Havelock Ellis

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”