Sexual content

“ 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. ”

“ The more serious periodicals are to-day often inclined to devote a good deal of space to many sexual occurrences; they even err in transforming many non-sexual matters into sexual ones, giving them a superfluous erotic background. ”

“ With this end in view the sexual life of woman is used as the fulcrum of the lever, and is withdrawn from the twilight into the open light of day, or indeed too often into a dazzling and altogether false illumination. ”

“ Girls of a passionate temperament, those also who from early childhood have been accustomed to mix much with young persons of the opposite sex, and those, finally, in whom from conversation on the subject with female friends or from the perusal of erotic literature, sexual enlightenment has occurred at an early age, experience the awakening of the sexual impulse earlier and with greater force, than phlegmatic girls, than those who have grown up apart from boys, and than those who have been strictly and carefully brought up. ”

“ Knowledge of sexual matters gives rise to the tendency of picturing erotic situations and relations, impelled by the pleasurable emotion of placing the mother, or the subject of the greatest sexual curiosity, in the situation of secret unfaithfulness and clandestine love affairs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In a treatment of the relation between art and sexual life the facts must necessarily be classified under two different headings, namely, the influence of artistic activity upon sexual selection and the importance of erotic motives in works of art. ”

“ At another point, also, it may be remarked, the repulsion between the sexes and the restraints on intercourse may be associated with weak sexual impulse. It is not improbable that a certain horror of the sexual organs may be a natural feeling which is extinguished in the intoxication of desire, yet still has a physiological basis which renders the sexual organs—disguised and minimized by convention and by artistic representation—more or less disgusting in the absence of erotic emotion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In normal girls, according to the same author, erotic dreams and similar occurrences are entirely wanting, and specific sexual sensations therefore remain absolutely unknown to them; hence it follows that the sexual impulse cannot, properly speaking, arise in such individuals, and in so far as they experience any desire for sexual intercourse it can only take the form of a craving for some enjoyment, the nature of which is entirely unknown. ”

“ In many hysterical and psychically abnormal women, auto-erotic phenomena, and sexual phenomena generally, are highly pleasurable, though such persons may be quite innocent of any knowledge of the erotic character of the experience. ”

“ We have now examined several very various and yet very typical manifestations in all of which it is not difficult to see how, in some strange and eccentric form—on a basis of association through resemblance or contiguity or both combined—there arises a definite mimicry of the normal sexual act together with the normal emotions which accompany that act. It has become clear in what sense we are justified in recognizing erotic symbolism. ”

“ THE PLAY-FUNCTION OF SEX
When we hear the sexual functions spoken of we commonly understand the performance of an act which normally tends to the propagation of the race. When we see the question of sexual abstinence discussed, when the desirability of sexual gratification is asserted or denied, when the idea arises of the erotic rights and needs of woman, it is always the same act with its physical results that is chiefly in mind. Such a conception is quite adequate for practical working purposes in the social world. ”

“ The art of love certainly includes such primary facts of sexual hygiene, but it involves also the whole erotic discipline of marriage, and that is why its significance is so great, for the welfare and happiness of the individual, for the stability of sexual unions, and indirectly for the race, since the art of love is ultimately the art of attaining the right conditions for procreation. ”

“ The discussion of the sexual life of woman, which for many centuries was concealed by a thick veil from the eyes of the profane, or was viewed only through the frosted glass of poetical metaphor, has in recent times assumed a quite revolting character. ”

“ He had shown, where we had failed, that erotic activity of some sort is universal, that the earlier and more vigorously such activities are commenced, the more potent and sexually capable its practitioners become—that use, not restraint (as the "pure" have decreed) , develops the nerves, capillaries and muscles of the sexual organs precisely as it does those of other organs and that what we call sins and perversions are as ubiquitous as what we call normal sex acts. ”

“ And in the second place, you have spoken too exclusively of Lust, as if it were the normal condition of sexual feeling, and the only one properly to be called sexual. But the great relation of the sexes is Love, not Lust ”

“ Artistic and literary activities may be mentioned as particular forms of sublimation in which the sexual impulses often play a powerful determining rôle. The sexual motive is unquestionably the principal determiner in these important fields. The artistic conception is realized if the interest is turned from the genital zone to the form of the body as a whole ”

“ It is well known that not a few women experience powerful and uncontrolled sensual inclinations, just like those of men. On the other hand, we must insist that quite a large number of women possess the so-called naturae frigidae, and have no sensual inclination to sexual intercourse, to which they are either indifferent, or in some cases strongly averse, even regarding it with horror. ”

“ This love soon becomes tinged with a very strong erotic feeling connected with the little one’s growing sensuality, which, as we have seen, is centered on her clitoris.
Now, it is necessary for humans to love and to have erotic feelings centered on others. But clearly, if this early love situation did not change at some point, the little girl would grow up to have women as her erotic centers of interest. Nature intends no such end result. She intends these erotic feelings to become ultimately very much man-centered. ”

“ 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 artistic and realistic representations of erotic sexual scenes, so widespread at the present day, are much more capable of exciting the sexual appetite than the crude and unnatural pictures of former days, when, however, erotic objects of art generally belonged to a few rich persons or to museums. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The wise adaptation of these regulations requires, however, a full understanding of the mental and physical processes, an exact recognition of the bodily states and intellectual sensibilities, of woman regarded as a sexual being. ”

“ The sexual side of life seems, in fact, be they sane or insane, to have undergone complete atrophy. They suffer from simple melancholia with stupor, or their insanity takes a religious turn, but very rarely indeed has it an erotic character. ”

“ The so-called innocence, or naïve ignorance, of an adolescent possesses quite a peculiar charm of attraction for libertines of both sexes, who find a refined erotic pleasure, a unique relish, in the seduction of the innocent, in the role of "initiator in the sexual art." ”

“ Not only, therefore, is the apparatus of sexual excitement in women more complex than in men, but—in part, possibly as a result of this greater complexity—it much more frequently requires to be actively aroused. ”

“ A quarrelsome temper, coldness and repulsion on the part of a woman cool the desires of the man, while an ardent sexual desire on the part of the woman, her love and tenderness, tend to increase and maintain them. We are dealing here with purely animal sexual instinct, and we may state that the sexual appetite of woman generally excites strongly that of man, and considerably increases his pleasure during coitus. ”

“ Such unnatural stimulation of the female is not infrequently practiced by the male—by the lover and even by the husband—it may be because he himself derives pleasure from such perverted practices, and wishes to obtain sexual gratification without the risk of impregnation, or because he is himself incompetent for normal complete intercourse. ”

“ Photography and all the perfected methods of reproduction of pictures, the increasing means of travel which facilitate clandestine sexual relations, the industrial art which ornaments our apartments, the increasing luxury and comfort of dwellings, beds, etc., are, at the present day, so many factors in the science of erotic voluptuousness. Prostitution itself has become adapted to all the pathological excrescences of vice. In a word, the artificial culture of the human sexual appetite has given rise to a veritable high school of debauchery. ”

“ If you emphasize the sexual act as the central factor, you might say that everything is sexual which seeks to obtain sensual excitement from the body and especially from the sexual organs of the opposite sex, and which aims toward the union of the genitals and the performance of the sexual act. ”

“ Sexual activity is so closely intertwined with the other organic activities, erotic exuberance is so much a flower which is rooted in the whole organism, that the blow which crushes it may strike down the whole man. ”

“ But a pattern of sexual behaviour, a true love pattern, even if it could not be final should have at least enough elasticity to make the changes in it a gradual transition. No sensational innovations can ever hope to be adopted overnight with the approval of society at large. In fact, conventions in other spheres than those of love are made, and have been made gradually for centuries. But it is a curious fact that the conventionalities which concern the expression of the erotic impulse are those not of yesterday but of many hundreds of years ago. ”

“ In writings exhibiting but little good taste, though all the more temperament, they emphasize again and again one side only of the sexual life, to wit, the sexual impulse, the force of which is intentionally exaggerated to a high degree, so that it is described as a mighty current of passion, which may with great pains be held in check for a season, but must ultimately break loose, and with devastating rage must overwhelm everything which has hitherto been regarded as discipline and good morals. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A peculiarity of the sexual sentiments of woman is an ill-defined pathological phenomenon with normal sensations, a phenomenon which in man, on the contrary, forms a very marked contrast with the latter; I refer to the homosexual appetite, in which the object is an individual of the same sex. Normally, the adult man produces on another man an absolutely repulsive effect from the sexual point of view ”

“ The good effects of sexual intercourse depend upon its adequacy to the feelings, upon the absence of any exhausting imaginative activity, and upon the absence also of artificial bodily stimulation. But artificial stimuli and exhausting imaginative activity are often associated with coitus also, in cases in which the stimulus evoked by the personality of the sexual partner is inadequate. ”

“ When, in the enormously increased sexual resistance of the present day, women emphasize the secondary signs of sex and their erotic charm by specially designed clothing, that is a phenomenon which belongs in the same general scheme for the heightening of allurement. ”

“ It may seem a venturesome advice to render, yet I can but urge the natural use of the sexual organs when there is a strong erotic excitement, following a long period of continence, when this desire is not a morbid one; which is likely to be the case only in the depraved, after long abuses. ”