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)
At present, however, this is extremely difficult to do at all
satisfactorily, and quite impossible, indeed, to do in a manner likely to
yield absolutely unimpeachable results. Nevertheless, a few series of
observations have been made. Thus, Dr. Harry Campbell[165] records the
result of an investigation, carried on in his hospital practice, of 52
married women of the poorer class; they were not patients, but ordinary,
healthy working-class women, and the inquiry was not made directly, but of
the husbands, who were patients. Sexual instinct was said to be present in
12 cases before marriage, and absent in 40; in 13 of the 40 it never
appeared at all; so that it altogether appeared in 39, or in the ratio of
something over 75 per cent. Among the 12 in whom it existed before
marriage it was said to have appeared in most with puberty; in 3, however,
a few years before puberty, and in 2 a few years later. In 2 of those in
whom it appeared before puberty, menstruation began late; in the third it
rose almost to nymphomania on the day preceding the first menstruation.
In nearly all the cases desire was said to be stronger in the husband than
in the wife; when it was stronger in the wife, the husband was
exceptionally indifferent. Of the 13 in whom desire was absent after
marriage, 5 had been married for a period under two years, and Campbell
remarks that it would be wrong to conclude that it would never develop in
these cases, for in this group of cases the appearance of sexual instinct
was sometimes a matter of days, sometimes of years, after the date of
marriage. In two-thirds of the cases there was a diminution of desire,
usually gradual, at the climacteric; in the remaining third there was
either no change or exaltation of desire. The most important general
result, Campbell concludes, is that "the sexual instinct is very much less
intense in woman than in man," and to this he elsewhere adds a corollary
that "the sexual instinct in the civilized woman is, I believe, tending to
atrophy."
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