Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1: The Evolution of Modesty; The Phenomena of Sexual Periodicity; Auto-ErotismEllis, Havelock
Science
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1: The Evolution of Modesty; The Phenomena of Sexual Periodicity; Auto-Erotism
Ellis, Havelock
Sex; Sex (Psychology)
[30] Shame in regard to eating, it may be added, occasionally appears as a
neurasthenic obsession in civilization, and has been studied as a form of
psychasthenia by Janet. See e.g., (Raymond and Janet, _Les Obsessions et
la Psychasthénie_, vol. ii, p. 386) the case of a young girl of 24, who,
from the age of 12 or 13 (the epoch of puberty) had been ashamed to eat in
public, thinking it nasty and ugly to do so, and arguing that it ought
only to be done in private, like urination.
[31] "Desire and disgust are curiously blended," remarks Crawley (_The
Mystic Rose_, p. 139), "when, with one's own desire unsatisfied, one sees
the satisfaction of another; and here we may see the altruistic stage
beginning; this has two sides, the fear of causing desire in others, and
the fear of causing disgust; in each case, personal isolation is the
psychological result."
[32] Hohenemser argues that the fear of causing disgust cannot be a part
of shame. But he also argues that shame is simply psychic stasis, and it
is quite easy to see, as in the above case, that the fear of causing
disgust is simply a manifestation of psychic stasis. There is a conflict
in the woman's mind between the idea of herself which she has already
given, and the more degraded idea of herself which she fears she is likely
to give, and this conflict is settled when she is made to feel that the
first idea may still be maintained under the new circumstances.
[33] We neither of us knew that we had merely made afresh a very ancient
discovery. Casanova, more than a century ago, quoted the remark of a
friend of his, that the easiest way to overcome the modesty of a woman is
to suppose it non-existent; and he adds a saying, which he attributes to
Clement of Alexandria, that modesty, which seems so deeply rooted in
women, only resides in the linen that covers them, and vanishes when it
vanishes. The passage to which Casanova referred occurs in the
_Pædagogus_, and has already been quoted. The observation seems to have
appealed strongly to the Fathers, always glad to make a point against
women, and I have met with it in Cyprian's _De Habitu Feminarum_. It also
occurs in Jerome's treatise against Jovinian. Jerome, with more scholarly
instinct, rightly presents the remark as a quotation: "_Scribit Herodotus
quod mulier cum veste deponat et verecundiam_." In Herodotus the saying is
attributed to Gyges (Book I, Chapter VIII). We may thus trace very far
back into antiquity an observation which in English has received its
classical expression from Chaucer, who, in his "Wife of Bath's Prologue,"
has:--
"He sayde, a woman cast hir shame away,
When she cast of hir smok."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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