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)
Many eminent alienists in various countries are very decidedly of
the opinion that there is a special tendency to the association
of olfactory hallucinations with sexual manifestations, and,
although one or two authorities have expressed doubt on the
matter, the available evidence clearly indicates such an
association. Hallucinations of smell are comparatively rare as
compared to hallucinations of sight and hearing; they are
commoner in women than in men and they not infrequently occur at
periods of sexual disturbance, at adolescence, in puerperal
fever, at the change of life, in women with ovarian troubles, and
in old people troubled with sexual desires or remorse for such
desires. They have often been noted as specially frequent in
cases of excessive masturbation.
Krafft-Ebing, who found olfactory hallucinations common in
various sexual states, considers that they are directly dependent
on sexual excitement (_Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie_,
bd. 34, ht. 4, 1877). Conolly Norman believes in a distinct and
frequent association between olfactory hallucinations and sexual
disturbance (_Journal of Mental Science_, July, 1899, p. 532).
Savage is also impressed by the close association between sexual
disturbance or changes in the reproductive organs and
hallucinations of smell as well as of touch. He has found that
persistent hallucinations of smell disappeared when a diseased
ovary was removed, although the patient remained insane. He
considers that such hallucinations of smell are allied to
reversions. (G.H. Savage, "Smell, Hallucinations of," Tuke's
_Dictionary of Psychological Medicine_; cf. the same author's
manual of _Insanity and Allied Neuroses_.) Matusch, while not
finding olfactory hallucinations common at the climacteric,
states that when they are present they are connected with uterine
trouble and sexual craving. He finds them more common in young
women. (Matusch, "Der Einfluss des Climacterium auf Entstchung
und Form der Geistesstörung," _Allgemeine Zeitschrift für
Psychiatrie_, vol. xlvi, ht. 4). Féré has related a significant
case of a young man in whom hallucinations of smell accompanied
the sexual orgasm; he subsequently developed epilepsy, to which
the hallucination then constituted the aura (_Comptes Rendus de
la Société de Biologie_, December, 1896). The prevalence of a
sexual element in olfactory hallucinations has been investigated
by Bullen, who examined into 95 cases of hallucinations of smell
among the patients in several asylums. (In a few cases there were
reasons for believing that peripheral conditions existed which
would render these hallucinations more strictly illusions.) Of
these, 64 were women. Sixteen of the women were climacteric
cases, and 3 of them had sexual hallucinations or delusions.
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