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)
"Miss C. A teacher. She is emotional and easily becomes
hysterical. Her life has been one of self-sacrifice and her
rearing most Puritanical. She told me she thought women did not
crave sexual satisfaction unless it had been aroused in them. I
consider her one who physically is injured by not having it.
"Mrs. D. After being married a few years this person told me she
thought intercourse 'horrid.' Some years after this, however, she
fell in love with a man not her husband, which caused their
separation. She always fancied men in love with her, and she told
me that she and her husband tried to live without intercourse,
fearing more children, but they could not do it; she also told of
trying to refrain, for the same purpose, until safe parts of the
menstrual month, but that 'was just the time she cared least for
it.' These remarks made me doubt the sincerity of the first.
"Mrs. E. said she enjoyed intercourse as well as her husband, and
she 'didn't see why she should not say so.' This same woman,
whether using a current phrase or not, afterward said her husband
'did not bother her very often.'
"Mrs. F., the mother of several children, was married to a man
she neither loved nor respected, but she said that when a strange
man touched her it made her tremble all over.
"Mrs. G., the mother of many children, divorced on account of the
dissipation, drinking and otherwise, of her husband. She is of
the creole type, but large and almost repulsive. She is a
brilliant talker and she supports herself by writing. She has
fallen in love with a number of young men, 'wildly, madly,
passionately,' as one of them told me, and I am sure she suffers
greatly from the lack of satisfaction. She would no doubt procure
it if it were possible.
"I believe," the writer concludes, "women are as passionate as
men, but the enforced restraint of years possibly smothers it.
The fear of having children and the methods to prevent conception
are, I am sure, potent factors in the injury to the emotions of
married women. Perhaps the lack of intercourse acts less
disastrously upon a woman because of the renewed feeling which
comes after each menstrual period."
As bearing on the causes which have led to the disguise and
misinterpretation of the sexual impulse in women I may quote the
following communication from another lady:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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