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)
HISTORY XII.--Mrs. B., aged 32. Father's family normal; mother's
family clever, eccentric, somewhat neuropathic. She is herself
normal, good-looking, usually healthy, highly intelligent, and
with much practical ability, though at some periods of life, and
especially in childhood, she has shared to some extent in the
high-strung and supersensitive temperament of her mother's
family. As a child she was sometimes spoiled and sometimes
cuffed, and suffered tortures from nervousness. She has, however,
acquired a large measure of self-control.
The first sensations which she now recognizes as sexual were
experienced at the age of 3, when her mother gave her an
injection; afterward she declared herself unable to relieve her
bowels naturally in order to obtain a repetition of this
experience, which was several times repeated. At the age of 7 a
man pursued her with attentions and attempted to take liberties,
but she rejected his advances in terror; four years later another
man attempted to assault her, but she resisted vigorously, struck
him, and escaped by running. Neither of these sexual attempts
appears to have left any serious permanent impression on the
child's mind.
At the age of 11, when her mother was giving her a bath, the
sensation of her mother's fingers touching her private parts gave
her what she now knows to be sexual feelings, and a year later
when taking her bath she would pour hot water on to the sexual
region in order to cause these sensations; this did not lead to
masturbation, but she had a vague idea that it was "wrong."
At the age of 12 menstruation began; she suffered very severely
from dysmenorrhea, the period sometimes lasting for ten days, and
the pain being often extreme. She was not treated for this
condition, her mother being of opinion that she would outgrow it.
From the age of 14 or 15 until 23, or about the period of her
marriage, she suffered from anemia.
She had little curiosity about sexual matters; her mother wished
that she should always come to her for information about things
she became acquainted with as to the general facts of sex; she
did not, however, know definitely the facts of copulation until
her marriage. She knew nothing of erection or semen, and thought
that when a man and woman placed their organs together a child
resulted. She hated talking about these subjects indecently, and
would not listen to the sexual conversation of her schoolfellows.
She never felt any homosexual attraction. Once another girl was
much in love with her, but she despised and disliked her
attentions; again, when a girl much older than herself, a friend
of her mother's, slept with her and made advances, she repelled
her and refused to sleep with her again.
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