Sexual excess

“ I saw her several years afterwards with her husband, happy and flourishing.
I have mentioned this case to show that, even in women, sexual excess does not necessarily destroy the character, the sentiments of modesty, nor the will. It all depends on their cause. If there is congenital weakness of character, the evil is irreparable; but if it is only due to external forces which can be eliminated in time, its effect may often be permanently suppressed. Some female inebriates are sexually cold and repulse men ”

“ Young and healthy individuals recuperate rapidly after excesses of brief duration, as is often seen in young married pairs. Sickly and elderly persons, on the other hand, are much more severely affected by sexual excess, and recover therefrom but slowly if at all. Long continued sexual excesses ultimately wear out even the strongest.”
Intercourse effected by force, or with a girl of immature age, is distinguished as rape, a punishable offence both in Germany and in Austria. ”

“ Excessive sexual indulgence is infinitely more harmful than too little. A body, misused by excess, will go to pieces, even without venereal diseases. Impotence, barrenness, spinal affections, insanity, at least [Pg 165] intellectual weakness, and many other diseases, are the usual consequences. Temperance is as necessary in sexual intercourse as in eating and drinking, and all other human wants. ”

“ If, therefore, we admit on the one hand that the sexual excesses of the female sex are especially grafted on hereditary disposition of character, or are primarily due to strong appetites, we are obliged on the other hand to recognize that the great role played by sexuality in the brain of woman renders it more difficult for her than for man to return to better ways when she has once prostituted herself, or when she has surrendered in any way to sexual licentiousness, even when her original quality was not bad. ”

“ Everything that tends to exhaust the vital resources of the body disposes it to nervous disorders. Sexual excesses, therefore, contribute a large share to the debilitating influences of civilized life. ”

“ The patients of this class have always been normal in their sex-life. Suddenly, one day, they find themselves impotent. The cause of this kind of impotence is, in the majority of cases, sexual excesses, and four different kinds of excesses may be taken into consideration, excesses in copulation, in masturbation, in mental erethism, or commonly called day-dreaming, and finally excesses in tactile eroticism, or the common sexual dalliance or caresses of young lovers. ”

“ Sexual excesses in the country are more conformable to nature. Apart from marriage, we meet with concubinage, infidelity, and sometimes prostitution, but these excesses are never widely spread in small places where every one knows each other. ”

“ Not merely does a woman entertain the disturbing thought that the critical age has begun, bringing in its train certain dreaded dangers to her health and even her life, but she is further depressed by the consciousness that she is about to lose her feminine attractions, and to decline in sexual esteem, and that her reproductive capacity is now to be extinguished. ”

“ On the other hand, an ever-larger proportion of girls belonging to the “middle and upper classes,” abstaining alike from the good and the evil results of marriage, falls under the yoke of sexual impulses denied satisfaction or gratified by abnormal means, and suffers in consequence both physically and mentally. ”

“ Most of the successful novels deal with the so-called sex problem, our plays are to a great extent sex problem plays and our newspapers are full of sex crimes and sexual divagations of many kinds. This acts as a strong incitement to sexuality and represents exactly the opposite of what nature intended in the matter. As a consequence, all the tendencies to over-solicitude with regard to sexual affections and all that instability of mind and over-reaction to all forms of irritation that comes in the midst of sexual excitation are noted. ”

“ The delicate brain, which is being molded, with the other organs of the body, receives its cast largely from those mental and nervous sensations and actions of the mother which are the most intense. One of the most certain effects of sexual indulgence at this time is to develop abnormally the sexual instinct in the child. Here is the key to the origin of much of the sexual precocity and depravity which curse humanity. Sensuality is born in the souls of a large share of the rising generation. What wonder that prostitution flourishes in spite of Christianity and civil law? ”

“ The man who, for some reason or another, cannot obtain normal coitus should content himself with nocturnal emissions, and the woman with voluptuous dreams, and should both abstain from active and voluntary excitations. For my part, I consider prostitution, or "love" which is bought, as a variety of compensatory masturbation, and not as normal copulation. Coitus with a prostitute, generally infected with venereal disease, who receives new clients continually, has as little affinity with love as with the normal object of the sexual appetite—reproduction ”

“ Their erotic needs, which could not be gratified in normal fashion, led to this sexual perversion—a tendency observable especially in persons with neuropathic predisposition, or with a liability to hysteria or to epilepsy. Sometimes such girls, even before puberty, show an inclination to wear boys’ clothes, to avoid all feminine manual occupations, and to examine and to handle the genital organs of their playmates. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Unfortunately there are a variety of morbid conditions to which the female is liable, so that sexual desires arise in spite of every effort to keep aloof from them—even though there is not the slightest guilt in mental or bodily transgression. These are owing to disordered conditions of the sexual system, just as other disorderly desires arise, and are often inherited—remember this all parents!—or they may be caused by some morbific influences, as are other diseased conditions of the body. ”

“ It is only in cases in which the female genital organs are wanting, wholly or to a considerable extent, or in which there are important cerebral disturbances or states of mental degeneration, that the sexual impulse is wanting. ”

“ 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. ”

“ More particularly in such circumstances are evil effects on the nervous system likely to ensue, since we have a combination of excessively prolonged and frequent sexual intercourse, and of interference with complete sexual gratification. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In natural or savage man, as well as in animals, the boy then makes attempts at coitus and soon attains his object, for, in the state of nature, man marries as soon as puberty is attained.
Nocturnal Emissions.—In civilized man such difficulties are opposed to marriage, that he replaces it by prostitution, or by more or less unnatural means, as soon as his sexual appetite becomes strong. ”

“ Any stimuli which cause an unpleasant reaction, such as obnoxious odors, a disagreeable tone of voice, an ugly feature of the face or figure, an awkward appearance, bad taste in dress, etc., are apt to adversely affect eroticism. Therefore, when one of the opposite sex by any of these means arouses disgust, the anti-fetich paralyzes the sexual appetite, and even a symbol of the objectionable object may cool love. ”

“ Such competent studies as have been made do conclude that so complex and numerous are the causes of sexual vice that it is impossible to assert with any assurance that 'obscenity' represents a ponderable causal factor in sexually deviant behavior. ”

“ The second is the fact that motherhood calls for tremendous psychological and sometimes physical sacrifices; it means that a woman has to reverse the natural law of self-preservation and put her children’s welfare ahead of her own. 105 This is deeply frightening to some women and, unless they are properly educated, can cause them to fear their feminine sexual impulses to the point where they are unable to enjoy love-making.
The third reason is that women have, in effect, two organs of gratification, the clitoris and the vagina. ”

“ From the time of puberty up to the time of marriage the growing woman is under the influence of the now awakened sexual impulse, which experiences ever-renewed stimulation. A sedentary mode of life, unsuitable nutriment, and the early enjoyment of alcoholic beverages, exhibit their inevitable result in the frequency with which, in this epoch of the sexual life, chlorotic blood-changes, neurasthenic conditions, and diverse symptoms of irritation of the genital organs, make their appearance. ”

“ Not, indeed, that it is an infallible means, but none the less the effects are often striking, as I have frequently had occasion to observe, both in young women so affected entering upon marriage for the first time, and also in young widows who have remarried. Especially is this true of women in whom the sexual impulse is exceedingly powerful, and even pathologically increased to the extent of marked sexual hyperæsthesia; likewise also in women whose social circumstances and manner of life induce increased sexual appetite. ”

“ Of the second, I dare affirm that if the men and women in America should stop whatever they are doing for an evening and read this book, there would be less harmful imagination as a result than from the occupations which its reading would replace. Of all the causes of sexual disorder, the reading of scientific books by reputable men is surely the least! The third--that is, the esthetic--repulsion toward publicity in respect to the natural history of sex, I will not pretend to judge. ”

“ Shameless prostitution may result, even in married women. In cases of a milder type, the sexual impulse is exhibited in the form of onanism, nude perambulations about the room, wearing of male attire, etc. In cases of hysterical mental disorder, the morbidly excited sexual life may manifest itself in the form of maniacal jealousy, baseless complaints against men of indecent assault, hallucinations of coitus, etc. Sometimes there may be frigidity, with lack of sexual pleasure, commonly due to genital anæsthesia. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Neurologists have observed women on whom continence was forced either during marriage or after its dissolution, who thereupon fell into a state of severe nervous exhaustion or nervous excitement, or suffered from threatening or even actually developed psychoses. That sexual abstinence is “absolutely harmless,” as moralists and many physicians would so gladly believe, appears to Erb a quite unwarrantable assumption.
“In the processes of reproduction,” continues Erb in his discussion of this subject, “woman is the principal sufferer. ”

“ Compared with the sacrifices made by woman, the temporary continence which is all that is demanded from man will be admitted to be a small matter! It is fortunate that as a rule the young woman who has never come into intimate contact with the male, appears to be endowed by nature with a relatively weak sexual impulse! This unequal and unjust distribution of the male and female rôles on the part of nature may be regretted, but it cannot be altered. ”

“ When familiarity with the naked body of the other sex is gained openly and with no consciousness of indecorum, in the course of work and of play, in exercise or gymnastics, in running or in bathing, from a child's earliest years, no unwholesome results accompany the knowledge of the essential facts of physical conformation thus naturally acquired. The prurience and prudery which have poisoned sexual life in the past are alike rendered impossible. ”

“ It is well known that terror or pain in either sex will temporarily destroy all physical pleasure. In married life, injury from childbirth, or brutal or awkward conjugal approaches, may cause unavoidable shrinking from sexual congress, often wrongly attributed to absence of sexual passion. ”