Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3: Analysis of the Sexual Impulse; Love and Pain; The Sexual Impulse in WomenEllis, Havelock
Science
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3: Analysis of the Sexual Impulse; Love and Pain; The Sexual Impulse in Women
Ellis, Havelock
Sex; Sex (Psychology)
In Germany Gläveke (_Archiv für Gynäkologie_, Bd. xxxv, 1889)
found that desire remained in 6 cases, was diminished in 10, and
disappeared in 11, while pleasure in intercourse remained in 8,
was diminished in 10, and was lost in 8. Pfister, again (_Archiv
für Gynäkologie_, Bd. lvi, 1898), examined this point in 99
castrated women; he remarks that sexual desire and sexual
pleasure in intercourse were usually associated, and found the
former unchanged in 19 cases, decreased in 24, lost in 35, never
present in 21, while the latter was unchanged in 18 cases and
diminished or lost in 60. Keppler (International Medical
Congress, Berlin, 1890) found that among 46 castrated women
sexual feeling was in no case abolished. Adler also, who
discusses this question (_Die Mangelhafte Geschlechtsempfindung
des Weibes_, 1904, p. 75 et seq.), criticises Gläveke's
statements and concludes that there is no strict relation between
the sexual organs and the sexual feelings. Kisch, who has known
several cases in which the feelings remained the same as before
the operation, brings together (_The Sexual Life of Women_)
varying opinions of numerous authors regarding the effects of
removal of the ovaries on the sexual appetite.
In America Bloom (as quoted in _Medical Standard_, 1896, p. 121)
found that in none of the cases of women investigated, in which
oöphorectomy had been performed before the age of 33, was the
sexual appetite entirely lost; in most of them it had not
materially diminished and in a few it was intensified. There
was, however, a general consensus of opinion that the normal
vaginal secretion during coitus was greatly lessened. In the
cases of women over 33, including also hysterectomies, a gradual
lessening of sexual feeling and desire was found to occur most
generally. Dr. Isabel Davenport records 2 cases (reported in
_Medical Standard_, 1895, p. 346) of women between 30 and 35
years of age whose erotic tendencies were extreme; the ovaries
and tubes were removed, in one case for disease, in the other
with a view of removing the sexual tendencies; in neither case
was there any change. Lapthorn Smith (_Medical Record_, vol.
xlviii) has reported the case of an unmarried woman of 24 whose
ovaries and tubes had been removed seven years previously for
pain and enlargement, and the periods had disappeared for six
years; she had had experience of sexual intercourse, and declared
that she had never felt such extreme sexual excitement and
pleasure as during coitus at the end of this time.
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