Sexual attraction

“ In love we project what is good in us, and so having created a good and an evil image we are more able to compare and value them.
Lovers seek their own souls in the loved ones, and so love is free from the limits I described in the first part of this book, not being bound down by the conditions of merely sexual attraction. In spite of their real opposition, there is an analogy between erotics and sexuality. ”

“ 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 ”

“ After mature consideration, a man and a woman are led by sexual attraction, combined with harmony of character, to form a union in which they stimulate each other to social work, commencing this work with their mutual education and that of their children. ”

“ A more than mere neutralizing influence, a positively idealizing influence of the sexual focus on the excretory processes adjoining it, may take place in the lover's mind without the normal variations of sexual attraction being over-passed, and even without the creation of an excretory fetichism. ”

“ As sexual love has its origin in the fact that the sexual characters, which biologically are favourable to the race, are the most attractive, this general attraction constantly operates side by side with the individual; and it operates most strongly precisely in that kind of love which is rightly called “blind passion,” the kind which thus brings together to their misfortune conflicting contradictions. ”

“ The physical thrill is not of it, no matter how ardent may the friendship be. Logically and clearly, friendship is divorced from the sexual attraction so inseparable from love, and from love's great master-principle of attraction. Our intense admiration of the mere beauty of a man or woman, that is to say of what seems to us their beauty, is not determining in friendship. Hence friendship can never be as vivid and masterful a power, not to say passion, as love. The latter ever remains the most vivid, mysterious and elementary emotion of the human race. ”

“ Sexual love is the passion which unites the sexes. The stimulating impressions produced by health, youth, and beauty, and ornaments and other artificial means of attraction, are all elements of this feeling. The antipathy to sexual intercourse with individuals of another species, and the horror of incest, belong to the same phenomenon. ”

“ In a somewhat less abnormal form, erotic symbolism probably shows itself in its simplest shape in the tendency to idealize unbeautiful peculiarities in a beloved person, so that such peculiarities are ever afterward almost or quite essential in order to arouse sexual attraction. ”

“ When the genital centres have been fully developed, the individual gets a conscious realization of its sexual power, and the psychological reactions of animal passion manifest themselves in the irresistible desire for intimacy with an individual of the opposite sex. ”

“ To those who study the people closely in regard to sex matters, I can say truthfully that sexual excitement has fallen fifty per cent., and that obscene pictures and stories have no attraction for the people. ”

“ But their will is unknown to the lovers themselves. Their attraction appears to be as mysterious as the attraction of the two poles of the magnet, which no scientist has yet been able to elucidate. This mysterious erotic attraction is healthy and invigorating. While so attracted, the sexual glands increase the secretion of the testines or ovarines, and these chemical products have a tonic effect and make the individual happy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whatever the real benefits, and there is no occasion for questioning them, of the sexual order thus established, it becomes clear that in certain important respects it had an unnatural and repressive influence on the erotic aspect of woman’s sexual life. ”

“ How intoxicating indeed, how penetrating—like a most precious wine—is that love which is the sexual transformed by the magic of the will into the emotional and spiritual! And what a loss on the merest grounds of prudence and the economy of pleasure is its unbridled waste along physical channels! So nothing is so much to be dreaded between lovers as just this—the vulgarisation of love—and this is the rock upon which marriage so often splits. ”

“ These comparatively simple curves represent what I would postulate as the normal spontaneous up-welling of natural desire in woman. These are the foundations on which the edifice of the physical expression of love may be built. It must not be forgotten, however, that, particularly in modern luxurious life, there are innumerable excitements which may stimulate sexual feeling, just as there are many factors in our life which tend to inhibit or retard it. ”

“ Nevertheless the moment the other love and all that goes with it is realised the natural sexual love has to fall into a secondary place—the lover must stand on his feet and not on his head—or else the most dire confusions ensue, and torments æonian. ”

“ But because of the more or less clear consciousness that sexual intercourse is really what is most desired in love, and because of the lack of courage openly to admit it, attempts are made to justify it from a social standpoint. ”

“ 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 appear, as this discussion proceeds, that the sexual problems of today are conditioned by the inhibitions placed by modern economic conditions upon the natural and instinctive expression of the erotic impulse. In brief, both men and women talk [18] sex and particularly women, in a certain extensive class of society, for the real though disguised purpose of exciting themselves sexually. ”

“ Thus the seeker of love, too, though in a restricted sense, may be regarded as a metaphysical erotic, for he loathes sexuality—his portion—and yearns for a higher form of love. He shares this attitude with the slave of love, who is also a sensualist and a would-be lover. The slave of love imitates the attitude of the worshipper, but he infallibly sinks into the sexual sphere. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The chapter on love is infinite, and its relations to the sexual appetite make it still more complex. We shall confine ourselves to indicating two more of its irradiations, peculiar to each sex, but having for each a physionomy corresponding to its own mentality. ”

“ No act can be quite so intimate as the sexual embrace. ”

“ The modest and coy reluctance characteristic alike of the maiden and of the wife, promote an increase of sexual excitement in the opposite sex, and this not only in a man of purely sensual character, whose vanity is stimulated by his being the chosen one among many—a circumstance which, in view of the great dependence of the sexual act upon psychical processes and imaginative influences, is by no means devoid of importance. ”

“ And this idea could be stimulated by the fact that the position is the familiar one that animals take. Or perhaps the fact that the partners are not face to face may remove some of 253 the personal factor from the sexual embrace, giving it a more primordial and impersonal character. This may be the reason men may find it more enjoyable than women, their sexual natures being, as we have seen, somewhat more deeply rooted in their biology than the woman’s sexual nature. ”

“ Until I was past 16 years my desire was simply for coitus, girls and women attracted me only as affording the means of gratifying this desire; but when I was nearly 17 I began to regard girls as beautiful objects, apart from this, and to desire their love and companionship. At the same time it dawned upon me that life held much of joy in the love of women and in domestic life—so henceforth I regarded them in a higher and purer light, and apart from sexual gratification. ”

“ To approach it is to approach excitement. So few people seem to be leading happy and healthy sexual lives that to mention the very word "sexual" is to set them stirring, to brighten the eye, lower the voice, and blanch or flush the cheek with a flavour of guilt. ”

“ Sexuality with its various manifestations has existed from the beginning; the ultimate object of sexual intercourse is pleasure; but here and there, and parallel with sexual pleasure, there have been, in varying degrees of intensity, instances of spiritual love. ”

“ Sexual activity, we see, is not merely a bald propagative act, nor, when propagation is put aside, is it merely the relief of distended vessels. It is something more even than the foundation of great social institutions. It is the function by which all the finer activities of the organism, physical and psychic, may be developed and satisfied. Nothing, it has been said, is so serious as lust—to use the beautiful term which has been degraded into the expression of the lowest forms of sensual pleasure—and we have now to add that nothing is so full of play as love. ”

“ Children exhibit the first case, adults often enough the second. It is generally known that children are frequently very early susceptible to sexual excitement, and show a desire for contact with others [Pg 332] as well as an enjoyment of it, without having the least suspicion of its meaning.” In the cases in which I have recorded lifting each other as indicating sex-love, it was unmistakably apparent that the lifting was not a trial of strength but an indulgence in the pleasures of bodily contact, as was also true of the scuffling. ”

“ Disharmonious because it cannot be too strongly insisted upon that the completely satisfactory realization of the sex act involves the participation of every side of human nature, spiritual and physical, and is the outcome of an intense desire for perfect unity with the beloved. Hence mere bodily satisfaction of sensuous desire must have a disharmonious and deteriorating effect, because it ignores a basal fact of man, namely spirit, and leaves that side of him starved and unsatisfied. And the same is true of all sexual aberrations and perversions. ”

“ It is entirely within a woman’s rights to transform herself into a member of the ‘third sex,’ the sex of the worker bee, of the neuter ant, if she finds therein her greatest pleasure. * * * Women exist in whom erotic feeling is totally atrophied; there are yet others who fail to find in intercourse with the modern man that soulful and deep erotic harmony which they rightly desire; and there are others still more numerous who desire love, but not maternity, which indeed they dread. ”

“ Thus we have two schools of thought, one attributing to woman an intense sexual impulse, even greater than in man, the other holding her sexually frigid by nature and erotic only by pretence or accident. ”

“ Woman's sexual nature, because of her biological rôle, is normally less dominated by a powerful urge that seeks specific expression, less centered upon the immediate goal of concrete sexual experience. ”

“ The wife who wishes to preserve her psychical purity and moral chastity, which is not only possible in marriage but also greatly to be desired, must not concern herself much with the technique of the sexual life, but must give herself up to sexual enjoyment only as the result of a delicate and immediate bodily and mental desire. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Gradually she finds herself allowing her new tenderness and concern for her husband to become a part of the meaning of her sexual embrace. She sees and feels the pleasure her sexual thawing brings him, and this process becomes circular, his increased pleasure giving her more pleasure. And with his pleasure in mind she now seeks out more and more those things that please him, and her exploration leads inevitably to the discovery that what pleases him most, outside of his own sensations, is her pleasure. ”