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)
We see the process very well illustrated by the occasional action of the
emotion of anger. In animals the connection between love and anger is so
close that even normally, as Groos points out, in some birds the sight of
an enemy may call out the gestures of courtship.[139] As Krafft-Ebing
remarks, both love and anger "seek their object, try to possess themselves
of it, and naturally exhaust themselves in a physical effect on it; both
throw the psychomotor sphere into the most intense excitement, and by
means of this excitement reach their normal expression."[140] Féré has
well remarked that the impatience of desire may itself be regarded as a
true state of anger, and Stanley Hall, in his admirable study of anger,
notes that "erethism of the breasts or sexual parts" was among the
physical manifestations of anger occurring in some of his cases, and in
one case a seminal emission accompanied every violent outburst.[141] Thus
it is that anger may be used to reinforce a weak sexual impulse, and
cases have been recorded in which coitus could only be performed when the
man had succeeded in working himself up into an artificial state of
anger.[142] On the other hand, Féré has recorded a case in which the
sexual excitement accompanying delayed orgasm was always transformed into
anger, though without any true sadistic manifestations.[143]
As a not unexpected complementary phenomenon to this connection of anger
and sexual emotion in the male, it is sometimes found that the spectacle
of masculine anger excites pleasurable emotion in women. The case has been
recorded of a woman who delighted in arousing anger for the pleasure it
gave her, and who advised another woman to follow her example and excite
her husband's anger, as nothing was so enjoyable as to see a man in a fury
of rage[144]; Lombroso mentions a woman who was mostly frigid, but
experienced sexual feelings when she heard anyone swearing; and a medical
friend tells me of a lady considerably past middle age who experienced
sexual erethism after listening to a heated argument between her husband
and a friend on religious topics. The case has also been recorded of a
masochistic man who found sexual satisfaction in masturbating while a
woman, by his instructions, addressed him in the lowest possible terms of
abuse.[145] Such a feeling doubtless underlies that delight in teasing men
which is so common among young women. Stanley Hall, referring to the
almost morbid dread of witnessing manifestations of anger felt by many
women, remarks: "In animals, females are often described as watching with
complacency the conflict of rival males for their possession, and it seems
probable that the intense horror of this state, which many females
report, is associated more or less unconsciously with the sexual rage
which has followed it."[146] The dread may well be felt at least as much
as regards the emotional state in themselves as in the males.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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