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)
There has been some discussion as to why, and indeed how far,
blushing is confined to the face. Henle (_Ueber das Erröthen_)
thought that we blush in the face because all nervous phenomena
produced by mental states appear first in the face, owing to the
anatomical arrangement of the nerves of the body. Darwin
(_Expression of the Emotions_) argued that attention to a part
tends to produce capillary activity in the part, and that the
face has been the chief object of attention. It has also been
argued, on the other hand, that the blush is the vestigial
remains of a general erethism of sex, in which shame originated;
that the blush was thus once more widely diffused, and is so
still among the women of some lower races, its limitation to the
face being due to sexual selection and the enhanced beauty thus
achieved. Féré once had occasion to examine, when completely
nude, a boy of thirteen whose sexual organs were deformed; when
accused of masturbation he became covered by a blush which spread
uniformly over his face, neck, body and limbs, before and behind,
except only the hands and feet. Féré asks whether such a
universal blush is more common than we imagine, or whether the
state of nudity favors its manifestation. (_Comptes Rendus,
Société de Biologie_, April 1, 1905.) It may be added that
Partridge mentions one case in which the hands blushed.
The sexual relationships of blushing are unquestionable. It occurs chiefly
in women; it attains its chief intensity at puberty and during
adolescence; its most common occasion is some more or less sexual
suggestion; among one hundred and sixty-two occasions of blushing
enumerated by Partridge, by far the most frequent cause was teasing,
usually about the other sex. "An erection," it has been said, "is a
blushing of the penis." Stanley Hall seems to suggest that the sexual
blush is a vicarious genital flushing of blood, diverted from the genital
sphere by an inhibition of fear, just as, in girls, giggling is also very
frequently a vicarious outlet of shame; the sexual blush would thus be the
outcome of an ancestral sex-fear; it is as an irradiation of sexual
erethism that the blush may contain an element of pleasure.[65]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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