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)
During the next few years little occurred. She was working hard,
and her amusements would mostly, she says, be regarded as rather
childish. She was extremely fond of dancing, and she was always
pleased when anyone paid her attention. She was frequently
conscious of sexual feelings, sometimes tormented by them, and
she regarded this as something to be ashamed of. The constant
longing for love was affected little or not at all by hard work.
"At about this time I was very fond of abandoning myself to
day-dreams. I was very glad if I could get everyone out of the
house and lie on an easy chair or the bed. I liked especially to
read poetry, all the more if I did not quite understand it. This
would lead me on to all sorts of dreams of love, which, however,
never went beyond the preliminaries of actual love--as that was
all I then knew of love." The only climax to her dream of love
was founded on a piece of information volunteered by a married
woman many years earlier, when she was about 12. This
lady--evidently agreeing with Rousseau (who in _Emile_ commended
the mother's reply to the child's query whence babies come, "Les
femmes les pissent, mon enfant, avec des grands douleurs") that
the unknown should first be explained to the young in terms of
the known--told her that the husband micturated into the wife.
She therefore used to imagine a lover who would bear her away
into a forest and do this on her as she lay at the foot of a
tree. (At a later date she accidentally discovered that a full
bladder tended to enhance sexual feelings, and occasionally
resorted to this physical measure of heightening excitement.) All
the physical sensations of sexual desire were called out by these
day-dreams, with abundant secretion, but never the orgasm. Her
reveries never led to masturbation or to allied manifestations,
which have never taken place. Such a method of relief has,
indeed, never offered any temptation to her and she doubts even
its possibility in her case. (At a later period of life, however,
at the age of 31, masturbation began and was practised at
intervals.) At the same time she remarks that, while no orgasm
(of which, indeed, she was then ignorant) ever occurred, the
sexual excitement produced by the day-dreams was sufficiently
great to cause a feeling of relief afterward. These day-dreams
were the only way in which the sexual erethism was discharged.
She cannot recall having erotic dreams or any sexual
manifestations during sleep.
Spontaneous sexual excitement was present a few days before
menstruation, and fairly marked during and immediately after the
period. It also tended to recur in the middle of the
intermenstrual period.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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