Sex efficiency through exercises : special physical culture for women / by Th. H. van de Velde ; [photos, by E. Steinemann].

  • Velde, Theodoor H. van de (Theodoor Hendrik), 1873-1937.
Date:
1933, ©1932
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Sex efficiency through exercises : special physical culture for women / by Th. H. van de Velde ; [photos, by E. Steinemann]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    27/426 (page 5)
    at present, to avoid psychological and philosophical subtle- ties. It may, however, be confidently asserted that such mental and emotional inhibitions are not solely due to the influence and ideals of Christianity, as has often been maintained both by advocates and critics. Doubtless Nietzsche was partly, at least, justified in his denunciation of the poisoned cup that Christianity served to Eros—for many of the leading fathers of the Church denounced all sexual life as shame, sin and dirt. But we must also admit that any social order demands some degree of regulation of the sexual activity of its members as a necessary condition of stability, safety and even progress. Yet such necessary regulation and limitation directly contravene urges and impulses of elemental force, which either dominate or saturate emotional life from childhood. This implies psychic conflict, forcible expression or deflection or conscious dissimulation ; and the result is a profound dishonesty in all sexual matters. Such a state of mind fully explains the insincerity and inaccuracy of most of us in these matters, whether to ourselves, or—and especially—towards our fellow-men and women, still more in any sort of publicity. At the same time, so intricate a labyrinth is the human psyche, it is equally certain that some degree of modesty, shame or shyness in these matters has become fundamental and spontaneous, at least in the white races. Perhaps the most striking proofs of this innate and acquired modesty are the automatic convulsive movements with which most women who are losing consciousness—in certain morbid states, or under anesthetics or narcotics— endeavour to conceal their sexual organs. Then there is the opposite emotional pole, the conscious repeal of inhibition, which takes place in certain situations and between certain persons ; at its unwisest and unloveliest perhaps between certain married partners in the course of their daily or nightly toilettes, out of sheer laziness, apathy and gross lack of mutual consideration and individual self-respect. Sexual modesty in itself is concerned rather with the /mictions of the organs of sex than with the organs them- selves. Functional modesty is a common human