Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume Iii Part 12

[136]

Erasmus Darwin, Zoonomia, vol. i, p. 496.

[137]

K. Groos, Spiele der Menschen, pp. 200-210.

[138]

Hirn, Origins of Art, p. 54. Reference may here perhaps be made to the fact that unpleasant memories persist in women more than in men (American Journal of Psychology, 1899, p. 244). This had already been pointed out by Coleridge. "It is a remark that I have made many times," we find it said in one of his fragments (Anima Poetae, p. 89), "and many times, I guess, shall repeat, that women are infinitely fonder of clinging to and beating about, hanging upon and keeping up, and reluctantly letting fall any doleful or painful or unpleasant subject, than men of the same cla.s.s and rank."

[139]

Groos, Spiele der Thiere, p. 251. Maeder (Jahrbuch fur Psychoa.n.a.lytische Forschungen, 1909, vol. i, p. 149) mentions an epileptic girl of 22 who m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.es when she is in a rage with anyone.

[140]

Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia s.e.xualis, English translation of tenth edition, p. 78.

[141]

Stanley Hall, "A Study of Anger," American Journal of Psychology, July, 1899, p. 549.

[142]

Krafft-Ebing refers to such a case as recorded by Schulz, Psychopathia s.e.xualis, p. 78.

[143]

Fere, L'Instinct s.e.xuel, p. 213.

[144]

C. F. von Schlichtegroll, Sacher-Masoch und der Masochismus, p. 31.

[145]

Archivio di Psichiatria, vol. xv, p. 120. Mention may also be made of the cases (described as hysterical mixoscopia by Kiernan, Alienist and Neurologist, May, 1903) in which young women address to themselves anonymous letters of an abusive and disgusting character, and show them to others.

[146]

Stanley Hall, loc. cit., p. 587.

[147]

Archives de Neurologie, Oct., 1907.

[148]

G. Stanley Hall, "A Study of Fears," American Journal of Psychology, vol. viii, No. 2.

[149]

A. Cullerre, "De l'Excitation s.e.xuelle dans les Psychopathies Anxieuses," Archives de Neurologie, Feb., 1905.

[150]

L. Gurlitt (Die Neue Generation, July, 1909). Moll (s.e.xualleben des Kindes, p. 84) also give examples of the connection between anxiety and s.e.xual excitement. Freud (Der Wahn und die Traume in Jensen's Gradiva, p. 52) considers that in dream-interpretation we may replace "terror" by "s.e.xual excitement." In noting the general s.e.xual effects of fear, we need not strictly separate the group of cases in which the s.e.xual effects are physical only, and fail to be circuited through the brain.

[151]

See the article on "Neurasthenia" by Rudolf Arndt in Tuke's Dictionary of Psychological Medicine.

[152]

Lunier, Annales Medico-psychologiques, 1849, p. 153.

[153]

Fere, Comptes-rendus de la Societe de Biologie, December 15 and 22, 1900; id., Annee Psychologique, seventh year, 1901, pp. 82-129; more especially the same author's Travail et Plaisir, 1904.

VII.

Summary of Results Reached-The Joy of Emotional Expansion-The Satisfaction of the Craving for Power-The Influence of Neurasthenic and Neuropathic Conditions-The Problem of Pain in Love Largely Const.i.tutes a Special Case of Erotic Symbolism.

It may seem to some that in our discussion of the relationships of love and pain we have covered a very wide field. This was inevitable. The subject is peculiarly difficult and complex, and if we are to gain a real insight into its nature we must not attempt to force the facts to fit into any narrow and artificial formulas of our own construction. Yet, as we have unraveled this seemingly confused ma.s.s of phenomena it will not have escaped the careful reader that the apparently diverse threads we have disentangled run in a parallel and uniform manner; they all have a like source and they all converge to a like result. We have seen that the starting-point of the whole group of manifestations must be found in the essential facts of courtship among animal and primitive human societies. Pain is seldom very far from some of the phases of primitive courtship; but it is not the pain which is the essential element in courtship, it is the state of intense emotion, of tumescence, with which at any moment, in some shape or another, pain may, in some way or another, be brought into connection. So that we have come to see that in the phrase "love and pain" we have to understand by "pain" a state of intense emotional excitement with which pain in the stricter sense may be a.s.sociated, but is by no means necessarily a.s.sociated. It is the strong emotion which exerts the irresistible fascination in the lover, in his partner, or in both. The pain is merely the means to that end. It is the lever which is employed to bring the emotional force to bear on the s.e.xual impulse. The question of love and pain is mainly a question of emotional dynamics.

In attaining this view of our subject we have learned that any impulse of true cruelty is almost outside the field altogether. The mistake was indeed obvious and inevitable. Let us suppose that every musical instrument is sensitive and that every musical performance involves the infliction of pain on the instrument. It would then be very difficult indeed to realize that the pleasure of music lies by no means in the infliction of pain. We should certainly find would-be scientific and a.n.a.lytical people ready to declare that the pleasure of music is the pleasure of giving pain, and that the emotional effects of music are due to the pain thus inflicted. In algolagnia, as in music, it is not cruelty that is sought; it is the joy of being plunged among the waves of that great primitive ocean of emotions which underlies the variegated world of our everyday lives, and pain-a pain which, as we have seen, is often deprived so far as possible of cruelty, though sometimes by very thin and feeble devices-is merely the channel by which that ocean is reached.

If we try to carry our inquiry beyond the point we have been content to reach, and ask ourselves why this emotional intoxication exerts so irresistible a fascination, we might find a final reply in the explanation of Nietzsche-who regarded this kind of intoxication as of great significance both in life and in art-that it gives us the consciousness of energy and the satisfaction of our craving for power.[154] To carry the inquiry to this point would be, however, to take it into a somewhat speculative and metaphysical region, and we have perhaps done well not to attempt to a.n.a.lyze further the joy of emotional expansion. We must be content to regard the profound satisfaction of emotion as due to a widespread motor excitement, the elements of which we cannot yet completely a.n.a.lyze.[155]

It is because the joy of emotional intoxication is the end really sought that we have to regard the supposed opposition between "sadism" and "masochism" as unimportant and indeed misleading. The emotional value of pain is equally great whether the pain is inflicted, suffered, witnessed, or merely exists as a mental imagination, and there is no reason why it should not coexist in all these forms in the same person, as, in fact, we frequently find it.

The particular emotions which are invoked by pain to reinforce the s.e.xual impulse are more especially anger and fear, and, as we have seen, these two very powerful and primitive emotions are-on the active and pa.s.sive sides, respectively-the emotions most constantly brought into play in animal and early human courtship; so that they naturally const.i.tute the emotional reservoirs from which the s.e.xual impulse may still most easily draw. It is not difficult to show that the various forms in which "pain"-as we must here understand pain-is employed in the service of the s.e.xual impulse are mainly manifestations or transformations of anger or fear, either in their simple or usually more complex forms, in some of which anger and fear may be mingled.

We thus accept the biological origin of the psychological a.s.sociation between love and pain; it is traceable to the phenomena of animal courtship. We do not on this account exclude the more direct physiological factor. It may seem surprising that manifestations that have their origin in primeval forms of courtship should in many cases coincide with actual sensations of definite anatomical base today, and still more surprising that these traditional manifestations and actual sensations should so often be complementary to each other in their active and pa.s.sive aspects: that is to say, that the pleasure of whipping should be matched by the pleasure of being whipped, the pleasure of mock strangling by the pleasure of being so strangled, that pain inflicted is not more desirable than pain suffered. But such coincidence is of the very essence of the whole group of phenomena. The manifestations of courtship were from the first conditioned by physiological facts; it is not strange that they should always tend to run pari pa.s.su with physiological facts. The manifestations which failed to find anchorage in physiological relationships might well tend to die out. Even under the most normal circ.u.mstances, in healthy persons of healthy heredity, the manifestations we have been considering are liable to make themselves felt. Under such circ.u.mstances, however, they never become of the first importance in the s.e.xual process; they are often little more than play. It is only under neurasthenic or neuropathic conditions-that is to say, in an organism which from acquired or congenital causes, and usually perhaps both, has become enfeebled, irritable, "fatigued"-that these manifestations are liable to flourish vigorously, to come to the forefront of s.e.xual consciousness, and even to attain such seriously urgent importance that they may in themselves const.i.tute the entire end and aim of s.e.xual desire. Under these pathological conditions, pain, in the broad and special sense in which we have been obliged to define it, becomes a welcome tonic and a more or less indispensable stimulant to the s.e.xual system.

It will not have escaped the careful reader that in following out our subject we have sometimes been brought into contact with manifestations which scarcely seem to come within any definition of pain. This is undoubtedly so, and the references to these manifestations were not accidental, for they serve to indicate the real bearings of our subject. The relationships of love and pain const.i.tute a subject at once of so much gravity and so much psychological significance that it was well to devote to them a special study. But pain, as we have here to understand it, largely const.i.tutes a special case of what we shall later learn to know as erotic symbolism: that is to say, the psychic condition in which a part of the s.e.xual process, a single idea or group of ideas, tends to a.s.sume unusual importance, or even to occupy the whole field of s.e.xual consciousness, the part becoming a symbol that stands for the whole. When we come to the discussion of this great group of abnormal s.e.xual manifestations it will frequently be necessary to refer to the results we have reached in studying the s.e.xual significance of pain.

[154]

See, for instance, the section "Zur Physiologie der Kunst" in Nietzsche's fragmentary work, Der Wille zur Macht, Werke, Bd. xv. Groos (Spiele der Menschen, p. 89) refers to the significance of the fact that nearly all races have special methods of procuring intoxication. Cf. Partridge's study of the psychology of alcohol (American Journal of Psychology, April, 1900). "It is hard to imagine," this writer remarks of intoxicants, "what the religious or social consciousness of primitive man would have been without them."

[155]

The muscular element is the most conspicuous in emotion, though it is not possible, as a careful student of the emotions (H. R. Marshall, Pain, Pleasure, and aesthetics, p. 84) well points out, "to limit the physical activities involved with the emotions to such effects of voluntary innervation or alteration of size of blood-vessels or spasm of organic muscle, as Lange seems to think determines them; nor to increase or decrease of muscle-power, as Fere's results might suggest; nor to such changes, in relation of size of capillaries, in voluntary innervation, in respiratory and heart functioning, as Lehmann has observed. Emotions seem to me to be coincidents of reactions of the whole organism tending to certain results."

THE s.e.xUAL IMPULSE IN WOMEN.

A special and detailed study of the normal characters of the s.e.xual impulse in men seems unnecessary. I have elsewhere discussed various aspects of the male s.e.xual impulse, and others remain for later discussion. But to deal with it broadly as a whole seems unnecessary, if only because it is predominantly open and aggressive. Moreover, since the const.i.tution of society has largely been in the hands of men, the nature of the s.e.xual impulse in men has largely been expressed in the written and unwritten codes of social law. The s.e.xual instinct in women is much more elusive. This, indeed, is involved at the outset in the organic psychological play of male and female, manifesting itself in the phenomena of modesty and courting. The same elusiveness, the same mocking mystery, meet us throughout when we seek to investigate the manifestations of the s.e.xual impulse in women. Nor is it easy to find any full and authentic record of a social state clearly founded in s.e.xual matters on the demands of woman's nature.

An ill.u.s.tration of our ignorance and bias in these matters is furnished by the relationship of marriage, celibacy, and divorce to suicide in the two s.e.xes. There can be no doubt that the s.e.xual emotions of women have a profound influence in determining suicide. This is indicated, among other facts, by a comparison of the suicide-rate in the s.e.xes according to age; while in men the frequency of suicide increases progressively throughout life, in women there is an arrest after the age of 30; that is to say, when the period of most intense s.e.xual emotion has been pa.s.sed. This phenomenon is witnessed among peoples so unlike as the French, the Prussians, and the Italians. Now, how do marriage and divorce affect the s.e.xual liability to suicide? We are always accustomed to say that marriage protects women, and it is even a.s.serted that men have self-sacrificingly maintained the inst.i.tution of marriage mainly for the benefit of women. Professor Durkheim, however, who has studied suicide elaborately from the sociological standpoint, so far as possible eliminating fallacies, has in recent years thrown considerable doubt on the current a.s.sumption. He shows that if we take the tendency to suicide as a test, and eliminate the influence of children, who are an undoubted protection to women, it is not women, but men, who are protected by marriage, and that the protection of women from suicide increases regularly as divorces increase. After discussing these points exhaustively, "we reach a conclusion," he states, "considerably removed from the current view of marriage and the part it plays. It is regarded as having been inst.i.tuted for the sake of the wife and to protect her weakness against masculine caprices. Monogamy, especially, is very often presented as a sacrifice of man's polygamous instincts, made in order to ameliorate the condition of woman in marriage. In reality, whatever may have been the historical causes which determined this restriction, it is man who has profited most. The liberty which he has thus renounced could only have been a source of torment to him. Woman had not the same reasons for abandoning freedom, and from this point of view we may say that in submitting to the same rule it is she who has made the sacrifice." (E. Durkheim, Le Suicide, 1897, pp. 186-214, 289-311.)

There is possibly some significance in the varying incidence of insanity in unmarried men and unmarried women as compared with the married. At Erlangen, for example, Hagen found that among insane women the preponderance of the single over the married is not nearly so great as among insane men, marriage appearing to exert a much more marked prophylactic influence in the case of men than of women. (F. W. Hagen, Statistische Untersuchungen uber Geisteskrankheiten, 1876, p. 153.) The phenomena are here, however, highly complex, and, as Hagen himself points out, the prophylactic influence of marriage, while very probable, is not the only or even the chief factor at work.

It is worth noting that exactly the same s.e.xual difference may be traced in England. It appears that, in ratio to similar groups in the general population (taking the years 1876-1900, inclusive), the number of admissions to asylums is the same for both s.e.xes among married people (i.e., 8.5), but for the single it is larger among the men (4.8 to 4.5), as also it is among the widowed (17.9 to 13.9) (Fifty-sixth Annual Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, England and Wales, 1902, p. 141). This would seem to indicate that when living apart from men the tendency to insanity is less in women, but is raised to the male level when the s.e.xes live together in marriage.

Much the same seems to hold true of criminality. It was long since noted by Horsley that in England marriage decidedly increases the tendency to crime in women, though it decidedly decreases it in men. Prinzing has shown (Zeitschrift fur Sozialwissenschaft, Bd. ii, 1899) that this is also the case in Germany.

Similarly marriage decreases the tendency of men to become habitual drunkards and increases that of women. Notwithstanding the fact that the average age of the men is greater than that of the women, the majority of the men admitted to the inebriate reformatories under the English Inebriates Acts are single; the majority of the women are married; of 865 women so admitted 32 per cent, were single, 50 per cent, married, and 18 per cent, widows. (British Medical Journal, Sept. 2, 1911, p. 518.)

It thus happens that even the elementary characters of the s.e.xual impulse in women still arouse, even among the most competent physiological and medical authorities,-not least so when they are themselves women,-the most divergent opinions. Its very existence even may be said to be questioned. It would generally be agreed that among men the strength of the s.e.xual impulse varies within a considerable range, but that it is very rarely altogether absent, such total absence being abnormal and probably more or less pathological. But if applied to women, this statement is by no means always accepted. By many, s.e.xual anesthesia is considered natural in women, some even declaring that any other opinion would be degrading to women; even by those who do not hold this opinion it is believed that there is an unnatural prevalence of s.e.xual frigidity among civilized women. On these grounds it is desirable to deal generally with this and other elementary questions of allied character.

I.

The Primitive View of Women-As a Supernatural Element in Life-As Peculiarly Embodying the s.e.xual Instinct-The Modern Tendency to Underestimate the s.e.xual Impulse in Women-This Tendency Confined to Recent Times-s.e.xual Anaesthesia-Its Prevalence-Difficulties in Investigating the Subject-Some Attempts to Investigate it-s.e.xual Anesthesia must be Regarded as Abnormal-The Tendency to Spontaneous Manifestations of the s.e.xual Impulse in Young Girls at p.u.b.erty.