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)
"As a child I exercised a good deal of authority and influence
over my youngest sister. It used to give me considerable pleasure
to be somewhat arbitrary and severe with her, but, though I never
admitted it to myself or to her, I knew instinctively that she
took pleasure in my treatment. I used to give her childish
lessons, over which I was very strict. I invented catechisms and
chapters of the Bible in which elder sisters were exhorted to
keep their juniors under discipline, and younger sisters were
commanded to give implicit submission and obedience. Some parts
of the _Imitation_ lent themselves to this sort of parody, which
never struck me as in any way irreverent. I used to give her
arbitrary orders to 'exercise her in obedience,' as I told her,
and I used to punish her if she disobeyed me. In all this I was,
_though only half consciously_, guided through my own feelings as
to what I should have liked in her place. For instance, I would
make her put down her playthings and come and repeat a lesson;
but, though she was in appearance having her will subdued to
mine, I always chose a moment when I foresaw she would soon be
tired of play. There was sufficient resistance to make restraint
pleasurable, not enough to render it irksome. In my punishments I
acted on a similar principle. I used to tie her hands behind her
(like the man in Krafft-Ebing's case), but only for a few
moments; I once shut her in a sort of cupboard-room, also for a
very short time. On two or three occasions I completely undressed
her, made her lie down on the bed, tied her hands and feet to the
bedstead, and gave her a slight whipping. I did not wish to hurt
her, only to inflict just enough pain to produce the desire to
move or resist. _My pleasure, a very keen one, came from the
imagined excitement produced by the thwarting of this desire_.
(Are not your own words--that 'emotion' is 'motion in a more or
less arrested form'--an epigrammatic summary of all this, though
in a somewhat different connection?) I did not undress her from
any connection of nakedness with sexual feeling, but simply to
enhance her feeling of helplessness and defenselessness under my
hands. If I were a man and the woman I loved were refractory I
should undress her before finding fault with her. A woman's dress
symbolizes to her the protection civilization affords to the weak
and gives her a fictitious strength. Naked, she is face to face
with primitive conditions, her weakness opposed to the man's
power. Besides, the sense of shame at being naked under the eyes
of a man who regarded her with displeasure would extend itself to
her offense and give him a distinct, though perhaps unfair,
advantage. I used the bristle side of a brush to chastise her
with, as suggesting the greatest amount of severity with the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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