Studies in the psychology of sex. Vol. III, Analysis of the sexual impulse : Love and pain / by Havelock Ellis.

  • Havelock Ellis
Date:
[1901], ©1901
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Studies in the psychology of sex. Vol. III, Analysis of the sexual impulse : Love and pain / by Havelock Ellis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    27/288 (page 11)
    In the study of auto-erotism in another volume of these Studies I have brought together some of the evidence showing that even in very young children spontaneous self-induced sexual excitement, with orgasm, may occur. Indeed, from an early age sexual differences pervade the whole nervous tissue. I may here quote the remarks of an experienced gynaecologist: I venture to think, Braxton Hicks said, that those of my hearers who have much attended to children will agree with me in saying that, almost from the cradle, a difference can be seen in manner, habits of mind, and in illness, requiring variations in their treatment. The change is certainly hastened and intensified at the time of puberty; but there is, even to an average observer, a clear difference between the sexes from early infancy, gradually becoming more marked up to pu- berty. That sexual feelings exist [it would be better to say 'may exist'] from earliest infancy is well known, and therefore this function does not depend upon puberty, though intensified by it. Hence, may we not con- clude that the progress toward development is not so abrupt as has been generally supposed? . . . The changes of puberty are all of them de- pendent on the primordial force which, gradually gathering in power, culminates in the perfection both of form and of the sexual system, primary and secondary. There appear to have been but few systematic observations on the persistence of the sexual impulse in women after the menopause. It is regarded as a fairly frequent phenomenon by Kisch, and also by Lowen- feld (Sexualleben und Nervenleiden, p. 29). In America Bloom (as quoted in Medical Standard, 1896), from an investigation of four hun- dred cases, found that in some cases the sexual impulse persisted to a very advanced age, and mentions a case of a woman of 70, twenty years past the menopause, who had been long a widow, but had recently married, and who declared that both desire and gratification were as great, if not greater, than before the menopause. Reference may finally be made to those cases in which the sexual impulse has developed notwithstanding the absence, verified or probable, of any sexual glands at all. In such cases sexual desire and sexual gratification are sometimes even stronger than normal. Colman has reported a case in which neither ovaries nor uterus could be detected, and the vagina was too small for coitus, but pleasurable intercourse took place by the rectum and sexual desire was at times so strong as to amount almost to nymphomania. Clara Barms has reported the case of a woman in whom there was congenital absence of uterus and ovaries, as proved subsequently by autopsy, but the