Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5: Erotic Symbolism; The Mechanism of Detumescence; The Psychic State in PregnancyEllis, Havelock
Science
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5: Erotic Symbolism; The Mechanism of Detumescence; The Psychic State in Pregnancy
Ellis, Havelock
Sex; Sex (Psychology)
and at the same time both parties are thrown into an emotional
state which to the fetichist becomes a mimicry of coitus, by the
act of defilement. We may perhaps connect with this phenomenon
the attraction which muddy shoes often exert over the
shoe-fetichist, and the curious way in which, as we have seen (p.
18), Restif de la Bretonne associates his love of neatness in
women with his attraction to the feet, the part, he remarks,
least easy to keep clean.
Garnier applied the term _sadi-fetichism_ to active flagellation
and many similar manifestations such as we are here concerned
with, on the grounds that they are hybrids which combine the
morbid adoration for a definite object with the impulse to
exercise a more or less degree of violence. From the standpoint
of the conception of erotic symbolism I have adopted there is no
need for this term. There is here no hybrid combination of two
unlike mental states. We are simply concerned with states of
erotic symbolism, more or less complete, more or less complex.
The conception of exhibitionism as a process of erotic symbolism, involves
a conscious or unconscious attitude of attention in the exhibitionist's
mind to the psychic reaction of the woman toward whom his display is
directed. He seeks to cause an emotion which, probably in most cases, he
desires should be pleasurable. But from one cause or another his finer
sensibilities are always inhibited or in abeyance, and he is unable to
estimate accurately either the impression he is likely to produce or the
general results of his action, or else he is moved by a strong impulsive
obsession which overpowers his judgment. In many cases he has good reason
for believing that his act will be pleasurable, and frequently he finds
complacent witnesses among the low-class servant girls, etc.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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