Human sexuality

“ Statistics of survival in the past world of limited available resources, of natural catastrophes, of disease, etc., cease to play any role in the illiterate sex encounters. Sexuality becomes a diversified human experience, subject to divisions, mediations, and definitely to the influence of the general dynamics of the world today. ”

“ In the first place, the normal phenomena give the key to the abnormal, and the majority of sexual perversions, including even those that are most repulsive, are but exaggerations of instincts and emotions that are germinal in normal human beings. In the second place, what is normal cannot be determined until the sexual life of a large number of healthy individuals is known, and until the limits of normal sexuality are known the physician is not in a position to lay down any reasonable rules of sexual hygiene. ”

“ We are learning slowly that sexually exhausted fathers and mothers do not parent superior children. This is causing thousands of thinking people and conscientious parents to inquire for the truth that will bring freedom from sensual slavery.{463}
Sexuality and sensuality.—Sexuality, or the sexual instinct, is one thing, and sensuality, or sexual perversion, is another. One is God-given and God-honored; the other is a human product resulting from bad heredity, a false education and a misuse of the sexual function. ”

“ Once conditions making literacy necessary are overruled by new conditions, sexuality undergoes corresponding changes. Basically, sexuality seems to return to immediateness, as it integrates many mediating elements. Sexuality unfolds in an unrestricted set of varieties, escaping some of its natural determination. In keeping with the shorter and shorter cycles of human activity, sexuality turns into an experience of transitory encounters. ”

“ Has any one made such a confidence to you as to his or her nature, without your returning your confidence for it?
Are you given to ardent friendships with persons of your own sex, which friendships are not tinged with the wish for sexual contact, or love of a bodily sort? Or do your warmer Intimacies seem all to tend to loves?—not stopping at the merely intellectual bond?
Does the sight of the nude human body—of others, or even of your own person, especially the sexual organs—excite you sexually? ”

“ Out of the fullness of knowledge she has gained by an amazingly sensitive sympathy she has there written the best account I have ever seen of how thwarted sex emotion can be sublimated to other ends, and made an immensely effective force for the progress of the race. In both men and women sexuality is just life force. ”

“ But as the brain and its faculties develop, powerfully aided indeed by the very difficulties of the sexual life, the impulse for sexual union has to traverse ever longer, slower, more painful paths, before it reaches—and sometimes it never reaches—its ultimate object. This means that sex gradually becomes intertwined with all the highest and subtlest human emotions and activities, with the refinements of social intercourse, with high adventure in every sphere, with art, with religion. ”

“ Erotic symbolism is therefore concerned with all that is least generic, least specific, all that is most intimately personal and individual, in sexual selection. It is the final point in which the decreasing circle of sexual attractiveness is fixed. In the widest and most abstract form sexual selection in man is merely human, and we are attracted to that which bears most fully the marks of humanity; in a less abstract form it is sexual, and we are attracted to that which most vigorously presents the secondary sexual characteristics ”

“ All that we can say in a general way concerning the complex entanglement of our sentiments and instincts is that, the most deeply rooted characters in human nature are at the same time, phylogenetically speaking, the most ancient.
Among the most profound instincts of sexual life, we find moral and intellectual incongruities. Along with excitement of the sexual appetite in the male by the odor of the female genital organs, or by the sight of erotic pictures, we find the most touching conjugal love, and life-long devotion of one conjoint for the other and for the children. ”

“ It will thus be seen that in the varieties of degradation of our sexual powers, as well as in their use and ennoblement, it is the predominance of the mental or spiritual element in our nature which is the characteristic fact of human sex. The inventions and abuses of lust, as well as the use and guidance of love, alike prove the striking and important distinction which exists between the sexual organization of man and that of the lower animals. ”

“ If all married{524} people were normal in their sex natures, unselfish love would reign in the homes and divorce courts would be largely a thing of the past.
Through universal ignorance of the true nature and functions of the God-given, God-honored and sacred sanctuary of reproduction, the youth, by mental and mechanical abuse of these functions, becomes more or less sensual. Sexuality is slowly transformed into sensuality and love into lust. ”

“ But one can help wondering if it is not true that, with the existence of the possibility of engaging in coitus at will, rather than at the bidding of instinct alone, there has also come a new and added function for the sex-natures that are capable of engaging in such before-unknown experiences? To a fair-minded person, such conclusion seems not only logical, but irresistible! That is in view of this conclusion, it naturally follows that sex in the human family is positively designed to fulfill a function that is entirely unknown to all other forms of animal life. ”

“ And now, taking a still further step, we may say that it has a spiritual value in relation to our whole conception of the sexual impulse. Our attitude towards the naked human body is the test of our attitude towards the instinct of sex. If our own and our fellows' bodies seem to us intrinsically shameful or disgusting, nothing will ever really ennoble or purify our conceptions of sexual love. Love craves the flesh, and if the flesh is shameful the lover must be shameful. ”

“ As already said, sexuality is associated with image models, and changing the structure of basic models, from image to symbolic, has produced strong perturbations in the approach to sex.
In the present technological implementation of humans, the dominant position of the man is evident. This is the source of the present crisis of sexuality. A woman, knowing that she is equal or, many times, even superior to the male partner, will have difficulties in implementing her sexual life. Due to this problem, the number of non-usual sexual behaviour is high. ”

“ However the same paths through which sexual disturbances encroach upon the other functions of the body must in health be supposed to serve another important function. It must be through these paths that the attraction of the sexual motive-powers to other than sexual aims, the sublimation of sexuality, is accomplished. ”

“ The inclusion of the following factors in our concept "sexual" amply suffices for all practical purposes in ordinary life: the contrast between the sexes, the attainment of sexual excitement, the function of reproduction, the characteristic of an indecency that must be kept concealed. But this is no longer satisfactory to science. For through careful examinations, rendered possible only by the sacrifices and the unselfishness of the subjects, we have come in contact with groups of human beings whose sexual life deviates strikingly from the average. ”

“ While sex expression becomes more specialized in the higher animals, and more refined in human beings, unless debased in the latter by lustful degeneracy, its latent influence is nevertheless always in evidence. For instance, the child through the whole period of life is being prepared gradually by nature for the florescence which takes place at the adolescent stage and which normally culminates in the full sexual development of adulthood. ”

“ If we attach due value to this fact, we are bound to pronounce this dream to be full of meaning, for it reveals to the young man the necessity of facing his erotic conduct boldly from the view point of morality. Primitive races have in some respects extremely strict legislation concerning sexuality. This fact proves that sexual morality is a not-to-be-neglected factor in the soul's higher functions, but deserves to be taken fully into account. ”

“ We have further found that this æsthetic human ideal is modified, and very variously modified in different countries and even in the same country at different periods, by a tendency, prompted by a sexual impulse which is not necessarily in harmony with æsthetic cannons, to emphasize, or even to repress, one or other of the prominent secondary sexual characters of the body. ”

“ The normal woman has learned by education to hide her true sexual feelings and was forced by tradition to produce in a quite extraordinary way the impression that she herself is nearly non-sexual, and her sexuality is only a concession to the man. ”

“ What injuries may follow artificial development of the breasts?—Flabbiness, inability to nurse a child, tumors and cancers.
What effect upon the morals of men has the wearing of low-necked dresses by girls and married women?—All normal adolescent youths and{272} adults possess sexuality. Occasional consciousness of sexual desire is natural. These experiences simply indicate that we are in possession of creative energy. If we keep control of our thoughts about the opposite sex, this energy will be converted into physical strength, mental brilliancy and soul beauty. ”

“ In all this we can but observe the worship of the sexual; though obscure, yet every manifestation of human existence points to it. The good people of the earth profit by the grand and noble sexual unity in the marital existence, and by the pure, social relations, and chaste affections of the unmarried; [8] but these are but a small part of human society. The masses express their worship for the sexual by debauch, dissipation, vice and crime. ”

“ Such a definition excludes the normal sexual excitement aroused by the presence of a beloved person of the opposite sex; it also excludes the perverted sexuality associated with an attraction to a person of the same sex; it further excludes the manifold forms of erotic fetichism, in which the normal focus of sexual attraction is displaced, and voluptuous emotions are only aroused by some object—hair, shoes, garments, etc.—which, to the ordinary lover, are of subordinate—though still, indeed, considerable—importance. [176] The auto-erotic field remains extensive ”

“ He described the sexuality of the infantile period as being purely autoerotic in character, the sexual interests of the child being centered in its own body. From this stage the object of interest is gradually transferred to other individuals of the same sex, the normal attraction to the opposite sex being a final development of later years. ”

“ Homosexual men who have started in our times an energetic action against the legal limitations of their sexual activity are fond of representing themselves through theoretical spokesmen as evincing a sexual variation, which may be distinguished from the very beginning, as an intermediate stage of sex or as “a third sex.” ”

“ Owing to the oppositional relation existing between culture and the free development of sexuality, the results of which may be traced far into the formation of our life, the problem how the sexual life of the child evolves is of very little importance for the later life in the lower stages of culture and civilization, and of very great importance in the higher. ”

“ True hermaphroditism in man being established, the question arises whether lesser grades do not occur.... Remote evidence of bisexuality in the human subject may, perhaps, be afforded by the psychical phenomenon of sexual perversion and inversion. ”

“ Let us then first consider what Homosexuality is.
Homosexuality means sexual love for one of the same sex. Thus, if a male feels sexual desire for another male, or a female for another female, they are called sexually inverted or homosexual. ”

“ In addition to the imposition of these arbitrary standards of masculinity and femininity, society has forced upon its members conformity to a uniform and institutionalized type of sexual relationship. This institutionalized and inflexible type of sexual activity, which is the only expression of the sexual emotion meeting with social approval, not only makes no allowance for biological variations, but takes even less into account the vastly complex and exceedingly different conditionings of the emotional reactions of the individual sex life. ”

“ 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? ”

“ No one has yet attempted a complete history of inverted sexuality in all ages and in all races. This would be well worth doing. Materials, though not extremely plentiful, lie to hand in the religious books and codes of ancient nations, in mythology and poetry and literature, in narratives of travel, and the reports of observant explorers. ”

“ Essai sur l’instinct sexuel, “qui n’est qu’un essai, parce que la matière de son idée est immense, représente pourtant une ambition: on voudrait agrandir la psychologie générale de l’amour, la faire commencer au commencement même de l’activité mâle et femelle, situer la vie sexuelle de l’homme dans le plan unique de la sexualité universelle.” It is a book full of illustration, a vast collection of facts, and throws into another fermenting vat than that of language some sufficiently valuable ideas. ”

“ Practically the passion is a matter of universal experience; and speaking broadly and generally we may say it is a matter on which it is quite desirable that every adult at some time or other should have experience—actual and physical, as well as emotional. There may be exceptions; but, as said, the sex-instinct lies so deep and is so universal, that for the understanding of life—of one's own life, of that of others, and of human nature in general—as well as for the proper development of one's own capacities, such experience is almost indispensable. ”