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)
"Now let me take another case: that of the man who used to
experience pleasure when surprising a woman making water. (Cf.
_Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, Nov. 15, 1900.) Here the
woman's embarrassment appears to be a factor; but it seems to me
there must be more than this, as confusion might be produced in
so many other ways, as if she were found bathing, or undressed,
though it might not be so acute. In reality, I fancy she would be
checked in what she was doing, and that the man, perhaps
unconsciously, imagined this check and a resulting excitement.
That such a check does sometimes produce excitement I know from
experience in traveling. If the bladder is not emptied before
connection the pleasure is often more intense. Long before I
understood these things at all I was struck by this quotation:
'Cette volupté que ressentent les bords de la mer, d'être
toujours pleins sans jamais déborder?' What would be the effect
on a man of a sudden check at the supreme moment of sexual
pleasure? In reality, I suppose, pain, as the nerves would be at
their full tension and unable to respond to any further stimulus;
but, in imagination, one's nerves are _not_ at their highest
tension, and one imagines an increase or, at any rate, a
prolongation of the pleasurable sensations. Something of all
this, some vague _reflection_ of the woman's possible sensations,
seems to enter in the man's feelings in surprising the woman. In
any case his pleasure in her confusion seems to me a reflection
of her feelings, for the sense of shame and embarrassment before
a man is very exciting, and doubly so if one realizes that the
man enjoys it. Ouida speaks of the 'delicious shame' experienced
by 'Folle Farine.'
"It seems to me that whenever we are affected by another's
emotion we do practically, though unconsciously, put ourselves in
his place; but we are not always able to gauge accurately its
intensity or to allow for differences between ourselves and
another, and, in the case of pain, it is doubly difficult, as we
can never recall the pain itself, but only the mental effects
upon us of the pain. We cannot even recall the feeling of heat
when we are cold, or _vice versâ_, with any degree of vividness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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