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Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology by C. G. Jung, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . CHAPTER VI here CHAPTER VI A Criticism of Bleuler's "Theory of Schizophrenic Negativism" Bleuler's work contains a noteworthy clinical analysis of "Negativism." Besides giving a very precise and discerning summary of the various manifestations of negativism, the author presents us with a new psychological conception well worthy of attention, viz. the concept of ambivalency and of ambitendency, thus formulating the psychological axiom that every tendency is balanced by its opposite tendency (to this must be added that positive action is produced by a comparatively small leaning to one side of the scale). Similarly all other tendencies, under the stress of emotions, are balanced by their opposites—thus giving an ambivalent character to their expression. This theory rests on clinical observation of katatonic negativism, which more than proves the existence of contrasting tendencies and values. These facts are well known to psychoanalysis, where they are summed up under the concept of resistance. But this must not be taken as meaning that every positive psychic action simply calls up its opposite. One may easily gain the impression from Bleuler's work that his standpoint is that, cum grano salis, the conception or the tendency of the Schizophrenic is always accompanied by its opposite. For instance, Bleuler says:— "Disposing causes of negativistic phenomena are: the ambitendency by which every impulse is accompanied by its opposite." "Ambivalency, which gives two opposed emotional expressions to the same idea, and would regard that idea as positive and negative at the same time." "The schizophrenic splitting of the psyche prevents any final summing up of the conflicting and corresponding psychisms, so that the unsuitable impulse can be realised just as much as the right one, and the negative thought substituted for the right one." "On this theory, negative manifestations may directly arise, since non-selected positive and negative psychisms may stand for one another," and so on. If we investigate psychoanalytically a case of obvious ambivalency, i.e. of a more or less unexpected negative reaction instead of a positive one, we find that there is a strict sequence of psychological causes conditioning negative reaction. The tendency of this sequence is to disturb the intention of the contrasting or opposite series, that is to say, it is resistance set up by a complex. This fact, which has not yet been refuted by any other observations, seems to me to contradict the above-mentioned formulæ. (For confirmation, see my "Psychology of Dementia Præcox," p. 103.) Psychoanalysis has proved conclusively that a resistance always has an intention and a meaning; that there is no such thing as a capricious playing with contrasts. The systematic character of resistance holds good, as I believe I have proved, even in schizophrenia. So long as this position, founded upon a great variety of experience, is not disproved by any other observations, the theory of negativism must adapt itself to it. Bleuler in a sense supports this when he says: "For the most part the negative reaction does not simply appear as accidental, but is actually preferred to the right one." This is an admission that negativism is of the nature of resistance. Once admit this, and the primary importance of ambivalency disappears so far as negativism is concerned. The tendency to resistance remains as the only fundamental principle. Ambivalency can in no sense be put on all fours with the "schizophrenic splitting of the psyche," but must be regarded as a concept which gives expression to the universal and ever-present inner association of pairs of opposites. (One of the most remarkable examples of this is the "contrary meaning of root-words." See Freud's "Essay on Dreams," Jahrbuch, vol. II., p. 179.) The same thing applies to ambitendency. Neither is specific of schizophrenia, but applies equally to the neuroses and the normal. All that is specific to katatonic negativism is the intentional contrast, i.e. the resistance. From this explanation we see that resistance is something different from ambivalency; it is the dynamic factor which makes manifest the everywhere latent ambivalency. What is characteristic of the diseased mind is not ambivalency but resistance. This implies the existence of a conflict between two opposite tendencies which has succeeded in raising the normally present ambivalency into a struggle of opposing components. (Freud has very aptly called this, "The separation of pairs of opposites.") In other words it is a conflict of wills, bringing about the neurotic condition of "disharmony within the self." This condition is the only "splitting of the psyche" known to us, and is not so much to be regarded as a predisposing cause, but rather as a manifestation resulting from the inner conflict—the "incompatibility of the complex" (Riklin). Resistance, as the fundamental fact of schizophrenic dissociation, thus becomes something which, in contra-distinction to ambivalency, is not eo ipso identical with the concept of the state of feeling, but is a secondary and supplementary one, with its own special and quasi independent psychological development; and this is identical with the necessary previous history of the complex in every case. It follows that the theory of negativism coincides with the theory of the complex, as the complex is the cause of the resistance. Bleuler summarises the causes of negativism as follows: (a) The autistic retirement of the patient into his own phantasies. (b) The existence of a life-wound (complex) which must be protected from injury. (c) The misconception of the environment and of its meaning. (d) The directly hostile relation to environment. (e) The pathological irritability of schizophrenics. (f) The "press of ideas," and other aggravations of action and thought. (g) Sexuality with its ambivalency on the emotional plane is often one of the roots of negative reaction. (a) Autistic withdrawal into one's own phantasies is what I formerly designated as the obvious overgrowth of the phantasies of the complex. The strengthening of the complex is coincident with the increase of the resistance. (b) The life-wound (Lebenswund) is the complex which, as a matter of course, is present in every case of schizophrenia, and of necessity always carries with it the phenomena of autism or auto-erotism (introversion), for complexes and involuntary egocentricity are inseparable reciprocities. Points (a) and (b) are therefore identical. (Cf. "Psychology of Dementia Præcox," chapters ii. and iii.) (c) It is proved that the misconception of environment is an assimilation of the complex. (d) The hostile relation to environment is the maximum of resistance as psychoanalysis clearly shows. (d) goes with (a). (e) "Irritability" proves itself psychoanalytically to be one of the commonest results of the complex. I designated it complex-sensibility. Its generalised form (if one may use such an expression) manifests itself as a damming up of the affect (= damming of the libido), consequent on increased resistance. So-called neurasthenia is a classical example of this. (f) Under the term "press of ideas," and similar intellectual troubles, may be classified the "want of clearness and logic of the schizophrenic thinking," which Bleuler considers a predisposing cause. I have, as I may presume is known, expressed myself with much reserve on what he regards as the premeditation of the schizophrenic adjustment. Further and wider experience has taught me that the laws of the Freudian psychology of dreams and the theory of the neuroses must be turned towards the obscurities of schizophrenic thinking. The painfulness of the elaborated complex necessitates a censorship of its expression. This principle has to be applied to schizophrenic disturbance in thinking; and until it has been proved that this principle is not applicable to schizophrenia, there is no justification for setting up a new principle; i.e. to postulate that schizophrenic disturbance of ideas is something primary. Investigations of hypnagogic activity, as well as association reactions in states of concentrated attention, give psychical results which up to now are indistinguishable from the mental conditions in schizophrenia. For example excessive relaxation of attention suffices to conjure up images as like as two peas to the phantasies and expressions of schizophrenia. It will be remembered that I have attributed the notorious disturbances of attention in schizophrenia to the special character of the complex; an idea which my experience since 1906 have further confirmed. There are good reasons for believing specific schizophrenic thought-disturbance to be the result of a complex. Now as regards the symptoms of thought-pressure, it is first and foremost a thought-compulsion, which, as Freud has shown, is first a thought-complex and secondly a sexualisation of the thought. Then to the symptom of thought-pressure there is superadded at least a demoniac impulse such as may be observed in every vigorous release or production of libido. Thought-pressure, on closer examination, is seen to be a result of schizophrenic introversion, which necessarily leads to a sexualisation of the thought; i.e. to an autonomy of the complex. (g) The transition to sexuality appears from the psychoanalytical standpoint difficult to understand. If we consider that the development of resistance coincides in every case with the history of the complex we must ask ourselves: Is the complex sexual or not? (It goes without saying that we must understand sexuality in its proper sense of psycho-sexuality.) To this question psychoanalysis gives the invariable answer: Resistance always springs from a peculiar sexual development. The latter leads in the well-known manner to conflict, i.e. to the complex. Every case of schizophrenia which has so far been analysed confirms this. It can therefore claim at least to be a working hypothesis, and one to be followed up. In the present state of our knowledge, it is therefore not easy to see why Bleuler only allows to sexuality a quasi-determining influence on the phenomena of negativism; for psychoanalysis demonstrates that the cause of negativism is resistance; and that with schizophrenia, as with all other neuroses, this arises from the peculiar sexual development. It can scarcely be doubted to-day that schizophrenia, with its preponderance of the mechanisms of introversion, possesses the same mechanism as any other "psycho-neurosis." In my opinion, at any rate, its peculiar symptoms (apart from the clinical and anatomical standpoints) are only to be studied by psychoanalysis, i.e. when the investigation is mainly directed to the genetic impetus. I have, therefore, endeavoured to indicate how Bleuler's hypothesis stands in the light of the theory of complexes; I feel myself bound to emphasise the complex-theory in this relation, and am not disposed to surrender this conception, which is as illuminating as it was difficult to evolve. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. C. G. Jung (2015). Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/48225/pg48225-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

A Criticism of Bleuler's "Theory of Schizophrenic Negativism"

Some General Remarks on Psychoanalysis

RAGS MARTIN-JONES AND THE PR-NCE OF W-LES

WINTER DREAMS

THE PROBLEM OF SEXUAL ABSTINENCE

SEXUAL EDUCATION AND NAKEDNESS

THE PSYCHIC STATE IN PREGNANCY

We have seen what the object of detumescence is

Analyzing the sexual impulse

A remarkable form of erotic symbolism

Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 by Havelock Ellis is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . SMELL VI SMELL VI The Place of Smell in Human Sexual Selections—It has given Place to the Predominance of Vision largely because in Civilized Man it Fails to Act at a Distance—It still Plays a Part by Contributing to the Sympathies or the Antipathies of Intimate Contact. When we survey comprehensively the extensive field we have here rapidly traversed, it seems not impossible to gain a fairly accurate view of the special place which olfactory sensations play in human sexual selection. The special peculiarity of this group of sensations in man, and that which gives them an importance they would not otherwise possess, is due to the fact that we here witness the decadence of a sense which in man's remote ancestors was the very chiefest avenue of sexual allurement. In man, even the most primitive man,—to some degree even in the apes,—it has declined in importance to give place to the predominance of vision. Yet, at that lower threshold of acuity at which it persists in man it still bathes us in a more or less constant atmosphere of odors, which perpetually move us to sympathy or to antipathy, and which in their finer manifestations we do not neglect, but even cultivate with the increase of our civilization. It thus comes about that the grosser manifestations of sexual allurement by smell belong, so far as man is concerned, to a remote animal past which we have outgrown and which, on account of the diminished acuity of our olfactory organs, we could not completely recall even if we desired to; the sense of sight inevitably comes into play long before it is possible for close contact to bring into action the sense of smell. But the latent possibilities of sexual allurement by olfaction, which are inevitably embodied in the nervous structure we have inherited from our animal ancestors, still remain ready to be called into play. They emerge prominently from time to time in exceptional and abnormal persons. They tend to play an unusually larger part in the psychic lives of neurasthenic persons, with their sensitive and comparatively unbalanced nervous systems, and this is doubtless the reason why poets and men of letters have insisted on olfactory impressions so frequently and to so notable a degree; for the same reason sexual inverts are peculiarly susceptible to odors. For a different reason, warmer climates, which heighten all odors and also favor the growth of powerfully odorous plants, lead to a heightened susceptibility to the sexual and other attractions of smell even among normal persons; thus we find a general tendency to delight in odors throughout the East, notably in India, among the ancient Hebrews, and in Mohammedan lands. Among the ordinary civilized population in Europe the sexual influences of smell play a smaller and yet not altogether negligible part. The diminished prominence of odors only enables them to come into action, as sexual influences, on close contact, when, in some persons at all events, personal odors may have a distinct influence in heightening sympathy or arousing antipathy. The range of variation among individuals is in this matter considerable. In a few persons olfactory sympathy or antipathy is so pronounced that it exerts a decisive influence in their sexual relationships; such persons are of olfactory type. In other persons smell has no part in constituting sexual relationships, but it comes into play in the intimate association of love, and acts as an additional excitant; when reinforced by association such olfactory impressions may at times prove irresistible. Other persons, again, are neutral in this respect, and remain indifferent either to the sympathetic or antipathetic working of personal odors, unless they happen to be extremely marked. It is probable that the majority of refined and educated people belong to the middle group of those persons who are not of predominantly olfactory type, but are liable from time to time to be influenced in this manner. Women are probably at least as often affected in this manner as men, probably more often. On the whole, it may be said that in the usual life of man odors play a not inconsiderable part and raise problems which are not without interest, but that their demonstrable part in actual sexual selection—whether in preferential mating or in assortative mating—is comparatively small. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Havelock Ellis (2004). Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/13613/pg13613-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org, located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

Olfactory sensations play in human sexual selection

In approaching the specifically sexual aspect of odor in the human species

Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 by Havelock Ellis is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . TOUCH II TOUCH II Ticklishness—Its Origin and Significance—The Psychology of Tickling—Laughter—Laughter as a Kind of Detumescence—The Sexual Relationships of Itching—The Pleasure of Tickling—Its Decrease with Age and Sexual Activity. Touch, as has already been remarked, is the least intellectual of the senses. There is, however, one form of touch sensation—that is to say, ticklishness—which is of so special and peculiar a nature that it has sometimes been put aside in a class apart from all other touch sensations. Scaliger proposed to class titillation as a sixth, or separate, sense. Alrutz, of Upsala, regards tickling as a milder degree of itching, and considers that the two together constitute a sensation of distinct quality with distinct end-organs, for the mediation of that quality. However we may regard this extreme view, tickling is certainly a specialized modification of touch and it is at the same time the most intellectual mode of touch sensation and that with the closest connection with the sexual sphere. To regard tickling as an intellectual manifestation may cause surprise, more especially when it is remembered that ticklishness is a form of sensation which reaches full development very early in life, and it has to be admitted that, as compared even with the messages that may be sent through smell and taste, the intellectual element in ticklishness remains small. But its presence here has been independently recognized by various investigators. Groos points out the psychic factor in tickling as evidenced by the impossibility of self-tickling. Louis Robinson considers that ticklishness "appears to be one of the simplest developments of mechanical and automatic nervous processes in the direction of the complex functioning of the higher centres which comes within the scope of psychology," Stanley Hall and Allin remark that "these minimal touch excitations represent the very oldest stratum of psychic life in the soul." Hirman Stanley, in a somewhat similar manner, pushes the intellectual element in ticklishness very far back and associates it with "tentacular experience." "By temporary self-extension," he remarks, "even low amœboid organisms have slight, but suggestive, touch experiences that stimulate very general and violent reactions, and in higher organisms extended touch-organs, as tentacles, antennæ, hair, etc., become permanent and very delicately sensitive organs, where minimal contacts have very distinct and powerful reactions." Thus ticklishness would be the survival of long passed ancestral tentacular experience, which, originally a stimulation producing intense agitation and alarm, has now become merely a play activity and a source of keen pleasure. We need not, however, go so far back in the zoölogical series to explain the origin and significance of tickling in the human species. Sir J. Y. Simpson suggested, in an elaborate study of the position of the child in the womb, that the extreme excitomotory sensibility of the skin in various regions, such as the sole of the foot, the knee, the sides, which already exists before birth, has for its object the excitation and preservation of the muscular movements necessary to keep the fœtus in the most favorable position in the womb. It is, in fact, certainly the case that the stimulation of all the ticklish regions in the body tends to produce exactly that curled up position of extreme muscular flexion and general ovoid shape which is the normal position of the fœtus in the womb. We may well believe that in this early developed reflex activity we have the basis of that somewhat more complex ticklishness which appears somewhat later. [10] The mental element in tickling is indicated by the fact that even a child, in whom ticklishness is highly developed, cannot tickle himself; so that tickling is not a simple reflex. This fact was long ago pointed out by Erasmus Darwin, and he accounted for it by supposing that voluntary exertion diminishes the energy of sensation. This explanation is, however, inadmissible, for, although we cannot easily tickle ourselves by the contact of the skin with our own fingers, we can do so with the aid of a foreign body, like a feather. We may perhaps suppose that, as ticklishness has probably developed under the influence of natural selection as a method of protection against attack and a warning of the approach of foreign bodies, its end would be defeated if it involved a simple reaction to the contact of the organism with itself. This need of protection it is which involves the necessity of a minimal excitation producing a maximal effect, though the mechanism whereby this takes place has caused considerable discussion. We may, it is probable, best account for it by invoking the summation-irradiation theory of pain-pleasure, the summation of the stimuli in their course through the nerves, aided by capillary congestion, leading to irradiation due to anastomoses between the tactile corpuscles, not to speak of the much wider irradiation which is possible by means of central nervous connections. [11] Prof. C. L. Herrick adopts this explanation of the phenomena of tickling, and rests it, in part, on Dogiel's study of the tactile corpuscles ("Psychological Corollaries of Modern Neurological Discoveries," Journal of Comparative Neurology, March, 1898). The following remarks of Prof. A. Allin may also be quoted in further explanation of the same theory: "So far as ticklishness is concerned, a very important factor in the production of this feeling is undoubtedly that of the summation of stimuli. In a research of Stirling's, carried on under Ludwig's direction, it was shown that reflex contractions only occur from repeated shocks to the nerve-centres—that is, through summation of successive stimuli. That this result is also due in some degree to an alternating increase in the sensibility of the various areas in question from altered supply of blood is reasonably certain. As a consequence of this summation-process there would result in many cases and in cases of excessive nervous discharge the opposite of pleasure, namely: pain. A number of instances have been recorded of death resulting from tickling, and there is no reason to doubt the truth of the statement that Simon de Montfort, during the persecution of the Albigenses, put some of them to death by tickling the soles of their feet with a feather. An additional causal factor in the production of tickling may lie in the nature and structure of the nervous process involved in perception in general. According to certain histological researches of recent years we know that between the sense-organs and the central nervous system there exist closely connected chains of conductors or neurons, along which an impression received by a single sensory cell on the periphery is propagated avalanchelike through an increasing number of neurons until the brain is reached. If on the periphery a single cell is excited the avalanchelike process continues until finally hundreds or thousands of nerve-cells in the cortex are aroused to considerable activity. Golgi, Ramón y Cajal, Koelliker, Held, Retzius, and others have demonstrated the histological basis of this law for vision, hearing, and smell, and we may safely assume from the phenomena of tickling that the sense of touch is not lacking in a similar arrangement. May not a suggestion be offered, with some plausibility, that even in ideal or representative tickling, where tickling results, say, from someone pointing a finger at the ticklish places, this avalanchelike process may be incited from central centres, thus producing, although in a modified degree, the pleasant phenomena in question? As to the deepest causal factor, I should say that tickling is the result of vasomotor shock." (A. Allin, "On Laughter," Psychological Review, May, 1903.) The intellectual element in tickling conies out in its connection with laughter and the sense of the comic, of which it may be said to constitute the physical basis. While we are not here concerned with laughter and the comic sense,—a subject which has lately attracted considerable attention,—it may be instructive to point out that there is more than an analogy between laughter and the phenomena of sexual tumescence and detumescence. The process whereby prolonged tickling, with its nervous summation and irradiation and accompanying hyperæmia, finds sudden relief in an explosion of laughter is a real example of tumescence—as it has been defined in the study in another volume entitled "An Analysis of the Sexual Impulse"—resulting finally in the orgasm of detumescence. The reality of the connection between the sexual embrace and tickling is indicated by the fact that in some languages, as in that of the Fuegians, the same word is applied to both. That ordinary tickling is not sexual is due to the circumstances of the case and the regions to which the tickling is applied. If, however, the tickling is applied within the sexual sphere, then there is a tendency for orgasm to take place instead of laughter. The connection which, through the phenomena of tickling, laughter thus bears to the sexual sphere is well indicated, as Groos has pointed out, by the fact that in sexually-minded people sexual allusions tend to produce laughter, this being the method by which they are diverted from the risks of more specifically sexual detumescence. [12] [13] Reference has been made to the view of Alrutz, according to which tickling is a milder degree of itching. It is more convenient and probably more correct to regard itching or pruritus, as it is termed in its pathological forms, as a distinct sensation, for it does not arise under precisely the same conditions as tickling nor is it relieved in the same way. There is interest, however, in pointing out in this connection that, like tickling, itching has a real parallelism to the specialized sexual sensations. Bronson, who has very ably interpreted the sensations of itching (New York Neurological Society, October 7, 1890; Medical News, February 14, 1903, and summarized in the British Medical Journal, March 7, 1903; and elsewhere), regards it as a perversion of the sense of touch, a dysæsthesia due to obstructed nerve-excitation with imperfect conduction of the generated force into correlated nervous energy. The scratching which relieves itching directs the nervous energy into freer channels, sometimes substituting for the pruritus either painful or voluptuous sensations. Such voluptuous sensations may be regarded as a generalized aphrodisiac sense comparable to the specialized sexual orgasm. Bronson refers to the significant fact that itching occurs so frequently in the sexual region, and states that sexual neurasthenia is sometimes the only discoverable cause of genital and anal pruritus. (Cf. discussion on pruritus, British Medical Journal, November 30, 1895.) Gilman, again (American Journal of Psychology, vi, p. 22), considers that scratching, as well as sneezing, is comparable to coitus. The sexual embrace has an intimate connection with the phenomena of ticklishness which could not fail to be recognized. This connection is, indeed, the basis of Spinoza's famous definition of love,—"Amor est titillatio quædam concomitante idea causæ externæ,"—a statement which seems to be reflected in Chamfort's definition of love as "l'échange de deux fantaisies, et le contact de deux epidermes." The sexual act, says Gowers, is, in fact, a skin reflex. "The sexual parts," Hall and Allin state, "have a ticklishness as unique as their function and as keen as their importance." Herrick finds the supreme illustration of the summation and irradiation theory of tickling in the phenomena of erotic excitement, and points out that in harmony with this the skin of the sexual region is, as Dogiel has shown, that portion of the body in which the tactile corpuscles are most thoroughly and elaborately provided with anastomosing fibres. It has been pointed out that, when ordinary tactile sensibility is partially abolished,—especially in hemianæsthesia in the insane,—some sexual disturbance is specially apt to be found in association. [14] [15] In young children, in girls even when they are no longer children, and occasionally in men, tickling may be a source of acute pleasure, which in very early life is not sexual, but later tends to become so under circumstances predisposing to the production of erotic emotion, and especially when the nervous system is keyed up to a high tone favorable for the production of the maximum effect of tickling. "When young," writes a lady aged 28, "I was extremely fond of being tickled, and I am to some extent still. Between the ages of 10 and 12 it gave me exquisite pleasure, which I now regard as sexual in character. I used to bribe my younger sister to tickle my feet until she was tired." Stanley Hall and Allin in their investigation of the phenomena of tickling, largely carried out among young women teachers, found that in 60 clearly marked cases ticklishness was more marked at one time than another, "as when they have been 'carrying on,' or are in a happy mood, are nervous or unwell, after a good meal, when being washed, when in perfect health, when with people they like, etc." (Hall and Allin, "Tickling and Laughter," American Journal of Psychology, October, 1897.) It will be observed that most of the conditions mentioned are such as would be favorable to excitations of an emotionally sexual character. The palms of the hands may be very ticklish during sexual excitement, especially in women, and Moll (Konträre Sexualempfindung, p. 180) remarks that in some men titillation of the skin of the back, of the feet, and even of the forehead evokes erotic feelings. It may be added that, as might be expected, titillation of the skin often has the same significance in animals as in man. "In some animals," remarks Louis Robinson (art. "Ticklishness," Dictionary of Psychological Medicine), "local titillation of the skin, though in parts remote from the reproductive organs, plainly acts indirectly upon them as a stimulus. Thus, Harvey records that, by stroking the back of a favorite parrot (which he had possessed for years and supposed to be a male), he not only gave the bird gratification,—which was the sole intention of the illustrious physiologist,—but also caused it to reveal its sex by laying an egg." The sexual significance of tickling is very clearly indicated by the fact that the general ticklishness of the body, which is so marked in children and in young girls, greatly diminishes, as a rule, after sexual relationships have been established. Dr. Gina Lombroso, who investigated the cutaneous reflexes, found that both the abdominal and plantar reflexes, which are well marked in childhood and in young people between the ages of 15 and 18, were much diminished in older persons, and to a greater extent in women than in men, to a greater extent in the abdominal region than on the soles of the feet; her results do not directly show the influence of sexual relationship, but they have an indirect bearing which is worth noting. [16] The difference in ticklishness between the unmarried woman and the married woman corresponds to their difference in degree of modesty. Both modesty and ticklishness may be said to be characters which are no longer needed. From this point of view the general ticklishness of the skin is a kind of body modesty. It is so even apart from any sexual significance of tickling, and Louis Robinson has pointed out that in young apes, puppies, and other like animals the most ticklish regions correspond to the most vulnerable spots in a fight, and that consequently in the mock fights of early life skill in defending these spots is attained. In Iceland, according to Margarethe Filhés (as quoted by Max Bartels, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1900, ht. 2-3, p. 57), it may be known whether a youth is pure or a maid is intact by their susceptibility to tickling. It is considered a bad sign if that is lost. I am indebted to a medical correspondent for the following communication: "Married women have told me that they find that after marriage they are not ticklish under the arms or on the breasts, though before marriage any tickling or touching in these regions, especially by a man, would make them jump or get hysterical or 'queer,' as they call it. Before coitus the sexual energy seems to be dissipated along all the nerve-channels and especially along the secondary sexual routes,—the breasts, nape of neck, eyebrows, lips, cheeks, armpits, and hair thereon, etc.,—but after marriage the surplus energy is diverted from these secondary channels, and response to tickling is diminished. I have often noted in insane cases, especially mania in adolescent girls, that they are excessively ticklish. Again, in ordinary routine practice I have observed that, though married women show no ticklishness during auscultation and percussion of the chest, this is by no means always so in young girls. Perhaps ticklishness in virgins is Nature's self-protection against rape and sexual advances, and the young girl instinctively wishing to hide the armpits, breasts, and other ticklish regions, tucks herself up to prevent these parts being touched. The married woman, being in love with a man, does not shut up these parts, as she reciprocates the advances that he makes; she no longer requires ticklishness as a protection against sexual aggression." About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Havelock Ellis (2004). Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/13613/pg13613-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org, located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

One form of touch sensation

Discussing the question of the sexual impulse in women

From very early times it seems possible to trace two streams of opinion regarding women

Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 by Havelock Ellis is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . LOVE AND PAIN - VII LOVE AND PAIN - VII Summary of Results Reached—The Joy of Emotional Expansion—The Satisfaction of the Craving for Power—The Influence of Neurasthenic and Neuropathic Conditions—The Problem of Pain in Love Largely Constitutes a Special Case of Erotic Symbolism. It may seem to some that in our discussion of the relationships of love and pain we have covered a very wide field. This was inevitable. The subject is peculiarly difficult and complex, and if we are to gain a real insight into its nature we must not attempt to force the facts to fit into any narrow and artificial formulas of our own construction. Yet, as we have unraveled this seemingly confused mass of phenomena it will not have escaped the careful reader that the apparently diverse threads we have disentangled run in a parallel and uniform manner; they all have a like source and they all converge to a like result. We have seen that the starting-point of the whole group of manifestations must be found in the essential facts of courtship among animal and primitive human societies. Pain is seldom very far from some of the phases of primitive courtship; but it is not the pain which is the essential element in courtship, it is the state of intense emotion, of tumescence, with which at any moment, in some shape or another, pain may, in some way or another, be brought into connection. So that we have come to see that in the phrase "love and pain" we have to understand by "pain" a state of intense emotional excitement with which pain in the stricter sense may be associated, but is by no means necessarily associated. It is the strong emotion which exerts the irresistible fascination in the lover, in his partner, or in both. The pain is merely the means to that end. It is the lever which is employed to bring the emotional force to bear on the sexual impulse. The question of love and pain is mainly a question of emotional dynamics. In attaining this view of our subject we have learned that any impulse of true cruelty is almost outside the field altogether. The mistake was indeed obvious and inevitable. Let us suppose that every musical instrument is sensitive and that every musical performance involves the infliction of pain on the instrument. It would then be very difficult indeed to realize that the pleasure of music lies by no means in the infliction of pain. We should certainly find would-be scientific and analytical people ready to declare that the pleasure of music is the pleasure of giving pain, and that the emotional effects of music are due to the pain thus inflicted. In algolagnia, as in music, it is not cruelty that is sought; it is the joy of being plunged among the waves of that great primitive ocean of emotions which underlies the variegated world of our everyday lives, and pain—a pain which, as we have seen, is often deprived so far as possible of cruelty, though sometimes by very thin and feeble devices—is merely the channel by which that ocean is reached. If we try to carry our inquiry beyond the point we have been content to reach, and ask ourselves why this emotional intoxication exerts so irresistible a fascination, we might find a final reply in the explanation of Nietzsche—who regarded this kind of intoxication as of great significance both in life and in art—that it gives us the consciousness of energy and the satisfaction of our craving for power. To carry the inquiry to this point would be, however, to take it into a somewhat speculative and metaphysical region, and we have perhaps done well not to attempt to analyze further the joy of emotional expansion. We must be content to regard the profound satisfaction of emotion as due to a widespread motor excitement, the elements of which we cannot yet completely analyze. [154] [155] It is because the joy of emotional intoxication is the end really sought that we have to regard the supposed opposition between "sadism" and "masochism" as unimportant and indeed misleading. The emotional value of pain is equally great whether the pain is inflicted, suffered, witnessed, or merely exists as a mental imagination, and there is no reason why it should not coexist in all these forms in the same person, as, in fact, we frequently find it. The particular emotions which are invoked by pain to reinforce the sexual impulse are more especially anger and fear, and, as we have seen, these two very powerful and primitive emotions are—on the active and passive sides, respectively—the emotions most constantly brought into play in animal and early human courtship; so that they naturally constitute the emotional reservoirs from which the sexual impulse may still most easily draw. It is not difficult to show that the various forms in which "pain"—as we must here understand pain—is employed in the service of the sexual impulse are mainly manifestations or transformations of anger or fear, either in their simple or usually more complex forms, in some of which anger and fear may be mingled. We thus accept the biological origin of the psychological association between love and pain; it is traceable to the phenomena of animal courtship. We do not on this account exclude the more direct physiological factor. It may seem surprising that manifestations that have their origin in primeval forms of courtship should in many cases coincide with actual sensations of definite anatomical base today, and still more surprising that these traditional manifestations and actual sensations should so often be complementary to each other in their active and passive aspects: that is to say, that the pleasure of whipping should be matched by the pleasure of being whipped, the pleasure of mock strangling by the pleasure of being so strangled, that pain inflicted is not more desirable than pain suffered. But such coincidence is of the very essence of the whole group of phenomena. The manifestations of courtship were from the first conditioned by physiological facts; it is not strange that they should always tend to run pari passu with physiological facts. The manifestations which failed to find anchorage in physiological relationships might well tend to die out. Even under the most normal circumstances, in healthy persons of healthy heredity, the manifestations we have been considering are liable to make themselves felt. Under such circumstances, however, they never become of the first importance in the sexual process; they are often little more than play. It is only under neurasthenic or neuropathic conditions—that is to say, in an organism which from acquired or congenital causes, and usually perhaps both, has become enfeebled, irritable, "fatigued"—that these manifestations are liable to flourish vigorously, to come to the forefront of sexual consciousness, and even to attain such seriously urgent importance that they may in themselves constitute the entire end and aim of sexual desire. Under these pathological conditions, pain, in the broad and special sense in which we have been obliged to define it, becomes a welcome tonic and a more or less indispensable stimulant to the sexual system. It will not have escaped the careful reader that in following out our subject we have sometimes been brought into contact with manifestations which scarcely seem to come within any definition of pain. This is undoubtedly so, and the references to these manifestations were not accidental, for they serve to indicate the real bearings of our subject. The relationships of love and pain constitute a subject at once of so much gravity and so much psychological significance that it was well to devote to them a special study. But pain, as we have here to understand it, largely constitutes a special case of what we shall later learn to know as erotic symbolism: that is to say, the psychic condition in which a part of the sexual process, a single idea or group of ideas, tends to assume unusual importance, or even to occupy the whole field of sexual consciousness, the part becoming a symbol that stands for the whole. When we come to the discussion of this great group of abnormal sexual manifestations it will frequently be necessary to refer to the results we have reached in studying the sexual significance of pain. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Havelock Ellis (2004). Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/13612/pg13612-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

Discussion of the relationships of love and pain we have covered a very wide field

Distinction between "sadism" and "masochism" 

Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 by Havelock Ellis is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . LOVE AND PAIN - IV LOVE AND PAIN - IV The Impulse to Strangle the Object of Sexual Desire—The Wish to be Strangled—Respiratory Disturbance the Essential Element in this Group of Phenomena—The Part Played by Respiratory Excitement in the Process of Courtship—Swinging and Suspension—The Attraction Exerted by the Idea of being Chained and Fettered. There is another impulse which it may be worth while to consider briefly here, for the sake of the light it throws on the relationship between love and pain. I allude to the impulse to strangle the object of sexual desire, and to the corresponding craving to be strangled. Cases have been recorded in which this impulse was so powerful that men have actually strangled women at the moment of coitus. Such cases are rare; but, as a mere idea, the thought of strangling a woman appears to be not infrequently associated with sexual emotion. We must probably regard it as, in the main,—with whatever subsidiary elements,—an aspect of that physical seizure, domination, and forcible embrace of the female which is one of the primitive elements of courtship. The corresponding idea—the pleasurable connection of the thought of being strangled with sexual emotion—appears to occur still more frequently, perhaps especially in women. Here we seem to have, as in the case of whipping, a combination of a physical with a psychic element. Not only is the idea attractive, but, as a matter of fact, strangulation, suffocation, or any arrest of respiration, even when carried to the extent of producing death, may actually provoke emission, as is observed after death by hanging. It is noteworthy that, as Eulenburg remarks, the method of treating diseases of the spinal cord by suspension—a method much in vogue a few years ago—often produced sexual excitement. In brothels, it is said, some of the clients desire to be suspended vertically by a cord furnished with pads. A playful attempt to throttle her on the part of her lover is often felt by a woman as pleasurable, though it may not necessarily produce definite sexual excitement. Sometimes, however, this feeling becomes so strong that it must be regarded as an actual perversion, and I have been told of a woman who is indifferent to the ordinary sexual embrace; her chief longing is to be throttled, and she will do anything to have her neck squeezed by her lover till her eyeballs bulge. [122] [123] [124] [125] "I think if I could be left my present feelings," a lady writes, "and be changed into a male imbecile,—that is, given a man's strength, but deprived, to a large extent, of reasoning power,—I might very likely act in the apparently cruel way they do. And this partly because many of their actions appeal to me on the passive side. The idea of being strangled by a person I love does. The great sensitiveness of one's throat and neck come in here as well as the loss of breath. Once when I was about to be separated from a man I cared for I put his hands on my throat and implored him to kill me. It was a moment of madness, which helps me to understand the feelings of a person always insane. Even now that I am cool and collected I know that if I were deeply in love with a man who I thought was going to kill me, especially in that way, I would make no effort to save myself beforehand, though, of course, in the final moments nature would assert herself without my volition. What makes the horror of such cases in insanity is the fact of the love being left out. But I think I find no greater difficulty in picturing the mental attitude of a sadistic lunatic than that of a normal man who gets pleasure out of women for whom he has no love." The imagined pleasure of being strangled by a lover brings us to a group of feelings which would seem to be not unconnected with respiratory elements. I refer to the pleasurable excitement experienced by some in suspension, swinging, restraint, and fetters. Strangulation is the extreme and most decided type of this group of imagined or real situations, in all of which a respiratory disturbance seems to be an essential element. [126] In explaining these phenomena we have to remark that respiratory excitement has always been a conspicuous part of the whole process of tumescence and detumescence, of the struggles of courtship and of its climax, and that any restraint upon respiration, or, indeed, any restraint upon muscular and emotional activity generally, tends to heighten the state of sexual excitement associated with such activity. I have elsewhere, when studying the spontaneous solitary manifestation of the sexual instinct (Auto-erotism, in vol. i of these Studies), referred to the pleasurably emotional, and sometimes sexual, effects of swinging and similar kinds of movement. It is possible that there is a certain significance in the frequency with which the eighteenth-century French painters, who lived at a time when the refinements of sexual emotion were carefully sought out, have painted women in the act of swinging. Fragonard mentions that in 1763 a gentleman invited him into the country, with the request to paint his mistress, especially stipulating that she should be depicted in a swing. The same motive was common among the leading artists of that time. It may be said that this attitude was merely a pretext to secure a vision of ankles, but that result could easily have been attained without the aid of the swing. I may here quote, as bearing on this and allied questions, a somewhat lengthy communication from a lady to whom I am indebted for many subtle and suggestive remarks on the whole of this group of manifestations:— "With regard to the connection between swinging and suspension, perhaps the physical basis of it is the loss of breath. Temporary loss of breath with me produces excitement. Swinging at a height or a fall from a height would cause loss of breath; in a state of suspension the imagination would suggest the idea of falling and the attendant loss of breath. People suffering from lung disease are often erotically inclined, and anesthetics affect the breathing. Men also seem to like the idea of suspension, but from the active side. One man used to put his wife on a high swinging shelf when she displeased him, and my husband told me once he would like to suspend me to a crane we were watching at work, though I have never mentioned my own feeling on this point to him. Suspension is often mentioned in descriptions of torture. Beatrice Cenci was hung up by her hair and the recently murdered Queen of Korea was similarly treated. In Tolstoi's My Husband and I the girl says she would like her husband to hold her over a precipice. That passage gave me great pleasure. [127] "The idea of slipping off an inclined plane gives me the same sensation. I always feel it on seeing Michael Angelo's 'Night,' though the slipping look displeases me artistically. I remember that when I saw the 'Night' first I did feel excited and was annoyed, and it seemed to me it was the slipping-off look that gave it; but I think I am now less affected by that idea. Certain general ideas seem to excite one, but the particular forms under which they are presented lose their effect and have to be varied. The sentence mentioned in Tolstoi leaves me now quite cold, but if I came across the same idea elsewhere, expressed differently, then it would excite me. I am very capricious in the small things, and I think women are so more than men. The idea of slipping down a plank formerly produced excitement with me; now it has a less vivid effect, though the idea of loss of breath still produces excitement. The idea of the plank does not now affect me unless there is a certain amount of drapery. I think, therefore, that the feeling must come in part from the possibility of the drapery catching on some roughness of the surface of the slope, and so producing pressure on the sexual organs. The effect is still produced, however, even without any clothing, if the slope is supposed to end in a deep drop, so that the idea of falling is strongly presented. I cannot recollect any early associations that would tend to explain these feelings, except that jumping from a height, which I used frequently to do as a child, has a tendency to create excitement. "With me, I may add, it is when I cannot express myself, or am trying to understand what I feel is beyond my grasp, that the first stage of sexual excitement results. For instance, I never get excited in thinking over sexual questions, because my ideas, correct or incorrect, are fairly clear and definite. But I often feel sexually excited over that question of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, not because I can't decide between the two sets of evidence, but because I don't feel confident of having fully grasped the true significance of either. This feeling of want of power, mental or physical, always has the same effect. I feel it if my eyes are blindfolded or my hands tied. I don't like to see the Washington Post dance, in which the man stands behind the woman and holds her hands, on that account. If he held her wrists the feeling would be stronger, as her apparent helplessness would be increased. The nervous irritability that is caused by being under restraint seems to manifest itself in that way, while in the case of mental disability the excitement, which should flow down a mental channel, being checked, seems to take a physical course instead. "Possibly this would help to explain masochistic sexual feelings. A physical cause working in the present would be preferable as an explanation to a psychological cause to be traced back through heredity to primitive conditions. I believe such feelings are very common in men as well as in women, only people do not care to admit them, as a rule." The idea of being chained and fettered appears to be not uncommonly associated with pleasurable sexual feelings, for I have met with numerous cases in both men and women, and it not infrequently coexists with a tendency to inversion. It often arises at a very early age, and it is of considerable interest because we cannot account for its frequency by any chance association nor by any actual experiences. It would appear to be a purely psychic fantasia founded on the elementary physical fact that restraint of emotion, like suspension, produces a heightening of emotion. In any case the spontaneous character of such ideas and emotions in children of both sexes suffices to show that they must possess a very definite organic basis. In one of the histories (X) contained in Appendix B at the end of the present volume a lady describes how, as a child, she reveled in the idea of being chained and tortured, these ideas appearing to rise spontaneously. In another case, that of A. N. (for the most part reproduced in "Erotic Symbolism," in vol. v of these Studies), whose ideals are inverted and who is also affected by boot-fetichism, the idea of fetters is very attractive. In this case self-excitement was produced at a very early age, without the use of the hands, by strapping the legs together. We can, however, scarcely explain away the idea of fetters in this case as merely the result of an early association, for it may well be argued that the idea led to this method of self-excitement. "The mere idea of fetters," this subject writes, "produces the greatest excitement, and the sight of pictures representing such things is a temptation. The reading of books dealing with prison life, etc., anywhere where physical restraint is treated of, is a temptation. The temptation is aggravated when the picture represents the person booted. I suppose all this will have been intensified in my case by my practices as a child. But why should a child of 6 do such things unless it were a natural instinct in him? Nobody showed me; I have never mentioned such things to anyone. I used to read historical romances for the pleasure of reading of people being put in prison, in fetters, and tortured, and always envied them. I feel now that I should like to undergo the sensation. If I could get anyone to humor me without losing their self-respect, I should jump at the opportunity. I have been most powerfully excited by visiting an old Australian convict-ship, where all the means of restraint are shown; I have been attracted to it night after night, wanting, but not daring to ask, to be allowed to have a practical experience." Stcherbak, of Warsaw, has recorded a case which resembles that of A. N., but there was no inversion and the attraction of fetters was active rather than passive; the subject desired to fetter and not to be fettered. It is possible that this difference is not fundamental, though Stcherbak regards the case as one of fetichism of sadistic origin ("Contribution à l'Etude des Perversions Sexuelles," Archives de Neurologie, Oct., 1907). The subject was a highly intelligent though neurasthenic youth, who from the age of 5 had been deeply interested in criminals who were fettered and sent to prison. The fate of Siberian prisoners was a frequent source of prolonged meditations. It was the fettering which alone interested him, and he spent much time in trying to imagine the feelings of the fettered prisoners, and he often imagined that he was himself a prisoner in fetters. (This seems to indicate that the impulse was in its origin masochistic as much as sadistic, and better described as algolagnia than as sadism.) He delighted in stories and pictures of fettered persons. At the age of 15 the sex of the fettered person became important and he was interested chiefly in fettered women. A new element also appeared; he was attracted to well-dressed women and especially to those wearing elegant shoes, delighting to imagine them fettered. He fastened his own feet together with chains, attempting to walk about his room in this condition, but experienced comparatively little pleasure in this way. At the age of 15 he met a lady 10 years older than himself and of great intelligence. As he began to know her more intimately she allowed him to take liberties with her; he fastened her hands behind her back, and this caused him a violent but delicious emotion which he had never experienced before. Next time he fastened her feet together as well as her hands; as he did so her shoes slightly touched his sexual organs; this caused erection and ejaculation, accompanied by the most acute sexual pleasure he had ever felt. He had no wish to see her naked or to uncover himself, and as long as this relationship lasted he had no abnormal thoughts at other times, or in connection with other people. He never masturbated, and his sexual dreams were of fettered men or women. Stcherbak discusses the case at length and considers that it is essentially an example of sadism, on the ground that the impulse of fettering was prompted by the desire to humiliate. There is, however, no evidence of any such desire, and, as a matter of fact, no humiliation was effected. The primary and fundamental element in this and similar cases is an almost abstract sexual fascination in the idea of restraint, whether endured, inflicted, or merely witnessed or imagined; the feet become the chief focus of this fascination, and the basis on which a foot-fetichism or shoe-fetichism tends to arise, because restraint of the feet produces a more marked effect than restraint of the hands. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Havelock Ellis (2004). Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/13612/pg13612-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

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