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)
Here we trace the presence of a feeling which recalls the
phenomena of the ancient and world-wide phallic worship, still
liable to reappear sporadically. Women sometimes took part in
these rites, and the osculation of the male sexual organ or its
emblematic representation by women is easily traceable in the
phallic rites of India and many other lands, not excluding Europe
even in comparatively recent times. (Dulaure in his _Divinités
Génératices_ brings together much bearing on these points; cf.:
Ploss and Bartels, _Das Weib_, vol. i, Chapter XVII, and Bloch,
_Beiträge zur Psychopathia Sexualis_, Teil I, pp. 115-117. Colin
Scott has some interesting remarks on phallic worship and the
part it has played in aiding human evolution, "Sex and Art,"
_American Journal of Psychology_, vol. vii, No. 2, pp. 191-197.
Irving Rosse describes some modern phallic rites in which both
men and women took part, similar to those practiced in vaudouism,
"Sexual Hypochondriasis," _Virginia Medical Monthly_, October,
1892.)
Putting aside any question of phallic worship, a certain pride
and more or less private feeling of ostentation in the new
expansion and development of the organs of virility seems to be
almost normal at adolescence. "We have much reason to assume,"
Stanley Hall remarks, "that in a state of nature there is a
certain instinctive pride and ostentation that accompanies the
new local development. I think it will be found that
exhibitionists are usually those who have excessive growth here,
and that much that modern society stigmatizes as obscene is at
bottom more or less spontaneous and perhaps in some cases not
abnormal. Dr. Seerley tells me he has never examined a young man
largely developed who had the usual strong instinctive tendency
of modesty to cover himself with his hands, but he finds this
instinct general with those whose development is less than the
average." (G. Stanley Hall, _Adolescence_, vol. ii, p. 97.) This
instinct of ostentation, however, so far as it is normal, is held
in check by other considerations, and is not, in the strict
sense, exhibitionism. I have observed a full-grown telegraph boy
walking across Hampstead Heath with his sexual organs exposed,
but immediately he realized that he was seen he concealed them.
The solemnity of exhibitionism at this age finds expression in
the climax of the sonnet, "Oraison du Soir," written at 16 by
Rimbaud, whose verse generally is a splendid and insolent
manifestation of rank adolescence:--
"Doux comme le Seigneur du cèdre et des hysopes,
Je pisse vers les cieux bruns très haut et très loin,
Avec l'assentiment des grands héliotropes."
(J.A. Rimbaud, _Oeuvres_, p. 68.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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