Erethism

“ Sight, touch, hearing, smell, even some- times taste, all the senses one after another, or all together, are excited to a certain extent, in order to raise the erethism to its highest degree of intensity. ”

“ It is under these excitations that passive pederasty shows itself, as a casual accessory phenomenon, as a new excitant, which may serve to heighten the erethism, which then finds its satisfaction in normal connection with a woman. ”

“ Above all, sexual desire not in keeping with his age is the very first symptom of a developing morbid condition of the subject.
The depraved individual seeks by changing the manner and means of accomplishing the sexual act, as well as in preparation for the same, a new way to increase and prolong the erethism. ”

“ Increased erethism, morbid sexual desire, with continual erection and emission of semen, lowered conscience and an inclination to impulsive actions, constitute, as above said, a frequent symptom of maniacal conditions of varied intensity and form. ”

“ Lombroso and Ferrero consider that sexual sensibility, as well as all other forms of sensibility, is less pronounced in women, and they bring forward various facts and opinions which seem to them to point in the same direction. "Woman is naturally and organically frigid." At the same time they consider that, while erethism is less, sexuality is greater than in men. ”

“ In this case human ingenuity would merely be seeking to supply an organ which nature has ceased to furnish, although it is still in some cases needed, especially among peoples whose aptitude for erethism has remained at, or fallen to, a subhuman level. ”

“ It sometimes happens that, by a kind of special organic idiosyncracy, the organs of generation become the seat of abnormal sensitiveness or irritation in young subjects, at once the occasion and the signal for the explosion of this most terrific and fatal passion. This explains the great number of examples in which, even in the nursery, during the "innocent slumbers of childhood," the genital organs are observed to be in a state of erection, or erethism, unnatural at that age, and which can by no possibility be supposed to subserve any physiological end. ”

“ Women, living at a profit, are more anabolic, i. e., the male sperma absorbed by her organs serve for constructive processes. But erethism of any kind, in both male and female, represents a katabolic crisis. ”

“ By mental erethism or, as it is generally called, or rather misnamed, mental masturbation, is understood the filling of the phantasy with lascivious pictures. The dreamers give themselves up to sensual thoughts, allowing the mind to dwell constantly on sexual ideas, or erotic subjects of connubial enjoyments, conjuring before the unruly imagination extravagant and voluptuous visions and bawdry portrayals. The mind is fixed on images of individuals of the other sex, all in lustful posi173tions, on pictures of the nude and of their genitals and of couples in actione coeundi. ”

“ It is comprehensible, that with the lower- ing of the intelligence and the deadening of the sensibility the two most powerful means fail for resistance against the passions, where- in the degree of virtue is recognized by the understanding and estimated by the sensibility.
To theee two factors, which constitute the dominant note of the general character of the feeble-minded, there comes further in addition increased sensuality, morbidly exaggerated
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erethism, under whose influence the subject sometimes becomes guilty of a whole series of criminal acts. ”

“ To-day we are far beyond the sexual conditions which, as shown in the sodomitic worship of the gods, in the life of the people, and in the laws and religious practices, existed among the ancient Greeks,—to say nothing of the worship of Phallus and Priapus among the Athenians and Babylonians, of the bacchanals of ancient Rome, and the prominent place prostitutes took among these peoples. In the slow and often imperceptible progress which human morality makes there are variations or fluctuations, just as in the individual sexuality manifests an ebb and flow. ”

“ In less irritable individuals, the sexual act consists of manustupration by the loved person, or mutual onanism, or imitation of coitus between the thighs. In urnings morally perverse and potent, quoad erectionem, the sexual desire is satisfied by pederasty,—an act, however, which is repugnant to perverted individuals that are not defective morally, much in the same way as it is to normal men. ”

“ Such are the everlasting betrothals with Christ, the Virgin Mary, with God or with the Holy Spirit, betrothals in which the venereal orgasm is combined with imaginary coitus and masturbation, followed by imaginary pregnancy and childbirth. These symptoms give us a clear indication of the relation which exists between eroticism and religious exaltation. The French alienists [349] have even designated them by the characteristic term of "erotico-religious delirium." A single visit to the female division of a lunatic asylum is often sufficient to satisfy the visitor. ”

“ Is it not in the nature of vulgar souls always to call an enemy evil? And should we call Eros an enemy? The sexual feelings have that in common with those of pity and worship that one being gratifies another by his own enjoyment—we do not too often meet with such a benevolent arrangement in nature. And we actually revile it and spoil it by an evil conscience! ”

“ We meet this fearful instinct, in many individuals, both heterosexual and homosexual. The sentiment put vice-versa—blood-lust breeding sex-lust—is met often. This fact enters into many assassinations and mysterious murders. Thus acts the passion well-known in sexual parlance as 'sadism,' a word derived from the famous French eroto-maniac, the Marquis de Sade, whose instincts were particularly of the kind. The maniacal instinct to dismember and to disfigure the body of some victim, either before or after sexual use of it, is not at all rare, either in heterosexual or homosexual erotism. ”

“ It accords with the nature of masculinity and femininity that the control of the woman’s erotism, if it be a control through expression, is the control exercised over it by the man. Any control she may obtain over it cannot but be the control by repression. In other words no woman has any control over her own erotism except the ability to refuse to express it, and even that she may lose if she meets the right man. And no control is exercised over her erotism except by her true mate, if she is thus developed by him. ”

“ It is the very emblem of generation, and everywhere men have contemplated it with a mixture of reverence and shuddering awe that has sometimes, even among civilized peoples, amounted to horror and disgust. Its image is worn as an amulet to ward off evil and invoked as a charm to call forth blessing. The sexual organs were once the most sacred object on which a man could place his hands to swear an inviolate oath, just as now he takes up the Testament. Even in the traditions of the great classic civilization which we inherit the penis is fascinus, the symbol of all fascination. ”

“ A normally built man, of high culture and moral sense, was affected with complete sexual anæsthesia since birth. He occasionally had nocturnal emissions, and also matutinal erections, but no erotic images. When he arrived at mature age he had no idea of sexual intercourse, and was completely indifferent to everything concerning sexuality. ”

“ In cases of completely-developed contrary sexuality, hetero-sexual love is looked upon as a thing absolutely incomprehensible; sexual intercourse. with a person of the opposite sex is unthinkable, impossible. Such an attempt brings on the inhibitory concept of disgust or even horror, which makes erection impossible. Only two of my transitional cases to the third category were able, with the help of their imagination, by thinking of themselves as men with reference to the woman, to have cohabitation ”

“ Thus understood in its widest sense, it may be said that every sexual perversion, even homosexuality, 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 assumed 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 relationships, that they cannot be adequately discussed merely as forms of erotic symbolism. ”

“ In the conflict that follows, sexuality becomes mixed up with erotism, the soul of the child is bewildered, a definite outcome is delayed and meanwhile the child’s soul is filled with anxiety and doubt. ”

“ The average homosexual applies his erotism to male friendships and his sexuality he places in the service of heterosexual love; the progress of culture consists therein that heterosexual love is also gradually sublimated, that is, turned more and more into erotism. The homosexual, for instance, turns his erotism towards women, and applies his sexuality in his relation with men. But at times he may turn his whole erotism into the homosexual channel and suppress his whole sexuality. ”

“ The psychical stimulus may also consist of reminiscences. In this way the memory of an attractive woman may be just as effective in causing erection as if she were actually visible at the moment; reading erotic literature may have the same result. When the sexual impulse is perverted, the ideas causing erection will naturally be themselves of a perverse character. Thus, in the homosexual male, erection occurs at the sight or remembrance of a man; in the fetichist, the idea of the fetich is operative—in the case of the body-linen fetichist, for instance, the idea of articles of underclothing. ”

“ In the present division of the world of thought and the imposing opposition to ecclesiastical teaching, that simple faith must be, and is, deeply affected; and erotism gains proportionately in power and stability. ”

“ The urning transfers his erotism to men and his sexuality is roused in relation with women only, but the latter is soon turned into disgust. Or the urlind loves spiritually only women and finds all men repulsive, unbearable and disgusting. ”

“ I insist here on the economic element in our sexual morality, because that is the element which has given it a kind of stability and become established in law. But if we take a wider view of our sexual morality, we cannot ignore the ancient element of asceticism, which has given religious passion and sanction to it. Our sexual morality is thus, in reality, a bastard born of the union of property-morality with primitive ascetic morality, neither in true relationship to the vital facts of the sexual life. ”

“ We find in the long list of our present social problems that the sexual question occupies by no means the last place. It agitates men and women who would shake the foundations of sexual morality, and throw off the burden of moral shame which past centuries have heaped upon Eros. ”

“ But it seems sufficiently clear that the practical observations of skilled and experienced observers agree in attributing to persons of erotic type certain general characteristics which accord with those negative and positive standards we may frame on the basis of castration, of puberty, and of detumescence. ”

“ If the training of the individual has not been such as to render conscious the manifestation of the sex desire, it then does not appear as a tumescence in the genital region, in many cases, but as a swelling or a pain, or a hardness somewhere else, or as an emotion of disappointment, disgust or hate. Some deeply religious people seem to prefer these emotions, in spite of their destructive nature, to the constructive emotions of truly erotic love. ”

“ That the fathers of Israel were quick to perceive the tortuous ramifications of this vice is proved by a passage in Deuteronomy, chap. 22, verse 5: “the woman shall not wear that which pertaineth to a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abominations unto the Lord thy God.” Here we have the first regulation against fetishism and the perverted tendencies of gynandry and androgeny. Inasmuch as our concern with this subject has to do with the Roman world alone, a lengthy discussion of the early manifestations of this vice would be out of place here ”

“ In placing more repression on hers than on his, he has not, however, given anywhere near a full expression to his own erotic instincts. Because of the dominance of egoistic-social impulses in modern civilization his erotism does not permit the expression of such fundamental strata of his unconscious as are stirred in woman, whose more flexible erotism is aroused to a pitch that he finds it difficult because of his egoistic-social interests to ascend. ”

“ In blunt language he loves himself more than his wife. He may love the results she produces in his feelings. What he needs is to learn how to love more, to be more passionate, to go deeper into the nature of erotism, into the study of the woman, his wife, and her individuality, particularly her unconscious reactions to him.
The thought, “I can control the most elusive thing in the universe—a woman’s erotism,” is the most triumphant thought that can occur to a man, except possibly the thought, “And I know how to continue to control it.” ”

“ We live in a world in which, as we nowadays begin to realise, we find two antagonistic streams of traditional platitude concerning the question of sexual purity, both flowing from the far past.
The people who embody one of these streams of tradition, basing themselves on old-fashioned physiology, assume, though they may not always assert, that the sexual products are excretions, to be dealt with summarily like other excretions. That is an ancient view and it was accepted by such wise philosophers of old times as Montaigne and Sir Thomas More. ”