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 civilization, however, dancing is not only an incitement to love and a
preliminary to courtship, but it is often a substitute for the normal
gratification of the sexual instinct, procuring something of the pleasure
and relief of gratified love. In occasional abnormal cases this may be
consciously realized. Thus Sadger, who regards the joy of dancing as a
manifestation of "muscular eroticism," gives the case of a married
hysterical woman of 21, with genital anesthesia, but otherwise strongly
developed skin eroticism, who was a passionate dancer: "I often felt as
though I was giving myself to my partner in dancing," she said, "and was
actually having coitus with him. I have the feeling that in me dancing
takes the place of coitus."[42] Normally something of the same feeling is
experienced by many young women, who will expend a prodigious amount of
energy in dancing, thus procuring, not fatigue, but happiness and
relief.[43] It is significant that, after sexual relations have begun,
girls generally lose much of their ardor in dancing. Even our modern
dances, it is worthy of note, are often of sexual origin; thus, the most
typical of all, the waltz, was originally (as Schaller, quoted by Groos,
states) the close of a complicated dance which "represented the romance of
love, the seeking and the fleeing, the playful sulking and shunning, and
finally the jubilation of the wedding."[44]
Not only is movement itself a source of tumescence, but even the spectacle
of movement tends to produce the same effect. The pleasure of witnessing
movement, as represented by its stimulating effect on the muscular
system,--for states of well-being are accompanied by an increase of
power,--has been found susceptible of exact measurement by Féré. He has
shown that to watch a colored disk when in motion produced stronger
muscular contractions, as measured by the dynamometer, than to watch the
same disk when motionless. Even in the absence of color a similar
influence of movement was noted, and watching a modified metronome
produced a greater increase of work with the ergograph than when working
to the rhythm of the metronome without watching it.[45] This psychological
fact has been independently discovered by advertisers, who seek to impress
the value of their wares on the public by the device of announcing them by
moving colored lights. The pleasure given by the ballet largely depends on
the same fact. Not only is dancing an excitation, but the spectacle of
dancing is itself exciting, and even among savages dances have a public
which becomes almost as passionately excited as the dancers
themselves.[46] It is in virtue of this effect of dancing and similar
movements that we so frequently find, both among the lower animals and
savage man, that to obtain tumescence in both sexes, it is sufficient for
one sex alone, usually the male, to take the active part. This point
attracted the attention of Kulischer many years ago, and he showed how the
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