Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2: Sexual InversionEllis, Havelock
Science
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2: Sexual Inversion
Ellis, Havelock
Sex; Sex (Psychology)
"I then went away to a co-educational boarding school. Here for
the first time I became happy. A girl of my own age, of fine
character and noticeable refinement, fell in love with me and
caused me to reciprocate. On retrospection I believe this to have
been a genuine and beautiful love on both sides. After a few
months, however, our relation, at my initiative and against my
friend's will, became a physical one. We expressed our affection
by mutual caresses, close embraces and lying on each other's
bodies. I sometimes touched her sexual organs sensually. All this
contact gave me exquisite thrills. After three years we had a
misunderstanding and separated. I was greatly grieved and
troubled for many years, and came to regret greatly the physical
relationship that had existed between us. My friend at length
fell in love and married. I had several other slighter
infatuations for women, was courted by several men to whom I
remained cold and bored except in one instance, where I was
somewhat touched, and finally found a lasting friendship with a
woman who had fallen deeply in love with me in her school days
and had never been able to care for any one else. She is a woman
of considerable literary talent and of good general ability and
high ideals. She is usually much liked by men. Her love for me is
the most real thing in the world for me, and seems the most
permanent. At first my feeling for her was almost purely
physical, although there were no sexual relations. I hated this
feeling and have succeeded in overcoming it pretty largely. At
times after long separations we have embraced with great passion,
at least on my part. This has always had a bad physical effect on
me. At present, however, it very rarely occurs. We both consider
sexual feelings degrading and deleterious to real love. Whether
at any time we have had complete physical satisfaction or
gratification, I hardly know. I have experienced very keen
physical pleasure, mingled with what I took to be great mental
exaltation and quickening of the emotions. This condition was
brought about by close contact with the body of my friend,
usually by lying upon it. But if by 'gratification' it is meant
that desire, having been completely satisfied, ceases
temporarily, I think I have never had that experience. If I did,
it was when I was about 18 when I lived with a girl friend in
intimate relations. Of late years, at any rate, it has never
happened to me, and an embrace, however close, always leaves me
with a desire for a closer union, both physical and spiritual. So
a few years since, I came to the conclusion that it was
impossible to obtain physical satisfaction through the woman I
loved. I came to this conclusion because of the bad physical
effects of contact. My sexual organs became highly sensitive and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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