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)
"In dreams the third stage seems to come suddenly without any
leading up to it, either mental or physical, of which I am
conscious. I do not, however, remember having any such dreams
before I was engaged. They came at a later period; even then,
when great pleasure was experienced, it came, as a rule, suddenly
and sharply, with no dreams leading up to it. The dreams
generally take a sad form (an Evangeline and Gabriel business),
where one vainly seeks the person who eludes one. I have,
however, sometimes had pleasurable dreams of men who were quite
indifferent to me and of whom I never thought when awake. The
impression on waking is so strong one could almost fancy one's
self really in love with them. I can quite understand falling in
love with a person by dreaming of him in this way.
"The first time I remember experiencing the third stage in waking
moments was at a picnic, when the man, to whom I have before
referred as the first that I fancied I cared for, leaned against
me accidentally in passing a plate or dish; but I was already in
a violent state of excitement at being with him. There was no
possibility of anything between us, as he was married. If he
guessed my feelings, they were never admitted, as I did my best
to hide them. I never experienced this, except at the touch of
some one I loved. (I think the saying about the woman 'desiring
the desire of the man' is just about as true as most epigrams. It
is the man's personality alone which affects me. His feelings
toward me are of--I was going to say--indifference, but at any
rate quite secondary importance, and the gratification of my own
vanity counts as nothing in such relations.)
"As a rule, to reach even the second stage the exciting ideas
must be associated with some particular person, except in the
case of a story, where one identifies one's self with one of the
characters. In childhood and early youth it was, in the case of
religion, the idea of God and the presence and the personality of
God which aroused my feelings and always seemed very vivid to me.
In the case of my governess, my feelings were aroused in exactly
the same way as later they would be by one's lover. In the art
craze I am rather vague as to how it came about, but I think, as
a rule, there was rather a craving for pleasure than pleasure
itself. I do not remember ever thinking much about the physical
feeling. It seemed as natural that a pleasant emotion should
produce pleasant physical effects as that a painful one should
cause tears. As a child, one takes so much for granted, and later
on my mind was so much occupied with worrying about the truth of
religion that I hardly thought enough about anything else to
analyze it carefully.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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