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)
"erotic rumination," and if this rumination took place at night
she would sometimes masturbate, the contact of the bedclothes,
she said, giving her the illusion of a man. In time this vague
longing for the male gave place to more definite desires for a
man who would love her, and, as she imagined, strike her.
Eventually she formed secret relationships with two or three
lovers in succession, each of these relationships being, however,
discovered by her family and leading to ineffectual attempts at
suicide. But the association of pain with love, which had
developed spontaneously in her solitary dreams, continued in her
actual relations with her lovers. During coitus she would bite
and squeeze her arms until the nails penetrated the flesh. When
her lover asked her why at the moment of coitus she would
vigorously repel him, she replied: "Because I want to be
possessed by force, to be hurt, suffocated, to be thrown down in
a struggle." At another time she said: "I want a man with all his
vitality, so that he can torture and kill my body." We seem to
see here clearly the ancient biological character of animal
courtship, the desire of the female to be violently subjugated by
the male. In this case it was united to sensitiveness to the
sexual domination of an intellectual man, and the subject also
sought to stimulate her lovers' intellectual tastes. (_Archivio
di Psichiatria_, vol. xx, fasc. 5-6, p. 528.)
This association between love and pain still persists even among the most
normal civilized men and women possessing well-developed sexual impulses.
The masculine tendency to delight in domination, the feminine tendency to
delight in submission, still maintain the ancient traditions when the male
animal pursued the female. The phenomena of "marriage by capture," in its
real and its simulated forms, have been traced to various causes. But it
has to be remembered that these causes could only have been operative in
the presence of a favorable emotional aptitude, constituted by the
zoölogical history of our race and still traceable even today. To exert
power, as psychologists well recognize, is one of our most primary
impulses, and it always tends to be manifested in the attitude of a man
toward the woman he loves.[73]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account