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)
In a previous volume of these _Studies_ ("Sexual Inversion,"
History XXVI) I have recorded the masochistic day-dreams of a boy
whose impulses were at the same time inverted; in his reveries
"the central fact," he states, "became the discharge of urine
from my lover over my body and limbs, or, if I were very fond of
him, I let it be in my face." In actual life the act of urination
casually witnessed in childhood became the symbol, even the
reality, of the central secret of sex: "I stood rooted and
flushing with downcast eyes till the act was over, and was
conscious for a considerable time of stammering speech and
bewildered faculties.... I was overwhelmed with emotion and could
barely drag my feet from the spot or my eyes from the damp
herbage where he had deposited the waters of secrecy. Even to-day
I cannot dissociate myself from the shuddering charm that moment
had for me."
It is not only the urine and the fæces which may thus acquire a symbolic
fascination and attractiveness under the influence of masochistic
deviations of sexual idealization. In some cases extreme rapture has been
experienced in licking sweating feet. There is, indeed, no excretion or
product of the body which has not been a source of ecstasy: the sweat from
every part of the body, the saliva and menstrual fluid, even the wax from
the ears.
Krafft-Ebing very truly points out (_Psychopathia Sexualis_,
English translation, p. 178) that this sexual scatalogic
symbolism is precisely paralleled by a religious scatalogic
symbolism. In the excesses of devout enthusiasm the ascetic
performs exactly the same acts as are performed in these excesses
of erotic enthusiasm. To mix excreta with the food, to lick up
excrement, to suck festering sores--all these and the like are
acts which holy and venerated women have performed.
Not only the saint, but also the prophet and medicine-man have
been frequently eaters of human excrement; it is only necessary
to refer to the instance of the prophet Ezekiel, who declared
that he was commanded to bake his bread with human dung, and to
the practices of medicine-men at Torres Straits, in whose
training the eating of human excrement takes a recognized part.
(Deities, notably Baal-Phegor, were sometimes supposed to eat
excrement, so that it was natural that their messengers and
representatives among men should do so. As regards Baal-Phegor,
see Dulaure, _Des Divinités Génératrices_, Chapter IV, and J.G.
Bourke, _Scatalogic Rites of All Nations_, p. 241. See also
Ezekiel, Chapter IV, v. 12, and _Reports Anthropological
Expedition to Torres Straits_, vol. v, p. 321.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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