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)
worlds, egotistic and altruistic, without conscious sense of
incongruity?" (F.L. Burk, "Teasing and Bullying," _Pedagogical
Seminary_, April, 1897.)
The primitive connection of the special emotions of anger and
fear with the sexual impulse has been well expressed by Colin
Scott in his remarkable study of "Sex and Art": "If the higher
forms of courting are based on combat, among the males at least
anger must be intimately associated with love. And below both of
these lies the possibility of fear. In combat the animal is
defeated who is first afraid. Competitive exhibition of prowess
will inspire the less able birds with a deterring fear. Young
grouse and woodcock do not enter the lists with the older birds,
and sing very quietly. It is the same with the very oldest birds.
Audubon says that the old maids and bachelors of the Canada goose
move off by themselves during the courting of the younger birds.
In order to succeed in love, fear must be overcome in the male as
well as in the female. Courage is the essential male virtue, love
is its outcome and reward. The strutting, crowing, dancing, and
singing of male birds and the preliminary movements generally of
animals must gorge the neuromotor and muscular systems with blood
and put them in better fighting trim. The effects of this upon
the feelings of the animal himself must be very great. Hereditary
tendencies swell his heart. He has 'the joy that warriors feel.'
He becomes regardless of danger, and sometimes almost oblivious
of his surroundings. This intense passionateness must react
powerfully on the whole system, and more particularly on those
parts which are capable, such as the brain, of using up a great
surplus of blood, and on the naturally erethic functions of sex.
The flood of anger or fighting instinct is drained off by the
sexual desires, the antipathy of the female is overcome, and
sexual union successfully ensues.... Courting and combat shade
into one another, courting tending to take the place of the more
basal form of combat. The passions which thus come to be
associated with love are those of fear and anger, both of which,
by arousing the whole nature and stimulating the nutritive
sources from which they flow, come to increase the force of the
sexual passion to which they lead up and in which they culminate
and are absorbed," (Colin Scott, "Sex and Art," _American Journal
of Psychology_, vol. vii, No. 2, pp. 170 and 215.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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