Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5: Erotic Symbolism; The Mechanism of Detumescence; The Psychic State in PregnancyEllis, Havelock
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Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5: Erotic Symbolism; The Mechanism of Detumescence; The Psychic State in Pregnancy
Ellis, Havelock
Sex; Sex (Psychology)
I am convinced, after many years careful thought, that sexual
vice and perversion could be greatly reduced if the young were
instructed in the elements of physiology as they bear on this
question. Personally, had I been thus enlightened much sin would
have been avoided in my schoolboy days, and a perverted view of
sexual matters would never have arisen in my mind. It took years
to overcome the feeling that all such things were unclean and
defiling. Eventually light came to me through reading a passage
in a tractate on the Creed by Rufinus. He was defending the
doctrine, of the Incarnation against the pagan objection that it
was an unclean and disgusting idea that God should enter the
world through the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and he meets
it by showing that God created the sexual organs, therefore the
objection is invalid--otherwise God would not be clean or pure,
having Himself designed them and their functions. This passage is
slight in itself, but gave birth to a line of thought which has
influenced me profoundly. I no longer regard sexual matters as
disgusting and unholy, but as intensely sacred, being the outcome
of the Divine Mind. Further, the Incarnation of the Saviour has
not only sanctioned motherhood and all that is implied by it, but
has eternally sanctified it as the means chosen for the
manifestation of God to the world. I should not obtrude my
theological conceptions, but for the fact that they have
determined my life-history in that aspect.
HISTORY IV.--When I was 9 years old a boy at the preparatory
school, which I attended, showed me the act of masturbation,
which he said he had practiced for a long time, and which he
urged me to imitate, if I wished to become a father when I grew
up, and married! Boy-like I believed him and tried, but the
sensation obtained was not a pleasant one (I suppose that I was
too rough with myself) and I desisted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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