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)
The particular emotions which are invoked by pain to reinforce the sexual
impulse are more especially anger and fear, and, as we have seen, these
two very powerful and primitive emotions are--on the active and passive
sides, respectively--the emotions most constantly brought into play in
animal and early human courtship; so that they naturally constitute the
emotional reservoirs from which the sexual impulse may still most easily
draw. It is not difficult to show that the various forms in which
"pain"--as we must here understand pain--is employed in the service of the
sexual impulse are mainly manifestations or transformations of anger or
fear, either in their simple or usually more complex forms, in some of
which anger and fear may be mingled.
We thus accept the biological origin of the psychological association
between love and pain; it is traceable to the phenomena of animal
courtship. We do not on this account exclude the more direct physiological
factor. It may seem surprising that manifestations that have their origin
in primeval forms of courtship should in many cases coincide with actual
sensations of definite anatomical base today, and still more surprising
that these traditional manifestations and actual sensations should so
often be complementary to each other in their active and passive aspects:
that is to say, that the pleasure of whipping should be matched by the
pleasure of being whipped, the pleasure of mock strangling by the pleasure
of being so strangled, that pain inflicted is not more desirable than pain
suffered. But such coincidence is of the very essence of the whole group
of phenomena. The manifestations of courtship were from the first
conditioned by physiological facts; it is not strange that they should
always tend to run _pari passu_ with physiological facts. The
manifestations which failed to find anchorage in physiological
relationships might well tend to die out. Even under the most normal
circumstances, in healthy persons of healthy heredity, the manifestations
we have been considering are liable to make themselves felt. Under such
circumstances, however, they never become of the first importance in the
sexual process; they are often little more than play. It is only under
neurasthenic or neuropathic conditions--that is to say, in an organism
which from acquired or congenital causes, and usually perhaps both, has
become enfeebled, irritable, "fatigued"--that these manifestations are
liable to flourish vigorously, to come to the forefront of sexual
consciousness, and even to attain such seriously urgent importance that
they may in themselves constitute the entire end and aim of sexual desire.
Under these pathological conditions, pain, in the broad and special sense
in which we have been obliged to define it, becomes a welcome tonic and a
more or less indispensable stimulant to the sexual system.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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