Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume V Part 1

Studies in the Psychology of s.e.x.

by Havelock Ellis.

VOLUME V

PREFACE.

In this volume the terminal phenomena of the s.e.xual process are discussed, before an attempt is finally made, in the concluding volume, to consider the bearings of the psychology of s.e.x on that part of morals which may be called "social hygiene."

Under "Erotic Symbolism" I include practically all the aberrations of the s.e.xual instinct, although some of these have seemed of sufficient importance for separate discussion in previous volumes. It is highly probable that many readers will consider that the name scarcely suffices to cover manifestations so numerous and so varied. The term "s.e.xual equivalents" will seem preferable to some. While, however, it may be fully admitted that these perversions are "s.e.xual equivalents"-or at all events equivalents of the normal s.e.xual impulse-that term is merely a descriptive label which tells us nothing of the phenomena. "s.e.xual Symbolism" gives us the key to the process, the key that makes all these perversions intelligible. In all of them-very clearly in some, as in shoe-fetichism; more obscurely in others, as in exhibitionism-it has come about by causes congenital, acquired, or both, that some object or cla.s.s of objects, some act or group of acts, has acquired a dynamic power over the psycho-physical mechanism of the s.e.xual process, deflecting it from its normal adjustment to the whole of a beloved person of the opposite s.e.x. There has been a trans.m.u.tation of values, and certain objects, certain acts, have acquired an emotional value which for the normal person they do not possess. Such objects and acts are properly, it seems to me, termed symbols, and that term embodies the only justification that in most cases these manifestations can legitimately claim.

"The Mechanism of Detumescence" brings us at last to the final climax for which the earlier and more prolonged stage of tumescence, which has occupied us so often in these Studies, is the elaborate preliminary. "The art of love," a clever woman novelist has written, "is the art of preparation." That "preparation" is, on the physiological side, the production of tumescence, and all courts.h.i.+p is concerned in building up tumescence. But the final conjugation of two individuals in an explosion of detumescence, thus slowly brought about, though it is largely an involuntary act, is still not without its psychological implications and consequences; and it is therefore a matter for regret that so little is yet known about it. The one physiological act in which two individuals are lifted out of all ends that center in self and become the instrument of those higher forces which fas.h.i.+on the species, can never be an act to be slurred over as trivial or unworthy of study.

In the brief study of "The Psychic State in Pregnancy" we at last touch the point at which the whole complex process of s.e.x reaches its goal. A woman with a child in her womb is the everlasting miracle which all the romance of love, all the cunning devices of tumescence and detumescence, have been invented to make manifest. The psychic state of the woman who thus occupies the supreme position which life has to offer cannot fail to be of exceeding interest from many points of view, and not least because the maternal instinct is one of the elements even of love between the s.e.xes. But the psychology of pregnancy is full of involved problems, and here again, as so often in the wide field we have traversed, we stand at the threshold of a door it is not yet given us to pa.s.s.

HAVELOCK ELLIS.

EROTIC SYMBOLISM.

I.

The Definition of Erotic Symbolism-Symbolism of Act and Symbolism of Object-Erotic Fetichism-Wide extension of the symbols of s.e.x-The Immense Variety of Possible Erotic Fetiches-The Normal Foundations of Erotic Symbolism-Cla.s.sification of the Phenomena-The Tendency to Idealize the Defects of a Beloved Person-Stendhal's "Crystallization."

By "erotic symbolism" I mean that tendency whereby the lover's attention is diverted from the central focus of s.e.xual attraction to some object or process which is on the periphery of that focus, or is even outside of it altogether, though recalling it by a.s.sociation of contiguity or of similarity. It thus happens that tumescence, or even in extreme cases detumescence, may be provoked by the contemplation of acts or objects which are away from the end of s.e.xual conjugation.[1]

In considering the phenomena of s.e.xual selection in a previous volume,[2] it was found that there are four or five main factors in the const.i.tution of beauty in so far as beauty determines s.e.xual selection. Erotic symbolism is founded on the factor of individual taste in beauty; it arises as a specialized development of that factor, but it is, nevertheless, incorrect to merge it in s.e.xual selection. The attractive characteristics of a beloved woman or man, from the point of view of s.e.xual selection, are a complex but harmonious whole leading up to a desire for the complete possession of the person who displays them. There is no tendency to isolate and dissociate any single character from the individual and to concentrate attention upon that character at the expense of the attention bestowed upon the individual generally. As soon as such a tendency begins to show itself, even though only in a slight or temporary form, we may say that there is erotic symbolism.

Erotic symbolism is, however, by no means confined to the individualizing tendency to concentrate amorous attention upon some single characteristic of the adult woman or man who is normally the object of s.e.xual love. The adult human being may not be concerned at all, the attractive object or act may not even be human, not even animal, and we may still be concerned with a symbol which has parasitically rooted itself on the fruitful site of s.e.xual emotion and absorbed to itself the energy which normally goes into the channels of healthy human love having for its final end the procreation of the species. Thus understood in its widest sense, it may be said that every s.e.xual perversion, even h.o.m.os.e.xuality, is a form of erotic symbolism, for we shall find that in every case some object or act that for the normal human being has little or no erotic value, has a.s.sumed such value in a supreme degree; that is to say, it has become a symbol of the normal object of love. Certain perversions are, however, of such great importance on account of their wide relations.h.i.+ps, that they cannot be adequately discussed merely as forms of erotic symbolism. This is notably the case as regards h.o.m.os.e.xuality, auto-erotism, and algolagnia, all of which phenomena have therefore been separately discussed in previous studies. We are now mainly concerned with manifestations which are more narrowly and exclusively symbolical.

A portion of the field of erotic symbolism is covered by what Binet (followed by Lombroso, Krafft-Ebing, and others) has termed "erotic fetichism," or the tendency whereby s.e.xual attraction is unduly exerted by some special part or peculiarity of the body, or by some inanimate object which has become a.s.sociated with it. Such erotic symbolism of object cannot, however, be dissociated from the even more important erotic symbolism of process, and the two are so closely bound together that we cannot attain a truly scientific view of them until we regard them broadly as related parts of a common psychic tendency. If, as Groos a.s.serts,[3] a symbol has two chief meanings, one in which it indicates a physical process which stands for a psychic process, and another in which it indicates a part which represents the whole, erotic symbolism of act corresponds to the first of these chief meanings, and erotic symbolism of object to the other.

Although it is not impossible to find some germs of erotic symbolism in animals, in its more p.r.o.nounced manifestations it is only found in the human species. It could not be otherwise, for such symbolism involves not only the play of fancy and imagination, the idealizing apt.i.tude, but also a certain amount of power of concentrating the attention on a point outside the natural path of instinct and the ability to form new mental constructions around that point. There are, indeed, as we shall see, elementary forms of erotic symbolism which are not uncommonly a.s.sociated with feeble-mindedness, but even these are still peculiarly human, and in its less crude manifestations erotic symbolism easily lends itself to every degree of human refinement and intelligence.

"It depends primarily upon an increase of the psychological process of representation," Colin Scott remarks of s.e.xual symbolism generally, "involving greater powers of comparison and a.n.a.lysis as compared with the lower animals. The outer impressions come to be clearly distinguished as such, but at the same time are often treated as symbols of inner experiences, and a meaning read into them which they would not otherwise possess. Symbolism or fetichism is, indeed, just the capacity to see meaning, to emphasize something for the sake of other things which do not appear. In brain terms it indicates an activity of the higher centers, a sort of side-tracking or long-circuiting of the primitive energy; ... Rosetti's poem, 'The Woodspurge,' gives a concrete example of the formation of such a symbol. Here the otherwise insignificant presentation of the three-cupped woodspurge, representing originally a mere side-current of the stream of consciousness, becomes the intellectual symbol or fetich of the whole psychosis forever after. It seems, indeed, as if the stronger the emotion the more likely will become the formation of an overlying symbolism, which serves to focus and stand in the place of something greater than itself; nowhere at least is symbolism a more characteristic feature than as an expression of the s.e.xual instinct. The pa.s.sion of s.e.x, with its immense hereditary background, in early man became centered often upon the most trivial and unimportant features.... This symbolism, now become fetichistic, or symbolic in a bad sense, is at least an exercise of the increasing representative power of man, upon which so much of his advancement has depended, while it also served to express and help to purify his most perennial emotion." (Colin Scott, "s.e.x and Art," American Journal of Psychology, vol. vii, No. 2, p. 189.)

In the study of "Love and Pain" in a previous volume, the a.n.a.lysis of the large and complex ma.s.s of s.e.xual phenomena which are a.s.sociated with pain, gradually resolved them to a considerable extent into a special case of erotic symbolism; pain or restraint, whether inflicted on or by the loved person, becomes, by a psychic process that is usually unconscious, the symbol of the s.e.xual mechanism, and hence arouses the same emotions as that mechanism normally arouses. We may now attempt to deal more broadly and comprehensively with the normal and abnormal aspects of erotic symbolism in some of their most typical and least mixed forms.

"When our human imagination seeks to animate artificial things," Huysmans writes in La-bas, "it is compelled to reproduce the movements of animals in the act of propagation. Look at machines, at the play of pistons in the cylinders; they are Romeos of steel in Juliets of cast-iron." And not only in the work of man's hands but throughout Nature we find s.e.xual symbols which are the less deniable since, for the most part, they make not the slightest appeal to even the most morbid human imagination. Language is full of metaphorical symbols of s.e.x which constantly tend to lose their poetic symbolism and to become commonplace. s.e.m.e.n is but seed, and for the Latins especially the whole process of human s.e.x, as well as the male and female organs, constantly presented itself in symbols derived from agricultural and horticultural life. The t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es were beans (fabae) and fruit or apples (poma and mala); the p.e.n.i.s was a tree (arbor), or a stalk (thyrsus), or a root (radix), or a sickle (falx), or a ploughshare (vomer). The s.e.m.e.n, again, was dew (ros). The l.a.b.i.a majora or minora were wings (alae); the v.u.l.v.a and v.a.g.i.n.a were a field (ager and campus), or a ploughed furrow (sulcus), or a vineyard (vinea), or a fountain (fons), while the pudendal hair was herbage (plantaria).[4] In other languages it is not difficult to trace similar and even identical imagery applied to s.e.xual organs and s.e.xual acts. Thus it is noteworthy that Shakespeare more than once applies the term "ploughed" to a woman who has had s.e.xual intercourse. The Talmud calls the l.a.b.i.a minora the doors, the l.a.b.i.a majora hinges, and the c.l.i.toris the key. The Greeks appear not only to have found in the myrtle-berry, the fruit of a plant sacred to Venus, the image of the c.l.i.toris, but also in the rose an image of the feminine l.a.b.i.a; in the poetic literature of many countries, indeed, this imagery of the rose may be traced in a more or less veiled manner.[5]

The widespread symbolism of s.e.x arose in the theories and conceptions of primitive peoples concerning the function of generation and its nearest a.n.a.logies in Nature; it was continued for the sake of the vigorous and expressive terminology which it furnished both for daily life and for literature; its final survivals were cultivated because they furnished a delicately aesthetic method of approaching matters which a growing refinement of sentiment made it difficult for lovers and poets to approach in a more crude and direct manner. Its existence is of interest to us now because it shows the objective validity of the basis on which erotic symbolism, as we have here to understand it, develops. But from first to last it is a distinct phenomenon, having a more or less reasoned and intellectual basis, and it scarcely serves in any degree to feed the s.e.xual impulse. Erotic symbolism is not intellectual but emotional in its origin; it starts into being, obscurely, with but a dim consciousness or for the most part none at all, either suddenly from the shock of some usually youthful experience, or more gradually through an instinctive brooding on those things which are most intimately a.s.sociated with a s.e.xually desirable person.

The kind of soil on which the germs of erotic symbolism may develop is well seen in cases of s.e.xual hyperaesthesia. In such cases all the emotionally s.e.xual a.n.a.logies and resemblances, which in erotic symbolism are fixed and organized, may be traced in vague and pa.s.sing forms, a single hyperaesthetic individual perhaps presenting a great variety of germinal symbolisms.

Thus it has been recorded of an Italian nun (whose sister became a prost.i.tute) that from the age of 8 she had desire for coitus, from the age of 10 m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed, and later had h.o.m.os.e.xual feelings, that the same feelings and practices continued after she had taken the veil, though from time to time they a.s.sumed religious equivalents. The mere contact, indeed, of a priest's hand, the news of the presentation of an ecclesiastic she had known to a bishopric, the sight of an ape, the contemplation of the crucified Christ, the figure of a toy, the picture of a demon, the act of defecation in the children entrusted to her care (whom, on this account, and against the regulations, she would accompany to the closets), especially the sight and the mere recollection of flies in s.e.xual connection-all these things sufficed to produce in her a powerful o.r.g.a.s.m. (Archivio di Psichiatria, 1902, fasc. II-III, p. 338.)

A boy of 15 (given to masturbation), studied by Macdonald in America, was similarly hyperaesthetic to the symbols of s.e.xual emotion. "I like amusing myself with my comrades," he told Macdonald, "rolling ourselves into a ball, which gives one a funny kind of warmth. I have a special pleasure in talking about some things. It is the same when the governess kisses me on saying good night or when I lean against her breast. I have that sensation, too, when I see some of the pictures in the comic papers, but only in those representing a woman, as when a young man skating trips up a girl so that her clothes are raised a little. When I read how a man saved a young girl from drowning, so that they swam together, I had the same sensation. Looking at the statues of women in the museum produces the same effect, or when I see naked babies, or when a mother suckles a child. I have often had that sensation when reading novels I ought not to read, or when looking at a new-born calf, or seeing dogs and cows and horses mounting on each other. When I see a girl flirting with a boy, or leaning on his shoulder or with his arm round her waist, I have an erection. It is the same when I see women and little girls in bathing costume, or when boys talk of what their fathers and mothers do together. In the Natural History Museum I often see things which give me that sensation. One day when I read how a man killed a young girl and carried her into a wood and undressed her I had a feeling of enjoyment. When I read of men who were b.a.s.t.a.r.ds the idea of a woman having a child in that way gives me this sensation. Some dances, and seeing young girls astride a horse, excited me, too, and so in a circus when a woman was shot out of a cannon and her skirts flew in the air. It has no effect on me when I see men naked. Sometimes I enjoy seeing women's underclothes in a shop, or when I see a lady or a girl buying them, especially if they are drawers. When I saw a lady in a dress which b.u.t.toned from top to bottom it had more effect on me than seeing underclothes. Seeing dogs coupling gives me more pleasure than looking at pretty women, but less than looking at pretty little girls." In order of increasing intensity he placed the phenomena that affected him thus: The coupling of flies, then of horses, then the sight of women's undergarments, then a boy and a girl flirting, then cows mounting on each other, the statues of women with naked b.r.e.a.s.t.s, then contact with the governess's body and b.r.e.a.s.t.s, finally coitus. (Arthur Macdonald, Le Criminel-Type, pp. 126 et seq.)

It is worthy of remark that the instinct of nutrition, when restrained, may exhibit something of an a.n.a.logous symbolism, though in a minor degree, to that of s.e.x. The ways in which a hyperaesthetic hunger may seek its symbols are ill.u.s.trated in the case of a young woman called Nadia, who during several years was carefully studied by Janet. It is a case of obsession ("maladie du scrupule"), simulating hysterical anorexia, in which the patient, for fear of getting fat, reduced her nourishment to the smallest possible amount. "Nadia is generally hungry, even very hungry. One can tell this by her actions; from time to time she forgets herself to such an extent as to devour greedily anything she can put her hands on. At other times, when she cannot resist the desire to eat, she secretly takes a biscuit. She feels horrible remorse for the action, but, all the same, she does it again. Her confidences are very curious. She recognizes that a great effort is needed to avoid eating, and considers she is a heroine to resist so long. 'Sometimes I spent whole hours in thinking about food, I was so hungry; I swallowed my saliva, I bit my handkerchief, I rolled on the floor, I wanted to eat so badly. I would look in books for descriptions of meals and feasts, and tried to deceive my hunger by imagining that I was sharing all these good things,'" (P. Janet, "La Maladie du Scrupule," Revue Philosophique, May, 1901, p. 502.) The deviations of the instinct of nutrition are, however, confined within narrow limits, and, in the nature of things, hunger, unlike s.e.xual desire, cannot easily accept a fetich.

"There is almost no feature, article of dress, att.i.tude, act," Stanley Hall declares, "or even animal or perhaps object in nature, that may not have to some morbid soul specialized erogenic and erethic power."[6] Even a mere shadow may become a fetich. Goron tells of a merchant in Paris-a man with a reputation for ability, happily married and the father of a family, altogether irreproachable in his private life-who was returning home one evening after a game of billiards with a friend, when, on chancing to raise his eyes, he saw against a lighted window the shadow of a woman changing her chemise. He fell in love with that shadow and returned to the spot every evening for many months to gaze at the window. Yet-and herein lies the fetichism-he made no attempt to see the woman or to find out who she was; the shadow sufficed; he had no need of the realty.[7] It is even possible to have a negative fetich, the absence of some character being alone demanded, and the case has been recorded in Chicago of an American gentleman of average intelligence, education, and good habits who, having as a boy cherished a pure affection for a girl whose leg had been amputated, throughout life was relatively impotent with normal women, but experienced pa.s.sion and affection for women who had lost a leg; he was found by his wife to be in extensive correspondence with one-legged women all over the country, expending no little money on the purchase of artificial legs for his various protegees.[8]

It is important to remember, however, that while erotic symbolism becomes fantastic and abnormal in its extreme manifestations, it is in its essence absolutely normal. It is only in the very grossest forms of s.e.xual desire that it is altogether absent. Stendhal described the mental side of the process of tumescence as a crystallization, a process whereby certain features of the beloved person present points around which the emotions held in solution in the lover's mind may concentrate and deposit themselves in dazzling brilliance. This process inevitably tends to take place around all those features and objects a.s.sociated with the beloved person which have most deeply impressed the lover's mind, and the more sensitive and imaginative and emotional he is the more certainly will such features and objects crystallize into erotic symbols. "Devotion and love," wrote Mary Wollstonecraft, "may be allowed to hallow the garments as well as the person, for the lover must want fancy who has not a sort of sacred respect for the glove or slipper of his mistress. He would not confound them with vulgar things of the same kind." And nearly two centuries earlier Burton, who had gathered together so much of the ancient lore of love, clearly a.s.serted the entirely normal character of erotic symbolism. "Not one of a thousand falls in love," he declares, "but there is some peculiar part or other which pleaseth most, and inflames him above the rest.... If he gets any remnant of hers, a busk-point, a feather of her fan, a shoe-tie, a lace, a ring, a bracelet of hair, he wears it for a favor on his arm, in his hat, finger, or next his heart; as Laodamia did by Protesilaus, when he went to war, sit at home with his picture before her: a garter or a bracelet of hers is more precious than any Saint's Relique, he lays it up in his casket (O blessed Relique) and every day will kiss it: if in her presence his eye is never off her, and drink he will where she drank, if it be possible, in that very place," etc.[9]

Burton's accuracy in describing the ways of lovers in his century is shown by a pa.s.sage in Hamilton's Memoires de Gramont. Miss Price, one of the beauties of Charles II's court, and Dongan were tenderly attached to each other; when the latter died he left behind a casket full of all possible sorts of love-tokens pertaining to his mistress, including, among other things, "all kinds of hair." And as regards France, Burton's contemporary, Howell, wrote in 1627 in his Familiar Letters concerning the repulse of the English at Rhe: "A captain told me that when they were rifling the dead bodies of the French gentlemen after the first invasion they found that many of them had their mistresses' favors tied about their genitories."

Schurig (Spermatologia, p. 357) at the beginning of the eighteenth century knew a Belgian lady who, when her dearly loved husband died, secretly cut off his p.e.n.i.s and treasured it as a sacred relic in a silver casket. She eventually powdered it, he adds, and found it an efficacious medicine for herself and others. An earlier example, of a lady at the French court who embalmed and perfumed the genital organs of her dead husband, always preserving them in a gold casket, is mentioned by Brantome. Mantegazza knew a man who kept for many years on his desk the skull of his dead mistress, making it his dearest companion. "Some," he remarks, "have slept for months and years with a book, a garment, a trifle. I once had a friend who would spend long hours of joy and emotion kissing a thread of silk which she had held between her fingers, now the only relic of love." (Mantegazza, Fisiologia dell' Amore, cap. X.) In the same way I knew a lady who in old age still treasured in her desk, as the one relic of the only man she had ever been attracted to, a fragment of paper he had casually twisted up in a conversation with her half a century before.

The tendency to treasure the relics of a beloved person, more especially the garments, is the simplest and commonest foundation of erotic symbolism. It is without doubt absolutely normal. It is inevitable that those objects which have been in close contact with the beloved person's body, and are intimately a.s.sociated with that person in the lover's mind, should possess a little of the same virtue, the same emotional potency. It is a phenomenon closely a.n.a.logous to that by which the relics of saints are held to possess a singular virtue. But it becomes somewhat less normal when the garment is regarded as essential even in the presence of the beloved person.[10]

While an extremely large number of objects and acts may be found to possess occasionally the value of erotic symbols, such symbols most frequently fall into certain well-defined groups. A vast number of isolated objects or acts may be exceptionally the focus of erotic contemplation, but the objects and acts which frequently become thus symbolic are comparatively few.

It seems to me that the phenomena of erotic symbolism may be most conveniently grouped in three great cla.s.ses, on the basis of the objects or acts which arouse them.

I. PARTS OF THE BODY.-

A. Normal: Hand, foot, b.r.e.a.s.t.s, nates, hair, secretions and excretions, etc.

B. Abnormal: Lameness, squinting, pitting of smallpox, etc. Paidophilia or the love of children, presbyophilia or the love of the aged, and necrophilia or the attraction for corpses, may be included under this head, as well as the excitement caused by various animals.

II. INANIMATE OBJECTS.[11]-

A. Garments: Gloves, shoes and stockings and garters, caps, ap.r.o.ns, handkerchiefs, underlinen.

B. Impersonal Objects: Here may be included all the various objects that may accidentally acquire the power of exciting s.e.xual feeling in auto-erotism. Pygmalionism may also be included.

III. ACTS AND ATt.i.tUDES.-

A. Active: Whipping, cruelty, exhibitionism.

B. Pa.s.sive: Being whipped, experiencing cruelty. Personal odors and the sound of the voice may be included under this head.

C. Mixoscopic: The vision of climbing, swinging, etc. The acts of urination and defecation. The coitus of animals.

Although the three main groups into which the phenomena of erotic symbolism are here divided may seem fairly distinct, they are yet very closely allied, and indeed overlap, so that it is possible, as we shall see, for a single complex symbol to fall into all three groups.

A very complete kind of erotic symbolism is furnished by Pygmalionism or the love of statues.[12] It is exactly a.n.a.logous to the child's love of a doll, which is also a form of s.e.xual (though not erotic) symbolism. In a somewhat less abnormal form, erotic symbolism probably shows itself in its simplest shape in the tendency to idealize unbeautiful peculiarities in a beloved person, so that such peculiarities are ever afterward almost or quite essential in order to arouse s.e.xual attraction. In this way men have become attracted to limping women. Even the most normal man may idealize a trifling defect in a beloved woman. The attention is inevitably concentrated on any such slight deviation from regular beauty, and the natural result of such concentration is that a complexus of a.s.sociated thoughts and emotions becomes attached to something that in itself is unbeautiful. A defect becomes an admired focus of attention, the embodied symbol of the lover's emotion.

Thus a mole is not in itself beautiful, but by the tendency to erotic symbolism it becomes so. Persian poets especially have lavished the richest imagery on moles (Anis El-Ochchaq in Bibliotheque des Hautes Etudes, fasc, 25, 1875); the Arabs, as Lane remarks (Arabian Society in the Middle Ages, p. 214), are equally extravagant in their admiration of a mole.

Stendhal long since well described the process by which a defect becomes a s.e.xual symbol. "Even little defects in a woman's face," he remarked, "such as a smallpox pit, may arouse the tenderness of a man who loves her, and throw him into deep reverie when he sees them in another woman. It is because he has experienced a thousand feelings in the presence of that smallpox mark, that these feelings have been for the most part delicious, all of the highest interest, and that, whatever they may have been, they are renewed with incredible vivacity on the sight of this sign, even when perceived on the face of another woman. If in such a case we come to prefer and love ugliness, it is only because in such a case ugliness is beauty. A man loved a woman who was very thin and marked by smallpox; he lost her by death. Three years later, in Rome, he became acquainted with two women, one very beautiful, the other thin and marked by smallpox, on that account, if you will, rather ugly. I saw him in love with this plain one at the end of a week, which he had employed in effacing her plainness by his memories." (De l'Amour, Chapter XVII.)