the object of his love.[74] Moreover, we have to bear in mind the fact-a very significant fact from more than one point of view-that the normal manifestations of a woman's s.e.xual pleasure are exceedingly like those of pain. "The outward expressions of pain," as a lady very truly writes,-"tears, cries, etc.,-which are laid stress on to prove the cruelty of the person who inflicts it, are not so different from those of a woman in the ecstasy of pa.s.sion, when she implores the man to desist, though that is really the last thing she desires."[75] If a man is convinced that he is causing real and unmitigated pain, he becomes repentant at once. If this is not the case he must either be regarded as a radically abnormal person or as carried away by pa.s.sion to a point of temporary insanity.

The intimate connection of love with pain, its tendency to approach cruelty, is seen in one of the most widespread of the occasional and non-essential manifestations of strong s.e.xual emotion, especially in women, the tendency to bite. We may find references to love-bites in the literature of ancient as well as of modern times, in the East as well as in the West. Plautus, Catullus, Propertius, Horace, Ovid, Petronius, and other Latin writers refer to bites as a.s.sociated with kisses and usually on the lips. Plutarch says that Flora, the mistress of Cnaeus Pompey, in commending her lover remarked that he was so lovable that she could never leave him without giving him a bite. In the Arabic Perfumed Garden there are many references to love-bites, while in the Indian Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana a chapter is devoted to this subject. Biting in love is also common among the South Slavs.[76] The phenomenon is indeed sufficiently familiar to enable Heine, in one of his Romancero, to describe those marks by which the ancient chronicler states that Edith Swanneck recognized Harold, after the Battle of Hastings, as the scars of the bites she had once given him.

It would be fanciful to trace this tendency back to that process of devouring to which s.e.xual congress has, in the primitive stages of its evolution, been reduced. But we may probably find one of the germs of the love-bite in the att.i.tude of many mammals during or before coitus; in attaining a firm grip of the female it is not uncommon (as may be observed in the donkey) for the male to seize the female's neck between his teeth. The horse sometimes bites the mare before coitus and it is said that among the Arabs when a mare is not apt for coitus she is sent to pasture with a small ardent horse, who excites her by playing with her and biting her.[77] It may be noted, also, that dogs often show their affection for their masters by gentle bites. Children also, as Stanley Hall has pointed out, are similarly fond of biting.

Perhaps a still more important factor is the element of combat in tumescence, since the primitive conditions a.s.sociated with tumescence provide a reservoir of emotions which are constantly drawn on even in the s.e.xual excitement of individuals belonging to civilization. The tendency to show affection by biting is, indeed, commoner among women than among men and not only in civilization. It has been noted among idiot girls as well as among the women of various savage races. It may thus be that the conservative instincts of women have preserved a primitive tendency that at its origin marked the male more than the female. But in any case the tendency to bite at the climax of s.e.xual excitement is so common and widespread that it must be regarded, when occurring in women, as coming within the normal range of variation in such manifestations. The gradations are of wide extent; while in its slight forms it is more or less normal and is one of the origins of the kiss,[78] in its extreme forms it tends to become one of the most violent and antisocial of s.e.xual aberrations.

A correspondent writes regarding his experience of biting and being bitten: "I have often felt inclination to bite a woman I love, even when not in coitus or even excited. (I like doing so also with my little boy, playfully, as a cat and kittens.) There seem to be several reasons for this: (1) the muscular effect relieves me; (2) I imagine I am giving the woman pleasure; (3) I seem to attain to a more intimate possession of the loved one. I cannot remember when I first felt desire to be bitten in coitus, or whether the idea was first suggested to me. I was initiated into pinching by a French prost.i.tute who once pinched my nates in coitus, no doubt as a matter of business; it heightened my pleasure, perhaps by stimulating muscular movement. It does not occur to me to ask to be pinched when I am very much excited already, but only at an earlier stage, no doubt with the object of promoting excitement. Apart altogether from s.e.xual excitement, being pinched is unpleasant to me. It has not seemed to me that women usually like to be bitten. One or two women have bitten and sucked my flesh. (The latter does not affect me.) I like being bitten, partly for the same reason as I like being pinched, because if spontaneous it is a sign of my partner's amorousness and the biting never seems too hard. Women do not usually seem to like being bitten, though there are exceptions; 'I should like to bite you and I should like you to bite me,' said one woman; I did so hard, in coitus, and she did not flinch." "She is particularly anxious to eat me alive," another correspondent writes, "and nothing gives her greater satisfaction than to tear open my clothes and fasten her teeth into my flesh until I yell for mercy. My experience has generally been, however," the same correspondent continues, "that the cruelty is unconscious. A woman just grows mad with the desire to squeeze or bite something, with a complete unconsciousness of what result it will produce in the victim. She is astonished when she sees the result and will hardly believe she has done it." It is unnecessary to acc.u.mulate evidence of a tendency which is sufficiently common to be fairly well known, but one or two quotations may be presented to show its wide distribution. In the Kama Sutra we read: "If she is very exalted, and if in the exaltation of her pa.s.sionate transports she begins a sort of combat, then she takes her lover by the hair, draws his head to hers, kisses his lower lip, and then in her delirium bites him all over his body, shutting her eyes"; it is added that with the marks of such bites lovers can remind each other of their affections, and that such love will last for ages. In j.a.pan the maiden of Ainu race feels the same impulse. A. H. Savage Landor (Alone with the Hairy Ainu, 1893, p. 140) says of an Ainu girl: "Loving and biting went together with her. She could not do the one without the other. As we sat on a stone in the twilight she began by gently biting my fingers without hurting me, as affectionate dogs do to their masters. She then bit my arm, then my shoulder, and when she had worked herself up into a pa.s.sion she put her arms around my neck and bit my cheeks. It was undoubtedly a curious way of making love, and, when I had been bitten all over, and was pretty tired of the new sensation, we retired to our respective homes. Kissing, apparently, was an unknown art to her."

The significance of biting, and the close relationship which, as will have to be pointed out later, it reveals to other phenomena, may be ill.u.s.trated by some observations which have been made by Alonzi on the peasant women of Sicily. "The women of the people," he remarks, "especially in the districts where crimes of blood are prevalent, give vent to their affection for their little ones by kissing and sucking them on the neck and arms till they make them cry convulsively; all the while they say: 'How sweet you are! I will bite you, I will gnaw you all over,' exhibiting every appearance of great pleasure. If a child commits some slight fault they do not resort to simple blows, but pursue it through the street and bite it on the face, ears, and arms until the blood flows. At such moments the face of even a beautiful woman is transformed, with injected eyes, gnashing teeth, and convulsive tremors. Among both men and women a very common threat is 'I will drink your blood.' It is told on ocular evidence that a man who had murdered another in a quarrel licked the hot blood from the victim's hand." (G. Alonzi, Archivio di Psichiatria, vol. vi, fasc. 4.) A few years ago a nurse girl in New York was sentenced to prison for cruelty to the baby in her charge. The mother had frequently noticed that the child was in pain and at last discovered the marks of teeth on its legs. The girl admitted that she had bitten the child because that action gave her intense pleasure. (Alienist and Neurologist, August, 1901, p. 558.) In the light of such observations as these we may understand a morbid perversion of affection such as was recorded in the London police news some years ago (1894). A man of 30 was charged with ill-treating his wife's illegitimate daughter, aged 3, during a period of many months; her lips, eyes, and hands were bitten and bruised from sucking, and sometimes her pinafore was covered with blood. "Defendant admitted he had bitten the child because he loved it."

It is not surprising that such phenomena as these should sometimes be the stimulant and accompaniment to the s.e.xual act. Ferriani thus reports such a case in the words of the young man's mistress: "Certainly he is a strange, maddish youth, though he is fond of me and spends money on me when he has any. He likes much s.e.xual intercourse, but, to tell the truth, he has worn out my patience, for before our embraces there are always struggles which become a.s.saults. He tells me he has no pleasure except when he sees me crying on account of his bites and vigorous pinching. Lately, just before going with me, when I was groaning with pleasure, he threw himself on me and at the moment of emission furiously bit my right cheek till the blood came. Then he kissed me and begged my pardon, but would do it again if the wish took him." (L. Ferriani, Archivio di Psicopatie Sessuale, vol. i, fasc. 7 and 8, 1896, p. 107.)

In morbid cases biting may even become a subst.i.tute for coitus. Thus, Moll (Die Kontrare s.e.xualempfindung, second edition, p. 323) records the case of a hysterical woman who was s.e.xually anesthetic, though she greatly loved her husband. It was her chief delight to bite him till the blood flowed, and she was content if, instead of coitus, he bit her and she him, though she was grieved if she inflicted much pain. In other still more morbid cases the fear of inflicting pain is more or less abolished.

An idealized view of the impulse of love to bite and devour is presented in the following pa.s.sage from a letter by a lady who a.s.sociates this impulse with the idea of the Last Supper: "Your remarks about the Lord's Supper in 'Whitman' make it natural to me to tell you my thoughts about that 'central sacrament of Christianity.' I cannot tell many people because they misunderstand, and a clergyman, a very great friend of mine, when I once told what I thought and felt, said I was carnal. He did not understand the divinity and intensity of human love as I understand it. Well, when one loves anyone very much,-a child, a woman, or a man,-one loves everything belonging to him: the things he wears, still more his hands, and his face, every bit of his body. We always want to have all, or part, of him as part of ourselves. Hence the expression: I could devour you, I love you so. In some such warm, devouring way Jesus Christ, I have always felt, loved each and every human creature. So it was that he took this mystery of food, which by eating became part of ourselves, as the symbol of the most intense human love, the most intense Divine love. Some day, perhaps, love will be so understood by all that this sacrament will cease to be a superst.i.tion, a bone of contention, an 'article' of the church, and become, in all simplicity, a symbol of pure love."

While in men it is possible to trace a tendency to inflict pain, or the simulacrum of pain, on the women they love, it is still easier to trace in women a delight in experiencing physical pain when inflicted by a lover, and an eagerness to accept subjection to his will. Such a tendency is certainly normal. To abandon herself to her lover, to be able to rely on his physical strength and mental resourcefulness, to be swept out of herself and beyond the control of her own will, to drift idly in delicious submission to another and stronger will-this is one of the commonest aspirations in a young woman's intimate love-dreams. In our own age these aspirations most often only find their expression in such dreams. In ages when life was more nakedly lived, and emotion more openly expressed, it was easier to trace this impulse. In the thirteenth century we have found Marie de France-a French poetess living in England who has been credited with "an exquisite sense of the generosities and delicacy of the heart," and whose work was certainly highly appreciated in the best circles and among the most cultivated cla.s.s of her day-describing as a perfect, wise, and courteous knight a man who practically commits a rape on a woman who has refused to have anything to do with him, and, in so acting, he wins her entire love. The savage beauty of New Caledonia furnishes no better ill.u.s.tration of the fascination of force, for she, at all events, has done her best to court the violence she undergoes. In Middleton's Spanish Gypsy we find exactly the same episode, and the unhappy Portuguese nun wrote: "Love me for ever and make me suffer still more." To find in literature more attenuated examples of the same tendency is easy. Shakespeare, whose observation so little escaped, has seldom depicted the adult pa.s.sion of a grown woman, but in the play which he has mainly devoted to this subject he makes Cleopatra refer to "amorous pinches," and she says in the end: "The stroke of death is as a lover's pinch, which hurts and is desired." "I think the Sabine woman enjoyed being carried off like that," a woman remarked in front of Rubens's "Rape of the Sabines," confessing that such a method of love-making appealed strongly to herself, and it is probable that the majority of women would be prepared to echo that remark.

It may be argued that pain cannot give pleasure, and that when what would usually be pain is felt as pleasure it cannot be regarded as pain at all. It must be admitted that the emotional state is often somewhat complex. Moreover, women by no means always agree in the statement of their experience. It is noteworthy, however, that even when the pleasurableness of pain in love is denied it is still admitted that, under some circ.u.mstances, pain, or the idea of pain, is felt as pleasurable. I am indebted to a lady for a somewhat elaborate discussion of this subject, which I may here quote at length: "As regards physical pain, though the idea of it is sometimes exciting, I think the reality is the reverse. A very slight amount of pain destroys my pleasure completely. This was the case with me for fully a month after marriage, and since. When pain has occasionally been a.s.sociated with pa.s.sion, pleasure has been sensibly diminished. I can imagine that, when there is a want of sensitiveness so that the tender kiss or caress might fail to give pleasure, more forcible methods are desired; but in that case what would be pain to a sensitive person would be only a pleasant excitement, and it could not be truly said that such obtuse persons liked pain, though they might appear to do so. I cannot think that anyone enjoys what is pain to them, if only from the fact that it detracts and divides the attention. This, however, is only my own idea drawn from my own negative experience. No woman has ever told me that she would like to have pain inflicted on her. On the other hand, the desire to inflict pain seems almost universal among men. I have only met one man in whom I have never at any time been able to detect it. At the same time most men shrink from putting their ideas into practice. A friend of my husband finds his chief pleasure in imagining women hurt and ill-treated, but is too tender-hearted ever to inflict pain on them in reality, even when they are willing to submit to it. Perhaps a woman's readiness to submit to pain to please a man may sometimes be taken for pleasure in it. Even when women like the idea of pain, I fancy it is only because it implies subjection to the man, from a.s.sociation with the fact that physical pleasure must necessarily be preceded by submission to his will."

In a subsequent communication this lady enlarged and perhaps somewhat modified her statements on this point:-

"I don't think that what I said to you was quite correct. Actual pain gives me no pleasure, yet the idea of pain does, if inflicted by way of discipline and for the ultimate good of the person suffering it. This is essential. For instance, I once read a poem in which the devil and the lost souls in h.e.l.l were represented as recognizing that they could not be good except under torture, but that while suffering the purifying actions of the flames of h.e.l.l they so realized the beauty of holiness that they submitted willingly to their agony and praised G.o.d for the sternness of his judgment. This poem gave me decided physical pleasure, yet I know that if my hand were held in a fire for five minutes I should feel nothing but the pain of the burning. To get the feeling of pleasure, too, I must, for the moment, revert to my old religious beliefs and my old notion that mere suffering has an elevating influence; one's emotions are greatly modified by one's beliefs. When I was about fifteen I invented a game which I played with a younger sister, in which we were supposed to be going through a process of discipline and preparation for heaven after death. Each person was supposed to enter this state on dying and to pa.s.s successively into the charge of different angels named after the special virtues it was their function to instill. The last angel was that of Love, who governed solely by the quality whose name he bore. In the lower stages, we were under an angel called Severity who prepared us by extreme harshness and by exacting implicit obedience to arbitrary orders for the acquirement of later virtues. Our duties were to superintend the weather, paint the sunrise and sunset, etc., the constant work involved exercising us in patience and submission. The physical pleasure came in in inventing and recounting to each other our day's work and the penalties and hardships we had been subjected to. We never told each other that we got any physical pleasure out of this, and I cannot therefore be sure that my sister did so; I only imagine she did because she entered so heartily into the spirit of the game. I could get as much pleasure by imagining myself the angel and inflicting the pain, under the conditions mentioned; but my sister did not like this so much, as she then had no companion in subjection. I could not, however, thus reverse my feelings in regard to a man, as it would appear to me unnatural, and, besides, the greater physical strength is essential in the superior position. I can, however, by imagining myself a man, sometimes get pleasure in conceiving myself as educating and disciplining a woman by severe measures. There is, however, no real cruelty in this idea, as I always imagine her liking it.

"I only get pleasure in the idea of a woman submitting herself to pain and harshness from the man she loves when the following conditions are fulfilled: 1. She must be absolutely sure of the man's love. 2. She must have perfect confidence in his judgment. 3. The pain must be deliberately inflicted, not accidental. 4. It must be inflicted in kindness and for her own improvement, not in anger or with any revengeful feelings, as that would spoil one's ideal of the man. 5. The pain must not be excessive and must be what when we were children we used to call a 'tidy' pain; i.e., there must be no mutilation, cutting, etc. 6. Last, one would have to feel very sure of one's own influence over the man. So much for the idea. As I have never suffered pain under a combination of all these conditions, I have no right to say that I should or should not experience pleasure from its infliction in reality."

Another lady writes: "I quite agree that the idea of pain may be pleasurable, but must be a.s.sociated with something to be gained by it. My experience is that it [coitus] does often hurt for a few moments, but that pa.s.ses and the rest is easy; so that the little hurt is nothing terrible, but all the same annoying if only for the sake of a few minutes' pleasure, which is not long enough. I do not know how my experience compares with other women's, but I feel sure that in my case the time needed is longer than usual, and the longer the better, always, with me. As to liking pain-no, I do not really like it, although I can tolerate pain very well, of any kind; but I like to feel force and strength; this is usual, I think, women being-or supposed to be-pa.s.sive in love. I have not found that 'pain at once kills pleasure.'"

Again, another lady briefly states that, for her, pain has a mental fascination, and that such pain as she has had she has liked, but that, if it had been any stronger, pleasure would have been destroyed.

The evidence thus seems to point, with various shades of gradation, to the conclusion that the idea or even the reality of pain in s.e.xual emotion is welcomed by women, provided that this element of pain is of small amount and subordinate to the pleasure which is to follow it. Unless coitus is fundamentally pleasure the element of pain must necessarily be unmitigated pain, and a craving for pain una.s.sociated with a greater satisfaction to follow it cannot be regarded as normal.

In this connection I may refer to a suggestive chapter on "The Enjoyment of Pain" in Hirn's Origins of Art. "If we take into account," says Hirn, "the powerful stimulating effect which is produced by acute pain, we may easily understand why people submit to momentary unpleasantness for the sake of enjoying the subsequent excitement. This motive leads to the deliberate creation, not only of pain-sensations, but also of emotions in which pain enters as an element. The violent activity which is involved in the reaction against fear, and still more in that against anger, affords us a sensation of pleasurable excitement which is well worth the cost of the pa.s.sing unpleasantness. It is, moreover, notorious that some persons have developed a peculiar art of making the initial pain of anger so transient that they can enjoy the active elements in it with almost undivided delight. Such an accomplishment is far more difficult in the case of sorrow.... The creation of pain-sensations may be explained as a desperate device for enhancing the intensity of the emotional state."

The relation of pain and pleasure to emotion has been thoroughly discussed, I may add, by H. R. Marshall in his Pain, Pleasure, and aesthetics. He contends that pleasure and pain are "general qualities, one of which must, and either of which may, belong to any fixed element of consciousness." "Pleasure," he considers, "is experienced whenever the physical activity coincident with the psychic state to which the pleasure is attached involves the use of surplus stored force." We can see, therefore, how, if pain acts as a stimulant to emotion, it becomes the servant of pleasure by supplying it with surplus stored force.

This problem of pain is thus one of psychic dynamics. If we realize this we shall begin to understand the place of cruelty in life. "One ought to learn anew about cruelty," said Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil, 229), "and open one's eyes. Almost everything that we call 'higher culture' is based upon the spiritualizing and intensifying of cruelty.... Then, to be sure, we must put aside teaching the blundering psychology of former times, which could only teach with regard to cruelty that it originated at the sight of the suffering of others; there is an abundant, superabundant enjoyment even in one's own suffering, in causing one's own suffering." The element of paradox disappears from this statement if we realize that it is not a question of "cruelty," but of the dynamics of pain.

Camille Bos in a suggestive essay ("Du Plaisir de la Douleur," Revue Philosophique, July, 1902) finds the explanation of the mystery in that complexity of the phenomena to which I have already referred. Both pain and pleasure are complex feelings, the resultant of various components, and we name that resultant in accordance with the nature of the strongest component. "Thus we give to a complexus a name which strictly belongs only to one of its factors, and in pain all is not painful." When pain becomes a desired end Camille Bos regards the desire as due to three causes: (1) the pain contrasts with and revives a pleasure which custom threatens to dull; (2) the pain by preceding the pleasure accentuates the positive character of the latter; (3) pain momentarily raises the lowered level of sensibility and restores to the organism for a brief period the faculty of enjoyment it had lost.

It must therefore be said that, in so far as pain is pleasurable, it is so only in so far as it is recognized as a prelude to pleasure, or else when it is an actual stimulus to the nerves conveying the sensation of pleasure. The nymphomaniac who experienced an o.r.g.a.s.m at the moment when the knife pa.s.sed through her c.l.i.toris (as recorded by Mantegazza) and the prost.i.tute who experienced keen pleasure when the surgeon removed vegetations from her v.u.l.v.a (as recorded by Fere) took no pleasure in pain, but in one case the intense craving for strong s.e.xual emotion, and in the other the long-blunted nerves of pleasure, welcomed the abnormally strong impulse; and the pain of the incision, if felt at all, was immediately swallowed up in the sensation of pleasure. Moll remarks (Kontrare s.e.xualempfindung, third edition, p. 278) that even in man a trace of physical pain may be normally combined with s.e.xual pleasure, when the v.a.g.i.n.a contracts on the p.e.n.i.s at the moment of e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, the pain, when not too severe, being almost immediately felt as pleasure. That there is no pleasure in the actual pain, even in masochism, is indicated by the following statement which Krafft-Ebing gives as representing the experiences of a m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t (Psychopathia s.e.xualis English translation, p. 201): "The relation is not of such a nature that what causes physical pain is simply perceived as physical pleasure, for the person in a state of m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic ecstasy feels no pain, either because by reason of his emotional state (like that of the soldier in battle) the physical effect on his cutaneous nerves is not apperceived, or because (as with religious martyrs and enthusiasts) in the preoccupation of consciousness with s.e.xual emotion the idea of maltreatment remains merely a symbol, without its quality of pain. To a certain extent there is overcompensation of physical pain in psychic pleasure, and only the excess remains in consciousness as psychic l.u.s.t. This also undergoes an increase, since, either through reflex spinal influence or through a peculiar coloring in the sensorium of sensory impressions, a kind of hallucination of bodily pleasure takes place, with a vague localization of the objectively projected sensation. In the self-torture of religious enthusiasts (fakirs, howling dervishes, religious flagellants) there is an a.n.a.logous state, only with a difference in the quality of pleasurable feeling. Here the conception of martyrdom is also apperceived without its pain, for consciousness is filled with the pleasurably colored idea of serving G.o.d, atoning for sins, deserving Heaven, etc., through martyrdom." This statement cannot be said to clear up the matter entirely; but it is fairly evident that, when a woman says that she finds pleasure in the pain inflicted by a lover, she means that under the special circ.u.mstances she finds pleasure in treatment which would at other times be felt as pain, or else that the slight real pain experienced is so quickly followed by overwhelming pleasure that in memory the pain itself seems to have been pleasure and may even be regarded as the symbol of pleasure.

There is a special peculiarity of physical pain, which may be well borne in mind in considering the phenomena now before us, for it helps to account for the tolerance with which the idea of pain is regarded. I refer to the great ease with which physical pain is forgotten, a fact well known to all mothers, or to all who have been present at the birth of a child. As Professor von Tschisch points out ("Der Schmerz," Zeitschrift fur Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, Bd. xxvi, ht. 1 and 2, 1901), memory can only preserve impressions as a whole; physical pain consists of a sensation and of a feeling. But memory cannot easily reproduce the definite sensation of the pain, and thus the whole memory is disintegrated and speedily forgotten. It is quite otherwise with moral suffering, which persists in memory and has far more influence on conduct. No one wishes to suffer moral pain or has any pleasure even in the idea of suffering it.

It is the presence of this essential tendency which leads to a certain apparent contradiction in a woman's emotions. On the one hand, rooted in the maternal instinct, we find pity, tenderness, and compa.s.sion; on the other hand, rooted in the s.e.xual instinct, we find a delight in roughness, violence, pain, and danger, sometimes in herself, sometimes also in others. The one impulse craves something innocent and helpless, to cherish and protect; the other delights in the spectacle of recklessness, audacity, sometimes even effrontery.[79] A woman is not perfectly happy in her lover unless he can give at least some satisfaction to each of these two opposite longings.

The psychological satisfaction which women tend to feel in a certain degree of pain in love is strictly co-ordinated with a physical fact. Women possess a minor degree of sensibility in the s.e.xual region. This fact must not be misunderstood. On the one hand, it by no means begs the question as to whether women's sensibility generally is greater or less than that of men; this is a disputed question and the evidence is still somewhat conflicting.[80] On the other hand, it also by no means involves a less degree of specific s.e.xual pleasure in women, for the tactile sensibility of the s.e.xual organs is no index to the specific s.e.xual sensibility of those organs when in a state of tumescence. The real significance of the less tactile sensibility of the genital region in women is to be found in parturition and the special liability of the s.e.xual region in women to injury.[81] The women who are less sensitive in this respect would be better able and more willing to endure the risks of childbirth, and would therefore tend to supplant those who were more sensitive. But, as a by-product of this less degree of sensibility, we have a condition in which physical irritation amounting even to pain may become to normal women in the state of extreme tumescence a source of pleasurable excitement, such as it would rarely be to normal men.

To Calmann appear to be due the first carefully made observations showing the minor sensibility of the genital tract in women. (Adolf Calmann, "Sensibilitutsprufungen am weiblicken Genitale nach forensichen Gesichts.p.u.n.kten," Archiv fur Gynakologie, 1898, p. 454.) He investigated the v.a.g.i.n.a, urethra, and a.n.u.s in eighteen women and found a great lack of sensibility, least marked in a.n.u.s, and most marked in v.a.g.i.n.a. [This distribution of the insensitiveness alone indicates that it is due, as I have suggested, to natural selection.] Sometimes a finger in the v.a.g.i.n.a could not be felt at all. One woman, when a catheter was introduced into the a.n.u.s, said it might be the v.a.g.i.n.a or urethra, but was certainly not the a.n.u.s. (Calmann remarks that he was careful to put his questions in an intelligible form.) The women were only conscious of the urine being drawn off when they heard the familiar sound of the stream or when the bladder was very full; if the sound of the stream was deadened by a towel they were quite unconscious that the bladder had been emptied. [In confirmation of this statement I have noticed that in a lady whose distended bladder it was necessary to empty by the catheter shortly before the birth of her first child-but who had, indeed, been partly under the influence of chloroform-there was no consciousness of the artificial relief; she merely remarked that she thought she could now relieve herself.] There was some sense of temperature, but sense of locality, tactile sense, and judgment of size were often widely erroneous. It is significant that virgins were just as insensitive as married women or those who had had children. Calmann's experiments appear to be confirmed by the experiments of Marco Treves, of Turin, on the thermoesthesiometry of mucous membranes, as reported to the Turin International Congress of Physiology (and briefly noted in Nature, November 21, 1901). Treves found that the sensitivity of mucous membranes is always less than that of the skin. The mucosa of the urethra and of the cervix uteri was quite incapable of heat and cold sensations, and even the cautery excited only slight, and that painful, sensation.

In further ill.u.s.tration of this point reference may be made to the not infrequent cases in which the whole process of parturition and the enormous distention of tissues which it involves proceed throughout in an almost or quite painless manner. It is sufficient to refer to two cases reported in Paris by Mace and briefly summarized in the British Medical Journal, May 25, 1901. In the first the patient was a primipara 20 years of age, and, until the dilatation of the cervix was complete and efforts at expulsion had commenced, the uterine contractions were quite painless. In the second case, the mother, aged 25, a tripara, had previously had very rapid labors; she awoke in the middle of the night without pains, but during micturition the fetal head appeared at the v.u.l.v.a, and was soon born.

Further ill.u.s.tration may be found in those cases in which severe inflammatory processes may take place in the genital ca.n.a.l without being noticed. Thus, Maxwell reports the case of a young Chinese woman, certainly quite normal, in whom after the birth of her first child the v.a.g.i.n.a became almost obliterated, yet beyond slight occasional pain she noticed nothing wrong until the husband found that penetration was impossible (British Medical Journal, January 11, 1902, p. 78). The insensitiveness of the v.a.g.i.n.a and its contrast, in this respect, with the p.e.n.i.s-though we are justified in regarding the p.e.n.i.s as being, like organs of special sense, relatively deficient in general sensibility-are vividly presented in such an incident as the following, reported a few years ago in America by Dr. G. W. Allen in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal: A man came under observation with an edematous, inflamed p.e.n.i.s. The wife, the night previous, on advice of friends, had injected pure carbolic acid into the v.a.g.i.n.a just previous to coitus. The husband, ignorant of the fact, experienced untoward burning and smarting during and after coitus, but thought little of it, and soon fell asleep. The next morning there were large blisters on the p.e.n.i.s, but it was no longer painful. When seen by Dr. Allen the prepuce was retracted and edematous, the whole p.e.n.i.s was much swollen, and there were large, perfectly raw surfaces on either side of the glans.

In this connection we may well bring into line a remarkable group of phenomena concerning which much evidence has now acc.u.mulated. I refer to the use of various appliances, fixed in or around the p.e.n.i.s, whether permanently or temporarily during coitus, such appliance being employed at the woman's instigation and solely in order to heighten her excitement in congress. These appliances have their great center among the Indonesian peoples (in Borneo, Java, Sumatra, the Malay peninsula, the Philippines, etc.), thence extending in a modified form through China, to become, it appears, considerably prevalent in Russia; I have also a note of their appearance in India. They have another widely diffused center, through which, however, they are more spa.r.s.ely scattered, among the American Indians of the northern and more especially of the southern continents. Amerigo Vespucci and other early travelers noted the existence of some of these appliances, and since Miklucho-Macleay carefully described them as used in Borneo[82] their existence has been generally recognized. They are usually regarded merely as ethnological curiosities. As such they would not concern us here. Their real significance for us is that they ill.u.s.trate the comparative insensitiveness of the genital ca.n.a.l in women, while at the same time they show that a certain amount of what we cannot but regard as painful stimulation is craved by women, in order to heighten tumescence and increase s.e.xual pleasure, even though it can only by procured by artificial methods. It is, of course, possible to argue that in these cases we are not concerned with pain at all, but with a strong stimulation that is felt as purely pleasurable. There can be no doubt, however, that in the absence of s.e.xual excitement this stimulation would be felt as purely painful, and-in the light of our previous discussion-we may, perhaps, fairly regard it as a painful stimulation which is craved, not because it is itself pleasurable, but because it heightens the highly pleasurable state of tumescence.

Borneo, the geographical center of the Indonesian world, appears also to be the district in which these instruments are most popular. The ampallang, palang, kambion, or sprit-sail yard, as it is variously termed, is a little rod of bone or metal nearly two inches in length, rounded at the ends, and used by the Kyans and Dyaks of Borneo. Before coitus it is inserted into a transverse orifice in the p.e.n.i.s, made by a painful and somewhat dangerous operation and kept open by a quill. Two or more of these instruments are occasionally worn. Sometimes little brushes are attached to each end of the instrument. Another instrument, used by the Dyaks, but said to have been borrowed from the Malays, is the palang a.n.u.s, which is a ring or collar of plaited palm-fiber, furnished with a pair of stiffish horns of the same wiry material; it is worn on the neck of the glans and fits tight to the skin so as not to slip off. (Brooke Low, "The Natives of Borneo," Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute, August and November, 1892, p. 45; the ampallang and similar instruments are described by Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, Bd. i, chapter xvii; also in Untrodden Fields of Anthropology, by a French army surgeon, 1898, vol. ii, pp. 135-141; also Mantegazza, Gli Amori degli Uomini, French translation, p. 83 et seq.) Riedel informed Miklucho-Macleay that in the Celebes the Alfurus fasten the eyelids of goats with the eyelashes round the corona of the glans p.e.n.i.s, and in Java a piece of goatskin is used in a similar way, so as to form a hairy sheath (Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1876, pp. 22-25), while among the Batta, of Sumatra, Hagen found that small stones are inserted by an incision under the skin of the p.e.n.i.s (Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1891, ht. 3, p. 351).

In the Malay peninsula Stevens found instruments somewhat similar to the ampallang still in use among some tribes, and among others formerly in use. He thinks they were brought from Borneo. (H. V. Stevens, Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1896, ht. 4, p. 181.) Bloch, who brings forward other examples of similar devices (Beitrage zur aetiologie der Psychopathia s.e.xualis, pp. 56-58), considers that the Australian mica operation may thus in part be explained.

Such instruments are not, however, entirely unknown in Europe. In France, in the eighteenth century, it appears that rings, sometimes set with hard k.n.o.bs, and called "aides," were occasionally used by men to heighten the pleasure of women in intercourse. (Duhren, Marquis de Sade, 1901, p. 130.) In Russia, according to Weissenberg, of Elizabethsgrad, it is not uncommon to use elastic rings set with little teeth; these rings are fastened around the base of the glans. (Weissenberg, Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1893, ht. 2, p. 135.) This instrument must have been brought to Russia from the East, for Burton (in the notes to his Arabian Nights) mentions a precisely similar instrument as in use in China. Somewhat similar is the "Chinese hedgehog," a wreath of fine, soft feathers with the quills solidly fastened by silver wire to a ring of the same metal, which is slipped over the glans. In South America the Araucanians of Argentina use a little horsehair brush fastened around the p.e.n.i.s; one of these is in the museum at La Plata; it is said the custom may have been borrowed from the Patagonians; these instruments, called geskels, are made by the women and the workmanship is very delicate. (Lehmann-Nitsche, Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1900, ht. 6, p. 491.) It is noteworthy that a somewhat similar tuft of horsehair is also worn in Borneo. (Breitenstein, 21 Jahre in India, 1899, pt. i, p. 227.) Most of the accounts state that the women attach great importance to the gratification afforded by such instruments. In Borneo a modest woman symbolically indicates to her lover the exact length of the ampallang she would prefer by leaving at a particular spot a cigarette of that length. Miklucho-Macleay considers that these instruments were invented by women. Brooke Low remarks that "no woman once habituated to its use will ever dream of permitting her bedfellow to discontinue the practice of wearing it," and Stevens states that at one time no woman would marry a man who was not furnished with such an apparatus. It may be added that a very similar appliance may be found in European countries (especially Germany) in the use of a condom furnished with irregularities, or a frill, in order to increase the woman's excitement. It is not impossible to find evidence that, in European countries, even in the absence of such instruments, the craving which they gratify still exists in women. Thus, Mauriac tells of a patient with vegetations on the glans who delayed treatment because his mistress liked him so best (art. "Vegetations," Dictionnaire de Medecine et Chirurgie pratique).

It may seem that such impulses and such devices to gratify them are altogether unnatural. This is not so. They have a zoological basis and in many animals are embodied in the anatomical structure. Many rodents, ruminants, and some of the carnivora show natural developments of the p.e.n.i.s closely resembling some of those artificially adopted by man. Thus the guinea-pigs possess two h.o.r.n.y styles attached to the p.e.n.i.s, while the glans of the p.e.n.i.s is covered with sharp spines. Some of the Caviidae also have two sharp, h.o.r.n.y saws at the side of the p.e.n.i.s. The cat, the rhinoceros, the tapir, and other animals possess projecting structures on the p.e.n.i.s, and some species of ruminants, such as the sheep, the giraffe, and many antelopes, have, attached to the p.e.n.i.s, long filiform processes through which the urethra pa.s.ses. (F. H. A. Marshall, The Physiology of Reproduction, pp. 246-248.)

We find, even in creatures so delicate and ethereal as the b.u.t.terflies, a whole armory of keen weapons for use in coitus. These were described in detail in an elaborate and fully ill.u.s.trated memoir by P. H. Gosse ("On the Clasping Organs Ancillary to Generation in Certain Groups of the Lepidoptera," Transactions of the Linnaean Society, second series, vol. ii, Zoology, 1882). These organs, which Gosse terms harpes (or grappling irons), are found in the Papilionidae and are very beautiful and varied, taking the forms of projecting claws, hooks, pikes, swords, k.n.o.bs, and strange combinations of these, commonly brought to a keen edge and then cut into sharp teeth.