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)
Hirschfeld (_Von Wesen der Liebe_, p. 26) was consulted by a lady
who, being without any sexual desires or feelings, married an
inverted man in order to live with him a life of simple
comradeship. Within six months, however, she fell violently in
love with her husband, with the full manifestation of sexual
feelings and accompanying emotions of jealousy. Under all the
circumstances, however, she would not enter into sexual
relationship with her husband, and the torture she endured became
so acute that she desired to be castrated. In this connection,
also, I may mention a case, which has been communicated to me
from Glasgow, of a girl--strong and healthy and menstruating
regularly since the age of 17--who was seduced at the age of 20
without any sexual desire on her part, giving birth to a child
nine months later. Subsequently she became a prostitute for three
years, and during this period had not the slightest sexual desire
or any pleasure in sexual connection. Thereafter she met a poor
lad with whom she has full sexual desire and sexual pleasure, the
result being that she refuses to go with any other man, and
consequently is almost without food for several days every week.
The late appearance of the great climax of sexual emotion in
women is indicated by a tendency to nervous and psychic
disturbances between the ages of 25 and about 33, which has been
independently noted by various alienists (though it may be noted
that 25 to 30 is not an unusual age for first attacks of insanity
in men also). Thus, Krafft-Ebing states that adult unmarried
women between the ages of 25 and 30 often show nervous symptoms
and peculiarities. (Krafft-Ebing, "Ueber Neurosen und Psychosen
durch Sexuelle Abstinenz," _Jahrbücher für Psychiatrie_, Bd.
viii, ht. 1-4, 1888.) Pitres and Régis find also (_Comptes-rendus
XIIe Congrès International de Médecine_, Moscow, 1897, vol. iv,
p. 45) that obsessions, which are commoner in women than in men
and are commonly connected in their causation with strong moral
emotion, occur in women chiefly between the ages of 26 and 30,
though in men much earlier. The average age at which in England
women inebriates begin drinking in excess is 26. (_British
Medical Journal_, Sept. 2, 1911, p. 518.)
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