Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4: Sexual Selection In ManEllis, Havelock
Science
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4: Sexual Selection In Man
Ellis, Havelock
Sex; Sex (Psychology)
Founded on the sense of vision also we find a phenomenon,
bordering on the abnormal, which is by Moll termed mixoscopy.
This means the sexual pleasure derived from the spectacle of
other persons engaged in natural or perverse sexual actions.
(Moll, _Konträre Sexualempfindung_, third edition, p. 308. Moll
considers that in some cases mixoscopy is related to masochism.
There is, however, no necessary connection between the two
phenomena.) Brothels are prepared to accommodate visitors who
merely desire to look on, and for their convenience carefully
contrived peepholes are provided; such visitors are in Paris
termed "_voyeurs_." It is said by Coffignon that persons hide at
night in the bushes in the Champs Elysées in the hope of
witnessing such scenes between servant girls and their lovers. In
England during a country walk I have come across an elderly man
carefully ensconced behind a bush and intently watching through
his field-glass a couple of lovers reclining on a bank, though
the actions of the latter were not apparently marked by any
excess of indecorum. Such impulses are only slightly abnormal,
whatever may be said of them from the point of view of good
taste. They are not very far removed from the legitimate
curiosity of the young woman who, believing herself unobserved,
turns her glass on to a group of young men bathing naked. They
only become truly perverse when the gratification thus derived is
sought in preference to natural sexual gratification. They are
also not normal when they involve, for instance, a man desiring
to witness his wife in the act of coitus with another man. I have
been told of the case of a scientific man who encouraged his wife
to promote the advances of a young friend of his own, in his own
drawing-room, he himself remaining present and apparently taking
no notice; the younger man was astonished, but accepted the
situation. In such a case, when the motives that led up to the
episode are obscure, we must not too hastily assume that
masochism or even mixoscopy is involved. For information on some
of the points mentioned above see, e.g., I. Bloch, _Beiträge zur
Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis_, Teil I, pp. 200 _et seq._;
Teil II, pp. 195 et seq.
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