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)
apparatus in us, what a wealth of motive would be lost!"[148]
It is on the basis of this tonic influence of fear that in some morbidly
sensitive natures fear acts as a sexual stimulant. Cullerre has brought
together a number of cases in both men and women, mostly neurasthenic, in
which fits of extreme anxiety and dread, sometimes of a religious
character and often in highly moral people, terminate in spontaneous
orgasm or in masturbation.[149]
Professor Gurlitt mentions that his first full sexual emission took place
in class at school, when he was absorbed in writing out the life of
Aristides and very anxious lest he should not be able to complete it
within the set time.[150]
Dread and anxiety not only excite sexual emotion, but in the more extreme
morbid cases they may suppress and replace it. Terror, say Fliess, is
transmuted coitus, and Freud believes that the neurosis of anxiety always
has a sexual cause, while Ballet, Capgras, Löwenfeld, and others, though
not regarding a sexual traumatism as the only cause, still regard it as
frequent.
It is worthy of note that not only fear, but even so depressing an emotion
as grief, may act as a sexual stimulant, more especially in women. This
fact is not sufficiently recognized, though probably everyone can recall
instances from his personal knowledge, such cases being generally regarded
as inexplicable. It is, however, not more surprising that grief should be
transformed into sexual emotion than that (as in a case recorded by
Stanley Hall) it should manifest itself as anger. In any case we have to
bear in mind the frequency of this psychological transformation in the
presence of cases which might otherwise seem to call for a cynical
interpretation.
The case has been recorded of an English lady of good social
position who fell in love with an undertaker at her father's
funeral and insisted on marrying him. It is known that some men
have been so abnormally excited by the funeral trappings of death
that only in such surroundings have they been able to effect
coitus. A case has been recorded of a physician of unimpeachable
morality who was unable to attend funerals, even of his own
relatives, on account of the sexual excitement thus aroused.
Funerals, tragedies at the theater, pictures of martyrdom, scenes
of execution, and trials at the law-courts have been grouped
together as arousing pleasure in many people, especially women.
(C.F. von Schlichtegroll, _Sacher-Masoch und der Masochismus_,
pp. 30-31.) Wakes and similar festivals may here find their
psychological basis, and funerals are an unquestionable source of
enjoyment among some people, especially of so-called "Celtic"
race. The stimulating reaction after funerals is well known to
many, and Leigh Hunt refers to this (in his _Autobiography_) as
affecting the sincerely devoted friends who had just cremated
Shelley.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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