MCGILL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 2952«4 1934 STUDIES IN TUB Psychology of Sex BY HAVELOCK ELLIS HAVELOCK ELLIS’S STUDIES IN THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. {Complete in Seven Volumes .) TITLES I. The Evolution of Modesty, the Phe¬ nomena of Sexual Periodicity and Auto-erotism. II. Sexual Inversion. III. Analysis of the Sexual Impulse. IV. Sexual Selection in Man. V. Erotic Symbolism. The Mechanism of Detumescence. The Psychic State in Pregnancy. VI. Sex in Relation to Society. VII. Eonism and Other Supplementary Studies. Each volume is complete in itself. Sold in sets or single volumes. This is the only edition in English published by the author’s permission. STUDIES IN THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX VOLUME VII EONISM AND OTHER SUPPLEMENTARY STUDIES HAVELOCK ELLIS PHILADELPHIA F. A. DAVIS COMPANY, Publishers 1928 COPYRIGHT. 1928 BY F. A. DAVIS COMPANY PRINTED IN U. 6. A. PRESS OF F. A. DAVIS COMPANY PHILADELPHIA. PA. PREFACE This supplementary volume of Studies is made up of what Schopenhauer would have called paralipomena and parerga. That is to say, it consists, in part, of essays and fragments left over from the main volumes because deal¬ ing with subjects which had not yet assumed sufficient im¬ portance or taken clear and definite shape; and in still larger part of studies that are by-products of my investiga¬ tion, lying on the borderland of the field of sex, partly in and partly out of it, but suitable to discuss here because here we are able to attempt to determine their precise sexual aspects. To the first class belong notably the study of Eonism, as I term the anomaly which Hirschfeld inadequately named “Transvestism,” and the summary of observations of Klep- tolagnia, as I would term an anomaly which would form¬ erly have been ranged in the ancient and highly disputable group of Kleptomanias. To the second class belong most typically the studies of dreaming and of vesical psychology, subjects having fields of their own, which yet at times pass over neighboring frontiers of sex. It may seem that some of the lines of investigation here followed lead away from familiarly recognizable paths generally accepted as profitable. But as one of our great¬ est masters in the exploration of the living organism, William Harvey, wrote a few weeks before his death: “Nature is nowhere accustomed more openly to display her secret mysteries than when she shows traces of her work¬ ings apart from the beaten path.” That which is true of Nature in general is true of the impulse of sex in particular, and none of the explorations, however unfamiliar, recorded in this volume will be devoid of instruction. (v) vi PREFACE. I had proposed to include as an appendix to this volume the detailed life-history of a Russian correspondent com¬ municated to me in French. This lengthy narrative I re¬ gard as of much interest, both as presenting an intimate picture of social life in Russia before the Revolution and as illustrating various points of sexual psychology. It is not, however, essential to my work, and on grounds un¬ connected with its intrinsic interest it has been considered desirable to omit it from the English edition of these Studies. It is included in its original form in the French edition published by the Mercure de France, Etudes dc Psychologic Scxucllc (Vol. 6, pp. 101-208), to which I would refer those who may like to consult it. In now finally drawing together the last threads of Studies which have occupied so large a part of my life I wish to restore an acknowledgment which w r as made in the Preface to what is now' the first volume, when it was originally published in London in 1900 (1899), of “my in¬ debtedness for the assistance and sympathy which, here and always, I have received from my wife.” I removed that acknowdedgment from later editions because in the stormy period my work had to pass through in those days I feared that to some persons any association with it might not seem creditable. It w r as not by my wife's wish that I made the omission, for it was her pride to stand loyally and help¬ fully by my side in even the most dangerous situations. In now restoring this acknowdedgment I know with what satisfaction she would have accepted even so small a recog¬ nition of her comradeship in my life-w'ork. Havelock Ellis. CONTENTS PAGE Eonism . 1 II. The Doctrine of Erogenic Zones . Ill III. The History of Florrie and the Mechanism of Sexual Deviation . 121 IV. The Menstrual Curve of Sexual Impulse. 213 V. The Synthesis of Dreams: A Study of a Series of One Hundred Dreams . 237 VI. The Conception of Narcissism . 347 VII. Undinism . 376 VIII. Kleptolagnia . 477 IX. The History of Marriage .492 Index of Authors . 533 Index of Subjects . 537 (vii) I. EONISM. Many years ago, when exploring the phenomena of sexual inversion, I was puzzled by occasional cases I met with of people who took pleasure in behaving and dressing like the opposite sex and yet were not sexually inverted; that is, their sexual feelings were not directed towards persons of their own sex. Such cases had, indeed, often been noted, both among men and women, and it is on record that various prominent people, some of high ability, have shown this peculiarity and sometimes thereby greatly intrigued the curiosity alike of their contemporaries and of posterity. The Chevalier d’Eon is probably the most conspicuous of these historical personages. Charles-Genevieve, the Chevalier d’Eon de Beaumont, was the son of Louis d’Eon de Beaumont, who belonged to the petty nobility, and was director of the King’s demesnes in Burgundy. He was born in 1728 in the delightful Burgundian town of Tonnerre. A house in the main street, nearly opposite the railway station, is traditionally regarded as his birthplace, but a local antiquary has in recent years found reason to believe that he was born in a house of more aristocratic character (the former Hotel d’Uzes) which is the architectural gem of Tonnerre. He was short, slight, delicate in shape, and in early life not robust in health. As a child he was dressed as a girl, and he stated that he had worn the robe of the Sisterhood of the Virgin Mary until his seventh year. He was of nervous disposition but restless and adventurous, courageous and full of energy, even quarrelsome and irascible. He became one of the best swordsmen of his time and when nearly seventy he was more than a match for the English champion fencer. He was also an accomplished musician, and he accumulated a large library. (1) 2 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. Though sometimes lacking in judgment, he was of high intelligence and sagacity, and his face in old age, while finely and delicately moulded, is, in some of the portraits, powerful and intellectual rather than feminine. But “his virility was all in his brain.” He appears to have had no known sexual relationships either with women or men, notwithstand¬ ing various romantic legends which circulated concerning him, and there is (according to Telfer) no truth in the story of a liaison with the youthful Catherine Woronzoff, later Princess Dashkoff, although he was on friendly terms with many women, both before and after his outward transformation. He played an important part as a secret diplomatic agent of the French Government in various countries, especially England (where he attained a certain popularity and succeeded in being on good terms with the Government), and became a conspicuous figure in the international political world. With the accession of Louis XVI his fortunes declined. He had adopted feminine dress on his own initiative, and became commonly regarded as a woman, the result being that, on account of his prominent position, it would not later have been easy for him to resume masculine dress. He was still playing the part of a woman and occupied in little feminine avocations, regarded by all as really a woman, even by the English woman friend with whom he lived and the doctor who attended him in his fatal illness, when he died in London in 1810. The autopsy showed that he was in all essential physical respects a completely normal man. A quarter of a century earlier this discovery would have produced a public sensation. But in the storm of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars the large part played by the Chevalier d’Eon in European public affairs had been for¬ gotten ; he had sunk into oblivion and poverty, reduced to pawn his Cross of St. Louis and his jewels. Pettow regards the Chevalier d’Eon as a “pseudo-trans- vestist,” who merely used feminine garments to aid his secret diplomatic missions, and his biographers, ignorant of psycho¬ logical considerations, refer to his “masquerade.” But this EONISM. 3 theory will hardly work out. A man who “plays a part” during the greater part of his active life and continues to play it long after the active phase of his life is over, plays it, moreover, with such ability and success that no one suspects the “mas¬ querade,” is, we may be sure, fulfilling a deep demand of his own nature. He clearly had a constitutional predisposition for the life he adopted, aided by an almost asexual disposition, so that we might place him with the asexual group of transvests in Hirschfeld’s classification. It is to be noted, however, that in people with this psychic anomaly physical sexual vigor seems often subnormal. There are many books on the Chevalier d’Eon both in French and English. Most of them are imperfectly reliable and by authors who were without psychological equipment. Reference may be made to Gaillardet, Memoires de la Chevaliere d'Eon, 1866 (but not the romancing book written by the same author thirty years before and afterwards frankly withdrawn by him); J. B. Telfer, The Strange Career of the Chevalier d'Eon de Beaumont, 1885; E. A. Vizetelly, The True Story of the Chevalier d'Eon, 1895 (a little book by J. B. Telfer, Chevalier d'Eon de Beaumont : A Treatise, 1896, is mainly a correction of inaccuracies in Vizetelly’s work); G. Letainturier-Fradin, La Chevar licre d'Eon, 1901; O. Homberg and F. Jousselin, Un Aventurier au XVIIT Siecle, 1904, translated into English as D'Eon de Beaumont: His Life and Times, in 1911. A German writer, Adolf Paul, has used the Chevalier's story, with much freedom, as the subject of a novel, Excellens Unterrock (1916). While the Chevalier d’Eon, by his abilities and his public prominence, stands out as the protagonist of transvestism, he is not its earliest representative of note. His fellow-country¬ man the Abbe de Choisy (Franqois Timoleon de Choisy) takes precedence not only in time but by virtue of the record he has himself left of his adventures in woman’s garb. Like the Chevalier d’Eon, he was of good birth and high ability, though he never attained the same conspicuous international reputa¬ tion. Eut he mixed in the best aristocratic and intellectual circles of eighteenth century France, and notwithstanding the feminine disguises of his early life he became a distinguished 4 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. ecclesiastic, the historian of the Church, and the Doyen of the French Academy. # f DeChoisy was the son of the Chancellor of the Kings brother, and was born in Paris in 1644. He was educated by his mother who belonged to the family of Hurault de 1 Hospital and was the great grand-daughter of the famous Chancellor. She was over forty at her son’s birth and a woman of much mental vigor, possibly of a rather masculine type, une , maitresse femme,” her son called her, who was treated as a friend by Louis XIV, and she is reported to have given that monarch good advice with much directness. It is said that she brought up her son “on the very breast of the Muses. He himself refers to her without affection, but it was she who cultivated or implanted his taste for transvestism, for she had a fancy to dress him when a child as a girl. Physically he seems to have been well adapted for the part. He was of small size, and plump, with breasts that were like those of a girl of fifteen, he says, on account of the tight stays he wore in early life; his skin was soft and well cared for, and he had much dark hair. He not only possessed a facile, delicate, and ex¬ pressive literary style, but was an accomplished musician on the harpsichord, and in comedy he was skilful in playing women’s parts. He had abandoned feminine garments at the age of 18; but while still a young man a little over twenty, in 1666, at the suggestion, it seems, of no less distinguished a woman than Madame de la Fayette, he returned to a costume for which he seemed so peculiarly adapted, and for which his predilection was so strong. All his adventures in that shape of which we have definite knowledge took place before the age of thirty. They helped to inspire Louvet to write a once famous novel, Faublas, and they are narrated in the fragments of Choisy’s Mentoires which have come to us, written at the instigation of another distinguished woman, Madame de Lambert, for he was happy in his women friends. These Memoires are written with much charm and skilful facility, in the best eighteenth century manner, the manner of the younger Crebillon, and while they EONISM. 5 have not the artist's touch which marks Crebillon at his best, they have a much greater precision of interesting detail and the additional attraction that they present real adventure. If we possessed them in full, Choisy’s Memoires would rank among the chief literary treasures of that fascinating century, and, as it is, they constitute a cherished fragment. Moreover they are typical of the Eonist’s attitude, and in their ingenuous vanity, their constant complacent absorption in all the smallest details of feminine costume, they curiously resemble the nar¬ ratives written by Eonists of today. The Abbe de Choisy also resembled the main Eonist type in sexual temperament, being definitely heterosexual, so that even in an age when hemo- sexuality was conspicuous not a rumor of that tendency is associated with him, and also in uniting a great devotion to women with a less than average degree of physical passion, so that he was able to find satisfaction in simple affectionate intimacy, though on occasion he went beyond this and, at least once, became the father of a child. In 1676 he accompanied the Cardinal de Bouillon to Rome in an official capacity. Later, after a serious illness in which his life was despaired of, he be¬ came serious, was converted, and, in retirement at the Seminary of Foreign Missions, occupied himself for a time in writing on the existence of a God and the evidence for immortality. In 1685 he went as coadjutor-ambassador to Siam and on the voyage became a priest, returning, with fine words from the King of Siam and beautiful presents, to receive a splendid reception in Paris. He translated the De Imitatione Christi and wrote the History of the Church in many volumes. But, notwithstanding, he seems always to have remained on good terms with his past life, while at the same time his amiable and indeed high character, aided no doubt by wealth and posi¬ tion, enabled him to preserve both general esteem and the friendship of many of the best and most intellectual people of his time. He died in 1724 at the age of eighty and D’Alembert pronounced his Eloge. 1 1 An edition of the Aventurcs de VAbbe de Choisy Habille en Femme was put forth in Paris in 1870 with a Preface by M. P. L. (Paul 6 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. During the life-time of the Chevalier cTEon (1795) a woman was born who became to some extent his feminine counterpart and had a long and distinguished professional career in masculine garments as James Barry, Senior Inspector- General of the English Army Medical Department. She was said to be the grand-daughter of a Scottish laird and entered the army, attired as a man, at the age of 18, to become a hospital assistant, passing through all grades, in male costume, ' to the rank she finally attained, and serving in various parts of the world. The Inspector-General was said to be quarrel¬ some in temper, once fighting a duel, and often guilty of breaches of discipline, but the offence was always condoned at headquarters. Barry was described as “the most skilful of physicians and the most wayward of men, ,, in appearance a beardless lad of unmistakably Scotch type, with reddish hair and high cheek bones; there was a certain effeminacy of manner which he was always striving to overcome; his conversation was greatly superior to that usually heard at a mess-table in those days. Barry died in 1865. There is no indication of any sexual tendency in her history, whether heterosexual or homo¬ sexual, and we may believe that, as is fairly common in this psychic anomaly, the sexual impulse was not strong, and, therefore, easy to divert and sublimate in this transformation. Rather earlier than Barry, a much more famous and romantic woman of the same type appeared in English aristo¬ cratic circles, Lady Hester Stanhope. * 1 On the death of her father, the third Earl Stanhope, who was highly eccentric, but a remarkable and able man and a notable inventor, she was Lacroix), and the same work, under the title oi Memoires de lAbbe de Chotsy Habille cn Femme, was published in Paris in 1920 with a some¬ what longer introduction. 1 The Life and Letters of Lady Hester Stanhope, by her niece the Duchess of Cleveland, 1897 and 1924. This is regarded as the authori¬ tative biography, though the Duchess never saw her aunt. There are many other lives, both in English and French, some of them superficial and inaccurate, merely serving up the old material afresh. Among the best, perhaps, may be reckoned Frank Hamel, Lady Hester Lucy Stan¬ hope, 1913; Julia Roundell, Lady Hester Stanhope, 1909. There is a brilliant little sketch of her in half a dozen pages of Lytton Strachey’s Books and Characters, 1922. EONISM. 7 adopted by her uncle, the great statesman William Pitt, and presided at his table with much brilliance. Her mother had died when she was a child but she was greatly devoted to a half-brother, and his death was “the crowning sorrow of her life/’ After Pitt’s death she nearly, it appears, married Sir John Moore. Then she set out on a tour in the East, lost all her clothes in a shipwreck, and put on a male Turkish costume, which she found so convenient that she adopted it. Her transvestism was thus apparently due to an accident, but the significant fact was that she clung to it for the rest of her life and also adopted many other male habits, though there seems no reason to suppose that she was sexually inverted. So that, as sometimes happens, an accident had served to reveal an innate disposition. She dressed sometimes as an Albanian Chief, sometimes as a Syrian soldier, sometimes a Bedouin, sometimes like a Pasha’s son. For the Moslems she became a prophetess, almost a queen. She died in old ^ge in her castle hermitage on the summit of Lebanon, and was described by one who knew her as “wholly and magnificently unique.” Numerous distinguished or capable women seem to have exhibited this peculiarity in the eighteenth century and earlier. Nacke briefly refers to Ulrike Kleist, the faithful and beloved sister of the poet, as a typical example of the heterosexual form of this anomaly. He brings forward no precise evidence. When we turn to Kleist’s correspondence and poems, it seems clear, at all events, that Ulrike possessed masculine elements in her composition. Her brother sends her a New Year’s Wish poem in 1800 in which he addresses her as an “amphibian,” living at once both in air and water, and begs her to make sure of her sex, to leave the water and shake her wings and fly. This may perhaps be explained by a letter addressed to her in the same year in which he tells her how deeply he has often wished that she were a man. This hardly suffices, however, to indicate transvestism. A much more genuine example is furnished in low life at an earlier date in England by Mary Frith, who was 8 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. commonly called Moll Cutpurse and became the heroine, in a rather attractive guise, of Middleton’s delightful play, The Roaring Girl. She was a kind of feminine Jonathan. Wild and possessed great natural ability; she was also the first woman to adopt the habit of smoking. She seems clearly to have been the subject of sexo-aesthetic inversion, per¬ haps with latent homosexuality. 1 Of all these people we have no precise scientific knowledge, even of their exact psychic state, to say nothing of the ex¬ planation of it. Toward the end of the nineteenth century they at last began to come under psychological observation. West- phal, a great pioneer in this field, briefly described the anomaly and brought forward examples. 2 Some years later the case was published in America of a highly cultured man of good moral character, happily married and a father, who cherished a passion for wearing very tightly laced corsets and women’s high-heeled French boots; he derived sexual excitement and gratification from this practice; there was a tendency to masochistic algolagnia; the taste, and allied feminine habits, began to develop in early childhood; this is a form of the anomaly of which later much was to be heard. 3 But the earliest full and scientifically described case, to my knowledge, was that of a Hungarian doctor whose history, written in 1890, was given by KrafFt-Ebing in the later editions of his Psychopathia Sexualis. The subject was a physician 1 See the brilliant account of her in Whibley’s Book of Scoundrels. The Roaring Girl is included in vol. ii of Middleton’s Plays, Mermaid Series. 2 Archiv fur Psychologie, 1876. The first was the case of a young man arrested in woman’s clothes and other feminine articles of toilet he was accustomed to wear and frequently stole. The tendency began in childhood. There was no sexual inversion, but he was slightly feminine in appearance and the testicles were incompletely descended. Westphal had a similar case in a woman. He regarded them as showing mental weakness. 3 “Gynomania: a curious case of Masturbation,” Medical Record March 19, 1881; quoted also by Hammond, Sexual Impotence, 1887, pp. 74-78. Later examples of the same type will be found, for instance, in Moll’s edition of Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathic Sexualis (1924) pp. 612- 613; a case will be brought forward in the present study. Emile Laurent had in 1896 recognized both inborn and acquired “psychic herma¬ phroditism.” EONISM. 9 who wrote his own fully detailed history. He was married and not homosexual, but his feelings were feminine and he felt to himself like a woman. He was really somewhat feminine in appearance. There were no actual delusions. KrafTt-Ebing considered the case to represent a stage of transition to meta¬ morphosis sexualis paranoica, that is to say a stage on the road to insanity. This manner of regarding the case is not now ac¬ ceptable. It was merely the schematic classification of an alienist and threw no light on the anomaly. To describe a mental condition which, though abnormal, is sane, by its rela¬ tion to an insane state it never reaches, although such a method may be the most obvious to an alienist, is to assume too patho¬ logical a standpoint. The case itself, however, as described by the expert subject, may still perhaps be regarded as the most typical and complete on record. 1 A few years later, Lombroso, another great pioneer in the realms of abnormal psychology, described what he called “a strange psychopathic form of sexuality. ,, It was That of a man of 30, belonging to Romagna, a good artist, small, timid, very kind to animals, who had from the age of seven a kind of pas¬ sion for feminine ornaments, especially ear-rings. At an early age he pierced the lobes of his ears and rather enjoyed the pain. He wanted to be a woman, he said to himself as a child, because women are nicer than men. He much admired women who wore large ear-rings, and when about twelve, though quite innocent in sexual matters, he used to have erections in thinking about this subject. Beauty in women consisted for him in the shape of the ears. He was not addicted to masturbation and seems to have had no relations with women. He carefully concealed his peculiarity and usually wore his ear-rings in secret. 2 Lombroso made no attempt to classify this anomaly, but a case I shall here bring forward indicates that it probably belongs to this group. 1 It will be found in the 16th and 17th edition of KrafTt-Ebing* s Psychopathia Sexualis , as edited and remoulded by Moll (1924), pp. 595-610. 2 Archivio di Psichiatria, 1896, fasc. 1-2, p. 163. 10 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. A little before Lombroso (in 1895), Austin Flint, the distinguished professor of Physiology at Cornell University, had carefully investigated and photographed a case belonging to this group, though he neglected to publish it until sixteen years later. 1 This was a youth of 21, who had always pre¬ ferred women’s dress and occupations, and had been lady’s maid in a Boston family, where he attended his mistress in her bath and slept with the servant girls. He denied sexual* feelings for either sex; nor had he ever had any erotic dreams, seminal emissions, or erections. But his physical development was entirely and fully masculine and the external genital organs were generously developed. His ways, however, were rather feminine, and he had a high voice, which in singing was a pure adult soprano and not a boy’s voice. This was his most re¬ markable peculiarity. He might now be fairly considered a case of eunuchoidism. But at that time all such anomalies were confused and obscure, still awaiting differentiation and ade¬ quate explanation. Another example, that of a teacher, not vigorous in phy¬ sical health but well endowed intellectually, was published as a case of “effemination with fetichism.” 2 He was referred to as an invert, but in reality he was attracted not to men but to women. It was clearly a typical case of what Hirschfeld later termed “transvestism” and what I would call “sexo-aesthetic inversion,” or, more simply, “Eonism.” In my own early attempts to classify the cases of this kind I met with I had similarly been inclined to regard them as representing a combination of feminism with fetichism and as occupying a sort of annex to inversion proper. But this was 1 A. Flint, “A Case of Sexual Inversion, probably with Complete Sexual Anaesthesia,” New York Medical Journal, Dec. 2, 1911. The name applied to the case is wrong, for, in the psychological sense in which the words are usually employed, “sexual inversion” and “sexual anaesthesia” are incompatible. Emile Laurent, who towards the end of the last century was a pioneer in the study of bisexual manifestations, sug¬ gested the rather better name of psychic hermaphroditism. 2 Jahrbuch fiir Sexuelle Zwischenstnfen, Bd. ii, 1900, pp. 324-344. Some further account of the early bibliography is given by Dr. E. Wilhelm, Sexual-Probleme, July, 1914, pp. 495-502. EONISM. 11 unsatisfactory, though it avoided some errors previously made, for not only is there usually no real primary inversion in these cases, but there is no true fetichism, the garment possessing no marked dynamic erotic power in itself, or when worn by another person, but only when worn by the subject himself; in some cases, moreover, clothing played little or no part. So I left the matter over for further consideration. It may be worth while to note that, about this time, C. G. Leland, a well-known and prolific American man of letters, wrote towards the end of a long life a book which had some bearing on the phenomena we are h^re concerned with. He argued that the “subconscious self” is of the opposite sex, as¬ serting itself when it can and especially in dreams. He seems to have had an intuition of the class of facts included under “transvestism” (though he made no reference to cross-dressing); we shall indeed meet with a case in which this impulse is con¬ fined to dream-life, and one is inclined to suppose that Leland had found such phenomena in himself and was tempted to un¬ duly generalize them; but his book was vague and unscientific. 1 In the meanwhile Magnus Hirschfeld of Berlin, whose acquaintance with all the phenomena in any way related to homosexuality is so vast, had become impressed by these cases of persons who take pleasure in assuming the attributes of the opposite sex and yet are not sexual inverts and seldom even tend to become inverted. He put forth a substantial volume concerning what he called “transvestism”—“An Investigation into the Erotic Impulse of Disguise,” as he termed it in the subtitle—in which the historical aspects of the subject were discussed and seventeen new cases fully described and an¬ alyzed. 2 This book placed the subject at once on a solid basis, for Hirschfeld clearly distinguished the anomaly from homosexuality and all other recognized groups of sexual aber¬ ration, and for the first time conceived of it as a simple and 1 C. G. Leland, The Alternate Sex and the Female Intellect in Man and the Masculine in Women, 1904. 2 Magnus Hirschfeld, Die Transvestiten: Eine Untersuchung iiber den Erotischen V erklc idling stricb , 1910. 12 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. not compound perversion. 1 But Hirschfeld’s conception of the anomaly scarcely appeared to me altogether satisfactory. Transvestism or cross-dressing 2 fails to cover the whole of the ground; it may even be a negligible element in the psychological anomaly, while the other name proposed, “impulse of disguise, (Vcrkleidungstrieb ), though approved by Nacke, 3 seems to me even more open to objection, since the subject of this anomaly, far from seeking disguise by adopting the garments of the op- . posite sex, feels on the contrary that he has thereby become emancipated from disguise and is at last really himself. From the first, however, Hirschfeld had realized the great dfficulty of naming this anomaly. In Die Transvestiten (p. 300) he had proposed and rejected the term “sexual meta¬ morphosis,” and he admits that “transvestism” by no means exhausts the contents of the phenomena. That may be the reason why for a time he preferred the equally unsatisfactory term approved by Nacke. 4 More recently 5 he has returned to 1 Stekel, in an interesting review of Hirschfeld’s book ( Zentralblatt fiir Psychoanalyse , vol. i, Heft. 1-2) thought that he unduly minimized the tendency to homosexuality and more recently in various volumes of his St dr ung cn (as Bd. ii. p. 183 et scq., and Bd. vii, pp. 534 and 570) is inclined to deny heterosexuality altogether in Eonism. More recently, Sadger, also from the psycho-analytic side ( Die Lehre von den Gesch- lechtsvcrirrungcn, 1921, p. 167), is inclined, on the contrary, to think that Hirschfeld related transvestism too nearly to inversion, whereas, at all events in its slighter forms, it is associated with a normal direction of the sex impulse. As we shall see, inversion, when it appears in such cases, seems usually to be secondary and not of primary appearance. Rohleder (Vorlesungen , 4th ed., 1920, p. 389) finds all his own cases heterosexual. 2 “Cross-dressing,” as suggested by Edward Carpenter ( American Journal of Religious Psychology and Education , vol. iv, 1911), is prob¬ ably the best English equivalent of “Transvestism.” According to Hirschfeld’s terminology, a cross-dressed man is a “transvestit”; a cross- dressed woman a “transvestitin.” 3 P. Nacke, “Zun Kapitel der Transvestiten,” Archiv fiir Kriminal- anthropologie, vol. xlvii, 1912, p. 237. 4 Hirschfeld and Max Tilke, Der Erotische Verkleidungstrieh (Die Transvestiten). This is an interesting collection of pictures and por¬ traits, ethnographic, historical, and clinical. 5 Sexual pathologic, 1918, vol. ii, ch. 3. He here (p. 140) further introduced the term “androgynous delusion” to express the tendency to believe that the body actually has a feminine or masculine build opposite to the apparent sex. The necessity for such a term, however, only arises from the use of the term “transvestism.” The Eonist (though some¬ times emphatically of the apparent sex) sometimes shows real physical EONISM. 13 “transvestism” and defines it as “the impulse to assume the ex¬ ternal garb of a sex which is not apparently that of the sub¬ ject as indicated by the sexual organs.” He adds that the name refers only to the most obvious of the phenomena con¬ cerned, and not to the inner psychological core. Still more recently * 1 Hirschfeld has stated the chief varie¬ ties of transvestism which he would accept as follows: 1. The Heterosexual variety. 2. The Bisexual variety, with an attraction to virile women and feminine men. 3. The Homosexual variety. f 4. The Narcisstic variety (regarded as common) in which the feminine components of the subject’s nature give satisfac¬ tion to his masculine components. 5. The Asexual variety, often impotent and finding full satisfaction in some feminine occupation, as that of a domestic servant. Since Hirschfeld’s book, Die Transvcstitcn, was published in 1910, Dr. Ralph Pettow of Berlin has occupied himself with the subject and finally published a small volume with a title accepting Hirschfeld’s names for the anomaly. 2 Pettow made no definite forward step in the study of the anomaly, and he regarded it as morbid, but he stressed its psychological signifi¬ cance, and brought forward a number of suggestive though not always original considerations, and many examples from the by-ways of literature and journalism. Pettow defined the aberration as being, “on the foundations of a psychological compulsion, a perpetual or periodic laying aside of the garb pertaining to sex and age and the adoption of another not so pertaining.” And he divided the individuals belonging to the class into three groups: (1) Men adopting women’s garb, (2) approximations towards the opposite sex, and is naturally apt to exag¬ gerate these. We must be cautious as to terming this exaggeration a “delusion.” 1 Jahrbuch fiir Scxuclle Zwischcnstufen, Jahrgang, xxiii, 1923, pp. 12-14. 2 Ralph Pettow, Der Krankhaftc V crklcidungstrieb: Beitrage cur Erf or seining der Transvestie, 1922. Johannes Baum, Pfiillingen in Wiirttemberg. 14 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. women adopting men’s, and (3) adults adopting the garb of childhood. He attached some importance to the last anomaly, which he dealt with in detail under the heading of the Retour a VEnfance. This was the name given to it by Pierre Janet who seems first to have called attention to it as a psychic anomaly; he treated it as an emotional disturbance but failed to note the associated tendency to revert to the garments of childhood. 1 Pettow was also careful to distinguish pseudo- ^ transvestism, in which cross-dressing is adopted, not out of psychic compulsion but from convenience or interest or occu¬ pational grounds. It is true, as Pettow claims, that the Rctour a VEnfance has not usually been given any important place in the study of transvestism. It is well recognized but has been frequently otherwise classed. Thus, Laquer of Frankfort, in his study of shop-thieves in 1907, brought forward the case of a youth of 18, having really a rather childish appearance, who twice stole money from a shop-till to buy clothes of child type and stood about the street wearing them, to be petted and kissed as a child; and Stekel, who quotes the case, 2 regards it as one of psychosexual infantilism combined with kleptomania from sexual motives (kleptolagnia, as I should term it), without any reference to transvestism. He brings forward a ijpther similar case of his own in a married man. The subject has still more recently been dealt with rather fully by Moll in a chapter of his remoulded and rewritten edition of Krafft-Ebing’s PsycJiopathia Sexualis, entitled “Con¬ trary Sexuality Outside the Sexual Impulse.” 3 He accepts, for a certain number of cases, the conception I had put for¬ ward, that they are due to “aesthetic inversion,” an exaggerated sympathy with the object of affection leading to imitation and empathy, the “Einfiihlung” of Lipps. He points out (as I had already done) that many such cases really are linked on to the fetichism with which they were originally identified, and 1 P. Janet, Les Obsessions ct la Psychasthenie, 1903, p. 391. 2 W. Stekel, Der Fetischistmis, 1923, p. 42. 3 Krafft-Ebing and Moll, Psychopathia Sexualis, 1924, pp. 572-632. EONISM. IS that the fetichist may easily be tempted to wear the garments he is attracted to; and further that an effeminate inverted fetichist may in consequence of such empathy wear masculine garments, even though he otherwise prefers feminine dress. Moll’s own classification (first put forward in 1921) is as follows: (1) A class of cases, which possibly may not belong to the psychosexual sphere at all, but in which there is simply an obsession taking the form of an impulse to wear the garments of the opposite sex. (2) Homosexual cases in which cross-dressing constitutes part of the contrary sexual psychic state. 1 (3) Heterosexual cases in which, though the sexual im¬ pulse is normal, cross-dressing constitutes part of a contrary sexual state. (4) Cases to be explained in the sense of Havelock Ellis as due to a pronounced heterosexual desire to imitate and enter into the feelings of the opposite sex. (5) Cases in which other grounds for the practice, such as concealment or professional occupation, must be sought; that is to say, cases which other investigators have called “pseudo-transvestism.” He refers, also, to the further cases, in which the retour d Venfance occurs, and the adult subject finds pleasure in feel¬ ing and acting like a child, and is wearing a child’s garments; but many of these cases on close examination, Moll considers, are found to represent forms of masochism. Moll’s conception shows a real grasp of the subject by his realization that the mere cross-dressing seldom constitutes the core of the anomaly, but it seems doubtful whether the classification will be found permanently to hold good and he omits the Narcisstic and asexual groups. The cases put down to obsession were not analyzed in a manner which would ex- 1 The Autobiography of an Androgyne (1918) and Female-Imper¬ sonators (1922) by Ralph Werther (also known as Earl Lind and Jennie June) are an interesting exhibition of this condition from the subjective side. They were published by the New York Medico-legal Journal and introduced by its editor, Dr. A. W. Herzog. 16 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. elude the possibility of a more definite explanation, and it is not clear that there is any decided line of demarcation between cases of the second and third groups and those of the fourt . But some of the cases brought forward are valuable, not on y the memorable case of Krafft-Ebing’s but another (No. 353) which presents the anomaly in a marked form, clearly revea mg that constitutional basis which induced Hirschfeld to regar such cases as representing a special stage of intermediate sexuality, though, it may be noted, Moll himself fails to fin such a conception acceptable. Since Hirschfeld’s work in this field, the most important effort to carry the investigation further has been that made by the psycho-analysts. Accepting the anomaly in the way understood by Hirschfeld, and usually adopting for it his name of Transvestism, they explain it, in a totally different way, as largely or mainly a disturbance in the psycho-sexual mechanism, due to influences traceable in early life, and involving a per¬ sistence into later life of infantile traits. This explanation is not presented as the psychic view of a situation which may also be viewed constitutionally, but sometimes (though not by more cautious psycho-analysts) as overthrowing the consti¬ tutional view altogether and putting it out of court. It seems often assumed by the psycho-analyst that the anomaly appears on a normal constitutional basis and is completely explained by psycho-sexual disturbance. It scarcely appears that Freud has given any special atten¬ tion to this anomaly. Karl Abraham, in dealing with hysteri- car conditions, brought forward a case which I should now regard as primarily an example of Eonism. It was that of a man who, without apparently any desire to wear feminine clothes, desired to be a woman and in his day-dreams imagined himself physically changed to a woman. There was a tendency to identification with his mother, and, like her, he had attacks of headache every month which he called his “periods. Abraham attributed this to a homosexual impulse-component. 1 IK. Abraham, “Ueber hysterische Traumzustande” Jahrbuch f. psychoanal. Forsch., Bd. ii, 1910, and reprinted in the author s Klimschc Beitrdge, 1921, pp. 71-74. EONISM. 17 Sadger has brought forward several cases, and he would explain them exclusively on psycho-genetic grounds: the sub¬ ject, as a child, wishes he were a girl, and, therefore, he tries to be a girl, and thinks he will thereby become more pleasing and more like his mother, or more attractive to his father, since his father admires his mother; it is usually the mother's or sister's garments that he first seeks to put on; whether in heterosexual or homosexual subjects, the desire is to be the mother or the father. 1 It is Stekel among psycho-analysts who has most often discussed the nature of cross-dressing, besides bringing for¬ ward new cases. 2 While accepting Hirschfeld’s clinical his¬ tories, he is completely opposed to his biological conception and refuses to regard these cases as representing one of the inter¬ mediate stages of sexuality in the way in which Hirschfeld has been inclined to class them, in a group by themselves, al¬ though passing into other groups, and with subdivisions. Hirschfeld, Stekel declares, has overlooked the fact that cross¬ dressing is really a latent homosexuality, and believes that he has proved that the “so-called sexually normal" Eonists are really masked sexual inverts. When we remember that Hirsch¬ feld undoubtedly possesses a wider knowledge of homosexuality than any other investigator of his own or earlier times, it re¬ quires some courage to assert that he has here “overlooked" its existence. It is hardly likely that he would overlook the anomaly of which he is the chief expert in a class of cases which he was the first to study with care on a large scale. It is more likely that his critic has overlooked some consideration. And that consideration seems to be that we are not entitled to classify a group of cases in relation to a condition which for the most part they never reach. To do so is a regression to precisely the same kind of error as Krafft-Ebing made when 1 Sadger, Die LcJire von den Geschlechtsvcrirnnigen, 1921, p. 171. Sadger somewhat misunderstands the view of Hirschfeld, who re¬ gards the group of transvestists as co-ordinate with that of inverts, and not, as Sadger supposes, subordinate. 2 Successively in Onanie und Homosexuality, Die Geschlechts- kdlte der Frau, and Der Fctischismus. 2 18 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. he classified his interesting case of Eonism in relation to in¬ sanity. We all, however normal, possess latent possibilities. But it is quite unprofitable, however correct, to classify the general population under the three heads of masked thieves, masked murderers, and masked adulterers, especially when we have to add that the same person may belong to all three groups. On another point—the distinction of Eonism from fetichism— Stekel agrees with Hirschfeld, though not on Hirschfeld s ground. ' Hirschfeld finds the distinction in the tendency of the fetichist to love the fetich for its own sake, and not as part of himself, while Gutheil (putting forward Stekel’s view) finds this distinction superficial, and considers that it is the system-formation of the fetichist which is absent; the garment for the Eonist is the expression of a strong wish, the wish to be a man (or woman), and the garment is used, under pressure of an ugliness-complex, to secure a flight into the other sex. An elaborate analysis of a female Eonist has been made by Emil Gutheil, Stekel’s assistant, under his general direction (W. Stekel, Dcr Fetischismus, 1923, “Analyse eines Falles von Transvestitismus, pp. 534-70). . . The case is that of Elsa B., a woman of 34, Government Official, who did not come for treatment but for medical investigation in view of an application to the police for permission to wear masculine clothes, which was in due course secured. She was a seven months child and delicate in early life. At the present time she is in all general respects normal and with no notable stigmata of degeneration. She is of slender figure with small asthenic chest, but the primary and secondary sexual characteristics are normal and feminine, and menstruation is regular and painless. But in her bearing and walk and ways generally she is masculine. She wears her short hair like a man’s. Urination is effected in the standing posture. She wears a skirt but her dress, so far as possible, is approximated to that of a man, so that at a first glance it is not always easy to recognize her sex, and she is thus liable to attract unpleasant attention in the street and several times aroused sus¬ picion during the War. But she cannot bear to wear ordinary feminine things; they have made her feel, she says, even from child¬ hood, “like a dressed-up monkey.” She has artistic tastes and plays the violin. As a child she did not care for girls’ playthings and would hide them away. She made no friends among other little girls but played EONISM. 19 with boys and found her best friends in books. The question of dress became to her, from early years, more and more a “catastrophe.” She was, however, much left to herself. Her father, a solid and serious man, a teacher, who died when she was 2, was 68 at her birth, and her mother was more than twenty years younger. The parents did not get on well together, and the mother was “master” in the house. She was lively and fond of dress and pleasure; she married again, and the child, who detested her stepfather, was brought up by grandparents who did not occupy themselves much with her. This neglect led to mental depression; she felt her inferiority and dreaded the future. She felt, too, that she was unwelcome as her mother had wanted a boy. Her obstinacy and grief over feminine garments caused much trouble with her rela¬ tions, who could not understand this strange child. At the age of about 12 she received enlightenment on sexual matters from a servant; up to the age of 9 she had not discovered that there were any sexual differences beyond those of clothing, so that to adopt boy’s clothing was to become a boy. At the age of 14 or 15 she was much attached to another girl and gratified her affection by kisses and embraces. Her erotic thoughts are exclusively directed towards women, but she believes in an ideal expression of such affection. She has never had any but a comradely relation with men, and the thought of anything sexual in connection with a man is disgusting to her. A castration complex is the chief sign of any erotic attitude to the opposite sex. But the impulse of transvestism is itself erotic for her. She denies that it depends on any homo¬ sexual impulse or on the attraction of the forbidden. The putting on of men’s clothing is itself a source of sexual pleasure to her and can suffice to produce orgasm, so that transvestism enables her to dispense with any other source of sexual gratification. She states that she is content with her feelings about transvestism and with auto-erotic practices; she has scruples about homosexual practices and could not bear to think that she might injure the lives of others. It was not until the age of 22 that she cut her hair short and began putting on men’s clothes in secret. But it was much earlier, at the age of 13, when still wearing ear-rings and feminine garments, that she first definitely expressed an open wish for men’s clothes. By analysis of dreams Gutheil believed he had detected mother- fixation and a religious complex (Madonna worship). He also found a degree of Narcissism which he finds significant. Her step¬ father used to tell her she was ugly; she was very sensitive to this reproach and came to believe it; but dressed as a man she considered she looked handsome and this was a main cause of her attachment 20 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. to masculine garments. She found in the mirror that in men’s clothes she had a great resemblance to her father. She has m course of time come to hate her mother. She has a younger brothe Edward. It was when trying on his clothes that the putting on o masculine garments first caused orgasm. Gutheil finds in her dreams indications of sexual fixation on this brother. In his final analysis of Elsa B.’s case, Gutheil concludes that the dominant element in her sexual attitude is the Electra complex of whic the neurotic expression is identification with the father. In the rela¬ tions of the girl to her brother Edward there is a new edition of the primary incest-constellation. This identification-an introjection of the object into the ego—takes place when the Electra relationship has to be given up. It is because no substitute, outside the family, presents itself for the incest object which is being given up that identification with the object takes place, and the foundation stone for a homosexual neurosis is thus laid. But as the father died when she was still a small child this identification took place early. In the meanwhile it was becoming clear to the child that she was not wanted by her mother because she was not a boy, that is to say because she was not clothed in the right kind of garments, and later her stepfather made it clear that she was thought ugly. S le wanted to be beautiful, and her infantile Narcissism was thus wounded. Then she discovered, in relation to her brother, the real nature of sexual difference, and that it was the absence of certain physical appendages which accounted for her mothers attitude towards her. So arose the castration complex: “There is the thing you lack; cut it off.” Whence sadistic impulses and wishes for her brother’s’ death, which had to be repressed. But she still hoped she might develop a penis, until, with the appearance of menstruation, she realized that all hope of this must be abandoned. That was a turning-point in her psycho-sexual development. But she grad- ually reacted against the resulting depression, borne up by the exhilaration of youth. The fiction of masculinity arose within her, bound up with the desire for beauty and resemblance to her father and her brother, and led to a new sense of well-being.^ (This "fiction of masculinity” is obviously the same thing as Adler’s “mas¬ culine protest,” and Stekel remarks that Gutheil is quite unacquainted with Adler’s work.) Enormous weight is attached to the fact that after on various occasions putting on men’s garments, the first orgasm occurred when in her brother’s clothes at the age of 15. (As a matter of fact, however, Elsa, as reported, had not said it was the first orgasm” but “the first orgasm in masculine garments.”) The scene has a pronounced fetichistic character and is the expression of a subconscious fantasy that she is now the equal of her brother and EONISM. 21 fully entitled to her mother’s love, while these are her bridges to a religious complex, supposed to be indicated by a dream in which she seems the son of the Madonna and also her lover. She struggled against her mother’s second marriage, and hence she must have wished to take the husband’s place. She wears a wedding ring which she bought, she says, because it pleased her. Elsa B.’s sexuality is thus anchored in her cross-dressing. Clothing has become the symbol of the rejected incest-object. The disposition to homosexuality arises out of identification with a sexual object of the opposite sex. Stekel regards homosexuality as a flight from the opposite sex, determined by perversities (“paraphilias” in Stekel’s terminology) and hate-attitudes, especially sadism. So in this case, says Gutheil; and the chief cause of the flight is here a castration- complex; and the full bearing of the complex becomes clear when we realize that the castration thoughts are closely associated with the sight of the sexual organs, so that direct contact with the penis becomes unthinkable, and anxiety at her own criminal thought leads to repression of heterosexual impulses. Sexuality in the homosexual direction is, however, also subject to inhibition in Elsa B., so that we may speak of a diminished need of sexual intercourse. A religious- ascetic complex is detected here, as indicated by a dream in which the cross-dressing seems to be effected in the name of the “Father,” the “Son” (Edward), and the “Holy Ghost” (the great miracle of sexual metamorphosis she is awaiting). We are to see in Elsa an apparently free-thinking but really deeply religious nature in whom the polar tension between impulse and inhibition has a fatal opera¬ tion on the psychic mechanism. A fellatio fantasy and exhibitionary impulses are also detected. Sadism and masochism are, further, held to be involved. Hirschfeld had devoted a chapter to Masochism in association with Eonism, but Gutheil and Stekel rightly point out that masochism and sadism are allied; as I have elsewhere sought to show (Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. Ill) they are best regarded as two aspects of the same phenomenon, that is to say, algolagnia, or the influence of pain in stimulating sexual emotion. Stekel, more dubiously, regards the relationship as one of “polarity.” Masochism is thus a reversal of sadism, the sadism being directed towards the subject himself. It is, Stekel thinks, hate towards others turned into hate towards oneself. Elsa’s castration complex had im¬ pelled her to wish her young brother dead, or at least to cut off the penis she envied. But she repressed that impulse and converted it into an impulse of harshness towards herself. This, however, while it is a partially true statement for this particular case seems to fall into the common error of regarding algolagnia as a manifestation of cruelty. The impulse to inflict pain, whether on others or on oneself, 22 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. whenever it arises from a sexual motive, must never be regarded as a manifestation of hate and cruelty. Whenever it so arises we can safely eliminate any genuinely sexual impulse. The real motive is to show love, not hate, and even if possible to give pleasure. And the reason so unlikely a method of manifesting this motive is adopted is simply that the stimulus of pain, when the sexual impulse is weak (as it often is in Eonism)—whether inflicted or suffered or even merely witnessed—does actually operate as a stimulus to the sexual emotions, and no cruelty is really involved, merely the^ appearance of it. The evidence on this point is overwhelming. Sadism and masochism cannot be understood unless this is realized, and to bring in the motive of hate, obscures the phenomena altogether. „ , , On the whole, it would appear to Gutheil and Stekel to con¬ clude this summary of a summary—the peculiar impulse to cross¬ dressing first appeared in Elsa B. about the twelfth or thirteenth year, following on the depression felt by the lack of a penis. In this cross-dressing incestuous sexual feeling was blended with an acquired feeling of beauty. She had become a “man, in the image of the beloved father and brother, and therein the deepest significance of the transvestism is reached. This analysis is presented as fairly as possible in a very condensed statement in order to make clear the strictly psycho¬ analytic explanation of cross-dressing, when put forward as completely adequate and as overthrowing every other possible explanation. (It must, of course, be understood that there is no necessary agreement with Gutheil and Stekel on these points among other psycho-analysts.) Certainly it would hardly be possible to pile up a greater number of complexes and perverse fantasies on to Elsa B.’s devoted head. They seem to be plenti¬ ful enough to account for anything. Yet one can well under¬ stand the sceptic feeling that the psycho-analyst is a kind of spider who spins his pathological web-complex so widely and so elaborately only in the hope that somewhere, at all events, the fly must become entangled. For it is certainly true that these threads are very slight and vague. When we remember how every living being is in perpetual slight movement and perpetually throwing off evanescent thoughts and feelings we realize how careful we need to be before deciding that there is a significance in these tiny facts strong enough to bear one’s EONISM. 23 big labels. Moreover, with all his readiness to find significance in phenomena that are very slight or very vague, Gutheil passes over, without any notice at all, very definite facts in which he might well have found a grave significance if he had not felt bound to reject altogether the possibility of any constitu¬ tional element in the case. Elsa’s father was old at her conception, and the mother comparatively young. That is a known cause of devia¬ tions in the offspring. She was, again, a seven months child, and that also is a recognized source of anomalies in development, sometimes even favorable as well as unfavor¬ able when we recall how many men of high ability have been thus premature. Then we are told that Elsa’s mother had the temperament of a “master,” which Elsa may well have in¬ herited. And we might further observe that the neglect which was Elsa’s lot in early life, the absence of parental care and guidance, furnished exactly the favoring conditions demanded by any perverse innate germs. The diminished im¬ pulse to sexual intercourse which Gutheil recognizes, and which frequently appears in other cases, completely harmonizes wfith the view that we are concerned with individuals who are constitutionally abnormal. On such a view, Gutheil believes, it is impossible to account for Elsa B.’s experience of orgasm when in her brother’s clothes. But the experience is scarcely w’ell explained on his own view, while it is easily conceivable that the excitement of the long desired assumption of male clothing, especially when associated with the garments of her brother who had evidently been an object of sexual interest to her, should produce a sudden involuntary gush of physical emo¬ tion. Stekel and Gutheil believe, and they emphasize and italicise the statement, that an “incest-fixation” is the primary and driving motive of Elsa’s cross-dressing, implying that no inborn predisposition is necessary. This incest-attitude (in Elsa B.’s case the desire to take the mother’s place with the father)—Freud’s Oedipus complex and Electra complex— they regard as the driving infantile motive to the cross-dressing and to the other symptoms associated with it. 24 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. The term “incest” (as I have on other occasions pointed out) should never be used in this connection. It can, cor¬ rectly, only have relation to adults; in the psychology of childhood it has no meaning. For children there is only love for an object of affection, not incestuous desire; in that love the as yet undifferentiated impulse of sex is blended and lost. To introduce here from criminology a legal term which be¬ longs to the law-courts may be a sensational method for arousing x the horrified attention of innocent minds, but it brings its own revenge. We are really concerned with a perfectly simple and natural impulse, not necessarily a complex at all, and almost universal, though in degree it varies greatly in different in¬ dividuals. Needless to say, it was known long before the psycho¬ analysts called attention to it, as they were perfectly justified in doing, however illegitimate the name they chose. I know of no better example of it in a well-marked form than Stendhal supplies in his autobiographical book, Vie de Henri Brulard, written in 1832, when in middle life, with a rapid pen and complete sincerity, because he was not writing for immediate publication, and only anticipated, vaguely, that what he wrote might possibly reach the eyes of “a reader of 1880. As a matter of fact the Vie de Henri Brulard was not published until 1890. In Chapter III, Stendhal describes how he lost his mother when 7 years of age:— “My mother was a charming woman and I was in love with my mother. In loving her at perhaps the age of 6 (1789) I showed absolutely the same character as in 1828 when loving Madame Alberte de Rubempre (Madame Azur) to madness. My way of hunting happiness had in no way changed at bottom though on the physical side of love there was the difference that Caesar would have found if he had returned to the world to discover cannons and small arms in war. I could quickly learn that and it meant no funda¬ mental change in my tactics. “I wished to cover my mother with kisses, and when she had no clothes on. She loved me wildly and often embraced me, and I returned her kisses with such fire that she was as though obliged to go away. I hated my father when he came and interrupted our EONISM. 25 kisses, I always wished to kiss her on the breast—but please remember that I lost her, when I was scarcely seven, in childbirth. “She was plump, of perfect freshness, very pretty, though I believe hardly tall enough. There was a fine nobility in her features. She perished, in the flower of youth and beauty, in 1790, when she could scarcely have been 28 or 30 years of age. Thus it was that, forty-five years ago, I lost what I have loved most in the world. She cannot be offended at the liberty I am taking with her in revealing that I loved her; if I ever meet her again I would tell her once more. Besides, she never in any way shared that love. As for me, I was as criminal as possible; I loved her charming favors. One evening, when by some chance I had been put to bed on the floor in her room on a mattress, this lively woman, light as a goat, jumped over my mattress to reach her own bed more quickly.” (Here Stendhal interrupted the narrative and placed a cross, which was his custom when he intended to revise or complete a passage; we may conclude that this incident had a significance which he has not fully explained.) Later (Chapter XI) he mentions that some years afterwards he heard his aunt remark that his mother had no inclination for his father at marriage: “That remark had for me an immense bearing. I was still, at the bottom of my soul, jealous of my father.” We could scarcely have a more definite example, in its fully developed shape, of what is improperly called the “incest- attitude” of the child. Yet it is the perfectly simple, natural, and—though Stendhal uses the term “criminal”—innocent ex¬ pression of a child’s whole-hearted affection for his mother. It happened to be a child of unusually vivid sensibilities and unusually acute intellect who was, by his own inborn nature, predestined to genius, and to the troubles which beset genius; such emotional precocity is sometimes found in genius and thus may even be of its essence. But, although we know Stendhal’s life fairly well, there seem no pathological problems to solve beyond those due to excessive nervous sensibility. There is no “Oedipus Complex” to pervert his existence and lead to tragedy. We know that love played an important part in his existence, that he wrote a famous book about its psychology, and that he was devoted to a succession of women, not all of whom returned his love. We may regard his mother as the first of these beloved women, but, so far as can be seen, his 26 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. love-life in later years would not have been sensibly different even if he had never known his mother. For the details of psycho-sexual experience such as the analyst investigates may be of high importance, but if there is no morbid constitutional foundation which they express they may be of no importance at all. These considerations are not brought forward in any controversial sense. Properly considered, they should have . no controversial bearing. Those investigators who concentrate on the constitutional foundations of psycho-sexual anomalies, and those investigators who explore the mechanisms revealed by psycho-analysis are alike performing necessary tasks. Nothing is now more certain than the influence of the varying balance of the internal secretions in building up the psycho- sexual constitution. Nothing also is more illuminating than the mechanisms which the masters of psycho-analysis have re¬ vealed in unravelling the varied experiences of the individual. Both are essential to a complete interpretation of the varied cases that arise. Evil only ensues when, in one party or the other party, there is a failure to realize the immense services which the opposite party is rendering. Realization of the need to recognize alike the hereditary and innate factors, the acquired and psycho-genetic factors, in the constitution of this anomaly may be noted among the most recent investigations. Thus Dr. Ernest Jones clearly assumes the existence of both sets of factors in all psycho-analytic in¬ vestigations. Dr. Lothar Goldmann of New York (though his observations seem to have been made chiefly in Berlin) is quite ready to accept both, as regards transvestism. 1 He points out that in many cases the subject shared the room of a sister in childhood, the period to which the aberration may so often be traced back, but as we know that the close association of brothers and sisters is commonly without significance for later life we are compelled to seek for a congenital predisposition. 1 L. Goldmann, “Ueber das Wesen des Umkleidungstriebes,” with many illustrations, Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, Bd. xii, Heft 9-12, 1924-5. EONISM. 27 Goldmann sees in transvestism “a variety of sexual disposition of high biological and cultural significance.” He is inclined to regard it as a form of auto-erotism, but seeks to distinguish between an erotic and a more permanent psychic form of the anomaly. He points out, like other investigators, its compara¬ tive rarity in women, and finds that in men when it is homo¬ sexual it tends to become less marked with years or with gratification of the homosexual impulses, but in the more pre¬ valent heterosexual cases it became pronounced with age; this distinction seems just. He also remarks how, in the case of a distinguished musical composer, the bisexual constitution in¬ volved by the anomaly aided him to reach his highest musical possibilities. On the whole, he concludes that the hormonic explanation of this peculiar and many-sided anomaly is often, without question, the signpost pointing to the right road, but that there are also numerous cases where we need psychology in order to attain a completely satisfying answer to the thousandfold questions involved. It was by Hirschfeld’s important work in this field that I was stimulated to return to the subject and to bring forward my own small contribution. In a study published in the Alienist and, Neurologist (May and August, 1913), describing four cases of the anomaly, I proposed for it the term “Sexo- Aesthetic Inversion,” which I used as the title of the study, and I also suggested as an alternative the name “Eonism” after the Chevalier d’Eon, the most famous historical subject of this anomaly, to be used as comparable to the terms “sadism” and “masochism.” (“Aesthetic inversion,” I should say, was the name suggested to me by a man of scientific and scholarly dis¬ tinction who was himself the subject of this anomaly in a pro¬ nounced form.) I pointed out the propriety of invoking aesthe¬ tic emotion in this connection since the main characteristic of these people—the impulse to project themselves by sympathetic feeling into the object to which they are attracted, or the im¬ pulse of inner imitation—is precisely the tendency which vari¬ ous recent philosophers of aesthetics have regarded as the es¬ sence of all aesthetic feeling. It now, however, seems to me PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 28 undesirable to use the word “inversion” in this connection as it is too apt to arouse suggestions of homosexuality, which may be quite absent, though it remains true that the phenomenon we are concerned with is one of erotic empathy, of a usually heterosexual inner imitation, which frequently tends to mani¬ fest itself in the assumption of the habits and garments of the desired sex; for the important point is that this impulse springs out of admiration and affection for the opposite sex, therefore , the subject of it is not usually tempted to carry the inner imi¬ tation so far as to imitate the sexual desires of that sex and so to become unlike it by being homosexual; that is how it is that, to superficial view, he seems less logical, less thorough-going, than the sexual invert. Moreover, “sexo-aesthetic inversion,” even if acceptable as a descriptive term, still remains one of those hybrid Graco- Latin compounds which it is best if possible to avoid. Aesthe¬ tic sexual inversion” is misleading, since it would apparently be equivalent to “aesthetic homosexuality.” The same subject of the anomaly who suggested “aesthetic inversion” also in¬ dependently proposed Laurent’s term, “psychical hermaphrodi¬ tism” ; but that is not accurate since these people are not always conscious of possessing the psychic disposition of both sexes, but sometimes only of one, the opposite sex, the sex to which they are attracted. Hirschfeld regretted that the difficulty can¬ not be solved by adopting the name of some well-known subject of the condition as in the terms * sadism and masochism, but thought none sufficiently well-known. He overlooked the well-known Chevalier d’Eon who exhibited this impulse very definitely, and I am now inclined to think best the term I had more tentatively suggested in my first contribution to the sub¬ ject and to call this anomaly “Eonism.” 1 Some years ago a man was found drowned off the Cornish coast dressed in women s clothes and with his hands fastened 11 have already used it as the title of an article on the subject in the New York Medical Review of Reviews (Jan., 1920). Wilhelm in 1914 ( Sexual-Probleme, July, 1914, p. 500) regarded my proposed name of Eonism as probably the best. EONISM. 29 together. Among his effects at the hotel he was staying at were numerous refinements of the feminine toilette and feminine articles of dress. He was a lawyer, practising as a solicitor near London, and regarded by his acquaintances (of whom one is known to me) as an ordinary and normal man of quiet habits. There was no suggestion that his death was due to violence. It was evident that he had sought what was from the point of view of the Eonist (apparently with masochistic tendencies) the most voluptuous death possible. 1 Such a case reveals some of the peculiarities of Eonism. It tends to occur among people who are often educated, refined, sensitive, and reserved. It is for the most part successfully concealed from the subject’s friends and acquaintances, even from the nearest members of his own family. It is sometimes associated with manifestations which recall masochism or pas¬ sive algolagnia. Thus it is in some aspects a form of erotic symbolism which, while it might be classified under inversion, in the wider sense of that term, yet has resemblances to erotic fetichism and occurs in the kind of people who tend to be sub¬ ject to fetichism. It also resembles, in some of its features, the kind of auto-erotism called Narcissism or erotic self- admiration. Aesthetic inversion cannot, however, be identified either with fetichism or with Narcissism; the subject is not really in love either with a fetich or, except in one special type, with himself. Although this psychic peculiarity is so difficult both to name and to define, it is, strange as that may seem, the com¬ monest of all sexual anomalies to attain prominence in the public newspapers. There are several reasons why that should be. There is not only the real frequency of the condition, but the fact that it is so striking and so intriguing a violation of our most obvious conventional rules and regulations of social 1 An imperfectly investigated case (Brand, Practitioner, Oct., 1917) of a robust married man found dead in his bedroom in a tightly laced corset and a weak electric battery with one pole to the base of abdomen, indicates an Eonist attempting to heighten voluptuous emotion, but may not indicate a voluptuous suicide, as the corset could hardly produce asphyxia and the battery was harmless. PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. life. There is the further consideration that, since in its simple uncomplicated form it constitutes no violation of our moral feelings and laws, it is easily possible to discuss it plainly in the most reputable public prints. It may be worth while to quote a typical case thus re¬ ported in the press. In the Alienist and Neurologist for July, 1895, is found the following quotation from the Journal of Lewiston, Maine: “Commander James Robbins, of Cooper s , Mills, in this State, is one of the prominent men of his com¬ munity, a citizen generally esteemed as a man of integrity and intelligence. Mr. Robbins has a brilliant war record. He has lived in the village since 1883, and is a jeweler. His house is a neat cottage house on the brow of the hill as one drives into the Mills. In the narrow front hallway is Mr. Robbins bench, lathe, and tools, and here you will find him placidly working away at the tiny wheels and springs. “If you are on sufficiently intimate terms with Mr. Robbins you will find him indulging in his hobby. He has one, like most of us. In his case the hobby is startlingly picturesque, and it may be safely said that he is the most original man in the State of Maine, so far as his curious fancy is concerned. He wears petticoats. Not when he goes down the street for the mail and to do his marketing. At these times he slips on the masculine pantaloons. Yet he does not wear his trousers even like the ordinary masculinity. No suspenders for him. He wears a sort of dress about his hips. He always wears a woman’s No. 6 shoe with high heels and graceful, slender shape. Mr. Robbins weighs something like 180 pounds, and the effect produced by those shoes peeping coyly out from beneath manly trouser legs is startling, to say the least. Mr. Robbins doesn’t mince or toddle, and his shoes seem to fit him pretty well. “He reserves his petticoats for the sanctity of the home circle, for the partial retirement of his orchard, and for calls upon neighbors with whom his acquaintance is close. Mr. Robbins isn’t squeamish about showing himself in petticoats. He enjoys wearing them; he has worn them when opportunity has presented all his life long, and he wears them scientifically, EONISM. 31 too. In the first place, there’s no half-way business about it. Every detail of feminine attire is there, and Mr. Robbins is rightly fussy about the details. There is no woman in Cooper’s Mills who owns so many dresses of such excellent material as does the commander of the Cooper s Mills Post. He takes pride in having only the best. His lingerie is elaborately tucked and ruffled, edged with lace and fashioned according to the most approved models of any lady’s wardrobe. The material is of the finest quality, and when Mr. Robbins lifts his skirts the eye gets a vision of ruffles, lace and ‘all such like’ of dazzling whiteness and im¬ maculate smoothness. He is very particular about his ironing. Everything must be starched up to the handle, whatever that is, and sometimes Mrs. Robbins finds her hands full and her clothes horse loaded down like a pack donkey. Amazed neighbors, who were not fully aware of the extent of Mr. Robbins’ hobby, have been obliged to ask for more details when Mrs. Robbins has laconic¬ ally informed them that ‘it is Jim’s ironing.’ Mr. Robbins’ hosiery is of the long sort and it is currently rumored that the stockings are hitched up at the sides. His corsets he has made especially for his girth, and these he wears continually. His shape is fairly good, especially when he dresses up for after¬ noons. In the morning he wears print gowns, for he assists in the housew'ork. Almost every morning Mr. Robbins in his print gown is seen sweeping off the piazza and whisking about the kitchen. He wears petticoats at home almost exclusively, putting on the garb as soon as he enters the house. For after¬ noon wear his gowns are elaborate. Some of them are made by Mr. Robbins and some are fashioned by local dressmakers. One cashmere dress is quite a favorite, and this is frequently worn by Mr. Robbins when he promenades in the orchard. He has lots of these good clothes, all of fashionable cut, puffed slee\ es, and all the fixin s that go to lend grace and dignity. Usually he wears an apron, and especially so when at his bench. The apron is white, ordinarily, and has a bib with ruffled straps and pockets. Therefore, does Mr. Robbins present a somewhat 32 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. unique appearance as he works away of afternoons, or sits and converses with his wife. “Look at the gown and you see a stylishly attired woman. But the face is very manly indeed. Mr. Robbins would be marked in any crowd. His face is full and he wears a mustache that possibly owes a colour to art. His hair is long, black and curly, his voice deep and full, and there’s nothing effeminate about him except his attire.” _ . ' It may be added, however, that this case, if representative of one type of Eonist, is not typical as regards the favorable response of the social environment. This is more usually one of petty persecution, so that the history of the Eonist, when less robust and jovial than Commander Robbins, may some¬ times turn out pathetically. Examples of women strictly belonging to the same group cannot so easily and so certainly be found in public records. Most of those thus brought before the world have either adopted men’s dress and ways for the sake of greater facility in earning a living, or they are in reality sexually inverted. This is illustrated by the numerous references to women in Pettow’s Krankhafte Verkleidungstrieb. The genuine Eonist type can be more easily discovered in women who are never brought prominently to public attention, but even then often obscurely. Thus Stekel ( Die Ceschlechtskalte der Frau, 1921, pp. 429-457), gives long fragments of analysis of a woman, anxious to be like a man and unlike a woman; it was rather a complicated case with conflict, and an element of homosexuality, but finally the feminine element conquered and she became reconciled to being a woman. If Eonism is a deeply rooted natural instinct, of which the possibilities are always latent, we should expect to find it wide-spread over the world among peoples of all stages of culture. We might also expect to find it emerging from time to time even among the general population. Both these ex¬ pectations are fulfilled even with our present imperfect knowl¬ edge. EONISM. 33 Among lower races the manifestations of Eonism may occur not only, as in civilization, in a sporadic and isolated way, but also sometimes endemically in groups. So that, one notes incidentally, Eonism may possibly represent, not, as we might have been tempted to suppose, a corrupt or over-refined mani¬ festation of late cultures, but the survival of an ancient and natural tendency of more primitive man. As an example of the isolated tendency I may quote the note of a case communicated to me by Dr. C. G. Seligman as observed by him during the Cambridge Anthropological Ex¬ pedition to Torres Straits. “Hiro, a woman of 30, daughter of a Hula chief. On casual examination she seemed rather taller and less fat than the average Hula woman, with less rounded figure. The skin of the breasts seemed rather wrinkled but the breasts them¬ selves looked normally developed. The genitals are said to be normal and the mons hairy. As a little girl she always pre¬ ferred playing boys’ games, and by all accounts she played them well. As she got older she stuck to boys and their games, preferring them as companions, and avoiding her own sex. She refused to adopt the girls’ petticoat for some time, but at puberty was compelled by threats to do so. She seems to have behaved normally as regards sexual matters, and about two years after the onset of menses there was an abortion. She now works in the garden man-fashion, using heavy digging sticks, and carries burdens man-fashion. She has refused at least three offers of marriage, and lives with her mother. As far as can be ascertained, she has never had any homosexual relationships, and since the abortion she seems to have had no normal sexual relationships, or, at all events, they have not been of sufficient duration to arrest public attention.” One or two rather similar cases were met, also in New Guinea, in men. The sarimbavy, found among the Hovas of Madagascar, and described by Rencurel and others, have sometimes been brought up as girls because their parents desired to have a girl, but in other cases the impulse towards feminine habits and vocations arises and 3 34 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. persists in spite of the parents’ opposition (Annales■ d’Hygitne, etc., 1900 p 562; Jourdran, Archives d’Anthropologie Crtminelle, Dec., 1903; Emile Laurent, ib. April 15, 1911). The sarimbavy shun the society of boys, and associate with girls, and as they grow up they wear their hair long and fastened in a knot; they follow womens occupations, dress in women’s clothes, and epilate them chins. They show no traces of physical abnormality, no infantilism, and the sexual organs are properly developed. The shoulders are, however, rounded, the muscular system soft and covered by adipose tissue The voice, also, resembles that of an eunuch; the inflection and timbre are those of a woman; and the laugh shrill. This appears to be due to unconscious imitation. The sarimbavy are gent e an timid, and very modest. Although constantly living with women, they have no sexual impulses; erections are rare, and when sexua intercourse takes place, it is only at the woman’s insistence, an fails to produce agreeable sensations. There appears to e no decided sexual impulse either in a normal or an abnormal direction, and Rencurel considers that the sarimbavy may be regarded as a group apart, that of asexual inverts. We may regard them as asexual Eonists. The Pu-Mca (“men-women”) of Eastern Asia, men who are brought up to live as women or who later become drawn to such a life, present an allied phenomenon, though on the borderland of homosexuality, for the Pu-Mea sometimes marry men (especially confirmed opium-smokers who have become impotent), and such unions are quite likely to turn out happily. This is especially found in Laos, according to Otto Ehlers (Im Sattel durch Indochina, Vol. I, pp. 80 ct scq., 116 cl seq.), whose account is also quoted by Pettow (pp. 19 et seq.)- Frazer has touched on this aspect of cross-dressing ( Golden Bough, “Adonis Attis Osiris,” Vol. II, pp. 253-264) and refers to various peoples among whom it is customary for some of the men to live as women. Among the Sea-Dyaks of Borneo this is said to be due to a call in a dream, which indicates the existence of an inner impulse. Among the Omaha it was regarded as due to the action of the moon and began, as we might expect, at the puberty initiation rites. Frazer regards interchange of dress as “an obscure and com¬ plex problem,” holding that it is unlikely a single solution applies to all cases. There may be a change of sex under the inspiration of a goddess; as perhaps the effeminate Sardanapalus, Hercules, and the priests of Cybele, the womanish priest or king, we may suppose, having “thought himself animated by a female spirit” (just, I may add, as with the Eonist today). Sometimes, again, the object, Frazer EONISM. 35 remarks, is to avert the evil eye, while sometimes it is a disguise for deceiving a demon. In Maarken, Holland, Jelgersma states that the boys are dressed as girls until the age of seven (Jelgersma, “A Peculiar Custom in the Island of Maarken,” Int. Jour. Psycho-analysis, July, 1925). He regards this custom as “ a symbolic castration,” imposed by the men to guard against the incestuous tendencies of children, among a sea¬ faring population. A general temporary impulse to cross-dressing is, so far as our present knowledge goes, still more widespread than its permanent forms. Crawley has brought together evidence of its occurrence among primitive peoples in various parts of the world (A. E. Crawley, The Mystic Rose , 1902, pp. 279- 281). Dr. Seligman tells me of what he would term “cere¬ monial cross-dressing” which he has observed in dances of the Marshall Bennet Islanders in Melanesia, and also among the Lotuko in Africa. Cross-dressing took place in the Roman Saturnalia. In the medieval Feast of Fools, which, like the Roman Satur¬ nalia, fell in December, women dressed as men and men as women; so also during Carnival. At St. Ives in Cornwall, I may add, it was usual some years ago to keep up the old custom of “guise-dancing” during the fortnight after Christmas, with cross-dressing and the wearing of masks. In association with these periodic manifestations of cross¬ dressing through the Middle Ages, fully accepted by public opinion and even by the Church, there were constantly oc¬ curring isolated manifestations of Eonism in men and women, and these unfortunate individuals, far from being accepted, were subjected to social contempt and judicial torture and not infrequently condemned to death. Hirschfeld, Pettow, and others have brought forward examples from old literature which could no doubt be easily increased. We may measure the strength of the impulse to Eonism by the dangers which were risked by those who experienced the impulse. It should be added that still today the Eonist often has to encounter the same hostile social attitude, not even the medical profession always constituting an honorable exception. Thus, an Eonist 36 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. of high character not long since informed me that a frien of his had spoken on the subject to a London doctor who be¬ came very wroth and said that all such cases should be con¬ fined to asylums and those who aided them shot.” The precise nature of “aesthetic inversion” can only be ascertained by presenting illustrative examples of which we may obtain exact and detailed knowledge with the aid of t e subject himself. There are at least two main types of such^ cases: One, the most common kind, in which the inversion is mainly confined to the sphere of clothing, and another, less common but more complete, in which cross-dressing is regarded with comparative indifference but the subject so identifies him¬ self with those of his physical and psychic traits which recal the opposite sex that he feels really to belong to that sex, al¬ though he has no delusion regarding his anatomical conforma- Before bringing forward a fully developed case of each type, it may conduce to an understanding of the anomaly i we consider some of the intermediate stages between aesthetic inversion and the normal sexual attitude. There are many gradations in the extent to which Eonism may occur. In a very slight degree it is extremely common, perhaps more so among women than men, and especially at an early age. This may be illustrated by the following note written by a medical woman, aged 30, normal in sexual and other re¬ spects, regarding her own youthful impulses. “As a a child it was my greatest desire to be a boy; I read only boys’ books; boys to me were wonderful beings, the souls of honor and truth, quite different from girls, and I tried to mould myself along lines which I fancied would evoke the admiration of boys. I climbed and ran and swam as well as could be done. The friendships between boys I thought wonderful and quite ideal. And even after I grew up my ideal relationship was always friendship with a man. For a long time I had short hair and dressed somewhat severely. And even now at times I am assailed by an almost irresistible de¬ sire to cut short my hair and to be unfeminine, and then at EONISM. 37 other times I want to do just the opposite. It is very wearing to be between two fires.” Occasionally, it would seem, this anomaly may exist in a more marked form, but only in the subconscious sphere, and manifest itself in dreams alone, in this rare form corresponding to Leland’s conception of “the alternate sex” lying beneath waking consciousness. I will first present a well-marked case of such aesthetic inversion confined to dreams. The subject is a Welshwoman, 29 years of age, married two years since. Though not muscularly strong, she is very healthy, entirely normal, tall and supple, with good complexion and hair, fond of swimming and of country life though compelled to live in a city. She is somewhat emotional in temperament, quick, vivid, high-spirited; it is a type not so very rare among her country-people. Her intelligence is of a very high order and she earns her living by literary work. Her ways and feelings are feminine; she is attractive to men and attracted to them. She has never at any time had any homosexual impulses and regards such things with horror. She has, moreover, never masturbated or played with herself. Until marriage, at the age of twenty-seven, she had had indeed, no sexual experiences, auto-erotic or other,—except in dreams. From the onset of sexual life at the age of twelve, she had experienced erotic dreams, coming usually (as shown by a diary she kept for a long time) two or three nights before the monthly period, which, as a rule, is fairly easy; sometimes a period is not preceded by the dream. These dreams have been accompanied by complete sexual satisfaction, and she awakens, she states, “all thrilling with the sensations—and I’ve tried to prolong them by lying hard on my face; but in a couple of minutes they’ve gone.” The dreams have, however, this special peculiarity that, invariably, the dreamer imagines that she herself is a young man of about twenty-three years of age, who is making love to a young girl. She has never had a normal erotic dream about a man, although she has sometimes dreamed of kisses PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 38 that had actually occurred. Indeed, in all her very vivid dreams, even apart from those of an erotic character, she dreams of herself in this masculine shape. (She makes exception o a nightmare, to which she is occasionally liable, in which she retains her own feminine personality and is pursued from room to room by a loathsome woman.) “In these dreams/* she writes, “I feel myself masculine; in one or two of them I have touched myself and found it different from a* woman, and once I saw myself in a mirror and recognized the face as one long forgotten somehow. 1 Personally, I believe I must have been a boy once. My girl is always the same type, though I ve only her about five times, and not clearly. I feel her absolutely dis¬ tinctly, soft-skinned and very full-breasted. The only time I saw her clearly enough to remember, she was dark-haired and light-skinned (as I am), but not of my figure; she was small and plump and had on a weird costume—sort of Turkish, with a scarlet jacket and gold jewels and white trousers and a scarlet close cap on her long hair. The costume I must have got from a picture, though I cannot call it to mind. All this is absolutely apart from my real life and I seldom give it a waking thought.” Some extracts from the subject’s diary (after marriage) may illustrate the occurrence of the dreams and their nature. 21st Sept. (Saturday.) I had that dream last night. I had in¬ tense feeling but could not see my girl. 24th Sept. Monthly period. 20th Oct. (Sunday.) My girl came. I saw her lying in the scarlet and white costume. She was very sweet and I loved her, besides the feeling, which was strong when I awoke. I kissed her very much on the breast. I had a feeling that there was a younger girl somewhere near that I was supposed to take, but I kept to my own one because she was so pretty. She was ever so fond of me. 22d Oct. Monthly period. 12th Nov. That dream with a girl. Couldn’t see her. 18th Nov. Monthly period. 13th Dec. Violin dream. That violin dream found me so dis¬ tinctly as a young man that it might be part of the other dream, though I wasn’t having the feeling with a girl at all. A party of us —tourists, I think—were in a certain Welsh hotel, in the coffee- room. There is a big mirror over the mantel-piece. I saw myself 1 This paramnesic feeling (as I have pointed out in The World of Dreams) is very common in dreams, even in connection with the most insignificant details. EONISM. 39 in a gray tweed suit with a gray cap. My hair was as dark as usual and I was about my usual (woman’s) height, but it looks less in a man. I saw myself more clearly than the others—men and girls, I don’t know who. I felt myself fond of one of the girls, though she was only one of a vague crowd, but I was quite aware of her—and the young man’s love in me was not the same as my woman-feeling all through my real life. I remembered that vividly afterwards. I felt I was taking care of that girl, but I didn’t see her. We were "waiting for tea. There was a violin case on a table at the other end of the room. Everybody knew it was something horrible and the girls were frightened. Then the violin case lifted itself up with¬ out being touched, and everyone was in a state of horror. I (the young man) had a feeling that I must stand on the hearthrug with my back to the mirror. I saw my own shoulder, and the back of my head in the mirror (I don’t see how I did it), I put my left hand up as if I were playing. (I’ve never learned the violin) and waited. I felt the girl looking at me and I was sorry she was so frightened. Then the violin suddenly flew through the air like a bird from the other end of the coffee-room, came straight at me and nestled under my chin in the right position for me to play. I held my other arm down at my side, and the loathsome violin played a tune as if some¬ one else were bowing, but there was no bow, and no one there. It played the same little tune twice over, and then dropped out of my hands. I turned to the girl as I woke. It was an extraordinarily vivid dream; myself, the room and the violin were as clear as real life; my feeling for the girl was very strong. Only the other people were the usual dream crowd. 15th Dec. Monthly period, I had rather a bad time. 23d Feb. That dream. I saw her shoulders and breast and her face. She held me tight with her hand down there, hurting me. I awoke in pain. (This pain was all up me and in my thighs, like, I imagine, acute cramp. I was not touching myself, both arms being around my husband, who was asleep. In about five minutes that pain went, leaving me light and easy.) Before breakfast the monthly period came. Easy time.” These erotic dream experiences had lately acquired a cer¬ tain importance in the subject's eyes, owing to circumstances following her marriage. Much as she loved her husband the expected emotions of intercourse failed to come about. The sensations of marriage union, while agreeable so far as they went, were not to be compared with those of the dreams. The husband, who had been without experience before mar- 40 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. riage, was ignorant of the sexual life of women and knew nothing of the art of love. He had not only failed to arouse the wife’s erotic emotions, he had not even been aware that they needed arousing, or that anything beyond penetration and ejaculation was required of him. Having sought advice, she speedily realized what was amiss, took the matter into her own hands, instructed her husband who was quite willing to learn, and according to the latest report, the sexual union of marriage ^ speedily became almost, if not quite, as satisfactory as the dream experiences. In these dream experiences we see aesthetic inversion carried to a point which is not possible in real life except during insanity. We see, that is, an inversion which is not homo¬ sexual but heterosexual. The interesting point about these dreams is the seemingly complete divorce from real life. It is fairly evident that the subject herself could not explain the origin of the systematized delusion in her dream-life. She set forth her history with an evident anxiety to conceal nothing, however trivial; her motive for keeping a diary of the dreams at one time was the wish to discover the meaning of them. It is possible that more minute psychological investigation might have given a clue to the first constitution of the dream-system, but this was not possible, for the subject, having received the solution of the special difficulty for which she sought advice, disappeared from sight. So far as we can judge of the mechanism of the dream-system from the available indications, it would appear to be determined by the impulses of childish sexuality, corresponding to the age at which the dream system arose. The aggressive tendency, the homosexual tendency, the tendency to Narcissism are all youthful tendencies, belonging to the period of puberty or earlier, and all appear clearly marked in this dream-system. As regards Narcissism, the subject notes that her dream-girl when seen, failed to corres¬ pond in all respects to her own waking self, but the most strik¬ ing features of the dream-girl were certainly those which the dreamer, when awake, most values in herself. The trans- EONISM. 41 formation of sex still remains to account for, and it would seem to have been a device of the subconscious mind whereby the tendencies to aggression, to homosexuality and to Narcis¬ sism might have free play. It may be recalled also that the desire to be a boy is really a very common wish of young girls, even girls of entirely feminine constitution . 1 This aesthetic heterosexual inversion in dream-life is, in the nature of things, a manifestation which cannot occur in sane waking life. When we turn to waking life we have to make a fresh start. The next case to be brought forward seems to me to present a partial approximation to the attitude of aesthetic inversion. J. G., aged 35. Married. Father nervous, high strung individual. Very quick tempered. Storms of rage quickly and easily produced and as easily subdued. Mother of a rather phlegmatic type. Two brothers and one sister, who seem to have been normal. Sister very religious. As a child he was quick tempered, but his likes and dislikes were strongly mastered. It seemed to him that he was unmercifully plagued for the purpose of exciting a tempest of rage, when he was punished, usually by whipping. At the age of 7 he became very fond of a little girl, the child of a neighbor, and enjoyed caressing and kissing her. They always met secretly and the practice was kept up until discovered by a nursemaid who informed his mother that he was very forward. He was punished, he could not understand for what cause, but decided that kissing and girls were bad. He 1 Maeder (“Ueber zwei Frauentypen,” Zentralblatt fur Psycho¬ analyse, vol. i, Heft. 12, 1911) attributes to what he calls the “clitoris type” of woman a tendency at puberty to want to be a boy and to have dream-phantasies in which she plays the masculine part, especially in sexual matters. Our present subject, however, only corresponds to Maeder’s clitoris type of woman to a very slight extent. With regard to the desire of a girl to be a boy, Alfred Adler (“Zur Rolle des Unbe- wussten in der Neurose,” Zt. f. Psychoanalyse , vol. iii) refers to the classic story of Caenis, the beautiful Thessalian girl who refused all her wooers but was ravished by Poseidon when walking by the seashore. He offered her any boon she might wish, and she chose to be a man in order to avoid any incident of this kind occurring again, at the same time receiving the gift of invulnerability, so that Caenus, as he was henceforward called, became active in martial pursuits (Ovid, Metamorph, lib. XII, 171-209). This story, no doubt, might well be a girl’s dream- phantasy. The tendency we are here concerned with is now by psycho¬ analysts commonly associated with the castration-complex. 42 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. was not allowed to play with the children of his own age for some unknown reason; but he thinks that his mother^ h ° u as an ord- nary sane person and none of them have any suspicion that he is not normal Yet, he states, “every nerve in my body seems to cry out that, in spite of my outward masculine form, I am actually feminin . and I long for female clothing, female form, female amusements, and female sexual gratification.” . “I began to have sexual feelings,” he writes, at what, I think, i The fact that fetichism really represents in some cases a transi¬ tion to aesthetic inversion, or constitutes an initial stage of it is well brought out in several cases that have been published. Thus in a case ^of developed foot and corset fetichism in a student of twenty- two studied by K. Abraham ( Jahrbuch fur Psychoanalyttsche For- SunWM 1912, pp. 557 ct scq.), the subject when a boy wanted to be a woman not in order to exercise a woman’s sexual functions, but m order to dress as a woman. Again in a very completely developed case of cross-dressing investigated by Hirschfeld and Burchard (Aerctlichc- Sachzrrstandigen Zcitung, 1912, Nos. 23 and 24) a well marked shoe- fetichism preceded the development of the aesthetic inversion and seems to have^ re p ea t ( what I have often remarked before, that there is no ground for the notion that sexual perversions are commonly acquired through reading books about them. It is quite true that reading about them sometimes encourages the subject to acknowledge them but that is verv different matter. It is only in rare cases of persons who are already highly abnormal that an acquired perversion can thus be artificially developed. Even in these cases we may possibly be concerned with a retarded congenital condition. EONISM. 45 must have been an extraordinarily early age, having discovered, I know not how, at about the age of four, that the handling of my penis produced a pleasant sensation and an erection, and that, after a little manipulation of it, I could bring on a short spasm of feeling even yet more enjoyable. Thus, long before I knew anything about sex whatever, I became enamored of this kind of pleasure, though, with a sort of instinctive feeling that it was ‘naughty,’ I carefully concealed my indulgence in it. A later discovery was that it was also very pleasurable to be partly or wholly naked, and when in that condition to bring my bare limbs or body in contact with all sorts of inanimate objects. I can remember when quite a little chap in petticoats, which I wore I think until I was about seven or eight, pulling up my little drawers to walk about with my thighs naked, and to press between them all sorts of things such as cushions, bottles, tin cans, or the legs of tables, which always gave me an erection and something the same sort of pleasure that I have since heard a woman confess to having experienced at having similar things clasped between her legs. Still better it was to strip quite naked and to roll on the floor or on the bed tickling my breasts or my thighs and enjoy the pleasurable stiffening of the penis which always supervened. As yet I had no consciousness of the other sex, and, as I have said, I always did these things when alone, though I generally experienced more pleasure in doing them in places where, at other times, there were other people, so that I preferred to strip say in the drawing room to doing it in my own bedroom, where I knew it was safe to do so, and loved to run all over the house and up and down stairs quite naked when I was alone in the house. This passion for nakedness and exposure has grown upon me, and has driven me to do all sorts of extraordinary things, and to gratify it in all sorts of places, both indoors and outdoors, often with the greatest possible risk of discovery, which, however, only seemed to add an additional charm and piquancy to my actions. “Growing up to boyhood with this taste for nakedness and exposure and constantly indulging in the habit of self abuse, and being, besides, a very spoiled child, I became, I am afraid, very much of a molly coddle, very effeminate and girlish in my tastes and habits. Against this, however, I developed after a time a great love and admiration for the other sex, having had many little sweethearts and juvenile love affairs, though for a long time I connected the objects of my affections very little with my curious sexual desires. Although, as may be seen, I was already in some respects very depraved, in others I was very innocent, and I must have been about fourteen or fifteen before I slowly realized the relation of the sexes and began to relate my desires to the sex of my charmers. 46 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. That, however, came quite strongly in due time, though curiously enough, the more I began to feel physically amorous towards the girls, the more bashful I became in their actual presence. At sixteen, though hardly able to speak to a girl I admired, I yet, in the exercise of a most fertile imagination, would in secret imagine myself engag with her in all sorts of amorous and voluptuous adventures, and com¬ mit to paper all sorts of stories in which we indulged m the mutua exposure of our persons to one another, and in lascivious caressings of all kinds. . . ,. , ' “About this time, too, began to develop the artistic tastes which have determined my general career and which have had their strongly sexual influence as well. I began, for instance, to take the greatest pleasure in pictures of the female form divine, and would take any I could get hold of to my bedroom and ‘worship it,* as I called it, by stripping mvself also naked before it, and manipulating my erected and excited organ until its spasm of pleasure culminated in what I termed a libation to my goddess. I also began to take the greatest pleasure in the sight and details of female clothing, especia y the pretty underthings, an accidental glimpse of which, given by an extra short-skirted girl or woman, I got to be always on the lookout for and to keenly enjoy. So keen did I get on this that I would do almost anything to see a girl or a woman in any condition of exposure or undress, loving the sight of her clothing, I think, quite as much as that of her limbs or body. Many a young girl with par¬ ticularly short skirts I have followed for miles enjoying the sight of her shapely legs and occasional delicious glimpses of her pretty underclothing, while one summer at the sea-side almost every day I used to go up some cliff steps behind a girls’ school in order to enjoy looking up their clothes and feast my eyes on the details of their pretty drawers and petticoats. My constant presence and purpose was, I am almost sure, noticed by one or two little coquettes, for once or twice I noticed that drawers had been pushed up and that petticoats were being bunched up with the result of the display of garters and even of bare thighs above them. “Then, somewhat later, came, quite naturally, the next step in my development. While one day enjoying being naked in my sister’s bedroom, where there was a large mirror in which I delighted to see my naked body and limbs reflected, I came across a lot of her prettily trimmed underclothing, and was seized with the desire to put it on. I did so—and from that moment I date what I term my change of sex. I cannot describe to you the pleasure I felt when thus dressing myself for the first time in female garments. It was exquisite, delicious, intoxicating, far and away trans¬ cending anything I had before experienced, and when, after some EONISM. 47 trouble, I was completely attired as a girl, and placed myself in front of the glass, it was a positive revelation. I felt that here at last was what I had been longing for. Now my bashfulness mattered no longer. Here before me was a pretty girl, whom I could see in any stage of dress or undress, whom I could pose in any position I liked that would show off her body or limbs or underclothing. I could experience all my old pleasures of nakedness and exposure and as a girl at the same time in the same condition. I was both boy and girl at once, and since that time I have never been a male pure and simple again, and today I am actually more female than male, in spite of the actual physical facts to the contrary. Feeling as I thus did, it is no wonder that the new pleasure became a posi¬ tive passion with me, which I lost no opportunity of gratifying, surreptitiously borrowing articles of female attire at every possible occasion in order to enjoy the exquisite sensations caused by wear¬ ing them. The ladies’ newspapers became of the greatest interest to me and I gloated over their illustrations of sweet chemises, dainty drawers and charming corsets; and gradually, through their medium, I began to get a collection of such things for myself. To such a pitch of refinement have I carried this passion for dressing as a female that I have now complete costumes of various kinds, and can appear in full evening dress, with bare arms and neck, and naked shoulders and bosom; as a dancing girl with yards and yards of lace petticoats, as a young girl in short skirts displaying her beautifully frilled drawers, or even as a child with socks instead of stockings and delightfully naked legs. Each of them gives me a different variety of pleasure as I wear them under fresh conditions or in fresh places, or pose and expose myself in some fresh variety of voluptuous position. For instance, I have when staying in the country, on going to bed dressed myself as a short-skirted young girl and when everyone else had retired, come downstairs and gone thus attired out into the garden, and walked about in the moonlight, pulling up my lovely lace petticoats to still further expose my shapely legs and frilled drawers, deriving the most exquisite pleasure from imagining myself to be a young girl thus behaving herself. And I have walked down a country lane, in full evening dress, at night, revelling in the nakedness of my neck and arms and the complete exposure of my bare bosom, and enjoying the feel of the billowy laces of my petticoats foaming round my silk stockinged ankles as I walked. I have also stripped and redressed myself as a girl in the railway carriage of a long journey non-stop train, and derived the most exquisite pleasure from the daring situation. 48 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. “Perhaps, however, my most absolutely daring exploit m this way was when I went into the garden of a London square late at night, from one of the adjoining houses, clad in a charming com¬ bination of evening and young girl’s dress, with a sleeveless bodice cut low to the last possible inch, and with the shortest possible skirts and petticoats, in which the delicious nudity of my bosom, and the naked exposure of part of my thighs between the tops of my elaborately gartered openwork silk stockings, was exquisitely ex¬ citing and in delightful contrast to the compression of my body in my tightly laced corsets. Over this I put on a long overcoat, which on reaching the square garden I threw off, and stood thus girlishly dressed and exposed in the open air, feminine, half naked, and more than half mad with excitement and pleasure. I walked about, tossed my lace petticoats, sat upon seats and still further exposed my legs and drawers, pulled even lower my bodice to still further bare my heaving bosom, then frantic with the lasciviousness of my feelings, I took off garment after garment, placing myself in some fresh extraordinary position in each stage of undress, and finally throwing all upon the ground and myself naked upon them I lay madly rubbing my frightfully erected organ until I spent more copiously than ever in my life before. Such is the state of things to which my mad passion for female dressing has at times driven me. “What I have already told relates to the earlier development of my condition, and up to this stage my aberrations were always solitary. They did not, however, after a while continue to be so, for I became acquainted with a widow lady, of handsome face and figure, though considerably older than myself, and conceived for her a great admiration, which she graciously accepted. I don’t know what she can have seen in me, or whether being herself of a most ardent, not to say lascivious temperament, she readily guessed mine to be the same, but anyhow the affair very quickly ripened and under her encouragement and skillful treatment I quickly became not only her admirer but also the absolute slave of her passions as well. When once encouraged I became very bold, and the first familiarities certainly came from me, but she soon convinced me that I was a mere tyro in voluptuousness, and taught me more than I had ever previously known or suspected. Confession of my half female condition she soon got out of me, and my state seemed to amuse her like a new toy, for she gave me every encouragement and assistance in it, delighting to dress me in her own clothes and even having some things especially made for me, such as corsets with special bust improvers in order that I might have the figure of a woman, and into these she loved to lace me until I was almost cut in two in the middle and suffered a curious blending of pleasure EONISM. 49 and pain. She, herself, was a confirmed tight-lacer and experienced much the same thing when she made me lace her in a similar manner. She liked the feeling and I the sight of her full firm breasts being forced upwards and outwards till they stood with erected nipples well out of her elegant corsets and courting the kisses and caresses which I loved to bestow and she to receive on these most sensitive parts of her beautiful form. Apropros of this I may add that another of my feminine characteristics is that my own breasts also have this extreme sensitiveness and that I love to have them kissed and caressed as they rise from my tight-laced corsets or low cut evening dress. Some time ago, on my longing to have real emale attributes, I tried to develop them to female proportions with an advertised preparation for improving the bust, but failed. When dressed as a woman and with my bosom bare I want real breasts very badly indeed. My lady friend was, however, an adept at caressing, kissing and tickling what I have got, as also in doing the same to another place where I also have extreme and quite feminine sensitiveness, namely, the insides of my thighs. To have between and upon these the feel of the frillings of very short drawers is just lovely, while to have them touched or tickled by female hands or lips is exquisite in the extreme. “In little tricks like these, and in the mutual handling and excitation of our private parts, we used to spend most of our time together, she either nude for her own pleasure or perhaps partly clad for me to enjoy the sight and feel of her underthings, and I usually in some variety of female attire. At times the pleasure of the latter, my sense of being actually female, my unrestrained exposure before my mistress, and her caresses and libidinous actions would almost cause me to swoon with the exquisiteness of my pleasure. At others my masculinity would come uppermost and the seance would end with a connection, but I may frankly confess that unless the latter were performed in some extraordinary manner or position, I did not enjoy it so much as when we kept up the illusion of my being female, as we sometimes even did to the extent of her dressing as a man and going through a scene of the seduction of myself as a woman. I may add that it was curious to note that just in the same way that I like to be tight-laced in order to feel thoroughly transformed into a woman and so enjoy my most delicious sensations, she liked to be the same during an ordinary connection, saying that it increased her pleasure to an extraordinary degree. “This particular amour is of some good time ago, but I have since had others more or less like it, some with younger women and girls who were glad to find a male admirer who could indulge in 4 50 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. unlimited lascivious caressing without wanting to go always to the full length of actual connection; sometimes my masculine and some¬ times my feminine desires have been uppermost, but the latter have always been on the increase, and I have now I think almost reached the stage described as actual sexual inversion. When dressed as a woman, I am a woman, with all a woman’s feelings and longings. The clothing still gives me all the exquisite pleasure it ever did, an , indeed I sometimes think that to be dressed in lovely feminine things, down to the last possible detail, with all of them designe and arranged for voluptuous effect, and when in them to be able to expose oneself to the lascivious gaze, or receive the lascivious caresses, of a pretty woman similarly attired, or to pose for oneself in some extraordinary position in front of a mirror, or to lie hal naked half femininely in a voluptuous dream, is the absolute height of sexual pleasure; yet at times when excited to the last pitch of female desire I sometimes find myself longing for a male instead of a female lover. Dressed as a girl I seem actually to become one. With my feet in high heeled shoes, and my legs looking exactly like those of a girl in black silk openwork stockings; feeling the clasp of my elaborate garters and the tickling of the frills of my drawers; clad in a delicate delicious chemise; laced to the utmost in shapely corsets; with a foam of lace petticoats round my ankles; with my neck and arms bare, and my bosom and shoulders rising nude out of the chiffons of a low-cut evening bodice, I look like a woman, and I feel like one, and then I seem to want a man to expose the charms of my person and clothing, to kiss and caress me, while I give myself up to him in I know not what mad orgie of lascivious and voluptuous pleasure. I have not yet got the length of doing any such thing in reality, even if there exists anyone who would abet me in such a thing, but when, in my calmer moments, I reflect on the extreme depravity of such desires and realize the depth to which I have actually fallen by the indulgence instead of the repression of my extraordinary feelings, I know that I have gone far enough and that it is quite time the whole thing was in some way stopped and treated. I think I know myself well enough to say that if the right road to a cure is pointed out to me I have strength enough to follow. Not that it will probably be easy, but the same spirit that has hitherto made me seek gratification at any cost may also serve me to practice renunciation in the same way. “I may say that my feminism is almost entirely mental, for physically, in all the matters of conformation, growth, and distribu¬ tion of hair, sexual organs, voice, etc., I am quite an ordinary and normal male. I have, certainly, rather small and well shaped hands and feet, and my legs, when seen in dainty stockings are surprisingly EONISM. 51 feminine in shape and appearance, and I hate to have my hair cut; but apart from these things I have no marked bodily female charac¬ teristics though I have often the most intense longing and desire, especially when enjoying the nakedness of my bosom in a low cut evening bodice, to have female breasts, that is in shape and size, for I already have the feminine quality of extreme sensitiveness in those parts, and keenly enjoy having them kissed and caressed, in which pleasure my lady friend used to very often indulge me, getting me, as I was nothing loth, to kiss and caress her own very fine, well-developed breasts in return. My other feminine characteristics are, as I have said, chiefly mental, beginning with the intense long¬ ing and desire to be a woman, and going through the faculty of, under certain conditions, actually being able to imagine myself to be one, to the love of and exquisite pleasure in the wearing of female clothing, and to the minor ones of a great love of perfumes, of jewelry in the way of rings, necklaces and bracelets, and of pretty things generally. The last is probably merely a part of the artistic tastes which make me hate anything that is coarse and ugly and love the beautiful and elegant. As an artist I get all my pleasure through the eyes, and suppose I carry the same thing into my sexuality, and naturally love the sight of a pretty woman quite nude, or displaying her charms and her pretty clothing together in some voluptuous or suggestive pose. That the charms of the underclothing exercise even a more powerful effect upon me than those of the woman herself is probably due to the fact that when I wear them myself they, to some extent, help to satisfy my longing to be actually a woman, and so gratify both my “feminism” and “erotic fetichism” at once. “Beyond these there, however, still remains my extraordinary delight in nakedness and exposure. This is a matter of feeling as well as seeing, for when, for instance, my neck and shoulders, arms and bosom are bared by a low-necked evening bodice; or a set of girlishly short petticoats and drawers expose above my socks or stockings a space of naked legs or thighs I enjoy the feeling of nakedness and exposure, quite as much as the sight of it in a mirror or on a pretty girl similarly exposed. “This exquisitely delicious feeling is tremendously increased in the case of my bosom when I am extra tightly laced in a pair of shapely corsets, and in the case of my legs and thighs when I have on very tight garters or the bands of my frilled drawers fit tightly round my thighs. It is also more delightful to be thus half naked out of doors than in, and most of all to be in that condition in the presence of and before the eyes of, a woman, who will give the nude parts the caresses they long for and enjoy. To be dressed like a 52 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. woman, exposed before a woman, all at one and the same time, while she herself is in a similar state of undress and exposure has been to me the absolute height of erotic pleasure—until recently I have been assailed with the further longing to give myself thus to a male instead of a female lover, and at this point have decided that things must stop, or they will certainly get to the disgraceful stage which they have not yet reached. I think I have the necessary will power to stop this. . “With regard to cultivating the masculine side of my highly erotic temperament I may be able to do something, but I fear that any sort of sexual indulgence with a woman will keep up the present state o things as my feminism and erotic fetichism are so absolute y a par of my general sexual feelings. I could not see a woman undress without at once being mad to put on her underclothing and experi¬ ence again all the exquisitely pleasurable sensations of being myself feminine. So potent has this erotic fetichism become that I can hardly tear myself away from the windows of an underclothing shop, or that of a corsetiere, while the sight of a girl’s or woman s acci¬ dentally exposed legs, petticoats or drawers will sometimes almost madden me with pleasure. “Dressed in elaborate female underthings; corsetted and laced to the last gasp; low-bodiced, and short-skirted; conscious of my exposed legs, my high-heeled shoes and tight garters; with the froth of billowy lace petticoats and flounced drawers round my thighs; with my breasts heaving in exquisite nakedness; and with the long hair of my wig flowing over my bare neck and shoulders and in this condition shamelessly displaying myself before a pretty woman in a similar condition, I become absolutely intoxicated with the exquisite femininity of my feelings and I feel that the next develop¬ ment of wanting a male lover would be actual madness and so must be resisted with all the means in my power.” This case, it is clear, while it presents a further stage of the condition revealed in the previous case, is yet not to be classed in the same group. Both are keenly interested in feminine dress, both attach importance to the corset, and both require to wear corsets themselves to obtain complete sexual satisfaction. But J. G. never goes beyond this; he wears no other feminine garment, and he shows no definite sign of any other feminine tastes or of any conscious identification with the feminine attitude. He may be quite plausibly regarded as a corset fetichist. A. T. is both less and more than a EONISM. 53 fetichist. He is not fascinated by any single feminine garment, and garments have only their supreme attraction when worn by himself. They are not really fetiches; they are simply the outward symbols of the inner spiritual state; and the really essential fact about A. T. is that he himself experiences the feminine state, and his tastes have undergone a feminine in¬ version and that he feels like a woman. A. T.’s attitude to¬ wards sexual inversion is instinctive and probably, it seems to me, fairly typical for this anomaly. It has gradually come about in the course of the full development of his sympathetic identification of tastes with women that he feels that the attentions of a man are needed to realize fully his feminine attitude. But this is purely an imaginative feeling, and, further, it is a later and secondary development. Actually he has not the slightest sexual attraction to any man. Moreover, he feels a profound repugnance to homosexual relationships. It seems highly improbable that he will ever become a sexual invert. D. S. He believes, but on slight grounds, that hereditary influ¬ ences may be traced back through his mother’s family. His mother had three brothers, one who was married committed suicide through business failure; the others, though prosperous, remained unmar¬ ried. They were of high character. D. S. thinks he has detected in them embarrassment in the presence of strange ladies, but this hardly seems significant. His mother’s life was devoted entirely to her home and family, but both were run in order to suit her, and perpetual quarrels and disturbances led to his father leaving the house when D. S. was 10 years old; his father was ever after pictured to him as a black-hearted vicious monster, a picture which it took some years to destroy. The mother was violent and passionate, had few friends, and cowed her family, but D. S. was the favorite between thrashings and scoldings, and by good luck, after the age of 12, escaped in part from her influence by mixing with other boys and devoting himself to sport. He was only happy away from home but had not the courage to run away. His mother still lives, and he still regards her with aversion as cantankerous, greedy and utterly selfish. “My father,” D. S. writes, “was a splendid man as far as I can find out from his old associates. He was a sea-captain and lived a hard life. His old companions brighten up and speak of him in such glowing terms that I am quite sure that it is not only my own memories that make me picture him 54 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. as a clean and particularly pleasant man, as well as brave. He died of cancer of the throat and suffered agony. I often console myself with the knowledge that there are two kinds of blood in me. D. S. has three brothers and one sister, all older than himself. The two elder brothers, when young, were always running after girls, and much in their company, married early, and both have families. The sister had a hard life at home, and was subjected to much drudgery by their mother, who, D. S. believes, disliked her. But she eventually escaped from this repressing influence, became a teacher, and later married. “My third brother,” D. S. writes, ‘<1 am convinced had sexual troubles. He was never willingly in girls company and was a lover of solitude, like myself. I cannot give any details as we never confided in each other. “My earliest recollection of sexual nature was when I was about five years of age. To eat and drink urine and feces I thought must be fascinating. Although, however, the thought was fascinating I believe I never even touched them, as actual contact revolted me. At the same age, though not combined with this, I had sexual sen¬ sations. The first time was when I was climbing a pole, and slipped down a little and then pulled myself up. I do not think any definite thoughts were connected with this. Then, a little later, I began to find fascination in girls’ and ladies’ underwear, and by the time I was 10 or 12 years old I had stolen a fair hoard of my sister’s under¬ wear, and borrowed her corsets on any available occasion. These I used to don and invariably had sexual sensations. I had a slight feeling of disgust and remorse afterwards, but nevertheless the fascination grew stronger. “One evening at the tea table my sister read from a periodical called Modern Society about a young man dressed as a girl. I at once went rigid with excitement, and I am sure turned pale. Until then I had thought I was unique in my thoughts. Later I had the paper to myself, and, enjoying tremendous excitement, read a page or two of readers’ correspondence on ‘effeminate men.’ My excite¬ ment was so great I had sexual sensations almost involuntarily. From that time my inner desire was to live as a girl. No thought of love or affection entered my head. If I had had a supply of lingerie, corsets, and high-heeled footwear I would have been happy. “By the time I was fourteen I had got hold of another periodical, Photo Bits, which devoted itself almost entirely to en¬ couraging this trait and the pleasures of birching. The latter never made the slightest appeal to me. “I was stopped one evening by a young man who asked me for a match. He said he had been to a dance, opened his shirt front, asked me to feel how warm he was. I innocently did so, and he EONISM. 55 gently took my elbow, forcing my arm down inside his shirt. I sensed rather than felt his erect member and, breaking away, hur¬ ried home, utterly shocked, and washed my hands. “About this age, of course, I began to have emissions, and that, I believe, made me desirous of having an understanding with myself. “I was alarmed at my powerlessness to resist the fascination of ladies’ wear and made a most determined and constant fight against it. I now admire the spirit I showed then, but I think I was unwise. Yet every time I gave way to self-abuse my determination increased; I was constantly losing yet always fighting, with brief reactionary fits of despair after each ‘downfall.’ The result of the long fight was to stifle desire in me, making me thoughtful, moody and possibly bitter. “All this time my desire was to wear exotic girls’ underwear. [D. S. explains that by ‘exotic’ girls he means prostitutes and act¬ resses, ‘hot house plants, orchids, beautiful, costly and delicate.’] Contemplation of it in a shop window made me passionate. The first pair of corsets I bought gave me tremendous excitement. I would have sexual emissions, either through wearing girls’ under¬ wear or reading about men dressed as women, sometimes three times a week, sometimes once a month; it depended how the fight was going. “In the year 1915, at the age of 19, I joined the Army, and I thought that I could start everything fresh. But of course, while I could not get w r hat I craved, my desire did not change. So I started new tactics. I imagined the pleasures of sexual intercourse and deliberately produced emission. The imagination of being near to intimate underwear appealed immensely, but the idea of intercourse itself left me rather cold. I had difficulty in imagining it. In the Army I took to drink and had enjoyable times with friends. All this time I was trying to make my desires ‘normal’ (w’hich is surely not natural) but without the determination I had shown before. At intervals, after I left the Army, I bought corsets and underwear to wear on the quiet. “In 1920, through an advertisement, I got into correspondence with a young man in London who lived, as nearly as possible, as a girl. His first letter raised hopes of going to London to live with him, and the emotions thus aroused made me feel a supreme being. I’ve read of men feeling more like young gods than men under the influence of love, and that is how I felt. I don’t think I shall ever forget it. A week later, however, I had word from him that it was impossible. But the incident gave me an inkling of what my emotions could mean. It set a standard I never expect to reach again, though anything less will not fully satisfy me. 56 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. “In 1922 I went to work in a little place in Scotland where I made many friends. Here, as always, girls failed to rouse me. Some were attractive, particularly those who were ‘exotic’ in dress, but these were the ones of whom I was invariably frightened. With them I tried to be as like other fellows as possible, though some¬ times I would get headaches with their laughter and talk. “One night I and some others became, not drunk but ‘lit up.’ I felt aroused. For some time previously I had thought indefinitely of marriage. Anyhow, about midnight, I saw two of the ‘exotic’ type of girls going home. A friend and I stopped them. I took oAe of them who was most attractive to me, though she did not arouse sexual feelings. I told her that she was the kind of girl I would like to marry. We talked for some time. I saw her several times afterwards, and (frankly helped by her) fell in love with her. After one or two false starts, we had sexual intercourse. I monopolized her for six months, and had intercourse as often as thirteen times in four successive nights. Then I had to leave and come to London. But we still corresponded and as a result we have agreed to get mar¬ ried in October. In the meantime I have ladies’ high-heeled shoes, corsets, literature, etc., in my trunk. I have not troubled much about them, for I think the pleasures of the girl’s company prefer¬ able. But I have no supreme desires. I make violent speeches of love in her presence, and they seem to come fairly naturally; but my passion towards her is nothing to what I know it might be. When I have emissions in my sleep now I sometimes dream of the girl, sometimes of other girls, sometimes about corsets and sometimes there are no accompanying dreams at all. “My own weighing up of my life is that I have spoiled myself by trying to force myself into the moulds of convention. I some¬ times feel bitter about it.” How the marriage turned out remains so far unknown, as it has not been possible at present to obtain further news from D. S. T. S. is now 50 years of age, a successful author and a man of high-minded character. I have only had one interview with him. In appearance he is tall, with the air of an English gentleman of sensi¬ tive refinement. There is nothing obviously feminine about him. I reproduce his history in his own words. “The wish to wear the clothes of the other sex is my earliest definite recollection. My father’s calling compelled frequent moves from place to place, and he kept a diary; I am therefore able to give essential dates with a measure of precision. I was between six and eight years old when I used to lie in bed imagining myself dressed in skirts; I invariably saw myself as a grown woman in black. This seems to me singular, as I love bright colors. EONISM. 57 I think this train of thought, which has never left me, arose through my mother’s treatment. She cordially disliked me and was at pains to prove her antipathy; she beat me frequently and merci¬ lessly; and if she could humiliate me before my brothers and sisters, did it. A favorite taunt was a threat to dress me in my sister’s clothes; the threat was never carried out—I suspect my father inter¬ fered but when a child is perpetually ill-used and such a threat occurs daily, he falls into a habit of brooding over injustice, and my broodings in the bed to which I was so often sent ‘to be out of my sight, took the form stated. I was made to part my hair in the middle ‘like a baby girl,’ and my resemblance to a girl was con¬ sistently pressed upon me. With what justice I do not know; there is no photograph of me at this age. “My mother, however, was a very shrewd judge of character, and it may be that I was feminine looking, (‘He ought to be a girl,’ she would say) and this offended her instincts; hers was a strong character. I know I was afraid of boys; I remember the surprise with which I heard my elder brother tell my father he should like to go to school. He was more than a year older than myself, but his wish to go among strange boys took my breath away. This dis¬ inclination to mingle with strange boys was strong during my ’teens. I did not mind meeting girls. “I was between fifteen and sixteen, home for holidays, when I first donned girl’s clothes. My elder sister dressed me, and I remem¬ ber her regret that my hair was not long enough to be curled as then ‘nobody could guess you’re not a girl.’ It was about this time the master of the school I was at sneered at me, saying I ought to dress as a girl and be at a girls’ school. This could only have been a gibe at my appearance, for I was as keen about football and other games —also mischief as the rest. Nobody knew of my craving to w r ear girls* dress; nothing on earth would have persuaded me to reveal it. “A little later an opening in a great business firm was offered to my brother. His tastes were artistic, and he had the strength of mind to refuse a career for which he had no liking; and, lest an opportunity of starting a boy in life be lost, I was summoned from school and the case put before me. The prospect of office life did not attract, but I was greatly attached to my father, his anxiety was unconcealed, and I yielded. Perhaps it was no great sacrifice on my part, as I had never really enjoyed school life. I had been sent to various schools as the family movements suggested, and remember only one boy of whom I made a friend. I was sent up to London, and passed two years—detestable years in an office. I used sometimes to pick up girls in the street and walk with them for the sake of companionship; my people had 58 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. few friends in London, so I had none other than office acquaintances. I boarded with some people of whose goodness I have no shade of doubt, but whose piety was slightly aggressive; the atmosphere of the house was not wholly congenial, and also I sought at night the exercise denied me by day. At the age of 18 I went to the East; it was a large station and I made friends. The Eastern method which requires a new arrival to call on the ladies of the place had no terrors for me; on the contrary, I enjoyed ‘calling’ and I made friends readily among the women. “I well remember myself at this age. I loved the society of women, and I think they liked me; at all events it always has been a source of gratification to recall the freedom with which I was ad¬ mitted into their confidence. I remember a married woman, perhaps ten years older than myself, saying suddenly as we sat out a dance, ‘You understand us better than a man has any business to.’ I forget what prompted the remark. I was then twenty or thereabout. I was, in some sort, a privileged character w T ith women. I have since imagined this may have been due to feminine discernment which recognized total absence of sexual thought. “At this age I ought to have been developing, but I was not. I had passed through the age of puberty without a trace of those facial spots so common among young men, and had no reason to shave till I was twenty-four. I must have been about thirty-two when my father asked with mild contempt, ‘Do you ever shave?* I did so about every second day then. Not till past forty did I shave regularly; a blessing, as my skin is peculiarly tender. I ought to have been developing, but was not. I admired and liked women, but never knew desire. There were two types of women I disliked— the fat, white sensuous creature, and in rather less degree the girl who woos with all her teeth. The latter, because intention to attract was obvious and repelled. “Perhaps sexual indifference was intensified into active dislike by my immediate surroundings: one of a bachelor household of half a dozen, all older than myself, whose talk ran much on women as bedfellows, to whom venereal disease was a matter of course, and regarded much as measles or whooping cough among children. I conceived an utter distaste for sexual matters. Disease was rife; on my arrival, two of my house-mates were ‘not riding just now* (a pony was the universal mode of conveyance), one had recently begun to ride, and a fourth was disabled within a few weeks. In a hot climate desire seems to be enhanced in the normal man, and to require more frequent indulgence, and when the predominant in¬ stinct supervenes, no thought of risk, no experience however painful, deters. And I hated the table-talk—twopenny worth of wit to an EONISM. 59 intolerable deal of obscenity. The tone of the house improved much after two men left; and a new arrival of clean mouth, whatever his private proceedings, wrought a welcome change. “Looking back now, reviewing the numbers of men I have known I see one point very clearly: it is the strong character, the man of force, who is most avid in a sexual sense; in fact, the experi¬ ence of the last few years (since 1915), during which I have been perforce drawn out of my shell, or study, to work with men, and control men, has reassured me on this head. “I led in the East much the same life as other active young men- established a reputation as a horseman, played polo, cricket in the cold season shot, and when transferred to a small station within e reach of jungles seized every opportunity of going off to the ♦ i W1 , ,, a fCW natlVeS 3fter big game ‘ 1 was not very keen on actual killing; what appealed to me was animal life at home- I enjoyed seeing the men track, and learning the art myself; the greatest pleasure was to come within the eyeshot of beast and watch its doings. It may seem odd, but at night lying on my camp-bed under the stars (I never carried a tent), my thoughts would run in the old groove—I would mentally dress myself, garment by gar- tTj *1 a , w 1 oma r n: and fin 'shed, begin all over again. Sometimes had the help of a sympathetic woman in my imaginary toilette, but usually I pictured myself alone. “From an early age I was addicted to the habit of handling my genitals possibly a consequence of being sent to bed in season and out of season to be ‘out of my mother’s sight.’ My father dis¬ covered this habit, and even now I hear his grave warning: ‘If you go on doing this you’ll never grow up to be a man. You’ll die ’ He was always very kind and was fond of me. I fear his admonition was thrown away. To a child of seven the idea of death is too remote to intimidate; and the habit remained. Later it developed 1"° maStU !' bat ‘ on ' and 1 associate it to some extent with my habitual train of thought in bed. In my ’teens erection was so regu¬ lar in bed I thought it must be the normal thing. When I learned from my elder brother that it was not, and he condemned it, I broke myself to a great extent, but even now am subject to involuntary erection, much as I dislike it, especially if accompanied by emission. I acquired the habit of sleeping on my back; this has been a real help to me. “After nearly seven years in the East I came home. I had never liked a commercial life, and threw it up without regret. Seekintr a new career, I essayed writing; and my first article was accepted by the editor of one of our best magazines, who asked for more I don t know that it was unfortunate; I should never have succeeded 60 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. in business, and was then too old (25) to enter Government service; and if the real aim of life is to enjoy it, I have nothing of which to complain. I had a struggle to establish myself; three anxious years in cheap London lodgings; but I have never regretted adopting a career which does not tie me to an office. _ “The old craving was still strong upon me; I was still without desire, and the absence of sexual appetite sometimes vaguely exer¬ cised me; very vaguely. I am as I am, and I thought little about it until I fell in love, and absorption led me to believe that sexual passion might awaken; though I shrank from the idea, from respect for the girl. “I married in my thirtieth year. Having never known woman my marriage night found me as nervous as my wife. I pass lightly over a phase of life that reproaches me. I failed to obtain access. A few months after marriage I made my wife see a medical man; he told her that our marriage had never been properly consummated. I tried, and failed, again. Soon after chance intervened; some slight operation became necessary, and the nurse in attendance told my wife that if in her place she would not run the risks of motherhood. ‘You are very small there and it would be very dangerous for you to have a child.’ To my infinite relief, this made on my wife a deep impression which lasted several years. Until then I had been haunted by the knowledge that she had the right to expect what I had utter disinclination to give; her periods, when nothing was expected, had been oases for me. Now we were at one; there was nothing to mar the complete harmony of our marital relation, and we shared the same bed, finding perfect satisfaction in physical con¬ tact and nothing more. With the approach of her retour d’dge longing for a child beset her again. I tried to gratify her, and again failed to gain access. Soon after this we separated, to occupy different rooms, remaining, however, on the old affectionate terms. “I had thought love and marriage would make an end of my longing to adopt woman’s dress. They did not. I soon found that I could be laced and padded to fit my wife’s clothes. Until my mar¬ riage I had never shaved my upper lip—there was little to shave, even at thirty. Within, I think, a couple of months, my wife, in frolicsome mood, cut off my moustache, ‘to see how you look with¬ out it.’ I let her have her way, secretly delighted to be thus rid of it. I have shaved clean ever since. It may have been a week or two afterwards that I broke the ice by putting on a pretty dressing- gown of my wife’s in our bedroom. She sat up in bed, burst out laughing, and exclaimed, ‘Oh! how feminine that makes you!’ I seized the opportunity, and she looking on in glee, I dressed myself in the clothes she had taken off. EONISM. 61 “That was the beginning. She took her favorite sister into her confidence; her sister must see me dressed as a woman, and I was nothing loth! For a time it was regarded as a joke. Then I think I betrayed my extreme content in woman’s dress and her instincts turned. We came to a sort of understanding; I might do what I chose when she was not in the house, and she was to hear nothing of my doings. We did not adhere strictly to this agreement, but it served its purpose inasmuch as our good relations remained undis¬ turbed. On one occasion she took a dislike to a dress when it came home from the dressmaker; she allowed me to buy it from her and I had it altered a little ‘for my sister,’ to fit me. I took over other gowns from time to time, bought underclothing, shoes, etc., and finally, after experiment, had a woman’s wig made. A propos those experiments, among others hired ‘for private theatricals’ I tried a black one. That was the only time I ever was dissatisfied with my appearance ‘habille en femme’; black hair gave me so markedly the look of a prostitute, I was filled with disgust. On the other hand, the first wig I ever tried created an effect exactly the reverse; it was one of the moments of my life w*hen I saw myself completely trans¬ formed for the first time. I was then 43 years of age. My wife and her sister are the only people who have seen me in skirts, save occasional messengers coming when I have been alone in the house. I used to prepare for such occasions; wearing hat and veil to justify gloves—I always feared my hands would betray—I would make sure it was not a visitor, then open the door acting my part. To be called ‘Ma’am’ delighted me. I do not think I was ever suspected. Health compelled my wife to winter abroad; I made the most of it, sending the maids out that I might be free. As already said, my sister-in-law was my only confidante. I once asked if it offended to have me dress as a woman. She reflected: ‘It would in anyone else I know, but somehow it doesn’t in you.’ And, after a pause, a laugh: ‘It seems natural for you to be a woman!’ “I made my first essay in fiction some years ago. The first novel I wrote was laid aside for a few months, that I might con¬ sider it with a more impartial mind. I read it again, and I suppose in masculine mood, for it struck me forcibly as the work of a woman. I had been wholly unconscious of sex while writing it, was absorbed in character drawing. Indeed the habitual train of thought had been displaced in idle hours by the congenial task of devising character touch, situation, turn of phrase. The book was published under a name that might be that of woman or man; and the reviewers who concerned themselves with the sex of the author at all assigned it to a woman. The next novel I wrote was, I thought, more masculine, but it also was accepted as a woman’s work. Two 62 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. others I deliberately wrote from the feminine standpoint. Long passages of these I drafted while dressed and made up as a woman, often before the glass. I tried to think this helped me to assume the mental attitude I intended, but doubt it. I was not su ® cient y accustomed to woman's dress not to be partly distracted by satis¬ faction with myself. It may have helped, but I have found t when writing of a man and a woman I am not even an impartia onlooker; inevitably I assume mentally the female character. “When first I began to dress as a woman, I was offended y fie fact that it induced erection; this irritated me greatly, but before very long, as I became more used to skirts, there was no disagree¬ able effect. I could entirely forget I am a man. “I have worked much with men and with women during the war and my conviction that the differences between the sexes is exaggerated has been confirmed. Man merges into woman, woman into man. I prefer working with intelligent women; I find myself in closer touch and see eye to eye with them readily. Methods o education, of up-bringing and dress, I believe go very far to emphasize what differences there are, save in those persons whose sexual character is particularly strong. My sympathies are who y with women; thus, I resent keenly the view so often advanced tha a woman should be paid less than a man because she is a woman. I cannot adopt the mental attitude of the normal male towards woman. It seems so animal. Recently I learned that office life and the independence it confers were producing a serious effect on the standard of morality hitherto a matter of course among girls of the middle and upper middle classes. The fact exercised me greatly; the indifference of those men with whom I have spoken on the subject exer¬ cises me not less. At best, it is indifference; at worst, cynical approval. Expression of the latter reduces me to speechless wrath. "During the War I refrained from indulging my preference in dress Shame forbade; starvation has bred increased appetite. “For many years now I have found satisfaction in writing an account of imaginary circumstances under which I adopt woman’s dress altogether. The scheme of the thing is always much the same. In the capacity of private secretary I take up my residence with a woman my own height and figure whose taste is the counterpart of my own. She thirsts to dress as a man, and I must take her place to adjust matters. She forces change of clothes on me, first in jest, then by persuasion, until I am committed. For some obscure reason an element of compulsion enhances the delights of the situation for me. I am allowed a week-end once a month to come home, but always on the understanding that I resume skirts without protest as soon as I return, that my employer may resume male dress. EONISM. 63 Refusal on my part would entail public exposure (a threat which, in practice, would serve its end), and I submit. I have worked out this idea a score of times in minute detail, introducing variations which seem to bring it within the ambit of the possible, and speculate on its prescience were it translated into actual fact. In a word, should I delight in the situation as I believe? (The monthly week-end is a concession to the actualities, it is not a respite from the skirts.) “The scene is generally a small country house in a large walled garden. My employer is a woman of strong and masculine cast of mind who, dressed as a man, dominates me dressed as a woman, treated as a woman, and restricted to feminine occupations. It would be an interesting experiment to try! A few years ago I had a dream that has remained vividly in mind. As already said, I have acquired the habit of sleeping on my back (I believe this makes for dreaming). I felt a weight on my chest and was conscious of something gently feeling within my vitals which shrinkingly embraced it. The sensation became stronger; an instant of ecstasy passed like a flash into nameless ter- ror literally black terror. I woke trembling violently and on the verge of tears. This is the only time I have ever dreamed of connection. “Another dream: I was with child. I felt the life stirring within me and knew a moment of indescribable exaltation. I woke to find that a trifling and passing pain in the stomach was thus rendered by sleeping thought. I think I can explain this, to some extent, by my great love of children. To say that I adore nursing a baby is hardly adequate. A young child in my arms confers a feeling I cannot describe. Children, of course, understand and always come to me. Some years back, while on a small coasting steamer abroad, there was among the passengers a woman with a small boy—a jolly little chap at the sturdy toddling age. He came to me and we talked— I knowing no word of the language. His mother’s amazement and indignation were comical. I really believe she suspected the Black Art, for my wife’s assurance that children always come to me did not seem to satisfy her. There are advantages, luxuries, boons, to obtain which some of us cannot make up our minds to face tasks we dislike. Children fall into this category with myself.” C. T. I am 2a years of age. My father died when I was three years old, and I was brought up by my mother and her brother. They were in poor circumstances, and at times we found it difficult even to get food. I was, considering the position and status of my parents and my early environments, a fairly intelligent child, and liked to ‘know all about things.’ At my first school I was looked PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 64 upon as rather a ‘prodigy.’ I subsequently went, at the age of 11, to a London secondary school, and remained there for four years. I then becam. a clerk in a Government office, and stayed on in that and other capacities until the autumn of 1915. I had decided by that time that I could not remain in such employ any longer, as was opposed to the late War and all that was connected with it. bo I resigned. Six months later I was arrested for failing to comply with the first Military Service Act, and remained in prison from then until February, 1919. Since then I have been living in an ordinary sort of way as far as my relations with society are concerned. “Physically I suppose I am quite normally masculine. I am of medium height, and have I think a typically male face. My left testicle is very slightly smaller than my right; and I have a tendency to grow less hair on the left side of my body than on the other. I believe my thighs are rather well developed for a man; my breasts are quite small. I am unable to exert myself physically very much without quickening the action of my heart to a great extent. I am anemic, and have a tendency to giddiness and fainting, but not frequently. Otherwise my health is quite good and I have suffered little from disease of any description. “I have little moral sense. I have, for example, no theoretical objection to stealing—in my own case at least—unless it causes injury to someone whom I like. I am much more afraid of getting found out than of ‘doing wrong.’ (I don’t think I am particularly afraid of physical pain, or at least I bear it moderately well.) I lie quite freely whenever it is useful or handy so to do. I have a tendency to appreciate beauty—or what I consider beautiful, for my taste often differs from other people’s—both in nature and in art especially in literature. I sometimes try to write verses, and a few have been printed. I am extremely ‘sensitive’ — t.e., I can t bear to see a child crying or in pain, and things of that sort, and I always suffer intensely on hearing any remark that may by any possibility bear a construction that hurts my self-respect—or perhaps I should say spiritual pride. “Soon after I left school I came across a periodical that aspired to provide literary criticism for the ‘lower classes.’ This paper con¬ tained a page set apart for advertisements by people who wanted friends. The idea attracted me, and on three occasions I inserted notices. I had replies from several people who, I discovered, were in most cases looking out for young boy associates for what is called ‘immoral purposes’—in fact, the page was a sort of Employment Exchange for pederasts. I saw several of these people—mostly of the ‘decadent’ type—and they interested me, but I soon dropped them all. One or two made definite approaches to me as a potential EONISM. 65 passive pederast, but I excused myself through fear and saw no more of them, though conscious of a desire to accede: not a very keen desire; more curiosity than anything, I think. “It was this that first awoke me to the realization of sex. I had made no friends at school, and was in the unusual position of having gone through a boys’ school without having heard any mention of sex and allied subjects from my contemporaries there. I forget how I acquired what vague ideas I had of the purpose and use of the sexual organs: probably by desultory reading. I never masturbated; when I read of the practice I tried it, but nothing seemed to happen. I couldn’t even become erected by that alone, though usually my penis erects on very slight mental provocation. In the summer of 191o I again turned to my paper, and happened to see there a notice inserted by a girl—more as a joke than with any serious import— asking for correspondents. I answered it. We soon met, found we liked each other, and met very frequently then. Her people were considerably better off than mine, but at that time she was not altogether happy at home. Just after I resigned from my office I suggested she should clear out and marry me. She wanted time to think, but at Xmas she left her home and came to me. We arranged to marry at the local Registry Office (we were both under age—she was then 18), but her people came to my place, found her, and would not let the marriage proceed. We decided under these circumstances to do without the ceremony, went away together, and got rooms where we lived until my arrest. “I should explain here that since about 16 I had had a great attraction for the ‘ritualistic’ type of religion, whether in the English or Roman Church. I was for some time an acolyte at a London church. I liked the pretty dresses and the incense and the lights and the solemn stateliness. And for a time I took it really seriously. I even thought of trying to read for Orders. I took a sort of private vow of celibacy, because the thought of married priests was re¬ pugnant to me. In fact, I had no desire to perform the sexual act even apart from this. My ideal of marriage was a sort of ethereal- ized comradeship (and I have managed to realize it). So as my wife, too, was at that time more or less affected by the religious impulse, we agreed between us that there should be no physical sexual element in our lives until we had gone through the actual ceremony of marriage. Until I went to prison, although we invariably slept together, we both remained in a state of virginity. “While I was in prison nothing particular happened to me that needs recording. But I gathered from my wife’s letters that she, as she grew, became affected with a very intense desire for the physical completion of our marriage (I should have said that we were mar- 5 66 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. ried a day or two before my arrest) and I at the same t.me lost my religious repugnance to physical satisfaction. I cannot say tha felt any greater desire than before for it; I have always had a sort of msTncUve feeling that for me the business was-well, I can on* say dirty, even with a woman to whom I was married. But on my release we attempted it more or less as a mattter of course I found at first that it was very difficult for me to secure an ere . I attributed this to weakness as a result of recent experiences, after about a month my erectness seemed normal though on attempt- ing to complete the sexual act I obtained no physical pleasure ( was using a silk sheath for preventive purposes.) I was, however, under the impression that I had properly penetrated my wifeJbnt she was told by a medical man to whom she addressed h * r “” ffe J ed cause she was under the erroneous impression that she suffered from a prolapsus-that her hymen was still unbroken. I maysay here that we are very deeply in love with each other, in spite: of these things: we caress each other’s naked bodies to a great exte , and both find immense pleasure in so doing; ually also, we seem to be perfect mates. We both greatly desi child, and after some years a healthy and apparently normal boy ""“Mywife tells me sometimes, and I think truly, that she often wishes she were a man, and could take a man’s part in our love- life- not always, but as an alternative. And sometimes she lies upon my body and makes me almost forget my sex-an experience which gives me greater pleasure than I can ever get from my virility. She looks upon me mostly, I think, as a sort of child of hers, andP our * out a sort of mother-love on me that one doesn t often seem to find in married people towards each other. “I have tried to tell her some of my feelings with regard to sex but I believe she thinks they are, as it were, secondary, and can be overcome. I disagree. And anyway, I don’t want to overcome them I want to become more of a woman, not more of a man. And this desire has grown very greatly of late. I cannot trace that it has had any physical effects. . , , “In my tendency to feminity, I have often thought seriously of castration. Only the possible danger has several times prevented me from castrating myself. I know that I should be immensely happier if my sexual organs were removed. If I knew anyone who would perform the operation I should immediately have recourse to him. This desire, also, seems to grow stronger, especially of lcltC. “Since what I suppose was more or less the time of puberty, or before, I have always had a desire to dress as a woman, and when EONISM. 67 about 13 I would put on, unobserved, various garments of my mother’s. Certain articles of female attire have always attracted me, more especially corsets, high-heeled and high-legged boots, combina¬ tions, and most of all, earrings. I have not been able to indulge my desires in these respects, because, until recent years, I have had no access to female clothing. During the last few weeks I have tried to explain more lucidly than in the past to my wife my thoughts in this respect—she has known or suspected them more or less, for a long time. I recently possessed myself of a pair of corsets which I am wearing, and which give me exquisite physical pleasure—espe¬ cially when they are actually within my view. I have several times been possessed with a desire to wear my wife’s boots, but cannot get them on, and unfortunately I cannot afford to indulge in such luxuries as a pair of women’s boots for myself just now. At present my wife is away on holiday, and I have been wearing in her absence a pair of her combinations, and at night her nightdress. When I give mj'self rein in this way I enjoy a luxuriously happy frame of mind. My chief desire sometimes is to get hold of sufficient money to buy myself a wig and a complete set of female attire. “I have a great desire that my friends should know of these peculiarities of mine, and yet I always try to keep them from them, owing to what I suppose is an impulse of shame. “One night I got my wife to dress in a suit of mine. The result was that I was almost mad with desire to be a girl and to love her as a boy. “Perhaps it is well to say a little more about two special peculiar¬ ities: my desire to be tattooed and to wear earrings. My first in¬ troduction to the former practice was that I was walking one day, when about fourteen, down a London street, and passed a tattooist’s shop. I examined the window, and went in to have my initials tattooed on my arm. The result gave me extreme joy, and since then I have at intervals had a great deal of tattooing done. My arms from the shoulders to a little way above the wrists are almost com¬ pletely covered: I have designs on my legs, feet, chest, stomach and penis. The desire to be tattooed has also been particularly strong of late, and is growing more so. I am very anxious to be tattooed on the exposed parts of my body—my wrists, hands, neck and face: and only the practical certainty that this would cut me off from the possibility of getting my living in a fairly respectable way, and of mixing—in so far as I do mix—with people of education, has pre¬ vented me from undergoing this. With reference hereto I may say that on the occasion—some five years ago—when I got a tattooist to place the figure of a butterfly on the upper side of my penis, I experienced a few minutes after leaving the shop, the phenomena of 68 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. erection and ejaculation accompanied by a feeling of physical exa tation so great that it almost prostrated me afterwards. I have never obtained anything like this in any other way: and it has always represented for me the ideal of physical sexual satisfaction “I don’t remember exactly when I first conceived the i ca ° wearing earrings, but when I was quite a child I recall noticing tha my mother’s cars were pierced and asking her why she never wore earrings. As far as I can recall when I was about fifteen, I came across a letter or article in some periodical of the Tit-bits type on ‘Earrings for men,’ and I wanted to experiment. So with a pimny pair of earrings and a needle I did. Of course, public opinion (especially as represented by my people) only allowed me to do so for a few minutes when alone—perhaps with intervals o mon s and the holes that I pierced closed up in the intervals, and had to e remade each time. . . “On my release from prison the possibility of satisfying this desire again arose; but I didn’t take advantage of it until later. Then, one evening, my wife being away, I spent about two hours in my bedroom with my earrings, after piercing my ears for their reception. I continually inserted and removed them, and the sight of the blood which dripped from my ears owing to the repeated •worrying’ of them gave me intense pleasure. (This, by the way, looks as if my sexual make-up includes a degree of masochism.) Then I pierced my nipples, and placed the earrings in them. As they were small and not sufficiently obvious to please me there, I removed them to my ears and sewed to my breasts by means of the hole I had made in my nipples a pair of pearl buttons—the handiest things I could find. This orgy of lasciviousness gave me a surfeit of pleasure such as I had not known for a very long time. “In connection with these things, the desire that I should do them is accompanied by a desire that others should follow my example. I always feel more or less pained to see a handsome woman whose ears are not pierced. I have several times asked my wife to wear earrings, and have also suggested that she should undergo some tattooing, but she will not. I have been in touch with C. T. at intervals for some years and in this way have been enabled to enlarge at various points the short account of himself he had originally sent me. In spite of his state¬ ment “I lie quite freely,” I believe that his narrative is reliable. A recent nude photograph illustrates the details of tattooing in the History. Two years later C. T. reported that soon after the period at which the foregoing narative terminated he became violently attracted to a girl, with red hair and unusually pleasant skin and EONISM. 69 complexion, with whom he came in touch at his place of business. He confided his peculiarities to her and she was not repelled but she in no way responded to his feelings towards herself. This produced in him so much depression that in a sudden mood of unreason, in order to escape from her presence which unduly excited him, he gave up his business post. A few days later he went to his previous tattooist and induced him to tattoo a large design on each cheek. “The desire to have my face tattooed has always been strong in me,” he writes. “Needless to say, however, the moment it was done I realized that it must be undone. I went home, told my wife the whole story, and with her help concocted a tale of an accident which would account to the world for my face being bandaged, and went in search of another tattooist who would remove the marks. We found one, and after several months of bandages my face became clear enough for the nature of its mishap to be hardly identifiable by anyone who had no reason to suspect tattooing. For a time the realization of my foolishness held me back from indulging in the practice any more; but the remembrance soon wore off, and since then I have had much more tattooing done on various parts of my body—legs, thighs, stomach and penis in particular. The most recent addition to my tattooing consists of a fully-worded inscription of a sexual nature on my stomach, which I am in continual fear of my wife seeing. “With regard to my feelings about the sexual act, these have approximated more and more to what I imagine to be the norm. I feel now no reluctance for it whatever; in fact I endeavor to induce my wife (who is by nature rather cold sexually) to consent to it more often than she is willing to do. As a result of this I have commenced frequenting prostitutes and also masturbation—the lat¬ ter every two or three days, if possible with a woman’s garment, preferably somethings of a silky or velvety texture, or a boot or shoe. I have managed to induce my wife to consent to have her ears pierced, and since then she has continually worn earrings. In my relations with prostitutes I invariably seek those who are tattooed— and my dream of the perfect prostitute depicts her as pale, tall, with red bobbed hair, a tight fitting velvet dress, high leather boots, and pierced ears, with as much tattooing as I dare hope for. “I feel convinced that my passion for tattooing will at some time or other lead me again to disfigure my face; and the results will in such case be of necessity, I imagine, permanent. I still wear earrings frequently when I am alone, whether indoors or out. My ears are now permanently pierced as a result of my continual borings. A very decided attraction to high boots, both for myself 70 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. and in women, is noticeable as being the strongest new feature of my more recent development.” _ Vrt three vears later, in response to inquiries, C. T. wrote: ^The principal* thing in ,ny devdopn.cn, calling for nottc. dttr- ,Hc 'ad rtrce yeari has been a very noticeable accen nation of z 'n h „rrr,:;.Lp«,s«..h„......—j for sexual satisfaction with women rather, ’ thfee secondary sexual pleasures than for actual coitus. ^ years ago my wife gave birth to a second child, and six months ago toa hird A week after the last event my wife died. Inconsequence I am now living alone-my children are in the care of my wife Lother-and I feel my loneliness and the absence of domestic femal comradeship very keenly. I an, longing for .h. » forming a union with a woman once it to be without the legal sanction of marriage. I { years indulged in masturbation-at times very frequently, but of fate I have endeavored with more or less success to break myself of the habit gradually. My desire for female clothing, jewelry, etc., diminished . d, wear earring, a, times frequently sleep in them. My tattooing continues, there was a decided outburst of it three months ago; for the last six months I have not given way to it, however, though I shall doubtless s0 °" do so once more. When walking through London streets I tend to notice with keen interest the dress of women. On a few occasmns when I have fallen into conversation with prostitutes, it has been heratti rather than their physical attractions which has drawn me to them. ••I tend to be much more affected by ‘Eonisf impulses in the evening than in the daytime. It quite frequently happens, if for any reason in the evening my thoughts have been at all ‘ oncer " ed sex _ f(7 . if I have been entertaining or entertained by a female acquaintance, have been accosted by a prostitute m the street, or hale been writing to a woman—that I have a sudden impulse to plan future tattoo designs, pore over my book of newspaper-cuttings regarding tattooing, put on earrings and such other feminine ado ments as I can lay my hands on, etc.” R. L. “I am 48, the eldest of five in a very healthy and normal family of English parentage, nor would anyone suspect that I am anything but a manly man. My father was a professional man and my mother of good country stock, and her parents and sisters a lived to a good age; she is still alive (75) and has enjoyed good health all her life. She was, however, the stronger partner physically and my father relied a great deal on her judgment. He suffered from an internal complaint that at times gave him great pain, and EONISM. 71 his temper was naturally affected by it; these outbursts used to make us side with our mother, whereas now I see he should have had our pity. My brothers and sisters are all alive and in good health. I am myself of a masculine type, tall and broad; there seems nothing effeminate in me and until recent years I have never confided in anyone. My youngest brother is musical and Bohemian in tastes, resembling my father. One of my earliest recollections is of my sister and I changing clothes and the pleasure it gave me to pull up my skirts and undo my drawers and use the chamber, not because I particularly wanted to but to do as a girl would. At that age there was no sexual feeling. We never repeated this although I reminded her of it when we were about 15, and asked her to do so again, but she refused. When about 8 or 9, I first had the desire to be a girl, and used to envy a little boy, a neighbor, who lived with two sisters and mother, and who was dressed girlishly, which led me to think that I should like to be him and be brought up as a girl. I took great notice of girls’ clothes, and admired them, yet there was the boyish desire not to be thought to be girlish. At the age of 12, I saw a female impersonator for the first time at the Moore and Burgess Minstrels in London, and although got up as a darkie I was attracted greatly by ‘her,’ and it seemed to make more possible what had been my secret ambition—to dress and live as a lady when I grew up. From the age of 8 I have had this desire, which has been continuous, and growing in strength, yet I am not out¬ wardly effeminate, but it is as if the soul of a woman had been born in a male body, and had been engaged in overcoming the physical nature, until now the spirit and mind long for pleasures that are contrary to the physical sex. I was of a very quiet nature, and am very sensitive, so that I react to influences of environment or personality very easily and am also quickly moved to tears. When very young I was severely frightened by the fear that I had injured my father in play, and this caused me to stammer very badly for many years, which undoubtedly has affected my whole life and temperament. Whenever I had a chance I used to go to the bed¬ rooms of my sister, aunts, cousins, or the maids, and try on their outer garments on the sly. I was particularly interested in a big bustle one of the maids had. On one occasion when about 15 I put on a dress, coat and hat of an aunt (in her absence) and went out for ten minutes. I used to steal interviews with the maids when quite a boy and later to kiss them, not consciously from sexual motives. My knowledge of sexual matters was very slight for at the age of 15 I did not know the cause of my mother’s sudden illness when my youngest brother was born, nor did her appearance cause me to think on these things. At boarding school I was disgusted 72 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. at any sexual practices I saw, but greatly attracted by the head master’s daughters, and the glimpses of their PeKteoate, tJ ese ; * n< | the thought of them used to cause erections. My thoughts about girls and their clothes while still a boy with little real knowledge o sexual matters, evidently had influence in developing strong sexual feelings. I don’t remember when I experienced my first erection, or when I first found it pleasant to handle my penis. I certainly never learned it from other boys, but must have accidentally discovered it when trying to case the pain caused by my desires, and the appeal of girls’ clothes, as clothes, to my sexual nature. I remember walking home from a Sunday evening service some miles away, with my father and brother, I walking on in front to indulge in my tirnghte of a certain girl I had seen who looked very nice in her pretty clothes and I held my organ (not exposed but gently squeezing it) with my thoughts on the pleasure of dressing like a girl. “When I went to boarding school (100 boarders) at the age of 14 I was beginning the habit of masturbation, not for the pleasure of’exciting my feelings, but as a relief to my feelings when excited by my desire to be a girl. I remember realizing that ‘‘ was wrong, my father had suspected something and scolded me and at school I used to sleep with a handkerchief tied round my hand, or a glove on, with a pad inside, or tie my organ to my thigh, or wear my pajama trousers front to back, all to prevent wet dreams or masturbation but the desire to be a girl always led to feelings which I found were relieved by masturbation, always followed by regrets at indulgence and the resolve to amend, not the thought but the act. I well remember being disgusted at seeing two boys in their night-shirts in a long dormitory playing mother and father one on top of the other and then one stuffing a pillow inside as if pregnant. I had many attacks of calf-love with girls or women but always thought more of their clothes than of sexual indulgence. Later, when admiring girls or behaving in a perfectly normal manner in paying them general or special attention, or in deeper love affairs, there has always been the desire to dress as she, and move about freely, undetected and feeling myself to be a girl. “I had no special experiences until I was 23 or 24 when I went to Canada and, while staying at the coast port for a few days, took a walk one evening with a girl I ‘picked up,’ who taking me to a quiet place, laid herself down and invited me to indulge. I laid down, and enjoyed my feelings but did not have intercourse, pre¬ tending to hear someone coming. Previously, on the beach in England one evening, I had slipped away from a woman whom I thought was going to ask me, and in London I had always refused to even dally with girls soliciting. For a few years I was very busy. EONJSM. 73 and only able to admire and long for women’s clothes. I joined a Musical Society, which was later on enlarged into a Musical and Dramatic Society. Although I was fond of choir work, it was with difficulty that I was induced to go on the stage in the chorus of comic opera, and later I was surprised at being offered a ‘principal part,’ which, however, was a success and I played many character parts in opera and comedy. My stammer, although I have since by a course of instruction practically reduced it to a very slight nervousness, yet has been a weight all my life, and I have been handicapped; it was a bar to the stage as a profession and a hind¬ rance in my life. Yet, although dissatisfied with myself, I have a record of which I can be proud. After my theatrical experiences— and note that they and previous ‘dressing up’ follozvcd my early desire and were not the cause of an appetite being created for wearing clothes or acting as a woman—I began to wonder if it would be possible to impersonate a woman successfully. I wrote for some clothes from a distant firm, and used to enjoy putting them on and sitting in them—but had no wig. Then I decided to try and get a proper dress made and went to a little dressmaker. The ultimate result was that I -was tempted to forget my ambition in the primeval attraction of physical to physical, but I realized not only that this was wrong but that it was an obstacle to my ambition. I used, however, to frequent women’s society as much as possible and envy them at dances; especially did I envy a young man who came dressed up in white satin as a bride at a fancy-dress ball. After this (at 36) I married, principally because the lady—a very Christian lady—was very fond of me and thought a great deal of me. My desire to be a woman was stifled, but existed, although it was not such a trial to me as it might have been with one who was more my ideal of what I should like. I did, however, have a sort of wish that it would be nice to divide myself in two and have both individualities. I Married life, though brief, helped me to understand woman’s nature more, and I envied happily married women, and felt sorry for the unhappily married, and especially for those with maternal instincts who were not married. “After my wife’s death (there were no children), when the first shock had passed, I determined to try if I could successfully dress as, and look like, a woman, and thought that if I could not do so the longing would die down, as an impossibility. I visited a theatrical costumer and ordered some clothes, which although stagey yet made me appear a remarkably good-looking woman, and my early ambi¬ tion being seen to be physically possible, I was fired with the desire to try and carry it out, and since then, that has been the consuming fire within me. 74 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. “The pleasure I felt in being dressed (although I wanted really feminine garments) was so great that I began to examine myself whether it was simply the fascination of the clothes, and if so should I fight against it. This I decided to try to do, but the desire returned and the sight of a well-dressed woman drove all resolutions away. I gave the matter serious and quiet thought, and felt that I would, if I had the chance, be changed into a woman physically, if I could be a refined charming gentlewoman, and that I should stipulate for full womanhood. From that time I began to realize that my desires were not mere idle fancies but were based on inherent tastes, developed by the years of thought and contemplation. Still realizing the physical handicap and the difficulties of public opinion, and the law, I thought that if I could try for once to live as a woman, the restricted life, and the tendency of realization to fall short of antici¬ pation, would lessen the desire and reduce or stop the conflict within. I ordered a costume and outfit and was astonished when dressed with hat and veil, as were the dressers; yet I felt I was only wear¬ ing theatrical clothes, the undergarments not being to my taste, and I wanted to be properly dressed and be able to go about and feel quite at ease. This happened in London, and soon after I went abroad again, taking the clothes with me, but finding little chance to use them. Simply to ‘dress up’ has never satisfied me. Event¬ ually, after having found a suite of two rooms in a block from which I could safely go in and out, and from which I was able to make several excursions, I discovered, in my search for feminine com¬ panionship, an elderly nurse, living alone, who took in maternity cases, and she allowed me to go there for two weeks between cases, during which time I dressed, but alternated between the two charac¬ ters. This was a step up but by no means represented my ambitions. Next I made the acquaintance of a smart English lady in reduced circumstances, when advertising for rooms and engaging a lady housekeeper-companion, ostensibly with two male friends, until I had discovered a suitable applicant whom I could trust with my story. This lady, however, I feared would be too attractive, so I said my two friends had retreated from the idea. She then openly suggested that I should undertake the project alone, but I pointed out the conventional difficulties, to which she replied: ‘If I don’t care, why should you?’ and in the end begged me with tears to do so; she was unhappy in her position and wanted a nice home, and a nice man, and confessed that her desires—unsatisfied since her husband had died—were so strong and her hunger for me was so great, she was in pain. I take no credit for resisting an undoubtedly attractive temptation, but I felt desperately sorry for her and in sympathy with her unfulfilled desires. In my next experience I EONISM. 75 inspected a room in an elderly widow’s house, a fine well-built woman, who had a grandson over 21. Having satisfied myself on her trustworthiness, I broached the subject, to which she raised no objection, but remarked that we were about the same size. I said that I had alwaj^s wanted to put on the clothes actually worn by a woman, and she offered to let me have hers, and suggested a trial then. We went upstairs, the plan being to undress in separate rooms, she to get into bed, and I to dress and go to her for inspec¬ tion. This gave me pleasure and promised well for the future, but she suggested afterwards I undress in her room which pleased me as being a feminine course. Then, later, she said she had done me a favor, would I do her one and get into bed for a little while in a nightdress of hers. Her warmth of body, caresses, and invitation to lie in her arms as a baby, followed by the baring and offering of her plump breast, gave me a delicious feeling of enjoyment, and I dozed happily and contentedly as a child after breast feeding. Then she invited connection, saying she had not enjoyed it for eight years, and that I appealed to her from the first. My two natures struggled for a moment, sympathy with her unfulfilled desires, especially in a woman much older than myself, and possibly with few, if any, chances for future enjoyment. I yielded although my inner self said: ‘You are spoiling my chances for enjoyment.* It was not passion, but more of a love embrace, and I felt additional pleasure in the thought that she was much older in years and her enjoyment was greater because of its unexpectedness to her. We were a pair of lovers, and I could have enjoyed my life with her (probably marrying her), but not in the way of a sexual orgie, simply love embraces and caresses without fiery passion. My inner self, how¬ ever, pointed out that I could not carry out my purpose and enjoy a feminine life thoroughly if I gave way to masculine sexual desires. “I should have said before this that I made the acquaintance of a smart lady who made costumes privately, and she undertook to fit me out completely and make an outdoors, an indoors, and an evening gown. While being fitted with the latter a lady friend came in and held the tray of pins, afterwards expressing admiration of my hair and figure, knowing nothing of me but that I was Miss-. I was filled with pleasure (not sexual) when she sat down on a lounge beside my hostess, lifted her skirts and showed her knickers, a recent present—I was admitted into fellowship! A doctor friend called after she had gone and favorably criticized my appearance saying: ‘You should go on the stage and make a success. You are so perfectly natural,’ adding, ‘But first of all go somewhere and live the life for a while continuously, to get quite correct in little details.* This put into words in concrete form what had before been a kind 76 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. of fanciful desire. The lady and I went out next day from 10.30 to 5 to get photos taken, do shopping, etc. We had lunch out and she introduced me to all her friends and said at the end of the day: ‘You are perfectly wonderful; I feel you are really a woman.* My first taste of enjoyment, quite free from masculine sexual feelings! Afterwards we went to a matinee at the theatre and she called on another lady, who, expecting us, told a male friend to go as we were coming. He came downstairs as we arrived at the apartment block, afterwards telling his friend that he easily recognized the man by the way ‘she’ went upstairs. The joke being that it was not I who was detected to be a man but my lady friend! Another time we went out calling and took tea. This experience, however, was enjoyable as far as it went, but it was not living continuously and entirely with a woman as a woman. Next I found an elderly spinster and took a suite of rooms for a month, but she regarded me as being ‘dressed up,’ so that episode ended. Then came another English widow quite satisfactory, but very matter of fact, who took me for a month during which time I had a bad attack of influenza. Later I had the luck to find a lady living in her flat alone for the time her friends were away, who was sympathetic and with whom I stayed for some months. She having had children of her own was able to talk with me on a subject that had growing attraction for me ever since I had decided that I really desired to be a woman, and not merely to dress as one. One day a neighbor left her infant to be looked after, and my friend gave it to me to nurse, but vivid as had been my imagina¬ tion before, the actual holding of a real baby so stirred me to the depths that I had to call out to have it taken from me. Since then I have had a real desire that amounts to physical feelings at times to enjoy the full experience of womanhood, and although my friend told me of the sickness, pain and discomfort, as well as danger, yet; I felt that it would be worth all these to experience the wonderful joys. Friends came to stay with her and I had to go, eventually finding rooms with an elderly couple who had two other boarders, this house being close to another lady friend, whom I used to visit when dressed and go out shopping with and to theatres, etc., on one occasion a male friend of hers taking us both to dinner at his club. The costume I used to wear then had a narrow skirt, with a small V at bottom, in which I walked and got in and out of street cars quite easily, yet when I sent it to my sister she said it fitted her nicely but, oh, the skirt was too narrow to walk in! Before my marriage I had accidentally found and read Richardson’s novel 2835 Mayfair and was still more infatuated with the idea of changing to a woman. EONISM. 77 I returned to the English lady after her friends left, and was experiencing some pleasure in changing into the character, when the spring of 1915 came and I decided that it was my duty to return to England, although advised in August, 1914, that men were not wanted. I had previously in one of my intervals since August, 1914, joined a recruits class and passed my elementary drills and on the night previous to leaving I went out dressed with two ladies to a vaudeville show, and remember sitting reluctantly on my bed, not wishing to undress and close a chapter which I knew not when I should reopen. My first thought on the outbreak of war was: I shall have to return to England, I may be killed, or wounded in such a manner that I can never dress again, nor realize my great desire. Upon my return to England in 1915 (at the age of 42) I found that men were not so urgently needed in the Army as in munitions, and as a stern sense of duty alone made me face the possibilities of a rough life with coarse men, hardships, discomforts and spiritual crucifixion, I was not sorry. After months of attempts to get something of national importance I joined an engineering class and learned to make shells. In a weary search for work as a lathe hand I acci¬ dentally met an officer, which led to an invitation from another officer to visit Woolwich Arsenal. I was engaged there to train for a month or so, and then go to branch works shortly to be opened, in which I ultimately had charge of a staff of several hundred women. Among them were several ladies of education, with whom, after hours, I became on very friendly terms, forming theatre parties, etc. By invitation I visited once or twice at the houses where they had rooms. But for my strong desire to be a woman, I should have let myself go and paid marked attention to one whom I had the greatest difficulty to refrain myself from embracing and kissing, one evening, as we sat together on a couch looking at photographs. A married lady tried to entangle me, but I guessed her nature and was careful. Having tasted the joys of dressing and going out in Canada, I was very anxious to get where I could indulge during week-ends, especially as my lodgings were very unsatisfac¬ tory. I stated my requirements to a London Agency without result, but at last I found an Agency run by two middle-aged ladies who took a sympathetic view, and tried to find me a suitable small flat, and a reliable housekeeper. I may say that I should never have con¬ templated such a step unless to indulge in dressing. I had been advertising for a lady housekeeper and made the acquaintance of an educated lady and this eventually ripened into friendship, but I felt the thin ice, and that residence in her flat would be very dangerous. She, however, understands my case now and is quite willing to help me do what I want to. The ladies at the Agency having found a 78 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. flat and a lady housekeeper I moved in (on a three months lease), the distinct understanding being that I was not to be seen as a man, but dress on entering at night, and have breakfast alone and unob¬ served in the morning. (This rule was soon broken in the morning by the lady.) It was with feelings of pleasure that I contemplated the end of the day’s work, and delighted, on entering my room, to find all my garments laid out, and, later on, the bed turned down and a dainty nightdress laid ready. “My ambition being to live as a woman, not to ‘dress up’ or mas¬ querade, it seemed quite right to go out. In fact the restriction of being confined indoors recalled the fact I wished to forget, i.e., that I was a man dressed up. I went to Hyde Park frequently on Sun¬ day mornings. On one occasion I met a lady friend there, and walked the length of the Church Parade after sitting watching the promenaders. My housekeeper and I were becoming friendly; I was sorry for her as she had had hard luck, losing her husband and being alone and not well off. She began by declining to go out with me, and begging that I would not go out, pointing out the great risk. While I realized the risk I ran when thinking of it as a man, yet the enjoyment was so great, and my femininity (so long clamoring for expression and life) developed so much that I was soon able to go out without anxiety or fear, except at the back of my mind a slight anxiety which was hardly fear. The pleasure I obtained was worth all the risk, which was no doubt very considerable, during the war when suspicious people were liable to arrest as spies. At the end of my lease my lady housekeeper suggested taking another flat and getting her furniture. Nothing unseemly had occurred between us, only I felt reluctant to embark on the new venture, but did so fully expecting a friend of hers to join us, and also because if I did not I thought I must give up dressing. I had by then given up the practice of appearing to my housekeeper only as a woman, partly because I grew to like her and took her out now and again to a theatre. During 1916-17 I frequently went out on Sundays, some¬ times to meet my friend, with whom I have been to many concerts, while I have been to Kensington Gardens and other parks, also to various large stores. My lady housekeeper later on tried to get me to drop my dressing, by a scare that detectives were on the watch, and I was induced to pack all my apparel and store it in the base¬ ment. I thought of paying the balance of the rent and clearing out, but as usual my sympathy over-ruled and I didn’t have the heart to leave her. Her war-work later on brought on poor health, and she had to go away to sea-air. We gave up the flat, and I went into rooms, later to a suite of two rooms where I could again dress and EONISM. 79 go out. My consideration for the lady, however, has led to her being talked about, and her feeling that I ought to marry her. I am fond of her and would like to see or make her happy, and mar¬ ried life has its attractions, in fact a nice home I greatly desire, but my masculine nature and desires are held in check by my feminine nature and I really shrink from matrimony and fatherhood although I am very fond of young children, especially girls of all ages. I had by now advanced to being able to go out freely although with some restraint and care, and yet the pleasure grew as I was able to more completely let my femininity dominate my physical self. I have walked or sat in Kensington Gardens carrying a sunshade, and thrilled with aesthetic—not sexual—delight, at feeling ‘I am a woman.* No sense of risk was present. Yet there was a risk of police prosecution, compulsory resignation of my position, and dis¬ grace before friends and relatives. Nothing counted in the aesthetic delight of allowing my feminine self to live. At this time, however, I had not reached the conclusions or opinions that I now have regarding myself. I had been attracted by the title of a lecture, ‘The Creative Power of Thought,* and obtained booklets on it, and on ‘The Power of the Mind.* I then began to realize that I had been building up my feminine nature, but felt that there must have been some sort of a foundation in my nature, other than a nursed desire, to cause it to grow through so many early years. It was not as if I had created the appetite by wearing the clothes; the appetite had come first. I sought for some explanation of my desire, and a Theosophist lady gave as her opinion that I had evidently just finished or was about to enter a female incarnation, while a leading male lecturer and editor of the Theosophical Society dismissed me with ‘Obsession!* I had been collecting every newspaper picture I could, and articles thereon, of female impersonators and used to go and see them in vaudeville or Army Concert parties, await their entrance with a kind of tremor, sit and admire them, long enviously to be doing the same, and wish I was smaller and more feminine. Vulgarity or burlesque in their acting displeased me, and the Malcolm Scott and Wilkie Bard women did not interest me. Neither did I like to see them take off their wigs nor raise a cheap laugh. But although the performance would leave me sad with a hungry desire and envy, yet I could never resist going. I have often thought that were I as perfect a girl as they in size, appearance and voice, I would never live as a man again, but adopt the stage as a profession, and the clothes and character for private life. For many years one of my special mental pictures of bliss has been lovely evening dress, bare arms, beautiful shoulders, back and neck, and a gorgeous opera cloak, and to be handed out of a luxurious car by a well-groomed 80 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. man, and wait in the theatre vestibule or hotel foyer, proudly con¬ scious of my appearance. Christmas Day, with its beautifully fur- clad women and girls leaving church on a frosty morning, and their queenly presence in the home, has always made me long sadly for a transformation. Up to this point I had enjoyed women’s garments as a means of getting into the character. When a lad I used to think, ‘If I married a rich lady and she died I could take all her clothes/ To dress in a lady’s clothes has always been more attractive than ‘dressing up/ for the imagination of being her would be assisted. I used to picture going to a beautiful house and undressing in the bath-room, having a scented bath and, leaving my masculine self behind, going into a lady’s dainty bedroom and dressing in her attire, absorbing the character from her clothes and the environ¬ ment, letting them raise me to my refined state. Then my ambition led me on to a gentlewoman’s life (even with a male body), accepted by a kindred spirit as a woman, treated as such and admitted to the inner sanctuary of a woman’s life and conversation and the usual intimacies as between two gentlewomen, regarding partial undress during daytime when changing frocks. Whereas I would not in¬ trude, or wish to be subject to temptation as a man by being in a woman’s bedroom, yet I wished for admittance into the restricted area, and to be treated as, and feel I was there as, a woman. Fur¬ ther realizations of the experiences of being a woman were beyond the realms of probability, and my previous experiences had been that women were often the cause of my departure from my ideal aim. “My next stage was, however, a step further. One evening after leaving Hyde Park and the band, I walked to Marble Arch to get a bus and a man came up and spoke to me, walking by my side, and asked me to go for a walk. I felt indignant that he should presume to speak to me, and threatened to call a constable as he persisted. A rather nice young man was in the bus and he alighted when I did and overtook me, asking if he might see me home. I said I was nearly there, but allowed him to do so, and went for a little stroll a round-about way. It was a delightful sensation, receiving his attentions; he begged me to take tea next day in Town and wanted to kiss me on leaving which I desired but refused as it did not seem to be the act of a gentlewoman. I had no feeling that I was fooling him, only a pleasant thrill at the thoroughness of my feminine feelings. “The next step upward was a sequel to another Hyde Park meeting. I sat on the outer edge of the seats around the band, under the trees away from the crowds listening to a waltz, and while enjoying it, picturing myself being whirled round in a ball-room, arrayed in a pretty gown. A good-looking gentleman of military EONISM. 81 aspect walked by and repassed, and I could see that he desired to make my acquaintance. I left it to Fate, feeling I could not en¬ courage him. He eventually sat down near me and opened with the usual small talk. When I rose to go, he asked to be allowed to escort me. I declined but he pleaded, so I allowed him, especially as I was feeling extra pleased with myself, having on my friend’s long seal coat, and a smart French hat and veil. It was pleasant being assisted over the low rails and we walked towards Lancaster Gate, my enjoyment being of the most aesthetic kind. It was past dusk when we reached the other side, and I was going to leave him just inside the Park rails, when under a large tree he seized me and kissed me. I expressed the surprise I felt and said, ‘How dare you?* —it made me tremble. He begged me to sit down a moment, apologizing fully, and I yielded, inwardly hoping for further experiences, yet keeping in the character of a lady and her proper behavior. I soon regained composure and rose to go, but under the same tree, quite shaded from view, he again seized me, and em¬ braced me ardently. I struggled but yielded and we had a long kiss of passion, he pressing close to me, and showing how I stirred his passion, and I returning his pressure in my abandonment to the delicious womanly feelings and desires I was enjoying, only to push him away and say, ‘What do you think of me?’ He begged me to dine with him and go to his flat next day; I consented and fled. I was trembling from head to foot, and did so for an hour after until in bed. On this occasion my sexual nature expressed itself in the character I was in and I really felt physical desires. I had no erection although padded there, and in my breasts I felt a sensation which caused me to press in a spasm against him. The one draw¬ back was his strong tobacco breath, and I felt I could not marry a man with such breath. To those who do not understand this episode may seem to be a sexual perversion, but to me it was not so much a physical as a spiritual experience, and made my desire to be a real woman much deeper, although handicapped by the wrong body, as I felt I could then think the thoughts and have the feelings which in a male are incompatible and cause sexual disturbances. “That night I had a most realistic dream, in that I was enjoying co-habitation with my husband and awoke disappointed (lying on my back with legs apart) to find it was not true. On another occasion I dreamed a man was in bed with me and pulled my shoulder for me to turn to him, but I began to raise myself on my elbow to get up, saying, ‘What are you doing in my bed?’ when I awoke. As a general rule my desire to be, or live as, a woman is ever present, yet there were times when I would decide that friends, conventions, the law, and to a certain extent my physical self were 6 82 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. against it, but all these thoughts and resolutions would vanish into thin air, and the longing reappear as strong as ever at the sight ot a well-dressed lady. To try on coats, furs, etc., had now lost its pleasure, the delight of putting them on as a man being much in¬ ferior to doing so as a woman. I had, before returning to England, tried to improve my bust, by massaging my breasts with olive oil as my enjoyment is always greater when I know I look well, and natural busts would please me more than pads or improvers. “At the end of 1919 I left England again, principally on private business, and resolved to try and enjoy a period of living as a lady continuously, thinking that perhaps realization might not be equal to anticipation and the result might be a less strong desire. I was nearly three months in finding a place where I could live the life— ostensibly to train for the stage—and at last went to the house of a retired man and his wife in a large city although my hostess was not the sort of kindred spirit I sought, in fact I used to feel she was less ladylike in character than I. They were both astonished at my appearance and my ease and naturalness, so much so that they felt no anxiety in introducing me as Mrs.- a widow, and I sat down to meals and cards with any guests. A week after arrival a relative of theirs, an elderly retired doctor, came to live with them, and he remained in ignorance all the time but was most courteous. I used to assist with meals and in the kitchen and in making beds, and felt more of a thrill when making the doctor s bed than in helping my hostess make hers. A charwoman called every week and did cleaning and washing, and I used to do a large part of the ironing. E\ ery day I used to go out and I visited stores, reading rooms, often had lunch out, called at the Customs to get a muff sent from England, and went to concerts, and regularly to church. I stayed just over three months and enjoyed it greatly, feeling quite at ease, and happy, except for the fact that I went out alone, and did not have the friendship of a woman who would accept me in the character I por¬ trayed, so as to forget my body. My hostess used to repeat nice things callers said of me, and said herself that I was more lady-like than some of her friends. It was a sad day when business matters caused me to leave; I felt very strange and uncomfortable in men’s clothes, and, with a man’s outlook on life, unhappy. I had to journey to another part of the country and it was over twelve months before I could again enjoy myself, the latter three being spent in vain searching for a habitation. I had found out how completely I was able to live as a woman, how I enjoyed it, in an aesthetic sense, and how thoroughly I could submerge and even practically forget my physical sex in my imagination that I was a woman or, as I EONISM. 83 began to regard it, letting my real self live, so that instead of the conflict of two natures there was now peace and enjoyment. “The next time I had another three months’ ‘life,’ and in many ways this was the best of my experiences. By advertising I found a lady whose husband had deserted her, yet allowed her a monthly check. She lived alone in a small house and was a devout church- woman. We became very good friends; she treated me as if I was a woman and I respected her confidence, for to do otherwise was foreign to my nature, and would have spoiled my enjoyment, and possibly ended the arrangement. We were alone together and kissed on retiring and in the morning, saying ‘dear’ in speaking, and she slept with her bedroom door ajar. I never entered it, but she used to enter mine during the daytime when we were dressing to go out. We frequently went to theatres and cinemas and I was out every day, rejoicing in the feeling and thought: ‘I am a woman.’ She con¬ fessed to me her desire to have a baby and I to her that I would too. Acting on an impulse I asked her to make me a maternity pad, which I wore for a whole day indoors, sitting about, and enjoying imagining I was pregnant. To many this may seem lunacy, or dis¬ gusting, yet my desire is always to get right into the character and think as a woman would, and feel like one. My departure, when she sold her house, was to steal away having said good-bye as a woman and not be seen as a man. For some days I suffered great depression and regret at the change. After two months absence I returned, and found a room but was unable to dress and go out for some months. Meanwhile I had obtained a position, hoping it would lead to a better one. A year after my last ‘life’ matters became bad, I was getting miserable, and frequently suffering real pain, for the sight of a well-dressed woman would often cause me to clench my nails into my palms, suppress a groan, sometimes a swear escaping my lips. I felt the injustice of things in that women with masculine natures were allowed to dress as men, and often say they wished they were men, yet the opposite was regarded with suspicion or derision. Many women with coarse natures and bad manners but good clothes were tolerated. Yet I, who could wear the clothes so much better, and give the impression of being a lady, was taboo, be¬ cause of my bodily form which was hidden. ‘Manners maketh the man’—‘character and personality tells’—all were disproved by the fact that ‘by their flesh ye shall know them.’ I realized that the cases are different, and males must not be allowed to dress as women, the usual result being unsatisfactory from a moral point of view. Yet I felt, and still feel, that my real self has had to be sub¬ jected to my physical self, my body. 84 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. “My Christmas Day, 1919, was spent with my first host and hostess; the next I felt must be spent as a woman, so I took a room at the chief hotel and after breakfast dressed, went to church, lunch, etc., then retiring and returning to dinner as a man. As I was, by April, 1922, feeling very unhappy because my inner feminine self clamored for another chance to live, I consulted my doctor, who later on found me a home with an ex-officer and his wife and child, the lady having had a brother who had similar tastes (in England). The doctor anticipated that I should only dress at week-ends to obtain relief and he was quite in sympathy with this; but the oppor¬ tunity to again live as I desired was too strong, also the objection to appearing alternately as a man and woman is to me great, and may raise suspicions as well, so I resigned my position which was distasteful to me and entered once more into my womanhood. Although I should have preferred to go to a house where there were only one or two ladies I was prepared to overlook the drawback of the presence of a young lady boarder, for she had expressed no objection at me residing there. After having seen me in costume, however (purely as a matter of curiosity), she raised so-called moral objections and gave up her rooms. The ironical aspect of this, how¬ ever, was that she was in the habit of keeping late hours and taking drives late at night with strangers and had confessed these things to her hostess. More and more I notice that it is the feminine physical form that is considered by the world to be the woman, behavior, personality, and character not being so important, whereas I look with scorn and disgust, or at least mild criticism, on some females, knowing how much better I could wear their clothes, con¬ duct myself, and give an impression of a real lady. There are sweet natures in deformed bodies, and many so-called women are by no means feminine. My sense of delight and enjoyment at again being able to live in the character that appeals so strongly to me was very great and continuous. Instead of the struggle of two natures, and arguments and counter-arguments in my brain, causing weariness and frequently a sadness which lay like a weight upon my spirit, the continual feeling of envy of women and inner or mental realiza¬ tion of the actual feelings to be dressed as they, I experience a sense of happiness and joy which now and again surges up as I think: ‘Now I am a woman.’ Merely wearing feminine clothes and masquerading is objectionable to me, and the slightest hint or sign by anyone who knows, that they regard me other than as a real woman is like an icy draught, or a sharp pin-prick. I enjoy letting the clothes and my inner nature completely conquer the masculine side of my brain and all desires pertaining thereto. EONISM. 85 Just as a clergyman is influenced by his surplice, a soldier by his uniform, or a nun by hers, so I am by my clothes. The transformation that takes place is really wonderful, for I often reflect sadly that I have no earthly chance of looking altogether like a woman. Yet my eyes and smile are regarded as truly feminine, and happiness shows itself and soon improves my appearance. During my few months’ life—this time in the spring and summer—I made surprising advances in my free¬ dom of movement. My hostess took me to a corsetiere’s and I derived great and lasting pleasure from an expensive and well¬ fitting pair of corsets which gave the feeling of smartness and helped in graceful deportment. We also went shopping to try on hats, and I experienced true feminine delight and abiding satisfaction on Easter Sunday in going to church in a pretty new mauve hat and mauve veil, a large bunch of mauve sweet peas in my waist band. Instead of being distracted and torn with envy of women and their clothes, I could kneel in true heartfelt thankfulness that I was able to ‘worship in spirit/ I possessed pure aesthetic enjoyment, the delight of feeling myself to be a woman ‘like you’ and the delicious sense of comfort and elegance derived from my clothes, which do not result in a sense of sexual gratification, but rather of spiritual enjoyment, of mental delight and peace. Every trivial action, such as using a dainty and perfumed handkerchief, placing articles down gently, acknowledging the trivial courtesies generally received by women with a smile and soft ‘Thank you,’ all gave me as much pleasure as the opposite would give pain. Although I am fond of company, yet walking alone as a woman is very pleasant, and I used to go out daily, if not shopping, then to the sea-front, or in the parks, where silent enjoyment of my character was continuous, my only regret being that I had not a kindred soul, a woman friend. My hostess and her small son used to take lunch on the sands now and again and I frequently joined them, but mice as she and her husband were she never properly understood me. I practically went everywhere I wished to, but always with a sort of necessary caution not to run too great risks, to theatres, concerts, cinemas, tennis tournaments, and to a reception of distinguished visitors at a civic garden party in the park, where I was delighted to catch the eye of the Governor- General’s wife and curtsy to her, being rewarded with a charming smile. In the house I used to assist in preparation for meals, and in making beds, and in shopping. Though I never indulged in an extensive wardrobe I should like to, and would have if I saw my way clear to a more lengthy ‘life.’ Yet I used to be well-dressed and was very successful in summer attire (my first experience), though winter clothes with furs, etc., are far more effective in hiding defects. In a 86 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. comparatively short white flannel serge skirt (which I bought and tried on at a store, having it adjusted in length by the fitter), a pretty white petticoat and underwear, and a net blouse half screening dainty things beneath and revealing throat and neck, with white stockings and shoes, a silk sports coat and wide hat, sunshade, etc., I looked well and felt the greatest sense of pleasure when out or sitting at home reading, or moving about before and after meals. I have gone on the sands with a sunshade and sat for hours enjoying the sea, and the delightful sensation of being alone in the character I am in. My doctor visited the house and took a meal with us, congratulating me on my appearance, and I called on him two or three times and saw him at his consulting rooms. He used, however, to advise me not to forget that I was Mr.-, but I impressed on him that I was able to practically forget Mr.- in the enjoyment of being Mrs.-. He said he saw no reason why I should not dress now and again as a relief to what becomes an overpowering desire, but if I let it get hold of me to an undue extent it became pathological. I said I was far happier, my brain was at rest, and there was not the continual conflict, and intense longing, causing depression. We debated the subject often for lengthy periods, I contending that the ego, the inner self, should rule and not the physical self. Although he was prepared to back up his early advice to protect me, and my hostess, if ‘discovery’ led to any untoward incidents (which did not worry me, my enjoyment was too great to be deterred by thoughts of risk), he regarding me largely as a mental case, yet he suggested that it would be wiser if I and he consulted another doctor; to which I agreed. After he had prepared the consultant with an outline of my case, and details of public work, and references I had; I visited these two doctors one evening, having specially smartened myself, and en route buying a large bunch of sweet peas to wear in my waist band. I sat for two hours and a half, describing my case and answering questions of a most searching nature. I stated that it was my sincere desire to be a refined gentlewoman (not any female) and that although I realized all the drawbacks attending some women’s lives, and had discussed the matter with an English lady who spoke of the illness, pains and drawbacks of women’s lives, yet though I shrunk from pain and operations as a rule (a tooth extrac¬ tion being terrible to my nerves) yet I would undergo a surgical operation if the result would be to give me a beautiful or attractive female form with full womanhood in a type that appealed to me. The only embarrassment I felt at the interview was that I had to speak of myself as a male, while in feminine attire and character. My contention was and is that masculine women are recognized by the world as a separate type and their personalities (or peculiarities) EONISM. 87 are allowed expression, in dress, mode of living, etc., suitable to their inner selves, not their bodies; they are free to coarsen themselves by living as like men as possible, yet are hybrids. I make a more successful transformation, hide my body as far as sex is concerned and my behavior is that of a refined lady. My doctor rather clings to the mental obsession idea; and suggested that it would doubtless be possible for them to arrange with the Chief of Police that I be not molested, but I demurred at being pointed out to detectives and others who would ignorantly regard me as being dressed up, for my pleasure would be greatly lessened. The consultant took my side often in argument and said it was the strongest case of dual per¬ sonality he had known; he wanted time to consider and would see me again. At the end of four months’ life, my hostess received warn¬ ing from a friend that I was known and being spoken about, and we supposed that the young woman, her erstwhile boarder, had seen me and was talking. I felt that it was wisest to give up for a time and consulted my doctor who was indignant at the fact being revealed. It w*as with very great sadness that I undressed for the last time one night, having previously bidden my hostess good-bye, and asked to be allowed to slip out in the morning. I had determined to go away for a couple of weeks to my sister’s, but to return to them, as they would have been seriously hit financially had I left them. I slipped out into a world that was particularly distasteful to me, my collar choked me, my trousers oppressed me like bandages, my boots felt clumsy, and I missed the clasp of corsets, and the beautiful feel of underwear. When I returned, however, I suffered considerable mental and spiritual anguish. I simply could not face the household at meals and for a w*eek or more used to get out on long walks, or remain in my room, later on beginning with break¬ fasts. My first evening meal was like a knife sticking into me, for I remembered—although my seat was moved by request. When my hostess rose to remove the first course my spirit wanted to do as before, and get up as a woman and help her. Instead of my own dainty movements and mental happiness as a woman, I had to act as a man to my great displeasure. I have lived it down somewhat but there is always the contrast between this life and the other, whether in the house or not. “I consider that I am a dual personality of which the feminine self has very early expressed itself, and gathered strength, dominat¬ ing my life, but my male physical self has been strong enough to prevent outward signs of effeminacy. In addition, the desires of the feminine have caused undue thought about, and love for, feminine clothes and life, and these have acted on my male sexual nature to 88 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. cause its development. Masturbation, when indulged in, and natural connection have been generally due to the feelings aroused by con¬ templation of the feminine state and clothes, in envy and not in a sense of sexual desire; also as a relief of the feeling of longing, rather than to create such feelings. I am a bundle of contradictions, a sort of Miss Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I cannot simply dreamily con¬ template the attraction of a feminine state, but the desires are always present in varying degrees, and sometimes enough to cause pain or deep depression. Were I living alone as a man with an attractive woman and were rash enough to go to her bedroom (unless a pros¬ titute who would repel me) my feelings would be aroused, especially if she tempted me, partly because I feel inwardly that I w’ould like to be in her place, and even during connection I have had a longing to be her. If going to her room to dress in her clothes, or already partly dressed and in the character of a woman, my femininity would keep my masculinity sternly down; for I know that I could not misconduct myself when in my clothes and character, for the sake of temporary physical gratification, thereby robbing a more lasting aesthetic and spiritual pleasure (together with the sensation of feminine sexual desires, mental and physical). I greatly desire to so thoroughly live as a woman that exposure in negligee in bed¬ rooms when it occurs, will be regarded as natural and so I may feel that I am admitted as a woman to the inner sanctuary of woman’s kingdom. Regarding the clothes themselves I admit frankly that they are very, very attractive to me, and that I love wearing them. I should like to have a complete outfit of essentially feminine things, dainty French lingerie, smart corsets which give a delicious feeling of snugness, pretty shoes, and silk stockings, lovely petticoats and underskirts and smart gowns, hats, lovely furs and cloaks, coats, wraps of all kinds. Dainty accessories, such as hankies, hand bags, gloves, jewelry, perfume, sunshades, veils—all have a truly feminine lure for me. My one great desire is for a really good seal coat with shawl collar and large cuffs of skunk. To see one of these makes me very envious, and this frequently happens. Hats have a great attraction, too, and I love a veil. Now underwear is known to have an influence on men’s passionate feelings, but with me, much as I love to see it on or in shops, yet my desire is to wear it. Except when shaving during my ‘lives’ I banish everything masculine, and I never see my head without a wig on nor expose my person below the waist. Dressing is a sort of ritual; I am really ‘in the spirit’ and see and feel myself to be a woman; it is pleasing to put on the clothes, especially the touch of a pretty blouse on bare arms and shoulders. The soft comfort of underwear, and clasp of corsets, the EONISM. 89 caress of petticoats around silk-stockinged legs, the smartness of shoes, together with the delightful sensation from the graceful move¬ ments, and happy frame of mind, all combine to cause the most delicious aesthetic feelings of happiness and content, so that any sacrifice, if necessary, of such an animal passion as masculine feelings often cause, is not to be even thought of as worth weighing. The great desire is to be as much a gentlewoman in appearance, deport¬ ment, personality, thought and desire as possible, and whereas the details of clothes are forgotten, skirts becoming a part of oneself, yet the delicious result remains in a happy feeling which surges up now and again in the Te Deutn: ‘I am a woman/ When undressing at night I like to do so slowly before the mirror (should like a long¬ haired wig to sit and brush), but my feelings are simply one of peaceful happiness, in that my real self is living without conflict with my physical self which lies dormant and subject. In various stages of undress I proceed to the last, where I release undergarments from my shoulders and slipping on a dainty nightie, I let my things fall to the ground as a modest woman would, never revealing my deformities. Then in a pretty boudoir cap I sometimes sit and gaze in aesthetic satisfaction at my woman-self, stooping to enjoy the roundness of the slight breasts thus emphasized. Then to bed, only regretting that a loving husband, or a dear little baby is not to nestle near me. I do not feel that my case is one of inversion. My mas¬ culinity is, however, conquered—a thing I cannot do when living as a man; I feel I am getting to be, if not already so, a sensualist, but when in the feminine state one nature only rules, and I have no desire to step out of it, any thoughts of masculinity being driven away. As a man I should scorn any homosexual relationship, even if imagining I was a woman. I have, however, allowed a woman to pretend to be a man to me, when desiring feminine sexual gratifica¬ tion, and I would wish to surrender myself to a nice man when a woman, but know that my ideal character would not allow such a lapse, yet the desire does not excite shame. I have not dressed since my last ‘life/ although all my clothes are within daily touch, yet I long to do so if it meant a life, not just dressing up or putting on the clothes. To try on a lovely fur coat would only be an aggravation, yet to put it on as a woman and revel in its cosiness and enjoy the large cuffs, that is different. As a lady once said: T suppose you want to have a woman’s experiences as well as dress in the char¬ acter?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I do.’ She understood when she said: ‘What a tragedy your life is! How you must suffer!’ And I do. Much as I desire feminine companionship and a nice home, yet marriage seems too great a risk. I cannot change my inner nature, 90 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. nor contemplate the continued crucifixion of my self by the agoniz¬ ing and tantalizing sight of a beautiful or attractive woman, in clothes that distracted me, being a continual source of torment. I still hope to live the life my real self desires, and in which I can build up a better and finer personality and a purer soul to take to the Beyond, when this body remains behind.” R. L. sent me numerous statements and letters, but the foregoing narrative (to which a few slight additions have been made from others of his papers) seems to cover the whole ground and it is in entire harmony in all essentials with his other statements. He came to see me at intervals after his return from Canada to London, and the personal impression he made agreed with his own account of himself. He was a quiet, solid, serious man, with no obvious feminine physical traits, and no mannerisms that suggested a woman. One would have supposed that he was rather too largely built to make up easily as a woman, but it would appear that in none of his adven¬ tures in that part was he ever alarmingly suspected. In numerous photographs as a woman his feminine air and bearing seem unim¬ peachable. There is nothing of the rather provocative and mere¬ tricious aspect which sometimes marks homosexual men when in feminine costume; the face looks rather massive but is that of a calm, experienced, decorous woman, and the impression is entirely agreeable. The part played by the sexual instinct in R. L. is of much in¬ terest, and characteristic of one of the types of Eonism. We see that it is held in balance, as it were, between his native masculine nature and his ideal feminine nature, pulled in each direction but unable to go to the full extent in either, for the ideal feminine nature prevents full enjoyment as a man, while to accept the sexual enjoy¬ ment of a woman though yet possessing a man’s body would hardly befit R.L.’s conception of a lady’s behavior. We see that there is a sense (though not the usual sense) in which we can say that R. L. is an example of dual personality. But to say that would not be to offer any explanation of his condition. If we were to investigate him psycho-analytically, we might pos¬ sibly find the influence of an infantile attachment to his mother. No attempt whatever was made to ascertain that influence, and there is nothing to show that he himself attached importance to it. So that it is all the more instructive to observe that his references to his mother, his recognition of her superiority, and his early championship of her against the irritable father, would agree with such an assump¬ tion. An infantile and always mainly unconscious absorption in the mother, on the part of a sensitive and sympathetic child, may well have furnished the point of departure for the attitude of Eonism EONISM. 91 which early began to develop in R. L., and, in the absence of any strong sexual impulse, more and more tended to an absorption in, and finally an identification with, the social, maternal, and domestic aspects of womanhood. This seems the only key we can expect to find, or need to find, to the influences that have molded R. L.’s life. In the next case, in a man of quite different intellectual, emotional and moral type, we see what may, I believe, be re¬ garded as a profound if not complete form of sexo-aesthetic inversion. R. M., age 66; man of science and letters, a fellow of various learned societies and engaged in official scientific work. “My father (a business man) came of a healthy, prolific and long- lived family of farmers, and was one of eighteen children. My mother came of a mercantile family, which suffered from a severe form of hysteria, showing itself in some members of the family, but not in others, through at least five or six generations. My mother was one of eight children, of whom one son and four daughters lived to be married, and had children. Of the others, one daughter died unmarried at twenty-four; and one boy and one girl died in infancy. “My mother and one of her sisters married in the same year; the former being thirty-one, and the latter thirty-five. But whereas the sister’s husband was only a year older than herself, my mother (who was my father’s second wife) was sixteen years younger than my father; and about two years after the marriages, the eldest children were born. “The sister, who had set her mind on having boys had six children of which the two eldest and the youngest were girls, the others, two boys and a girl, died in infancy. My mother, on the other hand, who set her mind on having girls, had five sons, all still living, of whom I am the eldest. “At the age of six months, I was frightened by a railway train, which passed before the window of a railway carriage at which I was being held up. I became so ill that my life was despaired of; I suffered much from convulsions, and could not walk until I was two. Still, my recollections go back distinctly and continuously to the age of three and a half, when we were staying at the seaside; though I have only isolated and disjointed recollections further back than that. “We were brought up in great seclusion, for my mother among numerous heresies, had a prejudice against schools; and we were seldom allowed to speak to other children. However, older cousins used to come to the house, and talk and read to me, especially a 92 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. delicate boy six years older than myself, whose mother was dead, and who lived with us during most of my childhood; and who was like an elder brother to me. “I was subject, till the age of eight or nine at least, to violent fits of hysterical crying, sometimes brought on by a mere trifle; I was generally put in a room by myself till the fit passed off. These fits were called ‘freaks/ “The earliest books I remember being read to me ( Sand ford and Merton, etc.), I accepted as real, and at one time (when about 5 or 6) kept on running to the door at every ring, to meet two boys out of one of these books, whom I expected to come to pay us a visit, and who specially interested me. At this time I was very timid, and could not bear to listen to such a story as ‘Jack the Giant Killer/ “I remember once thinking that I should have to marry my younger brother, because I did not know any one else. “When I was able to read, at the age of 7 or 8, I read everything I could get that looked interesting. There was no super¬ vision, except that a few books (mostly harmless enough) were tabooed as being ‘too old for me/ But Pope’s Homer’s Iliad on the one hand, and the Swiss Family Robinson on the other were long my favorite books; and now I began to personally identify myself with my favorite heroes, and to insist on being called by their names, changing from one to another, as the fancy took me. Thus, I was for a long time Hercules; Fritz of the Siviss Family; or Basil of Mayne Reid’s Boy Hunters, but always the oldest of the boy characters. “I never thus identified myself with any girl, and would have been horrified at the idea up to at least nine or ten; but I believe I was quite as well able to sympathize with the girls in juvenile tales as with the boys. “Occasionally I was a little sentimental. I was greatly impressed by the lines relating to Pasiphae in Homer, and also by the allusions to the beauty of the Anglo-Saxon women in Dickens’ Child's History of England. I was always very amenable to suggestion. I once thought I ought to make a sacrifice in Old Testament fashion, and was seriously inclined to burn my crossbow; but not my long bow, which I thought I could not spare so well. “I remember thinking that ‘cutting off the foreskin’ meant some¬ thing like ‘scalping’ the forehead; and if I met a Jew, was surprised not to see the scar. “I was always very anxious to try any new, and especially physical, experience. I was probably not more than five or six when my mother once told me that she had used soap-pellets during my illness; and I immediately insisted on her applying one. EONISM. 93 “I was also curious to know what it felt like to be wounded in battle, to be tortured, or to be burned at the stake. This is a form of masochism not uncommon with young boys; but in one form or other it was almost permanent with me. I even felt it when I was about to have a tooth out. And yet I am very sensitive to pain. “Of sexual matters I have nothing to record, except that once or twice one of the testes slipped up into the abdomen, causing me considerable pain and trouble to get it down again. We were told ‘the doctor had brought us;’ I was sorry he had not kept us, for the want of sufficient companionship and the dullness of our life made me very unhappy. Like most children, when I got a vague idea of something further, I thought babies might come through the navel; or that the navel had something to do with coition; and if I thought of the scrotum at all, I supposed it held urine. Among other things which appear trifles to parents, but often cause terrible suffering to children, we were kept so long in children’s instead of boy’s clothes that we were actually ashamed to be seen in them. “Fairy tales were tabooed; but I invented the idea of feather- dresses for myself before I had heard of them. “When I was about 10, I learned to swim, but was much dis¬ gusted at the sight of the men’s pubes, which I had not seen before. I still dislike hair on the face and body, and even the mention of a beard or moustache in a book is disagreeable to me, though I wear them myself, to save the trouble of shaving. A year later, we were at the seaside, and I saw the whole of my mother’s breast for the first time. It gave me a similar feeling of repulsion, which lasted some years, if I accidentally happened to see a woman’s breast. (When younger, I had, of course, seen babies suckled, but had then paid no attention.) As regards men, the feeling wore off after I began to bathe regularly; for bathing drawers for men did not come into general use till about 1860, or rather later. “When I was about 12, I found that if I ran very fast, I was sometimes obliged to stop from a strong necessity of making water, which feeling went off when I tried to do so. “I was brought up a teetotaller from the age of eight, and though I abandoned teetotalism after eight or ten years, I have never been in the habit of taking more than a glass of wine, or wine and water, in the course of the day. “About the age of 12 I began to feel much interest in the differences of the sexes, of which, however, I had no real idea before I married. Then I met with the Eastern story of the prince who was changed into a woman by drinking from a magic spring, and whether it was suggested by the story or whether the idea arose independently, I am not quite sure; but I began to think that it 94 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. would be very nice to be changed into a girl for a time, to see what it was like. Gradually this idea became regret that I had not been born a girl, but unaccompanied at present by any longing to take the place of any particular woman; and accompanied for many years, as it had been preceded, by an almost uncontrollable longing for a life of travel and adventure, which I never had any opportunity of gratifying except within very moderate limits, and for which I was wholly unsuited. Of course the two desires were quite incongruous. “When I was between 14 and 15, I used occasionally to draw back the prepuce to look at the glans, and twice had an emission of semen. I had not the least idea of what it was; and just about my fifteenth year, I fell into masturbation; but happening at that time to look into Rees’ Cyclopcedia, I stumbled across an article respecting it, and connecting it with what I was doing, struggled against the habit as much as possible, and never yielded to it in excess. As the “inversion” had then already commenced, it cannot have been seriously affected by it, one way or the other. “In the following year I had for the first time a passing fancy for a girl play-mate; but it never went beyond that stage. “At this period the desire to be a girl was not very intense; but it was still present, accompanied as it generally has been, by the wish to go through the experience of having a baby. Again, my reflections on sexual subjects were not limited to marriage, but to speculations on abnormalities, such as hermaphroditism and castra¬ tion. The latter never appeared to me as unnatural or revolting, but only as a curious and perhaps interesting experience, and I should have subjected myself to it after the death of my wife, if I could have carried it out without detection. 1 Hammond mentions a case in which a man wished to be castrated that he may be more like a woman. Such a feeling is perfectly intelligible to me. After my wife’s death, I often slept with all the organs tucked back between my thighs, out of sight and reach from the front. I have very rarely had erotic dreams, it has surprised me that I have very seldom dreamed of myself as a woman. “When I was about 19, I fell seriously in love for the first time with a very young girl; and enjoyed two days of delirious happiness, arising simply from the idea of being really in love; such as I never experienced before or since. But my mother opposed it, 1 Eonism has sometimes actually led to self-castration. Thus Tange and Trotsenburg ( Sexual-Probleme, June, 1911) have described the case of a married man, a good husband and father but regarded as peculiar by those who knew him, and in reality a transvestist, who thus mutilated himself; but his persistent dissimulation rendered it difficult to elucidate the case psychologically. EONISM. 95 and I found the girl was much younger than I thought; so the affair gradually flickered out, without my ever having spoken a word of love to her. “The 'freaks’ had ceased when I was about 10 or 11; but I was liable to violent fits of anger, if greatly upset, which sometimes left me ill for a day or two. I succeeded in overcoming this feeling; but at the loss of the 'righteous indignation’ and power of taking my own part which were absolutely necessary to protect my own com¬ fort and rights in the world. Besides, having sufficient sympathy and insight to see both sides in a dispute, I am equally liable in any doubtful case to be imposed upon by either cajolery or bullying, and am often ‘afraid to strike’ when it is my clear duty to do so, for fear of unfairly ‘wounding’ my adversary. Consequently I am always liable to be grievously imposed upon, or even talked into doing against my will what I know to be contrary to my own interests. Nor can I often think at such times of what I ought to say or do in the cir¬ cumstances; and I am quite unable to meet a sudden and unexpected attack or change of front. I reproach myself greatly for this after¬ wards, for when it is too late I see clearly what I ought to have said and done. This weakness is the most painful (and perhaps the only really painful) accompaniment of my ‘inversion’; and it may possibly have no necessary connection with it. “When I was about 20, I met a young foreign lady at the house of some friends she was visiting. She was a very bright, lively girl, with a light complexion and dark hair, which I have always preferred; and we soon became as good friends as if we had known each other all our lives, instead of meeting as strangers and foreign¬ ers. I believe I attracted her as much as she attracted me; and there was not an unkind word between us at any time; and though we married soon afterwards, we were never happy apart for an hour; and if we could get away together, it was like a fresh honeymoon to the last. She departed after we had enjoyed nearly thirty years of married life; by no means free from sometimes serious trouble; but as between ourselves, idyllic. We had one son. “We both thought that the first sight of each other undressed might be repellent, but we neither of us experienced any such feeling. Instead of this, much as I loved her, I also envied her very much, and the innate and instinctive longing to be a woman myself became greatly and permanently increased. Nothing would have pleased me better than for us to have gone to sleep, and to have waked up in each other’s bodies, for a time at any rate. “Unnatural as it may appear, when our son was born, the thought that I could not go through the experience myself, or even be with my wife at the time caused me the most acute suffering I ever 96 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. felt in my life, and I did not get over it for many months. 1 On such occasions I always sympathize greatly with the mental sufferings of the husband, not the physical sufferings of the wife. “A year or two later I was affected with hernia on both sides. That on the right side the doctor called inguinal, and it has given me more or less trouble ever since. The left one he called indirect; and I have scarcely felt anything of it from the beginning. He told me it was unusual for two forms to exist on opposite sides; but I may say that I know nothing of the cause, and that the right side was affected some weeks or months before the left. ‘‘And here I may note that there is a slight tendency to lateral hermaphroditism, the right side being more masculine than the left. On the right side the beard is considerably stronger; and though there is very little hair on the chest, or indeed on the body generally, what little there is, is mostly on the right side of the median line; and the right breast is a little smaller and less firm than the left. The shape of the pelvis seems equally masculine on both sides. “But on the other hand the right eye is much weaker than the left; it was never strong enough to read by at the best of times, and at present hardly reaches No. 2 of the test types, while the left eye goes up to 5 or 6, and is still strong enough to read good print w ith a good light without glasses for a short time. But my eyes are quite too sensitive for me to be able to hold them open for examina¬ tion with a light. “I forgot to say that when I was a child I was much troubled by a sensation as if everything was going into my eyes (a weakness inherited from my mother); and I constantly saw films, but had no other hallucinations. I should add here that I have never been able to whistle; and though the uvula was operated on when I was about twenty-six, I don’t know that it had any effect beyond stopping the constant annoyance of tickling in the throat, from which I had suffered for some years. I have never had the least inclination to smoke. “After my wife’s death, I felt her presence with me for some years; but it gradually seemed to fade away. Greatly needing the sympathy of a wife, as well as a congenial companion (for I seem to understand and sympathize much better with women than with men) I seriously con¬ sidered the possibilities of a second marriage, but several reasons led me finally to abandon the idea. The young lady who has been most i This feeling may be more common than is generally supposed. Karen Horney states that when she began to analyze men, after previous experience with women, she was surprised at the intensity of their envy of childbirth and motherhood, as well as of the breasts and the act of suckling {hit. Jour. Psycho-analysis , Oct., 1926, p. 330). EONISM. 97 attractive to me since the death of my wife married lately. I do not feel jealous of her or her husband, but feel as if I should like best to be her daughter. In any case, I hope to have my wife as my lover or my sister in some other life, according to whether she is a man or a woman. “When I was about 57, I was grossly abused and insulted by some unworthy persons who were under great obligations to me; and experienced great mental suffering for a long time afterwards. Whether it had any connection with what I am going to narrate, I do not know; but about two years after this, there seemed to be something like an alteration of sexual polarity. I felt like a woman born out of her sex, and was affected by the most passionate longing to be a woman. I could not look at a pretty girl without envying her, her beauty and her womanhood, and would gladly have changed places with almost any woman from fifteen to forty-five who was in the least attractive to me. “These feelings seem to have stimulated the breasts, which had previously been almost as flat as a child’s, for they now began to enlarge very slowly; but also very steadily; and sometimes they seem to alter almost daily. At first nothing could be felt under the nipples but a small hard detached nucleus about the size of a pea. This gradually enlarged, and then seemed to become dispersed and diffused, and was succeeded by a thickening, at first under the nipples, and then above; connected with a band (at first hardly thicker than a thread) a little below the armpit. Lastly there was a thickening beneath the nipple itself. Then the whole circumference of each breast became firm and thickened, and it was not till this pro¬ cess was completed (after perhaps three or four years) that the breasts have begun to protrude a little in front. They continued to enlarge slowly. “The growth of the breasts was occasionally accompanied by a titillating sensation in any part which was about to enlarge; also a throbbing feeling in the whole, and a feeling of inflammation could often be induced by a voluntary contraction of the muscles. The development of the breasts was not accompanied by any atrophy of the male organs, as sometimes occurs when it is the result of an injury to the head (I remember once having a bad fall on the ice on the back of my head when I was a boy of nine or ten, but don’t suppose this had any effect on my constitution). These remarks chiefly apply to the left breast, which has always been rather larger; there is little corresponding sensation in the right, but it enlarges more slowly, and probably sympathetically—the nipples have scarcely enlarged at all, and there are no signs of any fluid secretion. 7 98 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. “At present the breasts are beginning to feel increasingly h e a woman’s which is accompanied by a strange feeling of greatly in creased physical comfort and well-being. If I had an opportunity, I should like to try on a woman’s clothes, though I have no very special attraction for women’s dresses or their ordinary occupations —especially stays; and also put a child to the breast, to see if it would draw milk. The acme of physical human happiness often appears to me to be a woman suckling a healthy child. With the growth of the breasts, the painfully intense longing for womanhood has somewhat subsided. “A woman’s body appears to me to be far more beautiful and interesting, and even much more natural than a mans; and its physical drawbacks would be a cheap price to pay for the pleasure of living in one. The male organs appear to me ugly, inconvenient, and almost unnatural. I am fond of children, and perhaps my feeling towards them may resemble those of a woman. I should like to be a woman in order to enter utterly into their lives as one of themselves. “All of my brothers are more or less bald, but though I am the eldest, my hair is still very good for my age, only thinning a little in the front. I may add that I am not intuitive, and no judge of character, and am clumsy with my hands. “I am still greatly attracted by beautiful women, but my in¬ stinctive feelings towards them are always more those of envy than desire or jealousy; and I always envy a woman in proportion to my love and admiration for her. Still, there are many good women, for whom I feel sincere regard, and even affection, who are not in any way physically attractive to me, and towards whom I feel neither desire nor envy. “Fortunately I was never thrown among vicious companions, and was too timid and refined to fall into evil courses, though I might have done so, had bad companions tempted me. Perhaps, too, my physical passions were weakened by the tendency to inversion. “My wife and I used sometimes to change clothes, though her’s •were much too small for me. But I may repeat, I do not know that I have any special fondness for women’s clothes or women’s occupations. “Intellectual women of some force of character are most attractive to me, perhaps as a counterpart to my own weak and easily influenced character; I am not usually attracted by weak, delicate, fair ‘feminine women.’ “As regards myself, I do not feel the double sex to be an evil (except for the weakness of character which may or may not be connected with it), but rather an advantage, as enlarging my EONISM. 99 sympathies. I do not suppose it is possible for one sex to under¬ stand the other, without their being mixed in sufficient proportion to give them a real fellow-meaning. I consider it most probable that the sexes are always more or less mixed in varying proportions in every man or woman, one or the other preponderating. “The peculiar psychical affection which I have described might be called aesthetic inversion. It is dealt with by several living novelists, especially Frank Richardson in 2835 Mayfair . “It differs from ordinary inversion in that those who are affected by it appear (at least in most cases) never to be attracted by men, but only by women. There is no tradition, so far as I know, of anything resembling inversion in our family. “These people are generally devotedly attached to some woman; and love and honor her so much that they feel as if they themselves were born out of their sex, and naturally in a kind of uncomfortable exile. “I have written the foregoing account in all sincerity. The condition is no mere fancy, but has continued and indeed increased during almost the whole of a fairly long life.” The foregoing narrative, written by a man of scholarly habits, and highly trained in scientific accuracy of observation, was placed in my hands some years before the writer’s death. Not long before this occurred I submitted it to him for a final revision, which resulted in no essential changes. During this period I was in frequent cor¬ respondence with R. M., both on the subject of his anomaly and on other topics. Owing to circumstances I had only one opportunity of meeting him. The personal impression he made upon me cor¬ responded with that conveyed by his letters and his narrative. There was no outward suggestion of femininity, but there were present in an extreme degree the indications of the timid, retiring, sensitive disposition which is sometimes seen in men devoted to a scientific career and is apt to be associated with neurotic tendencies. He was described by his son (a physician who, when in accord¬ ance with his father’s request this narrative was eventually shown to him, admitted he knew nothing of his father’s Eonistic tempera¬ ment) as “a man of great erudition, and most gentle, thoughtful, and unassuming.” One could well believe in that absence of “grit” of which he himself complained. Except for this and for some slight nervous muscular tics, no abnormality was suggested. How far a more careful exploration would have revealed more significant changes must remain doubtful. R. M. had frequently expressed a wish for a physical examination to be made, and an appointment for this purpose had been duly arranged. Then occurred his sudden illness, due to acute nephritis preceded by a more chronic form of i 100 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. the disorder, resulting shortly after in death. It seems improbable that the examination would have revealed any conditions to whic great significance could be attached, for some degree of gynecomasty is far from uncommon. At the same time there was absolutely nothing in R. M’s attitude towards himself and his anomaly, or in his general mental condition, which reveals any delusional state. The utmost that can be said is that he was inclined to suspect that some very minor physical anomalies might possess a feminine or hermaphroditic significance. But he was anxious to submit these points to the judgment of those more competent in such matters. We see here what the Freudian would term a “complex, but it is not a paranoic delusional system. The condition presented by R. M. seems to me to be Eonism, or sexo-aesthetic inversion, in perhaps a complete form. In that form it brings home to us the unsatisfactory nature of the term “transvestism.” The element of cross-dressing was, indeed, present, but in so slight and unessential a degree as to be almost negligible. A man of intellectual tastes and of deep feelings, dressing had never been a matter of great in¬ terest to him, and there was no soil for any pronounced im¬ pulse of cross-dressing to take root in. The inversion here is in the affective and emotional sphere, and in this large sphere the minor symptom of cross-dressing is insignificant. The subject was a man of exceptional intellectual culture and of ex¬ ceptional sympathetic sensitiveness. He possessed marked feminine affectability. He cannot be regarded as an example of aesthetic inversion in its most usual and typical form. But he seems to me to present it in its most highly developed form. When we attempt to classify or to account for the cases here brought forward the task is scarcely easy. We may well assert that they illustrate that universal bisexuality which is now so widely accepted. We see that R. M., as well as R. L. ( perceived this, and it was also pointed out by Nacke. But if we proceed to co-ordinate these cases of sexo-aesthetic in¬ version with ordinary sexual inversion, now often regarded as most easily explicable by this same organic bisexuality, mani¬ fested through some constitutional hormonic irregularity, we encounter difficulties. We may be inclined to regard aesthetic EONISM. 101 inversion as a slighter degree of the same sexually intermediate state of which we find a more advanced stage in sexual in¬ version . 1 But a little consideration shows that that is scarcely correct. In the narrow sphere of the sexual impulse itself the Eonist shows indeed but little if any approximation to the op¬ posite sex. But in the wider non-sexual psychic sphere, on the other hand, he goes far beyond all the most usual manifesta¬ tions of sexual inversion. The two conditions are not strictly co-ordinate. They may rather be regarded as, so to speak, two unlike allotropic modifications of intermediate sexuality. Sexual inversion when it appears in Eonism would appear to be merely a secondary result of the aesthetically inverted psychic state. Eonism, when it appears in homosexual persons, is perhaps merely a secondary result of the sexually inverted psychic state. Raffalovich 2 has remarked that one is struck by the moral inferiority, the superficiality, the immodesty of the effeminate invert. This remark, whether or not it is true of the effeminate invert, rarely applies to the Eonist. On the contrary, we are frequently impressed by his moral superiority. Like the fetichist, he never flaunts his peculiarity in the public eye, con¬ cealing it from all but sympathetic observers who number per¬ haps only one or two in a life-time. His code of morals is usu¬ ally the accepted code, held perhaps rather more firmly than usual, and if, as may sometimes happen, he seems to discern a homosexual tendency in himself, he is genuinely distressed. There is little likelihood that he will ever become, as some¬ times happens to the effeminate invert, a prostitute. This is not, indeed, a point of view which always com¬ mends itself to psycho-analysts. There are some psycho¬ analysts who when they see acknowledged signs of homo- 1 Sadger, from the psycho-analytic side, repels the idea that trans¬ vestism can be regarded as a stage of inversion, and Moll, from a differ¬ ent standpoint, refuses even to regard the anomaly as an intermediate sexual stage. Hirschfeld, who champions the doctrine of intermediate sexual stages, is still inclined, as I am, to regard Eonism as primary in the heterosexual and secondary in the homosexual. 2 Raffalovich, Uranisme et Unisexualite, p. 93. 102 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. sexuality, accept them, as most other people do, as the signs of homosexuality. But when they see the reverse, even a strong antipathy, they accept that also as a sign of homosexuality, the reaction of a suppressed wish. ‘‘Heads, I win/’ they seem to say; “tails, you lose ” This is rather too youthful a method of conducting mental analysis. We must, therefore, hesitate to follow Stekel who would thus account for the Eonist’s fre¬ quently strong dislike of homosexuality, and considers that the Eonist is an invert, whose inversion is transferred from the body to the garments that are its symbol. Thus, on a common basis, we seem to be presented with two organic conditions which are distinct, do not easily merge, and are even mutually repugnant. A large proportion, per¬ haps the majority, of sexual inverts have no strongly pro¬ nounced feminine traits, and even so far as they possess them not infrequently desire to slur over or disguise them. The majority of sexo-aesthetic inverts, on the other hand, are not only without any tendency to sexual inversion, but they feel a profound repugnance to that anomaly . 1 In the two transitional cases I have brought forward there could not be said to be even a question of sexual in¬ version. In pronounced cases it only comes into question to be rejected. A. T. (as also R. L.) had latterly indeed come to feel that the sexual experiences of a woman were needed for the complete gratification of his state of feeling. This is, however, clearly a secondary development of his aesthetic inversion, and it is a development which the sub¬ ject himself views with terror. Moreover he is not in fact in the slightest degree sexually attracted to any person of his own sex. The idea is merely an idea, and though it might possibly become an obsession it seems highly improbable that it will ever be carried into practice. In R. M/s case, although here aesthetic inversion is carried so far, there has never been, 1 Hirschfeld (Die Homosexualitat, 1914, p. 233) refers to a male transvestist who remarked that “transvestism and inversion are two diametrically opposite dispositions,” and to another who declared that he felt contempt for inverts and effeminate men. EONISM. 103 even imaginatively, the slightest homosexual temptation. After he had devised the term “aesthetic inversion,” he was himself rather inclined to reject it for “psychical hermaphroditism,” on the ground that the use of the word “inversion” might suggest a connection with homosexuality which he would regard as highly repugnant. Psychologically speaking, it seems to me that we must regard sexo-aesthetic inversion as really a modification of normal hetero-sexuality. Assimilation in dress, Crawley re¬ marks, even from the ethnographic standpoint, “is a form of the desire for union.” It is a modification in which certain of the normal constituents of the sexual impulse have fallen into the background, while other equally normal constituents have become unduly exaggerated. What are those two sets of constituents ? In normal courtship it is necessary for the male to ex¬ perience two impulses which are, on the surface, antagonistic. On the one hand, he must be forceful and combative; he must overcome and possess the desired object. On the other hand, he must be expectant and sympathetic; he must enter into the feelings of the beloved and even subject himself to her will. The lover must be both a resolute conqueror and a submissive slave. He must both oppose himself to his mistress’s reticence, and identify himself with her desires. This twofold attitude is based on the biological conditions of courtship. In civilized human courtship there is a tendency for the first and aggressive component of the sexual impulse to be subordinated, and for the second and sympathetic component to be emphasized. This tendency was set forth many years ago by Colin Scott as the “secondary law of courting” by which the female (who is already imaginatively attentive to the states of the excited male) develops a superadded activity, while the male develops a relatively passive and imaginative attention to the psychical and bodily states of the female. This “imaginative radiation” and “development of the representa¬ tive powers,” is favored, Colin Scott points out, by the restric- 104 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. tions imposed by civilization, and the larger mental capacity in¬ volved . 1 This secondary component of the sexual impulse, the ele¬ ment of sympathy and identification, may be said to be con¬ nected, as Colin Scott seems to have recognized, with an aesthetic attitude. It is worth while to insist on the connection for it may furnish a deeper reason than I have yet suggested for applying the name “aesthetic inversion” to a condition which, as the reader will by now have perceived, is to be re¬ garded as an abnormal and perhaps pathological exaggeration of the secondary component of the normal heterosexual impulse. The Eonist is frequently refined, sensitive, and highly in¬ telligent. In this respect T. S. and R. L. and R. M. are typical. The Eonist has developed and exaggerated this secondary im¬ pulse of courting at the expense of the primary more aggres¬ sive impulse. (Carried to the extreme this tendency may be¬ come masochism, and we see in T. S.'s day-dreams a slight masochistic disposition.) But this impulse corresponds to the impulse which various modern philosophers of aesthetics re¬ gard as of the essence of the aesthetic attitude, an inner sym¬ pathy and imitation, an emotional identification with the beauti- 1 Colin Scott, “Sex and Art,” American Journal of Psychology , vol. vii, No. 2. It may be noted that Dr. Sabrina Spielrein ( Jahrbuch fiir Psychoanalytische Forschungen, vol. iv, 1912, p. 483) independently confirms Colin Scott’s view of the more primary nature of this imagina¬ tive attentiveness in women. There are, she says, two directions of ideas in the lover: “In the first, one is usually the subject and loves the outwardly projected object; in the second one is changed into the beloved and loves himself as object. In the man, to whom belongs the active part of capturing a woman, the subjective ideas prevail; in a woman, who has to attract the man, the refluent ideas gain, even normally, the upper hand. Herewith is connected feminine coquetry; the woman is thinking how she can please ‘him’; herewith is connected also her greater homosexuality and auto-erotism [Narcissism]; changed into her lover, the woman must to a certain degree feel masculine; as the object of the man she can love herself or another girl who is such as she would wish herself to be—of course always beautiful. I once found a feminine col¬ league much worried over a succession of envelopes she was addressing. She could not repeat the handwriting she had achieved in the first. On my asking why that pleased her so much, she suddenly realized that that was how her lover wrote. The need for identification with the beloved was, therefore, so great that she could only endure herself as being like him.” EONISM. 105 ful object. Even though we reject this resemblance as an adequate basis for a name to designate the anomaly, it still seems that the aesthetic tendencies of this impulse cannot be ignored. They help to explain, moreover, why, as Nacke long since remarked and as my cases show, it so often happens that the Eonist is an artist or a man of letters. William Sharp, who published various well-known books under a feminine pseudo- nym (Fiona Macleod), which was long believed to stand for a real woman, was an artist with the temperament of an Eonist and well shows how almost identical the aesthetic attitude is in the two cases. We are told in the biography by his wife that “scarcely a day passed on which he did not try to imagine him¬ self living the life of a woman, to see through her eyes, and feel and view life from her standpoint, and so vividly that ‘sometimes I forget I am not the woman I am trying to im¬ agine.’ 1 R. M. thought he found traces of Eonism in Renan and Rossetti, and he referred to Frank Richardson’s novel, 2835 Mayfair, as dealing with it. Hirschfeld has stated 2 that Richard Wagner was the type, even physically, of one variety of transvestist, and that it ought not to he doubtful to anyone that he was in his own life a transvestist, after reading his "Letters to a Dressmaker,” surreptitiously published years ago by Daniel Spitzer. 3 To me it is more than doubtful. The letters to the dress¬ maker show no indications of Eonism, even in the narrowest sense of cross-dressing. Wagner simply wants his garments made of silk and satin, cushions of similar material, and light fabrics of beautiful colors—he is very particular about the pre¬ cise color—around him as he works. We are in the presence, not of an Eonist, but an artist who, after an early life of hard¬ ship, was at length able to gratify the repressed cravings of his 1 Mrs. W. Sharp: William Sharp, p. 52. 2 Jahrbuch fiir Sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. xxiii, 1923, p. 13. 3 Briefe Richard Wagners an eine Putzmacherin, Vienna, 1906. They were written in 1864-8, stolen from the dressmaker, and later found at a dealer’s. See L. Karpath, Zu den Brief en Richard Wagners an eine Putzmacherin: Unterrednngen in it den Putcmacherin , Berlin, 1907. Also, Heinrich Pudor, “Richard Wagner’s Bisexualitat,” Geschlecht und Gesellscheft, Bd. ii, Heft 3. PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 106 physical and psychic sensitivity. Beethoven, it is true, liked to compose in an old dressing-gown. But Haydn, who in youth had suffered from living in dirt and rags, insisted on being elegantly dressed before he sat down to compose. It may be said—I have often said it—that in genius, whatever the actual sex, there are elements alike of the man, the woman, and the child. This was emphatically true of Wagner. We may even agree with Dr. Pudor that a feminine element is of special im¬ portance for the artist as musician, since “music implies em¬ bodied receptivity.” But while this brings the artist near to the Eonist, and helps to explain why the Eonist is sometimes also an artist, it will not suffice to identify them. Similarly, Ruskin and Rossetti cannot be regarded as Eonists, although both of them, even on the physical side, may have presented feminine traits. 1 It is this sensitive impressionable artist’s temperament which often leads the Eonist to believe that his peculiar nature has been moulded in childhood by the special circumstances of his early life. We may certainly believe that such circumstances have sometimes been influential. This may be noted with special frequency of the mother’s attitude towards her child, and Sadger’s cases, also, show the influence of the mother and of love for the mother. It is frequently recorded that the mother took an unusual pleasure in encouraging or emphasis¬ ing the child’s tendency to adopt the ways of the other sex. In T. S.’s case this influence was exerted in a reverse direction; she concentrated attention on the child s feminine traits by her repulsion to them. These are the two opposite ways in which it is possible for a mother to help to mould her child’s char¬ acter in this direction. The philosophic students of aesthetics have frequently shown a tendency to regard a subjective identification with the beautiful object as the clue to aesthetic emotion. They hold that we imaginatively imitate the beauty we see, and sympathe- 11 may note that Moll independently concludes that the evidence fails to prove that Wagner was a transvestist, Krafft-Ebing and Moll, Psychopathia Sexualis, 1924, p. 585. EONISM. 107 tically place ourselves in it. Our emotions, as it were, beat in time to its rhythm. Lotze and R. Vischer worked out an aesthetic doctrine of inner Mitcrleben on such lines as these. More recently, Karl Groos concluded that the play of inner imitation, inner Mitcrleben, is “the central phenomenon of aesthetic enjoyment/’ 1 Lipps, again, is a distinguished ex¬ ponent of imitation and of what he calls Einf Milling as the explanation of aesthetic emotion, and he has most elaborately set forth his doctrine. It is very interesting, from our point of view, to note that, 2 while Lipps on the whole regards imita¬ tion and Einf Milling as going together in aesthetic feeling, he stops short (where the Eonist does not stop short) at the threshold of sex and declares that here we must make a dis¬ tinction. We cannot, he says, explain the appeal of a woman’s beauty by imitation, for a man does not, for instance, desire to possess a woman’s breasts. Yet all beautiful forms, he holds, owe their beauty to Einf Milling, and this has nothing to do with the sexual instinct for which the specific form of the opposite sex are objects of a possible real relationship. The aesthetic enjoyment of a woman’s figure thus shows clearly, Lipps con¬ cludes, that the conception of EinfMilung is different from that of imitation (or Nachahmung) . 3 Here we may perceive a deeper reason than we have yet reached for describing the psychological anomaly we are here concerned with as aesthetic inversion. The subject of the anomaly is not merely experiencing an inversion of general tastes in the sexual sphere; he has really attained to a specific¬ ally aesthetic emotional attitude in that sphere. In his ad¬ miration of the beloved he is not content to confine himself to the normal element of Einf Milling; he adopts the whole aesthe- 1 K. Groos, Dcr Aesthetische Genuss, 1902, e.g. Ch. V. 2 See T. Lipps, Dcr Aesthetische Genuss in die Bildende Kunst, 1906, Ch. I. 3 T. Lipps, Grundlegung dcr Acstlietik, 1903, vol. i, p. 147. It may¬ be remarked that Lipps entirely dissociated aesthetic emotion from sexual emotion. Groos (op. cit., 248) considers that we cannot escape the conclusion that the artistic enjoyment of markedly sensual situations belongs to the aesthetic sphere. Lipps (op. cit., p. 148) thinks that it is decadent to involve the sexual instinct in aesthetics. 108 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. tic attitude by experiencing also the impulse of imitation. He achieves a completely emotional identification which is sexually abnormal but aesthetically correct. At the same time we may carry this conception beyond the aesthetic field into that o the psychic life generally. Such a conception has, for instance, been worked out by Prandtl. “Every ‘you,’ ” says Prandtl “every person outside myself, proceeds from a splitting up of myself, and is part of my own me.” 1 The Eomst thus be¬ comes simply a person in whom a normal and even quite or¬ dinary and inevitable process of thought is carried to an un¬ due and abnormal length. He has put too much of “me” into the “you” that attracts him. Physically, it would appear, this secondary and aesthetic element of the sexual impulse tends to assert itself abnormally in the form of aesthetic inversion in those men in whom the primary and more “virile” element of the sexual impulse is defective. In some cases, though not in all, there is a lack of physical robustness. The Eonist frequently shows feeble¬ ness of physical sexual impulse. This is not always found but it is remarkably common and is illustrated by T. S. as well as C. T. Nacke regarded it as so common that he proposed to divide the subjects of this anomaly into three classes: The heterosexual, the homosexual, and the asexual. 2 Such a division, however, hardly meets the situation. The absolutely asexual are probably rare, but the heterosexual are often only feebly sexual. The Chevalier d’Eon himself seems to have shown this characteristic; he was attracted to women but not strongly sexual. The Eonist is more often than not married, and most tenderly and sympathetically devoted to his wife; but he attaches little importance to the sexual act, is sometimes inapt for it, and much pleased if his wife is willing to forego 1 Antonin Prandtl, Die Einfiihlung, 1910, p. 115. 2 Hirschfeld (Sexualpathologic, vol. ii, p. 144) finds that 35 per cent of the transvestists he has known were heterosexual, 35 per cent, homosexual, 15 per cent, bisexual and of the remaining 15 per cent, most were “automonosexual,” or content to find complete satisfaction in t ic change of clothing itself; a few, he thinks, were perhaps of asexual disposition. EONISM. 109 it. Sometimes early masturbation has been carried to an ex¬ cess conducive to lowered vitality. In the case of A. T. we find a precocious auto-erotic sexuality which was probably a signifi¬ cant factor in the development of the aesthetic inversion. In the very complete case of R. M., a highly sensitive tempera¬ ment was marked by a lack of self-assertion, an inability to hold his own in conflict with others, an undue suggestibility, which was to the subject himself a source of life-long misgiv¬ ing. In most cases of aesthetic inversion it would appear prob¬ able that the sexual impulse as a whole is somewhat below the average in intensity. But, in any case, it is certainly in¬ harmonious, atrophied on one side, hypertrophied on the other. Kiernan suggested that aesthetic inversion may sometimes be due to arrest of development. In this way Eonism would have some resemblance on the psychic side to what we find in eunuchoidism on the physical side. Eunuchoidism is the convenient name suggested by Griffiths and Duckworth for a congenital or pathologically acquired approximation to the artificially acquired condition of the eunuch; many complicated and obscure names have been devised for it, but Tandler and Grosz reasonably regard the simple name proposed in England as the best. 1 In this condition we see the operation of under¬ functioning glands of internal secretion, producing not only defective developments of the primary sexual character, but also a general tendency to persistence of the infantile condi¬ tion. The sexual impulse usually remains normal in direction, though it is weakened and may be altogether absent. The psychic characteristics of Eonists sometimes resemble those found in eunuchoidism, and sometimes there are physical eunuchoid characters. Early environmental influences as¬ sist, as we have seen, but can scarcely originate Eonism. The normal child soon reacts powerfully against them. We must in the end seek a deeper organic foundation for Eonism as for 1 Tandler and Grosz, Die Biologischen Grnndlagen dcr Sekundaren Geschlechtscharaktere, Berlin, 1913, pp. 61-8. B. Onuf, “A Study of Eunuchoidism and its Various Aspects,” American Journal of Derma¬ tology , Nov., 1912; Stefko, Zt. f. Sexualwiss., Feb., 1927, p. 350. 110 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. every other aberration of the sexual impulse. The very fact that the mother of the young Eonist so often shows an ab¬ normal attitude of feeling towards the child should serve to indicate to us that the child has probably inherited an anomalous disposition. The heredity of the Eonist, as also Hirschfeld has noted, seems generally sound, though, as he cautiously adds, that may not exclude a neurotic disposition. Actual inheri¬ tance of the tendency seems not usually to be traceable, though it is sometimes; I may note that it is possible that T. S. s father had a latent impulse of this kind and near the end of his life, when in a delirious condition, he endeavored to put on his wife s clothing. Perhaps the chief reason for asserting the organic basis lies in the so frequently feeble character of the Eonist’s physical sexual impulse. It is thus that, in Hirschfeld s view, we may fit this anomaly into the frame of intermediate or transitional forms of the sexual disposition, and regard it as a form of feminism 1 ; though why the “feminine strain should so operate,” he remarks, “that in one case hermaphroditism should appear, in a second gynecomasty, in a third inversion, and in a fourth transvestism, at present escapes our knowledge.” To me it seems probable, as I remarked some years ago, that the real physical basis on which this and the related psychic peculiarities arise may be some unusual balance in the endocrine system, inborn and sometimes, it may be, inherited, whence the resemblance, already noted to eunuchoidism, which has been found associated with disease of the hypophysis. 2 It is also instructive to consider the varieties of partial hermaphroditism. It would seem probable that Eonism, in which the physical signs, though often distinct, are less marked involves a much slighter disturbance in the balance of the play of hormones and chalones, and the path lies open for its modification by suit¬ able gland implantation. It falls short of disease; it is, as Nacke said, simply a variety, though, one may add, an ab¬ normal, in the strict sense a pathological, variety. 1 Lelewer ( Deutsch. Med. IVoch., No. 18, 1918) believed he had found in the blood serum of a transvestist substances usually found only in the ovary. See also Placzek, id. No. 36, 1927. 2 See Blair Bell, The Sex Complex, 2d Edition, 1920; also Paul Kammerer, Geschlechtsbcstimmung ttnd Geschlechtsvcrwandlnng, 1921, and F. A. E. Crew, The Genetics of Sexuality in Animals (1927). II. THE DOCTRINE OF EROGENIC ZONES. Modern writers on sex often make mention of “Erogenic Zones.” Yet they seldom formulate the significance they at¬ tach to the term, and even of the origin of the term itself and of the nature of the fact it seeks to express, they often seem to know nothing. Liebermann, in a lecture to the Berlin Medical Society of Sexual Science and Eugenics on “Erogenic Zones in relation to Freud’s Teaching,” stated that he knew nothing of the term except that it is “apparently of French origin.” 1 One has even seen it attributed to Freud! It seems worth while, therefore, to attempt to trace in its main lines the origin of this term with its attached meaning. It is the more worth while to do this since no one seems to have pointed out that we owe the term “erogenic zone” to a misquotation, to a lapse of memory. In the general sense, and without reference to the sexual feelings, this phenomenon has been known from the earliest days when exact medical observations began to be made. It was termed “sympathy.” The doctrine of “sympathy” has indeed been traced back to Hippocrates and Galen, but it may suffice to take it up in comparatively modern times. Willis, in the seventeenth century, helped to make clear by his precise observations of the nervous system through what mechanism of the body “sympathy” works, while a century later, in 1764, Robert Whytt (or Whyte as the name is spelled on the title page of his work), the distinguished Scottish physician, in his epoch-marking work, Observations on the Nature, Causes, and Cure of Diseases Commonly Called Nervous, Hypo¬ chondriac and Hysteric, first dealt comprehensively with “sym- 1 Hans Liebermann, Zeitschrift fur Sexualwissenschaft , Tan. and Feb., 1915. (in) PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 112 pathyrichly illustrating the phenomena from literature and his own experience. At the outset he discusses “that general sympathy which prevails throughout the whole body,” with many examples of it, as well as “a particular and very re¬ markable sympathy between several of its organs.” He gives of these a great number of instances, but none that involve the sexual emotions. That sphere, however long familiar to folklore and to daily life, was still far below the dignity of science. A few years later, the great John Hunter in his Croonian Lectures on Muscular Action (1776-1782) furnished an admirable definition of “sympathy” as "the action of one part in consequence of an application being made to another part,” and he distinguished three different modes, not, how¬ ever, widely dissimilar, by which "sympathy in the higher animals may work. But Hunter, like his predecessors, never touched on that erotic field in which "sympathy is so beauti¬ fully illustrated, and down to the present his successors have been chiefly occupied with the non-erotic field of synaesthesias, synalgesias, and so forth. It is an instructive example of the persistency with which even scientific investigators, throughout the ages, have rigidly maintained the observance of the ancient tabu on sex. This observance is still more pronounced when we approach the next stage in the development of the doctrine we are concerned with. We arrive, in this stage, at Charcot who may be said to have taken up "sympathy” at the point where Whytt left it, and given it greater precision. Here we are more particularly concerned with hysterogenic zones (zones liysterogenes ), such zone being a region which, Charcot found, on pressure initiated, or immediately arrested, the hysterical spasmodic attack. It was not really a new observation; Willis and Boerhaave long before, and especially and more recently Brodie, had recognized the phenomenon. But it was Charcot who in 1873 brought it into prominence and first gave it a name in his Logons sur les Maladies du Systeme Nervcux. He was here concerned only with investigating ovarian hyperaesthesia; later, in 1879, he recognized that it was not only the ovarian region that could THE DOCTRINE OF EROGENIC ZONES. 113 be hysterogenic, but that such zones might be widely dispersed and even of different orders, cutaneous, or mucous, or visceral. 1 There is not the slightest reference to sexual phenomena here, or to any analogy with sexual phenomena; indeed the whole subject of the sexual emotions in Gilles de la Tourette’s com¬ prehensive and detailed treatise only occupies a page or two. That was altogether in accordance with Charcot’s preposses¬ sions on this subject. He refused to admit that anything so degrading as sex could be present, even when it seemed the most obvious key wherewith to explain the phenomena. Hys¬ terogenic zones, it is fairly clear, may be regarded as a simulacrum, or a compensatory substitute, or a morbid trans¬ formation of what later became known as erogenic zones, but to this the Charcot school remained completely blind. At length, two years later, we reach the region of sex. In 1881 Ernest Chambard, Laboratory Director of the Asylum of Sainte-Anne in Paris, and, it would seem, a physician of some distinction in his time though his name is now seldom mentioned, published a book on hypnotic phenomena entitled Du Somnambulismc cn general: Analogies , signification noso- logique et etiologie . It is a book which reveals a considerable degree of original ability and power of observation, while the cases are freshly and interestingly studied. There is, however, only one passage (p. 65) which here specially concerns us. “There exists,” he says, “in the normal state, and especially in women, on the surface of the skin a certain number of re¬ gions, comparable to the epileptogenic centers of M. Brown- Sequard, to which the name of erogenic centers ( centres - erogenes), or some such analogous name, might be applied. Among these centers some are constant: such are, independent of the dermo-mucous covering of the external genital organs, the mucous surface of the mouth of the womb, the inner side of the thigh, the inguino-crural and ilio-inguinal regions, and especially the nipple; others are less constant and vary from 1 The doctrine of hysterogenic zones according to the Charcot school is clearly and fully set forth by Gilles de la Tourette, Traite de VHysteric, “Hysterie Normale,” 1891, Chs. VI and VII. 8 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 114 subject to subject; they are especially found in the anterior cervical region, the sides of the neck and in the palmar region. These centers are the points of departure of special sensations and reflexes, some bearing on the nervous apparatus of organic life, some on the nervous apparatus of the life of relation, but all concordantly rendering the genital functions obligatory and instinctive. Excitations practised here under certain conditions produce in fact not only a voluptuous sensation but those vari¬ ous muscular actions which prepare, determine, and accompany the venereal orgasm. These excitations must be light and rapid. Thus deep pressure on the inguinal region produces no effect, or perhaps pain, while rapid and superficial contacts suf¬ fice to determine in some subjects a well-marked voluptuous sensation. Great irregularities may be noted in the distribution of these centers, not only in different subjects but in the same subject at different times; for the mental state plays a large part in the intensity of the sensations and reflexes which they set up; if too often excited a center loses its sensibility, and under the influence of repeated excitation another appears where it had not existed before.” Chambard gives the case of a hysterical girl in whom such centers were extraordinarily hyperaesthetic, even a breath on the palm, when she was in hypnotic sleep, sufficing to cause complete orgasm. This passage, in which the erogenic aspect of general nervous activity was for the first time set forth precisely and named, is remarkable alike for the accuracy and the compre¬ hensiveness of its statement; it not only presented a sound view of the phenomena, but they were distinctly, and for the first time, set forth as normal, however liable to exaggeration in disordered nervous conditions. Even today it may still be accepted as an accurate statement of the matter. Yet it may long have been passed over, since the volume in which it ap¬ peared seems never to have attracted much attention, if it had not been noted by Fere. This distinguished physician and in¬ vestigator, who was then much occupied with hypnotism and who later wrote the best manual in French on the sexual in¬ stinct, was in close touch with the Charcot school and familiar THE DOCTRINE OF EROGENIC ZONES. 115 with the doctrine of hysterogenic zones. He could not, there¬ fore, fail to note the analogy, which Chambard seems to have overlooked, between these “erogenic centers” and Charcot's “hysterogenic zones.” In the Archives de Neurologie for 1883 (Tome VI, p. 131), in the course of a paper dealing with ex¬ periments on hysterical subjects under hypnotism, Fere wrote: “In some hysterical subjects there are at certain points of the body regions {cones erogenes') which are not without analogy to hysterogenic zones, and simple touching of which in a state of induced somnambulism determines genital sensations suf¬ ficiently intense to produce orgasm.” He refers in a footnote to Chambard and he mentions the case of a woman who ex¬ perienced a copious flow of mucus from the vagina when the upper part of her sternum was touched. A little later, in 1887, in Le Magnetisme animal (p. 112), which Fere wrote in con¬ junction with Binet, we find a reference to the same phe¬ nomenon—termed the cones erogenes of Chambard—as oc¬ curring in some hysterical subjects, and it is added that it only occurs during total, not partial, somnambulism, that it may be transferred by the magnet, and that it is only experienced when evoked by a person of the opposite sex. Again, a few years later, in L’Instinct Sexncl, Fere introduced a reference to cones erogenes in almost similar words, except that he here recog¬ nized that the phenomenon could occur in the normal state. These statements of Fere were less accurate and complete than those of Chambard on which they were ostensibly based, but it was evidently through Fere, and not directly from Cham¬ bard, that the term and the idea have become commonly recog¬ nized. This is indicated by the fact that Chambard (who had Brown-Sequard in mind and not Charcot) never spoke of cones erogenes but of centres erogenes, while Fere, consciously or unconsciously influenced by the analogy of Charcot's zones hysterogenes, silently modified the term, though still, quite in¬ nocently no doubt, attributing to Chambard his own modifica¬ tion. We need not complain, for the modification thus intro¬ duced by Fere is an improvement. 116 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. In English, it is probable, the first reference to “zones erogenes” occurred in the translation of Binet’s and Feres book, Animal Magnetism, in 1887. Here the term appears as “erogenic zones.” It was in this form, consequently, that the word was introduced in 1891 into the great Oxford Dictionary with the meaning “that gives rise to sexual desire,” and the quotation from the translation of Binet and Fere; it is adde that the word is from the French erogcnique, a surprising mis¬ statement to find in so elaborately organized a reference work, for it need scarcely be said that the word devised by Chambard and since always used in French is erogcne. Whether the word was used in English during the next ten years I am unable to say, but when in 1903, in the third volume of my own Studies in the Psychology of Sex, I had occasion to translate the term zones erogenes I was not familiar with any English form, having forgotten Binet’s and Fere’s book which I had read long before, and I adopted the term “erogenous zones” or, as I now prefer, “erogenic zones.” The English psycho¬ analysts have sometimes put forward the form “erotogenous.” Whether this is a form to be preferred I leave undecided. In Germany, it is probable that the first references to this subject (though the term is not used) were made by Krafft- Ebing in one of the numerous editions which he put forth so rapidly and hurriedly of his Psychopathia Scxnalis. Thus, in the tenth edition, published some years after Chambard s and Fere’s books, we find the incomplete and inaccurate statement that under pathological conditions in hysterical subjects, as shown by Chambard and others, regions of the body round the mammie and genitals may become hyperaesthetic, but that normally in men the only hyperaesthetic zones are on the sur¬ face of the genital organs and pathologically the anal region. Bloch supplied a much more accurate and comprehensive ac¬ count of the matter a few years later, in 1903, in his Beitrage zur Aetiologie des Psychopathia Sexualis (Part. 11, p. 192), taking it up, apparently, from my Studies rather than from Chambard’s book. “All the senses,” he here states, “can de¬ liver synaesthetic stimuli to the sexual act, whereby not only THE DOCTRINE OF EROGENIC ZONES. 117 are many erogenic zones formed, but often some special and at first only synaesthetic stimulus gradually becomes essential to complete enjoyment and often itself suffices.” Bloch quotes Mantegazza’s dictum that “love is a higher form of the sense of touch,” and refers to the important extragenital erogenic zones at the mouth and the breasts, but he insists that all the senses possess this synaesthetic action, so that we have a multiplicity of erogenic zones, and such synaesthetic stimuli become of enormous significance in relation alike to normal love and to its perversions. This view of the matter is entirely sound, the only question being whether we should follow Bloch in the extreme extension of the term “erogenic zones” to all the senses, instead of confining it (as, following Chambard and Fere, I had done) to the sense of touch and especially to the body surface. In 1905 Freud published his notable and widely influential little book, Drei Abhandlungcn zur Sexualtheorie, and here first adopted and made wide use of the doctrine of erogenic zones, which fitted admirably into his own dynamic theory of the erotic mechanism. Whence he derived the idea he fails to state, but it was set forth in more than one of the books which he refers to with approval in his essay, notably in Bloch’s Beitrage. He was also influenced by the paper in which Lindner of Budapest in 1879 had first suggested, on the ground of a significant observation of his own, that thumb-sucking, or in a wider sense Ludeln, in young children is a sexual process. 1 Freud deals with erogenic zones, like so many of his predeces- 1 It is well known that this view of Lindner’s and Freud’s is widely disputed. Thus Lowenfeld, a sagacious and discriminating investigator of the older school, cannot agree (Sexualleben und Ncruenleiden, 5th ed. 1914, p. 9) that the infant’s expression proves suckling to be a sexual satisfaction, a more probable explanation being that, as in the adult, it expresses simple well-being. Even finger-sucking, which he recognizes as sometimes having sexual significance, in most cases cannot be so regarded (Lowenfeld here agreeing with Moll and Bleuler), but is a manifestation with various significances according to individual con¬ stitution. This dispute, however, becomes relatively unimportant when the psycho-analyst is content to assert the presence of pleasure in such actions, without reference to what is later specifically known as sex pleasure. 118 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. sors, mainly on a pathological basis; erogenic zones, he remarks, and hysterogenic zones have the same characters, and psycho¬ analysts have since insisted that erogenic zones, being spots of diminished resistance, in hysteria inevitably become hystero¬ genic zones. But Freud clearly implies, also, that they are part of the normal process of sexual development. Accepting Ludeln, or actions of the nature of thumb-sucking, as typical, he states that the erogenic zone is “a region of the skin or mucous membrane where stimuli of a certain kind evoke a pleasurable feeling of special quality.” Certain parts of the body are “predestined erogenic zones.” But any part may be¬ come an erogenic zone, and Freud, following Bloch, is pre¬ pared to regard all the sensory organs, notably the eye, and in¬ deed all parts of the body, as possible erogenic zones, though he is careful to insist that the skin is the erogenic zone par ex¬ cellence. In early life the pleasure derived from erogenic zones is an end in itself though at the same time a method of education; the first or auto-erotic stage of libido in Freud’s view is that in which the sex impulses have no object and their aim is under the rule of the erogenic zones (a view which would justify Chambard’s use of the term “center”) ; after puberty more truly sexual ends emerge, and then the formula for the func¬ tion of the erogenic zones is that “they are used so that the fore-pleasure, alone gained in earlier life, may now be em¬ ployed to gain a greater satisfaction.” The significance of the zones is that of “by-apparatus and surrogates of the genital organs.” As such they are liable to become unduly active in the psycho-neuroses, and especially in hysteria, where the sensi¬ bility of the genital region retires into the background and the erogenic zones may take on a compensatory heightened sensi¬ bility. Freud also pointed out that the quality of the stimulus is important, especially if it is rhythmic, and also if it involves a warm temperature. 1 He applied his own personal vision 1 L6went'eld (Ueber die Sexuelle Konstitution, p. 42) would add wetness as sometimes favoring the action of the skin as an erogenic zone, especially in neurotic subjects, and he refers to the influence of hot baths in stimulating sexual feelings. THE DOCTRINE OF EROGENIC ZONES. 119 to this question of erogenic zones, he investigated them more searchingly and penetratingly than had before been done. Al¬ though he found the doctrine and incorporated it in his system, rather than invented it, so that it subsists independently what¬ ever value we may attribute to that system, it seems largely to Freud that we must attribute the general current acceptance of the idea, and of the name, of erogenic zones. At the present time the existence of erogenic zones is gen¬ erally accepted, but there is some difference of opinion as to their extent and significance. It may be worth while to mention the opinions of two of the chief authorities, outside psycho¬ analysis, in the field of sexual psychology. Moll describes erogenic zones as “areas of the surface of the body whose stimulation gives rise, directly or indirectly, to voluptuous sensations/’ and states that they are often found in early child¬ hood, especially in the anal and gluteal regions, but not often elsewhere, though in adults they are numerous, and varied in different individuals; he omits, perhaps significantly, any ref¬ erence to the oral region in infancy. 1 Hirschfeld deals more systematically with the subject. “The special proximal sexual sense in human beings/’ he considers, “lies not in the oral zone or the genital zone in particular, but in the skin generally,” and he adds that some skin contacts, which have now become conventional greetings, or expressions of sympathy, as of hand and cheek, may originally have been erotic. It is the kind of feeling, and not the particular spot, Hirschfeld insists, which gives the erotic character, although special spots are favor¬ able to this kind of feeling. He distinguishes eight such spots as peculiarly adapted to be erogenic zones, four possessing hair and also appealing to the sense of smell (head, chin, armpit and pubes) and four with mucous surface (mouth, nipples, genital region, and anal region), of these the chief being the nipple, and Hirschfeld adds that it was a connoisseur in love who in the Chanson de Roland said that a man loves with his heart and a woman with the point of her breast. 1 A. Moll, Sexual Life of the Child (English translation), p. 91. 120 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. Hirschfeld mentions as secondary erogenic zones the palm of the hand, the sole of the foot, the finger tips, the toes, the knees, the elbows, and the sacral region; he might have added the ears. 1 Freud has become inclined to admit no limits to the zones of the body which may become erogenic, just as there are no limits to the zones which may become hysterogenic. The gen¬ eral tendency is, however, to limit the term to the skin and mucous surfaces of the body to which it was first applied and which Freud himself regards as the chief seats of such zones. That limitation seems to me desirable and convenient. Theo¬ retically, it is true, we may say that the other sense-organs, such as the eye, which are modifications and developments of the original skin surface, are erogenic zones when they trans¬ mit voluptuous sexual emotions. But it is undesirable, as well as inconvenient, to apply to a higher sense-organ a term which was devised for the special conditions of a more primitive sense- organ. However that may be, it has seemed worth while to trace briefly the origin and development of the idea and the name because it is doubtful whether the significance of the erogenic zones in sexual psychology is even yet fully appreciated. Not¬ withstanding the original clear statement of Chambard, the question has chiefly fallen into the hands of investigators who were primarily interested in the pathology of the psycho¬ neuroses, and have insisted mainly on the exaggerations and perversions of which the erogenic zones may form the basis. It has not been always clearly emphasized that these zones constitute an important part of the normal sexual process, and that they play a legitimate part in the natural art of love. 1 M. Hirschfeld, Sexualpathologie, vol. iii, pp. 28-29. III. THE HISTORY OF FLORRIE AND THE MECH¬ ANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. We are familiar today with the methods and the results of that process of psychoanalysis which the genius of Freud first reduced to a definite technique. We must not forget, however, that both the method of psychoanalysis and its alleviating re¬ sults have in a less clearly formulated and less deliberately con¬ scious form long been abroad in the world. To recognize that fact is not to diminish, but rather to increase, the importance of psychoanalysis. As Freud and all who follow him rightly insist, the need for a careful attention to technique largely de¬ pends on the intensity of the resistance offered by the subject of psychoanalysis and the rigidity of the internal censorship which has to be overcome. When the subject is highly in¬ telligent and fairly unprejudiced, not hysterical or otherwise definitely morbid, and able to feel confidence in the judgment and good opinion, if not actual sympathy, of the investigator, and, at least, is in possession of an adequate medium of self- expression, it may come about that, though the task still needs time and patience, the resistance is less even from the outset, and the censorship relaxed. It is not indeed abolished. In the present case I was careful to play as passive a part as possible, and to avoid the risks of suggestion; but it was sometimes necessary to throw out a question, which was always put in a casual way as regarding some quite innocent and harmless sub¬ ject. It might then happen that the subject, without the slight¬ est embarrassment or violence, quietly put the question aside as though it were of no concern to her, that I refrained from any comment, and that subsequently she spontaneously showed that the subject thus put aside was of vital bearing on the case. Such a method of investigation naturally takes time. In the ( 121 ) PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 122 present case the period covered was three years, during which numerous interviews took place, and over sixty written com¬ munications, some of considerable length, reached me. While not unwilling to make oral communications the subject was much more accomplished and instructive with a pen. 1 It is on the material thus accumulated that the present paper is based. It is not brought forward as a demonstration of technique and still less as a criticism of technique. The method adopted was the best available under the circumstances,—and, as it turned out, adequate,—for as the subject lived in a distant city con¬ tinuously frequent visits were out of the question, even if I had been prepared to propose a strictly Freudian technique, to which, moreover, it is improbable that the subject would have easily lent herself. Some years ago a lady who had chanced to read some of my books wrote to me over her own name enclosing a lengthy narrative by a married lady who assumed the name of Florrie and described her obsessions with the subject of whipping and her impulses to auto-flagellation. The narrative was sent as likely to be of psychological interest to me, but Florrie de¬ scribed her distress and her anxiety to be cured, although not aware that I was a doctor. There was no indication that the 11 may remark here on the fairly familiar fact that a woman usually finds it more difficult to describe her intimate sexual feelings than a man. This is usually attributed to modesty and reserve, an inadequate explana¬ tion since a woman is, to say the least, as ready as a man to reveal objective sexual facts not involving the description of her intimate feel¬ ings. Certainly there is the shame felt in expressing anything which, it is thought, may be regarded as shameful, as any sexual feeling in a woman is by some regarded. But beyond this there is the real difficulty of the absence of a medium of expression for feelings which have never been put into words before, so that they can only be brought out under pressure, slowly and piecemeal, and even in the end remain bald and vague. When, however, a woman possesses an adequate medium of expression the result may be quite different. It is significant that all the women, and they are fairly numerous, from whom I have received really precise and instructive records of intimate emotional experiences have, without exception, had some training in literature or journalism, though they may have lived in various environments and different parts of the world. They have by no means lacked modesty and reserve, but they possessed an adequate medium of expression, and when at last the need arose, they could translate their intimate experiences into it, with results at least as interesting and instructive as any man’s record. MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 123 lady sending the narrative was herself identical with Florrie, and I refrained when replying from making the identification, which was soon spontaneously made, though my correspondent continued to retain the fiction of Florne in case any letter should go astray. In my reply I asked for further informa¬ tion, explained that the case was not quite so unique and ter¬ rible as Florrie believed, and offered advice as to various ways by which some relief from the conditions described might be obtained. Florrie expressed much gratitude for my advice and for my attitude towards her state, assuring me of her anxiety to follow the counsels I had given. Before long she proposed to come and see me, and in a few weeks—not without experi¬ encing shyness and hesitation in approaching the first person to whom she had confided her intimate experiences—she duly appeared. Florrie appeared as a robust and rather stout woman, her matronly appearance being to some extent belied by a some¬ what girlish, slightly timid expression which, however, still remained compatible with a complete and quiet self-possession. She is 5 ft. 6 ins. in height without shoes, 178 pounds in weight (clothed); and, in circumference of the body at the crest of the hip bone 40)4 ins., 45 inches at the level of the nates and 25 ins. round the upper, 18 ins. round the lower, part of thigh. The breasts are of moderate development. The hair and eyes are of medium pigmentation, the complexion good, the teeth excellent. Menstruation is normal though slightly painful and she has to avoid undue exertion at this time. Her age then was 37; she had been married for some years to a man about twice her own age; before her marriage she had been an accom¬ plished artist, and also a writer of articles on art and other topics; she wrote well and her articles were published in high- class magazines. She had studied art abroad and travelled considerably, but she had never entered Bohemian circles. Born in a well-to-do family, she had been brought up strictly and conventionally, and had always lived a quiet and protected life in the domestic circle of her relations and a few friends, mostly of intellectual tastes, who had never regarded her as in any 124 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. way peculiar or abnormal; apart indeed from her secret ob¬ sessions, she appeared to be, then and always, the practical commonsense sort of person” she termed herself, so that she was all the more worried by aberrations which seemed to her a kind of madness. She had not confided her obsessions to anyone, with a partial exception which will be duly recorded, not even to her husband. Florrie is the child of healthy parents, and on both sides the health of the family generally is good, though among her uncles and aunts there had been one or two cases of insanity. At least one member of the family was a man of high intellect¬ ual distinction. There was probably a slight strain of anomaly in Florrie’s father, but Florrie had not been conscious of this. She herself had always been healthy and robust, full of phy¬ sical and mental energy, though latterly she had complained of a tendency to lassitude, irritability, headache, and, as she im¬ agined, some heart-weakness, these slight symptoms being, however, mainly due to absorption in her imaginations and the worry thereby caused. Since being haunted by this craving she had become lazy, and during the past year fatter, and felt that she had declined mentally, morally, and physically. Florrie was brought up as a child among her brothers. She was not inquisitive about sex matters and cannot re¬ member that the children ever discussed their physical differ¬ ences ; nor did they ever play any games involving personal dis¬ play. While a healthy child, and never subject to any but trivial illnesses, she was shy and always strictly taught to re¬ frain even from romping because that might display her under¬ clothing ; for this reason she was not allowed to disport herself on the see-saw since the boys next door might see too much. She thus gleaned that there was a certain mystery and secrecy to be observed; she regarded it as quite proper, since certain natural functions were always attended to in private. When about six years old she was once left alone in a wing of the house where some workmen were being employed. One of them, a lad of sixteen or seventeen, came up to her as she sat on the floor quite alone, and tried to raise her petticoats, ask- MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 125 ing to look up them. She repulsed him, as a “rude boy,” with much childish indignation. When, baffled by the closed drawers, he tried force, she screamed and he desisted. She was too ashamed ever to tell anyone. As a child she was from time to time whipped by her father for childish naughtiness. She loved and respected her father and accepted the punishment, painful as it was, as being in the order of things, though she would have resisted it from anyone else, especially a woman, even her mother. She now realizes that this punishment was unnecessarily severe, and that as she was not a troublesome or rebellious child, milder methods would have been easily effectual. An ignorant and foolish governess who favored her brothers and disliked Florrie was the cause of the mischief. When the little girl failed to please her, she would become furiously angry, shake her vio¬ lently, and finally drag the child, now violently resisting and screaming, up to her father’s room. Her appearance con¬ demned her, and her father, without asking any questions, would assume a fierce expression, thus still further frightening the timid and already terrified child, take down a small lady’s riding-whip,—possibly imagining that being small it was less painful, though really, Florrie remarked, the most effectively painful weapon that could be selected,—and order the child to go to his dressing room, the room from which noise was least likely to be heard. Having locked the door, he would stand over her, raising her clothes, gripping her by the back, and mak¬ ing her bend forward until her drawers were stretched tight. Then he would apply the whip, the more vigorously the more the child screamed and begged for mercy, and threatening in angry tones to whip her till the blood came, though the pain was so acute that she could not help screaming. Then he would send her back sobbing to the governess, who always greeted her with the remark: “If you don’t stop sobbing at once, I shall take you upstairs again.” But much as she dreaded a repetition of the performance, she sometimes could not stop sobbing for an hour. There may seem to be a rather abnormal cruelty in the father’s attitude, though it must be remembered 126 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. that he cherished all the old-fashioned notions concerning the treatment of children, and it is likely that he regarded himself as merely carrying on a proper and necessary tradition. Florrie bore him no ill-will, and when afterwards he would kiss her and hope she would be good she felt truly thankful. “I can remember now,” she writes, “the curious feeling of shame and shyness when I met him afterwards, turning away and wanting to hide my red face because I was so ashamed of having been whipped, then a thrill of delight when he took me in his arms.” But the governess she never forgave, and when ten years later she chanced to meet her, she avoided even shaking hands. These whippings finally ceased when Florrie was sent to school. I have narrated these incidents in their details (though with fewer details than Florrie herself), all of them significant, because we here come upon the main clue to the chief manifes¬ tation of the sexual impulse which has so far taken place in Florrie’s life. Intense, vivid, and enduring as these childish experiences were, however, it is only in the course of the pres¬ ent investigation that Florrie came spontaneously to see that there was any connection between her early experiences and the later experiences which were yet in substance identical, or that there could be any association between whipping and the sexual impulse. Such failure to see an obvious connection may seem surprising, but in mental analysis one is used to such failures. “I cannot describe my feelings of shame, mortifica¬ tion, and above all, the wish for concealment, they were so in¬ tense,” she wrote. “Nothing would have induced me to men¬ tion the subject to my girl friends, and my brothers were good enough not to allude to it. I feel ashamed of it to this day, and even now could not tell any ordinary person. I could not know then why I felt it so shameful and degrading, and even now I cannot always analyze truthfully, but I am inclined to think the almost abnormal shame was due to the fact that the punishment was inflicted on the buttocks, with me a sexual center. I should not have felt so utterly ashamed of a box on the ear, or being whipped on the hands. It was a sort of sex shyness and shame.” MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 127 In addition to this poignantly emotional group of infantile experiences, destined to become the unconscious germ of a later psychic flagellational impulse, we have to record another group of at first sight unrelated experiences—less intense but more chronic and more the subject of childishly intellectual speculation—centering in the function of urination. It should be stated at the outset that Florrie never suffered from true nocturnal enuresis. She remembers sometimes as a child dreaming that she was urinating, and on rare occasions she actually wetted the bed, but this may happen occasionally to quite normal children. Her earliest impressions in connection with urination probably lie too far back to be recalled nor were they made permanent, like those of whipping, by pain and terror. When about five or six, however, she distinctly re¬ members being taken for a country walk by her nurse, and before they approached the destination, a friend’s house, her drawers were unbuttoned and she was held over the grass. Nothing came, and the nurse fastened her up again, repeating the performance ten minutes later with the same result, where¬ upon the nurse began to scold. The third time she was very cross and smacked the child’s bare bottom until Florrie yelled; still sobbing and protesting, she was held out again, and a con¬ siderable stream flowed on to the grass. She still recalls kick¬ ing and struggling, and crying out "I can’t! I won’t! I shan’t” as well as her surprise and mortification at hearing the rushing sound that announced that, nevertheless, she was doing what she was refusing to do. The nurse was triumphant at her conquest over the child’s obstinacy, and subsequently adopted the same method when she considered it necessary. Of recent days Florrie has perceived here an early blending of the ideas of urination and whipping. There were others. She notes that the very sight of the whip used to produce, from fear prob¬ ably, a desire to urinate. Once, after being whipped, she re¬ turned sobbing to the schoolroom and a sudden stream flowed on to the floor, which she was too agitated to heed, though it evoked threats of another whipping from the governess. 128 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. As often happens in childhood, the function of urination occupied much of the place in Florrie’s mind which at a later age is normally occupied by the functions of sex, of which she had no knowledge and never heard. She was not tortured by curiosity about the opposite sex because from infancy she had been accustomed to see her little brothers urinate and so there had been no mystery. At an early age, about seven, she was given a bedroom of her own, and was discouraged from going into the boys’ room. But she vaguely remembers that they played a sort of urinary game, putting their hands in the liquid without disgust. (There was not, then or later, any special interest in the act of defecation, though when she had reached the age of thirteen and was trying to puzzle out how babies are born, she thought it must resemble the act of defecation.) Such games, she felt, ought to be kept a close secret. If any attempt had been made, however, to play with what she re¬ garded as the urinary parts she would have revolted, but no such attempt was ever made. No childish friends made any sexual advances, and being brought up very strictly, and sur¬ rounded by nurses and governesses, there was, in any case, little opportunity. In spite of punishments, much care was lavished on her, and she had expensive toys and frocks from France, though she would much have preferred to play freely with her brothers. In the winter the family lived in a town, in the summer in the country. It was chiefly during the sum¬ mer that Florrie’s interest in urination was cultivated, espe¬ cially out-of-doors. The ordinary use of a vessel gave her no extraordinary pleasure; it was too closely associated with the routine of the nursery. When the act touched the forbidden its pleasure was always heightened. She enjoyed the sight of her brothers doing it out of doors and envied them the superior advantage of a specially constructed organ for that purpose. “My earliest ideas of the superiority of the male,” she adds, “were connected with urination. I felt aggrieved with Nature because I lacked so useful and ornamental an organ. No tea¬ pot without a spout felt so forlorn. It required no one to instil into me the theory of male predominance and superiority. MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 129 Constant proof was before me.” Still, in the country the act was always natural and delightful, and she found special methods of adding to its enjoyment. The choice of quaint and unexpected places added a good deal. Nothing could come up to the entrancing sound as the stream descended on crack¬ ling leaves in the depth of a wood and she watched its absorp¬ tion. Most of all she was fascinated by the idea of doing it into water. “When I was in my bath I remember distinctly wondering if it would be possible under water or whether the water all round would prevent this performance. I finally in¬ dulged in the experiment, and bubbles (if I remember rightly) came to the surface. I was delighted. I also thought it would be pleasurable to do on to the water, and to hear it going in. I went so far as to try the experiment with a little girl cousin when the nurse was out one evening. I artfully impressed upon the child the necessity of doing it. She replied she didn’t want to. I tried to coax her by offers of sweets and toys, but in vain. Children are so suspicious and fortify themselves against the unexpected. In this case the child was accustomed to the minis¬ trations of the nurse and could not understand my officiousness. I was only a child myself (about eight) but I distinctly re¬ member my vexation. I had always been fond of her and she wouldn’t please me. Yet she was too young to be shy; it must be a kind of inherited feeling. (One sees the same trait in young girls, and always most in the ignorant; also in the suspiciousness of country people when asked to pose for a moment for an out-door sketch, while children run away. The unusual startles them.) To return to my tiresome cousin, I became so annoyed that I told her she must do it, and began to unbutton her drawers. The only effect was a fearful howl which I feared might be heard. But my mind was made up. In spite of struggles and kicks and attempted bites, I led her to the bath. Then a fresh outburst when she found that she had to do it in an unusual way. I had intended to hold her over the bath, but she struggled so violently that I finally contented myself with making her sit on the edge, and in this position she did (intentionally or not) a good stream to my delight. I 8 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 130 watched it with gratification tinging the water below, and was sorry when it ceased. Then I lifted down the tiresome child who continued to sulk and of course told the nurse, whereupon I was chidden for letting her do it in the bath. All this is stamped on my memory. It must be uninteresting to an out¬ sider, but it was a distinct episode of my childhood. Florrie’s youthful investigations of urination, both in others and herself, were hampered by the peculiarities of child¬ ish knickers. She remarks that it may seem a trivial thing to mention, but that she is sure it was significant. Those un¬ fortunate garments constantly interfered with her experiments. Except when dressing or undressing there was no freedom, and even then it was usually checked. There was, however, one way in which she managed to defy everyone, for, as she now looks back on it, she regards it as intentional. She distinctly recalls wanting very much to urinate when out for a long country walk, but refusing to say so. This could go on for a long time, until, being unable to hold out any longer, she would let it come without any preliminaries of unbuttoning and squat¬ ting. “I can distinctly remember the strange and delicious sen¬ sation of this forbidden delight, and also my puzzled feeling that it came standing. It came in such a torrent that it filled my drawers like air in a balloon and remained there a little time before it could soak through to betray me, though the fact that I had to stop walking helped to give me away, and I was hauled home. Sometimes, however, I escaped unobserved, and nothing happened except that I was left sore with the wetness.” Florrie again and again spontaneously recurs to what she now regards as the great significance of the child’s drawers, not only as bearing on her own later psychic evolution, but as in¬ fluencing the ideas and conventions of women generally. ‘‘It was not only a source of annoyance to me that I had to un¬ fasten my drawers and then squat down for fear of wetting them in front, but the flap at the back, which must be removed to uncover the posterior parts during the act, accounts for my early impression that in girls this function is connected with those parts. It seems a trifling thing to notice, but in the world MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 131 of clothes our ideas, when we are quite young, are colored by those unphysiological facts. The first distinction in sex that impressed me—the one great difference in sex—was that boys urinated standing and that girls had to sit down. I regarded that as a fundamental distinction of great importance, and never doubted its necessity. To this day I know of grown-up women who simply exclaim in horror at the notion of standing up: ‘But I couldn’t! It can’t be done! How unnatural!’ 1 Last year I saw when at Portsmouth a novel ‘urinette’ for ladies, a quite new, up-to-date smart arrangement, without a seat; one had to stride across a boat-shaped earthenware grat¬ ing. Ladies went in, and came out again with horrified faces. They simply couldn't they said! There is thus a deep-rooted impression among women who have never made any close ob¬ servation that the urinary organs are differently placed in women, and that this is a chief sex difference. I am sure I harbored the idea for a long time. It seems to have been an¬ other source of my juvenile notion of the connection between urination and whipping. This could never happen to a boy, who is brought up to know a clear distinction. But in my case both these experiences were associated with the unbuttoning of my knickers at the back. The fact that my earliest feelings of shyness were more associated with the back than the front may have thus originated. These things seem trivial but are signifi¬ cant.” It has been necessary to present these childish experiences in some detail, for we herewith see constituted the infantile germs which in their psychic development were to play so large a part in later periods of Florrie’s intimate psychic life. There yet remains for consideration the soil in which these two germs grew and gathered strength, the soil without which they would probably have perished. This soil was furnished by day- dreaming. 1 It may be mentioned that there is nothing “natural” in the feminine custom of squatting to urinate, and among some peoples, while the men squat, it is the custom for the women to stand, as it was (according to Herodotus) in ancient Egypt and (according to Giraldus Cambrensis) in Ireland. 132 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. As a child Florrie was much attached to day-dreaming, but she cannot definitely recall any day-dreams that belong to an earlier age than eight or nine. They never led up to masturba¬ tion, or to touching herself, or to any other physical procedure, and were never accompanied by any conscious physical excite¬ ment ; this was not due, then or later, to any deliberate restraint from masturbation; she had never heard of it, and she never experienced any spontaneous impulse prompting her to attempt it. The whole process was entirely mental, and though she thinks there must have been accompanying physical sensations, these have left no abiding memory. Day-dreaming has, how¬ ever, throughout, been an important sedative influence in her life (even allaying, she states, any tendency to worry or per¬ turbation) and she is assured that, notwithstanding all it has led up to, it has yet greatly contributed to her physical and mental well-being. At one rather early period, indeed, she feared it might be a sign of insanity, for it seemed to her so odd to experience this impulse to imagine without a purpose. She now plainly discerns that, unknown to herself, there was a purpose, that day-dreaming has a sex origin and is an automatic psychic attempt at sexual relief. As is usually the case, she regards day-dreams as belonging to an extremely private and secret sphere, not easily to be divulged, and then only to a sympathetic hearer, for it is, as she expresses it, rending the veil from the holy of holies.” The earliest day-dreams are only vaguely recalled. Throughout they always centered in whipping or in urination; it is not clear which came first, and at an early date they tended to be united. When whipping predominated she was the pas¬ sive subject, in day-dreams of urination the active subject. (In the actual dreams of urination in childhood she was the actor, a normal condition.) An early type of day-dream, and the favorite form, dealt with naughty conduct for which she was whipped in very tight drawers; in this day-dream the feeling of tightness and pressure was more prominent and important than the idea of whipping, and this feeling was in front rather than behind; she now considers, no doubt correctly, that it was MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 133 associated with a full bladder. (In this connection she refers to the sexual attraction for some persons of the idea and the reality of tight-lacing.) She notes also that in her day-dreams she took delight in the very sense of humiliation which was so painful in real life. In the day-dreams the unsympathetic by¬ stander became shadowy and unreal, it was her own shame that became most important. She had no day-dream in these early days of anyone wanting to give her pleasure, but only to cause her pain and shame. As she now rightly realizes, this delight in shame was an early form of sexual pleasure. She enjoyed books in which whippings were described. But at the age of thirteen, when menstruation began, her power of imagination increased, the day-dreams grew more vivid, and can be recalled in detail. At this age a favorite day-dream, with numerous variations, was connected with the idea of a school where girls were treated very strictly. “None of the opposite sex figured in these dreams/’ she writes, “nor did I then suspect their undoubtedly sexual origin. My particular horror of others knowing that I had been punished led me to imagine the whipping, with which the day-dream always began, as taking place before the whole school. I was either leaning on a desk or bent forward in the middle of the room. Some¬ times the whipping took place in tight drawers which pressed on the bladder or sex parts. Sometimes the drawers were un¬ buttoned and I was exposed to view with great chagrin and shame. I read in a book that at some girls’ boarding-schools in the olden time, it was the custom to undress the victim and put on her a chemise reaching only to the waist; thus attired and mounted on a servant’s back she was whipped before the whole school. This was a new idea for my day-dream and in¬ cluded much extra shame. In addition to the whipping it was announced that I was to urinate before the whole school. I think the idea originated in the fact that I was sensitive and ashamed about that function, and also that I had done it actually sometimes after being whipped. So I went through the whole episode, taking a shuddering delight in having my clothes stripped off and the punishment chemise put on. I experienced PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 134 agonies of shame as I was led thus exposed into the school¬ room. I was hoisted on the back of a strong country girl who wore a dress very much open at the back and neck, so that I remember realizing the sensation of sitting on her shoulders with a leg on each side of her neck, and my parts pressing against her soft neck and back. While I indulged in this day¬ dream I lay in bed with my face downward and this may have induced the sensation of a nice warm neck. After I had pictured to myself a dozen strokes of the birch, and my wrigg¬ ling condition of pain, curiously mingled with gratification, I would imagine that I was slipping down and that someone came and pushed me up from behind, the hand under my bare behind giving me a most pleasurable feeling. Then I would lean for¬ ward against the warm neck and imagine that I was relieving myself there and then, unbidden, taking delight in the trickling of the warm stream against the bare flesh. Other forms of the day-dream ihcluded having to urinate against my will, an idea that gives one a curious sense of gratification.” She never con¬ nected these day-dreams with sex; men and boys never at this time entered into them, only very stern members of her own sex, sometimes, however, half-fabulous creatures, bad fairies, who were punishing her and seemed to control her existence. It was not till about the age of fifteen that men entered the day¬ dreams, always in a very paternal and authoritative way, evi¬ dently, though this seems not to have occurred to her, in the image of her father. But at about this age the day-dreams seem to have begun for a time to recede into the background. The presence of the school imagery in these day-dreams was doubtless due to a change in her own circumstances. At the age of thirteen she had gone to a boarding school. This age was indeed an important epoch in her life. It was the year in which menstruation began, although this eruption of the physical sexual life seems to have made little conscious im¬ pression. (It may be noted that she was informed by a girl friend that the menstrual flow comes from the urinary passage, a belief, adds Florrie, which her informant, now a married woman with children, still holds.) It was also the year of her MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 135 first religious experience, and there was a second phase of religious enthusiasm at the age of sixteen, a phenomenon which may be regarded as quite normal; in Starbuck’s curve of the age of conversion in girls the chief periods of climax are pre¬ cisely at the ages of thirteen and sixteen. In Florrie’s case, however, religious interests and experience scarcely attained to the acuteness of conversion, although she desired and sought that consummation. “I remember kneeling and trying hard to get the feeling that the moment had come,” she writes. “I was told it would come all at once, and I should suddenly feel it. But I never experienced that kind of religious orgasm, and I felt that something must be lacking in me since others realized their fondest hopes. I spent a lot of time in thinking about spiritual things, of the mystical union with Christ, and as I look back I think this religious day-dream took the place of sexual day-dreaming.” She adds: f T think the love of religion is truly of a sexual character because it is usually marked by a great reticence, the sort of secrecy one has about sexual day-dreams; a kind of shyness, even shame, makes one unwilling to refer to one’s most intimate experiences. Anyhow that was how I felt.” Although the religious day-dreams proved no permanent sub¬ stitute for those of the earlier type they gave a serious blow to the latter, which between the ages of thirteen and sixteen seem to have died out. This must be regarded as normal. Although Florrie’s early day-dreams vanished and although menstruation was normally established, there was no manifesta¬ tion of sexual emotions or of sexual interests. There was noth¬ ing in her life to stimulate such emotions or interests. No one talked to her on such subjects. She was completely ignor¬ ant, and no one made love to her. When a little later she had sentimental attachments they had no physical side. At school everything was “high-class” and “ladylike”; the education was of an old-fashioned and paltry character, but the girls were watched like convicts. They never discussed sex subjects. Florrie remained completely ignorant and not very inquisitive. At a later school the girls would flirt in a harmless way with boys and write notes, but Florrie took no interest in this. Up 136 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. to the age of thirteen she believed that a gipsy brought babies; then she was told that women bore them, and she believed that it was in their bosoms. The suckling of babies interested her and when she first saw it at the age of nine it caused strange sensations (“sort of thrills ,, ). It seemed to her very indecent and made her feel shy. She thought it was just like urinating in public. Again, at the age of sixteen, she experienced the same sensation, though she has never had any homosexual feel¬ ings; on this occasion when a mother was retiring from the room to suckle her baby, one of the company begged her to re¬ main: “Why not here? Why should we object ? It is Nature/’ Florrie remembers reflecting over this argument, and wonder¬ ing what the company would think if she raised her skirts and did a stream on the floor, calling it “Nature.” It is interesting to observe here the significant fact that urination occupied in Florrie’s mind the place of the typically natural function. It may be noted that her strong feeling of shyness in relation to the act of urination still continued. She disliked accomplishing it in the presence of another girl and was sometimes unable to do so. This shyness remains to the present day. She dreads sleeping with any other woman because she would hate urinat¬ ing before her. This shyness, as she now realizes, indicates that the sexual feelings are involved. It is further indicated by the fact that she feels differently to men. “The shyness would dis¬ appear to a certain extent,” she writes, “before a sympathetic member of the opposite sex. A kind of shame, really strongly felt, would still remain, but this would add to the pleasurable feeling; for it is in the breaking down of reserve that one gets a sex feeling. To pass the barrier before anyone to whom I am indifferent is a great trial. It may seem absurd for a woman to be more shy about this before another woman than before a man; but such is the fact, and I now think that this alone proves the sex factor in urination. It becomes, as it were, a kind of sex act.” In this matter, also, Florrie expresses a feeling which is quite commonly felt by completely normal women. We have seen that the establishment of puberty brought no development of the specific sexual sensations, and that neither MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 137 were the experiences of religious emotion deep or permanent. Art, and intellectual interests related to art, constituted the channel along which Florrie’s energies chiefly ran during adolescence and later. She displayed a real taste, if not aptitude, for painting, and she worked hard. She attained a considerable degree of accomplishment and used to ex¬ hibit. As she began to travel abroad with her family to Italy and elsewhere she devoted much time to the intelli¬ gent study of pictures and sculpture. She enjoyed going on sketching tours. At the same time, she was beginning to take an interest in social questions, and at the age of sixteen had already become an enthusiastic adherent of women’s suf¬ frage. With the development of these absorbing new interests and activities, her day-dreams, alike on flagellistic or vesical themes, faded into the background. At the time, however, when the period of adolescence came to an end, when Florrie was just about twenty-one, an in¬ cident occurred which re-awakened her interest in urination on a new side. It may seem a trivial incident, but in Florrie’s memory it stands out as “a feat of great audacity,” and it has so much significance in her psycho-sexual development that it may be well to narrate it exactly in her own words: “We were living in the residential part of a large English town and I was paying calls. At the last house I had stayed half an hour and as I then experienced a great need I determined on quitting the drawing room and being shown out to ask the maid if I might retire. This was all settled nicely in my mind, but it never came off. When I rose to go, my hostess expressed a wish that I should see her conservatory, and we all went into the garden accompanied by the son of the house. It followed naturally that I had to make my exit from the garden directly into the road. By this time further delay had made matters worse. I felt that I could not wait any longer. There were no shops near, only houses, and I could not find any sheltered spot. I at once realized how utterly impossible it would be to squat down, so I determined to make the attempt standing, though I felt very nervous and doubtful as to my probable success. 138 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. There was no rain to help matters, and the pavement was white and dry. I was afraid to stand in the gutter for fear of attract¬ ing attention, but I stood on the extreme edge of the curb and looked down the road as though I was expecting somebody. No one was in sight, and I determined to be as quick as pos¬ sible, but to my mortification it wouldn’t come. I suppose I had put off too long. At last, after waiting what seemed to me a tremendous time (although probably only a few seconds!), I felt it beginning to come. For fear of detection I had refrained from standing with my legs a little apart, and the result was that a great deal went into my drawers and soaked them straight off. Afterwards, the stream penetrated, and came with terrific force on the pavement, and terrible were my feelings when I saw it meandering from under my skirt and running down the pavement instead of into the gutter. To help matters I placed one foot in the road and was covered with confusion when I saw three persons approaching. I remember shutting my eye3, as though if I did not see them they would not see me! I was rooted to the spot, I felt detection was certain if I moved, and I was sure as they passed that they must have heard the sound, and seen the stream. As soon as they had gone I moved on and came to another turning. Here I found a house for sale, and as the gate was open into the garden it immediately oc¬ curred to me that I had by no means finished, and I hid near a bush, whilst apparently engaged in surveying the house. I was now on grass and felt fairly secure. I was standing up, and for the first time realized that it was a nice sensation, and a delight to do it like this. Several persons passed, but that rather added to the charm, since I was secure. A first experience is not for¬ gotten. After that, and finding that it was quite possible to achieve this feat without much difficulty, I had other experi- ences.” Before discussing the psycho-sexual significance of the long series of incidents of which this was the first so vividly remembered and narrated after more than fifteen years—it may be necessary to point out that it was not really the first occasion on which Florrie had urinated either in the standing MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 139 position or in the street. This comes out in another communica¬ tion in which Florrie is specially describing the feelings of modesty and shame associated with this function. “I remember, even as a child (five or six) that it gave me a kind of shock when I did it standing. It seemed so horribly audacious and bold. This idea was confused in my childish mind with the other idea,—that I was doing something wrong, —which was the case, since I did it right off without waiting for usual preliminaries, thus wetting myself. But there was always also a feeling at the back of my mind that it was wrong in itself, just as crawling on all fours was wrong, although the delight of children. Children confuse the conventional with the right, just as grown-up persons often do. As I grew older I could not overcome this idea. I remember at the age of fifteen having occasion to do it standing one night in the dark out of doors. I simply couldn't wait any longer, but not seeing any¬ one about I thought I might venture. I dared not squat down, and felt sure it could not be done standing; I had faint recol¬ lections of my childish exploits in that direction, but thought vaguely that children were different. (No one had ever told me of women doing it this way, nor had I ever seen it done.) I wondered how the experiment would act, or if it would act at all! I remembered standing in the gutter and waiting, hoping no one would pass. I was afraid they would guess my purpose, especially as I was obliged to stand with my legs somewhat apart for fear of splashing my clothes. I thought it would never come, and when it did I shall never forget my abashed feelings. I would have stopped it if I could, but when it once began it would not cease. In my alarmed state of imagination it seemed to make an appalling noise which I felt sure could not fail to attract attention if anyone passed. Not only was I fearfully afraid that the rustling sound would attract attention, but from under my clothes there emerged a stream which ran rapidly along the gutter, betraying me! I splashed my stockings in my haste, and tore away just in time as I saw a man coming along, feeling very red and abashed, and wishing that I had found some dark corner where I could have squatted successfully. In 140 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. trying to analyze my sensations I think the most prominent lay in the shame that came from standing, and the consequent y greater distance the stream had to descend. It seemed to ma e the affair important and conspicuous, even though clothing hi it. In the ordinary attitude there is a kind of privacy. As a small child, too, the stream had not far to go; but at the age o fifteen I was tall and it seemed to give one a glow of shame to think of this stream falling unchecked such a distance. (I am sure that the ladies who fled in horror from the urinette thought it most indecent for a woman to stride across an earth¬ enware boat on the ground, a leg on each side, and standing there to pull up her clothes and do a stream which descended unabashed all that way.) “Of course as children all that one knows of that mysteri¬ ous thing called sex shame, is attached to these functions. After one has grown up this early association of shame still remains inextricably mixed up with real sex feeling and, in rny belief, is, more truly, an inseparable part of sex feeling.. It will be seen that while these early experiences illuminate the later psychic development they represent a different stage of feeling. They correspond to the feelings—in some part natural, in still larger part conventional—which most inexpert normal women experience when they are suddenly compelled to adopt a device of this kind; it gives little or no pleasure, be¬ yond that of the relief to an urgent need, and is put out of mind as quickly as possible with some feeling of shame. But at the age of twenty-one Florrie’s adult personality had become constituted, and in her special psycho-sexual constitution this experience took on a special character. The emotions of mod¬ esty and shame and reserve, very strongly rooted in Florrie, and her firmly implanted traditions of conventionality and right, excited to the extreme by this audacious act, were trans¬ formed into a climax of pleasure and triumph, with a resulting satisfaction far transcending the gratification of a vesical need. The act of urination under such circumstances becomes a simu¬ lacrum of the sexual act. It is a kind of vicariously auto-erotic manifestation. At the same time it was to some degree an MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 141 untransformed urolagnia. That is to say that there was, ac¬ companying the act, definitely a consciousness of pleasure which she now regards as sexual, adding on one occasion, when spon¬ taneously pointing out the sexual character of the pleasure, the significant remark that “the feeling, however vague, of a sym¬ pathetic spectator would cause delight and heighten the sensa¬ tion.’’ But there was at this stage no conscious sexual emotion. The act of urination was, in the main, a symbol of the sexual act . 1 In connection with this urolagnic character of Florrie’s ex¬ periences, reference was made to the excitation of the sexual emotions of modesty and shame which was associated with them. As will have been seen, she experiences these emotions strongly, and in a high degree in connection with the act of urination. There is, therefore, in these public episodes all the gratification of a risky adventure with the possibility of “de¬ licious shame” (an expression of Ouida’s) should the effort to avoid detection fail. “The nervousness is awful,” Florrie writes, “especially when others are in sight and there is the awful dread that they may see or hear. On such occasions, too, the stream always seems of double force.” “It is such a strong personal feeling that one has over it; someone may have heard or seen, and an awful feeling of shame overtakes one. For some women this is literally the last act they would do in public or before an unsympathetic person. If this feeling of shame were lacking,” she significantly adds, “the erotic feeling that is connected with the act would be deadened.” An episode from Florrie’s experience may be quoted in illustration: “The most awkward case I remember was on the summit of a mountain. The ascent was made with a party of others, and I could not escape. I tried several times to turn a corner to contemplate a view in solitary enjoyment, but it never came off. Someone always followed. Finally, on the summit, I could hold back no longer, and as all were contemplating the 1 1 have elsewhere in these Studies (vol. iii, 2d ed., pp. 59 et seq.) pointed out that urination may be regarded as a nervous explosion com¬ parable to the process of sexual detumescence and may to some extent act vicariously for the sexual orgasm. PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 142 snow-clad range opposite, across the valley, I started, in fear and trembling, a terrific stream. There were two men quite close, and I was not only afraid they would hear it, but from under my skirts in front and running down the steep path a stream made its way to my horror, for I had thought the earth would absorb it. In desperation I kept pointing out things to see, hoping to engage their attention otherwise, but it was an awful moment, and even now I can hardly believe that the incident escaped observation. I managed to stop before the bladder was really empty, but it was awful when I quitted the spot—the dry rough ground only relieved by this artificial stream! I only breathed freely when well down the path and out of sight of it. “In towns I generally take refuge on a doorstep or in a doorway where no one is likely to enter. I did this once on an early closing day when the shops were shut, and thought how lucky I was since no one would enter or come out. Although the shop I chose was closed the blinds were up and the goods displayed. So I looked in, but my attention was in reality absorbed in an entirely different manner. It was some time before I could persuade myself to begin, and then I started cautiously, but even so I was alarmed when I saw the stream flowing rapidly down the passage, over the step and on to the pavement. Rain was coming down, but it did not even seem to mingle with the rain on the pavement as I had hoped, but to my probably distorted vision seemed a distinct and obvious stream, a thing apart from all else, which could not fail to be¬ tray me, while the sound it made as it descended on the pave¬ ment of the passage seemed loud and distinct. Suddenly some¬ one pushed past me and said something. I could not catch the words, but made quite sure that they had an allusion to myself, and I felt I was detected. But no! it was merely an apology for passing to look at something beyond, and before I could decide what to do the intruder had come and gone, and I verily believe that I remained undetected, though when I came to move it was obvious what had happened. In the country there is less risk and more pleasure on the whole; but a certain MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 143 amount of audacious joy comes to one in a city, born of the feeling that there are others near; they may know nothing about it, but one has a sort of daring pleasure in wondering and thinking: ‘If they only knew what I am doing, how aston¬ ished they would be!’ But the feeling, however vague, of a sympathetic spectator would cause delight and heighten the sen¬ sations.” The psychic state thus described might be termed a kind of disguised exhibitionism. There is a feature of the act of urination, frequently found in the case of women (though rarely in men), which further increases its resemblance to the act of sexual detumescence, and that is its tendency to be uncontrollable when once started. Florrie was well aware of this tendency, though not conscious of any parallelism herein with the sexual orgasm, and attaches great importance to it in heightening the pleasure of her vesical adventures. “I remember,” she writes, “standing in a country lane, ostensibly searching for blackberries, and being caught by a passer-by. There was no escape; I was in full swing. I shall never forget my sensations. The stream seemed to be drawn from me without my consent, and yet with even more pleasure than if I were doing it freely. [The italics are Florrie’s.] This curious feeling—that it is being drawn away by some unseen power which is determined that one shall do it—is an entirely feminine pleasure and a subtle charm. Real control seems gone; one feels it must come even though the whole world were present. One would stop if one could—a sudden footstep, a shadow falls, ‘Oh, do stop!’ one says to oneself, ‘there’s some¬ one coming!’ But no, it is not to be. The inexorable force wills otherwise, the stream continues to flow unabashed, and the gentle compulsion is pleasing. It is a curious and fascinating experience which assumes a magnitude that is intensified every second. There are moments when this becomes a positive de¬ light, although one may be overcome with shame that one al¬ lowed oneself to begin. It was an effort to start. All the audacity and shame were concentrated in that vital moment (sometimes difficult from sheer nervousness)—that pause as though Nature hesitated before taking the irrevocable step, and 144 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. then that feeling. ‘Oh, it’s coming!’ and the breathless start. After that nothing seems to matter. One is no longer respon¬ sible and can give oneself up to pure enjoyment. One doesn t want to stop really and one revels in the idea that one cannot, though sometimes shame and fear are so mingled that pure delight cannot exist. But even then there is a fierce charm in the torrent that binds one to its will by a mighty force. The episodes of this urolagnic type just narrated have not been dated because they have occurred frequently after the first experience, without greatly varying in character, and Florrie soon acquired skill in conducting them (“though I cannot say, she remarks, “that even with open drawers I always managed successfully to escape quite dry”). But the act never became a compulsion nor the thought of it an obsession. It may be suspected that it has sometimes been carried out when not ab¬ solutely necessary, for Florrie is not ordinarily affected by any tendency either to polyuria or to vesical irritability, conditions that are both apt to be associated with urolagnia. But if that is so Florrie was not aware of it; she simply regarded these in¬ cidents as due to a physical need, occurring in a public place, and when satisfied producing mingled feelings of shame and pleasure. It is only lately that she has realized that the pleas- ure is of a sexual character. At the age of twenty-one, when these experiences began, Florrie had reached full physical and mental development and was enjoying excellent health. She was already above the average in size and weight (weighing at this time 140 pounds), robust and active. She was working at her painting and at the same time her mind was opening out in various directions, and she was becoming eagerly interested in social and literary questions. She still had no conscious sexual preoccupations, and was completely innocent of sexual knowledge and sexual experi¬ ences. At the age of twenty-two she was for a short time slightly troubled by what she thinks may have been ovarian neuralgia. A friend, who was anxious to help on a young doctor, induced her to go to him to be “examined.” She had MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 145 not the slightest idea what this meant, but lay on a sofa and felt something hurting her. She was horrified to learn after¬ wards from her friend that the doctor had inserted his finger and she wondered how this could be possible without a ore- liminary incision. The friend assured her that it was good to be examined as “it made it easier when one married.” This cryptic saying filled Florrie with wonder, but she was too shy to ask what it meant. She was told she had slight congestion of the womb. It quickly disappeared and she has never had any other sexual trouble of a physical character. About this time, when staying with friends, there was a man of about thirty-five, also visiting at the same house, who showed a liking for her. He used to take her on his knee and kiss her. This gave her no more pleasure than if done by a woman and aroused no sexual feeling. But during the same visit a notable incident occurred. A little girl of six, who was very fond of Florrie, proved troublesome, and her mother re¬ solved to birch her. Florrie, to her own surprise, made no protest or attempt to save the child. “She was, I could see,” Florrie remarks, “profoundly affected at being punished before me, and remembering my own childhood I ought to have saved her. Instead of that, I felt positive enjoyment when she was hoisted on to the table, her clothes turned over her head, and the birch well applied. She kicked and screamed, but I felt rooted to the spot. I couldn’t interfere. It had for me a strange fascination.” The significance of this incident will be revealed by the subsequent history. For the most part Florrie was so absorbed in study, in art, in the widening of her intellectual horizon, that she gave no thought to love. There was, indeed, an affection of an ex¬ clusively sentimental character, and lasting for two years, for a professor whose lectures she attended. He wrote touching letters and one day kissed her. She was pleased at this mark of affection and believes that if he had then proposed an elope¬ ment she would have agreed. But her senses were quite un¬ touched. Even when one day in a cab he opened her blouse, took out her breast and sucked the nipple, she believes she felt 10 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 146 no sexual pleasure. She declined an invitation to come to his bedroom in her dressing gown and nightdress when in the same house with him, as she was sleeping with her sister, and she also had a vague idea that such a visit might lead to pregnancy. But she had no keen disappointment at missing what the pro¬ fessor described as “a lover’s embrace.” She eventually found out that this man was married. The whole episode left no deep impression. We now, however, approach a highly important epoch in Florrie’s life. Even from the age of sixteen, when she became a keen suffragette, Florrie had believed in the equality of men and women. In theory she regarded it as a worthy ambition for a woman to imitate men and to seek to eliminate all that is femi¬ nine. With this she had a horror of man’s dominancy and a hatred of his “cruelty” to woman in the past. And nothing filled her with such seething wrath as the knowledge that in the past, and sometimes even in the present, men beat their wives. She could not even speak of this subject, her emotions were too strong. As to the word obey in the mai riage service, she regarded it as an insult to the whole sex, though in spite of this purely mental defiance, her disposition, as she ad¬ mits, is really much more to obey than to command. At the age of twenty-five Florrie wrote an article which was published in a leading Review, dealing with the ethics of force; in a'well-reasoned and comprehensive way she mar¬ shaled and criticized the arguments in favor of the rule of force, and argued against militarism, and against all exaltation of merely physical strength, as opposed to progress as well as to the instincts and interests of women, who have passed the stage when brute force appeals to them. Her views, as she herself expresses it, were an external crust plastered over her real self. We now approach a new stage in Florrie’s develop¬ ment. From the period of adolescence she had lived on the surface of consciousness, responsive to the normal influences of her environment, and reacting to this on the whole normally. But they had not touched her deep, personal impulses repressed beneath the surface of consciousness. Now these concealed MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 147 and arrested impulses began to stir, to surge towards the sur¬ face, and to seek such devious paths of expression as they could find. At the age of twenty-eight, still cherishing her abstract hatred of man, she chanced to read an article by a man on Why Man rules Woman/’ Here all the old-fashioned con¬ ventional arguments on the natural duty of a man to master a woman were crudely set forth: “In the good old days a man proved his superiority over a woman in no uncertain fashion. If she betrayed any symptoms of rebellion he simply took a lash and instilled into her a more satisfactory train of thought; she accepted the lesson meekly and loved him all the more. The good honest laborer who bestowed upon his wife a sound thrashing is rarely extolled by his fellowmen as a redeemer of the rights and privileges of mankind. It is a sad fact, but nevertheless a true one, that the more a man beats a woman the more she admires him.” Florrie read and writhed. Others had also read; there was a storm of protest and feminine rage. Much of this was so silly and illiterate in expression that a new and unexpected impulse arose in Florrie. Merely to annoy the feminine protesters, for the sake of argument (so it seemed to her), she entered the ranks of the letter-writers against the women who refused to let men rule, upholding instead the original writer who advocated chastisement. Under different pseudonyms in several letters, she used her literary ability to argue from history and experience that it is well for a just and educated man to possess the power to chastise a perverse wife, and that, far from resenting it, she loves and respects him as never before; done moderately and in love it was not only harm¬ less, but was beneficial, calculated to restore peace when every¬ thing else had failed. Then other women, following her ex¬ ample, also wrote on somewhat similar lines. It seemed to Florrie when she wrote these letters that she was playing a superficial intellectual game. But when we bear in mind her earlier history we shall realize, as she later realized, that she was obeying a deep instinct, which came into consciousness in 148 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. the only way in which at this stage it could come and be ac¬ cepted. That there was really a deep impulse here at work is shown by the accompanying revival of day-dreaming which for more than twelve years past had ceased to occupy her. The day¬ dreams were now of more adult character, but exclusively de¬ voted to whipping. They now chiefly depicted wives whipped by their husbands. Instead of disgust and horror at man s tyranny over woman, Florrie found herself beginning to like the idea, to feel that it would be pleasant to be in subjection to a wise and good man who would thus correct her. The humiliation naturally had a charm, and wife-beating no longer seemed so dreadful a thing, nor men such monsters. Without in the least suspecting that they had any sexual origin, Florrie now invented stories with whipping as the climax, stories of disobedient and ill-tempered wives who were thoroughly thrashed and so reformed. The husband, it will be seen, had taken the place of the mother or school-mistress of the young girl’s day-dreams. “In imagination I saw an ill- tempered wife just stepping into a cab to run away when up comes the furious husband, dismisses the cab, quickly escorts her upstairs to the bedroom, and locks the door. Then he opens a drawer, takes out a short, flexible riding whip, and in spite of her cries and entreaties, forces her face downward on to the bed, pulls up her skirts, strips off her drawers, and then whip! whip! on the bare buttocks, flanks, and calves, until she kicks and screams with pain, imploring him to desist. But he only leaves off when she has been well punished. She then sobs and is penitent. Sometimes I made him tie her wrists and ankles. The whipping was not too severe. But the thought that this was frightfully indecent gave me a wicked thrill; and finally that he could make me endure physical pain, even this was attractive.” This first adult outbreak of interest in whip¬ ping and flagellatory day-dreaming was severe while it lasted, and she could think of nothing else, day or night. But in two months the day-dreams faded away, and the series of flagel- lational letters, the writing of which gave her the same relief MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 149 as day-dreams, was brought to an end. During this period, it is interesting to note, she was moved to take photographs of her own nates, not, it seemed to her, out of admiration of her body, but to enable her to realize the imagined scenes. But though there was no conscious sexual influence, Florrie's views of the relationship of men and women and her general social ideas were modified. A year or so later Florrie became engaged. There seems to have been no question of deep affection on her part. She had no thoughts of a sexual nature, and she never day-dreamed of her fiance whipping her. She simply wished to marry in order to avoid being an old maid. This engagement was broken off. But at length, at the age of thirty, she married a physician, about twice her own age, of high character and amiable dis¬ position, much esteemed in the city in which he practises. There was no question of passion on either side, but he has always treated her with great kindness, and she cherishes much regard and affection for him. There have been no marital relationships. By the time she married Florrie had begun to realize for the first time, as a result of accumulated hints and mysterious remarks from vari¬ ous sources, that there is a physical act in marriage. Concern¬ ing its exact nature she was still ignorant. Some people hinted that it was very pleasurable; others described it as “horrid,” and one said that “it makes you feel lower than the beasts of the fields.” In view of this conflicting evidence Florrie con¬ sulted a girl friend who was astonished and incredulous at her ignorance, and replied: “Everyone knows; Nature teaches them.” But Florrie felt that Nature had not taught her. “I guessed” she writes, “it was something painful since I had read in Restoration Plays of the bride's screams the first night, which everyone expected to hear, and that the next day her brothers and others taunted her with not being able to walk properly, and made her show off for their amusement. (I thought this very horrid and was glad those days were past.) Then I had heard of brides fainting, and altogether I couldn't make out where the pleasure came in, since it seemed full of 150 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. woe for the bride. I wondered why any girl wanted to be married, and came to the conclusion that they put up with the conjugal act as one puts up with having a tooth extracted. I even once propounded to a girl friend the theory that it would be nice if one could live with one s husband as a brother. She seemed astonished, and said: ‘But it wouldn’t be marriage! The truth was that my sex instincts were dormant, and though I was capable of sentimental affection towards men I did not think of them as sexual beings. So when I married I made up my mind with a kind of heroism to endure whatever happened. I dreaded it, yet I was prepared for it. It never once occurred to me that a bride ought to have some anticipation of pleasure. I had, too, been brought up to think any advances on the part of a woman meant immodesty and indecency. I had always regarded a bride as a passive instrument for the use of the man—something he enjoyed like a mince-pie or a glass of champagne. I was unaware that she enjoyed any pleasure, be¬ yond that she was giving to the man. I had a vague idea that she was supposed to be dying to have a baby and he could sup¬ ply it. But the desire for the baby did not possess me. I con¬ soled myself by thinking that greater warmth might follow my initiation into the mysteries. I wondered if others were like me. A lady had told me that her mother had said to her as a bride: ‘Good bye, and remember that whatever you have to go through your mother had to go through the same.’ That was all she had to tell about it.” On the wedding night her bridegroom dallied with her a little, complained much of the springy nature of the bed, and finally turned over and went to sleep, not waking till morning. Florrie felt relieved and slept also. Days and nights passed, and her husband made no further allusion to this subject. Florrie followed his example, considering that it was not for her to make advances. Yet she thought it rather strange. There had been no violent love on either side at the outset. As time went on, and they grew fonder of each other (they have continued throughout to be much attached) the husband made an attempt at coitus. It failed. She lay quite still, as he MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 151 told her, but when the attempt was unsuccessful he blamed her and said it was due to her coldness. She was grieved, but felt there was nothing she could do in the matter. All further attempts were unsuccessful, although erection and ejaculation occurred, and the husband recognized that it was hopeless. He fondles her lovingly, and he appreciates the way in which she accepts the situation without making allusion to it. In a photograph taken shortly before marriage Florrie appears at the age of thirty as a bright, attractive, fully de¬ veloped woman. She is plump, but though the hips are pro¬ nounced there is no superfluous fat. During the four succeed¬ ing years she continued on the whole to pursue the same work and interests which had occupied her before marriage; grad¬ ually, however, her mental life began to be overcome by an in¬ creasing lassitude, and she found herself losing interest in her old pursuits. She no longer had the same impulse to work or to paint. She attributed this in part to the fact that she was no longer living in the bracing climate she had always been used to, but in a relaxing atmosphere. There may have been an element of truth in this. But it is probable that a more fundamental cause lay in the subconscious sphere. In any case, six years after the first attack of what Florrie terms the “whipping craze,” there came a relapse, this time in a much more intense, serious, and prolonged form. She first noticed that she would wake up in the morning feeling perturbed and irritable, although quite calm when she went to bed. She is habitually good-tempered, but on these oc¬ casions she would get up feeling an imperative need to quarrel with someone and a wild explosion of anger would burst forth, the victim usually being a servant. These outbursts distressed her greatly; she could not understand them, although later she vaguely divined their sexual significance. To us they may be intelligible if we know that anger is sometimes a transmuted form of latent sexual energy, and an explosion of anger a kind of vicarious detumescence. 1 1 1 have discussed this point in Studies , vol. iii, 2d ed., pp. 172 ct seq. 152 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. Suddenly these fits of temper were entirely replaced by day-dreams of whipping. Yet, even on the surface, there re¬ mained a connection. Whipping in the day-dreams was re¬ garded as a punishment for bad temper, a kind of restraining force. It even had a calming effect. Referring to a later stage than we have yet reached Florrie writes: “I do so long for someone to whip me when I feel in a bad temper!” She men¬ tions also that once, when she felt on the verge of an outburst of anger, she whipped herself rather than victimize anyone else, and so obtained relief. “Whipping,” she remarks, “acted like a soothing bottle to a fretful child.” When the day-dreams were temporarily suspended she would often be irritable and cross, although she felt she ought to overcome this feeling. It is clear, however, that all through this phase Florrie was not consciously aware that it was relief she was seeking. When the idea was at last suggested to her she recognized its truth, but it seemed new. The day-dreams were in substance identical with those of the earlier period before marriage. But they were now more varied, more intense, more vividly realized, more absorbing. “Sometimes,” Florrie writes, “I have pictured myself as having eloped with a groom and derived much enjoyment from a day¬ dream in which this coarse cruel man ill-treated me. I picture myself sick of him, loathing him and his coarse surroundings. Then I picture his growing exasperation, his intolerance of ‘fine lady' airs and graces, his complaints, and at last his threats to whip me. My fury and indignation know no bounds. The thought of this at his hands is intolerable, but yet in my day¬ dreams it gives me a horribly fascinating, pleasurable, creepy feeling to be roughly handled by this odious man. I know that in reality it would be intolerable, for, as a matter of fact, I hate and loathe common men and feel as if I should scream if they were to touch me with their coarse hands. But in this awful day-dream I have a fiendish delight in the triumph of the man’s sheer physical force, in being held down forcibly w r hile he ap¬ plied the whip unsparingly to my bare flesh. The feeling that MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 153 I couldn t get away, that I was really hating and loathing the enforced whipping, heightened the sensation.” I'lorrie had chanced to come across a little low class weekly paper which was full of letters from correspondents about whipping. It would seem, indeed, that this chance had had something to do with arousing her renewed and excited interest in the subject. It also led her, as in the earlier period of flagel- lational obsession, to write to the papers on the subject. This time, however, she wrote to papers of high standing, and in a more daring manner, while her literary skill ensured the publi¬ cation of her letters. She found that this occupation moment- ai ily eased the obsession although it was all the time steadilj increasing in intensity. Dozens of letters were written in this way, and published in more or less prominent quarters. She who had been so convinced an opponent of force in human affairs, and so vigorous an advocate of women’s rights, became the opponent of the suffrage and argued that women should be the slaves of men. She would, for instance, join in discussions on the Mar¬ riage Service of the Anglican Church and write as follows, over the signature “A Contented Wife,” in a leading religious newspaper: “We have daily proof that loving submission is by no means regarded as slavery by the average woman. Husbands (in England at least) are not tyrants, and we feel this slight put upon them by the suggestion that the word ‘obey’ is dis¬ agreeable to us. We have the instinct of obedience, and in all things lawful are glad to exercise it. As a married woman I, in company with others, protest against this absurd objection to the word ‘obey.’ Husbands, in my opinion, would do well to assert themselves more than they do, and a little more discipline in the home might check the modern tendency to gambling.” In other letters she plainly advocates “mild chastisement” by the husband as “women respect physical punishment much more than anything else.” Of course these letters called out a flood of other letters from indignant feminine correspondents. That was the time of the Suffragette agitation and Florrie en¬ tered with spirit into the discussion as an enthusiastic advocate 154 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. of the physical chastisement of suffragettes committing out¬ rages. “Our chief virtues,” she wrote, “are the outcome of the discipline we received in the past, and now that it is removed women are beginning to revolt.” In this connection F lorrie had a fright. She sent to an important newspaper, in all serious¬ ness," a day-dream of a suffragette who, caught in the act of committing an outrage on property by other women, was spanked until she promised never to do the like again. The letter attracted attention and was copied into other papers; lawyers and professors wrote to defend the cause of the suf¬ fragette; it was proposed to get up a subscription for the “victim”; the Police tried to trace the affair. Finally the public concluded that it had been hoaxed. “Really,” as Florrie writes, “nothing was further from my thoughts than a hoax or a joke. My only aim was to give myself a nice (as I now recognize) sexy feeling. Thus may one be carried away by the terrific impetus which literally makes one do things against one’s will. At the time I wrote it I thought I meant it all, but I couldn t trace its source. I had a vague idea it wasn t my real self to write such a lot of insane nonsense—diametrically opposed to all I had written and advocated in my earlier days when my brain was at its best. But it gave me immense satisfaction.” Florrie was extremely ashamed of these letters and could not bear the thought of anyone knowing she wrote them. The impulse to write them entirely ceased immediately after she came under my observation and found a more wholesome chan¬ nel of self-expression. Florrie’s excitement in her obsession was now wound up to such a pitch that she felt she must give actual realization to the pictured sensation of her day-dreams. This was a definitely new stage in her development. Hitherto the day-dream had been an end in itself. We may remark, indeed, that Florrie had already for more than ten years past shown an aptitude, even demanding courage, to put imagined scenes into action. It is true that her vesical exploits had seemed to her to be only due to the call of an imperative physiological need. But the desire to feel the actual sting of the whip now seemed an equally MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 155 imperative need. She had reached a point where she could think of nothing else but whipping and had continually to lie, whether in bed or on a sofa or on the floor, face downwards, imagining that she was being whipped. The primary object was to secure relief by attaining the practical physical culmination of these imaginings. She tried in succession a hair-brush, a slipper, a strap, a razor strop, a small stick, a birch. These were not al¬ together satisfactory. At last she found an implement, appar¬ ently a lady’s small riding whip, which was exactly right. It was of Russian leather with silver mounts, thirty-six inches long, whalebone covered with gut, and a knotted tip. This gave more pain than anything else, at first almost more pain than she could bear, though it never drew blood. She would apply it after breakfast, first removing her drawers. This whip —though the first time she applied it she thought she must be mad to do so absurd a thing which she had never heard of any¬ one else doing—became her fetich and the very sight of it soon gave her a pleasurable sensation. (When she read that it was the custom in Russia for a bride to have a silver mounted whip in her trousseau she thought that the best part of the ceremony.) Now this whip corresponded exactly to the whip with which her father whipped her as a child. Yet, strange as it may seem to those who are unacquainted with psychic analysis, it was not until a later period, when she began to study her own history, that Florrie realized that the whip she had once dreaded, which for many early years had fastened itself on her mind as an object of sacred terror, had now re-appeared unrecognized to become a beloved fetich. It may appear yet stranger that even when at length she had recognized in her fetich the whip of her childhood she still failed to see, until the idea was clearly brought before her, any emotional connection between the ex¬ periences of her childhood and these experiences of adult age. The whipping was a satisfaction to her, but it brought no climax of relief. She would sometimes whip until she was ex¬ hausted, but still without any relief. She had, however, no clear idea as to what kind of result was to be expected. As she afterwards realized, she was trying, without knowing it, 156 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. to produce orgasm. But she was supremely ignorant. The pre¬ valent idea in her mind was that there would be some satisfac¬ tion if blood came. (We see here the germ of sadism, of algolagnia, which is often equally innocent.) Her thoughts were entirely astray from the sexual sphere, and she was further deceived by a craving to be whipped also on remote parts of the body, arms and legs, palms of the hands, anywhere in fact except on the breasts and abdomen. But though no orgasm was consciously desired, and none took place, the intensity with which Florrie realized these day¬ dreams, and the emotional excitement which accompanied these whippings, are evidenced by the fact that she now for the first time discovered that as a result of day-dreaming and whipping the vulva was bathed with mucus. She had not noticed this in the earlier phase of day-dreaming before marriage, and she now began to realize, for the first time, that day-dreaming must be connected with sex. This was a revelation, but it had no in¬ fluence, in one direction or the other, on the course of the phase she was passing through. It seems to have led her to place the hand to the vulva while applying the whip and about this time she learnt for the first time of masturbation through reading Dr. Nichols's Esoteric Anthropology (at one period almost the only popularly written manual of sex which reached respect¬ able women) ; it was the first book on sex she had seen, and she here learnt for the first time that mucous discharge accom¬ panied sexual excitement, and first heard of the clitoris. But her manipulations seem to have been slight, only faintly pleasur¬ able, and in any case orgasm was not thereby induced. With these accessory developments the day-dream grew still more potent and was still more assiduously cultivated. It brought a certain amount of soothing and relief, it enabled her to overcome her fits of irritable temper, but the obsession con¬ tinued to be interminable, because she never reached a point of adequate satisfaction, even with the aid of the actual whip. The day-dream assumed various forms. Sometimes Florrie would imagine that she had just returned from the theater in low dress, and was getting up a quarrel with the Man, a rather MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 157 indistinct person, never anyone in particular, but a vague hus¬ band, and always very anxious to assert his authority. The quarrel would not arise from any love of quarreling, but wholly because she wishes to provoke him to strike her. Finally, white with rage at her exasperating conduct, he jumps up, pushing back his chair, and seizing one bare arm violently slaps the other. When he has finished with that arm he starts on the other arm, and then on her back until her skin is red all over, and at this point she experiences a “sexy” feeling. She im¬ agines the Man's attitude towards her to be that one would have to a small child whom one slapped, corrected, or petted with a safe sense of proprietorship. It would give her a delici¬ ous feeling to think that he claimed her as his own, to do what he would with, to say what he liked to. The sense of being thus possessed, the fact that the Man dared to whip her, was a supreme attraction. This was intensified if the day-dream pro¬ ceeded, and he dragged her upstairs, sobbing and protesting, kicking and biting, until, landed in the bedroom, he locked the door. Anger and terror were now mingled with strange delight in a relationship so intimate and so daring. The whipping, al¬ though severe, and with a tendency to grow severer, was never felt as ever bordering on cruelty, although sometimes the pain was almost past endurance. When it was over Florrie felt re¬ duced to a state of sobs and penitence, with a greater love and respect than before for the Hero who then ordered her about, and made her do things she disliked. Florrie's phantasy, it will be seen, was taking on a masochistic tone. In all these day¬ dreams the hero was the master and she the slave; he was on the throne and she grovelled at his feet. “If,” she writes, “you add to this picture a whip instead of a sceptre in the hand of the King, you get a fair idea of my erotic conception of the re¬ lation of the sexes.” She could never understand a man wish¬ ing to be whipped by a woman; “it seems unnatural and horrid.” A day-dream of an Eastern harem would much excite her sexually. Its luxury or magnificence made no impression on her. The idea that fascinated her was that the women are in bondage, slaves to one man—who is free—and that idea was 158 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. overpowering. At this time Florrie liked reading the narratives of Europeans’ visits to harems, and was impressed by their general failure, as it seemed to her, to comprehend the Oriental standpoint. It must be understood that Florrie had no desire to be treated with cruelty, and in her day-dreams the hero was never inspired by cruel motives. Any callousness on his part would not be tolerated. He is always really fond of her, and if he seems to be cruel he means it for her good. This was the case in all Florrie’s whipping dreams. They were not a form of cruelty (she hates all forms of cruelty and has very strong feelings about cruelty to animals) any more than they were, consciously, a form of voluptuous enjoyment. They were al¬ ways associated with the idea of punishment. The day-dreams thus remained intimately connected, little as she herself was aware of the fact, with that core of infantile experience in the early whippings inflicted by her father. The hero certainly lacked respect, and that, indeed, was a word which in her more sexual moments Florrie hated. At such moments she felt—shocking as the admission seemed to her—that.to be treated without respect would be a delicious sensation, even in its savagery. There were limitations, indeed. She could not, for instance, imagine herself enjoying the lack of respect of a vulgar common man who kicked her or gave her a black eye. But she would sometimes in day-dreams imagine a sort of satyr man, wild and uncouth and uncivilized, who possessed a greater fascination than the typical knight. “One sees these queer satyrs,” she writes, “in early Renaissance paintings, and they pursue nymphs, and people say, ‘How hor¬ rible Y But they somehow typify the primitive forces of Nature, crude physical force with a touch of cruelty. Hideous and barbaric, they yet represent something that is lacking in life. I am quite sure that the nymphs liked the fauns, and it gave them a lovely sexy feeling when a satyr dragged off an unwill¬ ing nymph. But it is only in day-dreams that the satyr-man exists. In real life this embodiment of physical strength with¬ out brains is by no means fragrant of woods and streams; MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 159 more probably he reeks of onions, beer, and perspiration.” Usually, however, the attitude of the Man to the woman in Florrie’s day-dream has been that of the father to his child. She wanted to be treated like a naughty child. Even when in earlier years she used to write in favor of women’s rights and against man in the abstract, she was always conscious of that apparently contradictory feeling. She could not then account for it, and its presence rather annoyed her. When Florrie adopted the use of the whip as an aid to her day-dreams she attained a much higher degree of satisfaction than had before been possible. She was able to realize her day¬ dreams in imagination to a much greater extent. But the satisfaction was far from complete. The process was by no means the actualization of her day-dreams, for auto-flagella¬ tion had played no part in them. These dreams were normal to the extent that an attractive hero always played the essential part. Thus her method of satisfaction still left her craving for a congenial man to apply the punishment. It was natural that her thoughts should turn to her husband. He knew nothing whatever of her constant obsession and she never at any stage confided to him her ideas and feelings on this subject. But she made a few mild attempts to induce him to play a part in some degree corresponding to the hero of her dreams. These attempts were a complete failure. He felt too much love and respect to be able to bear the idea of hurting her, however slightly, even in play, nothing beyond a gentle pat, and treated a matter, which, had he known it, was absorbing all her vital energy, merely as a joke. She found, moreover, that the touch of his hand, in sexual manipulation, failed to produce any erotic excitation whatever. Her thoughts then turned in an¬ other direction. It so happened that in the course of her in¬ cursion into newspaper and letter-writing on the subject of flagellation she had come in touch by correspondence with a man, of lower social class than herself, who was without doubt the victim of a mania for active flagellation. Their interests were so congenial that they had carried on a considerable cor¬ respondence on the subject. This man, whom we will call N., 160 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. had written verses on whipping which he sent to Florrie for hei opinion. In one of his letters he stated that it gave him an erection to read about whipping and he desired to know if his letters on the subject made her wish to “tickle herself. At first Florrie could not make out what he meant, but at last it dawned on her; then at length she definitely realized that N. s desire to whip, and her own desire to be whipped, were both sexual. This correspondence doubtless still further stimulated her obsession. In any case, it continued to increase. When tired of whipping herself every morning (after breakfast) she would lie on the bed face down and think about whipping and long for a man to whip her. Sometimes she would throw her¬ self on the floor or on the sofa, always face down, with this craving, while the vulva became more and more bathed with moisture. She would try to bestir herself actively in other in¬ terests, but was powerless. She would begin writing articles on art and other subjects, as of old, but the imagery of her dreams would come before her, her thoughts wandered, she could not fix her attention, and had to lie down on her face and indulge her dream. Her husband had gone out for the day; she was left to her own devices, and she could not escape from her obsession. Then she would write to N. and he would respond, describing whippings that were largely imaginary, but which gave her what she described as a “ghastly pleasure. She grew to dislike society, though when staying away from home with friends the obsession was relieved; but even then it would return at night, and if there was a library she would find herself hunting for any book that might touch on the sub¬ ject that fascinated her. She could read Boccaccio unmoved, but when she reached the Ninth Day with the story of Giosefo beating his wife she would become excited, and the vulva grow moist. She could not see the “Taming of the Shrew” with¬ out longing for Petruchio to beat Kate. Shops where whips were sold and exhibited in the windows offered more attractions than any jewellers’ or milliners’; she would stand before them gloating over the display and experiencing what she came in time to recognize was sexual feeling; once she walked two MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 161 miles merely to see such a shop. This condition she had fallen into caused her much alarm. She would sometimes say to herself: “\ou are awfully mad; I am sure you will end your days in an asylum.” Then she would regret the passing of the time when asylum patients were flogged and yearn for those past ages when men chastized women without scruple. But there were such men even today as she began to realize (al¬ though her husband regarded the matter as a joke), and N. was dying to do it. Finally Florrie agreed to meet N. The meeting was ar¬ ranged to take place in a strange city, midway between their respective homes, where N. took a room in a hotel, ostensibly for the night. Florrie found him a powerful and fairly attrac¬ tive man, intelligent and genial, though not refined or well- bred, with nothing about him to suggest cruelty, and much of her own age. He had no personal attraction for her, though she considered him “a fascinating barbarian,” and she felt no impulse of trust in him; it was solely the common and com¬ plementary obsession of flagellation which brought them to¬ gether. When they entered the room and he locked the door, she began to feel alarm and put her hand on the lock, but he dragged her away saying he was not going to stand any non¬ sense, and as she had not come there to be “respected” she made up her mind for the worst. N. was much excited from the first, tremulous and perspiring. He wished to tie her down but to this she objected, and he placed her on the bed face downwards, pulled up her clothes, unfastened her drawers, and pulling her thighs apart, carefully examined her and began to tickle the vulva. She did not relish being handled by the man’s coarse hands and remonstrated that this was not in the bargain, but he made a coarse reply and proceeded to fondle and rub her nates. There was no question of coitus. At last he took a birch which he applied unsparingly, touching up the tender spots inside the thighs. Then he used a thin small riding whip (like her own fetich) which made her smart horribly, and it seemed to delight him to see her writhing. He would pause between each stroke to watch her terror at the expectation of 11 162 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. the next, though she never dared to utter a cry, rather to N.’s disappointment, for he would have liked her to resist and scream. She merely laughed nervously all the time, though the pain was acute. He also took her between his legs, bending her over his left knee in a grip of iron, and using the birch with all his might. No blood came, which also disappointed N., who explained that he took special delight in the sight of flowing blood. Florrie was, however, covered with black bruises, and the marks of the whip showed for a fortnight after. “I wanted it, I craved it, and I got it!” And she added: It was a terrific relief too. I enjoyed it thoroughly.” The relief was so great that for months afterwards she was able to re¬ frain from whipping herself altogether, and the obsession was never again so overmasteringly powerful, although there were still times when it was continuous. She felt “horribly ashamed at this episode. She was a well-bred and cultured woman, one, moreover, who had sought to raise the status of her sex, and, as she herself truly said, she was “proper and sedate, so shy and stiff with men they would never dream of taking a liberty, and she could not fail to feel ashamed at the recollection of that “awful ceremony.” “I really felt that I was mad to countenance such an indecent proceeding, but I was goaded on by a desire of such intensity that it overcame all other feel- ings.” Yet it was significant that there was a fascination even in & the humiliation. “If,” writes Florrie, “a woman has the real whipping obsession she gradually comes to delight in the thought of her own degradation and physical suffering. It is hard to analyze, it includes so much. To begin with, when the man locks the door and approaches her with the whip she feels no delight, but cowers, perhaps trembles, and looks at him im¬ ploringly like a cowed dog about to be whipped. She shudders at first and half regrets her longings. This of course adds zest to the man’s feelings. Then the exposure which follows, dreaded, liked, and yet repulsive to a sensitive woman strictly brought up. The shame, confusion and mental agitation are almost worse than the physical pain. Then he holds her down and the pain begins. Most women can endure a fair amount MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 163 without flinching—I can—but it seems that the man feels no satisfaction as long as the whip produces no emotional distur¬ bance, even though the skin be covered with weals. It was only the last six cuts that were becoming more than I could bear, stinging cuts on the parts which were sore from being already lashed. I called out in vain protest. Strange, but true, one’s keenest enjoyment (if so one may call it) is when the strokes are given in defiance of one’s wishes and have passed the limit of endurance! The man, too, feels his keenest thrill in those cruel strokes, not heeding cries, but taking extra pains to give a cut on the thigh where it is most tender. He begins by hesitating—he couldn’t hurt one, he is timid. But the more he whips the more he wants to go on; weals don’t satisfy, he wants blood. He knows it causes pain, but he must go on. When it was over, my man said he would like to tie me up and use the cat ! He was quite exhausted with his exertions, though he took his coat off before he began. So you see the gradual de¬ velopment from mild day-dreams to this final exultation in man’s physical power over woman.” It was at this stage, less than twelve months after the episode with N., that I first came in contact with Florrie. Then and for some months later she was in much the same condition resulting from that incident. She was, that is to say, relieved from the most acute form of her obsession, yet always haunted by it, always restless and craving for gratification, yet always discontented with her craving, dissatisfied with herself and with what she felt to be the decline from her old self. She was not hopeful of improvement, though believing that under some conditions a cure might be possible, and it was not with that object she had written to me, but rather with the idea, after reading my study of “Love and Pain,” that I might be in- terested to know of her case. “As the outside world sees me,” she wrote at this time, “I am just an ordinary normal woman, fond of my people and my husband, and leading a good moral, if somewhat quiet, life. If I have had to yield to circumstances in the planning of my life, no one knows it—or cares. The fact that I have wasted 164 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. my time most awfully, and deteriorated lately, is not evident to them. Of course I feel disgusted with myself sometimes. Now I am trying to free myself from my errors! I still think, and know, that to love any man is for me to be his slave. It would give me sexual delight, thrills of pleasure, to be ordered about and punished. Equality would have no sexual charm whatever. To be treated like a child, to feel that the loved one possesses even one’s body, to beat at his will, to feel his superior strength gripping one—it is all delicious. Of course there might be dis¬ advantages, and one might weary of it, but, oh! what a woman suffers when she cannot indulge her particular sexual perver¬ sity! My brain has become powerless and my physical health lessened. I wish I could cure myself. Perhaps it will pass. I earnestly hope so, for it embitters my existence. My friends are of the intellectual variety, and I have never mentioned the subject to anyone but N., and I knew of his tendencies before¬ hand.” From this period on, although progress was slow, Florrie never again spoke so pessimistically about herself. It was an immense and immediate relief to be able to face her condition, to talk about it, and to know that her case was not unique nor her fate hopeless. “I have felt better,” she soon after wrote, “since I know others have suffered in the same way, and don’t feel quite such a lunatic as when I thought I was the only one in the world.” “It is because no one seems to trouble about these things,” she wrote again, “that they bulk so largely in life, affecting the health, and the temperament generally. The more one bottles it up the more explosive it becomes.” A con¬ siderable degree of relief was thus attained, and the tension, though not removed, was lessened. She sought to distract her attention from the craving for actual flagellation by directing it into other though mostly related channels. A period of ex¬ perimentation followed. She succeeded to some extent in dif¬ fusing her impulses, and in the diffusion gradually, naturally, spontaneously, she brought them nearer to normal courses. The obsession came back in force at intervals, especially at the menstrual periods, and then she just had to roll on the floor and MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 165 shiver with longing. She found some relief in simple day¬ dreams in bed, not usually followed by self-flagellation, in which she would lie face downward and imagine scenes of women seized by force and held down while men and boys performed coitus, afterwards whipping well. This introduction of the idea of normal coitus was new and spontaneous, and these day¬ dreams produced local sexual excitement, but not orgasm which, so far, she had never experienced. There was, as these day-dreams show, some shifting of ideals towards the normal center, with the beginnings even of pleasurable sensations in that center brought out by manual touch, not strictly masturba¬ tion, which somewhat earlier she had once or twice attempted, both roughly and gently, without the slightest result. At the same time the sight of the whip fetich lost something of its attraction. At this point a notable stage was reached in Florrie’s sexual evolution. Hitherto she had never experienced the or¬ gasm. Imperfect connection with her husband, erotic reverie, actual flagellation, attempts at masturbation, none of these ever led up to actual orgasm, although there had often been a high degree of sexual erethism with much mucous discharge. She had come to the conclusion that she was one of the women she had heard of who never experience the orgasm. At this period, however, early one morning, just after the end of the men¬ strual period, experiencing vague sexual feelings, her thoughts recurred to the whip which she had not used for a long time. She tried one or two strokes; it cut her painfully and she felt nothing but the pain. So she lay down on her face and thought over things. Why had whipping such attraction And why should that particular part of the body so enjoy being hit? She pondered, and gradually it came to her (“things are always so slow,” she remarked, “such ages in dawning when they have to do with sex, so far as I am concerned”) that if she was so sensitive to these blows on the outside perhaps, even without whipping, she might feel some sensation by penetrating further inside, though any approach towards the rectum, which she felt sure had nothing to do with her sensations, had no 166 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. attraction. She placed her hand, however, between the nates touching the anus and extending to the vagina, moving about a little, and tried to imagine it was a man’s hand. “All at once my thighs and legs began to twitch and move in an involuntary manner, my heart began to beat more quickly, and waves of warmth seemed to pass up my body to my head. The vulva seemed to distend terrifically, and become springy, so that my bottom was sent up and down as if I were on springs. Then followed curious sucking-up sensations at intervals, contractions that seemed to want to draw in something. I had by now re¬ moved my hand, but the feeling went on just the same. At last (after a few seconds, I suppose, really) it was all over, leaving wetness, and I was rather frightened, like a child that has accidentally set ofif an alarm.” But she repeated the ex¬ perience three times in succession, with nearly the same result each time, and then got up, very white, and rather shaky. She realized that, for the first time in her life, in a totally unex¬ pected way, a way that seemed to her rather horrid so that she was never tempted to repeat it, she had experienced the orgasm. This manifestation of the orgasm is a fact of great signifi¬ cance. We see that Florrie’s gluteal obsession had a genuine physical basis, being associated with a corresponding sexual orientation, natural or acquired, and probably both, in the direc¬ tion of the anus. We realize how deeply implanted in the organism are these complexes which, to the superficial observer, often seem to be entirely psychic, mere vagaries, arbitrary and capricious, the result of accidental external circumstances. At the same time it must be realized that this manifestation of the orgasm, although occurring under abnormal conditions, yet marked a real stage in the progress towards normality. On previous occasions she had frequently whipped herself until exhausted, yet never produced orgasm. But after this incident, on one occassion, when the fiagellatory obsession was abating, and she had not whipped herself for some months, there was a temporary recurrence of the old longing and she applied the riding whip one morning. For the first time in her experience this application produced definite sexual feelings followed by MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 167 orgasm, though not of the intensity reached in the experiences just described. It must be added that, although Florrie had never experienced the orgasm in connection with the anus or any other region before the occasion described, she had at a somewhat earlier date experienced a slightly sexual feeling on the insertion of an enema nozzle, and had afterwards tried this as an experiment, thus producing a distinctly sexual sensation by pushing it in and out, a more distinctly sexual sensation, she remarked, than that produced by the insertion of a vaginal syringe. Another incident may be mentioned, in connection with an increasing sexual sensibility of the vulva region, to indicate Florrie’s slow approach towards the normal state. Sometimes, especially in the morning, as the obsession of whip¬ ping became rarer, she would now feel an intense longing to rub herself against something. This troubled her, though she recognized that it was a substitute for the de¬ sire to whip herself, but as it persisted she tried to relieve it, at first by riding astride a bedstead, a pillow, or other object. Then by much thinking she spontaneously devised the idea of a round india rubber ball to secure the desired end; she obtained one, rather larger than an egg but round, and stuffed it into the vulva, finding that it produced con¬ tractions at once, with much wetness, and a very soothing effect. “I felt pacified, like a baby that is given a teat to suck! It stuck in of itself, and when I walked upstairs produced a lovely soothing sensation, but I only allowed it to remain about ten minutes, as it caused so much wetness, and I had my doubts as to whether I was doing a very nice or proper thing. I am not in the habit of doing such things to myself, but on this oc¬ casion I was mad to relieve the longing.” About two months after Florrie had for the first time ex¬ perienced the orgasm there occurred her first real erotic dream, with orgasm during sleep . 1 “It came to me just as I was going 1 1 may remark that this succession of events is in accordance with what I have elsewhere stated ( Studies, vol. i, 3d ed., p. 197), that it is the rule for women to experience the orgasm in sleep only after it has been experienced in waking life, a statement which has been criticized on insufficient grounds. 168 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. off to sleep (after having already been asleep once) and I was not sure at first whether I was awake or asleep. I lay face downwards on grass somewhere and a snake coiled itself round and round my naked body, and as it closed round me and drew me tight I had a delicious sensation. I knew it was a friendly snake and that it wanted to be nice to me, and I liked it in con¬ sequence. It is not now clear to me whether there were not two snakes, but I distinctly remember seeing one in a man s hand. He put it down between my legs, and it crawled up with a somewhat jerky movement, and I was not surprised at all when I felt it entering my body. Instead of horror it gave me a lovely sensation, and the part that was outside I clasped be¬ tween my thighs. It seemed to occupy a great space inside me, but I dreaded the moment when it would withdraw itself, and was just wondering what would finally happen when I suddenly awoke. I tried to cherish the illusion that the snake was there, but finally awoke properly and realized that one arm was fastened under my body and tightly clasped between my thighs. The vulva was contracting spasmodically. There was no revulsion of feeling, but the thought of the wriggling, writh¬ ing thing working its way up inside me gave me a delicious sensation. It was a long time before I shook it off. Now writ¬ ing this and thinking of snakes I still feel no horror. But I hope I shan’t see one at a picture house or anywhere for I am afraid it would excite me. This was the most definite sex dream I ever had and was simply luscious.” Florrie comments that she cannot remember dreaming of snakes previously, but had been reading of snakes the day before. She had seen snakes in the woods in France and their flexibility and writhing movement have a fascination for her. She connects this flexibility with her old preference for a pliable whip over a stick. “A snake is something like a whip ,” 1 and to picture a writhing snake makes a sexual appeal to her. The snake, it need scarcely be said, is a recognized symbol of the penis, but i The snake is, indeed, a symbol of the whip, and of the ancient Serb hero, Prince Kralyevich Marko, it was said that, when mounted on his steed, a serpent served him as bridle and another as a whip. MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 169 it has a greater resemblance to a whip, and thus naturally be- came identified in Florrie’s subconscious mind with her own erotic symbol. In this tentative and experimental period of transition there was, however, an interest which began to assume a certain stability, and became, in a sense, a substitute for the interest in whipping. This was an interest in the act of urination. It was not, as Florrie’s history will have shown, a new interest, but one of early appearance, which had never quite died out, and now, with the recession of the interest in whipping, it became prominent. It may be defined as a mild form of urolagnia, and it is important to understand that it never became, as the pas¬ sion for flagellation had been, an almost uncontrollable obses¬ sion, and never led, like the flagellatory mania, to those violent impulses and torturing apprehensions which had marked her auto-flagellatory phase. As Florrie herself recognized, while of a more peculiarly intimate and private character, it was also more nearly normal than the flagellatory obsession; it brought a certain measure of relief, and it indicated a real progress. Before describing this new phase, however, an incident must be narrated which definitely brought to an end the domi¬ nance of the earlier craving. Whipping had not lost all its fas¬ cination, but it had ceased to be an uncontrollable obsession dominating the whole personality, and leading to acts which might well have become dangerous for Florrie’s mental in¬ tegrity as well as her social position. She was able to write: “The whipping craze seems to have evaporated for the present after raging for four years, and I suppose I ought to be glad. I don’t know that I am exactly. I miss it in a way. It has left me as sexy as ever but in a vague and more general way.” The reality of the progress made was, however, at this period put to the test. At the moment when she thought the obsession was subsiding altogether a letter unexpectedly arrived from N., full of enthusiasm over flagellation, the craze for which pos¬ sessed him more than ever, and indicating that he had never met anyone so well suited to share in that enthusiasm as herself. At once the dying flame flared up into new life. She felt 170 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. ashamed of herself, she tried to escape from the reviving ardor but in vain. He wanted another interview. She had no liking for the man, even hated the idea of his coming near her, or touching her with a whip. Yet for a moment the impulse was overmastering, and she wrote to agree to the interview which this time was to be at her own house. The moment after she posted her letter she regretted it. She recalled all the progress she had made of late, the new standpoints of knowledge an self-control she had been reaching, her realization of the merely abstract, primitive, and animal nature of a sexual grati cation obtained through whipping, however intense and pleasurable it might be, and her new recognition of sex feelings as too in¬ timate and personal to be connected with anyone for whom she felt no love and respect. Florrie thus speedily recovered her self-command, revoked her first hasty decision, and wrote again to N. to explain that she could not, after all, grant him the in¬ terview, and no longer even desired it; so far as she was con¬ cerned all that was at an end. As soon as this second letter was despatched the revived obsession died down as suddenly as it had sprung up. This was a tremendous relief to Florrie. She felt genuinely grateful and glad. That, she thought, was the end of N. So far as her obsession was concerned, that was the end of N. But it was not the immediate end on his side. On the day and hour first appointed and afterwards cancelled, N. appeared at the house to Florrie’s consternation. She ex¬ plained that she had written to ask him not to come. He denied receiving the second letter (though later he inadvertently quoted a sentence from it) and still further agitated Florrie by raising his voice in excitement and demanding that at all events she should appoint another interview. At this point an afternoon caller was heard ringing the front door bell, and it became necessary to smuggle N. out of the drawing room immediately. He refused to leave the house. At this critical moment Florrie s feminine resourcefulness and presence of mind asserted them¬ selves. She remembered an isolated, unused room at the top of the house, cut off by a separate stair-case, and to her great relief N. consented to follow her there. There she locked him MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 171 in, after he had nervously asked her to assure him that he was safe. When her visitor in the drawing room had finished her call Florrie at once flew up to the locked room where she found N. in a rather frightened state, she was not clear why, and after some difficulty, still refusing to agree to any further interviews, though she was by no means feeling very brave—she suc¬ ceeded in cajoling him down and let him out through a back door in the garden. That was the last she saw or heard of him. His fascination was completely lost. He had succeeded in mak¬ ing himself both contemptible and ridiculous. The urolagnic interest, like the flagellatory interest, was, as we know, rooted in Florrie’s experience as a child when the two were in origin combined. The emotional reservoir, so clearly associated with the sexual sphere, which her childish whippings stimulated, was that of fear, and the bladder played the most prominent part in the fear reaction, on one occasion at least producing urination directly her father began to whip her. But that early common root will hardly suffice to explain why it was that the urolagnic element developed at this stage to take the place of the receding flagellatory element. Let us look into the matter a little more closely. We may then find that there are links of connection apart from that early com¬ mon origin. Florrie herself, who became so acute an analyst of her own experiences, pointed out the significant fact that in a woman there is invariably a mental association,—an association which has no existence in a man’s mind,—between the nates and the act of urination. The little girl’s drawers must be unfastened behind to permit of the act being accomplished and the grown woman must raise her clothes behind for the same act; even when, as is now so often the custom, she adopts the standing attitude in private, she usually raises the clothes behind, though, as the stream tends to take a forward direction, it would be more convenient to raise them in front. Thus, throughout life, in a woman’s mind there is an association between urina¬ tion and bared prominent nates. Custom, as Florrie empha¬ sizes, compels a woman to bare and protrude the nates and sit 172 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. for the purpose of urination, and when there is nothing to sit upon to squat, although, she adds, as far as decency goes, it might be much more modest to turn one s back to any stray passerby, and raise the skirts in front, towards a prote'tive bush; but this would be contrary to habit—and savour of a man!” Even when, as we have seen to be the case with Florrie, the practice of urination in the open without raising of the skirts is adopted, the prominence of the nates may still be as¬ serted, for, as Florrie discovered, the act is best performed in this attitude when bending forward slightly and so protruding the nates. She had noticed this in women abroad and referred especially to a peasant woman she had once come across, with her skirts raised over her head, wearing no drawers, and bend¬ ing far forward. “She was standing at the wayside and might have been picking flowers by the attitude, but for the upturned clothes, and the perfectly visible stream that descended with great force, splashing up and running off the grass to make a rivulet in the road.” Florrie notes also having seen an exactly similar scene in a French engraving of the early eighteenth century. But this attitude is not only practically advantageous, it was also, in Florrie’s experience, in itself a pleasant attitude, evidently because of the prominence it gave to the nates. “I re¬ member many years ago trying it for the first time, she writes. “I was out with a party for a picnic and was too shy to suggest retiring, so it occurred to me that I might do it un¬ noticed if I pretended to pick flowers. I managed fairly well but splashed my dress in front. Unfortunately it showed, and I had to pretend I had got into some water in a ditch, and was fearfully embarrassed. But I remember distinctly that it gave me such a pleasurable feeling to do it stooping forward, much nicer than standing upright,—a more sexy sensation. I don’t know how to explain this unless it is somehow vaguely and unconsciously connected with the bottom. I don t know how it may be with others.” There was, however, another favoring influence in this change of interest in Florrie’s mind. The urolagnic day-dreams —although the urination interest and the whipping interest had MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 173 become apparently separated in her ideas for so many years during which the former had considerably receded—followed closely, so far as her recollections can be trusted, on the flagel- latory day-dreams, at the time when she had clearly realized that these latter were sexual. But the latter prevailed not only by their elements of fear, anger, love of force, and desire for pain, but also by their appeal to touch. In urination she missed this sense of touch. It is probable, as she herself believes, that the urolagnic interest would not have become in any sense a substitute for the flagellatory interest if she had not accident¬ ally discovered a mode of considerably heightening her delight in it by introducing the sensation of touch. She had not been in the habit of touching herself except with the whip, and such experiments as she had made in that direction by friction of the clitoris had yielded little result. She was, therefore, con¬ siderably surprised when on first making the experiment of allowing the stream in the act of urinating to gush over her hand she experienced not only a warm and pleasant sensation, but a decidedly sexual feeling, still further heightened if during the act the urethra or vulva was touched, although at other times such a touch would be without effect. This seemed to explain to her why it was she had long vaguely felt how nice it would be for someone to touch her there just as she was about to begin, especially “when the baldder is full and just dying to do a stream.” This experiment was prompted by the idea of trying to realize the sensation of someone else urinating upon her, an idea which she was now craving to realize as she had formerly craved to realize the idea of being whipped by a man. As it proved so successful, a new and powerful impulse was given to urolagnic day-dreams. On these lines Florrie’s day-dreams now advanced rapidly. At the outset, as she herself remarked, the mere idea of urinating before a person of the other sex it¬ self seems shocking, even to be discovered in the squatting posi¬ tion in a wood seems terrible. But the fascination of the situa¬ tion grows ever more urgent, and ever bolder attitudes and situations are pictured in imagination, to be further elaborated PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 174 under the stimulus of the delicious sensations they arouse. In the conflict between shrinking modesty and reserve on the one hand, and these daring imaginations, the urolagnic impulse pro¬ duced the same fascination of horror which accompanied the auto-flagellatory day-dreams. There is yet another point to be mentioned in regard to this transformation of Florrie’s phantasies, important as bring¬ ing out more clearly the fact that the transformation repre¬ sented a real stage of progress towards the normal condition in other respects than in its greater harmlessness. It was more definitely heterosexual and more intimately personal. This also Florrie herself perceived and recognized as a new and ad¬ ditional attraction. In urolagnic phantasies she was able to realize a close and more intimate relationship with the hero of the day-dream than was possible by whipping. I felt in¬ stinctively that more would depend on the man himself. One could be more indifferent to a man who used a whip than to a man who urinated on one.” Florrie added some remarks on what seemed to her the natural connection between urination and the sexual emotions, a connection often overlooked. “Even day-dreams always make me want to urinate, as well as being with one of the opposite sex I like, though I might not have the slightest inclination before. I don’t know of course what others feel about it, for I have never heard, but I think most people vaguely feel that they would like more than they think they ought to say. When, as sometimes happens, a girl imagines in her ignorance that the sexual act consists in a man urinating on her, and this fancy persists in after life when she knows better, as a special liking, then I affirm that it is not entirely liked as a symbol only. Of course it is a form of erotic symbolism, and might disappear with the experience of normal coitus, just like the desire to be whipped, for the love of ‘substitutes’ is strengthened in those who are debarred from natural relationships. But for my part I think it a natural liking, intimately connected with the sexual feelings, and it seems chiefly prejudice which makes some people think otherwise.” MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 175 With regard to the hero of Florrie’s day-dreams, it may be remarked here that he was not a real person, but vague and imaginary. This was invariably the case in all her earlier periods of phantasy, and usually but not quite invariably in the later stages. This was a natural progression. Children do not normally weave their phantasies round real persons; they make them up, create them. Florrie’s day-dreams in childhood and adolescence were a continuation of infantile phantasies, and they showed therefore the same normal absence of real persons. But in adult life, when the day-dreams again emerged, the preservation of this anonymity of the hero was more de¬ liberate. Although the charm of the day-dreams lay largely m the emotional relief furnished by their shocking audacity, modesty and reserve yet prevented her from going so far as to take the liberty of introducing a real person into the hero part. “I can never get over the feeling,” she writes, “that it seems like taking an unpardonable liberty with a real person to make him play a part like that. Day-dreams are such tremendously real things, that it seems even greater sacrilege than if it hap¬ pened in real life. A moral embarrassment, probably far greater than in actual life, seizes me, and I dare not make an¬ other act as I should wish. It may be because my life has been lived so much among thoughts and intellectual ideas generally (or perhaps it is my ‘psychoneurosis’!) that they take such a startling reality. I argue with myself that it can’t possibly hurt the Person, especially as he will never know, and mightn’t care even if he did, and that after all it is only a creation of my brain. \ et the fact remains I deny myself many nice day¬ dreams that would bring relief because I have this strange moral objection to involving another. Once or twice, I admit with shame, I have made delightful use of a real person in a rare day-dream, but awful qualms of repentance have fol¬ lowed. Yet it is a great relief, greater than the Abstract, so much more deliciously real. In my case, it could never be an absolute stranger I had casually seen, as in a railway train; that seems to me not only appalling impudence, but makes no appeal. It must be someone I know, like and respect and 176 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. secretly adore.” What real person was introduced into the part on these rare occasions Florrie never mentioned and was never asked. It must be added, however, that her scrupulosity in this matter-unreasonable as it may seem—was entirely normal. As the purely imaginary day-dreams of the infanti e stage take on a more adult form they fall more and more into line with real life. That is an approximation to the normal. But it is also normal that precisely because the day-dreams are thus brought close to real life there should be the same scruple as real life would bring of abusing the personality of another. This is strongly felt by entirely normal and healthy women (men are probably often less scrupulous) who if they are be¬ trayed into an erotic day-dream concerning a real person will often experience deep shame . 1 Before, however, proceeding to describe Florrie’s urolagmc day-dreams we may at this point touch on her nocturnal dreams during sleep. It may perhaps seem that this should have been done at an earlier stage. Florrie is not, however, a vivid dreamer; she herself remarks that all her powers of dreaming have been absorbed in day-dreaming. Except the dream al¬ ready recorded, she has never had any sexual dream, and she has never dreamt of whipping. The matters that most absorb her attention during waking activity fail to enter her dreams (it is the experience of many) ; they are mostly made up of the trivialities of the previous day, mingled with reminiscences of people and incidents belonging to school life and the period be¬ fore marriage. It seems probable that she dreams more often l in this and many other respects Florrie was more normal than Zenia X (whose history is indirectly recorded in the Psychoanalytic Rr-iew October, 1914). In many points, even of detail, Zema X. and PWrip’ whose dav-dreams began in each case at the age of nine, are alike But whereas Florrie, who never saw the slightest objection to the nleasure of actual urination in a wood, felt very scrupulous about intro¬ ducing a real person into a day-deam, Zenia regarded urination in a wood as a sexual temptation to be strongly resisted, but saw not the slightest ohiectfon to the introduction into her phantasies of real persons towards whnm hA affections went out. In other words, the moral censure was n Horrie's case on tfie imaginary world, not on the actual world in 7enia°s case on the actual world, not on the imaginary world, and that means a deeper degree of abnormality, since the energies shut out from the real world furnish a mischievous potency in the unreal world. MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 177 than she believes, but her dreams are pale and fade on waking if no effort is made to retain them. They usually occur about the period of menstruation. She was requested to observe them and note them down carefully on waking. The significant fact was thus disclosed that though she had no dreams of whipping, her more vivid dreams, though not urolagnic, were symbolic of urination, and this was the case even when she had not herself realized it, though she had discovered the influence of a full bladder on dream activity. A few examples may be given, though it can scarcely be said that Florrie s dreams throw any special light upon her history, beyond confirming what was already clear, and they belong to easily recognizable types. '‘Just before the last menstrual period and when the blad¬ der seemed more full than usual (I seem to urinate more often then) I had the following dream. I was in a church. This dream has come to me before; but this time it was an English church and there were rows of pews well filled. I wanted to get out, and finally found myself walking up the aisle; everyone stared and looked reprovingly at me, but I pressed on and passed through a south door to find myself in some cloisters. There a foreign guide came up and assured me in a confidential way that he could show me the way (I was quite vague as to my ultimate destination, but I seemed to be hurrying some¬ where). He pointed out that I could pass through the rooms of the picture gallery and come out at the other end. 'No one will stop you and you will be unobserved/ I hurried through deserted rooms with polished floors, and walls lined with old masters. But I did not stop to look at any. I was pressing on eagerly to the exit. “Then I came to a door, and pushing it open found to my horror that I was in a room occupied by two librarians seated at a table writing among books. Their faces were quite un¬ familiar. I apologized and beat a hasty retreat, but was called back. They said they wanted my opinion about a new book. I was seized with fearful panic, for I wanted to get to the exit, and was being hindered. Hastily and abruptly I pushed through 12 178 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. a door I saw opposite, and was once more in galleries and cor¬ ridors. Oddly enough—and how I got there I don’t know—I found myself next in a tiny shop, where a man was serving me with black satin waistcoats for gentlemen. ‘Ah, not black! I exclaimed in horror and rushed out. Finally I found myself, calm and collected, on the steps of a house to be let or sold. It was empty, and had a dreary, deserted look. It was ap¬ parently in a London Square. I opened the door with a key and entered a gloomy hall, passing up the dark staircase. It was getting dusk and a shiver, partially of fear, came over me. The sensation of going up and up, and not daring to look round was very vivid. I wandered aimlessly through vacant rooms, feeling depressed and anxious. All was silent till I tried a bell to see if it would ring, and then was alarmed at the loud, clang¬ ing sound that echoed through the deserted house and in the basement below. I stood stock still, alarmed at my own temer¬ ity in having disturbed the stillness, still more alarmed when I became conscious of distant regular footsteps echoing through the empty house. I was rooted to the spot with terror, as tramp, tramp, came the steps up the stairs, approaching nearer and nearer. I made sure it was some ghostly inhabitant coming to visit me, disturbed by the bell, and I finally found courage to move through a door near. This led me to a landing and some stairs which brought me eventually to the kitchen. The basement was quite dark and the kitchen shutters were closed; but presently it grew lighter and I saw a window, typical of a city basement, and a table near it. It was like the kitchen of an early home—the same house where I used to get the whip- pings—but in my dream it seemed a strange house. As the light appeared I saw traces of cooking about, and wondered how they came there. I was undecided what to do, when a housemaid came out of the scullery, but I experienced no sur¬ prise or fright. My thoughts were centered on the floor. It was stone. But it was not that which was riveting my atten¬ tion. The floor was wet, it was running with water apparently. Astonished, I questioned the servant who looked embarrassed, and then laughed and explained: ‘It was cook done that!’ I MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 179 thought at first she meant the cook had spilt some water, then her meaning dawned, and I expressed my horror at cook’s be- havior. For it was evident cook had made water on the kitchen oor. After this I have no clear recollection of what happened, hen I got up the bladder was very full. This dream was early in the morning. The bell may have been the first break¬ fast bell, and the fear I felt was like that I had when my father was coming to whip me. The Picture Gallery was suggested by the fact that I had been studying ‘The Madonna di San Sisto’ the night before.” This dream is full of the symbolism of urinary desire, and nothing is commoner in such dreams than for the sleeper’s desire to be embodied in the action of another person. The next dream brought forward was as follows : I was in a vast Cathedral. There were broad aisles and lofty arches and stained glass windows. At first I was under the impression that I was in Westminster Abbey, but this idea faded away and I knew I was in some foreign building. Fac¬ ing me was a gorgeous High Altar and I was reminded some¬ how of St. Roch, although the rest of the building was not unlike Antwerp Cathedral. There was a good deal of crimson about the High Altar, and lighted candles. But what impressed me most was the multitude assembled there. I was near the back (West end) wedged in with others on cane-seated chairs. The whole of the vast Cathedral seemed packed with people. I spoke to someone at the back, expressing my wish to go out. I had a great longing to leave, I don’t know why. I next found myself in a large bare building occupied only by some school¬ children who were congregated on the back seats. Again dis¬ content came over me. I enquired when ‘the performance’ would begin, and finding it impossible to sit still I said, ‘I will go to take my ticket.’ A lady replied, ‘Oh, but the ticket office is closed. It won’t be open yet.’ Nevertheless, I rushed about trying to get my ticket. Then a diversion was caused by the entrance of a lovely collie dog. The children played with it, but it showed a special liking for me, and I caressed it and it followed me about. Still impatient, I sprang up and said, ‘I 180 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. think I should like to see the room we are to sleep in at the Hotel.’ So I went out of the door and asked a man to direct me. The rest of the building I was in seemed to be the hotel and he said, ‘Turn to the left and then again to the left and then to the right.’ I seemed to run (with the collie following) down long white marble passages with great white doors on either side. They were all closed tightly, silence reigned, and there was no sign of life. I had been told that our bedroom was the billiard room and I now thought of asking directions, for I had lost my way. A man passed, but I did not stop him to enquire, for how, I thought, can our bedroom be the billiard room? Anyhow, it sounds silly; I will go back and abandon the search. I don’t much care for this cold, deserted campo santo sort of place. I long to be in the open air, and out of these confined passages. I next found myself on a country road. The day was hot and it was summer. The road was very white and dusty and by the side were green banks. I sat down by the roadside on the grassy bank and my husband sat by me. I did not seem surprised to see him. I looked down the long white road and was conscious of something coming towards me, mov¬ ing rapidly. ‘Oh, it is the collie!’ I exclaimed in delight. But as & it approached it changed gradually into a small pony—brown and very pretty. ‘This must be the children’s pony’ I said, ‘no doubt it is a great pet.’ I sought thus to connect it with the children in the building. It came straight towards us, and evidently wanted to be noticed. I was delighted, and caressed it, patting its back, and it seemed most friendly. Then its legs seemed to shrivel up somehow and what was left of the legs be¬ came tucked up under its body, so that it nestled down on a level with us on the bank, between us. It thrust its head under my arm and wriggled about its body and I caressed its silky hair and called imploringly to my husband to fondle it too. ‘Oh, do! do!’ I pleaded, ‘just pat its nice fat sides, it does want you to so much. Look at it, how it is simply asking you to notice it.’ I was burying my face in its plump back and enjoying its demonstrations of affection. But my husband moved away about half a yard on the bank and refused. I never care to MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 181 touch strange animals,’ he said. ‘They might bite, I will leave you to caress it.’ Then the road and the bank and my husband and the pony vanished. I found myself back again in the Church, still crowded, so that I could not get a seat in the nave. But there were some odd chairs on the north side, on a line with the High Altar. I sat in one, but I did not like it, as I had thus to face the congregation, and I felt shy. Presently I be¬ came aware that the chair was somewhat rickety and I thought to myself that ‘These chairs were evidently broken ones, put here to be out of the way, and not meant for people to sit on.’ To the right a door opened on to some cloisters and just inside stood a priest who seemed to be conducting the service. Pres¬ ently some women and a child came pushing in near me, and took chairs behind. The chairs were smaller than mine, but the woman said they would do. I was very puzzled as to how a woman could squeeze herself into a child’s chair with sides. The woman near me was English. She repelled me, being of the common tripper type seen in summer on the sands at the seaside. She had red in her hat, and the sides of the chairs were painted red. A child, a little boy, came and pushed him¬ self between my knees. He was looking at a picture book. The presence of this infant perturbed me dreadfully, though I felt it was rather nice and seemed fond of me. I wished it would go out, for it was making me uncomfortable. Then I spoke to the woman in the red hat about the chairs and she admitted hers was more than shaky, but she was willing to risk it. Then I had a curious sensation. The cane seat of the chair seemed to be crumbling away beneath me. The chair frame stood firm, but very gradually the cane work sank and burst round, so that I was gradually let through the chair, but yet entirely supported by the framework, so that no one knew of the disaster. I had been afraid of the chair collapsing, and I thought the congregation would see me and laugh. I did not pray, or feel religious. My thoughts were with the chair, and the child—who had now gone. Then—although I do not re¬ member distinctly quitting the chair—I found myself with my 182 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. mother in another part of the same building. An official was showing us some old carved pews. “A row of cherry stones were ranged on the top of one of the pews and he was telling my mother her fortune. I re¬ member vaguely that he said a lot of things, and finally that my mother was going to America and there she would rise to a high position and wear a red and gold official cap. She laughed and said he must be telling his own fortune, since he wore a red and gold three-cornered hat, and ladies were not so decorated. He emphasized the fact that in America ladies were admitted to all sorts of honors denied them in England, and that it was quite possible for my mother to rise to a high position. He turned to me and asked if I would not like to see the ladies’ swimming contest. He showed us a sort of narrow artificial canal, with some painted scenery behind. I protested loudly that it was most unwomanly to swim! We had a heated controversy, over all the things women ought or ought not to do. Then I found myself quite alone walking behind the High Altar. There was no one there. All at once I became aware of a man’s approach. He was a very seedy in¬ dividual, his clothes once black were now of a greenish tinge, dusty and unkempt, his thick black hair hung disordered, and he had a dusty shabby half bowler on his head. The face was sallow, tending to a greenish shade, heavy and inert. His black eyes were dull, his expression lifeless. It was N. A very changed N., but still I recognized him; I did not like to allude to his changed appearance, but he saw the question in my eyes and he said dully: ‘I am hard up.’ I began to reproach him and reminded him that he had said he had just received some money. ‘That’s spent,’ he said. ‘I want more.’ I felt sick. I shivered and wondered how I could ever have let him touch me. ‘I must have been mad,’ I thought, ‘such an odious brute!’ He still pressed for money. I told him (rather irrelevantly) that I was not now so much affected by my old craze, and did not want him and begged him to go away. Then he was furious and put his hand on my shoulder and shook me violently. I had a curious sense of dwindling away and disappearing, and MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 183 then I awoke. It was 6 a.m. and I made water to a great ex- tent. It is one of the most complete dreams I ever had. Yet I cannot trace its origin as well as of the previous dream, and I do not remember thinking about churches. But a collie had come into our garden and could not get out. I was much amused at its antics in trying to escape. The pony I cannot account for, except very faintly. The children were undoubt¬ edly caused by reading the night before about the erotic satis¬ faction some women feel when suckling their babies. A lady I once met told me it was the sweetest sensation she had ever experienced in her life, and I thought of this. Although \\ omen never affect me erotically I remembered how twice in my life, once when a child, and again when grown up, I had been profoundly affected at the sight of a woman with a baby at her breast. The cane-seated chair was the outcome of my wish to buy some chairs of this description. The sense of going through was suggested by my weight.” The foregoing dream, although Florrie remarked in send¬ ing it that she did not know if it showed any indication of being a bladder dream, is really very typical of the vesical dream. In manifest content, as Freud would put it, there is no reference to urination throughout, yet the symbolism constantly tends to have reference to that function and to the state of desire that precedes it: the latent content ’ is throughout urinary, and so it distinctly falls into what I term the vesical group of dreams. 1 The following dream Florrie described as one of the most vivid she had ever had: “I dreamt I was sitting in front of a fire day-dreaming. The room was apparently a kind of salon, with French windows to the left. I seemed to be the only person in the room and I was wrapped in a reverie of most engrossing nature when I turned my head to look out of the window and saw the curtain move. It was pulled back and I saw my mother behind, sitting 1 It is sometimes overlooked, I may remark here, that not only the sexual impulse but any other repressed primary impulse may form the latent content of a dream, beneath a manifest content of quite different texture. 184 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. by the window. I felt perturbed, as though she had intruded on my privacy. She spoke to me and then all was silent. Sud¬ denly I became conscious that the rain was coming down in torrents, quite a deluge, I could hear it, and looking out I saw it, although dimly, for it was nearly dark. My father was outside (he has been dead some years) and called out to my mother, saying it was too wet for her to come out. The streets were running with water. From the window the outlook was the same as from rooms we had once occupied at Ostend. Then my mother got up and approached me. She was all in black, deep mourning (black often comes into my dreams), and came forward with a gliding motion. As she drew near she seemed strangely unlike my mother, grew transformed and uncanny. She was tall and thin with a long black wriggling train to her dress (I saw the same figure in a dream at Florence once), had light fluffy hair and a weird witch-like expression on her face. She came close behind me and put her hand (a small white hand) on my shoulder. I shuddered with horror, and she remonstrated and was much hurt at my aversion. I was semi- clothed, the upper part of my body had only a vest on, and the touch of her hand was on my bare flesh. She explained that she was my mother and I ought not to rebuff her, but I still drew back. She tried to push down my vest and I protested and stopped her, and she saw my repugnance and her face was full of bitter hatred. The expression was awful. I begged her to take her hands off me. She then placed her left hand on my neck and bid me look. I gazed in a sort of fascinated horror, and when she lifted her hand off the little finger was left be¬ hind adhering to my skin, and a bright blue flame appeared on the bed opposite—for the room now seemed somehow to have become a bedroom. A most triumphant, uncanny expression of delight at my terror came over her face. I imagined she was a witch and was horror-struck. I then awoke. “This dream I imagine was suggested by the lady doctor remembrance. I cannot in any way account for the bright blue flame. The incident of sitting in my vest was suggested by the fact that I had been trying on some vests. The rain I MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 185 cannoi account for since the night was fine, as was the preced¬ ent of i v y r awoke !t was about tw ° °’ ci ° ck and 1 J um P ed bladder ° Unnate ’ being 111 some dis tress with a full So far as the cen tral part of this dream is concerned with d J™ ° f ( ra,n ’'V s definitely and typically symbolic of the sire to urinate. A bright light, such as seen in the conclusion the f d f rean Y S .° ften CaUSCd by some actual fight seen through the curtain of the eyelids, and the concluding episode of the dream was suggested by a reminiscence which came to Florrie’s min efore falling asleep of a physical examination by a woman doctor which had been undergone with much repug¬ nance. This genital suggestion was the naturally resultant sec¬ ondary element not uncommon in vesical dreams. It was desirable to test the nature and quality of Florrie’s nocturnal dreams, but the field hardly seemed to be rich enough to repay much cultivation. In Florrie’s case, throughout, the day-dream has absorbed most of the subconscious psychic activ¬ ity which in some people is brilliantly manifested in nocturnal dreaming, and, rightly or wrongly, here there seemed no need to employ any complex and dubious methods of interpretation. 1 his remained so in her last and urolagnic phase. Although the urolagnic day-dreams had their origin some way back, and though, as we have seen, whipping and urination were throughout connected in Florrie’s mind, the whipping day¬ dreams always leading to a desire to urinate, the two classes of day-dreams had tended to remain separate, and now it was the urolagnic group that covered the whole field and attained new and bolder developments, in which the climax tended to become the representation of the act of urination accomplished upon her own body. There was a general mark of this class of dreams distinguishing them from the whipping dreams, not only in the fact, already noted, that they were more intimate and person¬ ally individualized, but that, instead of being located indoors they were always imagined as out of doors and thus came to be connected with rural scenery, and to find symbolic links of asso¬ ciation with Nature and with natural scenery. There was thus 186 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. an instinctive attempt not only to poetize what might seem t eir unduly physiological character, but to diffuse their intensity m a widespread interest in the forms of water in Nature. Florrie was thus brought near to that psycho-sexual tendency which I am inclined to call Undinism. There remained a community of nature with the flagellatory day-dreams in a sensory foun a- tion that was mainly that of touch, a sense which usually plays a leading part in the erotic emotion of women. Merely to observe the act of urination Florrie regarded as, a secondary pleasure, “though not without a delicious charm. It was to the sense of touch that the imaginative appeal was made ( why, if one squeezes warm water out of a sponge on to one’s flesh, it gives one thrills”) ; to be taken into a field or wood in summer time, stripped of her clothes under the shade of the trees, and then the sensation of the stream on her flesh, all the more delicious because connected with the most intimate thoug ts, feelings, and sensations. The hero, while usually somewhat shadowy, was always a man, never a woman. A typical dream was described as follows: “I am generally in a wood or glen, with open spaces here and there, and very often a brook or running water near. Of course it is summer. I am lying, generally face downward, on a comfortable grass plot (softer in my imagination than it probably would be in reality) when the Stranger comes up. I cannot identify him, for my day-dreams have always been indistinct on this point. (But in my night dreams persons are always distinct.) Al¬ though strange I feel that he is nice. I say ‘feel’ because that just expresses it. I don’t see him clearly, but I feel he wants to please me. He sits down by me, and talks, but it rather passes over my head, for I feel that he is giving me a vague sexy feeling and I cannot resist it. He seems to know exactly how I feel, and sympathizes. Custom and conventionality make a woman dread to admit that she wants anything from a man, but being a day-dream and strictly private, I admit frankly that I am longing for him to urinate on me. He guesses it, and expresses a strong wish to do so, but I must remove my clothes, in order to feel it on my bare flesh, and not to wet my garments. MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 187 This rather appals me, but he helps me, and the touch of his hand thrills me. As each garment is removed I feel more and more helpless but more and more sexy. Finally nude, I try to hide in. the grass, feeling at a disadvantage and very uncom¬ fortable. He is clothed and that seems to accentuate his already masculine superiority, whilst my unclothed state accentuates my feminine inferiority. At the same time it increases my sex feel¬ ing, which is largely based on a perhaps exaggerated view of the sex differences. (Some old pictures—Giorgione’s Concert in the Louvre, for instance—give us clothed men and naked women, but I don’t know of an instance where it is reversed.) He seems to be in no hurry to begin, and when he just places his hand on my thigh and rests it there I feel thrills of delight. Then lying, half hidden in the grass, I am conscious that he is preparing himself to begin. But this critical moment has never become a very clear incident, even in a day-dream just told to myself. I have never dared to picture it. I feel vaguely, per¬ haps erroneously, that he might resent my watching him’ and my inability to read the thoughts of another causes the picture to become blurred here. But I can quite imagine that the tiniest element of phallus worship might easily develop under these circumstances. I picture him in all sorts of attitudes, standing, kneeling, half lying, anyhow, so that I can feel the benefit of the warm’ soothing stream. He turns me over so that I feel it everywhere, it is delicious on the breasts and arms and thighs. Sometimes I picture him naked and then he treads on me with bare feet, or stands astride my thighs. Sometimes I stand and he kneels or stands, accentuating the pleasure by putting his left hand between my thighs. But the most delicious sensation of all is when I lie face downwards and he pulls my legs wide apart and kneels between them and urinates right into the vulva. Some¬ times he does this with me face upwards, and it is always a triumph of sensations—I seem to crave more and more. In it¬ self the sensation is delicious, added to the keen feeling that it is part of himself and precious on that account. Very often these day-dreams are so strong that I can distinctly detect the 188 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. odor of urine, although I am aware that this is a trick of the senses. In my day-dream it pleases me, too, to see it done, al¬ though the sight is perhaps a trifle subordinate to the sensation produced by the running fluid on one’s bare flesh.. I think, too, that I should not object to it on my face, or even m my mouth. “Day-dreams of this description are such a horribly private sort of thing that it appears a kind of treachery to oneself to drag them to daylight! I feel ashamed, too, as if I never oug t to have thus indulged myself. One does it so secretly that when it is written down in words one feels astonished and abashe . Still, this does not make it less real, although it costs me some¬ thing to write it.” This was the chief though not the only variety of urolagmc day-dream which Florrie experienced. She never realized it in life, never even made the slightest attempt to realize it; it was too intimate and private for that. But she craved for it, and would lie face downward on the bed or sofa, as in the days of her whipping obsession, and sometimes would pull up her clothes and imagine that the desired act was being performed over her, sometimes even squirt warm water on to herself in order to simulate the experience. These manifestations, it must be noted, were far slighter than the corresponding mani¬ festations associated with flagellation, and of comparath ely faint obsessional power. She would also indulge in the act of urination in uncon¬ ventional ways that seemed to make it more interesting and attractive. The method she found most pleasing was to adopt a semi-reclining position with separated legs. After various experiments on the floor and the bed, etc., she found most suc¬ cess and satisfaction by placing a cane chair in a large long bath and leaning back in the chair with a leg resting on each side of the bath, the vulva being held open by both hands; “then there shoots out a fountain-like stream that descends in a semi¬ circle at the other end of the bath, rising slightly above its level,” with variations in direction, extent, and height every time the experiment is repeated. “It gives one a lovely sensation,” she adds, “I don’t know why.” MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 189 It will be observed that Florrie instinctively introduces the analogy of a fountain. It is necessary to emphasize the point that her urolagnic phantasies, unlike her flagellational obses¬ sions, tended to take on an open-air character and to be diffused in natural imagery which was that of water generally. This is a characteristic of what I call Undinism. In childhood Florrie’s urinary associations were most defi¬ nitely with the bath, and also with the color yellow in general. (She remarked also that the connection of urine with yellow ochre paint has been vivid from childhood.) But from an early age the act of urination began to become mixed with beautiful natural imagery, although it was not apparently until her late urolagnic phase emerged that these associations became promi¬ nent in her mind. She points out the charm which is always felt to inhere in fountains which send out jets of water to fall into a basin of still water beneath, and she suggests that child¬ ren are unconsciously aiming at the same effect when they urinate into the bath, or, better still, in the open, in some secluded spot in the wood where there is a little brook. “The idea of water mingling with water is a great fascination, though it must be smooth water, a lake rather than the sea. It is also interesting when done from some little height. A person thus raised above the eye level presents, too, a new charm. (Hence, I suppose the pictures I have seen in Paris of girls being held in the air while doing it.) Of course it is difficult to say how common this liking is, for the persons most impressed are just those most likely to be secretive. And I must say that as a rule they do not receive much encouragement to be otherwise. The erotic nature of the attraction is possibly proved by the fact that, personally, it would not interest me particularly in one of my own sex." As regards woods, Florrie writes: “There is something fascinating in the sound of the stream descending on dead leaves in a wood, the rustle and sense of wetness in the midst of so much parched dryness, as though the earth must welcome and swallow up the slightest moisture. In a wood one seems nearer to the heart of Nature. The artificial ele¬ ments that accompany the act in an enclosed room have dis- 190 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. appeared; it assumes a new character and is seen in a fresh lio-ht. This applies in a measure to all acts of Natur , makes one understand the idea of fauns and nymphs All sex acts seem better out of doors, especially m a wood. As agir the dread of having a baby was especially associated with t accompaniments of a sick room, of which I had a dread, never having experienced any illness. 1 he idea appea e o me strongly of having babies, like savages who seem to suffer so much less, in woods and caves. As a child I was much im¬ pressed by that famous passage in Jeremy Taylor where t same thought seems in his mind concerning the final act of Nature, and he describes the pompous paraphernalia of Death, which yet is ‘the same harmless thing that a poor shepher suffered yesterday.’ I pictured the ‘poor shepherd’ out in the open, by the running stream and waving trees, being made one with Nature.” , . Florrie digresses. It will be seen that there has been a con¬ tinuous decrease in the emotional tension of her phantasies. That movement of relaxation had indeed been proceeding, through all changes in the form of her sexual interests, during the whole period of her history which we have here been able to study. But at the point we have now reached it became marked. Her visits ceased. Her letters became ever shorter and the intervals between them ever longer. She expressed gratitude for the help she had received, but she no longer seemed to feel in need of it. “With regard to Florrie she wrote at length in a brief note, “there is nothing to relate. Finally came the announcement, in answer to a letter of en¬ quiry: “I have been meaning to write for some time past to tell you that, as you may have guessed from my long silence, Florrie is dead.” The story of Florrie, so far as it is known, here comes to an end. Nothing has been heard of her in the years that have followed. It would be rash to assume that her sexual odyssey has been finally completed. Obviously a woman in the full vigor of life who has not attained to normal sexual relationship, al¬ though she has slowly reached an approximation to the normal MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 191 sexual attitude, may have many emotional troubles still ahead But, whatever these troubles may be, we can be fairly certain that they will never again take on the threatening and alarming aspects which they sometimes assumed in the past. Henceforth Florrie knows herself and understands the mechanism of the sexual impulse. She walks in light where formerly she stumbled m a darkness full of awful spectres. For years a mysteriously cloaked terrible figure had seized her from behind in an iron clutch she could not shake off, threatening her with insanity and all sorts of dreadful fates. Now she is able to turn round and face it, to observe, with calm critical eyes, and that quiet shrewd humor native to her, what it is made of, and the iron clutch loosens and the monster dissolves into mist, a mist that even seems beautiful. We are familiar with such a result. It may indeed seem to some that the whole history of Florrie could have been dis¬ missed in a sentence. So it might. But, as Freud more than anyone has shown us, the minute and prolonged study of an individual history can rarely fail to be profitable. In the pres¬ ent case, while the general pattern may seem familiar, yet the details possess a significance and illumination which extend far beyond the individual history. Aristotle said that the work of human art must ever show a continual slight novelty. So also it is in the art of Nature. I have set down Florrie’s case in careful detail—though condensing and suppressing much that seemed irrelevant—in order to disentangle the slight novelty and to discover what it may teach us. . may teach us tIie more since Florrie is far from being a highly abnormal person. It is true that we find insanity in a collateral branch of her family, but the general mental dis¬ position and nervous system which she has herself inherited are in most respects sound and normal, even of excellent quality, and the germs of inherited abnormality, which I distinctly be¬ lieve to be there, are yet so small as to be almost invisible. Florrie seems to the world generally, as to her husband and all her friends, a stable normal person. 192 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. How, then, it may be asked, 1ms it come about ttotthese minute germs developed? Why has the «“* ?*£*“ Florrie’s case passed through stages that seem so y normal? And how can we account for the particu ar o perversion which this abnormal development assume . It seems to me that Florrie’s history brings out at leas three groups of factors which all had a share in eterminin the deviation of the sexual mechanism in her case, an are Sm '"'g“up of considerations are of a negative kind and concerned with the absence of the normal stimuli of sex. It is well known that in women, to a far greater extent than in men, the sexual impulse needs to be definitely aroused m order to enter normal paths, and that in the absence of definite stim¬ ulation a certain proportion of women are not conscious of normal sexual needs although the impulse is still working un¬ consciously within them. Now Florrie had been to an unusua extent safeguarded against sexual stimuli, whether from wit out or within. She was carefully brought up by prosperous parents who were able to protect her from all dubious influ¬ ences, while her own extreme shyness, reserve, and staid dig¬ nity prevented her from making approaches to sexual matters, and equally prevented others from bringing such matters to her These influences were fortified by her youthful training in social, artistic, and literary ideals and activities. They were further aided by Florrie’s slow mental development, for while her intellectual powers are much above the average she was not mentally precocious, and her nervous and cerebral activities generally are of a solid and deliberate order. The decisive in¬ fluence of a negative kind in Florrie’s slow and devious de¬ velopment was, however, her marriage. The course of devia¬ tion had, indeed, begun long before marriage, but so unob¬ trusively, even to her own consciousness, that if at twenty- eight she had been united to a vigorous and congenial mate, of her own age and able to arouse her sexual emotions, she would never have seemed to herself or to anyone who knew her, how- MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 193 ever intimately, anything other than a completely normal woman within the usual range of slight variation. To admit the influence of these negative conditions on Florrie s development is to assert by implication that the auto¬ erotic impulses which, notwithstanding, actually developed had a fundamental organic basis. That I consider to be the case. We now know that to place the sexual impulse in any kind of environmental vacuum may effect the direction of its growth, but will not prevent growth in some direction. We know, moreover, that in childhood, when the same environmental vacuum is produced naturally, through the absence in early life of any mechanism of response to external sexual stimuli, auto¬ erotic or spontaneous pseudo-sexual impulses still tend to occur, the activities that later are to become genuinely sexual being manifested in play forms that are trivial or at most imperfect, and often symbolic. The two auto-erotic forms in which the infantile sex impulse appeared in Florric’s case were, we have seen, the urolagnic and the auto-flagellatory. The first of these belongs to the scatologic group of childish interests which are now generally recognized to be exceedingly common. They have an organic basis of their own quite distinct from sex, while at the same time there are definite reasons why they should frequently be associated with, or substituted for, sex in¬ terests. While, however, the prevalence of the scatologic in¬ terest in childhood is now well recognized, it is doubtful whether the prevalence of the whipping interest is equally well lecognized. No doubt it is often absent (as also is the scato¬ logic interest) but it is present so often, and quite apart from whether the child has had any actual experience of whipping, that it seems to me that we must regard it as a normal, though by no means constant, manifestation of the auto-erotic impulse m childhood. I find it more common in girls than in boys and more common in inverted men than in normal men. In my ob¬ servation it is found so often that it is almost possible to give it the same position which used to be given to a homosexual strain in childhood, although we must not be led by the over- 13 194 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. emphasis on the homosexual strain to minimize its importance or to overlook the fact that it has a constitutional basis which must ever tend to re-appear. Nothing is constant and mvanab e in the sexual sphere, but it will probably be found, on careful observation, that the flagellatory interest in childhood is a least as frequent as the homosexual interest . 1 It is not neces¬ sary here to discuss the origin of this interest and its natura foundation . 2 We must regard the whip as a natural symbo of the penis. One of the most frequent ways in which the idea of coitus first faintly glimmers before the infantile mmd—and it is a glimmer which, from an evolutionary standpoint, is bio¬ logically correct—is as a display of force, of aggression, of something resembling cruelty. Whipping is the most obvious form in which to the young mind this idea might be embodied. The penis is the only organ of the body which in any degree re¬ sembles a whip . 3 The idea may be supported in the minds of some young boys, though this would not refer to girls, by the nature of the sensations experienced in the penis. Thus it comes 11 may mention as fairly typical the early experiences of an entirely normal woman of good heredity, married and a mother, who during the years of puberty and early adolescence, from the age of thirteen to six¬ teen when lying in bed would have occasional phantasies of being whipped. These phantasies would excite her so that she could not sleep, and she now recognizes that this excitement was of a sexual nature. She was not whipped as a child, and is entirely unable to account for such day-dreams or for the effect they had upon her. Sometimes the sexual flagellatory impulse may only emerge in a dream of the night. Thus a married woman, aged 30, healthy and normal, with well developed sexual feelings has never had any experience of whipping or desire for it. Recently a man friend, interested in the subject, succeeded in persuading her to let him try its effects on her; she remained entirely cold and in different. Shortly after, however, she had a dream of being whipped which was accompanied by excitement and orgasm. There was evidently a possibility of association between the sex impulse and the idea of whipping, though only revealed in the sub-conscious state. We seem to Tee (as I have often tried to make clear) that there is a latent disposition to anomalies in the organism itself, so that there is no need to fall back always on the fantasies of psychogenetic speculation to account for their existence^e t his question in Studies in the Psychology of Sex , vol. iii, 2d ed., pp. 137-150. . - 3 It has even been at one time commonly so used for educational pur¬ poses We read in old literature of the bull’s pizzle with which the school-master was provided for the correction of his pupils. 195 MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. about that, as Sadger remarks, “penis and whip are equiva¬ lent.”! All these infantile forms of the sexual impulse—homo¬ sexual, scatologic, flagellatory, or what not—we are accustomed in our solemn adult way to call “perversions.” I have always preferred to call them symbolisms, more or less auto-erotic in origin. Whatever we call them we have to recognize that they are natural. They are manifestations of a normal and neces¬ sary play instinct, with those beneficial effects which Groos es¬ tablished as associated with the play-instinct generally in Nature. From the standpoint of the fully developed sexual impulse they present that impulse in a deviated or twisted form, just as (to repeat an analogy I have elsewhere used) the young fronds present to us in a curled and twisted form what will later become the large and graciously expanding leaves of ferns. It is indeed what we see throughout living Nature where young life ever develops under pressure, contorted into strange forms which are straightened out when the period of functional activ¬ ity approaches. But that period never would approach if the earlier fantastic period had not preceded it. 1 2 We must be¬ ware, therefore, of terming it abnormal; the real abnormality would be the appearance of the developed adult impulse at the infantile stage. In Florrie’s case, however, there really was a deviation which lay in an arrest of the development of the sexual im¬ pulse at the infantile, or rather pre-pubertal, stage. Normally, at puberty and early adolescence, the process of straightening out more or less harmoniously occurs, and the earlier impulses are transmuted into, or at the least subordinated to, the adult 1 Jahrbuch fur Psychoanalytische Forschungen, Bd. v, p. 188. Sadger elsewhere (tb., p. 498) refers to a patient who as a child seems to have thought that in coitus his father whipped his mother on the buttocks with his penis. 2 I by no means wish to assume that the play functions of sex are only valuable m early life. They are specifically human and are asso- ciated with the general retention of childlike qualities which marks man The play function of sex,” as Parmelee remarks ( Personality and Conduct, p. 113), has been an important factor in the evolution of civilization, and see Havelock Ellis, Little Essays of Love and Virtue, Cn. Vi. The'Play-function of Sex. 196 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. impulse of sexual attraction. In Florrie’s case, placed as she was in an environment without sexual stimuli, the transmu a- tion took the form of a premature sublimation or, rather, pseudo-sublimation, into artistic and literary activities, a trans¬ mutation which was apparently complete. But, as we know, sublimation cannot be complete, even when it is the developed form of sexual energy that is sublimated. The artistic develop¬ ments of the sexual impulse during adolescence are norma when they represent an idealized manifestation of the sexua impulse itself. But in Florrie’s case they represented no such manifestation. They were not really a sublimation at all. ihe yet undeveloped impulse remained in its arrested state to e- velop unconsciously, shut off from external stimuli and con¬ sequently still arrested in form. Meanwhile, Florne was at¬ taining an unusual degree alike of mental power and robust physical development. The organism was reaching its full adaptation for sexual activity, and finally this repressed activity came to the surface at the age of twenty-eight, under such con¬ ditions as her constitution and experience rendered possible. This active manifestation of the sexual impulse, not at first realized as sexual, assumed the form of an interest m whipping of the nates by a man, the whip becoming a sexua fetich, and the mental absorption on this subject inducing auto¬ flagellation. This leads us to the third instructive factor in Florrie’s sexual deviation. It has been pointed out that an emotional interest in whipping is so common about the age of puberty, especially in girls, that it may be regarded as com¬ ing within the range of normal variation . 2 But that this m- 11 have elsewhere (Studies, vol. Hi, p. 243) brought forward many considerations tending to show that it is at the age of from twenty-eight to thirty that the sexual impulse tends to be strongest in women, and sexual desire to be most consciously experienced. -' This argument was elaborated by Freud some two years before the nresent study was written ( Internationale Zcitschrift fur Aerzthch. Psychoanalyse, 1916, translated in Freud’s Collected Papers, vol. n, 19-4) in a notable paper, “A Child is being Beaten," which is often referred to. But I had not seen it when my own paper was published. I may add that the two papers are not in conflict. Freud s deals with flagellation mainly as a phantasy throughout, not, as I have, putting forward a case in which early whipping was an experienced fact and the demonstrable foundation for phantasy. MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 197 terest, after naturally dying down in early adolescence, should suddenly re-assert itself spontaneously, and with an immeasur¬ ably increased intensity, after an interval of some fifteen years, that is by no means normal. How came it about that in Florrie’s case the adult sexual impulse took this particular form? It was at one time supposed that fetichisms and erotic symbolisms in general, as well as homosexuality, are adequately accounted for when we have discovered some chance association in early life. That is part of the explanation, but it is not in itself adequate. Chance associations occur to everyone and for the most part without effect. Many children have been severely beaten; few have become adult auto-flagellants. We go deeper when we are able to see how much importance attaches to the early formation of a reservoir of emotion linked on to what is, or is capable of becoming, a sexual motive. In Florrie’s sensi¬ tive shy nature as a child (she is herself convinced of the sexual character of shyness) whipping served to form exactly such a reservoir, admirably adapted for later use to sexual ends. Such considerations, however, are still abstract and general. When so definite an erotic symbolism as this of Florrie’s becomes con¬ stituted we suspect the existence of individual peculiarities rooted in the organism and specially fitting it to become the seat of that symbolism. This was the case in the present in¬ stance. The pronounced development of the gluteal region and thighs has been pointed out. It became evident to Florrie in adolescence; some years later, at a time when her figure gen¬ erally was not more than moderately plump, this development is plainly observable in her photographs, and at the time when she came under observation, while there was a somewhat in¬ creased general tendency to deposit fat, it was still most pro¬ nounced in the buttocks and thighs and hardly noticeable at all in the breasts. 1 In association with this anatomical preponderance of the gluteal region, we find a corresponding physiological deviation. 1 Sadger ( Jahrbuch fur Psychoamlytische Forschungcn, Bd. S 1913 p. 500) brings forward the case of a man who when a boy practised auto-flagellation. He had small genitals but large buttocks. 198 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. Many indications reveal that Florrie was to a certain extent sexually anesthetic in the region of the vulva, though this con¬ dition latterly tended to diminish. She was unable to obtain orgasm by ordinary masturbation, but, as we have seen, acute sexual excitation with orgasm was at once set up by stimulation of the anus. 1 It would thus seem probable that in some persons, of whom Florrie is an example, there is a tendency for the centers of sexual excitation to be shifted posteriorly, such persons possessing unusually developed buttocks and an anus with greater sexual sensibility than the normal sexual centers. Such a state of things must be regarded as constituting a pre¬ disposition only; it is not necessarily final or beyond the reach of training. But it is obvious that it constitutes a favorable and even natural basis for various sexual deviations. 2 But we still have to account for Florrie’s urolagnia. It is indeed now well recognized that a urinary interest is so natural in childhood that it comes easily within the normal sphere; that to some extent it may take the place later occupied by the purely erotic interest, to which at puberty it becomes normally sub¬ ordinated, if it is not indeed completely suppressed or even extinguished. But why should we here find this impulse side by side, and even mutually interchangeable, with another and stronger impulse to which, on the surface, it has no relationship. The answer seems to be that here also we must recognize a natural underlying relationship. Sadger, who has cast many rays of light on this obscure and little explored field of psy¬ chology, points out that urolagnia, “urethral eroticism” as he 1 Anal masturbation is, of course, recognized, and is referred to by Hammond, Schrenck-Notzing, and others. See, e.g., Bloch, Bcitrage cur JEtiologie der Psychopathici Sexualis, vol. i, pp. 224-7. I am not aware, however, that any connection has been recognized between anal mastur¬ bation and a pronounced gluteal development. 2 i n mental analysis there is sometimes a tendency, of which we need to be aware, to overlook the constitutional basis of psychic deviations. This tendency has sometimes been laid to the charge of Freud, but not altogether justly, for, in principle at all events, Freud fully recognizes these constitutional bases, and has stated ( Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse, vol. ii, p. 167) that in the production of the observed effect constitutional and accidental factors regularly work together and that the need for insistence on the latter is merely due to their frequent neglect. MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 199 calls it, or Undinism, as I am inclined on account of its wider connections to term it, is associated with “Gesasserotik,” the eroticism of the buttocks, such as we find in Florrie. “In most cases of passive flagellation,” he remarks, “there exists, besides the eroticism of the buttocks to be named in the first line, also a powerful urethral eroticism.” He adds, quite truly, that there are many urethral eroticists who have no inclination for flagel¬ lation, but he seems to regard heightened urethral eroticism as the basis for a frequent combination of masochism with uro- lagnia. It is in the web of the associated eroticism of skin, mucous membrane, and muscle that these combinations, Sadger believes, are naturally formed. He attaches little importance to the nerve connections between the genito-urinary sphere and the gluteal sphere, though it scarcely seems to me that that factor can be entirely ignored. In any case, and even though at this point the precise mechanism may not be clear, it must be recognized that we are in the presence of a natural manifestation. I should be con¬ tent at present to point out that, in Florrie’s case, as doubtless in many similar cases, we have an association in time of the two experiences, flagellatory and urinary, as is set forth in the narrative of her childhood. Moreover, there is the signifi¬ cant fact that, underlying both the gluteal and the vesical ex¬ periences, are the same emotions of anxiety and terror, of shy¬ ness and shocked modesty, the emotions which, as we know, are so well adapted for transformation, under favorable conditions, into sexual emotions. We see an important stage in this trans¬ formation on the vesical side, though not yet recognizably sex¬ ual, at the time when, years after the gluteal experience had taken on an unconsciously erotic character, Florrie discovered her favorite method of urinating erect and out of doors. She has well described how, under the irresistible vesical impulse, her acute emotions of anxiety, dread, and shyness were sud¬ denly transformed into pleasure and the triumphant discovery of a new method of gaining vesical relief. No doubt as a child she had felt infantile interest and pleasure in this function, but it was at this time, at the age of twenty, that its special 200 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. adult transformation into urolagnia reached the first stage. There are, obviously, two distinct elements in the emotional state described, both capable of sexual transformations, anxiety and shyness. When in recent years Florrie has come to realize the significance of her own experiences, it is to the latter that she is most inclined to attach importance. “It has come to me gradually to suspect/’ she wrote, “from my own experience, that there must be a sexual element wherever this sensation of shame and shyness, reticence, the wish to conceal, is felt, even in religion. Everyone feels a sort of ashamed, try-to-hide, name-it-not, feeling about the excretory processes, just the same as about sex matters. If it is not sexual, what is it? The average person says, ‘Why, of course, it is quite different. It s just disgust/ Yet people show little or no objection in show¬ ing other things, ulcers and loathsome tumors, that are far more disgusting, while as regards urination even for the most fastidious person there cannot really be any feeling of disgust. The bashfulness can only come from a hidden sexual feeling/’ When we thus survey the course of Florrie’s deviation we see that it was throughout inevitable and necessary. It was the outcome of her hereditary predisposition, of her physical and psychic constitution, of the special conditions to which in childhood she was subjected and under which she developed in adult life. The course was abnormal, yet, alike in its pro¬ gress and its recession it was completely natural. It was a course affected by infantile arrests of development, and as oc¬ curs when such arrests are carried on into adult life to be rein¬ forced by all the other more evolved aptitudes of that life, the infantile traits become immensely exaggerated, tending to take on that genuinely adult erotic character which in early life is not yet developed. Florrie’s course of sexual development was affected by arrests, overwhelming to her in their magnitude, yet, however slowly, however imperfectly, nevertheless that de¬ velopment proceeded. Throughout the years she was under ob¬ servation it passed from stage to stage, still abnormal yet con¬ tinuously less abnormal, through the ascending spiral of natural MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 201 growth, until at the point where it passes out of sight it had be¬ come almost, if not altogether, what we call normal. Here it is necessary to say something of the therapeutic conditions under which the desirable termination of Florrie’s case was reached. I hesitate to use so positive a word as “thera¬ peutic” in this connection. Certainly the method adopted was important, probably essential, to the result obtained. But to apply to it a term with such gross connotation as “treatment” may be misleading: that term may be in place elsewhere; it is dubiously in place in the psychic field we are here concerned with. "hole method needed to ensure Florrie’s progress lay in surrounding her with an atmosphere. That atmosphere was simply one of sympathetic comprehension. She was thus en¬ abled to gain confidence in herself, to apply her own native in¬ telligence to her own problems, and, not least, for the first time to express her experiences in words to another person. It be¬ came a process of mental analysis. But it was Florrie herself who mainly carried on that analysis, and therein its virtue lay. There was little attempt to present to her relationships which were fairly clear, but which she had not worked out for her¬ self : she w'ould not fail to reach them, and sometimes herself saw them first. She was surrounded by an atmosphere favor¬ able for guidance, but no firm guiding hand was laid upon her, scarcely so much as the almost imperceptible touch of a finger! Thus Florrie’s course towards normality, however devious, was as inevitable and as absolutely natural as her course to¬ wards abnormality. Such a method would have aroused the scorn and even the indignation of the old-time physician. His impulse would be to react violently to all these unwholesome fancies and vicious habits, as he would consider them, and to thrust Florrie forcibly, with much severe admonition, into the path of rectitude. The upward spiral of her actual course under observation would have seemed to an undiscerning observer a disconcerting series of abnormal eruptions, and the final result of such “treatment,” if possible at all since a reserved and sensitive woman of 202 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. Florrie’s temperament would have brought it to an end at the outset—must have been failure, if not disaster. It is necessary to go further and to cast doubts even on more discerning methods when they are based on routine and on the subconscious belief that every case must conform to the same pattern. Such a method is pernicious and unlikely to lead to success even when it is the outcome of a genuine analytic investigation. Every human being presents, as every fine work of art presents, a continual slight novelty. There must always be a tendency to a pattern, but the pattern is never quite the same, and it is puerile to insist on trying to make it so. Each new person is a fresh revelation of Nature, to be watched, quietly and patiently, until its secret is manifested. We cannot rule Nature, as Bacon long ago declared, except by obeying her. And we cannot guide the struggling human being on his course unless we realize what that course is and possess the faith and the insight to discern the meaning of even its most unexpected deviations on the upward path. Even the leading question must often be regarded as almost an outrage, and still more the insistent demand on the patient to admit impulses which some theory demands. There are times when it is de¬ sirable to let fall a suggestion of what the observer divines, but it must be let fall easily, as it were casually, as lightly as a rose petal. It will not fail to hit the mark if the divination was sound, even though, at the moment, there is no response. In the record of Florrie’s history I have passed over an element of that transfer of emotion to the person of the in¬ vestigator which Freud and others have termed Uebertragung or transference. It was easy to pass it over because it never came directly and interruptively into the course of the history. But it must not be passed over altogether because it may really be regarded as of vital importance and largely contributed to constitute that favorable atmosphere to which reference has been made. It was never obtrusive, demonstrative, or insistent, so that it was easy to disregard it, and treat it as non-existent. It subsided gradually, without comment, or the need for com¬ ment, step by step with Florrie s course towards normality. It MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 203 was traceable from the first interview. Florrie approached that interview with much nervous trepidation. She almost turned back at the end of the long journey which she had taken to obtain it. But when it was over she returned home with feelings of confidence and admiration—although nothing had been done to arouse such feelings—which affected, vaguely but influentially, the subsequent course of her development. The influence may be said to be two-fold. In the first place it was an essential condition to enable one of Florrie’s shy and re¬ served nature to bring to the surface and carry on openly the whole course of the mental analysis. She had, it is true, in her first letter revealed herself almost as far as at that time she knew herself. That, however, would not have been enough, and if personal contact had proved inhibitory, even any further progress by correspondence would have been sterilized. The expanding influence on her reserved temperament of this emo¬ tional attitude was an essential condition for the progress of the analysis. In the second place, the emergence of a personal interest of this kind in the course of analysis helps to release the repressed and arrested normal emotions and to bring them out of the unconscious to the surface. In this way it can scarcely fail to exert a favorably guiding influence, because it tends to weaken, if not completely to replace, the phantasies of an obsession or a fetich by setting up a more normal object of attraction. Both of these influences appear to have acted favor¬ ably in Florrie’s case, although the action may not have been consciously or definitely perceived. It is true that Freud re¬ gards transference as a more complex process, acted upon by that tendency, even found in normal persons, but in more pro¬ nounced degree in the neurotic, which Bleuler terms ambiva¬ lence, so that there is not only a “positive” but a “negative” transference. Along the first line are produced a confidence and sympathy altogether favorable to the patient’s progress: along the second a hostile and resistent attitude which are un¬ favorable, if not fatal, to any beneficial treatment. 1 Without I S. Freud, “Zur Dynamik der Uebertragung,” Zentralblatt fiir Psycho-analyse, vol. 11, p. 187 . J 204 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. seeking to dispute this doctrine, it must be said that such “negative” transference seems to be often an artificial product of analysis, an artefact. (Not always, for many subjects are inevitably hostile.) One is tempted, indeed, to ask whether an investigator who encounters “negative transference migit not be well advised to retire from the world for a time and to practise a little auto-psychoanalysis. The investigator, in¬ stinctively and unconsciously, however good his intentions may be, often forgets that it is his part to educate and develop; he falls into the attitude of combat; he unconsciously adopts the gesture of tilting against a foe, and so inevitably he arouses the corresponding impulse of hostility and resistance on the oppos¬ ing side. It is a plausible fallacy to fall into. But in this field, to adopt the method of force, however subtly moralized, is to condemn oneself beforehand to defeat. It is not by our much doing that much is done, least of all by the exercise of force. “Strength and Hardness are the Companions of Death: Tenderness and Suppleness are the Companions of Life. The wise Sydenham, when asked what books he would advise a physician to read, replied profoundly "Don Quixote. And the therapist of the soul would be well advised to make his bedside companion one of the oldest of books which is also one of the deepest, the Tao-Teh-King of Lao-tze. ; It would be easy to discuss the significance of Florries history in many other relationships—such as the fairly obvious emergence of what Jung would call the Father-Imago—but there would be no end of such discussion. If, as a great naturalist said, one could spend one’s life in studying as much earth as one can cover with one hand, much more easily can one say the like of the complex human soul. But if all the things were to be written that could be written about even a single person we may sympathize with that Evangelist who in an outburst of extravagance supposed that “even the world itself would not contain the books that should be written.” Since we have not world enough nor time, we must be content to make but a little exploration, and to count ourselves happy if we thereby achieve but a little good. MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 205 Postscript. Shortly after the point reached at the conclusion of the foregoing history, Florrie disappeared from sight and nothing whatever was heard of her. After a period of some years I began to work the history into a coherent and orderly narrative. This was published, almost exactly as it here stands, in the Psycho¬ analytic Review , Vol. VI, 1919. A little later I heard from Florrie again, met her, and have continued in occasional touch with her since. She has read her own History, and considers that it is correct to an extraordinary degree; there is nothing in it that she would wish to see changed. At a period shortly after the termination of the history her husband had died and a year later she had married again, her second husband, like the first, was a man of good position, elderly, and a widower, but her life with him was happy and she looks back on this period with much satisfaction. It was, however, terminated before long by her husband’s death. Lately she has married a third time; but this third marriage has not turned out so well, the man, as she described him to me before marriage, seemed of high character as well as of intellectual attainments; but imme¬ diately after marriage she discovered him to be eccentric, hypo¬ chondriacal, and morbidly introspective. This led to dissensions of feeling from the outset and within a few months to a separation which each partner charges the other with initiating. Hence has arisen for Florrie much worry, anxiety, and legal complication, still unsettled, which might well have had a disturbing influence on her mind. But it is important to state that so far, more than ten years after the history ends, Florrie has had no recurrence of the obses¬ sions which once possessed and tortured her. She admits that normal ideals have no strong attractions for her, and probably never will have, and she still takes a mild interest in the subjects of the obsessions, but they have no more anj' power to absorb or disturb her. She is now truly the staid and solid matron she seemed when she first came to me. Lately a physician of repute, Dr. Wilhelm Stekel of Vienna, has published (with my consent), and commented, a full summary of the history of Florrie (Sadismus und Masochismus, 1925, pp. 200-34). As Dr. Stekel is a psychoanalyst of much experience, intuition, and practical therapeutic success, though not always approved by fellow practitioners of other schools, it seems to me worth while to go over his version of the case and to deal with his chief criticisms. I may say at the outset that his attitude towards my exposition and inter¬ pretation is mainly appreciative and largely of approval, especially in his chief conclusion that, as he is kindly pleased to put it (p. 231), no other case demonstrates so well the connection between maso¬ chism and infantilism. But when we come to details it seems to me 206 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. on the one hand, that Dr. Stekel is inclined to emphasize and to exaggerate points which I had made clear but attach less .mportance to, or less permanent significance, and that, on the other han , le seeks to find points which the history as it stands does not contain, and which, from my own standpoint, there is no occasion to seek. . Among the former I note the “sadism” of Florrie s father It is certainly impossible to over-rate the importance of her father s excessive physical punishments on Florrie; they constituted a most decisive influence in her sexual life; they fixed her prolonged in¬ fantile psychic state; they largely determined the character and attitude of her unconscious and conscious masculine ideal in adu t life. But it seems unnecessary to call the father a sadist; it is quite possible that he had a latent sadistic disposition but his chastisement of his child, even though excessive, merely illustrates the foolish old-fashioned notion, founded on the Bible, of the dangers of sparing the rod in education. This is also Florrie’s own opinion and she thinks that her father may have worked himself up into a rage out of a sense of duty; he was not sadistic and was fond of animals. Similarly, the castration-complex, with its “penis-envy, has its sig¬ nificance in Florrie’s childhood, as a phase of her development. But that significance is exaggerated when it is prolonged beyond child¬ hood into a supposed desire to be a man, and becomes the evidence of homosexuality. Dr. Stekel is always apt to see the traces of homosexuality, and in Florrie’s case he finds evidence in her adop¬ tion of the erect attitude for urination (“there could be no more beautiful example of Adler’s ‘Masculine protest’ ”). It is undoubt¬ edly true that this habit is sometimes cultivated by feminine inverts out of a pleasurable imitation of the male; that was long ago known to Krafft-Ebing and was not overlooked by me. But the habit is also quite common among women from other motives, out of doors especially with the object of avoiding detection, being in this way practised by women of the people all over Europe. It is also often regarded by women, and perhaps quite naturally, as in itself pleasurable. In Florrie’s case there is not (and she herself entirely agrees) the slightest ground to connect it with any homosexual impulse. Other influences on Florrie’s life for which there is no evidence, Dr. Stekel considers must have been there. He thus believes that Florrie had much more knowledge of sex matters in childhood than she acknowledges. It was “suppressed.” This supposition I alto¬ gether reject. Carefully guarded little girls in England of the well- to-do class are very commonly in complete ignorance of sexual matters, as indeed they often are also in France and other countries. Florrie was specially well guarded, “surrounded by nurses and MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 207 governesses,” and not allowed much freedom even with her own young brothers. Dr. Stekel believes that Florrie was brought up treely in the country and must have observed the coupling of anima s. Florrie assures me she made no such observation of animals. She lived largely in town, and occasional observation of anima s, even in the country, has little or no sexual significance for uninstructed children who do not live on farms. Dr. Stekel further I ?° rrie mUSt haVe had Sexual play with her brothers in , ’ ° not re g af d the assumption as necessary or even probable, while it is quite opposed to the evidence, for Florrie states C 01 ? ^ * t. at t ^ lere was no suc b play. He also assumes (and quite wrongly) that there must have been cruelty towards animals, a sadistic impulse being required to complement the masochistic im- 11 15 time that the two impulses tend to be connected (and Dr. Stekel observes that I was one of the first to assert this connection) but it does not invariably happen that a sadist shows clearly marked masochist impulses or a masochist pronounced sadism; the connection of the two impulses is quite sufficiently established when ench of the partners in a sado-masochistic relationship sympathizes with the attitude of the other partner. Then Dr. Stekel thinks that there is more to be discovered concerning Florrie’s mother; he believes (on familiar Freudian lines) that Florrie loved her father and that that love involved hate for her mother; but while that is a result which is liable to follow it does not necessarily always follow as a matter of fact Florrie saw little of either father or mother who went much into society and were aloof from the children, loving hem in their own way, though not really caring for children and leaving them to the care of a governess and two nurses. Dr. Stekel is mistaken in thinking that Florrie’s statement that she would not have accepted a whipping from her mother meant that she hated her mother; it meant simply that, the whipping being unconsciously felt as a sexual manifestation, it could only be tolerated when exercised by a man. Florrie was living close to her mother and in almost daily association with her at the time when she came to me; this had gone on ever since she was 20 (when the father died); they had become friends (“good pals,” Florrie says) rather than mother and daughter. Dr. Stekel believes, once more, that Florrie probably had rectal enemas administered to her as a child, and he would thus explain the erogenic sensibility of the anus. This explanation 1 would not regard as necessary, even if I were ignorant of the facts. The erogenic properties of the anus were only discovered acciden¬ tally by Florrie when near the age of forty, and it would be absurd to assume that stimulation by enemas thirty years earlier is required to account for that discovery. The anus is one of many regions in 208 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. ,h« body which arc hahic .o *** ''XtafThthil^ « j Tt ceems at least equally probable that tzz s“»- —a and heredity has practically no existence. f T , ; fl ^v^eenTckarplaces^nd 1 the^h^hen^betweerfthe'attraction^upwards and the attraction downwards. She leaves the church, she leaves the picture gallery, and descends to the kitchen, to common people. We see plainly that she strongly disapproves of the cook s doings. (A sharp moral disapproval of her perversity.) The word cook is m English bisexual and may indicate either a male or f 3 , . ’ he ** clear however, that the masculine principle is indicated by the erec urination Reproach is already indicated in the church by the dis¬ approving gaze of the congregation. The religious significance of the dream is transparent and symbolized by the church, the P,c ures the sound of the bells, and the dream material (study of the Madonna). The father’s form in the dream is concealed^ He man who will enter the empty room of her heart, he is the spirit she calls by the bell. The librarians may be her brothers (frater — monk _ brother), but it is also possible that we are concerned with a holy book, the Bible. The longing for a man to fill her empty room is plain First appears a foreign guide (the physician and analjst.), then another man. Death-wishes against her husband are clear (black satin waistcoats). ‘Satin’ is perhaps a play on Satan. MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 209 There is plainly a struggle between ascetic tendencies (church- cloister) and the pleasures of life, and finally the flight into infan¬ tilism. The picture gallery is the museum of her soul. She will not look at the pictures. She will remain blind (dark kitchen) and recognize nothing. The vesical impulse is a symbol of the sexual impulse. She can control herself but must suddenly give way and urinate. Two tendencies struggle in her soul: the Madonna and the prostitute (cook). It is sweet to give way to the longing. It is plain that she wishes to escape from the labyrinth of her soul and cannot find the way. She desires to conquer the ascetic tendency (church). She uses the symbolism, customary with her, of urination, to express the conflict in her life. The man who will free her is approaching, she hears his steps, but she flees at the last moment from the fulfillment of her wish. The new book, that she ought to read, is the book of her life. Very beautifully is the occurrence of the orgasm represented as a bell which echoes throughout her body especially below (cellar). It is plain also that whipping by the father for her signifies coitus. The emotion of terror is the same.” With regard to the second dream Dr. Stekel writes- “This highly interesting dream is a dream of warning and healing, and shows a plain mystical tendency. The church represents the religious and ethical disturbance from which she wishes to be freed She is then continually reminded that she is a married woman who has vowed eternal fidelity to her husband. Her perversions are indi¬ cated as infantilisms. She has no justification (cannot obtain a ticket). She is always met by her husband, who might be dangerous to her. The billiard room is the room haunted by men with erected penis (billiard cues) and testicles (balls). I recall that she had used an india rubber ball in masturbation. Her thoughts go to her own bedroom and her impotent husband. His sexual nature is a cemetery (cold, deserted, campo santo sort of place.’) Marriage is like a prison, and she longs for freedom. She finds herself in the street of life and her husband behind her. The dog is a symbol of her animal passion. The pony has the same significance, perhaps chosen because of its association with a riding whip. The pony shrivelled up (like the penis of her husband when he approached her) Her whipping ideas also shrivel up. Her husband will have nothing to do with animal passions. She gives up adulterous thoughts and re¬ turns to the church. Her perversion is by the rickety child’s chair indicated as infantilism. The woman with the red hat symbolizes women who enjoy life. She is reminded of the ‘tripper’ type But trip’ also means a spring aside, and also stumbling; she is'reminded of women who stumble and ‘fall;’ the ground gives way under r lorrie s feet; only a wanton woman could risk herself in such a 14 210 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. child’s seat She feels she is sinking, and is only outwardly pre¬ ssing the appearance of a respectable woman. She wishes to know her future. What will she be: a true wife or a prostitute. America There the land of freedom. Her mother is the image of virtue also the symbol of her womb (or would shehavesuspectcd he^mother^). Now she meets N. who shows himself a blackma . The type of a dream of warning. She must overcome her w she to be whipped. They shrivel as the pony shrivelled. She will not a K ain be entangled in such dangerous situations; she realizes she has - bee" mad. N who was her ideal, has become a shabby person. She had over-estimated him, and she tries to free herself by depre¬ ciating him. She pictures the horrors of a blackmailing scene. • wears a “wler, that is he has an erected penis. Bowler also indi- cates a connecdon with cricket. The full bladder seems to have nothing to do with the dream. It can merely have released the in¬ fantile fantasies, upon which as a reaction comes t e warning o moral ego. In a wider determination there is significance, the of cherfy stones signify threads of semen, the red cap the g,an penis, the narrow canal the vagina, swimming is coitus, and even the three-cornered hat is a known phallic symbol. Florrie re S rets ^ she is not a man. The conflict is concerned with whether men enjoy greater sexual freedom than women. To the glance ‘"to the future corresponds a glance at the past, culminating in the wish: Oh, 1 had been born a boy! As a woman she is directed to the penis of her husband which, as we know, showed a lamentable tendency SHn In interpretation of the third dream, Dr. Stekel says: “In this dream the mother appears as a revenging and uncanny figure, t is not difficult to find castration motives here. In the finger which remains attached to the neck (transposition from below to above) is the lacking phallus, now completed or given back by the mother. We might agree with the Freudians who in such a dream see a reproach by the daughter to the mother for castrating her at birth. The terror would also be the terror of castration. It is much easier to believe in a terror of retribution. She has presumably wished for her mother’s death, in order to possess her father alone. But her father has died first. The mother must follow him. The father warns the mother not to come out, it is too wet, that is, streams of tears would flow. The dream shows Florrie strongly homosexual, fixed on her mother. Masturbation (finger at the neck!) must have brought her thoughts to her mother. The first impressions of nursing in childhood (the mother’s hands) seem to live m Florrie: she wished to be a man and possess the mother. She identified herself with the whipping man. (‘If I cannot have a penis I will MECHANISM OF SEXUAL DEVIATION. 211 procure a whip and show my mother who is master!’) The exami¬ nation by the woman doctor arouses association with the first examination by the mother. She is more man than woman. A woman must be taken by force and overpowered. She turns her back as the side on which she can be viewed as a man. Also the h^ il Unnat ' d °" may reCaH the time of infanc y when she ad wetted her mother. This homosexual tendency is extraordinarily deeply concealed. But here a curtain falls and the mother recog¬ nizes what she signifies to her daughter. Longing is changed to orror and disgust. In this dream she lets the mother carry out the aggression (pleasure without guilt). But she meets her mother in the mofh 1S ha w nak u d ' InterestIn S also is the gliding approach of “° th . er - We observe that the men are heard approaching, so also the dog, but the lady approaches silently, and enters the room without warning. The father is out in the rain (he is somehow con¬ nected with water fantasies), the mother wears a long train to her dress (phallic symbol). Her ideal would be a woman with a penis. u h ^°i^ er n aS n ° PenlS< Her finger rema 'ns attached to the neck. The blue flame on the bed shows that in Florrie’s heart glim¬ mers a homosexual passion which had originally attracted her to women. She seems to have courted her mother’s love in vain. Her mother has repulsed her. In the dream she revenges herself, and it is she who repulses her mother and is afraid of her. We understand the longing to urinate on the mother (Mother Earth!) as a symbolic substitute: she wishes to be a man and to fertilize the mother. Dimly also we guess that Florrie suspects her mother, and that the two poles, Prostitute and Madonna,’ are projected on her mother. The woman with the red hat, the going of her mother to America where she assumes a masculine position, speak for this assumption’ For this deprecation the mother takes revenge. Perhaps original blows by the mother count. The father finds her unfaithful and s nkes her. Here arises doubt about her origin. Am I the child of my father. She has desecrated the highest (cathedral) and deserves to be chastized for it.” I do not feel able to discuss these dream interpretations, which to Florrie herself seem often “fantastic.” I will only remark that largely, they seem to me speculative, and also unnecessary, while at some points they are entirely opposed to my reading of Florrie’s character, being based on conventional psycho-analytic lines which do not correspond to Florrie’s special disposition. This does not mean that I would belittle the skill of the psycho-analysts in de¬ ciphering dreams. Those who are inclined to laugh at psycho¬ analytic dream-interpretation should remember the endless ability of the so-called “Baconians” to find cyphers in Shakespeare. Speaking 212 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. generally however, and without special reference to dreams, I would fike to say that it is very hazardous for a psycho-analyst, however skillful and experienced, to put forth speculations concerning a sub¬ let he has never seen which over-ride the conclusions o the original 'reporter -ho, however inferior he may be in skill and experience has had opportunities of minutely studying the peculiarities of th subject. Dr Stekel regrets that Florrie was never regularly psycho¬ analyzed It is true that there was no psycho-analysis in any re g .“idtchnict sense. b„, i. is cbvions that there , Slow and careful process of analysis during which alll the elemen s of the case likely to have significance seem to have floated gradually up to the surface. “The end crowns all,” and it is sa ‘ 1S ^ Ct °^ h Dr. Stekel, while thus freely criticizing, in the mam^agrees with reported statement of the case and commends the final outcome. “Remarkable,” he says (p. 233), “is the brilliant therapeutic result which was achieved in an atypical way, deviating from strict analysis. It confirms my opinion that in analysis there are really no rules. In this case the method adopted was perhaps the on y p sible method.” I must add in qualification of this generous attribu¬ tion of “brilliant therapeutic result” that I hope I have made clear that the result obtained must not be held to be the establishment of full ordinary “normality.” Florrie’s disposition arose, as I have sought to show, on the basis of her congenital psycho-physical organization; it developed normally on that basis, and even if the environmental conditions had been more favorable than they were her constitution would always have colored her temperament as life actually worked out. Florrie is not, and never will will be, com¬ pletely what we are pleased to term “normal. She is reconciled to “normal” sex relationships, but they do not afford her any intense gratification. Her disposition, and the ideals based on that disposi¬ tion, remain essentially what they always have been. But now she understands. She is no longer obsessed and tortured. She is conte t and at peace. The therapeutic result-here as always in this field- does not lie in the personality being forced into a rigid alien mo , for that would not be really “normal”for it, however much so on the average. It lies in enabling the subject to see himself or herself understanding^, not in being artificially changed but m being rightly harmonized. IV. THE MENSTRUAL CURVE OF SEXUAL IMPULSE. There is no familiar physiological process of equal im¬ portance which has taken so long to explain, or aroused such difference of opinion, as menstruation. It may doubtless be said that we are at last approaching a stage of agreement as to the essential nature of the process. Yet as regards its periodicity we are still so much in the dark that we even re¬ frain from putting forward hypotheses. Why does menstruation tend to fall into a cycle which approximates to that of the moon? Darwin suggested that, early in zoological evolution, an oceanic tidal element was a potent condition of life, imprinting a rhythmic character on the organisms submitted to it. Obviously, however, such a condition, even if we can agree that the ancestors of Man ex¬ perienced it, is too remote to be invoked as the cause of so comparatively recent an acquirement as the menstrual cycle. It has therefore been suggested, that some condition in the general or sexual life of the immediate ancestors of Man was intimately associated with the lunar cycle . 1 In the absence of any precise and definitely known force acting among the early Primates to produce a menstrual cycle of lunar length various attempts have been made to theorize 1 Thus, in “The Phenomena of Sexual Periodicity ,, in the first volume of these Studies , I wrote: “Bearing in mind the influence ex¬ erted on both the habits and the emotions even of animals by the bright¬ ness of moonlight nights, it is perhaps not extravagant to suppose that, in organisms already ancestrally predisposed to the influence of rhythm in general and of cosmic rhythm in particular, the periodically recurring full moon, not merely by its stimulation of the nervous system, but pos¬ sibly by the special opportunities which it gave for the exercise of the sexual functions, served to impart a lunar rhythm on menstruation.” And I referred not only to the considerations which indicate a greater predominance of lunar deities in early culture, but also to the fact that festivals of distinctly erotic character still take place at full moon in some regions both of Australia and Africa. ( 213 ) 214 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. on the matter. As an example I may summarize an effect by Adolf Gerson to reconstruct the conditions under which i cyde developed.^ ^ ^ ^ ^ K£e ig s0 predominant^ that it is difficult in general to trace any lunar influence. Gerson believes, however, that at the period of the evolution of man conditions were present which favored such an influence. . He admits that it is not possible, in the absence of any direct evidence, to prove the existence of these conditions, but be¬ lieves it is possible to show their probability. Early man and the stock out of which he grew were en¬ tirely defenceless against beasts of prey. They lived in trees or, as Gerson believes, in caves, and when it became necessary to’go further afield in search of food they had to adopt many precautions. In temperate zones, where beasts of prey prowl by day, they could be avoided by moving abroad at night. (In tropical zones the heat compels all animals to hunt at night, and therefore Gerson considers it improbable that Man evolved in the tropics.) But it was only during light moon¬ light nights that it was profitable to go abroad at night. n this way early man became accustomed to wander at full moon, and many hordes may have acquired the habit of regularly wandering at this time. They may thus have learnt to surprise and slay the larger animals, and excursions at full moon be¬ came strengthened by association with the taste for flesh. This practice has died out because savages today are better armed for slaying animals and better acquainted with the arts of hunting, while wild animals are no longer so numerous, so fierce, or so large as in former days. Man has abandoned these nightly excursions, while wild animals themselves are now compelled to practise them from fear of man. 1 Adolf Gerson, “Die Menstruation, ihre Entstehung und Bedeutung,” Zeitschrift fiir Sexualwissenschaft, April, May, June, 19-0. This aut had already published various suggestive studies on the physiology and psychology of searaal phenomena^ ^ reproduction even in man, have long been reSS See for instance, Westermarck’s History of Human Marriagc Zd ed„ Chap. II, “A Human Pairing Season in Primitive Times.” THE MENSTRUAL CURVE OF SEXUAL IMPULSE. 215 This wandering at full moon was of sexual significance because early man was compelled to limit sexual intercourse to such excursions. Gerson assumes that at this period the male was chiefly affected by sexual desire; the female was cold and only gradually acquired such desire, this process of acquisition being indeed even still in progress. Such coldness, Gerson believes, was necessary to ensure maternal devotion. (He fails to consider that a similar result might be obtained by the periodicity of sexual desire which, in fact, we com¬ monly observe in female animals.) Coupling was a kind of combat and the peace required for the breeding of the young was secured by the limitation of male sexual desire within periodical limits. But the gradual extension of these periods of sexual activity might have destroyed the race, through combats with the female and with male rivals, if sexual inter¬ course between males and females of the same horde had not been brought to an end. Gerson endeavors to show how this may have happened. When a horde wandered by moonlight into a strange and fruit¬ ful region it would be liable to encounter another horde. A combat would ensue and the victorious horde, having put to flight or slain the opposing horde, would take possession of, and have intercourse with, its women. It would thus be easy for them to leave their own women undisturbed. The members of a horde which followed, this practice would be enabled to live among themselves in comfort and peace, avoiding the quarrels which sexual desire and rivalry produce. The horde which failed to follow this practice would be enfeebled by in¬ ner dissensions. So also it would come about that the act of sexual inter¬ course was regarded as a hostile act. The male who thus treated the female of another horde would feel that he had done dishonor to her, he would not definitely know why be¬ cause the fact that intercourse led to pregnancy had not yet been discovered, but his feeling would be right because he had compelled a hostile horde to adopt his child. The idea would, however, be extended to the women of his own horde; to have 216 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. intercourse with them would dishonor them and be a hostile act. In this way arose the instinct against incest. There would, however, be friendly as well as hostile hordes. These would exchange useful objects and such ex¬ change would extend to the women. In this way a man would form a union with a woman of another horde, who, however, remained with her own horde, so long as the two hordes were neighbors, and if later they met again and recognized each other by their tattoo marks and other signs the old bond would be renewed. This bond extending over more than a single sexual season would be the primitive form of human marriage. It is in this way, Gerson believes, that we obtain a satis¬ factory explanation of menstrual periodicity. The horde wandered only at full moon; the women of other hordes could only be met at full moon, and if intercourse was confined to the women of other hordes, sexual intercourse also would necessarily be confined to the recurring periods of full moon. If originally the rutting period of the male had only occurred in spring or other seasonal period of the year it would now tend to recur at monthly periods. Obviously, also, it would be to the advantage of human procreation if the female also at the time of monthly intercourse became capable of impregnation, for otherwise, if she failed to find a mate in the spring when the other higher animals usually mate, she would remain unimpregnated throughout the year. The horde whose females acquired this monthly susceptibility to impregnation would be favored in the struggle for existence over those whose females had failed to acquire it. By selection and heredity were pro¬ duced females whose ovulation, sexual desire, and menstrua¬ tion corresponded to the periodicity of the males and followed the phases of the moon. There are various considerations, Gerson points out, which favor this theoretical explanation of menstrual period¬ icity. Savage peoples still often hold their dancing festivals at the full moon; and the dances still often present a panto¬ mimic representation of the conditions, now entirely passed away, which prevailed when the full moon was really the THE MENSTRUAL CURVE OF SEXUAL IMPULSE. 217 proper and only period for sacrificing at once to Ares and to Aphrodite. They are true survivals, and Gerson here seems on fairly safe ground . 1 The same can scarcely be said of his attempt to argue that the primitive goddess was at once not only a goddess of the moon and of hunting (primitively asso¬ ciated with the full moon), but also, like Artemis, sexually cold, thus recalling the primitive coldness of woman; we know too little of the primitive goddess we vaguely discern to speak so definitely, and the original Artemis was far from chaste . 2 Along the same lines Gerson seeks to explain the frequent discomfort, painfulness, and mental depression of the men¬ strual period. It is impossible, he argues, to account adequately for these manifestations on physiological or psychological grounds. He neglects to bring forward evidence of their actual occurrence under conditions of savage life. There is nothing in the process of menstruation which need cause symp¬ toms of pain, and slight loss of blood is normally a cause of relief and excitement rather than of depression. But they become intelligible, he argues, if we can regard them as the inherited outcome of the conditions under which menstruation arose. “Consider,” says Gerson, “the nature of the impres¬ sions which the primitive woman received during sexual inter¬ course. They were frightening, horrible, in the highest degree painful. Her marriage bed was a bloody heath and the dead bodies of her friends and brothers lay around. Here she was subjected to the unrestrained violence of the male which still at times re-emerges as sadism or sexual pleasure in the sight of combat, blood, and corpses.” The pains of menstrua¬ tion arose in the same way as the pains and hallucinations of hysteria, that is, as the after-results of real feelings, when Malinowski (Jour. Anthrop. Inst., 1927, p. 206) has, with special reference to New Guinea, emphasized the importance of moonlight among primitive peoples in periodically heightening social life so that all festivities reach their climax at full moon. _, ^ Briffault in his brilliant and learned work, The Mothers (vol ii Lh. XX) has discussed lunar deities in relation to women, and empha¬ sized the primitive connection between pregnancy and the moon 218 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. revived by appropriate associations, and it makes no difference that these associations are transmitted by heredity. Menstrual pains are really hysterical pains, not founded in the nature of menstruation but a by-product, which may not occur at all, and they can be removed by hypnotic treatment. This, Gerson believes, shows that physiology has nothing to do with them and that the biological explanation is sound. Gerson would go further and seeks to show that the menstrual loss of blood was a necessary incident in the pro¬ cess he describes. It is to be regarded, he believes, as primi¬ tively a discharge for the relief and recuperation of the over¬ excited organism in these monthly orgies, gradually acquired as an organic property and transmitted so as to become fixed even when there was no intercourse and no ill-treatment. Al¬ though it takes place through the sexual organs it is really connected with excitement in the higher nervous centres. It depends on a vasomotor reflex which arose in the primitive sexual combats at full moon. The same psychogenous hemor¬ rhages, he remarks, were often caused in women by shock dur¬ ing the Great War. Why has sexual desire, confined to a rutting season among many lower animals, become constant in the human male? Because, Gerson answers, it has produced a valuable conserv¬ ing influence on the species. It has bound man and woman more closely together in marriage, impelling the husband to court the wife from day to day. It has given occasion to the wife to stay with her husband and remain true to him, even when not needing him to protect and nourish her. Per¬ petual desire imparted to marriages which were formed chiefly or solely on economic grounds an increased stability and a new nobility. It was the guarantee of a happy family life. Perpetual desire and monogamy conditioned each other. This consideration, one notes, however valid, does not neces¬ sarily confirm Gerson’s theory. It may be objected, Gerson adds, that we witness today an almost religious horror of intercourse during menstrua¬ tion. He thinks that this had not arisen in primitive times THE MENSTRUAL CURVE OF SEXUAL IMPULSE. 219 and that there was no occasion for it to arise. The man would scarcely so much as be aware of the presence of menstrua¬ tion, which also, as among many primitive races today, would be scanty and not constant. It was not until much later times, when wives were acquired by favor or by purchase, that the condition arose for this state to be conspicuous. Lnder such conditions combat and struggle, which Gerson regards as the inevitable accompaniments of intercourse in the primitive stage, ceased to be agreeable to the husband. They had, however, become fixed by heredity to the menstrual period. It was at menstruation that woman, with an organism reminis¬ cent of the orgies of the old festivities of the full moon, was most inclined to be quarrelsome and irritable, as indeed, Gerson adds, she often is even today. So the husband pre¬ ferred for intercourse the time immediately before and after the period, when he observed that his wife was apt to be in a much more peaceful and complacent mood. In this way a prejudice against intercourse in the menstrual period itself be¬ came deep-rooted. Yet intercourse, at all events among the lower races, is practised as near as possible to the period . 1 That spring of blood, Gerson concludes, flowing from women, is the source of a great part of the blessings of modern civilization. I do not bring forward Gerson’s theory to suggest that it should be accepted. There are points in his arguments throughout at which criticism may be offered. What one notes, first of all, is the fact that he never allows for the ex¬ istence of a rudimentary menstrual cycle among even many of the monkeys and lower apes. It is not only found among the anthropoid apes, which are closely allied to Man but has now been studied among various monkeys who show an ap- 1 In proof of this, Gerson refers to the evidence brought forward bv Siegel to show that the number of boys born greatly prevails over that of girls when conception takes place near menstruation, and that at other periods girls prevail. Among lower races to-day boys seem to prevail over girls at birth, Gerson states even more than among the higher ne^/menstruaTion * ' are m0re apt t0 hav * intercourse PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 220 proximate lunar periodicity in menstruation. We must, there¬ fore, push the origin of this phenomenon further back than Gerson supposes, for he throughout regards it as arising in early Man, the Urmensch; an acceptably satisfying hypothesis can only be sought in a much more primitive stock, long before the Urmensch had branched off in Pliocene times. Then again, Gerson regards it as an essential part of his conception that the primitive mode of intercourse, associated with the origin of menstrual periodicity, took the form of a brutal and inconsiderate attack by the male, without court¬ ship, and indeed without on the part of the female any of that aptitude for sexual pleasure to which courtship must be addressed. But some form of courtship, some promise of pleasure to the female, is almost universal in the animal world. We should need to know why it was in abeyance during this hypothetical period in which the menstrual cycle had its origin before we could accept Gerson’s view of that origin. Other difficulties will present themselves to the careful reader, in¬ volving, for instance, the theory of heredity assumed. Gerson’s conception, however ingenious, fails to meet these difficulties. The unsatisfactory nature of such attempts to explain menstruation by the circumstances of the early history of Man and the primates, throws us back on the possibility that we may be concerned with direct cosmic influences on life, manifesting themselves when the balance of the vital phe¬ nomena are sufficiently delicate and unstable to yield to such subtle influences. It is an ancient belief that sea urchins in the Mediterranean are subject to lunar influence in their breeding season. Munro Fox, in a careful study of the matter, has found that this is not generally true. But his observations on the spot have shown that it is true of an echinoid —Ccntrechinus ( Diadema) setosus at Suez. This sea urchin really spawns at full moon in the breeding season. He suggests that the old belief that related sea urchins on other shores of the Mediter¬ ranean similarly spawn at full moon was carried thither from THE MENSTRUAL CURVE OF SEXUAL IMPULSE. 221 Egypt where it is actually true. 1 It is not easy to connect this lunar periodicity with tidal influences since the tidal range on these coasts is so minute, being only 58 centimeters between new moon and full. Among the sea urchins we are far from Man, but Arrhenius in Sweden, in observations which date a number of years back though they have attracted little attention, has shown some grounds for the existence of a lunar influence on menstruation which he associates with the amount of electricity in the atmosphere. 2 Richter had shown in 1885 that the moon has an impeding influence on thunderstorms. This drew the attention of Arrhenius to the matter and he was led to conclude that there is a significant relation between the electricity in the air and the tropic lunar month of 27.3 days. With regard to varia¬ tions in natality Arrhenius found a very marked double periodicity according to the tropic month, the first maxi, mum falling on the 6th or 7th day, the second on the 25th or 24th day. So he expected a corresponding variation in menstruation and made an investigation in 6000 cases in the Stockholm Maternity Hospital, based on the last date of menstruation before pregnancy, and found a sharp mini¬ mum just before the southern lunistice (about the 17th day). The deep minimum in the air-electricity curve is on the 14th—15th day, so the menstrual minimum falls about a day later. Arrhenius also found a nearly 26 day curve (that of thunderstorms, aurora borealis, and perhaps also affecting air-electricity) as well as the tropic lunar curve, and thinks this may be connected with the sun. Arrhenius finds no ground for the old belief that menstruation is con- 1 H. Munro Fox, “Lunar Periodicity in Living Organisms,’* Science Progress , Oct., 1922, and a later paper, “Lunar Periodicity in Reproduc¬ tion,” Proc. Royal Soc. B. vol. xcv, 1923. Munro Fox found no lunar influence in the rate of growth of fruits as tested by daily measurements of a small marrow. . 2 S. Arrhenius, “Die Einwirkung Kosmicher Einfliisse auf physio- logische Verhaltnisse,” Scandinavisches Archiv fiir Phys., Leipzig, Bd. iii, 1898. Mr. Munro Fox has called attention to this paper and kindly lent it to me. 222 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. nected with the synodic month of 29.5 days, and considers it highly probably that the menstrual month is associated with a co-operation of the two periods (27.3 days and 25.9 days). Hannover’s figures for the average menstrual period in Denmark, 26.6 days, confirms this view in the opinion of Arrhenius. He also found that at St. Petersburg (Lenin¬ grad) in epilepsy, the 27.3 days period, and in a less degree the 25.9 days period affects the attacks, which tend to fall (as for menstruation) one day later. It is worth while to note these various investigations, even although it must be acknowledged that the origin of the lunar, or so nearly lunar, periodicity of menstruation still de¬ mands a satisfactory solution. I am not concerned further with it, except to consider its psychological aspect the men¬ strual curve of sexual feeling in women. The manifestations of the sexual impulse in women have long constituted an obscure subject to investigate. On the one hand poets and satirists have declared for centuries that the evils of the world are largely due to the sexual lust of women; on the other hand, moralists and even physicians have assured the world in the most solemn manner that normal and respect¬ able women have no sexual feelings at all. It is unnecessary to say on which side the public opinon of women, even when they chanced to be physicians, was most likely to be found. Under such conditions, it was only an occasional man of genius, like Haller in the eighteenth century, who ventured to state the truth, which should have been obvious, that there was a tendency for menstruation in women to be associated with sexual desire. Thirty years ago, when I was preparing my study of “The Phenomena of Sexual Periodicity,” it was beginning to be widely recognized that sexual desire tends to be specially associated with menstruation, some authorities placing the heightening of desire immediately before, and others im¬ mediately after, the menstrual period. Krafft-Ebing, at that time the most prominent authority on the psychology of sex, placed it usually after the period, but he gave no exact figures. THE MENSTRUAL CURVE OF SEXUAL IMPULSE. 223 Dr. Harry Campbell, who carried out an investigation among healthy women of the working class in London, by making enquiries of their husbands, found that in two-thirds of all cases there was increased desire just before, just after, or during the flow, and that the proportion of cases in which it was increased before to those in which it was increased after was as three to two. Campbell’s indirect method of inquiry seemed to me unsatisfactory, and therefore I obtained direct information from a number of women of the educated class who were likely to furnish reliable answers. I came to the conclusion that there can be no doubt whatever that im¬ mediately before and immediately after [the period of men¬ struation], very commonly at both times—this varying slightly in different women—there is usually a marked heightening of actual desire. I also found that it occurred more commonly than had usually been supposed during the period itself. 1 Sub¬ sequent inquiries have confirmed this result, and have also tended to indicate that the heightening of desire is more likely to be pronounced at the end of the period than just before its onset. This seems what one might have expected if the end of menstruation may be regarded as corresponding to the oestral period. 2 I made no attempt to plot a menstrual curve of sexual de¬ sire in woman. There were no data for such a curve, for no woman had told me of any monthy climax of sexual feeling other than that around the menstrual period. I must confess that the question of such a curve had not even occurred to me. Such a failure may seem inexcusable. I had pointed out the 11 quote from the third edition (1910) of Vol. I of these Studies, p. lUo. 2 This main result is confirmed if we find that the greatest number of conceptions occurs immediately after menstruation. This was found to be so by Siegel, in Germany during the Great War, by observation on married soldiers who were only able to return home for two or three days at a time. Siegel found that the likelihood of fertilization increases from the beginning of menstruation, reaches its highest point six days later and remains at almost the same height until the twelfth or thir¬ teenth day when it declines, reaching absolute sterility at the twenty- second day I have not seen Siegel’s paper, which is summarized by Carr-Saunders, The Population Problem, p. 488 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 224 significant fact of Mittclsclimerz, the name given to the oc¬ casional occurrence of a kind of minor or abortive menstrua¬ tion in healthy women, usually appearing about the fourteent day of the menstrual cycle and lasting two or three days. o that there is sometimes an intra-menstrual cycle, possibly in¬ dicating a tendency towards a future breaking up of the men strual cycle into two. Fliess (in his book Die Beziehungcn zwischen Nase mid weiblichen Geschlechtsorganen) went so far as to assert that this phenomenon, which he called ATeocM- menstrmtion, is “well known to most healthy women. Here was a point at which one should have sought for a secondary climax of sexual desire. But, for my own part, I failed to make the search. At this stage enters Dr. Marie Stopes with an attempt, on the basis of new data, to construct a menstrual curve of sexual desire in women, such as Perry-Coste (and previously on slighter evidence Nelson) had sought to construct m the case of men. 1 Her attempt is the more interesting because it is brought forward in complete independence of the already established phenomena of Mittelschmerz, to which she makes no reference. Yet she places a climax of sexual desire pre¬ cisely at the date of Mittelschmcrz. The nature and extent of Dr Stopes’s data are not clearly stated, but her conclusion, il¬ lustrated by charts, is that there are two wave-crests in the menstrual cycle of sexual desire, one usually occurring during the three days before the actual onset of menstruation, the other during the three or four days around the fourteenth day after the onset of menstruation, and so beginning about a week after menstruation ceases. Dr. Stopes seems to regard the second climax as usually higher and more prolonged than the immediately pre-menstruation climax. This attempt to establish a menstrual curve of sexual de¬ sire in women seemed to me to be a step in the right direction, and I resolved to test the reliability of the particular kind of 1 Marie Carmichael Stopes, D.Sc., Ph.D., Mamed Love, Ch. IV. “The Fundamental Pulse.” 1918. F H Perry-Coste (later Perrycoste), “Sexual Periodicity in Men,” Appendix B. to vol. l of these Studies. THE MENSTRUAL CURVE OF SEXUAL IMPULSE. 225 curve Dr. Stopes had found, though without any confidence that I should be able to confirm its existence. The first point was to decide on a satisfactory objective criterion of genuine organic sexual impulse, of a truly auto-erotic nature, so far as possible independent (it can never be entirely independent) of all those slight erotic stimuli by which in civilization men and women alike are constantly solicited. This was the more necessary since the method of merely general inquiry had in my hands already produced only negative results except as to the one climax aroundi menstruation, while to ask a woman the leading question as to whether she feels a special tendency to sexual desire around the fourteenth day is obviously a fal¬ lacious method, because—even apart from the fact that few women have exercised a sufficient amount of precise self¬ observation to make their answers reliable—the influence of suggestion and auto-suggestion at once comes into play, and when the point is thus brought before her a woman may easily, in all good faith, find unreliable reasons in her own experience for accepting or rejecting the theory. On consideration it seemed to me that there are two ob¬ jective criteria, both of which may be used with considerable confidence in the attempt to find d,ata for the construction of a menstrual curve of sexual desire in women: (1) The oc¬ currence of erotic dreams, and (2) the occurrence of masturba¬ tion in the case of women who adopt that practice. Erotic dreams are an entirely normal and organically auto-erotic in¬ dication of sexual desire, largely independent of direct environ¬ mental influence, while the act of masturbation, it may be pre¬ sumed, is not usually resorted to unless under the stress of an impulse sufficiently strong to be fairly considered organic. It was on the basis of one or other of these two classes of auto¬ erotic phenomena that the attempt to construct a menstrual cycle of sexual desire in man was based. It so chanced that at the time when Dr. Stopes’s book appeared a record of dreams was being kept for me by a married lady (Mrs. F.) for purposes of investigation. There was no idea of including the question of a menstrual curve of 15 226 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. the sexual impulse in such investigation, but the record itself admirably to an inquiry of the kind, and I have accord¬ ingly examined it to that end with the following result. Mrs. F. is thirty-two years of age, physically and ment¬ ally normal, in good health, the mother of children, but sep¬ arated from her husband, owing to war conditions, during the whole period of the investigation. This covered six mont s, it was not practicable to continue it longer, as the record oc¬ cupied considerable time, and Mrs. F. is engaged in an arduous profession and desires to devote all her spare time to her children. Her full and sometimes fatiguing life prevents her from giving as much thought as might otherwise have been the case to sexual interests, while at times worry and anxiety have exerted a depressing effect on her vital energies. 1 e menstrual flow lasts four days and is accompanied by only a minor degree of discomfort; the menstrual month oscil¬ lates a day or two on each side of twenty-six days, which is the average, though it so happens that during the seven periods that have been observed the average has never coincided with the actual length of any period. For the purposes of this inquiry the erotic dreams only will be taken into consideration. It is possible that the dreams as a whole may follow a menstrual curve (as Nelson found) ; I am inclined to think they may; but to consider that question would unduly and unnecessarily complicate the question be¬ fore us. We will only consider erotic dreams, and we have first to decide what constitutes an erotic dream. As I regard the matter, an erotic dream is one which by its psychic con¬ tents manifestly reveals an erotic situation, or else it is a dream which is accompanied by physical sexual excitation traceable on awaking. 1 It may be added that the latter are not a separate group, for all the dreams in this series which presented physical sexual accompaniments were psychically erotic, although not all the i The data on which Perry-Coste worked were exclusively the physical accompaniments; he found remarkably few traces of the dreams themselves. THE MENSTRUAL CURVE OF SEXUAL IMPULSE. 227 psychically erotic dreams had corresponding physical accom¬ paniments to a noticeable extent. I have not adopted the Freudian criterion according to which a dream may be latently erotic while not manifestly so. I do not dispute that this is often possible and sometimes likely, but it opens the door to many doubts and uncertainties, while at the same time diminish¬ ing the soundness of the foundation we are working on, for there can at least be no doubt that all the most definitely erotic dreams in the series have been included in my enumeration. Thus I do not include two dreams of flying, which Freud would regard as the expression of a sexual wish; their affective tone was pleasant, but the subject is emphatic that these pleas¬ urable feelings were quite distinct from sexual feeling. The total number of erotic dreams, as thus ascertained, rom the end of March to the end of September, was thirty- two, of which thirteen left traces of physical excitation notice¬ able on awakening. Their summated daily occurrence in the menstrual cycle, was as follows: n „ V’ J; *' 2 ’ '• *• °- »• 4 - 4 > 2, 1, 1. 1, 1, 0, 2, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, " U, U. If we convert these figures into two-day periods in order to smooth the curve we reach the result: 5, 2, 3, 1, 5, 6, 2, 2, 2, 1, 2, 1, 0. Then the curve becomes unmistak¬ ably clear; we see a first climax within the time of menstrua¬ tion, followed by a dip, and succeeded on the tenth to twelfth days by a second higher and wider climax, followed by a cor¬ respondingly still lower and more prolonged dip which finally ends in zero during the days preceding the onset of the next menstrual flow. There can be no question whatever concerning the reality and the harmonious formation of this curve. It becomes still more emphatically clear if we carry further the process of smoothing by arranging the figures in four-day periods : 7, 4, 11, 4, 3, 3, 0. If the dream test is reliable Mrs. F. possesses a definite auto- erotic menstrual curve. It is obvious that the period covered by this curve is hardly long enough to encourage complete confidence in the re- PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 228 suit. A little later, therefore, Mrs. F. was persuaded to renew the observations for a longer period, beginning with 1st of November, and without noting or considering whether they formed any kind of curve. The conditions, both internal and external, had already considerably changed, and were no longer so favorable. Mrs. F. had a serious attack of influenza just when the observations were to begin and remained in Vv-jak health for nearly a month afterwards. No erotic dreams, in consequence, occurred till 4th of December. She was, how¬ ever, during this second period, on the whole much more cheerful and much more vigorous than during the first period of observation. But, on the other hand, she was also working much harder, and so, probably, less observant of her dreams, which, also, were more often replaced by day-dreams. These various changes of circumstance could not fail to affect the curve. But the curve, though modified, and to some extent dis¬ placed, still remains, though it cannot be superimposed on the earlier curve. We have always to remember that, as has been shown by Mr. Perry-Coste, physiological curves taken during a long period of years, precisely because they are those of liv¬ ing and growing persons, are in process of constant slow modi¬ fication. To attempt therefore to make a single curve out of the separate curves of different years or different seasons in¬ troduces confusion. Yet an intelligible curve still remains. This second series of observations was continued till the end of November in the following year, and when we have eliminated the early month effaced by influenza, it covers thirteen menstrual months. There were 54 erotic dreams re¬ corded during this period, including several that were doubt¬ ful but probable, or interrupted by awaking, and excluding others that were more doubtful. In five of these 54 dreams orgasm occurred. From the first day of the menstrual month they were distributed as follows: 0, 2, 0, 0, 2, 4, 0, 2, 2, 2, 0, 3, 4, 4, 2, 2, 5, 4, 1, 2, 3, 2, 3 , 2 , 2 , 1 . Summated in two-day periods we find: 2, 0, 6, 2, 4, 3, 8, 4, 9, 3, 5, 5, 3. THE MENSTRUAL CURVE OF SEXUAL IMPULSE. 229 CHART I. 230 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. Considering the extent of the various disturbing influences this curve comes out quite harmoniously, and may even be said to be in some respects more likely to be normal than the earlier curve, although both the climaxes are concomitantly moved to the right, that is to say both are delayed. The first climax oc¬ curs at the end instead of the beginning of menstruation, and the second and main climax also occurs later, on the four¬ teenth to the eighteenth days. When we compare these two results, even in their difference, it is not easy to doubt the reality of the curve revealed. There remains to test the second criterion, constituted by acts of masturbation. For this purpose I propose to use data which have been in my hands for some years, but which I have not hitherto worked out. They concern a married lady, whom we will call Mrs. A., not personally known to me, but with whom I was in touch through a medical friend 1 of hers and mine, who was permitted to copy certain entries in her diary to send me. I am also acquainted with her sexual history generally. Mrs. A. has no children. She has travelled much, is at¬ tractive and accomplished, and has lived in hot countries, which has perhaps contributed to develop the sexual tendencies. She may, however, be regarded as fairly normal except as con¬ cerns the frequency of masturbation. She was taught this method of sexual indulgence at the age of fourteen, but seldom practised it at that time. It has become much more frequent during adult life, but has apparently had no injurious influ¬ ence of any kind, nor has it interfered with pleasure in normal intercourse, which has often taken place shortly before or shortly after an act of masturbation. She is accustomed to note acts of masturbation (there are sometimes two in one day) in her diaries, as well as the date when menstruation be¬ gins and ends; she makes no entries of acts of sexual inter¬ course. The period for which I have these data covers two 'This, it may now be stated, was the late Lieut.-Colonel \\. D. Sutherland I.M.S. the Imperial Serologist for India, too skilled and acute a medico-legal observer to accept testimony easily. THE MENSTRUAL CURVE OF SEXUAL IMPULSE. 231 years, with the exception of a break of a few weeks when she was away from home and had left her diary behind. Mrs. A. resembles Mrs. F. in that the menstrual flow lasts for four days and the menstrual month oscillates round an average of twenty-six days. When the total number of acts of masturbation is summated and arranged, as with Mrs. F.’s CHART II. erotic dreams, beginning with the first day of menstruation, we have the following series: 8, 6, 9, 10, 10, 6, 5, 9, 8, 10, 4, 6, 6, 13, 2, 6, 7, 9, 10, 6, 8, 8, 4, 6, 3, 12. When, as before, we attempt to smooth the curve by condensing into two- day periods we have the series: 14, 19, 16, 14, 18, 10, 19, 8, 16, 16, 16, 10, 15. If, finally, we reduce to four-day periods (doubling the odd two-day period) we have this result: 33, 30, 28, 27, 32, 26, 30. Here clearly is a curve exactly analogous to Mrs. F.’s curve of erotic dreams, though with variations from that curve. There are still two climaxes in the menstrual wave, but they have changed places. The extreme smoothening of the 232 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. curve, while emphasizing its shape, to some extent disguises the precise incidence of its high and low points. Mis. As second¬ ary climax occurs shortly after the middle of her menstrual month, while her chief climax, which begins to appear and then falls just before menstruation (though the condensation involved by the irregular length of the month makes this pre¬ liminary rise even greater than it is really), is chiefly marked during the last two days of menstruation and the day im¬ mediately following. Mrs. F.’s chief climax occurs a little before the middle of her menstrual month, and her secondary climax, which is of considerably less magnitude, is at the second day of menstruation. In both Mrs. F.’s and Mrs. A. s curves the longer and lower depression occurs in the week pre¬ ceding menstruation. I may further bring forward a case (kindly furnished to me by Dr. Norman Haire) which is interesting as it seems to show careful and precise self-observation. It is that of Miss S. aged 29. The menstrual periods began at 14, and she was regular until 21. Then she had intercourse and the periods ceased for six months. Then they reappeared and have con¬ tinued ever since. Her menstrual cycle takes 24 days when out of health and 28 days when in good health. She herself divides it into five periods as follows: (1) Period of rest¬ lessness and sexual excitement, beginning five or six days be¬ fore menstruation and lasting three or four days; (2) a period of depression lasting two days and immediately preceding menstruation; (3) period of menstruation, lasting three or four days; (4) period of persistent headache and vaginal contrac¬ tion, lasting about a week and culminating in a sudden and brief crisis of sexual excitement; (5) normal period, lasting from nine to thirteen days according to the state of general health. Her own account of the characteristics of these periods follows, given exactly in her own words:— “1. Period of restlessness and sexual excitement. This period is marked by nervous tension, restlessness, abnormal gaiety, great talkativeness, keen sexual desire, a feeling of extraordinary physical THE MENSTRUAL CURVE OF SEXUAL IMPULSE. 233 fitness, buoyancy and self-confidence. At this time, my dreams are vividly sexual—of coitus, of sexual caresses or of suckling an infant. Any of them result in orgasm which gives complete relief. There is no exhaustion in the morning, and the feeling of fitness continues though the nervous tension is relaxed. “I am only able to sleep during this period if I have not worked too hard during the daytime, and am not overstrained. When I have been hard at work sleep is impossible, the whole nervous system seems to be influenced, as if there were general neuritis, and there is a kind of ‘hot wires’ feeling all over the body. The tempta¬ tion to masturbate is almost overwhelming, as without it I always remain awake all night and am quite exhausted in the morning. A strong sleeping draught of chloral and bromide is, however, some¬ times but not always, effectual in bringing sleep. “Masturbation also sometimes brings sleep, but is not at all a desirable expedient, because it gives very little relief, makes me feel (and look) very ill and increases the pain at the next menstruation. It disturbs the action of the heart, upsets the nervous system alto¬ gether and brings a distaste for food. Apart from these evils it causes much mental distress. It is quite three days before I look normal again. “When I am much run down and suffering severely during the period, my dreams become hideous. I generally dream of babies. The last dream of this kind was that I carried a suit case containing the decomposed bodies of two babies, but my impression was that they had decomposed in my womb, not outside.^ I never experience fear at such dreams—I am merely shocked. When I am well I have dreams at this time demanding physical courage, I have to decide to walk through deep water, fully clothed. I have a fear of deep water because I was nearly drowned when I was 15. I have tried to conquer this fear but without success. In¬ variably I decide to go through the water though it menaces me. I always fear that it will reach my mouth, but it never does. I wake with a strong feeling of elation that I have conquered. Sometimes I have to walk over a cliff, but there is no fear in this dream. 2. Period of depression. A feeling of depression sets in which gradually increases up to the beginning of menstruation. This is the only time in the month when I can cry, and do! It is difficult, I think, for a woman with a sense of humor to cry, especially if she be accustomed to regard her own feelings, and actions, dispassion¬ ately. But at this time my sense of humor departs. Sexual desire, also, has disappeared, and there is general slackness. The feeling of 1 With regard to this remark by Miss S. a psycho-analyst would doubtless say that the suit case is an obvious symbol of the womb. 234 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. pain and of being ‘out of sorts’ grows, and I am peevish. Some girls are extremely bad-tempered and ‘snappy’ at this time. “3 Period of menstruation. When I am overworked there is almost intolerable pain for 6 hours or so before the discharge begins, so that my face becomes haggard and drawn, as in some pregnan women, and my condition cannot possibly be disguised. The first and second days of the discharge are extremely painful afterwards quite bearable. If masturbation (or sexual excitement) has taken place since the last menstruation, the process is more painful and the vulva, vagina and uterus are swollen and inflamed. The d charge continues in decreasing amount for four days. Sexual desire 15 3 “When I lead an open-air life, or am not drawing too much on nervous energy at the office, the menstrual discharge is increased there is scarcely any pain, and the menstrual blood becomes bright scarlet. Even when I take a walk of half an hour each morning a fortnight, the flow increases and becomes bright in color, the general supply for the body seeming to improve, whereas when I am tired the flow is less, the color of the menstrual blood is darker and the pain increases. All girls tell me that same thing ; tthe healthier the girl the greater the flow. Food too, makes a differ¬ ence I find that if I take two meat meals each day during the pre¬ vious 24 or 28 days, the next menstruation shows more blood. On two occasions, I have lived on vegetarian diet for about 3 weeks and the flow has decreased—almost ceased, in fact, and there has been weakness and lassitude. Fresh air without extra food produces better results than extra food without fresh air. An open-air life and absence of worry produce a marked improvement in health in a very short space of time. ... ~ . “4. Period of persistent headache and contraction of vagina. During this period which follows menstruation and lasts about a week there is a tense nervous feeling and persistent headache as if there were a tight band round the head. The pain is most severe in the center of the forehead above the eyes. The skin of the forehead is tight and flushed, and slightly swollen. There is a tight, painful feeling of t e sex organs, the walls of the vagina are rigidly contracted, the vulva swollen and painful. The flow of blood throughout the body seems restricted There is a general unhappy feeling of being ‘out of sorts both because of actual pain and because of the feeling of restriction It is as if three-quarters of the personality was submerged. Instead of being, an ‘active’ and ‘attacking’ personality, it is perforce a ‘defensive’ and ‘passive’ one, because of the lack of energy. During this period I have little energy, my brain is not keen and I am unable to concentrate or to grasp clearly the details of a matter. THE MENSTRUAL CURVE OF SEXUAL IMPULSE. 235 This period comes to an end with a sudden welcome relaxation without any sexual excitement beforehand, but just before the re¬ laxation there is keen sexual desire, keener than in Period 1, and the nervous tension climbs to a ‘peak.’ The sex organs relax, the head¬ ache disappears. At the same time there is abundant mucous dis¬ charge from the vagina if there has been sexual excitement or mas¬ turbation during the 24 days before menstruation. The discharge continues for 2 days. My theory is that this mucus is secreted at the times of excitement but cannot be discharged at once owing to the inflamed condition of the uterus. When there has been no sexual excitement, masturbation or nerve strain during the previous periods, there is only a slight discharge and I feel more myself. When I make any special demand, physical or mental, on my reserve of nervous energy, especially after sexual excitement, there is a mucous discharge, and I quickly become thin, haggard, and easily tired. Nervous strain of any kind produces neuritis, in the first place, fol¬ lowed, when the tension is relaxed, by the mucous discharge. The nervous strain is severe—the whole of my body twitches, heart beats rapidly, and it is many hours before I become moderately calm. “At the end of this period, after relaxation and mucous dis¬ charge, I experience a feeling of complete exhaustion for a day or so. S. Period of normality. For about 9 days I am now normal with no special symptoms until the recommencement of Period 1.” In minor details these three menstrual curves differ from each other and from the curve which Dr. Stopes re¬ gards as typical. That is what we should expect; no doubt every woman has her own monthly curve, which (as has been found for the annual curve in men) may even slowly vary during life in the same individual. It is almost needless to add that many further careful observations are required. Yet when we remember that the cases here reported are random samples, the first that chanced to come to hand, that they were tested by different criteria, and that, as I may add, they are not all even of the same nationality, it is remarkable that they should confirm the same two essential points: (I) the regular existence in women of a menstrual wave of sexual de¬ sire, and (2) the occurrence in that wave of two crests, of which the second roughly corresponds to the period of Mit- telschmers, as it is not happily termed, for it is not necessarily 236 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. accompanied by pain, and is merely the indication of a tend¬ ency of the menstrual cycle to split into two. The establishment of this curve seems to represent a notable advance in the knowledge of the psycho-physiological life of women. V. THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS: A STUDY OF A SERIES OF ONE HUNDRED DREAMS “Celui qui veut ecrire son reve doit etre infiniment eveille.” Paul Valery. We have become familiar d,uring recent years with the analysis of dreams. The typical form of such dream-analysis may fairly be said to be due to Freud. His Die Traumdeutung marks an epoch in the study of dreams; that must be recog¬ nized even by those who question the general validity of the principles there applied. Never before had so concentrated and piercing an energy of intellectual vision been applied to the phenomena of a dream. Never before had so much been read out of—though some might say read into—an isolated dream. On the whole, without doubt, dream-analysis, as thus understood, has become an accredited method. There may be wide differences of opinion as to its special details, or its general limitations, or its universal validity, but as a method it stands. It may even be said to stand so firmly that no other method of dream-study is at the present time being carried out with the same thoroughness, if even it is being carried out at all. \ et there is at least one other method of dream-study which is of the same psychological validity, and that is the method which I would term dream-synthesis. It may fairly be said that the method of dream-synthesis is, as a scientific method—for as an unscientific method dream- analysis had its beginnings early in human history—older than the other method. Everyone who makes a study of the char¬ acteristics of his own dreams may be said to be occupied with dream-synthesis. In America, also, at one time (as we may see in the early volumes of the American Journal of Psy- ( 237 ) 238 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. chology), there have been some more or less thorough atte P at a scientifically methodical dream-synthesis. So far as I aware, however, dream-synthesis has never been carried on a really conscientious and relentlessly scientific spirit. A psychoanalyst who reads any of these early series of dreams must be tempted to think that he is in the presence of people whose waking daytime lives are of an appalling y o > ^ character, for all the shamefaced thoughts and desires which among the ordinary educated population are not allowed to present themselves to public daily life, and often never even to waking consciousness and so are driven to seek freedom in the world of dreams, seem never to reach these peoples diearns, they must all have been expended in waking life. The modern psychosynthetist of dreams, however, will have another story to tell. His experience enables him to state, with assurance, that these people are not honest: although they rare y perhaps never, admit it, they are acting as the conscious and deliberate censors of the experiences they narrate: they are only concerned, in reality, to present a partial, tame, misleading, respectab e and conventional picture of the great world of dreams. Such a method may bring out interesting points of detail in the mechanism of dreaming. But that is all. It can reveal nothing of real life in the dream-world, and can have no vital relation¬ ship to the large fundamental facts of human psychology. In the same way, a geography which prudishly refused to admit the existence of rivers or to mention peninsulas could furnish no satisfactorily scientific account of the earth. I have significantly referred to geography because it seems to me that dream-synthesis, in its advantages and its limita¬ tions, fairly corresponds, when we are comparing the soul to the earth, to geography. Dream-analysis, in its advantages and limitations, obviously corresponds to geology. The geolo¬ gist cuts down below the surface, more or less at random, and draws a section of the strata he comes across, or he knocks off a fragment of rock for microscopical examination, and, in the measure of his knowledge and experience, he makes the most far-reaching deductions, which may be profoundly true, al- THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 239 though they are often violently disputed by other geologists. The geographer, on the other hand, travels over the surface in all directions and describes it comprehensively so as to present a balanced and duly proportioned picture of its whole extent; he cannot be so thorough as the geologist, who works from be¬ low upward, with its origins and genetic course; but, as he works from above downward, he is able to take with more cer¬ tainty a comprehensive outlook; so his results are usually less disputable than the geologist’s and may often serve to check the geologist’s more revolutionary speculations. Thus each method has its own advantages and limitations; each really aids the other . 1 The method of dream-analysis, however, as we know, with all its good qualities and all their defects, is now so familiar and so well established that it has long ceased to have any pioneering interest, or to offer any scope for scientific adven¬ ture. It is not so with dream-synthesis. So far, at all events, as I know—I may easily be wrong—there has yet been no scrupulous and completely relentless attempt—for without scrupulosity and complete relentlessness no step in science can ever be taken to present a reliable series of dreams exten¬ sive enough to reveal an unconscious soul. That is my excuse for what I am here attempting. None can know better than I know that I have not succeeded. But I venture to think that I have been able to carry the method a step farther forward. That is all I claim. The subject we are here concerned with appeared, before this experiment began, to be decidedly below the average in dreaming activity. Moreover, although she was at the time in a rather troubled and uncertain mental and nerv¬ ous condition, there was here no pronounced psychoneurotic 1 Since the present investigation was completed, the importance of what I have termed the synthetic study of dreams has been independently asserted m a leading article of the British Medical Journal on “The Statistical Method in Psychological Analysis’* (Nov. 11 1922) It is here pointed out that in the interpretation of a dream by analysis “the answer must depend on a knowledge of the frequency with which dream incidents of the type considered occur” in the dream life of people gen¬ erally, and that “the collection and analysis of such data is difficult but not beyond the bounds of research.” 240 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. problem to unravel, such as would more especially allure the dream-analyst. The superficial simplicity of t h ^e» ; I need not add, altogether an advantage when we are conce ing ourselves exclusively with questions of metho • Mrs. N., the subject in question, is a lady o on both sides, born and bred in France, but or ma " y * h resident in London. She was thirty-two years of age at period in question, married and the mother of children She was trained in an ficole Normale for the but since marriage the economic conditions of her Me to often been hard and trying. During the whole of the pe covered by the dreams, her husband, an officer in the ar y, was absent in a remote country; owing to incompatibility temperament she was meditating a complete separation. I he dreams, often noted down during the night and written out as rn as possible after awaking in the morning were written in French, and inevitably lose in translation; for dream synthesis, however, that loss is less significant* would be in dream-analysis where the actual word is °^ off * mental importance. For the same reason, that we are not here concerned with analysis, the dream-narratives have, been slightly condensed in translation, care being taken to om t nothing that could fairly be regarded as likely to be significant The subject is a woman of high intelligence, who interest in the experiment, and tried to carry it out {altl £ It is possible to rely on her complete frankness, thoug effort involved was sometimes a little trying to her. n o - dinary life, it may be said, she is rather shy and reserved though she rarely fails to secure the affectionate esteem o those with whom she comes in habitual social contact. Dream I. Night of 28th March: A few days after the beginning of monthly period. An hour before going to bed I had a light supper with a glass of sherry, which is contrary to my usual habits. I liked the sherry but it went slightly to my head, giving me an agreeable sensation of pleasure and quiet gaiety, rather strange to me in these sorrowful days [of war time]. When the memory of the dream begins I was seated1 on t ground, I know not where, for I see nothing, only a gate behind me, THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 241 through which on slightly turning my head I saw a man who seemed to have entered by the half-open door. He appeared a man o t e people, strong and well-built. I seemed to experience a feeling of pleasure in furtively looking at him, especially his body, covered with coarse clothing. He was a heavy, not perhaps very distinguished figure, but his shoulders interested me. Robust and solid, with those slow and indolent movements one often notes in men of the people, my man was filling a bucket, or buckets, with coal. There seemed to be coal everywhere. Then the dream seemed suspended, but it was continued. I was now m the room where the man had been filling the buckets with coal. I do not remember getting up from the position I was in, nor entering the room, but I suddenly saw myself there. I notice that the room is long and narrow, with the door in the middle of one of the long side walls. Opposite the door, on the other side wall, I see a long shelf with books, nothing else. The coal has dis¬ appeared, the room has become extremely clean, and the man is no longer there; at all events I do not see him. All at once I am outside the room; I do not know how I achieved this. The man is behind me at the right; his right arm is supported by what must be a piece of furniture. I turn my back to him; he dominates me and speaks to me, and without my turning round, slightly bending his head forward as if trying to see me in profile from the right. His voice is persuasive and gentle for a man of his size, it seems almost affectionate. I must have rendered him some service of which there is no trace in the dream, for he is thanking me and trying, almost tenderly, to make me accept a penny m recompense. I joke, as one would joke with a friend, at the idea that my services should be paid for, but he insists, also as a friend. I still refuse, always without looking at him, and he slips the penny into the large pocket of my apron. As I still do not move, the circular movement of his right arm in reaching the pocket on my left side gives me an agreeable sensation, almost as a caress would. Then the dream is again suspended, and suddenly I am once more in the room, still without knowing how I came to be there, and I look at the book-shelf, the man always behind me, always dominat¬ ing me, and always at my right. We talk, still not looking at one another. I remark that the books are evenly arranged, that there are many of them, and that the shelf seems too long as it runs the whole length of the wall. In the middle of the shelf, placed on the others, are two or three of smaller shape, bound in red leather, like prayer-books. I take up one which I look at and like touching; I read a title: “Epiphany.” 16 242 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. Suddenly I am in front of a window on the narrow side of the room, and on the left. As ever, I do not know how I came there but the man is also there, always at my right, always i me I am very conscious of his presence, and it seems to me that am speaking to him of the book, though expecting a movement on h“ part One would almost say that I am on the defensive; yet I turn over the pages of “Epiphany” and preserve an appearance of great calm. I do not ask myself what the title of the book means, and what relation it has to the text. Opening the book I see verses there, but do not recall reading them. I remark to my companion that “Epiphany” is one of my favorite books. He replies m a caressing voice: “Why did you never tell me so? I would have loved to have it.” I feel troubled at these words and turn the leaves of “Epiphany.” I remark some engravings but only recall one, o the Virgin enclosed in a circle. All at once the man’svmcechanges and seems almost warm. He demands brusquely: If I asked you, would you consent to give me a kiss?” At first I do not mov , make no reply, I hesitate; then slowly I turn my head and raise t to look at him, while he bends down. We gaze at each other for a long time. I seem to be reflecting; his face looks beautiful, no longer heavy as at the outset, though at the same time I am conscious that he is a man of the people. (Then it seems to me that I begin to awake. I am in a half-sleep, or am I not? I do not know.) After reflecting, and stilt looking at him, I say gravely: I allow you to give me a kiss to show you that I regard you as a gentleman but only on condition that you will never ask for another. I feel a passionate kiss on the lips, but I do not remember feeling his arms round me. I suddenly see a bed at the other end of the room, and I ask myself if he will be content with that burning kiss if he will be a “gentleman” or if he will take me up passionately and place me on the bed. I tremble with hope that he will be strong and ardent, and at the same time I feel ashamed. Thereupon I awake. After a moment of languor I think of my dream, recall its details, and reflect that it is a pity it was interrupted I am too hot and throw off the eiderdown. I notice that the lips of the vulva are moist and tremulous with little spasms. That con¬ tinues and I think of my husband and desire his presence. I take notes of the dream, thinking there may still be time to go to sleep again and perhaps continue the dream. It is seven o’clock. I want to make water, and do so, but retiring to bed I am unable to sleep sgsin. It is to be noted that during the day I had bought some biscuits to be shared with three colleagues, and there was an odd penny due to me which I had refused to take, as in the dream. Before going to 243 THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. bed J j 3 * 1 bee " reading an articIe on the Russian Revolution, and recalled a letter of my husband’s in which he mentioned that under Bolshevism some of the people, a cook for instance, had suddenly ecome generals. That had reminded me how the same thing had haPPened in the French Revolution, and I reflected how often in a great crisis the people can supply men of strong, ardent, virile type. is an i ea that is dear to me. I like men of the people, and certain types of workmen of strong physique and possibilities of intelligence and vigor always appeal to me. The man in the dream was quite unknown to me. The dream was written down in French, but the conversation in it was carried on in English. Dream II. Night of 29th of March: I go to bed after a supper more copious than usual, with half-a-glass of sherry. Previously I had taken a bath which gave me an appetite; hence the larger and later supper. Coming out of the bath I could not find my warm dressing gown which had gone to the laundry, and I had my supper insufficiently covered, near a fire that was almost out. So by the time the meal was over I felt so cold that I went to bed at once with a hot bottle and piled on more bed coverings than usual. . ’I 6 ”, the dream be gins I hear someone playing the piano. I trv to find out where the sound comes from and decide that it is from the room immediately below. I say to J. (my servant): “They are beginning the noise again; we must stop them.” We agree to knock on the floor. I do so, I think at first with my fist, then with the handle of a hair-brush, but the sound continues. I call for an iron and send J. for it. While she is away the music changes It is now a violin. It is beautiful, very beautiful; I no longer know whether to continue knocking on the floor. Suddently R. (my eldest boy) rises, runs towards me, and makes some remark I cannot recall about the noise Till then I had seen nothing around me; now I see the bed R. has just left. I resolve to knock anew on the floor, for I am annoyed that the noise should have awakened R. I knock and R. knocks. (There is no longer any J.) And all at once the floor opens in a corner of the room, as if one or two boards were removed leaving a hole through which a man might pass. I do not see the floor open, nor know how it was done; I suddenly see the hole, with the loose ends of the boards, and I am at the edge, gazing down into the room below, where I see a tall, well-built man, though rather slender, with a long face with a rather mischievous air, and long hair, turned towards me in an impertinent way. This is the man playing the violin. He stares at me. Our eyes meet, and his question mine m a bold and arrogant way. I pretend not to under¬ stand the invitation thus conveyed, and my eyes seek to give no 244 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. reply. But I am ill at ease, and I suddenly perce.ve that I am in a nightdress, and one that does not very well suit me; I makethe reflection, however, that white always goes well with me. To.escape from my embarrassment I begin to talk to the man. . y gentle and a trifle malicious. I say to him: “You can play as much as you like during the day, and then it is very nice; but you should not wake the children.” He replies ironically, with a princely a , that he is entirely at my disposition. I continue to feel embarrassed, and I carefully replace the boards to cover the hole. Suddenly, without transition, I am in a bedroom, whether the same room I do not know, but I suddenly see all the details. The room is square. On one wall is a fireplace. On the opposite side are two beds, side by side, square with the wall, one larger than the other, and with a passage between them. At the foot of these be is a third smaller bed; it is that of R. but he is not there He is with my favorite brother (now dead) in one of the other beds. I am in the largest bed, and the man is seated before the fireplace in which burns a fire. He is seated on an ordinary chair, with his back turned to us, gazing into the fire, the left leg over the right knee, and the hands clasping the left knee. I cannot see his face but I know that he has a mischievous air, although his bearing is calm. I know that he is studying me. I cannot tell how we have all come there, but the presence of that man studying me is embarrassing and I see that it also displeases my brother. I hope that the man will mistake my brother for my husband and go, but have little expectation that he will Suddenly my brother sends R. to his own bed and rises. 1 see that he is angry. He goes towards a corner of the room by the fireplace. Then the ceiling seems suddenly to open, revealing a spiral staircase, and my brother goes up, seeming to disappear by a trap-door, as in a barn. I hear a sound like that of a latch in a barn of my early home. I know that my brother has gone because he dis¬ likes the man’s presence. I am now full of apprehension and wonder what will happen. I should like to be angry, I ought to send that man away, but I am tired and singularly indifferent. I decide to let him believe that I have not noticed his presence. I turn towards the wall and pretend to go to sleep. I seem to be half asleep. Suddenly the man furtively glides between the beds. I have no heard him come, but I feel a warm kiss on the back of my neck. I turn round, pretending to be indignant and demand an explanation of his conduct. There is no harm in that, he assures me, and he talks of my loneliness, and begs me to have pity on a man who is so hungry for love. He puts on an unhappy air, but there is always a mischievous expression about the corner of his lips and I feel that everything he says is false. I ask him what he means by solitude. THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 245 He confesses that really he is not alone, but that someone who lives with him will soon go away, and he will then be alone, so it comes to the same thing, and in any case he deserves my pity. He says this in a blustering and arrogant way as though the little confession "ere of no significance. I reprove him and try to show myself really angry at such lying. I tell him I hope he will some day know what real solitude is, such as I have known for years and years, during which I have often had to go to the pawn shop to get money for bread. He listens, still retaining his mischievous air, seeming to wait till we have finished talking in order to reach what we both of us tacitly know must soon happen between us. My thoughts recur to the kiss, and resolving no longer to beat around the bush, I brusquely ask him: “And what more do you want” He assures me that he wants nothing more. But his smile belies his words and what he says sounds false. I try to be indignant, but I am soft and languorous, and, at last, resigned. He suddenly covers with greedy and passionate kisses my uncovered legs and buttocks and back. My softness and lack of resistance seem strange to me when I know that I ought to resist, and I am full of shame. He could in reality have me altogether. I turn my back towards him, with the attitude of a cat whose belly one is caressing, except that I hide my head in the pillow so that he shall not see my beatitude. He leans over the bed and continues to embrace my back. Suddenly he starts up like a drunken man, but always with that false air. He disgusts me and attracts me. His hand glides beneath the sheets near my feet. I am covered but I notice that I have on a night-dress that suits me. It is no longer the same one; this is open at the neck and trimmed with red braid, but I do not understand why I see it near my feet where the man’s hand is. His hand is seeking my legs which he caresses, but he seems to stop suddenly in the middle of this caress, and reaches his hand towards me with the air of saying: “Let us be friends, I will keep my promise, and ask no more.” I press his hand, but I know that it is false, that he will return and have me altogether, and I feel nothing but languor. There the dream ends. I awake. The awakening is sudden and I am terribly hot, but do not at first seem to be experiencing any sexual emotion. What I feel is more like a kind of colic, but quickly disappearing. Was it really colic? Perhaps, and it is followed by a kind of heaviness as when the bladder is too full. This sensation is agreeable, and though I reflect that I ought to get up and urinate I decide not to do so. I try to go to sleep again, and in a sort of half sleep I make the reflection that such dreams should not always be attributed to the bladder. I cannot, however, go to sleep. So I get up and make water but am surprised to find how very little comes. 246 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. I get back into bed and the sensation of heaviness seems slowly to disappear, but I suddenly realize that the lips of the vulva are moving and the clitoris seems to be jumping. It is not easy to calm myself; and that annoys and irritates me. I deliberately excite mvself. Then I rise to make a few notes. I return to bed in a calmer state and go to sleep again, and dream vaguely of other I am told that the night was windy, though I do not remember having heard the wind. But I should say that we have a lady in the house who learns singing, and every day she devotes herself to vocal exercises that are more or less agreeable. She has a way of begin¬ ning just when the children have gone to bed and so awakens them. Last night when she began as usual, I remember saying to J: i his is getting troublesome; I must ask her to choose some other hour. She lives above, not below me. The man was completely unknown. The dream was in English. Dream III. Night of 3rd April: I am at the top of what seems to be a square tower. The roof is flat and surrounded by an iron balustrade, and I am seated before what is like a bureau table. In front of me is one of my brothers, A. (an author), seated before another table like mine. We are working. A harsh artificial light falls on us, recalling the electric reflectors which follow actors on the stage. I take no note of whence the light comes, nor what pro¬ duces it, but accept it as natural. Everything outside this shaft of light is in a dim penumbra. At the foot of the tower, and included in the light, which spreads fanwise, a woman is seated at a table covered by a green cloth. She is beautiful, well proportioned, with a tendency to a certain plumpness which exactly suits her, and gives her the air of a velvety and nonchalant Angora cat. Her features are regular and beautiful; her skin is warm and matt, with a kind of ivory texture besides her black and lustruous hair and her heavy black velvet gown. Her hair is arranged like a halo round her head. The contrast between the green tablecloth and the warmth of this woman and her dress is highly agreeable. At the lady’s feet (for she is a great lady) is a carpet of green moss of incomparable softness, and the black velvet dress falls harmoniously over the moss and heightens its tones. It is a picture of the most agreeable artistic arrangement. The lady’s movements are all gracious, and measured with a careful art of which she seems quite conscious. I only note one gesture, that of opening a drawer, but her grace in this act fills me with admiration. My brother from the top of the tower admires the lady with the air of a connoisseur. In real life he is a great con¬ noisseur of beautiful women, especially when they are rather fat. I also gaze at the lady with much pleasure. THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 247 Then the dream seems suspended, and I suddenly see myself descending an extremely slippery slope which reaches from the top of the tower to the spot where the lady is seated like a flower. I seek to catch something rolling before me. Is it a ball? I believe so, but it is vague. I seem to slide and suddenly I see what seems a row of little cells beside the slippery descent; they become like theater boxes, in each of which, I know, is a woman. The entrance to each box is closed by a cretonne curtain of bright colors, green and red. On climbing the slope again, with difficulty, for it is like a polished floor, I remark to myself that I should not like to have to do this every day, like these ladies. I wonder how they contrive to do it without falling. Have I caught the rolling object? It seems so. I do not see myself again reaching the top of the tower. Every¬ thing suddenly changes. I am I know not where; I only see a wall, and do not note its color. A dear man friend (F.) is with me, young, tall, strong, quiet. I do not see him but I feel him. I love him. There is no desire for kisses or caresses or physical union, but I am hurt because he is distant and indifferent. I say to myself (in English): “I love him because he is the first man who ever made me feel so small. I have been small in front of the sea-.” There the quotation stops. I use the word “quotation” for this was the echo of my thoughts before going to bed. Having said this, however, I resolve to be great. I get together a few wooden cases of the Tate sugar-box kind, and place them one above another against a wall with the idea of climbing to the top of them in order to be great. There are three of them and I feel that I shall never be able to climb to the top without falling. They seem too near the wall, which renders the balance uncertain since the smallest is beneath, and it is the bottom of each box that is against the wall. I feel that in climbing I shall bring them all down. But I am resolved to risk everything to be great. I do not see myself climbing; nor do I see my friend anywhere near, but I am conscious that he is somewhere about. Suddenly I realize that I must have succeeded, but that I have hurt myself. I am very glad of it. My friend is worried about me, and that maliciously delights me. I must have passed on the other side of the wall, but though invisible I am able to see him and enjoy teasing him when I hear him ask: “How is she?” It is delightful to me that his anxiety shows he loves me. I awake slowly and peacefully and happily. There is nothing to indicate the slightest sexual excitement. It is time to get up. Dream IV. Night of 17th April: The day after beginning of monthly period. A rather large supper an hour before going to bed. 248 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. I am in a room of which I see no details except a fire flaming in the hearth. My great aunt is seated before the fire. I cannot recog¬ nize her but I know it is she. She hides the fire from me, but I guess it to be there. I am seated on a wooden bench against the wall like those in railway stations. This seat (certainly English, like the fire) is made comfortable by a pile of cushions and is ensconced in an angle of the room. I am on the right side, buried in the cushions, and on the left, turned towards me and looking at me, is a man with stupid placid face and a foolish smile at the corner of his lips. He displeases and irritates me horribly. His hair is blacky smooth and well combed, his skin is pink and delicate like a woman’s, his face is round. He devours me with his eyes, smiling foolishly. I feel more and more irritated and constrained. I begin to ask myself if I should go to my train. Suddenly I find myself in a bedroom with my aunt and my sister, and am washing myself feverishly. I do not, however, observe any details of this operation. I tell my sister not to forget the bag. She opens a drawer and begins, with my aunt, to fill a portmanteau. I do not see it, but the room seems in disorder. I am feverish, the idea of the train pursues me. I shall lose it. I am constantly saying so to my sister and my aunt. The thought of the man still seems to be irritating me. Then my servant awakens me. It is a quarter to seven and I have to leave the house to catch a train, of which I had been speaking the evening before. During the day I had had occasion to mention that grand aunt who died sixteen years ago. In the evening, on returning from work, I had met a Belgian, an idiotic sort of man who has been trying to court me, and he had greeted me with a loud “Salut!” which got on my nerves. He resembles the man in the dream except that the dream man’s hair was dark like that of a Hungarian who also, a little while ago, became annoying by following me about. Dream V. Night of 18th April: I am in a large store like Sel¬ fridge’s and in front of a shelf of toys when I suddenly hear the “grosse Berthe” roaring, and a shell whistles above my head, just as I used to hear it at Lille. There is a general cry of alarm. The shop girls rush for their hats and coats in order to descend, for we seem to be at the top of the building. As for me, I am looking for my children, I cannot find them anywhere. I am in great trouble. I wander about everywhere, asking everybody if they have seen two little boys. Suddenly the scene changes. I am waiting for an omnibus at the corner of Oxford Circus and have in my hand a book written by a friend, though its title is slightly transposed in my dream. Sud¬ denly I see Olive Schreiner (with whom I am acquainted) also THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 249 waiting for the omnibus (which in real life she has often taken at this point). I am happy to meet her. I approach and say, “You are Olive Schreiner?” She replies, “Yes and you are Madame-” (I cannot recall the name; it was not mine, but I regarded that as of Utle importance.) I say: “I saw to-day six photographs of you!” Where? she asks. I reply that it was at my friend’s, the author of the book, who in real life possesses many photographs of Olive Schreiner. Then I look for the book, but it has disappeared and I remember that I left it at a sort of tea garden where I had had tea. I tell this to Olive Schreiner and ask her to accompany me to the tea garden. I am happy at the opportunity to speak of my friend. We return; I see green tables, with gravel on the ground, and find my book on a chair. Olive Schreiner suddenly changes into a very young person; she does not hear me talking of my friend, and (oh horror!) begins to flirt with some young people. I do not know where they come from, and remember no more. Dream VI. Night of 19th April: Last day of monthly period. Light supper three-quarters of an hour before going to bed. Here is all that I recall: I am in a house which I do not see but know to be like mine here. The room in which I find myself cor¬ responds to my front room. I even know that the door on my left leads into a passage identical with mine. I am near a wall. Before me is a large table. The passage between the table and the wall is narrow. I am there and looking at a book. There is a man in the room. I do not see him, but I know that he has black hair and is well built. I know also that he is a lodger upstairs. Suddenly he is near me on the right, though I had not seen him move. With a quick movement he raises my clothes behind and passes his arm firmly round my waist. I am extremely indig¬ nant, and surprised at the audacity of the action and its suddenness. All at once I see a woman before us on the other side of the table. As ever, I do not know where she comes from, but her presence seems quite natural. She is the wife of the man who has his arm round me. She shows no sign of jealousy or indignation towards me, but she seems to disapprove the man’s conduct, and her face shows this clearly, while her husband maintains an arrogant air. The scene changes. I am in a large vestibule or hall, as of an hotel or theater. At the far end is a staircase that seems to shine (I do not know what it is made of). On the left, looking towards the further end, the staircase turns and some steps are visible. It is brilliantly lighted. There is a crowd though I can distinguish no one. The staircase is encumbered with people, and I see the man of the first scene seated on the lowest step and apparently engaged in repairing it. I am in the midst of the crowd, and I feel agitated and 250 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. feverish The man’s presence irritates me, though at the same time H pleases me “eel awkward. I have to go up the staircase to dress for a ball I know that he is on the first step to await me, and that n going'up the crowded staircase I shall brush against him and reveal my agitation. I go up. My feet are caught in the long sk rt of sea-blue taffeta I am wearing. I have to stop a minute to d engage them. I bend my head to the right, the side on which the man is, the better to see the bottom of my skirt. *PP ear j slender in the long skirt. I betray my emotion. I am sure-hat never said, “I love you!” but I must have said it, for he repeats. “I also love you.” « T ™ Change of scene: I am in a bedroom. I see no details. I am hot suffocating, a wave of heat rises to my face. A friend is near me’ a young girl I lost sight of at least fifteen years ago and who now appears as a young woman, though I have never really seen her so I talk to her feverishly of the man and the worry he is causing me At the same time, I tell her I am too hot, that before putting on my ball dress I absolutely must take off the vest underneath, see myself with the skirt of a ball dress in my hand; it is one I had some 'seven years ago, but I have detached it in my dream and had it washed and cleaned. I am very busy but I know I “haM find the bodice and the girdle in the room and I hope to succeed in fasten g them together. I feel that I am late, everyone is dressed, but I beg my companions not to leave me, I must take off my vest, I am so hot. The thought of the man still further heats me. \\ e talk of him He makes love to everyone, my companion says. It seems have had to undress, for I see my companion, patient and submissive as I formerly knew her, holding out my open drawers for me to put my legs through. The drawers are short, with broad legs and trimmed with lace. I continue feverish, agitated, begging my friend not to leave me. She remains patient and placid. Two other women enter the room. One I cannot see at all; the other is another old acquaintance of the same period as the girl who holds the drawers and equally lost sight of long ago. She is dressed in sea-blue si with a high neck, which surprises me in a ball dress. I note in her the same hypocritically austere and prudish air as when I knew her in former years. She tells us it is time to be ready. I beg them all to wait for me. I am dreading the man. I awake. I am agitated. My legs and my buttocks are tightly pressed together. The clitoris seems erect; the vagina is in spas¬ modic movement. I have a horrible desire to put my hand to the sexual parts. It is difficult to grow calm. But it is time to get up and I rise. I urinate copiously, for I have not done so during the THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 251 night. I recall no details during the previous day to arouse the idea of the man or the ball. Dream VII. Night of the 19th (or possibly a day or two earlier as there was a little confusion in noting this dream): A political dream about the Bolsheviks. I have an animated discourse with an acquaintance of advanced political views. He accuses my husband, who seems all the time near, of not being a Bolshevist, and I defend my husband and argue against Bolshevism. Dream VIII. Night of 24th April: I dream that I shall lose the train but can recall no details. Dream IX. Night of the 25th April: I dream that I have con¬ fused Saturday with Friday, and that instead of going to the school where I have an engagement, I have stayed at home. At mid-day I realize my mistake, and my mother urges me to dress and leave quickly, telling me that I shall reach the school towards two o’clock. I dress feverishly, asking myself who has taken my lesson and what the principal will think of me. The scene changes. I am giving a dictation to pupils; they are noisy and disagreeable. I cannot quiet them and am worn out. I am beating one and tell her I shall report her to the principal. (All this has not the least resemblance to the reality of my daily life as a teacher.) Then I am with another class which is very well behaved. I make them a little speech in which I tell them that they are behaving as English children always behave when one trusts to their honor, etc. I recall no more. Dream X. Night of 26th April: A week after the monthly period. Bath at nine o’clock, light supper at nine-thirty, to bed at ten-thirty: I am m a wood. It is the forest of Fontainebleau. It is dark and I cannot distinctly see any details, but we must have spent the day there, I and my family. My mother suddenly gives the signal to leave and I perceive that my little brother O. (who seems strangely like my elder child) is not dressed. Then I am squatting down in front of him buttoning his jacket. I must be in a bedroom, for there is a bed beside me. I can, however, see nothing clearly. I hear my brother’s wife telling me we must make haste. I see her with someone else I do not recognize, at the end of a green avenue descending a rather steep path. But I seem to see her without having risen from my position, and I seem to have a double vision, both in front and behind. My mother’s voice worries me for I am already trying to make haste. At the same moment I see a man approaching by a large green avenue of which I catch a glimpse from the room in which I am. This avenue is on flat ground and dark 252 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. leading to we had ta with the j< can help n do not sec some man down besi pleases me. pleases me. . , „ A The scene then changes completely. I am in a bedroom a have on a long night dress. I know that the man is coming My door is shut and locked, but he is clever, and has a key that will open all the doors. One would say I can see through the walls for distinctly see him in the corridor outside my door. He is in a night shirt and approaches my door smiling; I await him, evident y wi pleasure. , . . Then, suddenly a head appears at another door opening on to the corridor. It is a woman’s head, a sister’s or a friend s, I am not sure, but someone near to me. I divine that she wishes to get in front of the man and enter my room, and that annoys me, though do not want to hurt her feelings. I seem to be watching the man through the door. He enters. I rush to the key and turn it. The man seats himself on a sort of old oak chest, his right leg crossed over the left. I am stretched out on the bed, and the woman who had been seeking to enter comes and places herself on me. Sud¬ denly she is transformed into the man. I am on my back and he is on me, but this position is reversed and he is on his back and I on him The position is really strange. I cannot explain it. He is under me but I no longer see him, I only see an immense penis standing up, as large as a policeman’s baton, between my legs. Therein lies a mystery. I must be lying with my stomach on the man, and yet 1 see the penis as though it came between my legs from behind, and I see it without turning, as it agreeably caresses me from behin . I take it in my hands and notice that it is hard. I ask myself whether I shall place it in the vagina. Then I lose all idea of the mutual position of the man and myself. We are engaged in coitus, and I am appeased. I dream that I am; I dream that it is not a dream because I can see all the pictures on the wall. They are not at all the pictures really on my wall, but I am sure that I am not dreaming, and I dream that, feeling happy, I go to sleep again peacefully, and there seems really to have been a dreamless interval before my elder boy came to wake me. It is late. I feel extremely calm. Half an hour later I urinate as usual in the morning. I should add that in the evening, before going to bed, and with¬ out any definite reason, I had felt myself much sexually irritated, THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 253 which had worried me. The bath failed to calm me, but when in bed I would not have recourse to masturbation. I succeeded in growing more or less calm and fell asleep. Dream XI. Night of the 27th April: A light supper an hour before going to bed: My younger child seems to be on my knees. He is quite naked, and a doctor, whom I cannot see, is examining him with an instrument resembling pincers of which each blade terminates in a narrow sharp point. With this instrument he pricks the child above the testicles, which seems to please the little one. Then he pricks each testicle, and the child, though he jumps a little, does not seem to find this disagreeable. Suddenly the doctor buries the instrument in the anus which seems to open like a mouth, and withdraws it, bringing out what seems like a ribbon, soft and gray. I ask if this is the bowel and he replies that it is a fragment of brain coming from the head to which it is attached by a button. He has had to pull very hard to extract it, but he assures me the child will be better for the operation; and that I shall see him change beneath my eyes. I then ask if I shall dress the child and he agrees. The scene changes. I am seated on a sort of dray loaded with goods. It is flat and I am accompanied by a number of people among whom I recognize one of my brothers, O., and a former friend, P. Near us is a young woman I know. We are both dress¬ ing ourselves. I am conscious that we had undressed and that my companion had undergone an operation. She is still weak and I help to put on her stockings. She has two pairs, one black and another yellow open-worked. I do not know which pair to put on first. I begin with the yellow pair, then I take them off and put on the black and over them the yellow, through which I can still see the black. In the midst of this we are disturbed. Our wagon is on a tramway line and its progress is blocked. Then it suddenly moves and my companion and I are thrown back with our legs in the air, nearly making a somersault. Almost at once we are again stopped by another tramway line. Then I find my brother near me; he is seated in front and the dray is transformed into a steam car. O. informs me that the best plan, to avoid blocking the road, will be for him to turn the machine off elsewhere. We set out, though I cannot perceive the movement, and at last reach a large public place, gray, dark, dirty, and cold. I no longer see the steam engine. I cannot tell where I am, but I see little boys and girls, making water, here and there, so that there are pools everywhere. They are all standing and have the air of carrying out an exercise, for they exchange opinions regarding the operation. One of them, a little boy, takes a vessel such as I have seen used by men in hospitals, and 254 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. places it to his penis, which I cannot see. He vani ^es, to give place to a little girl who repeats the performance with a chamber, which I clearly see through the skirts which seem as transparent aS ^Suddenly I become aware that P., looking as he was at eighteen or nineteen, is gravely walking up and down the square, w>t a co - panion I cannot see, to whom he is talking of the naturalness of the act of urination. He has the grave and placid air that I hav ® alw ^ seen in him. He adds that, before going to the front, his mother ha said to him: “If ever you require to satisfy your little needs, do so. At this point my servant awakens me. [There is neg ect to men ion the condition of the bladder on awaking.] _ . .... In the evening, I had occasion to examine my elder child s testicles. I have never before had a dream of this kind. P. and O. are two of the beings for whom I have most affection and they are often in my thoughts, consciously or unconsciously. Dream XII. Night of 1st May: A large supper two hours be¬ fore going to bed, and just before going to bed I drink much water I am amidst sandy hills on which the sunshine is playing^ It is very beautiful; I clearly see the golden and red tones. There is someone with me: yet I do not know who, and I see no one. It m an invisible presence, but very agreeable, and I vaguely believe that it is my friend F. We walk together and I know that we ought to be trying to reach the river. Suddenly I see the river, far off, as i. between an opening in the hills. It gleams like silver beneath the sun It is a beautiful sight. My companion and I are very happy. We hold each other’s hands, so far as that is possible with a being who is felt but not seen. We are full of gladness and walk rapidly, lightly, like children, over hills and valleys, now and then catching sight of the river, and then losing it from view. Change of scene. I am in. a convent garden, and it suddenly becomes a cemetery. My companion is always there invisible, but speaking in a strange language which must be that oi souls, for we understand each other perfectly without saying anything. Then I see a nun walking in the cemetery. The graves are green, the gen¬ eral atmosphere is calm and peaceful, but the nun looks tormented. All at once I understand the cause of her anxiety for water is every¬ where appearing between the graves. It increases every moment, the cemetery will soon be submerged. I read the anguish of the nun in the sinister aspect of this field of peace. Suddenly she ap¬ proaches me and says how idiotic it was for the monks to try to stop the course of the river. “One cannot stop a river; they have only succeeded for a time, and now it is rising over its banks.” I try to find out how the monks stopped the river. It is not clear; for a THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 255 long time I cannot make out. Then I seem to see a sort of dam made of moss and rising about a meter above the cemetery. The ri\ er is level with the dam, spreading in a sheet of silver, and the water drips between the moss. This vision is rapid. The nun begs me to write to the Father Superior of the monks to explain the anxiety of the nuns. I suddenly see conveniently a bureau, which does not seem out of place in a cemetery, and the nun opens it and produces a tiny square of rough gray paper on which I write my letter. I do not know what I write. Change of scene. I am walking on a hillside, along a horizontal path parallel with the valley. Other people are with me but I can¬ not see them. We walk for some time, with difficulty, for on the right side we are afraid of slipping down the slope. Suddenly, behind us, an immense jet of water arises and a few drops splash us. We turn round and see as if a hose pipe had cracked; but the jet is a thousand times more powerful, gigantically enormous and of extra¬ ordinary force. It is a marvelous sight, so beautiful that though it seems to me as if the river had burst at last, I cannot help feeling happy. Suddenly another jet rises nearer, and we run away laugh¬ ing. \ et more jets, and always coming nearer, and we are con¬ stantly obliged to run away; but I never seem to see more than one at a time; as soon as one appears the other vanishes. The hill seems immense, the footpath is lost in the distance. There is something human and mischievous in the jets, one would say that in their grandiosely immense way they are playing with us. Suddenly going down the hill I see a long green palisade stretching along beside the path. Before the jets of water we retreat by the side of this palisade. At the end we pass through a gate and I meet a friend (Miss G.) with her sister whom I have never seen but corresponded with. I recognize Miss G. and her sister resembles her. We talk but I remember nothing, if indeed there was anything said. Change of scene. We are in a garden. Many people are there, and I am with a group round a rustic table of the mushroom type! The dream is vague. We are to eat sausages and mashed potatoes. A young girl, whom I do not know, is to distribute the sausages, two each, but she manages badly and they do not go round. I take the dish and go to find Marie (cook at a Lycee where I was a pupil nearly twenty years ago and have never seen except on my return to the Lycee as a Military Hospital). So I go to ask Marie for more sausages and she replies, in the same surly tone as when I used to ask her for things for the wounded, that I am very late. But, still in accordance with her ways in real life, she serves me abundantly and I return in triumph to my mushroom table, announcing that I have three sausages each for everyone. No one, however, is hungry. 256 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. Then I awake and have such a strong desire to urinate (not having done so. as usual, during the night) that I have to jump out of bed immediately and make water copiously. , , . „ a . .. In the evening, I had spoken of Rasputin and of the Neva into which the murderers had thrown his body. Dream XIII. Night of 3rd May: Large supper an hour and a half before going to bed: . T I see a class with several desks and I ask someone wh not see why those of the M. P.’s have not been placed in the front row. I see the desks move. Someone is pushing them and p acing little tables in the front row for the Members of Parliament. Dream XIV. Night of 4th May: A large supper at the house of my friend F., some three hours before going to. bed: I am in a road. I see mounted police passing before me. I see soldiers. They pass without ceasing. They are going to a May Day Demonstration and I know there will be a terrible uproar. The scene changes. I am with my brother E. in the street and he is pushing a child’s perambulator. A policeman (for it is in England) jostles him and says something I cannot understand but which I know is not polite. I turn to the policeman and ask why he speaks so to my brother; he replies it is because my brother is so short and he hates these little foreigners. I reply that my brother has been to the front, that he was wounded and has won the Military Cross. He replies that the French are dirty beasts (or some such abusive term) and I continue to dispute with him. The discussion becomes heated until I turn away, shrugging my shoulders. I go down a road with my brother and J. (my servant), still much agitated. Suddenly I turn to J. and exclaim: “Where are the children?” In the excitement we had forgotten them (though I do not remember seeing them at the beginning of the dream). E. dashes away to find them, running up a street; I follow him, while J. is behind. We search everywhere. I awake. Dream XV. Night of 10th May: First day of monthly period. I can only recall that there were bombs in the dream and that it seemed not at all interesting. Dream XVI. Night of 11th May: A light supper two hours and a half before going to bed: I am with my mother in a garden but see no details. I do not see my mother but she talks to me, telling me what I ought to do with the beetroots. She wishes me to go and look for them in the garden and to carry them to the cellar in order to blanch them. So I go with a spade to dig up the beetroots. As I turn up the soil I see them, red and earthy. I go down the steps of a cellar, they 257 THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. kw eaUt ? Ul , Ste f S ^ m ° Saic - At the bottom 1 suddenly see a man lying on his back on an inclined board fixed to the wall. He looks very uncomfortable. His legs are too long for the board, he is obhged to keep them bent at the knees. He is tall and extremely in an ias a lie white beard and white hair, his eyes are deep, his face expresses suffering. I am horrified. I realize that this un- fortunate creature is, as it were, a beetroot put down here to be blanched. I am furious at the cruelty and the tyranny of the act. y indignation is directed against the invisible and ferocious being who has willed these things to be. That being seems to me to have the body of a man, though he sometimes vaguely appears to be a woman. Taken altogether, he is a man, and my indignation against this tyrant is boundless, for I know that he inflicts the same torture on other men. I persuade the unfortunate man to flee. Change of scene. The man has escaped. I meet him. He looks ten years younger. His face is rounded. He is physically powerful, but his fine head, ironical and intelligent, reveals also his mental power He looks like a conqueror. Audacity is on his face. He is beautiful. A woman is with him. They seem to love each other. I certainly love this unknown man, for I am so pleased at his escape. 1 feel intensely happy at seeing him. The scene changes. The white haired man is in the house of the tyrant (a woman, it seems to me at this moment) and with his new audacity he laughs at danger. He is taking a bath. I cannot see details, but the woman, his companion, is with him, helping him m his bath, though she shows fear at his presence in the old house of suffering. I am myself terrified. Suddenly the tyrant appears, a man now, in a state of jubilation. He has grabbed his victim once more. New change. The old man lies on his inclined plank, his legs twisted up beneath him. He is haggard and piteous, his eyes are hollow and burn like flames. My grief is intense. At this point my child moves and I waken. It is eight in the morning. I have a strong desire to urinate. I remember nothing in the day which could lead to such a dream except the bath which I had thought of in the evening. The white haired man was strongly like my friend F. whose photograph (but with dark hair) I had been looking at before going to bed. Dream XVII. Night of 12th May: Last day of period. Light supper just before going to bed. I see women going up a staircase. They are two friends of mine They are dressed in red as I have often seen them. They are sisters. I am surprised at the color of their dresses for they have just lost a brother in the war (this is true). They are gay and lively, which, 17 258 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. under the circumstances, also surprises me. There are■ °^ ^They girls, ascending the staircase ^hey'“J ‘ t o theh rooms. The house SlaS "i^tSce^ h g uVl see no details, except the 3ttiC i no'lonJeJVnrwhere I am. A lift is descending^ I - that it is connected with the kitchen service underground. A g, J[ d as a lion, splendid and must te the disappears m the descending . laughter. He goes to kitchen boy, follows him. He is shaken « what a fine the edge of the yawning hole of the lift and calls out. row there must be down there I” I awake. j cannot I had been thinking of my friends in the even g, explain the dog or the lift or the kitchen boy. Dream XVIII. Night of the 14th May: Supper a long time bef °H fs°va g gu°e,Tno longer recall the beginning. This is what I rTry er A mirisTthe t" ofthTstlS, ST- to S-. w V hich surrounTs t.: S e France.’The man looks at me as I^go down xxsznz: ill — ^^After that, I am in the street. I see a large theater poster, Mae - t^«-^ though I only see the one word in blue I approach a large and ask for a seat at eight pence. I recall no more. I cannot explain the dream. Dream XIX. Night of ISth May: Supper an hour before going t0 hfsee beds-three, I think-in a large room; my brother A. sud¬ denly appears in one of them. My father is als ° the . re ' . We ^ 1SC " S ® whether there are enough beds for everyone. My brother O., also there, declares that two must sleep in a bed and that someone can sleep on the brown oak settee which I suddenly see in the room, tried whether it would be comfortable for two to sleep in one bed. It would not be comfortable. It would not work. Suddenly, through a window, I see a passing procession, with flags and white banners in the air. I am with a young girl whom I do not see, but she is a friend. We go out and join the Procession I know that it is for a wedding (though it resembles the Catholic procession of the 15th August) and I remark to my friend that I am THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 259 not dressed for going to a wedding. I show her my dirty apron; it is in fact very dirty, and of the carpenter’s kind. She shows me hers, equally dirty, and we decide not to enter the church. When the procession arrives near the church, which I do not see, my friend and 1 escape, and I see us climbing a hill, laughing gaily like school children playing truant. Then we go down on another side, meeting a herd of cows which block the way. I awake. I had been thinking in the evening of a rearrangement of the beds when my husband returns (as I had sold our old double bed), ot the new beds needed, and of the discomfort of two in a bed. During the day I had seen young people with carpenter’s aprons going to the carpentry school; also I had met cows in the road. The procession I cannot explain. Dream XX. Night of 16th May: I see myself trying to buckle a portmanteau which is too full. I cannot succeed. Then I have to make haste to go and eat my pudding. Dream XXI. Night of 20th May: Light supper an hour before going to bed. A girl, whom I cannot see but know to be very young, tells me t at a ear friend (F) is dead. I am deeply moved but the young gir is even more so. I know (and there is no need for her to tell me) that she loved him, and that he loved her. I feel full of pity and affection for her. She leads me, and I see him stretched on a bed. I see his fine head, at least the dream tells me that I see it, though I do not actually recall seeing it. I only see a long body extended on a bed in a small room. The scene changes. An elderly woman (it is perhaps my mother, there is a vague idea in my dream that it is) seems occupied with the idea of my friend’s death. Suddenly she rushes towards me in indignation. I do not know where I am, but I see her before me, and angry, for he is not dead. She must be telling me what she has seen, though I hear nothing in the dream. One might say that I see what she tells, and that it is this vision which makes me smile maliciously. I see (is it her narrative appearing to me in image.) what in the dream is a railway station, though there are no precise details. My friend is walking about, dressed in a navy blue costume I have never seen him in, and he meets the elderly lady who looks at him indignantly. He, for his part, is calm, with a slight mischievous smile on his lips. Change of scene. I am stretched on the bed with my friend. It is in the same small room as before. From the bed one sees a large room through the open door. I know that he was only pretending to be dead, playing a trick, and now everyone knows it was a trick. 260 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. „ • ic stretched out beside me, for people who will believe anything: “I will tell her that it is my ghost ” Then I embrace him laughingly, without paying any Ren¬ don to the servant girls who are looking at us window of opaque glass. The room seems to be behind.the kitche , and the girls are looking through a corner where the glass is trans parent On the other side is the large room visible through the open door. I see women seated on a bench facing the door and also gazing at us angrily. Then I awake and find it morning. I had gone to sleep thinking of my friend whom I had been to see that day. . . Dream XXII. Night of 21st May: After returning from a visit to ICew Gardens, a rather large supper and to bed soon afterwa . I am doing my hair in a hurry for I fear I shall be late for my work. I go out for breakfast. I meet two enormous elephants with trappings of red and yellow. These elephants bar my way. W th trunks in the air they look threatening. I know that there must a so be others. They belong to a firm of furniture removers (I think that in my dream I could detect the name of Whiteley) and I seem know that there is behind them a stable and straw. I feel very small in front of these monsters. What shall I do? I am pursued by the thought of the lessons I have to give. . Change of scene. Someone, I know not who, is asking me if I know the little restaurant where one can have so large a meal at so low a price. I turn the corner of a street and see the restaurant, a corner house. I enter. It is a plain square room with a few tables. I awake and find it morning. r . The hair dressing and lessons are easily explainable from frequent experience; the elephants are inexplicable.! I had been speaking to my servant about going to a restaurant, and I had just been reading in be , before going to sleep, a scene in a novel about a house removal which had made me laugh. Dream XXIII. Night of 24th May: Late supper and to bed immediately after. # . . I am cutting out a green dress and get into difficulties over it. The square neck, in particular, I cut wrong. I take much time over it for the material has been too much exposed to the sun and has lost color in places. It is now light brown but the upper part is l But they are probably to be explained by an unconscious analogy between Kew Gardens and the Zoological Gardens. THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 261 still green, and that worries me. I decide that I must leave the stuff in the sun so that it will become brown all over, and think that will be pretty. Suddenly I see the name of E. D. Morel. I am defending him against someone whom I do not see. Then I see the name of Montesquieu and the title Lettres Provinciales. (But I do not know what this interruption of the dream signifies.) I return to my dress. I perceive that its green material is embroidered and that I have awkwardly cut the embroidery. I carry it to a dressmaker (a woman I have not seen for ten years) whom I address by her real name, a tall, lean, awkward woman. She examines the dress, tells me she can put it right, and asks me if I will keep the fur (it appears to be called swan but was not white but reddish). The scene changes. I am holding open a door. Before me are boys with baskets full of pots like jam pots but they are ink bottles. The children are my pupils, making me a present of ink. I seem delighted. I carry the bottles (resembling earthenware jars) with great care, fearing to spill the ink, and place them on a shelf. I return towards the young folk and embrace one of them, saying that he is the friend of my childhood. (He vaguely seems to be my early friend P.) One of the others wishes me to embrace him too, and I do so with the distant air of a sister. I awake. It is morning. I had spoken of Morel during the day, and had also been sewing. The appearance of pupils is also natural, though not the embraces. The strange salad of Montesquieu and Pascal is inexplicable. Dream XXIV. Night of 25th May: Usual supper, half an hour before going to bed. I see the old house in which I lived some months ago. Really I only see the staircase. I am at the top, leaning on the banisters, and speaking to the coal merchant’s son who, quite black, is going down with an empty sack under his arm. He is on the last step of the stairs and turned towards me. I tell him that if his father would like to take my flat I would let it to him. He asks how much I want and I reply that his father can pay what he is paying at his present place. That is seven and sixpence a week, he replies. That seems to me very little but I decide to accept. Change of scene. I am knocking at a door. I know it is the coal merchant’s house. I have a vague idea that I am going there to spend the evening. A youth opens the door, no doubt the son, and he tells me that to-day we are going downstairs. His tone gives me the impression that I have been there before and that we are intimate. I see vaguely, as if my memory were going back to previous visits, a room at the top of a dark staircase. Then I am in a room brightly lighted by two windows. I know that it is the 262 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. dining room on the ground floor. On a table between the windows I see conspicuously, in a well-known hand, a letter addressed to «ie (my real name followed by an old family nick-name). There follow several lines, in the same writing, which now escape me. they made me smile. I am moved and delighted at the sight of the letter, but also astonished to find it there. But I realize that no one ought to see it and quickly slip it through my blouse into my bosom. Then I see the coal merchant. He is very clean and neat, with the air ot a gentleman, and perfectly at ease. I have the impression that I had seen him walking down the stairs in a lordly way. He asks to come and see my flat. We go into the next room where I see a tall lady in laces, seated in a rose-colored chair. He presents me. Thereupon I awake. . . I had thought about coal before going to bed and of telling the coal merchant not to send coal this week. I sometimes think of letting my flat, and that evening I had been invited to tea by people of the working class. Dream XXV. Night of 27th May: A large supper an hour and a half before going to bed. . I pass near a horse standing by the footpath. As I pass he suddenly turns his head and seems to want to seize me with his mouth. I know he is hungry. A man appears near me. He is the master of the horse which, he tells me, is hungry. We walk on talking; the horse disappears. The man is a pedlar and pushes a little hand cart. We walk on cheerfully, very good friends. We seem extremely happy, and must be saying very witty things for we are as light as birds. But we must be tramps for we are hungry. We are seeking—but this very vaguely—for rolls and sausages, but suddenly we see a car of roast chestnuts. It is a strange vehicle, looking like a fire engine as it passes along the road, and in my dream I have the impression that it is a fire engine, noisy and shining, and like a great cask. The man and I run after it, but cannot catch it up. I awake. I had been speaking the day before of the chestnut avenue at Hampton Court. The rest I cannot explain at all. Dream XXVI. Night of 2nd June: A light supper half an hour before going to bed. I see an enormous bed with gray curtains, like the bed of my father and mother. On this bed, with its white and well-drawn quilt and its rose-colored eiderdown, I see human excrement. It is very abundant. I am indignant, furious. I know my brother A. is the culprit. How can he dare to behave like that at his age? I ask as I clean the horrible thing. I am afraid that a stain will remain on the eiderdown and I take a damp towel. THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 263 Suddenly a woman I cannot see comes and tells me that the cul¬ prit is not my brother, but a wounded soldier who is paralyzed and not responsible for his acts. One must not bear him ill will, and I forgive him as one would a child. During the day my younger child had committed a similar mis¬ deed but on the garden lawn. On awaking, at eight o’clock, I had a slight colic pain and was obliged to go to the w. c. Dream XXVII. Night of 5th June: I see a small boy gathering myosotis. I see the bunch in his hand. A blue flower falls. I see it on the ground. The rest escapes me. Dream XXVIII. Night of 7th June: Last day of monthly period. Light supper an hour before going to bed. I vaguely see water more or less everywhere. Then it becomes more definite and there are two immense basins surrounded by thick green hedges. They shine in the sun, and seem to extend to right and left, and especially to left in the far distance, so that they almost have the appearance of rivers. The higher one, for they are on a terrace, as it were two stories, is particularly immense and covered by tall, thick reeds. The sun shines on everything; it is superb. I am contemplating the scene from a window, a low window like an alcove with seats round (resembling those at Hampton Court). It is a dear little nest, and I am not alone; a man is with me. At first I do not see him, I feel him, quite near me, surrounding me and imploring me, though I do not know exactly what he wants. He annoys me, however, all the more since a woman, who also is not visible though I feel her presence, seems much interested in my man and rather jealous of the care he is expending on me. I am worried at the poor woman’s trouble and try to repel the man, who is irritating me, but in vain. At last the woman, seeing that she is losing her time, declares that she will go for a swim. There is, how¬ ever, no conversation. It is as though conversation was carried on by gestures which the dream describes and explains. Through the window I see the basin full of reeds and I consider that it is not prudent to go and swim there. I do not know whether I tell the young woman of my doubt, but I am disturbed about her for she has gone. Change of scene. I see a woman in bathing costume standing in the water which reaches half way up her legs. She smiles to the man and to me. There are no more reeds. The w T ater is now like a beautiful calm river glistening in the sun. Suddenly I see the man beside me. He is dressed in something like tights, perhaps a bathing costume, which is soft and shines as though wet. It is of old rose color, and in touching me and pressing against me I have the im- 264 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. pression that our naked bodies are together. Then suddenly we reach coitus, though I see no details of this operation. I only know that it is delicious and that I am happy. Change of scene. I am alone. I undress to go to bed. I seem vaguely to remember what has just happened, as of something happy. I reflect that these rooms leading one out of anot " e ^ (as a Hampton Court) are not convenient, for other people will have to pass through my room. This is small and square, with doors and panels of oak (as at Hampton Court), but horror! all painted over white Suddenly I discover two more doors in the room. 1 hrougti one which is ajar I see, though this is vague, two women seated in the next room. The other room, also white, leads into a corridor. After all, the rooms do not run in a series. I feel reassured. I awake. No erotic sensations on awakening but a strong desire to urina e and much pleasure in doing so. . , — Four days before I visited Hampton Court with my friend r., and the thought occurred to me that it was a charming place for lovers. Dream XXIX. Night of 8th June: Late but light supper. I am trying to make my elder child R. eat a pudding which he does not like, and I say to him, “It is very good, it is a pudding called”_and I give it the name of the road in which lives the friend with whom I went to Hampton Court. I proceed to emphasize the goodness of the pudding. After that, there was some question of Hellenism, but the details escape me. During the day I had had difficulties with my child over a pudding. The road clearly stands for my friend. Dream XXX. Night of 9th June: A light supper late and to bed an hour after. . T . I am in a road and suddenly a bomb bursts, then another. It is terrible, bombs and noise everywhere. It is a raid. “Where is R.? I ask, and suddenly I see him, pale and shoeless, against a wall. I take him in my arms, caress him, and whisper reassuring words. I reach an empty house, with the notice up “House to Let.” A woman is coming down the steps. It is the house of Mrs.--(wife of my friend F. and now dead) who had invited me to come with R. (this had happened). She was not there, the woman told me. (This also had once happened.) But I could go up-there were people taking care of the house—and make myself at home. I shall find R s shoes in the bedroom at the top of the house. I enter the house, which seems deserted, and fear to turn on the electric light, for the raid continues and there are no curtains. But I light a lamp and go upstairs, looking and feeling for the shoes, with R. in my arms. I awake and very happy to do so. THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 265 I had been anxious about Paris and its bombardment. I was also worried about shoes for R. as they are now so dear. . ^ REAM XXXI. Night of 12th June: Supper a long time before going to bed. I am making a pie. I ask advice of someone, it seems my ser¬ vant, about making the crust. It is very vague. Dream XXXII. Night of 13th June: A week after the monthly period. A bath before going to bed. I am singularly excited sex¬ ually, and do not know how to calm myself for sleep. I am in front of a large house. I am very lightly clad, but I am not sure whether I am in underclothes or in night dress. I only know that it is white, and that I have no dress on. I am going to see my friend F. His house looks vast and imposing. I feel quite small and trembling as I seek an entrance. I am in front of a few steps, leading to a kitchen below ground and I will enter there, but before doing so I move back and gaze up at the house to see if I can perceive any lights. I see one window lighted up. It is that of I". How good it would be to be in his arms, close against him. I experience a delicious sensation in thinking this. That passes. I am in a long corridor, below ground, with a bare floor I meet a servant who says, “Yes, she is going to see the old gentleman. But she seems to be taking it as a matter of course and allows me to pass. I am wandering through a large house like one in which I once lived. I am on the staircase, and meet people. I realize that the house in which my friend lives is really several old houses united in one, and that I am in the worst part of the building. I say to myself that corridors of communication have evidently been made, and I seek one. On every floor I see a door but it is certainly not that of a bedroom. On the first floor I open the door of a w. c.; on the second also; but I see nothing for I quickly close the doors again, though on the second floor I know there was someone inside, for I have heard the sound of paper. At last I am in a very long corridor with a thick red carpet. I reach a room at the end of the corridor, my friend’s, I say to myself. I enter. It is empty, the bed is vacant; the furniture is covered as though the room had not been occupied for a long time I am dis¬ appointed, but, on the whole, not very much. I throw myself onto the large empty bed, as if pretending there was someone there It is cold; I quickly get up. I wander in the labyrinth of corridors. I awoke experiencing no particular emotions, and quickly went to sleep again, to dream no more, so far as I know. n , D t ream XXXIII. Night of the 15th June: (On the night of the 14th I had felt much agitated sexually on going to bed, but remem- 266 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. bered no dreams on awaking.) To bed immediately after returning from a visit to F. I am calm and happy and go to sleep thinking ° f ^am looking for a pump to pump up the water which is threatening to flood Paris. I see Paris in danger. I will save Pans, like the shepherdess, Genevieve of old. I stamp my feet energetically as I repeat that I will save Paris. But I must have that pump, water that is going to inundate Paris comes in glass boxes of cubic rape, Placed one on top of another like a transparent and cellular wall Many are already empty. But I will save Paris. I must have that TlTdream is chaotic. I awake for a few minutes and go to sleep again after carefully repeating to myself the key words of the dream, many times over. . I am in a law court which resembles a theater. The judges are on the stage and the accused are in the auditorium. I am among the accused The noise of the crowd present is terrible, and the judges cannot make themselves heard. Suddenly, the public and the prisoners rise like one man and defy the judges, singing a Royalist song of which I distinctly hear the words and, it seems, the air, but which I could not recall on awakening, even when humming the on y Royalist song I know. In the face of this tumult the judges shout that since we behave in this manner we must certainly be guilty, and they condemn us in the mass to a punishment which must be terrible, by their expressions, but we do not seem to care. Change of scene. We leave the court. I am with a young woman. I am pushing her child’s baby carriage. I am awkward, the carriage overturns, the baby falls on his head and screams; the mother seems not to care. I find it all natural, pick up the child, console it, tell the mother it is only a trivial accident, and we go on. We reach two rocks, one on each side of a small stream of Water. We have to cross it with the baby carriage. The rocks are slippery I stumble forward. The carriage is again overturned and the child strikes his head against a rock. He is now hardened; he does not cry. The mother remains indifferent. I awake with a desire to urinate. « , The Law Court was suggested by a recent trial and an article on “Tmmoralitv and the Law” which I had just read. Dream XXXIV. Night of the 16th June: To bed immediately after a light supper. I seem to see a horse and carriage and am myself in another pony carriage which I am driving. The two vehicles collide. I do not see the accident, I only see the result, and my brother E. is lying drowned in a sort of stream which flows peacefully on the THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 267 right. He floats on the surface of the water, calm and as though asleep, like Ophelia in pictures. At this sight I take no notice of the accident to the carriage but jump down to pull my brother out of the water. How? I do not see, but I see myself kneeling on the bank near my brother’s extended body and striking his hands. He is saved, I know not how. Change of scene. I am proceeding, with other people—whom I do not see except one, a very large and tall man—towards a laundry house. It is not visible but I divine it to be situated, in the French fashion, on the bank of a river, and washing goes on to the sound of beaters. We are all going to wash linen, but we go seated in little boxes mounted on wheels, with our legs outside, in the fashion of a child s play wagon, and we propel ourselves with our hands, hold¬ ing two pieces of wood. It is a fantastic course, over imposing hills and valleys, over rocks, over an inclined plane made of slippery planks, like a switchback. At last we reach the laundry house, though I do not see any water. I am looking everywhere for my beater. I awake with a desire to urinate, which I do. Then I fall asleep again; and have the following dream: Dream XXXV. I am, I believe, in a kind of school. It vaguely seems that I am one of the pupils. There are other pupils around me. I suddenly find l am on the knees of a young man, also a pupil who is seated in a chair. My head is turned up and bent back, with the hair flowing down, and he leans over me. He gives me a kiss on the mouth, I feel his tongue, but we seem more like pupils than lovers, I reflect to myself; is it not idiotic to allow myself to be embraced like this when I am happy with my friend F ? But the operation continues for a while, as well as my reflections on it Suddenly, I know not how, all the pupils, male and female, are mounting an inclined plane of slippery planks. We mount them by the aid of two short pieces of wood with which we push on each side. I do not know how we could effect this, and in any case I see nothing. We reach a class room and I look for my books in the midst of the noise made by the pupils. I awake. My brother, who comes into the earlier dream, had been much in my thoughts. The method of locomotion, entering into both dreams, is inexplicable. Dream XXX\ I. Night of 17th June: To bed immediately after a light supper. During the day my elder boy had seen Charlie Chaplin posted up outside a cinema and persuaded me to take him in. I was distressed for it was all war, pillage, women insulted, alto¬ gether horrible. But he would not leave till we had reached Charlie. Hence the dream: 268 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. I am in a house, a sort of restaurant, with tables on trestles (as seen aHhe cinema). At one table, I do not know if it was mine, a . n • rj savs* “The girls in uniform are just lined up pretty. 8 and on. - Coo,« nnd do »hn. 0,16 Change of scene. The same man is seated bes * de * q “ te the horrors being perpetrated in this house. It se to interest me and leaves me rather cold. But-has the man insulted thegulJ am sure of it. She runs away, rushes to a staircase; he follows her others also follow, all men. He pushes them back furiously with a dramatic gesture and exclaims, “She is mine! They draw back timidlv The man adds: “We shall see what I will do to bring her to reason!” The stairway seems to have no rail, but to be between two wooden partitions. The man is at the top pursuing theg * rl ’ b ^ he is turned towards those who are following him (almost exactly as a scene at the cinema). We are all at the bottom of the stairs. We hear a noise above, a coarse voice, then two shots, the cry o woman in distress; it is the young girl. Will no one ,nterfe ^. hear the man cry out: “If I cannot have her I will burn her alive Suddenly the house bursts into flame like a torch. I escape, just m time, for the place is falling in ruins. Then I am in the street with a young girl whom I have not seen for years. We are looking for the railway station and discussing these horrors quite calmly. I awake. Dream XXXVII. Night of the 18th June: A light supper an hour and a half before going to bed. I go to sleep happily and peacefully, hoping I shall dream of F., of whom my last thoughts have been. Nothing of the kind. ^ I am afraid I shall miss my train. I am polishing my boots. I see a large black cloud and I say, “We shall have more rain! I awake. It is time to get up. Dream XXXVIII. Night of the 19th June: Light supper before going to bed. The dream is indistinct and escapes me. It is about school. Dream XXXIX. Night of the 20th June: A light supper a long time before going to bed: . I am lying on a bed with my child R. I seem to be in a night dress I rise and sit on the edge of the bed, showing R. a large building on which is written: Bains, Paris, Londres. The bed seems to be out of doors for it faces the building of which we see the frontage. I say to R. “Would you like us to go and have a bath? THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 269 A man half concealed behind a corner near the bathing establish¬ ment looks delighted at the idea that we are going to have a bath. Then I was awakened by the alarm. During the day I had spoken to R. of baths. Dream XL. Night of 21st June: To bed a long time after a light supper: I am with my friend K. (a pacifist, whom I much like, secretary to a prominent Labor politician). She asks my news. She assures me that the Germans will not take Paris. I reply that I am not sure; I have fears about Paris. But I hear nothing except my exclamation: “Poor Paris!” as I burst into tears and bury my head in my folded arms, sinking on to a step which seems to lead to a platform where I vaguely seem to see mannequins dressed as in a costume show room. K. puts her arms around my shoulders, but I continue to cry and sob. I awake with a start. I had written to K. in the evening, mentioning my latest news from Paris. Dream XLI. Night of 22d June: To bed directly after a light supper: I am seated in the front row, either at an open-air theater, or a garden fete. I am looking about for my husband. He has gone to speak to someone and is coming back, though I have the vague im¬ pression that he is restless. Change of scene. I am with my husband on a high sand dune which on one side is precipitous, almost vertical. We wish to descend the dune. I look towards the precipitous side, but he seems trying to draw me towards a green and gradual descent farther on. Though the dune is high I seem suddenly to come to a decision; laughing like a child I slide down the precipitous side, in a seated position with my skirts raised behind me. It is delicious. He looks at me from above. Change of scene. We are walking in a quiet and friendly way, talking the while. I ask him: “Have you got that thing?” I know I mean a contraceptive. He replies: “No, b^it it does not matter. It is not absolutely necessary. We can do without it.” I insist: “No, it is not safe; I do not want any more children.” Then we seem to change the subject, but continue to talk affectionately. He has his arm round my shoulders, holding me close to him as we walk. I say to him: “You have never told me your intentions. Are you coming here for good? They may take you away.” He shrugs his shoulders, as though to imply that he is indifferent. I see him dis¬ tinctly as I saw him last before his departure, and I talk to him about money and prices and household expenses. 270 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. Change of scene. I vaguely see a hotel, the Hotel de 1 Europe. It is all confused. There is a public place where my husband works It a table? with a telephone. There seems to be a question of going to another hotel. Someone, I, it seems, must have had » taj. see a doctor who is scolding me. I have got up, m my n ‘g ht ^ res ®- the day after confinement, and have a baby m my arms 1 am standing near a bed. I say, “I could not let her cry hke that Change in scene. My husband is leading me to hishotel. I reflect that it must seem strange, that I should be con nc different hotel from his. I feel jealous about the two hotels but I am happy with him. He opens the door of a bedroom. 1 here we find servant dusting. It is annoying that we cannot be alone, but the room is very large, and at the further end we find an enormous bay window separated by a long white muslin curtain taithe rest o^ the room and with a long seat against the window. There we can quietly talk. We go there and sit down. Suddenly I observe, still in the bay window and the wall to the left of it, a e ng U P ® concealed in an alcove; it seems an old carved oak wardrobe, a little open at the top, so that one sees the corner of a white pillow. This bed makes me smile, and I see a corresponding one on the other side. I say, smiling, to my husband: “How do you suppose I can come and see you if we are to be perched up so high.- Then I seem to be aware of the presence of a second maid. But my husband does not seem to mind. He shows me another immense bed m the room, with gilt pillars. We are happy. I awake and find I am sexually In the evening a telegram had come addressed to my husband, and I had been wondering where he is just now and talking about him. I believe that all the latter part of the dream was in French, but whether the earlier part was in English I cannot be sure. Dream XLII. Night of 22d June: I was in Paris, traveling by train, seated on the top of the engine and talking to the engine driver. I seem to be much amused, but I can recall no more. Dream XLIII. Night of the 27th June: First night of menstrual period, which arrived rather to my surprise, for I had lost count ot the days. Supper with F. and to bed immediately on returning h ° m i am in a room and see nothing, but there are people to whom I am talking. I cannot definitely recall anyone. Then I see chairs in yellow wood, a sort of polished walnut. The seat is of open-work wood. There is also a folding couch. I believe that all the chairs fold. I am saying (in English) to someone: “Is it not nice of him to give me all these chairs?” I know that it is my early friend P. who has given me this present; I do not see him, I feel grateful. THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 271 Change of scene. I am with one of my old girl friends of college days. We are in a room undressing to have a bath. I see no details. Someone tries to enter. It is a man. Is it P.? I do not think so. I leave this room and meet a man I seem to know. Suddenly every¬ thing becomes dim and all I can remember is that I and this man are in the act of coitus. My legs seem to be separated and bent at the knees. I see this distinctly as well as the pubic hair, and the sexual region seems raised and projecting. I distinctly feel the penis in the vagina. I even seem at the same time to see it, small and pointed, not longer than a child’s, but hard and firm. The sensation is of an agreeable tickling. I cannot recall the awakening. Possibly I awoke for a few minutes and went to sleep again. At the final awakening I detected no emotion. On going to bed, with the recollection of a pleasant evening, I had felt slightly excited sexually. The detail of the chairs was suggested by a recent conversation. Dream XLIV. Night of 28th June: To bed immediately after a late but light supper: I arrive at my friend F.’s. I ring at the door and as I go up the stairs I say (in English) to myself, “Why did I ring? I never do, and he always knows my footsteps on the stairs.” At the top of the stairs I see him, very distinctly, in clothes I know, and smiling radiantly. He is standing on the landing against the wall (the details are as in reality) and seems slightly bent forward as if to salute me in the French manner. With extended right hand he points to the door of the flat. I stumble on the top step and drop a brown paper parcel, tied with string, which I had in my hand. I clearly see the landing paved with gray marble, in squares of two tones which harmonize marvellously. My friend wears the malicious and indifferent air he often has in my dreams though less often in real life. When I reach him he boldly attempts to embrace me. I repel him because of the neighbors. But we enter the flat close together. Then I see the entrance passage of the real flat but paved with gray slabs like the landing. We reach the bedroom at the end and we sit on a white bed close to each other, I on his left. I see him very clearly. He says to me: “You did not mind me asking you here? You French people do things so well.” I do not recall any¬ thing else, though I see in my notes a reference to the kitchen which no longer says anything to me. I awoke happily, made my notes and went to sleep again. Dream XLV. Same night: A pupil is noisy. She is talking with another young girl. I see them at their desks but do not recognize them. I say to the first (in English): “You will not do that again!” But immediately she does. I am furious and say: “You will go and 272 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. report to the head master that you dared to do what I^ ^ you not to!” She descends the stone staircase leading to the pr cipal’s room, and I must be following her, for I see her sudden y SfiTSi - run into ,hu yard. I. is .11 vury .to I run after her I know there are many pupils, boys and girls, in the y , see no one. I run after the girl, who is dressed m brown with a brown hat. I feel that my dignity is at stake. Shall I catch • We are suddenly face to face, lively and heated as two children. She has her back to the wall, and tries to escape, but I catch her. I awake. • This dream is absolutely opposed to real life at every point, even as regards the costume of the pupils. Dream XLVI. Night of 1st July: A light supper and to bed an hour after: , , I am in a house which I do not know and can only see vaguely. The room is large and spacious. I vaguely see tones of old oak but cannot tell what they belong to. A tall lady in b ack approaches, but does not seem concerned with me. I am sorry for her for I see she is suffering. He is dead, and she is his wife. I do not know who he is, there is no name, but I know it is someone I had loved. I experience a feeling that is almost religious, and I wish to touch the furniture that belonged to him. I have a feeling of profound and intimate communion with all that surrounds me, even with the carpet on which I am standing. I feel as though I would like to roll on that carpet, to share my grief with it and be happy at its touchy (Throughout the dream there seems to be a vague idea that the dead man is my friend F. but the name never comes though al ^ays seems about to come.) I do not know what prevents me. The ady in black and her grief make me feel constrained. I remain silent, feeling moved, but reserved, while the lady in black displaces a gate- leg table by pushing it alternately on one leg and then on the other, rapidly directing it towards a large open door which leads into another room full of furniture. I see a butler in the other room, busily occupied amid the furniture. He is a round and very im¬ portant man, with a round rather oiled head, and a calm, knowing, good natured smile. He looks at me, winks, and disrespectfully placing his right forefinger beneath his right eye, he gives me to understand that he knows my secret, but that she (the lady) has never known, for it would pain her, so what would be the good. I am rather annoyed at the butler’s free and easy manner, and at his knowledge of my secret. But I am happy to be among the furniture that is so dear to me, and with which I feel a sort of physical communion. THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 273 Change of scene. I seem vaguely to see a path which is, I think, y a river. Beneath my arm is a book absolutely identical with one written by the friend who seems to have been on the threshold of the rst scene of the dream. Something to do with cakes comes in here, but it is too vague to recall. Then the dream becomes clearer. I see a \ idal-Lablache Atlas. A man calls me to tell me I have to correct a map. The man is fair and shaved, with a round head, he is unknown to me. He wears brown trousers with a large pale spot, apparently because they are old and worn; he pulls them up as he talks and the gesture is displeasing to me. In referring to the map he tells me there are two rivers where I have only put one, and that Berlin is on the Oder. I reply: “Berlin is on the Spree. I can show it to you m the atlas I have.” I find my Vidal-Lablache Atlas (seeing it as I saw it in childhood) and open at the right place. I find, to my surprise, two Oders, running parallel, one through Berlin towards Hamburg, the other to the West. I am surprised and not convinced, but I tell the man I will make the correction. He gives me back my book, which it seems I had handed to him, and I go into an adjoining room like an office. Then I am overcome with confusion, for I ask myself if in the book I had given the man, and which he has just returned, I had not left a letter I should not like him to read, beginning (in English): “You naughty man who made me sob. I look in the book which still resembles that written by my friend Then I see the man, who is still pulling up his trousers, and he asks me if he ought to change them to go to the lecture. I dislike him with his brown trousers and false air and coldly tell him he had better change them. I awake. It is certain that the dead man was my friend F., for during the day I had been thinking of happy times spent with him, and how much I should feel the loss of him, whether by absence in another country or by death. The other man, and the butler, are inex¬ plicable. So is the lady in black, unless, by the gymnastics of dream thought, she represents my husband who might suffer if he knew I believe I had written the English phrase of the dream in a letter to c ,. T , feehn 8' of communion with material objects is a well known feeling, but in old days I was inclined to smile at it; lately, however it has become pronounced in me. I have always liked carpets and hangings, but have not been conscious of pleasure in touching them though I like to touch, and even kiss, personal things like letters* and books. Dream XLVII. Night of 2d July: Light supper and to bed a long time after, with a dose of quinine, for I have a cold and there is much influenza about. 18 274 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. The dream is vague. I am traveling with my father and mother and brothers and sisters. We are busy. I see “ S * 1 “ t he restaurant Then we are looking for a compartme My mother is nervous and agitated, and we are encumbered with luggage. It is not clear. Dream XLVIII. Night of 3rd July: A light supper and to bed a long time after. A dose of quinine which makes my ears ring, fall asleep seeming to hear a motor as of a great eppe in o\ dream that I have to go to Paris by train, but cannot. have my passport I am troubled and agitated. Then I see my mother. She has come to live with me and is transforming my little house. She fikes bTautiful furniture and hangings, and there are new curtains and pretty things everywhere. I like to see her hanging pictures on the walls Then my elder boy knocks over a mahogany cabinet wit many glass windows, one of the legs is gone, but 1 * g ass broken. I raise it up with my mother’s help and decide to stay home until all is finished. But there is much to do. I shall lose my train. Nevermind. For once I will not go to school, but will say I have the Spanish flu. The train haunts me. I awake. Dream XLIX. Night of 5th July: To bed two hours after a largC I am on a large white bed and in the midst of changing a baby’s diapers I seem to be in my nightdress. I hold the child’s feet delicately between the fingers of my left hand, raising t em up, w v e operating with my right hand. “I want some more safety pins, I sav to my servant. “Bother the child!” she replies, he always wants something.’’ (This is quite true to life.) I continue the operation. I need a sponge to clean the legs which are very long and lean. I do not know whether the sponge is brought, but I see the baby lying on its stomach on the bed, with bottom in the air and this I kiss. Someone, I do not know who asks his name. After what seems a moment of hesitation I reply that it is E., then O. is E. O., my new son (E. and O. are the names of two of my brothers). He is beautiful. I love him. After this I think t dream went off in another direction, and I was troubled over the prospects of my children in the world. But my difficulties seeme about to be settled by a man who eventually turns out to be my friend F. I awake just as he puts his arms around me consolingly. During the day I had been speaking of children and the American scheme of Mothers’ Pensions. Dream L. Night of 9th July, a week after end of monthly period. A rather large supper and to bed immediately after. THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 275 I see a young man man seated on a garden bench with a young girl. He is tall and well-made, with dark brown beautifully curling hair all round his head. I cannot see the girl but I feel that she is of gentle and passive nature. The young man is talking to her, with bright eyes and an abundance of vitality which seems to please her. One might say that in listening to him so eagerly, as he turns towards her talking, she is every moment expecting a declaration of love. The young man, becoming more animated, declaims (in English): There was once a young man who loved a young woman.” She seems about to ask a question, but he continues: “The young man was myself” (I have a vague idea that he here mentioned the name of a doctor I am acquainted with) “and the girl was the name does not come into the dream but it was evidently not that of the young girl, for she stifles a cry of pain that the young man does not seem to perceive, for he continues, with increased animation and standing up, with his hair in the wind and tragic eyes: “Yes, and they killed her. She was warned not to go to the station but she gave no heed. She went, and they tortured and hanged her.” I see a scene of savagery, though not clearly. It is like a distant picture in which I catch a glimpse of fantastic Blacks dancing grotesquely. The young man evidently sees the same thing; his gaze is fixed and pained, reflecting the terrible spectacle. The young girl rises, and timidly, full of love, passes her left arm beneath her companion s right, placing her right hand on his arm, and looking into his face. Change of scene. The young man is going along a street, on his right arm the young girl who, from the shock she has received, has become half imbecile and seems shaken by a nervous tremor like St. Vitus’ dance. She walks at his side, convulsed and contortioned. He aids her, gently and tenderly, with left hand placed on her left hand which rests on his arm. His lofty head dominates her, with luminous gaze, but fixed and directed afar. He meets the parents of the young girl who had been so tragically killed and speaks to them of a pension for his companion. The dialogue is rather vague. The girl is to have money to which the dead girl had been entitled. Of the parents, I only see the mother, a fair, gentle, middle-aged woman. She adds a remark (in English) I do not understand: “In any case he will not drive any more to the station, and they won’t stop him again.” I awake, take a few notes, and go to sleep again. Dream LI. Same night: I see a flat in which we have just installed ourselves, and I am occupied in considering how I shall find enough beds for every one. I see my father, my mother, and a boy I do not know. 276 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. A sudden change of scene. I see, in a kind of court .the naked body of a dead woman, stretched on the earth. She ’ and I must be behind her head, for I seem especially to see the lower oart of her body, her legs and the pubic triangle. I speak to a boy who is trying from a distance to kick a football between the woman s legs This evidently seems to me quite natural, for the body so that he may succeed. I have the impression that I am pulling'the body by the shoulders and with ^fficulty feelmg Us inert weight, across an asphalted court. I place it separated legs face the youth, but the legs have a singular way of always closing as soon as separated. At last I succeed ,n keeping tS Inplace The young man gives a kick to the ball which I see running to the body, .triking it, and rebounding towards ' who takes it, and star,, again. I. tou.bes.be & dead young woman rises and exclaims. W ell • , struck her sexual regions. This seems to give me sexual pleasure. (On waking and thinking of it I still ielt sexual excitement, though Ml same time feeling « was silly to do so.) The young man ts vague; I do not know who he is. ... Change of scene. I am at a table in a dining room like a restaurant, where there are many other small tables, all occupied. I am annoyed because I have to go out, and before going out to change my dress and put on my navy blue petticoat and a p nk blouse But I do not dare to get up and leave the table. My bro A tbe s.™ Ubfc, is miking to ». of a green cio.k and think of my little boy’s green velveteen jacket, and say. No, it is not.that . Suddenly my mother at another table turns towards me and says, “Ought you not to change your dress?” I am pleased she has spoken and rise to go towards her, replying, “Yes. They are m the wardrobe ” I go to the wardrobe to look for my petticoat an blouse I reach a room I have to go through before arriving at the bldroo- with the wardrobe. At the door I hear voices and the laughter of boys. I knock and ask if I may go through to the bed¬ room. Then I kneel down before a drawer looking for my blouse. One of my pupils, a fair, smiling, amiable boy, as he is in real 1 e, gently and mischievously kisses me on the left cheek, eaning is head towards mine. With my right forefinger I playfully threaten him. Then I ask of my brother: “Could you bring me some warm water?” Then I awake, but neglected to note at the time whether I wanted to make water, but believe that I did. Garde-robe (ward¬ robe! is an old French name for w. c. During the day I had been thinking of a story I had been told of a woman spy shot naked by French soldiers; the story had haunted me. In the evening I had felt much excited sexually, and could not THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 277 resist masturbation, I am ashamed to say, after refraining from it for a very long time. On awaking after the first dream I thought of my husband, of money which fails to arrive, and of my friend F., and found that I was sexually moved and wet. At the final awaken¬ ing I noticed nothing remarkable, but detested both dreams. Dream LII. Night of the 10th July: I remember nothing except that I am flying, or rather I leap into the air from one foot. I am as light as a ball that rebounds. I rise in the air, float over people s heads, and then sinking I rise again. It is delicious. A man is looking at me; he desires me; he tries to catch me, but I always escape him by rising in the air and laughing at his failure. Dream LIII. Night of 11th July: A vague dream of a walk, a factory, a tramway, though I seem to see nothing, but I am on a bridge with a man, and before me there is a superb mass of water, an immense pool with waterlilies in the sun, and then all is vague again. I awake wanting very badly to urinate. It is as I do so that the dream comes back to me. Dream LIV. Night of 13th July: Late supper and to bed imme¬ diately after. I am in my old flat of two years ago, but the furniture is new and I say to J., “It is all mine.” “Of course it is not,” she replies. You know very well you have sold everything.” It is really a furnished flat. “There is even a piano!” I exclaim. There are two or three pianos in a large room; I decide that they are badly placed, and begin to rearrange them. Suddenly I am in the corridor with J. I see a low door like a little cupboard on the floor. “What is this, I wonder?” I open the door and see a great yawning hole at the bottom of which a large fire is sparkling. “What is this?” I ask. “Is it the furnace of the central heating?” “No, the house is on fire.” Then I see myself going down the stairs and calling out: “House on fire! House on fire!” Below, at the street entrance, there is already a fire engine. I call my youngest child and go upstairs again. H. is at the top of the staircase. I call him again. J. is agitated; she has him in her arms. “Give him to me,” I say, “or you will fall. Go slowly.” We go down, the child is in my arms and full of delight as he exclaims with amusement: “House on fire! House on fire!” I am in the road. I can see neither J. nor the child. I am stand¬ ing on a street refuge looking at the flames destroying the house. I see at one corner a fireman hacking down a partition with an axe. I awake. During the day I had been reading to my elder child (who does not come into the dream) the story of “Joe, the Fireman’s Dog.” 278 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. My thoughts have also been much occupied with the question of a new flat; the conversation was throughout in English. Dream LV. Same night: It is vague, a room, a sort of drawing room. Near the window a little boy, dressed in pale blue, is on a seat with a hole in it, a kind of long wooden case, full of water. At the other end I can see the water, clean and deep. A lady is there, cleaning her teeth and spitting into the box. I put my head through the door, and say (I do not know whether in French or English), “Before going, I want to wash my teeth.” The lady replies, Come in and make yourself at home.” Change of scene. The child is still there looking at us, but I do not know if he is still on the seat. The lady is no longer there, now it is J., my servant. We are mending a broken toilet table. It is a difficult task. We need some pieces of wood. At last, after much trouble, and with many precautions, we get the table onto its leg and place it against the wall. It is of the half-moon shape with central leg, and being top-heavy will not stand well. It falls; I hold it. The lady comes back; she seems to be someone whom I used to know. I say to her: “I am sorry but we have broken your table. We have mended it, but it is top-heavy and won’t stand.” She says: “It is only because J. has not done it well.” She shows me a piece of marble, with yellow lines on a white ground, and says: “This belongs to another table. The two sides are not alike, as J. has done them, and that is why it will not balance.” I awake. This dream is quite inexplicable. Dream LVI. Same night: I am in a large room with several women, whom, however, I do not see nor any details, for it is vague, but we seem to be at a table of hard wood. A man enters and says, “To-morrow morning,” giving us a piece of paper on which are written two surnames, one of them mine, while the last is invisible. It means that to-morrow morning we are to appear before the tribunal. We are arrested as pacifists. The other name is that of a school teacher whom I like, but her opinions are in real life strongly militarist. Change of scene. I and another woman, who is slight but only vaguely seen, await our turn. We can see the tribunal through a door. While waiting I feel nervous. I call out suddenly, “I have forgotten my handkerchief.” I turn back, almost running. Some¬ one, I know not who, gives me a handkerchief wuth a pink edge. I quickly return to my place. At last I hear a voice say, “Case No. 11.” A man asks something and the voice replies, “The woman who has so many names,” and he pronounces my name. An inspector approaches me, places his left hand on my shoulder and leads me along a corridor. He is tall and slender, in a gray coat; I do not see 279 THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. his head. I ask myself why I was called “The woman with so many names ; can they know that I once had another name? The in- spector js still leading me. I ask him the question. He replies that I will know everything soon. He asks me if I will remain quiet before the tribunal or if he must continue to hold me by the shoulder 1 reply that I will remain quiet. We have to pass the corner of a street to enter the court, which is square, lined with light oak, much resem mg ow Street Police Court. The inspector leads me into a vacant space in the middle where I see a kind of platform resembling an overturned gilt fender. That is the place for the accused, but it is decided (I do not know by whom) that I am to be brought in front of a flat desk so as to face the judge. I see vaguely before me seats of oak on steps, the highest being that of the judge dominating me from above. I do not see him, but I hear his disagreeable voice declaiming in a dramatic way (the dialogue is all in French): “You see before you a young woman of some twenty years,” and he repeats with a tragic air, “Twenty years!” as though to say, “Is it wUh i > Say , t0 mySdf ’ “ He is very Altering.” But I do not wish to be treated as a child and I call out in an assured tone, as though to brush aside sentimentality and get to the point: “I am not twenty! I hesitate for a moment between thirty-two and thirty- three and continue: “I am thirty-three. I am not so young as you think. Sensation among the public. My great assurance arouses astonishment. I see, however, at my right the back of a man who vaguely recalls Archibald Bodkin. This man reads out in a harsh and monotonous voice the charge against me. During the reading the inspector continues to hold me so firmly by the shoulder that my green dress slips down, uncovering my left shoulder almost com¬ pletely which worries me, but he is packed so tightly behind me that I can hardily move. I make a violent movement, however, with my shoulders to free myself, saying, “Let go; I shall not run away: besides, how could I?” pointing with my right hand to the court room. I add, “Besides, I like being here.” The inspector then addresses the judge, “She says she likes being here.” The judge turns to me, “Pay attention to what is said to you.” Hesitating and trembling, afraid I may say something that will injure me, I reply: 1 W ^„ t0 “if* 1 am pleased to hav e an opportunity of explaining myself. Yes, the judge replies, “many people have had that pleasure, and have had to pay for it with five years of hard labor.” I imagine I may get two years, and wonder what will happen to my children. Then I say to myself that one must have trust. The in¬ spector continues to hold me tight, but he is now holding my head He pushes my hair back from my forehead with a gentle movement of the fingers of both hands, and he seems to like the operation. To 280 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. me it is very unpleasant; contact with the man is repugnant to me. “Why are you doing that?” I ask. “I must show your head to the judge,” he replies. I feel that my forehead is large and beautiful, and the abundant hair standing out finely, and I am proud of it, though still disgusted with the inspector. At last the judge seems to come down from his seat, for it is vacant, and he is standing beside me, on the other side of the railing, gazing at us. He is at my right. He has in his hands a pair of woman’s boots, very high and with ridiculously small soles. He continues to talk grandly and says pompously: “Look at these small soles, these pretty little small soles. Merely to look at the shape of these boots one feels that they are heroic. They have done their duty in the Vosges. And these pointing to others large and heavy—“these which leave a woman s leg visible, they smell of duty, but the others”—Here everyone is looking at me and I feel behind me people bending forward to see my feet, for he is speaking of the boots I am wearing, large, solid, and comfortable. I wonder to myself whether they will now turn up my foot like a horse’s being shod, to look at the soles. I decide to pretend not to understand what that madman is saying. Someone seizes me by the leg, and I hear the judge saying, “But the others only smell of orange flowers.” That is said with an air of contempt. I want to laugh for it seems to me better to smell of orange flowers than of duty, but he calls out, “No laughing! and I reply, with a scarcely disguised smile, “I am not laughing. I am very serious. Then I hear the laughter of my two children as I awake. The tribunal may be explained by the fact that I had been reading during the day the sad story of a conscientious objector I knew who after more than two years of hard labor is now said to be at the end of his strength; at this I had felt horribly grieved and indignant, for I recall him as a strong and vigorous young man. I can explain the uncertainty about my name; the orange flower has no associations beyond being a symbol of pleasure and luxury. Dream LVII. Night of 20th July: To bed immediately after a light supper. I dream that I desire to masturbate but am afraid of being seen. I go into a bathroom, shut myself in and lie on the floor. I feel the draught from below the door. I am lying on my back. I raise my skirts in front, when suddenly a young girl comes in. I realize that I had left the key in the outside of the door when I shut it. I am annoyed. I quickly lower my skirts, saying that I am resting by lying on the floor. On awaking, I find that I am really lying on my back, a position I rarely assume. I am hot and sexually excited. I can recall only twice having ever masturbated when dressed. The first time was 281 THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. r o fa n i dMif- y ? XCited , by ? reparing a lecture and when lying on a tTce The ‘ r CtI y W ' thOUt CVer havin S heard of such a prac- the fl T se . cond occasion was similar. It has never happened on the floor or in a bathroom. on F and" '*' ^ ^V gbt of 21 st J u ty : 1 am walking with my friend F and we come m front of a palace of marble and gold, 'i see a Stalcas? S ‘ a,rCaSe b f Cann0t deSCribe its tastic architecture Staircases seem to reach up towards the sky. The whole palace is terraces F sa^Th ” fl '’ ghtS ° f ab ° Ut tWenty ste P s ^ding to races'” /It y ° U Can rec ognize Italian art, all in ter- large room Th 6 ^' Ab ° Ve We find y ° Ung pe0ple drawin S « a look at their J y ar ® engaged in an architectural competition. I be over a d T °" e reprCSentS 3 freSC ° and -ems meant to be over a door; there are rows of saints in long robes of bright colors, blue and red. I reflect that it is very Italian. Another young man with a few fantastic strokes of his pencil traces terraces which again remind me of Italian architecture. I awake. I am unable to explain the dream. Perbd" tL L\ X U ^ ?‘ h Wj,: S “°-l day of mon.h.y period. To bed half an hour after a light supper I am at my butcher’s. I ask for sheep’s kidneys. He gives me one^ I ask, Is that all I can have?” He says, “Yes; I have been without mutton for three months.” He takes the kidney back with the Z 0 LT y 7shJi h 1 don,t T\ k 1 can go without 1 am T d Say ' I sha Jl change my butcher.” He seems disdainful. Then sav “Th Fl ^ S tl0n ’ bu ‘ suddc nly I am again at the butcher’s and say. There is going to be a storm.” I hear thunder and see rain falling in sheets. I awake at six-thirty. My servant tells me that it had rained and thundered towards morning During the day she had been unable to obtain kidneys at the butcher s, and I had spoken of going to him. Dream LX. Night of 26th July: Last day of period. After an evemng spent with F„ I had returned home and to bed immediately after a cup of cocoa. y I am walking with someone, I do not know whom, and we are in front of large masses of water, like reservoirs, with narrow cemented paths between them. We walk in single file along these pans at the risk of falling m, and at one point the path follows a sqiuire building of yellow bricks, around which we turn clinging to the wall. Then we take another path, always with the risk of falling into the water which is all around and very deep. I awake, with a strong desire to make water, which I do copiously, and then fall asleep again. 282 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. Dream LXI. Same night: I am in a swing, in the air, my skirts raised A man below me is looking, and I say indignantly, You ought not to be there.” The sensation of the swing is very pleasant. The man is still there, looking beneath my skirts. Then I am awakened by the children, but again want to make water. I feel sure that the dream, if continued, would have been erotic. The day before I had seen an engraving in a book of a rather similar swinging scene from a picture by Fragonard. Dream LXII. Night of 28th July: To bed immediately after a light late supper. T • I see a flat, winding, blackish road near a factory. I reach a point where I have to cross a slimy, marshy patch of road by means of a plank thrown over it. I realize that a river has overflowed. People behind me are awaiting their turn, for only one can pass at a time. I see no one, but I hear their voices encouraging me. I step on the plank, which slides back with the pressure. I nearly fall and feel afraid, but try again and succeed. I reach a slight elevation where I meet two, perhaps three, surveyors who with their instru¬ ments are taking measurements. I know that they are concerne with the repairs made necessary by the damage caused by the rain. Then I reach a flat dirty canal and follow a black path level with it. It seems a district of factories, as in certain parts of Northern France I am familiar with. I see dirty walls along the canal, and always the dirty water and the black path I am following. At the end of the path I seem to see a bridge with an ascending path I have to take. I awake with the wish to urinate and a headache. This was an unpleasant dream; the previous dreams of water had been either agreeable or indifferent. During the day I had been thinking of the town I was born in and its ugliness. Dream LXIII. Night of 30th July: A light supper and then at once to bed. , I am about to sit down to table for tea. I am at the head of the table, half bending to sit down and with my right hand I am inviting some invisible person to take a seat. I know that the invisible person is my mother. I am happy, but I still do not see her. Sud¬ denly I see a beautiful white swan on the chair to my right. It is my mother. This seems to me quite natural, and I am very happy. The swan’s long white neck and black bill arise proudly with gentle undulating movements. I admire and love him. On awaking I at once make water. The dream seems inex¬ plicable. (Later the dreamer spontaneously suggested that this was a bladder dream. In writing down the dream on awakening she 283 THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. underlined the color of the bill, for it seemed to her wrong; but some tune later she found that her sleeping memory was more correct than her waking memory, and that a swan’s bill really is black.) Dream LX IV. Same night: We had been shipwrecked (though I do not know who “we” includes) and I feel that we have had many veil tires, which I have forgotten, before we reach a great wall, smooth and slippery, and a man who is drawing me by the hand causes me to slide and fall down into what seems the moat of a tortress. There is, however, no water there; it seems a green ter- nice; I do not know whether of grass. The descent is perilous; the t d ° " 0t SCe ’ ,S 3 Sail0r ' 1 d ° not think he g° es down with me, for I see him no more. I seem to be in the fortress, on the green terrace surrounded by crenellated walls, and at a sort of table is a woman like a school mistress I know; she approaches and says in a half-cold, half-friendly manner, seeing my rather pitiable air “I am very sorry but we are not allowed to grant anyone the right of asylum here. At this I exclaim, “Damn!” which seems greatly to TnoiH ?m er> 1 ‘ dI her 1 must inform husband, Jho is at another table at the end of the terrace. He is quite unlike real life very young in the uniform of an English naval officer and shaved’ with a careless air he is playing some sort of game like chess As I go up to him, I remark to myself that he does not seem worried. I seem to alter my intention of speaking to him, for I go back to the woman who had told me I must leave the fortress. She is seated- I fall at her knees, kneeling on my left knee, and bury my head in her lap. I can see myself from behind in this posture, observing the fair hair at the nape of my neck. I say to her: “You must not think I am not brave because I said ‘Damn’; I am brave, but I have been through so much that I am very weary. If I must go, I will go.” weep in her dress for a moment, and then rise and call my children. I do not know where they come from, but suddenly they are there running about, active and without care. I also see several women like nurses, and they say: “Is it not a shame to send her away like that after all they have gone through?” The matron (for so the head mistress has now become) grows merciful and says I may stay to rest for a quarter of an hour. But we leave; my younger child runs to take my left hand which I hold out to him behind. He passes the matron laughing and jumping grotesquely, and she smiles and gives him a playful smack on his behind. We go down a steep path between two crenellated walls. The nurses follow and overtake us, saying, “It is a shame to let you go like this. Have you even enough money?” I open my green purse and say, “I have a pound and a little silver” (exactly what I had yesterday). A nurse 284 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. tries to slip a note into my hand but I refuse, saying, I am going home to sell everything.” She insists. I awake. The dream is inexplicable, except as regards money. Dream LXV. Night of 31st July: To bed an hour after a light supper. # . I see my mother and other people. There is a question of re¬ moval to a new house. But there is a nanny goat with an extremely long body and short hair which constantly annoys us. She is fierce and we are all afraid of her. I push her back with a long thick iron bar but she constantly returns and tries to bite our legs. At last she finds a large piece of bread which she takes between her teeth snarl¬ ing and seems to expend her anger on it. We are no longer afraid of her. I awake. In the evening I had read a story of Jack Londons about a snarling wolf-dog. Dream LXVI. Night of 2d August: To bed immediately after returning from a visit to F. I think of him peacefully and hope to dream of him, but the Fates are not propitious. I dream that I am at the hairdresser’s to have my head washed, and that a young woman is occupied with my hair. I say to her, I am sorry it is so sticky, but I have tried to make it curl with sugar- water.” I tell her I am a singer at the opera and that my name is Blake. I know it is not true, but I make a good impression on her. I tell her to spend care on my head because I must have beautiful hair on account of my profession. But suddenly she leaves me to join a circle of dancers. They are dancing very prettily in bright red and green and blue costumes which often cling to the body. It is charming and pleases me. I awake. I had been speaking of my hair, rather sticky with soap, and my intention of washing it again on this account. The stickiness had evidently suggested the absurd idea of sugar-water. The idea of a singer was suggested by a recent concert, and that of dancing by the Russian ballet. Dream LXVII. Same night: A complicated dream in which many things are vague and escape me. My mother is in it, and a fire breaks out, but I see nothing clearly until I enter a white bed¬ room in which are beautiful pictures in very dark frames of brown wood. I say to my brother O. who is with me, “What a pretty room!” “Yes,” he replies, “it is L.’s (our sister’s) and I am sure it will please her; I arranged it.” I admire the pictures; they are by another of my brothers, and I am moved at their beauty. I reflect that I had never imagined he could attain such a perfection of line; there is no longer any awkwardness or stiffness, and the colors are THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 285 brilliant, while the frames enhance these qualities. He had always said, I reflect, that the stiff and awkward period was transitional, and I see that these are like his earlier pictures but with a new force. I note two luminous heads of children close together (as in Reynolds) and behind them an immense golden fish, like a dolphin with arched back. The colors dazzle me, golden, rosy, flaming, but yet delicate. Then I see another picture—a man tall and well built, in the attitude of one of Isadora Duncan’s poses in her dance of the Return of the Warriors. I see him from behind, walking with rhythmic steps, the left leg behind, the thigh in profile. He is handsome, dressed in a dark red clinging costume, so clinging that I see the curves of the buttocks and the lines separating them. I linger over this detail, as mg myself why my brother has often emphasized the buttocks in his drawings. Then I vaguely seem to hear my mother calling me to speak about a dress, and I awake. I have to get out at once to urinate. The subject of pictures had been suggested to my mind during the day, and a drawing of a dance pose by my brother resembling that m the dream is a favorite of mine, and I often look at it. The opinions expressed correspond to reality. Dream LXVIII. Night of 3d August: To bed directly after a light supper. The beginning escapes me, being very vague. Then I see a street crowded with vehicles and tramways; on the wide footpath to the right is a sort of red kiosk into which climb men furnished with trombones, clarinets, etc. They are going to give a concert. But before they can begin a man and a woman commence singing and make so much noise that the band decides to move away, and I see them carrying off their kiosk on their backs and crossing the road. Then suddenly I am with a troop of people, men and women, and we are perched on the top of a sort of pyramid, made of sugar boxes. A well-intentioned lady passes behind us and pushes the cases to the edge of the footpath. She must be very strong for she scarcely seems to touch them. But her touch brings the structure down and we fall into the mud. I say to her, “Why on earth have you done this? She excuses herself. “I thought you would be better placed on the edge of the pavement.” She disappears behind a tramway We seem to have crossed the road for we begin to reconstruct our pyramid on the left-hand side pathway perilously near the tram¬ ways. I am on the right of the pyramid near a man of our troop in the roadway, and suddenly I say to him, “You poor O.” (the name of one of my brothers), “in what a state you are. You could claim damages.” He is covered with mud, especially his brown waistcoat, but I realize that we cannot now find the lady who has disappeared 286 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. in the crowd. O. shrugs his shoulders as if to say, Bah. It s our luck'” But I put my hands on his shoulders, and say: Never min , dear I will clean it to-night.” To which another man of our troop adds, “And mine, too, dear little girl.” He puts his arm round my shoulders and I promise; I am feeling happy. I am awakened by the children, who are just now sleeping with me. The details are inexplicable. Dream LXIX. Same night: It is vague. There are women friends and I show them a blue dress with pink flowers. It«a sot of muslin and seems vaporous and cloudhke. “How pretty! they say “Yes, but it is merely an old dress that I am making up again. I show a seam behind and say, “You see this piece; I hope it will not show.” I have the impression that I wish to finish the dress to look pretty for someone, but it is vague. I awake. This dream agrees with reality. Dream LXX. Night of 6th August: To bed immediately after a light supper. . , . I am in a station, on the platform. I am going to take the train for Germany. I climb up with difficulty into a very high carriage. I cling to the slippery step and nearly fall, but someone from behind pushes me with so much force that I am thrown into the compart¬ ment with my buttocks uppermost. The sudden movement seems to have uncovered my behind, for my skirts are pushed up, exposing t le flesh, and a man continues to push me by means of a long cane placed at the anus. (I am not quite sure that this does not give me a vague pleasure.) Then I seem to be on a red seat and a woman is talking to me through the open door. The train is so high that I only see her head as she says to me concerning my eldest child who is seated beside me (he had not previously been in the dream), “This child has scarlet fever.” I turn towards him and observe that he is feverish. I draw him towards me and pet him, saying to myself that I hope he will not get worse before we reach the end of our journey. I want to put cold compresses but cannot find water in the train. I observe his tearful eyes and am worried. Change of scene. I seem to be at my school, but the room is like the interior of a convent. A school mistress is with me, known as B. But she is not like the teacher of the same name whom I knew but more like a charwoman. I ask her to stay and have tea, but she says she must catch the train. As she is leaving we see two railway lines; we seem to be on a country station platform, and we see a train moving out, the train that should have taken B. to Germany. Forced to remain, she agrees to have tea, and we are once more in the convent when a packet arrives, I know not from whom, with chocolates for the children. I open it and find a small THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 287 piece of paper which I expect to indicate the sender, but it is blank I awake with slight colic. The D cM?ren XXL ^ “T night: 1 am teachin S one of my classes. I he children are noisy. I am tired and rather angry. I turn towards a little girl, more noisy than the rest, and tell her to write childV^ d,S . 0bed ! e T nt >” and to sh °w it to the head master. The child is confused and I see tears in her eyes. I am worried at having been so severe. I would like to kiss the little girl. I awake. 'fter D rfoht LXXIL ° f 7th ° f AUgUSt: T ° bed imm ^iately T ght supper * 1 have a slight headache. The afternoon had been spent at Kew Gardens with my friend F. PlatfLm ™;l Part °12 e dream is Vague; 1 seem to be on a station p atform with my children, waiting for a train for Belgium. Then sil-T Changes and 1 see ver y distinctly a young woman I lost ght of seven or eight years ago. She is dressed in blue, but her this anH C ?n eS b f W ber dreSS - 1 Wish to attract her attention to in the H ^ le T’ h ?, U f h 1 d ° " 0t SCem t0 hear her name Pronounced it r£hf d kT' 1 P “ Her Sk ' rt d ° Wn ° n the left side to tf y to m ake it right, but cannot succeed; she will have to take her dress off. white °!i scene ' ^ e are ' n a sort of bathroom, which is quite S' r ,°° r Se r ,S CCmented - 11 is like a modern hospital. There are combs on the floor. Then I am in a long corridor, pahited white, and on the floor I see women’s combinations. Some are white and embroidered. One is of coarse net, and this I take for my I f" d pUt ° n> but 1 see no de tails of undressing and dressing WC are golng to a banquet given by an important govern¬ ment personage. Change of scene. I am at table with many other people in a large room, richly decorated and gilded. I am surprised to see no one of importance but they give us to understand that, being myself of no importance, I have been relegated with the small fry to a room where the great personage has given orders that we shall be properly gorged as 1S done with lacqueys. I yield to this, seeming to think that anyhow good cheer is always good. The person who has given me the information seems a servant and very much occupied. She Ptles good things onto my plates, hors d’oeuvres, etc., then unctuous mokas and while I protest she tells me she has orders to look after us, so I attack my plate with a shrug, as much as to say, “Very well go a lead. I bite into a Saint-Honore which is a dream of whipped creum and preserved cherries and melts beneath the teeth. I awake. There was nothing to explain this gargantuan feast unless it was the headache. The young woman is a connection and I had spoken of her during the day. 288 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. Dream LXXIII. Night of 10th August: The day had been spent in a delightful garden in the country; I go to bed an hou 3 h8 I ht se S e U m P to be at a sort of fete, but I do not quite know what it is. I seem however, to see a stage. Is it a theatre? But I seem to be L thT’open air. A friend is there. She is affected by nervous trembling. I am seated near her. I am happy. Suddenly I see a boy who is a connection of my husband's. He looks just as when I last saw him, except that he wears a navy-blue costume^ I. say, £ he is here it means my husband has arrived. I ; replies ,* 1 “He sent me to fetch you.” I ask, “How are we going to do about beds?” _ - ^ < • I am in the house. My husband is near me I only see h,m vaguely but I feel his right arm round my shoulders. He ta me gently and affectionately, never leaving me wherever g . calm and quietly happy, but occupied about two low beds wh.ch I am trying to place close together so as to make one large bed. My husband approves without paying much attention, for he is occup with me. He says, “This will do,” but I am not satisfied. I awake. The friend is a connection whom I had seen during the ay similarly ill and nervous and I had felt troubled about her. The boy s costume is the same as that my own boy was wearing. Dream LXXIV. Same night: I distinctly see one of my pupils. We talk in a low voice near a window in the corner of the room. The head master is at a desk. He is writing. He hands a letter to the youth, who gives it to me. I read (in English): Dear Madame _"(my real name): I am sorry I have not yet been able to send you back your essay on Suffragettes. I have just glanced at it There I stop. I find it funny he should write when he is quite close to me; but I say to myself that the letter is meant to count as having been written during the holidays that are about to begin. I smile, the youth smiles and points to the head master as much as to say that he is a little cracked. I speak to the youth, who admires my essay (having apparently read it) and I say: “That was done years ago in a better way than I have done it. I have always had these ideas but I know no one who has expressed them more clearly than F ” I advise him to read the book of my friend F. The name of it is not mentioned, but I see a book that resembles it in form. I awake. I do not know what provoked this dream. Dream LXXV. Night of 10th August: A light supper and then at once to bed. . I am in a carriage, a kind of diligence. There are several people. We seem to be at the top of a kind of dune. We descend a sandy the synthesis of dreams. 289 T,t ,i‘ T b0,, . 0m W ' see ,he bl ”« ”» a " d ™ws of low houses l* d s Sf'iHr ^^ rench dinner with a huge omelette aux fines herbes I do not f “-f hto had spoken of the sea during the day. a lig?“ A „pp? XVL Nigh ' 14lh A « T ° b ‘ d “ hour after We pa“ rX 'i‘,u e T* Wi ' h ,h ' ,ady above me. ^rr^ »""» «SS”l°LSZ quite amiabla.'Yawake ‘ n ° ,S ' w,l “ ”’ y child " Sb « ‘' Mk ‘ had WeTmTug “ d ,h *' ,b ' y afters." A ”*“ *• b « d <■—* me I awlke° n m ° ney? ” She Seems to ,ook sorry for I am told that in the distance there were sounds like cannon Z:\° r f0Ur tImeS ‘ 1 heard nothing ex «pt in the dream. There have been money worries. Dream LXXVIII. Same night: I am in my bedroom of our old house in France. I see all the details: the large iron bedstead *' a ' Va " U ‘ Wood night table with its green tiles, the blue flowered walls. I hear the servant moving in the next room, and my sister appearing as quite a little girl, in short petticoats and with her 2 19 290 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 110 'r^btrtoSrf TO eerly home life. The see„e ag~> with 1 reality, except the shoes and they belong to recent occttrrenc . -T^r: 5“ Dream LXXX. Night of 18th August: To bed after a copious supper. mother who seems busily occupied with me. She reproached., tri.h being badly dressed. "You are dressed him an Englishwoman." She worries me and 11 want tole.ve her. But She will not let me go. a. my petticoat show, below TO start She calls me back. I think to myself, "I ought to dress as bad y Tulia and then I should be left in peace.” Change of scene. My mother is undressing me and I arei he.p „,,“ h« 8 r hands, although 1 pro,.,, and grumble• A ^ Labor politician (not personally known to me in real life) is seated on a low chair opposite me, with his left knee bent and his right leg extended He calmly watches the operation, but seems to take pleasure in it. I am ashamed and uncomfortable. My mother reaches the last garment, a sort of pink drawers. Then suddenly I am seated on a low chair facing the Labor politician. There is a sort of gas warming apparatus between us. I seem now to be dressed. My mother makes some remark which does not seem to me correct and a discussion arises, while the Labor man gently places his right foot on my left foot, as much as to say “Why dispute when you know that she will not yield.” Change of scene. The Labor man has become a woman and frying ham. I awake. Dream LXXXI. Same night: I am vaguely aware that I ought to have an English lesson, where or why I do not know, but I see my teacher, a small active woman closely resembling an actu teacher of English I had when at the ficole Normale in France. 1 take the tram to return home, and my teacher is there before me, she is the tram conductress (in English). I am surprised she is there before me, and seeing me enter, she greets me with an amiable 291 the synthesis of dreams. rctnf h o7tT Vt OC u C T ed - We are now seated in front of “bateau mouche”"'^* i!° 3 S ° rt ° f pIatform > as on a Paris skein nf i • t n gksh teacher, dressed in gray, holds a ««e, isiiZLh J h r ,T ra ' ed *"* «S-I i« I L” n LT™? T "'™ 8 ,K> " sl " »”*>» ™“y y ,hi„t she remarks- “Yon Tn 1 S °’ ° r She reads my thou g h ts, for leading 1 ^ very S”? *" h,v. been wnm . . ^ feel that she is the new type of war woman busy, active, completely happy, it seems. there alwavch Ve ^ t0 be in a room - The ^tle woman is still "T ’ m 3 C ° rner ’ ta ' king gaily and amial >lv. She turns seemingly 5 ”%TT ™ CaSy chair with'green arms! carefnlKr^f t f d ,' 7, he y ° Ung woman herself is like a doll, pink carefully tended, placid and pretty. She is A. L. whom I knew in "ppo C st d he°r 0d She d - iS ^ I seLtT it opposite her. She is now married and I ask if she is hannv T rCp y ’ >Ut 1 see fr° m a childish grimace that she is neither happy nor unhappy, and I know that her husband finds her exasperating ien for a moment I see a tall woman who speaks to the little voman in gray and runs away peacefully and happily. It i s L O fsk tZ m T 4 "" I!" 1 ' 8ra >' lad >- •«»* ■”«' I .m surged ,„d definit 1 h f 15 ^ aPP f’ thOUgh the question does not seem to be «vtyb™“bi:. " p,i “ L - °' s "” !bi, " d herself She Lds “P "J S,g " ° f this and decides to resign awake ’ ° f U She W3S a,ways such a girl.” I She U °' IS a teacbe, ; : she is not marr 'ed. A. L. is really doll-like tram stT ? ‘ 1 d ° n0t kn ° W her husband. There is a tram strike at present. I had been thinking of the Labor noHt.Vi^ in connection with my husband. politician supper REA Firtt X d XXII f' ^fi* ° f 19th AugUSt: To bed after a light supper. First day of monthly period. K to J./T an Und ? rgr0Und Iavatory of the English type. I wish to put a penny in the automatic lock Then T finr? • , washing basin. Sudden,y , seated I, a w c svbh raised but I feel uncomfortable for I am near a door by which ladies are entering. I awake with a a colic pain which is, howe.er “ S' Dream LXXXIII. Same night: I am in a school, but it is more ke an enormous bazaar with large strange gilded stairways ser pentining overhead. There seems a crowd of people below I am on one of the staircases leaning on the balusters. I am looking for Mademoiselle Z. (a teacher in the French Lycee I was once aD T find her in the corner of a large hall (the place is something^ 292 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. Selfridge's) and she shows me handkerchiefs with red and blue bo,d”2 There are Cher „eop,e pr«s«». ,„d someone say.t "They look nice, on the wrong stde. They "’“tang”“ °'e”e ine A rather loud voice, resembling that ol the tt i M as ter but yet being a woman’s, announces that before ente Head Master dui yei ocn.fe „ all assem bled in : n „ in class there will be assembly. W e are . a large hall, and my pupils for French conversation are* Lmsss rr«S air. Turning towards my pupils she says: It is important y £2^ sfr-is’x;. word and to every defect.” This time she calls me simply by my Christian name and I am astonished. She turns ask whether I approve. I smile vaguely, as if approving, but feel uncomfortable. I have the impression that there is a man behind us looking on. The Head’s voice still continues: Before going back To iur Ss rooms we are going to open at last this ^cup¬ board.” And suddenly I see a yellow cupboard. It semstob made of cardboard with wooden uprights, rather like a theatrical property It has a mouldy and dirty appearance. They are about to open This is a dramatic moment. I ask myself if a coffin wd be found there or a mutilated body. I still eel the presence of the unseen man behind, looking on. It is much like a play. At last t e cupboard is opened and I see, high up, something red like mahogany and say, “It is a coffin,” but it is only a child s wheelbarrow. The playthings are brought out of the lower part of the cupboard, most y of wood painted yellow and green. I do not know wliat these things are for, but there are many of them, and I note that they are in goo condition. There is a train but I do not see the other things >s- tinctly I take some dusty books out of the cupboard, and look at them. There are, too, clothes and rags there. Someone pulls out a small girl’s riding costume. All these objects belonged to her-a little girl who is dead, and her parents, who adored her, have thus preserved all her possessions. Suddenly a baby is taken out of the THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 293 cupboard Every one bends over the minute creature which is in a r ?“ a " bed . ° f wb |, te T wood Iikc a child’s plaything. Someone h f °7 he ls! He is in fact maki ”g a grimace, but I, who understand bab.es, declare: “It is nothing, it is onlv a little colic.” (See the previous dream.) I take the baby in my arms. He smiles, he is beautiful, everyone admires him, but suddenly I perceive that it is only a doll. Someone calls out that there are eggs in the cup- board. It is the little girl’s favorite fowls and someone declares ( believe it is I): “If the hens have been there all this time they must have laid eggs and many must have hatched.” I find broken eggs in the dust, sticky and dirty. Suddenly I feel something scratching my posterior. I find it is broken shells, and that I must have sat on the eggs. From beneath my skirts I draw yellow sticky broken eggs. My hands are full of them, there are still more. After I.r ’ M J S :T e ’ IS , rainin S and littIe g'rls are coming to school across the fields beneath. I awake and then arise to urinate. During the day I had felt “sticky” and was surprised to find my periods had begun. The other details are inexplicable. Dream LXXXIV. Night of 22d August: A light supper and to bed at once. The dream is very vague. I am learning to ride with a man. I am seated beh, n d him. Then he changes into a young woman dressed as a land girl” in gaiters and breeches. We go to wash our hands for dinner. I awake. Dream LXXXV. Night of 24th August: To bed half an hour after a light supper. It is vague. I dream of how to make cheese with milk curds I give a recipe. I think I awake before the next scene. 1 am near my friend F. who is writing at a table. I am seated at his left, at a lower level, my head resting on his arm. I am very happy I say to him: “Yes, I am rather tired of school work; per¬ haps I could do something with these.” It is a question of writing articles. He says he will think about it. Then we go together to a window where the sun seems to enter. His arm is round me and my head on his breast. He says: “Which restaurant shall we choose?” I leave the choice to him. He adds: “Would you like a new one?” I agree to what he likes. Then we seem to be near the fireplace facing each other and close together. Suddenly I see that he had no trousers on, only drawers, and yet his buttocks are uncovered I can feel them with both my hands behind him. I am all the time very happy. Then I feel his penis against my skirt. We seem now to be both dressed. At this point my younger child awakes me I am conscious of no agitation. The night before I had been slightlv excited and I had also been thinking of F. 294 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. Dream LXXXVI. Same night: I seem to dash into a passing taxi. It does not stop but I open the door and enter. There are already two gentlemen there, but that does not seem to disturb me. I sit beside them and we proceed. We reach Charing Cross. I open the door next to me on the left, and the gentleman near it opens the other door. He is my father. He is tall and slender with white hair more like a well known Swedish politician than my fat er. ask myself why I had not noticed him before, but I realize that the gentleman between us had obstructed my view. My father seems happy to sec me but treats me more as a friend than as a daughter He simply squeezes my hand and tells me he is going to 'r anc ®; say “How lucky! I am going, too, and we can travel together, am’going to look for my mother, but I must have my passport. I sec a sort of ticket office. There the young girl asks me a question I do not understand and I reply “No” at random. “Oh! that settles it!” she remarks. “I cannot give you a passport.” I am worried and discouraged, and I ask her, timidly and very politely. Excuse me, could you repeat your question? I don’t think I quite understood. She asks, “Where have you lived before in France? I mention the name of the town where I was born. She writes it down m a register but spells it wrongly, and I am about to correct her, but saying to myself, “What’s the good?” I go on to name the depart¬ ment. She writes down “Jura” instead, but I say to myself that these are merely formalities, and that all clerks are like that Then I ask for my passport, but the employee replies very amiably: You are too late; you must ask Mile. Gabrielle,” and I feel that I am losing my time, and that we shall miss the boat. But my father has my “identity book.” I see it in his hands with its white cover. We find Mile. Gabrielle and while she attends to me I am worried and say to my father: “We shall miss the boat. You go first and I will take the next boat.” But he replies: “I will wait for you.” Then my child awakens me. Dream LXXXVII. Night of 27th August: A week after the monthly period. A light supper after a hot bath and then imme¬ diately to bed. I dream that I am in bed and that I see my husband enter my room He wears a heavy brown winter overcoat and I know that he is arriving after a journey. I see a bed in the corner of the room, the bed of my elder child facing mine. My husband goes towards it, and bends down to kiss the child. This action uncovers his legs which are naked. He seems to have nothing on but his overcoat, and I see his buttocks and the anus when he bends. Then he sits on my bed, at the foot, on the right. He seems far away, I find him cold, and ask myself if he will kiss me. Suddenly I put one leg out 295 THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. Of bed, then the other, and exclaim: “How silly! I went to bed with m> stoc mgs. I begin to take them off, exposing my legs and vaguely feeling that this was a sexual appeal to my husband. I awake. I do not remember feeling sexually excited. Dream LXXXVIII. Night of 2d September: (After a week at the seaside during which there were probably several dreams but no record was kept.) To bed early after a light supper. I seem to be in a room of which one side is pierced by arches seeming to form cellars. These cellars are open and I see they are u of coal. I am with a friend, a woman, perhaps my sister, and I make some remark I forget, about the coal. Then, still in a cellar, I see tables on trestles and a profusion of articles on them—linen, bed clothes, etc.—and I proceed to take what pleases me, I cannot now recall what, except eiderdown quilts. We pile up a lot of things, and I suddenly reflect, “This is stealing.” But something happens-I cannot recall—to suggest that it is not so, that the things belong to us. I awake. Dream LXXXIX. Night of 3d September: On returning from spending an evening with my friend F. I went to bed at once I cannot recall the dream except that F. came into it, and that also there was a sort of water tap for watering a lawn. On awaking I had to rise to make water. Dream XC. Night of 7th September: To bed immediately after a large supper. I was slightly excited sexually and thinking also about Russia atrocities, Socialism, etc., having just received a letter with regard to Bolshevism. In spite of taking notes immediately on awakening, they were insufficient and I am not able to reconstruct the dream exactly. A man came in, with a whip which he flourished, as he walked in front of me. Sometimes it touched my cheek. That pleased rne and I was confused that it should please me. The man lets fall a card which I pick up. It begins: “My dear Lenin,” I reflect: “He is one of those Anarchists.” I awake. Dream XCI. Night of 8th September: Hot bath and to bed after a light supper, still feeling slightly excited sexually, I do not know why. Iam in a house though I do not see it, busily making up parcels I have my hat on and am ready to go. I speak to someone I do not see, a woman, and say: “If my husband is never coming I shall have to leave.” The woman in a gentle arid friendly way persuades me to do nothing of the kind, and suddenly the door opens and I exclaim ‘There is my husband!” I do not, however, distinctly see anyone' and certainly not my husband, but I put my parcels down on the 296 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. floor and no longer think of leaving the house. Then I am m my husband’s arms. But it is all very brief. He seems agitated and goes out in a hurry. We follow him and reach a grating; he disappears. , Change of scene. I am still there but I seem to be a little boy. My father (the same man who was before my husband) tells me to run towards the grating to find something. I now simply follow the little boy and the man who is my father. I run to the grating where someone, a woman, I think, gives me an envelope and I run back to my father who is on horseback going down a very narrow road. Another road crosses this and when I go along it to reach my father and arrive at the crossing, I see on my right the Kaiser galloping along madly. He sees my father who also sees him. My father is now a general; on seeing the Kaiser he acts promptly and puts his horse to the gallop. The Kaiser shouts to him: “I shall have it,” and turns the corner in wild pursuit of my father, while I obliterate myself against the hedge. Then in an extraordinary way the road seems to divide and curve and the two men pursue each other while I glide along by the hedge avoiding the horses as well as I can each time they pass me, and wondering each time whether I shall be able to pas" Another change. I am a woman again. I am above the road, anxiously gazing at the wild course of the two horsemen. It is absolutely mad. The Kaiser seizes the envelope that my father holds in his hand, reads something, and says, ‘‘Seventeenth of July. You have got wonderful dictation on your side, but we shall have you yet.” My father snatches back the envelope and the race begins anew. I observe the little boy advancing. At last he runs into my skirts barely escaping the horses’ feet. I awake. I am lying on my back, very hot and uncomfortable. Dream XCII. Night of 9th September: To bed soo~ after a bath and light supper. There seems to have been a beginning to the dream which I can¬ not recall. Where it begins to be clear to me I am in a room re¬ hearsing a comedy. A young woman is seated near a man who is my husband but does not at all resemble him. The young woman is fair; my husband is tall, handsome, and his head round. She says to me: “You must not say that I am in love with your husband.” Someone, a woman, I believe, who is conducting the rehearsal, ex¬ plains that the young woman is my husband’s secretary. Change of scene. I am seated in a low chair and my husband, who in the dream is called “George,” kneels before me, with his head in my lap and his arms round my waist. I gently kiss the back of his neck. But I know that this is a rehearsal and that the man is not 297 THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. really m y husband. Yet I love him and the kisses please me. A voice says (it is that of the woman conducting the rehearsal)- Someone is coming.” The man and I quickly jump up for we must ot be seen kissing. I am exuberant and happy, and dance round the room. Someone enters. It is Marjorie (a young girl I knew some years ago and of whom I had lately been thinking); she is tall and beautiful, as ever, and seems not to suspect anything between us. i awake. I cannot understand the details of the comedy. mr ?t!f AM . X 5 n I- , N ' ght of 1Sth September: Second day of monthly period. To bed after a light supper. ..... A . dark com P Iex, '°ned man is leaning over me and giving me k!‘l* k ' SSC f °" the ne t ck He ,s an Egyptian. The sensation of the kisses sends shivers of pleasure down my back, but at the same time 1 teel ashamed to experience this pleasure and I say to the man, ninr y ° U f ' as hamed to be an Egyptian?” There must have been more, but I recall nothing else. Dream XCIV. Night of 19th September: To bed immediately after a light supper. I feel myself suddenly bounding up in the air like a ball. I rise rapidly m the air with my legs very extended and vertical. It is delicious. I float in the air. I am in a vast room with a very lofty ceiling. It seems to be in a palace. Long red curtains, thick and heavy, no doubt of velvet, form an immense canopy, and hang as portieres. Still floating in the air, almost stiff, without making any movement of my own, I come near the portieres, separate them and pass into another large room. Several people look at me, and I hear them murmur: I wish I could do the same.” I reply: ‘“It is quite r? Sy i- ,t °^ y depends on elements which compose your being ” (I think this sentence was in English; the first one certainly was.) Then the room seems empty except for a beautiful lady in black- seated at a heavy table where a little boy reads to her. The scene If ° f f “ ed,e , Val P a ' ace - l seem to see black and white marble flags beneath the lady s feet. I still float, still happy. The lady and the “ boy turn towards me, full of admiration, and I remark to them: You cannot say now that you have not seen an angel” I awake with a desire to urinate, which I do and go to sleep again. I cannot explain the dream but it was very agreeable. Dream XCV. Same night: I see a white curtain which moves and seems to descend along the window, and strike the glass Then this curtain changes into hail which beats noisily against the panes like a white curtain. I awake. It is not raining, but I am sure there had been a sharp shower. 298 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. Dream XCVI. Night of 20th September: An almost cold bath just before supper and to bed directly after. I am in a room with a large open window looking on the sea. The level seems much higher than that of the sea which appears in the distance like a sheet of silver, luminous with sunshine and covered by white sails. Suddenly an immense wave rises, enters the window and gently bathes the naked feet of my elder child. We are both standing near a white bed. His legs are naked; I have on a very short chemise. The wave, which only touches his feet, seems to ascend to my buttocks, though I am still standing. I feel the freshness of the water and have the soft impression of being seated on the wave which agreeably caresses the lips of the vagina, an they seem separated and throbbing. I go downstairs and say to my servant: “When the wave goes we shall have awful mud.” I awake. I am sexually agitated and moist, and have difficulty in calming myself. A letter from my friend F. in the morning had referred to the seaside. Dream XCVII. Night of 23d September: To bed soon after a light supper. . . I am looking on while a well known Pacifist is explaining to a young girl the trams she must take to reach the office. They are bending over a map which I do not see. She is like a pretty teacher I know, but with rather a stupid air which the teacher has not. He explains the map, at the same time wondering to himself, I know, how she can be so stupid as not to find out for herself. Suddenly an invisible person comes and tells her that her bath is ready, and as she fails to go at once I decide to take this bath. I enter the bath which is a cemented hole in the ground. Suddenly I observe the Pacifist at the other end of the bath. We are both naked and facing each other. My legs are separated and I ask myself if he can see my sexual parts. His legs also are separated and I wonder if I can see his sexual organs. I see nothing, and I reflect that if I make the water very soapy no one can see anything. I proceed to do so. A shelf behind my head worries me. I keep knocking against it. I decide to move to the other side. But I can only do so by going near my companion. I do so and we are seated side by side in the water. I awake with a longing to make water. I had spoken of the Pacifist during the day. Dream XCVIII. Night of 27th September: A light supper and to bed after evening at a concert. I hear music though I cannot catch the sounds, and I ask myself how thought can be rendered in music. I see a little boy making water, or, rather, I do not see the boy, only the golden arch made by the urine. It is an immense arch and I ask myself how that can be 299 THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. rendered in music. Then a fish is shaken threateningly before my tace, and I hear afresh the sounds of music which seem to tell of the rebirth of the world.” I awake with a desire to urinate but i°°. a .’/ V t0 f et up or to nia ^e any notes, and saying to myself that 1 ,! nC V 0rget - 1 fal1 int0 a light sleep again, but soon awake, repeating the word “rebirth” and get out of bed. I had lately been advised by a doctor, in connection with a slight disturbance of health, to drink more water, and the results doubtless influenced some of these later dreams. period*^ M XCIX ' Night ° f 19th ° ctober - the last day of monthly I see a sort of seashore in a depression made of sand. I say to myselt that it would be nice to lie on the sand and be softly caressed y ^ t T e i- Wa ] VeS ' 1 am m a bathing dress, with arms and legs bare, and I lie down on the sand. The sea caresses me and I enjoy the sensation like a wave of velvet rising and falling on my body Suddenly from another side, in this strange basin, an immense wave from behind me rushes forward to meet the sea. I see that I shall be caught between these two masses of water unless I escape quickly I run away though the water already reaches my thighs. Then 'i find myself seated astride of a wall against which I seem for a moment to rub my posterior holding on by both hands. This action seems to excite me sexually and I say to myself that I must mas- turbate. I wonder where I can do so and suddenly think of the . £ ln Jf cabln - Then I am there, stretched on the floor with my right hand applied to the sexual parts. I awake, asking myself if it had really happened, or if I had only dreamed it. It was only a dream, of which I am ashamed, but I was much agitated and the sexual region moist. I wanted to urinate and did so, copiously. S , Ni f ht °/ the 20th ° Ctober: 1 am Soing to a village near Southend looking for a house for my husband’s nephew. When I reach Southend the sea breeze enters my nostrils, and I say: “I must see the sea, if only for a minute. How good it would be'to be here with F. But reason prevails, and as I am not there to see the sea, I go on my way to the village. The most elementary distinction in dreams, as elementary as that between land and water in geography, is, as the earliest scientific investigators of dreaming pointed out, that between presentative and representative elements, or whatever terms may be preferred to indicate the dream elements that are based on actual impressions on the organism at the moment and those based on stored up impressions of the past in memory. It is PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 300 a fundamental distinction, but scarcely one that it is profitable to dwell on. Every dreamer—one might almost add in every dream—is working with both kinds of elements, though the presentative element is not always easy to recognize on account of our imperfect knowledge of the condition of the organism. Theoretically, moreover, we can easily imagine a dream made up entirely of representative elements; but it is probable that our theoretical view is wrong. We may say, for instance, that a dreamer, who after a hard day’s work seems to be continuing his work in sleep, is engaged on a representative dream, but it is highly probable that the fatigued organism stimulates the dream which thus has a presentative element. It is certain, also, that every presentative dream has representative elements, otherwise there would be no dream. All the dreams here recorded may probably be held to contain both presentative and representative elements, very often quite clearly, and it scarcely seems that much would be gained by making the attempt, which could only be approxi- mate, to estimate their relative proportion. It may be worth while, and is certainly easier, to consider another common and ancient distinction: the proportion in dreams between representative elements of old and of recent date. It may well be that there are individual or other peculiarities (as of sex, age, temperament, and nationality) m this matter, so that the proportion is worth noting. When we consider the dreams before us from this point of view, it is seen that 21 of them must be put aside as vague or indefinite, for they present pictures which cannot be clearly associated with any single remembered event, recent or remote. There remains 70 which can be associated with recent events, oc¬ curring within a few days before the dieam, most often the day before, and 45 which can be associated with remote events, sometimes fifteen years back, or in childhood. It will be seen that the new and the old frequently overlap in a single dieam. Probably, indeed, in every dream of any length, it would be possible to detect the blending of recent and remote memories. THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 301 This is probably a normal result and true for dreaming generally. Probably, also, it is true of dreaming generally, as for the present dreamer, that there is a decided predominance of recent over remote memories. In order to discover whether there is anything peculiar in the balance of memories in the present dreamer we should have to bring forward comparable numerical proportions from other dreamers. In the texture of all fully-formed dreams—dreams that are more than mere floating fragments—we must expect to find the texture con¬ stituted by the warp and woof of these two kinds of memories, whether or not the proportion varies. Every dreamer’s map must show the two blended, just as land and water are blended in the geographical map. It is perhaps unnecessary to deal further with generalities. It is more interesting, it is no doubt more significant for the establishment of individual personality through dreams, to as¬ certain the chief groups into which a dreamer’s visions of the night fell, to find out their relative frequency, and to note their main characteristics. Something, however, may be said first as to the classes into which the dramatis personae of these dreams fell. From the point of view of their nearness to the dreamer I divide them into five classes and I note the number of dreams into which one or more members of each class fall (independently of the exact number of figures belonging to any class in a single dream): (1) Her children, in 18 dreams; (2) her parents, in 13 dreams; (3) other relations (usually brothers), 13; (4) other known people, not being blood relations, 37; (5) imaginary people, 48. Looked at broadly, there are two classes: real people and imaginary people. The imaginary people constitute more than a third of the whole population of the dream world, and play a part therein which is just as real as that of the real people, often indeed a more impressive part. From the point of view of the dream world one might even be tempted to say that the “real” people—the people whose proper place is in the waking world—must be regarded as merely in¬ truders. 302 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. With regard to the distribution of classes of people in relation to kinds of dreams, the dreamer herself has made some remarks (not after the present series but after a later series which were noted down in a more summary manner) suitable for quotation here: “I do not hold the theory that we people our dreams wit i beings absolutely unimportant or of secondary or remote im¬ portance in our life. It seems to me, rather, that we people them either with those who are closely and immediately im¬ portant to us or, failing these, with utterly fantastic and imag¬ inary beings bearing no connection with our life, abstract people for the most. “I base this on the following facts: “(1) In dreams purely physiological in origin, urination (if not associated with erotism), difficult breathing, etc., the characters are more than in any other kind of dreams abso¬ lutely fantastic, a vague friend, a flying man, a crowd, and seldom do they present the face of anyone one knows. “(2) On the other hand in dreams belonging to the psychic sphere (affection, worries, work, disquietudes, and erotism) the characters are either very clearly defined and known people or else again fancy-pure fancy—rather than anyone remote or secondary in one’s life. “For instance in dreams of worries over work it has always been my headmaster or mistress or educational agent who has come in. Most close they are to my everyday life of all im¬ portant work, and always the head, never other teachers, hardly ever vague, and never bringing remote or secondary people into the dreams. “Dreams of worries over children are also clearly set. I never dream of children vaguely known to me as nieces and nephews, or of children of my youth, but of my own two darlings or else pure fancies. My own, however, occur far more often than the fanciful. The same applies to dreams con¬ nected with parents, brothers, etc., though these are not fre¬ quent, the ties of affection, though great, not as great as to THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 303 leave deep constant concern or worry as children d,o or a lover, except on occasions such as long silence, illness, etc. “Beside all this, dreams are occupied with matters of de¬ tail, with people and things close at hand during the day pre¬ ceding the dream far more than with remote people and things of the past. I find something of this kind in almost every dream I have. A remark during the day, a personality recalled through conversation, a face in a ’bus, offer far more fancies to build upon, for a leading part or for filling in details, than youthful or past things secondary in one’s life.” When we survey broadly the sleeping life of this dreamer —and probably of any dreamer—we find that it reflects all the essential and fundamental experience of the activities of the organism, physical and psychic, those actually being ex¬ perienced in the body at the time and those so recently or so persistently experienced that they have left traces easily per¬ ceptible to the dreaming mind. It needs scarcely to be re¬ marked that the distinction between “physical” and “psychic” in dreams, however convenient, is merely superficial. All dreaming, on the one hand, is psychic, wherever the stimuli that set it in action, or that affect its action, may chance to arise. On the other hand, we cannot positively say that all dreaming is not, as regards the nature of its stimuli, physical, for we know nothing of the way in which experiences are reg¬ istered on the organism. It may be convenient to talk (with Semon) of “engramms” but we do not know what an en- gramm is. It is important to insist on this equality of character in the experiences of dream-life. It is all the more necessary be¬ cause there is always a temptation to introduce our own social conventions in estimating the quality of dream experiences. Social conventions exist in dreams. That is to say, for in¬ stance, that the dreamer may be ashamed at finding himself in situations which would cause shame in waking life. But the dreamer is merely playing an unwilling part in a dream which he has not consciously had any part in producing. And that dream-drama is set forth with serene impartiality on a basis PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 304 altogether regardless of social conditions and exactly reflect¬ ing the functions of the organism in their relatively fun la- mental importance. In dreams everything that affects the human organism of the dreamer assumes its true value, t ere is neither “high” nor “low.” So it comes about that many things that in the conventionally arranged life of human societies are emphasized are in dreams almost ignored, and many things that in society are almost ignored appear in tie first order of prominence. This is well illustrated when we group these dreams in order in accordance with the natural human functions which most frequently come into play. We find this order to be: erotic, 20; parental, 18; eating, 15; vesical, 14; filial, 13; vocational, 9; intestinal, 3. As there are one hundred dreams all these figures are at the same time percentages and .he order thus revealed seems to be significant. It will be seen that the erotic group comes first with the largest number of dreams (Nos. 1, 2, 6, 10, 21, 28, 35, 41, 43, 50, 51, 57, 61, 85, 87, 90, 91, 93, 96, 99), one-fifth of the whole. We are of course dealing with what are termed mani¬ fest dreams, the dreams of whose nature there can be no ques¬ tion, or, at all events, with dreams of whose nature there can be little dispute; we are not here viewing them psychoanalytic- ally and therefore we are not primarily concerned with the question of a concealed meaning beneath the surface, that is to say, with latent dreams; that is a question which still remains obscure, even when we admit, as we can scarcely fail to do, that dreams often possess a meaning which is not on the surface. This proportion of erotic dreams will still, however, seem to many a matter to contest. There are some persons who will be shocked to see so many; there are others who will assert there could not be so few. That still persisting opposi¬ tion of attitude is due to the historical development of the study of this aspect of dreams. Down to nearly forty years ago even the most serious students of dream psychology had little or nothing to say about erotic dreams. Sometimes they THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 305 would deal with the subject of dreaming in an elaborately de¬ tailed and apparently comprehensive manner and yet never refer to erotic dreams. It seemed as though their most search¬ ing investigation of the sleeping mind had never revealed to them the play of the fundamental and singularly strong im¬ pulse of sex. Then the inevitable reaction took place. The pendulum which had been artificially drawn up to one absurd extreme swung violently back to the opposite extreme. Dream psychologists arose (it is unnecessary to say what persuasiveness the overwhelming genius of Freud lent to their argument) who declared that, so far from not finding sex in dreams, they could really not find anything else! To-day (although survivors of both the ancient views may still be detected) it is at length possible to take up a more rationally balanced position. On the one hand we no longer pretend not to see the psychic operation of any human impulse; we can impartially accept, and even welcome, them all. On the other hand,, we recognize that we are not narrowly driven down to a single root for all the variegated wealth of the mind, whether sleeping or waking. We can map out the vegetation in this rich field, finding different growths with different funda¬ mental roots, although we cannot fail to find frontiers where the growths are blended or the roots uncertain. The efforts of doctrinary controversialists to reduce all these growths to a single genus cease to be of interest. We find it more in¬ teresting to trace the enrichment of genera and to determine their relative extent. This can never be quite the same for any two persons or even for the same person at two different periods. That is illustrated even by the example before us, for dreams observed in subsequent years, and even in the year immediately following that with which we are here concerned —some of them I propose to bring forward—indicate, though only in a slight degree, an evolving process of change. They develop because personality develops, or, as it were, exfoliates, revealing ever new phases from within; yet that newness is ever new only within narrow limits—or when the limits seem to be wide it is because we contain within ourselves com- 20 306 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. plementary and compensatory aspects—so that personality al¬ ways retains its own outlines and those outlines always dis¬ tinguish it from every other personality. It is the value of dreams that they reveal the real features of this personality more nakedly and in truer proportion than we could ever expect to see a personality revealed in waking life uni => had very intimately learnt to know it, and even then we cou never be quite sure that we had justly estimated the exact pro¬ portion of its various elements. In dreams that is done for us: we only need the privilege of observation. There seems to me reason to believe that the relative place of the erotic in the present dreamer’s life is justly P rese " te by her dreams-though it would be helpful to compare them with the observations of other dreamers—when we bear in nun that the dreamer was at this time enduring a considerable de¬ gree of sexual deprivation at a time of life when in a hea y and vigorous organism the spontaneous sexual impulse is strong We dream of a thing, as is well recognized, because we want to do it, although, as is less often recognized, we also dream of a thing for other reasons, because it forms part o the logic of the dream, or because we do not want to do it, or even merely because we just happen to have done it. A dream of erotic excitement may occur immediately after erotic grati¬ fication and seems then, probably, to be an echo of the grati - cation rather than a sign of desire; provided, that is, that no actual physical excitement has accompanied the dream. There, indeed, we are brought up to an important criterion: how far are we entitled to call a dream erotic when no physical excite¬ ment can be detected by the dreamer on awakening. At least ei-ht (rather less than half) of the present dreamer s erotic dreams were accompanied by physical excitement ^nd were therefore erotic in the full sense (Nos. 1, 2, 6, 28, 41, 50 57, 96) I am disposed to consider myself justified in regarding all dreams erotic in which the psychic content is erotic, quite independent of the physical accompaniment. But it is obvious that when we regard a dream as erotic where there are neither THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 307 obvious psychic indications of its erotic nature nor any physical sexual-accompaniment, we tread upon unsafe ground. I do not propose to examine the details of these erotic dreams. They tell us a great deal about the dreamer’s ama¬ tory and affective temperament and experience in waking life. But I am not here concerned with analysis, and the reader may therefore be left to study them from this point of view for himself. It may, however, be of some interest, from the analytic as well as the synthetic point of view, to present a few of the subject’s later erotic dreams, mostly dating from the following year. Those noted down seem to have been typical of the later dreams, though they undoubtedly represent the most im¬ pressive of them, and cannot therefore be considered quite average dreams. One is tempted to believe that they corres¬ pond to the subject’s actual development at this period; they present a greater refinement and sublimation of erotic feeling, and the subject herself noted that actual coitus entered less fre¬ quently into her dreams. Yet this impression may be fallaci¬ ous, as is indicated by two early dreams (Cl, CII) dating just before the main series, which I have brought forward. They chance to be very instructive in the light they throw on the subject’s erotic temperament, occurring within a few days of each other, and illustrating the two sides, spiritual and physical, of her erotic nature. They might very well be regarded as the prelude to the series of dreams which they immediately preceded. Dream CL (This and the following dream as well as CIV and CV are written in English by the subject.) The dream begins with a dull dreary earth where suddenly comes a dear child, most certainly sent from fairyland. The child looks like a girl though I could not tell the sex and has big brown eyes shining like bright jet. Her locks are a soft golden brown, and, everywhere she looks, beautiful flowers grow, and everywhere she breathes, wonderful light appears. Soon the earth is transformed. I see, right over the hills, far away, a magical light glowing, and going into a wood, I find the undergrowth full of pink and firm anemones. As I marvel at them I notice that, high above my head, 308 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. stand tall and splendid red lilies. I do not know where to look, the earth is a real paradise, and I exclaim: “I must gather some lilies for mother.” I am just going to break the strong stalk of one of them, when I see, entering the wood, the tall lanky figure of a dear man I know. His beautiful head is a glowing contrast to the red lilies near which he stands. There was no name but there could be no mistake, it was the head I love so much. He looked grave and somewhat sad, and this caused me to pause in the act o 8 a ing my wonderful red lilies. Then suddenly the beautiful child came into the wood and ran to him. She looked tired and haggard. Her flower-like eyes seemed bigger than ever, but stared strange y as 1 for ever condemned to remain open. She almost fell into his arms and he supported her as if he had been waiting for her and knew she would come in this dreadful state. The sadness of the face deepens and the child says softly, “They are asking too much of me I shall have to leave them.” And I understand that they are men and women, and that the fairy child is bound to leave the earth. I could not gather the lilies. ,, „ There the dream stopped. I never came near him. He seemed not to notice me. I was the mere wonder-bound spectator of this enchanting scene. Would you call this an erotic dream? It left me in a most beautiful state. Was the child Love. Did it mean: Abuse love and it goes, and with it the flower and light, and itself the most glorious flower of all? Dream CII. (Two nights later): Last night I had a wicked erotic dream. Coming home from school a man boarded the bus who, I am sure, is a French professor at the great college near here. I had never seen him before but have been shown his photograph. He looked so French, so professor-like, and so like the photograph, that he interested me. Well, in the night, he, of all men, a perfect stranger, not even pleasing to me, did what no man has ever been allowed to do without being kicked in the face. And I simply Jove it, though I quarrelled with myself and kept on repeating: How dare he when only one man is allowed to do this? It was an idiotic dream, which left me disgusted at my wild enjoyment. Dream CIII: I had a dream last night which, though neither charming nor agreeable, may be of interest as combining erotic and vesical elements. I was in a crowd at a great railway station in Paris, going to take a ticket for my birthplace, and awaiting my turn at the booking office with a number of very French people, in shawls and hatless. People press against me and a fat lady tries to pass in front of me saying: “I was there before you,” to which I reply, knowing she is telling a lie: “Indeed! I am going first however. THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 309 Which I proceed to do, elbowing my way, I fear. I ask for a third class ticket for —. The clerk says: “Have you your papers?” I reply: “No. I did not know they were needed.” He tells me the gentleman beside me will tell me what I must do. Then I see a man at my right who explains vaguely that I must go and see M. —, pay two francs, telegraph for my papers, etc. (I don’t recall the details clearly.) I see myself quite small, like a school girl, in a light dress, and thinking that by pretending to be innocent I may get through without all these worries; so I innocently say: “I have a passport at home,” and think to myself that I will telegraph to my servant, who is at a hotel with the children, to send it. The man is taken in by my angelic air, says, after the clerk has given me my ticket: “Come with me to see the superintendent [the word I think in English] and the matter will be arranged.” “But I shall lose my train?” “Oh, no, you have plenty of time.” So we go, I, quite small, beside him, and telling him that I have been to England several times during the war and must therefore have a passport in order. As I walk or rather run after this man who strides ahead, I drop a sixpence and then a half penny which roll on the ground. I stoop to pick them up when to my horror I find they have rolled in front of some men s urinals, but not wishing to lose my sixpence half penny I pick the coins up quickly and awkwardly and go on. We reach at last a room, which I enter, following the man, without at first realizing that the place is full of urinals (holes in the floor covered with earthenware) and I put my foot into a pool of golden urine. I become very red and uncomfortable, and then I see that my companion is opening his trousers and preparing to urinate. I rush out and knock against a large, strong, short-skirted woman (of the “Land Girl” type), carrying a bucket, who has come to clean the urinals, and who says to me smiling broadly: “You made a mistake?” which makes me feel still more confused. But the man comes out as though he had noticed nothing amiss and we enter another room which looks at first like the other, but I soon notice that, above holes in the floor, are taps, at one of which my companion washes his hands, afterwards saying to me: “Where is my handkerchief then?” He searches his pocket in vain, then suddenly throws him¬ self on me, takes me in his strong arms, draws my head back and leaning over me seeks my lips. I struggle and exclaim: “What are you doing? I shall call out!” I see behind me a window through which is visible the station crowded with people. I repeat: “I shall call out!” and I try to do so but he plants his tongue in my mouth saying: “I know how to prevent that!” This seems horrible to me at first and I continue to struggle. He is powerful like the navvy who sometimes appears in my dreams; he holds me as in a vise, and PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 310 little by little I begin to find that agreeable. He seeks to raise my skirt—a skirt of a golden color—in front—and I aid him in doing sol He is exciting me with his finger in a most agreeable way when swskCt It was a dream of the handsome brute kind, such as two years ago my erotic dreams nearly always were, though of late much more rarely. Dream CIV: She had been to see her friend F., who had a sore throat. _ . ,. I was out for a walk, rather in a hurry, very busy, I believe, on going shopping. When at the corner of a quaint little French street there was a man waiting for me. It annoyed me as I had nothing to do with men, so I pushed on hastily, never looking at the man. When I came back, however, I began to wonder if he would still be there, and on coming to the corner I saw him and was not at all surprised to find that it was F. In a teasing mood, and giving myself the excuse that I was too busy, I passed him, head in air, though pleased and happy that it was he. I had no sooner started on my way up another quaint little street than I was sorry for what I had done, and felt I had been extremely unkind, but on looking back I saw F.’s sad and somewhat sexually greedy face (which is a look I have never seen on his real face) peeping at me through the doorway of an open-air sort of “lavoir,” and looking sadly resigned to my naughty enticing ways. I then pictured what he must have done to have the chance of seeing me. I saw him, retrospectively, so to say, entering boldly the lavoir full of women at work washing, crossing it to cut short the street corner, and, when he saw me looking back, hiding himself hurriedly, while I, playing hide and seek, came softly against the wall to surprise him. When we saw each other face to face we both looked radiant and happy, as in real life, but auto¬ matically each put out a long tongue to show the other (oh, horror) that it was black with a throat lozenge (such as I had given F. during the day) which meant we were both suffering from sore throat, and must not kiss. It was a gesture as of two children, and with the same mirth and gusto. In the end, however, the tongues united in a real kiss, and then in high and childish bliss we walked up the narrow little French street lightly, arm in arm, swearing mutually: “We shall cure one another.” Then I awoke extremely happy at this ridiculous yet so delicious little dream. I wanted to urinate. Like the previous dream, this dream may be regarded as erotico- vesical. Dream CV: The beginning is vague. I am with W., a young lawyer to whom I was engaged more than ten years ago. He is THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 311 urging me to something, but it is very vague and I recall no words or gestures, only a desire on my part not to yield, and a feeling of boredom that he should be so pressing. At last, still suppliant, and now with his arm round my waist, he is beginning to move me when he hears a sound in the next room. He goes to see what it is; it is F. who is there, looking sad and overwhelmed, and I mysteriously seem to see him through the wall. Not less mysteriously, I know that F. is pretending that he feels it to be quite natural that I should take a lover of my own age, but his dejected air contradicts that assurance. That would have settled the matter, but in dreams our hearts are made of stone. W. comes back from the room, laughing cynically, and somehow indicating that he cannot believe that F. is my lover. He seems sure of his approaching victory, and while F. is preparing to retire and leave us entirely alone he catches sight of the impatient W. in an act which he would no doubt have post¬ poned had he realized, like me, F.’s sad attitude. It was the placing of his finger beneath my skirt, and penetrating the sexual parts. For the moment I was strongly excited and forgot F.’s sad face. I even believe that for a few seconds I experienced a delightful languor. But suddenly I saw F. leave the house, looking crushed. I heard someone say: “They cannot make him eat; he will never get over it.” Then I knew that it was F. I loved, that I needed his mag¬ netically vivifying caresses, and to the astonishment of W. I rapidly threw on a rose colored dressing gown, and ran up the stairs, to find myself soon in F.’s arms and see his radiant face bending over mine. It was immensely sweet. But W. had followed me. He was there in front of us, and still sheltered in F.’s arms, I said to him: “Yes, this is the man I love, and I shall never love any other.” Mean¬ while, apparently attracted by the disturbance, a number of boys and men seemed to be seizing and insulting F., while I (a good Pacifist!) suddenly became a tigress, violently throwing at them whatever pro¬ jectiles I could find and protecting F. with my body. I awoke. Dream CVI: While still, as it seemed to me, half awake, I was seeing and caressing F.’s head. This continued in dream, very happily. Suddenly the bed seemed to become immensely long, and F. appeared, far away at the foot of it, only his bearded face show¬ ing, as it rested on the sheet, gazing towards my legs. At my end of the bed I was white and small lying on my back, with feet towards the threatening beard. Then the face began to advance towards me like a long serpent on its belly, and suddenly the head is between my legs, and I have the impression of coitus, but cannot say whether it was not just a kiss. Then I awoke. Dream CVII: This dream occurred just before a visit to Cam¬ bridge, which place I associate with W. who was at that university. 312 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. I see W. in my dream, though not at all resembling him in physical appearance (but I am never able now to recall his features). He is tall and slender, with long dark hair, the air of an artist in the popular notion, and a negligent but elegant costume. We seem to have met after years of absence, and he looks at me with attention and tenderness, as if to see if I am unchanged. Then in a slightly biting tone, his eye becoming rather hard and cynical, but his face yet keeping, as though in spite of himself, a ray of tenderness, he throws out the remark: “No need to say, you have much thicker eyebrows than the rest of your family, and that indicates passion, tragic passion, but still passion. Vous etes une grande passionnee! As, with intense and tragic desire, he cries out these last words, the agitation and suffering of my friend affected me too in the same way, although at the same time the words he used made me smile, and then laugh, for I seemed, below all this, to see F. whom W. could not see, and, at the reference to thick eyebrows in connection with tragic passion, my overflowing and assured joy associated other ideas. How could he not see that passion is always the sister of joy! And then the idea suggested a little secret, for “thick eyebrows” are associated in my mind with a certain little triangle of dark hair elsewhere. These thoughts, difficult to render, passed panoramically across my mind, while my friend looked at me with a wounded air, puzzled at my gaiety, and so I, softening the outburst of a laugh which might hurt him, replied: “Ah, if you had said that two years ago I should really have been frightened. But now I can no more be frightened, no more; it is joy!” This phrase rearoused my friend’s ardours, and he began to soliloquize on his side: “Passionate, yes, passionate. Tragic perhaps; but she will be my wife.” And I, who guess what he is feeling, am full of pity. How can I say, without wounding him, that there is now F., and that after the joy and light that have come to me I can never belong to him, that he belongs to the past? I do not recall whether I said this to him. The dream became vague as I awoke. Dream CVIII: This dream begins with the idea that a Chinaman is to be my husband. I do not know whether my mother was the despot in this matter but I am being put into an immense bed, and they (who remain vague) bring to me a Chinaman who is to sleep with me and be my husband. Horror! this man grimaces like a monkey; his nails are cut short, but with a sharp projecting point in the middle which transforms them into claws. When he comes near me these points prick my skin like needles and his body is hairy. The physical repulsion is painful and agonizing and no monster could be better fitted to provoke it. But he does not take me, someone interrupts. Two young girls are looking for a bed and they THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 313 propose to occupy that next to ours in the same room. But the sight of the monster shocks them; they rush out with tragic gestures, making with raised hands and arms, in the direction away from which their faces are turned, the classic gesture of certain Egyptian bas reliefs in pushing off a horrible vision. But it seems to be a country in which beds are scarce, for these girls had hardly left before a whole procession of others passes through with the same end in view; at last two remain and, in spite of the Chinaman, occupy the vacant bed. My man was thus obliged to keep quiet, to my great relief. The scene having changed, I was in the street with my China¬ man and several young girls; we were walking in a row, one might almost say arm in arm, the Chinaman at the end of the line and I at his side. He had become singularly changed. His bronze or coppery com¬ plexion suited him wonderfully; he was handsome, he was noble, and now completely shaven, with all his horror and grimacing gone. I felt myself leaning against him, and the presence of all these women embar¬ rassed. both of us. Suddenly my companion seemed no longer able to stand it, and as if by magic we both entered a room, leaving the young girls behind. There my personality became doubled. There was one me on the bed—it must have been me and it spoke French distinctly—but there was also another me remaining spectator. The woman on the bed was lying on her back and she said in pure French to the Chinaman (and the words remain very clear to me) : “There is a flower; the most beautiful of flowers, and so finely constructed.” Was this a command? My Chinaman seemed to understand it so, for he approached his sweet¬ heart (she was certainly that now), and turning her over on the bed, with a light movement, the thin drawers that covered her fell as by magic, and discovered two beautiful buttocks, rosy and firm, at the edge of the bed. Having only admired (but not touched) what he had thus revealed, my Chinaman, still in a charmingly playful way, turned this “flower” onto the other side, thus exposing the sexual parts, which were like those of a little girl, without any shadowing hair. He seemed struck with astonishment at the beauty of this sight and still not daring to touch stood back the better to contemplate the sight, finally drawing away to a corner, where he squatted on the floor. The French woman on the bed, now modestly lying on her back, was a little astonished that he should go away, and after a few moments she said to him gently: “You know there is another flower and I should much like to know if it is well made.” The Chinaman then, quite naturally, unbuttoned him¬ self and drew out an organ which was small but erect and firm as though made of bronze, with a patina of copper, harmonizing with his face, which was so gentle and firm and noble. I do not know which admired it most, the woman on the bed or the woman who was looking on, but 314 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. both felt great admiration for what seemed to be an object of art. And suddenly this beautiful object became a^ serpent grew^ elongated^ and onened its mouth, but still in an altogether artistic way, and then the Chinaman rose and came and made love to the little woman in a pos.Oon which I am sure none ever thought of. He lay down beside her, both of them on their backs, and seeming not to touch her (he always seemed to fear to use his hands as though in his admiration he desired to minimi the contact) but I know that the serpent did his work, drawing 1 out and twisting himself extremely, but so sweetly and voluptuously, with no trace of venom; I cannot say that I was violently stirred, it was all so subtle; I cannot even recall the entry of the serpent; the dream tells me that it was so, but I do not know; I doubt it; I only hear ta music which nty Chinaman was playing for me on a flute W music' I really cannot describe it, any more than his way of Paying it while lying close beside me, his two beautiful bronze muscular but rat slender arms holding the flute to his lips and raised to ^r ds ‘h e ce lmg both lying on our backs, so calm, so peaceful, so serene, that thesense what the dream openly declares to have taken place was lost in the sounds of the flute, which filled me with ecstasy. The me, spectator, was during this time much occupie in ing some method of shutting a door formed of two mattresses to prevent the profane noises and gross language of two harrld ^ S quarrelling on the first floor from penetrating to the lovers It was specially what one of these vixens was saying which scandalized th spectator me, a woman doing journey-work for the proprietor of the house. She was making a furious onset on the mistress of the house on account, she said, of the scandalous goings-on. She had pro¬ fanely attempted to enter the room in the midst of the_ lovers ecstasy. I had quickly chased her out as one throws out filth, but her loud talk with the mistress of the house seemed to me a sacrilege and was so afraid that it would be heard on the bed that I vowed I would sew together these mattresses, which persisted m falling back on me, if I could not otherwise hold them in place. Then I awoke. Why a Chinaman? That I do not know, but it was a jewel of a dream, which made me laugh afterwards. My son had been to see The T cm test and told me of Caliban and his costume and sharp claws; that clearly influenced the dream. Dream CIX: This dream took place four years later and is of rather different type, seeming to indicate a more mature stage of dCV< i°cannot remember exactly, how the dream began, but I see myself in bed with my favorite brother (lost in the war); we were both naked and lying spoon-fashion, I with my back to him. (It was the position in which I had actually gone to sleep.) It is my brother, THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 315 but at the same time it is Death. He is dear to me. We are loving each other tenderly but yet he is Death as well as Love, those two divine things, which he is forever in my thoughts since Death took him from me. This mystic lover—Death, Brother, and Love—is loving me and caressing me, and I feel very happy with his flesh against mine. He caresses me with his hands, covering all my naked body, especially the thighs and legs, with large slow movements full of tenderness. I feel all through how much he is a lover, but also how much he is Death, and how sweet and tender. Though my back is turned to him, I seem to see him, lean and bony, like a skeleton, hardly covered by flesh, and yet that flesh is so sweet to me, and the head, which I also seem to see, is small (as those of skeletons seem to be compared with those of the living), bald, beardless, but not terrifying; without definitely recalling my brother’s features, I know that it is his face, rosy, with a tender rosiness like a child’s face and quite unlike a death’s head. Yet it is indeed Death that is loving me, and at the same time it is indeed my brother. After these pleasant caresses, he sits up and throwing back the bedclothes and finding me lying flat on my back he raises the nightgown which I then seem to be wearing (before we had both been naked) and uncovers my legs, stomach, and body, which is then seen to be, on the left side, from beneath the breast to low down on the belly, adorned by a very beautiful picture in colors, a landscape. My brother says tenderly, and with gentle pride: “That is the expression of our love, which you have produced,” and I am lost in wonder. I wanted him to go on caressing and loving me, so that other beautiful things should come out and cover my legs and thighs with fine landscapes, to express in color all that I am feeling; but my brother says gravely: “No, that is not for the present. To find in colors the expression that you are seeking you need solitude.” Here the dream became vague. The name of B. seems to float before me and the words “expression in colors.” (Here it should be explained that B. is the author of a book, read just before I went to bed, in which I had much admired the power to express color. It may also be added that my brother was a painter.) After my brother’s remark I felt at first a little sad that he wished to leave me alone—it is so good to be loved—and then I felt that he was right. Still I need com¬ pany and I decide to leave my brother’s bed and go and sleep in my sister’s. She is lying, not yet asleep, in a small bed which I ask her permission to enter. She consents, even seems pleased, but soon falls asleep, and we are in an uncomfortable position, back to back, her rather large buttocks against mine. In sleep her body arches, and her bottom is thus propelled as a sort of battering ram, pushing me to the edge of the bed, so that I fear I shall fall out and begin to 316 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. think that it is not pleasant to sleep with a sister who is so in¬ hospitable and whose buttocks are so fleshy and firm. Then I awake for a few seconds and on going to sleep again find myself with my brother—here again also my lover and Death—both of us naked. Again he is loving me with large tender caresses and again, as before, he throws back the bedclothes and lifts my nightgown very high, then kisses me at length between the legs, so that I nearly lose all sense of the real world, save of my brother’s gentle hand covering and caressing my left breast. He stops in the midst of the long kiss to ask: “Would you like me to kiss your breasts?” But I, in a trance, reply, “No, go on,” and the delight of that kiss again absorbs me entirely. But he stops, and seeing me lying flat on my back gazes at my legs and body; on the left from below the breast to the bottom of the belly there was a great brown patch. My Brother-Lover- Death exclaimed: “There is no more picture, but that is where it was; it has left traces. Everything in you, with the help of our love, is preparing for it.” After that I seem to remember no more. I awoke much moved by this dream which seems to contain the mystic and erotic essence of my intimate life and affections. Before passing on from the erotic dreams of this subject, which have now been revealed, with singular frankness, in all their aspects and all their intimate personal recesses, from the crudest to the most spiritual, it may be of interest to consider briefly the personality of the lover in these dreams. We are not here called upon to do this analytically, because, without going beneath the surface, these dreams reveal manifestly and quite accurately the emotional phase the dreamer was in real life passing through. It used to be said, and is indeed still often repeated, that in dreams there is a “censorship” which suppresses or distorts wish fulfilments. That may be prom¬ inently true in the case of many abnormal or neurotic dreamers, but such censorship is not pronounced in the case of normal, healthy dreamers, and indeed the significant fact for us to re¬ member is that, as Freud has truly said, the heavy pressure of the “censorship” is really suspended, or at all events very much weakened, during sleep. Therefore it is enough to summarize the results synthetically. It will be found that the largest number, as many as eight, of these erotic dreams were en¬ acted with completely unknown men, of lower social class, THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 317 usually vigorous working men, ultra-virile, inclined to be rough and aggressive, occasionally dark-skinned foreigners; in this group the physical excitement was most apt to be pronounced, and most easily detected on awakening. Of the other dreams, one concerned the man to whom she had been engaged many years earlier; three her husband whom she had not seen for a year or two before this series of dreams began; six a new friend for whom at this time her affection was growing; one a more distant friend; one a man of her own class only known by sight and for whom she felt no attraction; one a half al¬ legorical figure associated with her brother; one was of mastur¬ bation; one of swinging; two were mixoscopic, the sexual ex¬ citement arising from the scene witnessed. The erotic picture thus presented seems fully adequate to all the excitations likely to be presented in daily normal life. Yet the largest group of all, the first, cannot be thus obviously explained, and corresponds to no pronounced emotions in the dreamer's waking life. It thus becomes of some psychological interest. There is little doubt that what is misleadingly called “marriage by capture” has been common in primitive society. There has not usually been any violence or rape involved; the woman has retained her right to decide; but the man has exerted a show of force, and so is enabled to manifest his ro¬ bust virility while she is enabled to manifest her feminine modesty. The courtship in this group of erotic dreams is clearly of the nature of “marriage by capture.” The dreamer is impelled to invent a powerful and primitive lover whose sudden and ardent advances alarm and repel and disgust her; but gradually she is won over, the lover seems more and more attractive, and the scene tends to end in intense physical and emotional satisfaction. It would seem that we may properly regard dreams of this group—which are without correspond¬ ence in the dreamer's waking experiences or desires—as atavis¬ tic; but only in a very restricted sense. That is to say that they are the correlated psychic aspect of the most fundamental primitive sexual desire. When in the sleeping woman the phy- PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 318 sical sexual impulse is making itself felt apart from her daily civilized life and her personal affections the ancient deep- seated associations of that impulse will assert themselves and the dreamer imagine that she is playing her part in a mar¬ riage by capture.” Most women, asleep or awake, are aware of the presence within them of this primitive desire to be carried away by force, even though in actual experience they would resent it and never yield to it. In dreams they can give it free play. I would propose to term the dream of this type the Marriagc-by-Capture Dream. Flying Dreams. I introduce the discussion of these dreams immediately after the erotic group, because there is some reason to think that in part—though, I believe, only in part they lie on the borderland of the erotic group. When I wrote at length on such dreams in my book, The World of Dreams, many years ago, I did not find that they were ever erotic. I associated them with exaggerated rhythrriic muscular movements, especially with the rise and fall of the chest wall in more or less excited respiration. The evidence seemed to make that clear, and I had no evidence in favor of a sexual origin. Then came Freud who asserted that dreams of flying are the expression of a sexual wish, a kind of symbolization, of sexual origin yet with¬ out organic stimulus. It might, of course, be possible to at¬ tach too much importance to this assertion. Freud at that time believed that the majority of dreams are the expression of erotic wishes . 1 So it seemed to me that he had no choice— 1 Thus in Die Traumdeutung (3d. ed., 1911, p. 205) Freud writes: “The majority of the dreams of adults deal with sexual material and express erotic wishes.” He merely added, as by an after-thought, that he would not “exclude the appearance” of numerous dreams dealing with hunger thirst, etc. Fourteen years later, in his ‘Selbstdarstellung (Grote’s Medizin der Gegenwart, 1925) Freud states the matter much more clearly: “I have never set forth the opinion, often ascribed to me, that dream interpretation shows that all dreams have sexual content or lead back to sexual impulses. It is easy to see that hunger, thirst, and ex¬ cretory pressure may just as well produce dreams of satisfaction as any repressed sexual or egoistic tendency.” Thus stated-—though he has not always stated it so clearly—Freud’s position is the same as that 1 maintain. THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 319 evidence or no evidence—but to make the same assertion of flying dreams. But I was quite willing to take the suggestion seriously, and I gave fresh attention to the matter. Freud had brought forward no convincing evidence on the point, but I found that—while the respiratory origin of some dreams of the group could not be questioned—there was ground for believing that an erotic element must not be excluded. I found that in some of these dreams a distinct erotic coloring could be traced, and also that such dreams tend to disappear in late life when definitely erotic dreams also tend to disappear, though this later consideration is not decisive since in later life all dreams tend to become less vivid and less definite. It will be seen that there are two dreams of flying in the present series (LII and XCIV). On account of the interest of the subject I asked Mrs. N. to make further records of such dreams during the three or four subsequent years, carefully noting the circumstances under which they occurred. This she was kind enough to do, and I am thus able to bring forward six additional and highly instructive dreams of this class. Dream CX: It was a very agreeable dream. I was flying on a huge aeroplane with many planes, and I was able to move about on the wings of the monster, like a fly on the wall, without even en¬ dangering its equilibrium. I am suffering from a sore throat. The dreamer subsequently added that during the five following days, still suffering from her throat, she had two other similar flying dreams. Dream CXI. Menstrual period: I had a rather pleasant dream of flying last night. I was floating in the air and being admired by a little crowd, amongst which was one of the masters of the school. “It is quite easy,” I explained, coming to the ground. I proceeded to demonstrate this: “Take a long breath, lifting the chest; then, always holding your breath, bend down on your knees and take a sudden bounce, springing like a piece of elastic.” I went on to do so. It was most delightful, but, alas, I awoke. This dream is of peculiar significance because we find that, even in the dream itself, the dreamer realized the respiratory foundation of it. Dream CXII: Last night I dreamed I was in a kind of office with a man, dressed in brown, rather fat, and a stranger to me, who 320 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. was my boss. He told me that some document was missing but that we should find it in Irene’s room (Irene is pure fancy), where e had gone to wash his hands. So we went up together to find the document, but, once in Irene’s room, the man changed and became my friend F. and suddenly lifted me high in his arms, bringing m down again to sit on his hips, with my legs clasping him tight and the sensation of his coat and buttons against my bare flesh, for the flying motion of lifting me had raised my skirts like a balloon, same movement brought my face above his, so that I looked down on it. Then I put my tongue forth just to touch his lips, but su dcnly it became hard and swollen and I pushed it far into his mouth. It was so sudden that he was quite thrilled and his happy face amused me and I laughed cheerfully; I was feeling happy and highly mischievous. At the same time I felt strangely excited sexually though this seemed only due to the contact of my bare flesh with the rough coat and a button close against the vulva. But then the dream became confused and fantastic, and the feeling o p easure disappeared. Dream CXIII: I do not remember the beginning, but I see myself floating in the air. Unlike those flying dreams in which I simply let myself be borne up by the air passively in a vertical posi¬ tion and in a state of delicious ecstasy, I am full of energy and, as it were, swimming in the air. I make a movement of the legs, though only one leg seems to move, rather similar to that in swimming (in former years I often used to swim) and my body is extended hori¬ zontally on the side, while moving forward. In these movements of the legs it seems to me that people below can see beneath my skirts to the sexual parts, and that annoys me. I attempt while swimming to drape my skirts chastely around my legs. But all my efforts are vain. I suddenly find myself in a vertical position, with a man gazing at me from below. He makes a sign to me to descend, and I plane down to earth. I am no sooner there than this gentleman caresses me with his hands between the legs. I can feel his finger and I think (though I am not quite certain) that at the same time he was slightly smacking my buttocks. I felt much thrilled and excited, to such a degree that in my dream I felt a strong desire to masturbate and dreamed that I was doing so, with such a sense of reality that on awaking I felt sure that I had really done it. I have a bad cold and am unable to breathe through the nose, so was sleeping with my mouth open. Dream CXIV: I have had a flying dream which was clearly erotic and apparently with normal respiration. THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 321 The beginning was very vague, bringing in a friend of my youth with her beautiful complexion, and a man, a perfect stranger, small and with beautiful hair. When the dream began to interest me was when, leaving my friend, I started to leap about in mid-air in the most delightful way, laughing at the stranger below and teasing him, as I thought he would not be able to imitate or catch me. My position was not that usual in flying dreams, though there was no idea of swimming. I do not indeed recall the position in the first movements of rapid leaping and flitting about. Soon, however, I see myself with legs bent at the knees, as if I were kneeling in mid-air but with the knees much apart. The motion of the air lifted a thin chemise above the hips, and thus exposed the sexual parts to the little stranger below me. Then, very slowly and with great pleasure, I seemed to descend on his lips and receive a most delicious kiss in mid-air. Dream CXV : I had gone to bed much worried with the troubles of the day and full of fierce revolt against society in general. I tried to soothe myself by thinking of the calmness of F. I do not know at what hour of the night I seemed to find myself, suddenly, quite naked, in a beautiful landscape bathed in dazzling sunlight. I was walking on alone full of joy to be thus bathed in light; my skin grew firm, my breasts stood out hard and round, with two little points. Only there remained on my body the wrinkles of childbirth which my hands instinctively tried to hide, while my heart said gently to me: “They are the wounds of the war to which women go; he cannot but love them. ,, I knew that he must love all the little defects of my body, and I lived in joy to think that at all events my skin was growing firm for him and my breasts regaining their beauty and youth. And now, I said to myself, I can tell him that I have discovered a corner in the world where one may walk quite naked in the sunshine, and without shame, even of one’s imperfections. I continued to walk, intoxicating myself with the air and sunlight, but I was no longer alone. There were inquisitive people around me, possibly sympathetic, but I was not sure of them, and I began to fear that, after all, the world was returning to torture me again. There was only one, a Chinaman, of whom I felt sure, for he followed me in an ecstatic dream and seemed to wish to kiss my feet every time they touched the ground. He had understood my way of celebrating the worship of the sun, and he followed me like a great artist or a great child, to be at my side to help or guide me. He was disturbed, as I was, at the crowd, not knowing whether or not they would spoil everything. “Could we not find a corner where we could be quite alone?” Saying this to him, I saw before me a superb avenue where the sun seemed to 21 322 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. play through a kind of golden foliage. The Chinaman (I do not know whether he really had the traits of that race or whether it was simply a label applied to him in the dream) then made a sign that he understood and that nothing could be more favorable than this avenue. As soon as I entered it the crowd disappeared and I could more easily abandon myself to the joy of nakedness and free¬ dom. But now I was no longer walking; I was dancing, or rather flying, near the tops of the trees, with dance rhythms in the air, seeking to leap forward and ever higher. It was a combined flight and dance, with half descents and bounds (I do not recall having had this sensation before), and with a laughter more delightful than that of humans. The Chinaman continued to follow me in ever greater ecstasy, seeming to fear nothing but my fall. At a little cry of mine he anxiously asked what was the matter. “It is noth¬ ing,” I said, “only some holly.” I had got into a clump of holly, very highly situated. But I once more bounded into the air. Then the dream was suspended and completely changed its character. I was on the ground again and with a cloak around me, and a pro¬ cession of acrobats, giants, dwarfs, hunchbacks, and jugglers passed before me, apparently emerging from the avenue. The dream had been delicious at first, but it gradually took on a rather nightmarish character. I may conclude this series of flying dreams with two by other subjects, also both women. Dream CXVI: I had dreamed many times of flying but the scene of the dream had always been out of doors, when I had seemed sometimes to float to the top of tall trees picking flowers from the highest branches, or when in a field or meadow I had tried to teach others to fly. None of these dreams had ever seemed to have any sexual connection. But last night I had a quite different flying dream. I was lying on a couch with a man whom I had known only as a friend but whose fine physique and handsome face I had always admired. At the end of a long voluptuous kiss, which ended in an orgasm, I floated from the couch to the ceiling, circling the room several times, and then awoke as I was about to take from the wall a picture which would ordinarily have required a ladder to reach. The last dream of this series is recorded by a woman medical student, aged 30. I here condense it. Dream CXVII: She had been spending the evening with a man to whom she felt a strong attraction, and had been smoking rather excessively. She took tea on going to bed. In the early part of the dream she is waiting, a little impatiently, for a man who, the last THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 323 time she saw him, wished to make love to her but for whom she elt no, response. He appeared, and the dream continues in the subjects words: “With him there is a boy of eight or nine years o age.. He is a beautiful bronze color, like some Indian, brown eyes and hair [she recalled later that he was like an attractive picture she had recently seen of Otto Braun as a boy], and is absolutely naked. I admire him intensely. I talk to him and he replies in a deep musical voice. Then my favorite brother comes on the scene and admires him, too. He puts his arm around him caressingly and touches the boy’s penis. I am worried and wonder how I can tell him to desist without attracting the boy’s attention. Then I am relieved for my brother has stopped. They fade away. I still seem to be in the same place. I hear the noise of an aeroplane (they always fascinate me) and run to look at it. I see it take a dive and am horrified. Then I see it again with relief. The scene changes. I am in a field with several other people and a number of men are flyhig. but instead of aeroplanes they have wings, strapped to their waists, which open out as they fly. They offer to let me and other women try. The wings are strapped on and we start running round a sort of course. Soon I feel my wings have caught the wind and I soar most deliciously for a few moments. Then I come down again. I try hard by running round to rise again but the wind always seems wrong. The wings are taken off and we hand them on to a fresh crowd of people. Before summarizing the results of these dreams of flying it may be helpful to refer to the most instructive investigation of this dream-type hitherto made. Mourly Void, whose pos¬ thumously published work in experimental psychology, Ueber den Traum, is a classic in the study of dreaming, by the methodical care with which it was carried out and the scientific caution in the statement of its conclusions, devoted a certain amount of attention to flying dreams . 1 Mourly Void definitely associates flying dreams, not only with unsupported soles of the feet but with respiration (though respiration of a light and agreeable kind), even as a sine qua, non, but he admits he was not able to bring forward objective evidence of this association. He also attaches a certain signifi- 1 Professor J. Mourly Void. Ueber den Traum, 1912, vol. ii, pp. 791 et seq. He makes no reference to Freud, and his observations (from 1876 to 1897) were of earlier date than Freud’s writings. They had not appeared when I published The World of Dreams in 1911. 324 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. cance to flexed extremities which he had sometimes found associated with these dreams. It should be noted that Mourly Void was well aware that the sleeper is constantly subjected to a great mass of stimuli, motorial and others, of all kinds, so that only the most powerful of these can pass the threshold of sleeping consciousness, thereupon using their predominance to effect a harmonious psychic coordination with the other conditions. The most powerful motive to flying dreams Mourly Void found in vibration, not of the limbs but of the body, and espe¬ cially of the loins. The activity thence arising, he regarded as “obviously of sexual nature. ,, The muscular vibrations are of the same nature as those which in a stronger degree produce actual detumescence; but they arouse more vaguely voluptuous and sentimental emotions, and these express themselves in a flying dream. So that, according to Mourly Void, it is rare for such dreams to accompany actual orgasm but common for them to precede or follow it. He states that during some twenty years he analyzed twenty-five flying dreams of his own. In fifteen of these he was able to observe some degree of sexual vibration on awakening; in the remaining ten he noted no such manifestation, but he considers that as these mostly belonged to an early period he may possibly at the time have failed to detect it. He regards such dreams as being most frequent in youth and in the convalescent period after acute illness. He legitimately argues that the feelings, not only of enjoyment, but of pride and self-complacency which accompany the dreams are further evidence of their erotic origin. He also makes the interesting suggestion that the typical witches’ dream in old days, of riding on a broomstick to the Devil’s Sabbath, may be regarded as an erotic flying dream conditioned by the special superstitions of ancient times. It might have confirmed Mourly Void’s opinion on this point if he had known of any folk-lore evidence of the erotic significance of flying dreams. This has been supplied by Pro¬ fessor Seligman who has lately stated, on the authority of a personal communication from Dr. Rock, of the Vienna THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 325 Museum, himself Tyrolese, that in Tyrolese folk-lore the fly- ing dream is regarded as a preliminary to a sexual emission . 1 * These observations of Mourly Void's, thus confirmed by folk-lore, I regard as carrying great weight. They are not responsible for the modification which has taken place in my own view, for that occurred earlier when, in the light of the Freudian conception, I re-surveyed my own experiences and found reason to believe that I had overlooked an element which, while far from being so clear as in Mourly Void's experience, was yet traceable—to a degree that caused me to feel surprise I had not suspected it before—to a sexual source. But Mourly Void's evidence is decisive for at all events the possibility of the occurrence of this factor in flying dreams, and the more so as he was by no means an investigator with an a priori de¬ termination to find a sexual causation of dreaming. Freud's slight discussion of the matter, while highly sug¬ gestive, carries less weight, if only for the reason that he gave a less detailed and scrupulous attention to the matter. He discusses flying dreams in his great book on dream interpre¬ tation.- Stanley Hall would have found an atavistic origin for flying dreams in the experiences of the ape-like ancestors of men when they flew from branch to branch among the trees . 3 1 C. G. Seligman, Presidential address on “Anthropology and Psychology,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. liv, 1924, p. 44. -Die Traumdeutung, 3d ed., 1911, pp. 201-4. Freud admits other explanations, such as a horror of pollution. “Some faint reminiscent atavistic echo,” Stanley Hall would say (“A Study of Fears,” Am. Jour. Psych., 1897, p. 158.) “Do we not dishonour the soul,” he asks (p. 169), “by thinking it less complex or less freighted with mementoes of its earlier stages of development than the body?” This point of view has been more recently supported by Dr. C. S. Myers in a discussion of “Heredity in its Physical and Mental Aspects” at the Oxford (1926) Meeting of the British Association, where he argued that what is in¬ herited is something more akin to mind than to matter. 3 If so we might expect to find such dreams more prominent among more primitive peoples. But among, for instance, the Lango tribes of the Sudan, Driberg states (Man, Aug., 1927, 94) that they are unknown. I may remark here that Stekel (Dcr Fetischismus, p. 453), from the psycho-analytic standpoint, explains dreams of flying quite differently, as not reminiscent but symbolic, and characterizing ambitious people. It would certainly be plausible to suppose that rising in the air indicated a desire to rise in the world. But flying dreams occur in all kinds of people, and often in those who have no marked ambitions. 326 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. Freud finds the explanation, not in the early experiences of the race, but in the early experiences of the individual, when as a child he “flew” into his uncle’s arms, sometimes in these move¬ ments, he adds, sexual sensations being aroused. No attempt is made to prove that such childish experiences are associated with later dreams of flying, or even to prove that in their ab¬ sence dreams of flying fail to arise, though evidence of this kind would obviously be valuable. Yet Freud regarded this speculation as “good ground” for rejecting the evidence (now here made more definite) that the conditions of the sleeper as regards skin sensations, respiratory state, etc., are able to evoke such dreams. Some years later, however, in his lectures on psycho¬ analysis, Freud very briefly touched on dreams of flying, and other typical dreams, in a way that suggested that he was no longer able to speak so definitely on the matter, and was willing to leave the interpretation of such dreams to the gradual widen¬ ing of our comprehension. His discussion of the matter was slight and hardly satisfactory, but it was suggestive. It suf¬ ficed to induce me to review my own experience and seriously to revise my interpretation of these dreams long before I saw Hourly Void’s book. It is now possible to realize the significance of the flying dreams in the present series. As they are presented in full it is enough to sum them up briefly. There are ten (twelve if we count the two similar to CX, but not recorded in detail) of them, all but two in the same dreamer, and all in women. In one there was no traceable cause but a desire to urinate on awaking; in two (really four) there was obvious respiratory trouble due on one occasion to a sore throat, and in the other to inability to breathe through the nose. In as many as seven (even eight if we include a dream that occurred during men¬ struation and may possibly therefore be of sexual origin) the dream either contained sexual suggestions or else , 1 and more 1 1 could add a further dream by a fourth dreamer who imagined she was being violently made love to by a man who in real life does not attract her, while both were gazing from a window at a huge aeroplane; this dream was felt to be unpleasant. THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 327 usually, was accompanied by definite erotic feelings; and in one of these there was also at the same time respiratory trouble. There are thus only one or two dreams of the group that we cannot account for. We are justified in believing that in some dreamers, in a most pronounced way, flying dreams are erotic. We are also justified in believing that this is not the only factor in flying dreams, but that, in the absence of the sexual factor, the respiratory factor is amply effective . 1 Finally it is seen that the respiratory and sexual motives may act together. A consideration of this group of dreams, I am now con¬ vinced, thus amply justifies a modification of the view I put forward in The World of Dreams, confining the causation of such d ; reams to disturbed or excited rhythm of the chest or heart. Accurately speaking, it is not so much a modification as an extension of that view which is required, for sexual activity also is ultimately a muscular rhythm. The original view that a flying dream may be purely respiratory is de¬ cisively confirmed by such dreams as CX and CXIII which were accompanied by definite obstruction to respiration in the nose or throat. The view of Freud that flying dreams may be associated with sexual excitement is confirmed by the definite occurrence of the phenomena of flying in what are distinctively erotic dreams. Moreover we find—and in two dreams—the coincidence of respiratory phenomena and sexual phenomena in the same dream, indicating an ‘kwer-determination” (to use the Freudian term) of visions of flying by two allied classes of muscular rhythm operating in association. Further evidence scarcely seems necessary, for it would hardly be possible to adduce any more precisely to these points. 1 Mrs. N. remarks that the suggestion of swimming in a dream such as CXIII, with difficult breathing due to catarrh, may be evoked by the sensation of the resistance which has to be overcome in respira¬ tion. Ferenczi (Versuch einer Genitalthcorie), on a very different basis, believes that swimming, with its suggestion of fish, water, etc., is the symbol of both coitus and the foetal position in the womb, so the dream of swimming would imply an actual reminiscence of previous aquatic life in a lower vertebral stage. Before we accept this fancy as fact we must, of course, wait for evidence; if we have to wait a long time we must not feel unduly anxious. 328 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. Vesical Dreams. This group of dreams resembles the group of flying dreams in raising a similar problem as to the question of sexual origin. The point of view that we shall here find reason to adopt is that in sleep, as we know also to be the case when awake, sexual excitement is aroused or increased by the pressure of a full bladder, but that the impulse of urination, being funda¬ mentally a primitive and distinct instinct, can act independently, exactly by the same right as the impulse of sex, in constituting dream activity. The present dreamer, as has been pointed out, having a readily contractile bladder, is peculiarly liable to dreams in which urination is prominent, so that we may expect to find illustrations of various types of vesical dreams in her experience. It is important to note that there is no history of enuresis in childhood. It seems, therefore, of interest to record a few more of her dreams in this class, noted down during the three or four years following the series already here recorded. Dream CXVIII: I cannot remember how it began. I only know that I am practicing urination in front of F., and that it pleases me infinitely. He seems to be in a corner of the room, and we are laughing and joking together. In the dream I see myself lying flat on my back, or at least I know that I am in this position, and a huge fountain rises up almost vertically and with prodigious force. Then I am standing though I still do not see myself, the jet alone being visible. Suddenly I draw F.’s attention to a buffet with glass doors provided with curtains midway up the window; all along the panes golden pearls are dropping, seeming to detach themselves from the curtain, one by one, and well-rounded. I call F. s attention to them, though I do not recall speaking; it is all very vague, and we laugh at the sight. It is my fountain which has scattered in golden drops behind these curtains. We are full of admiration for these pearls to which the sun, penetrating into the room, has given the golden tones. All the panes of the buffet are glistening with gold. The curtains seem of the same color, and everywhere gold is streaming and falling in drops. It is fairy-like. Then I wake, greatly wanting to urinate and also with a strong longing to masturbate, which I did, and some time after urinated very copiously; it seemed very hot. Dream CXIX: I have had a delightful dream with rivers of flowing water. I was hunting for a pretty sight of my childhood, a THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 329 water mill, for me full of dazzling magic. I was in my dream going to this mill with some kind but vague companion, and asking every¬ one where it was. I was always following water, for the most part swelling and impetuous, and sometimes as in a mirage, and from the top of lovely hills I could see the mill in the dstance in a glory of glittering water. Copious urination on awaking. Dream CXX: I arise to urinate and do so largely. On returning to bed and sleep I dream that I am in a shop buying a hat; a shop¬ man shows me one, a fancy Tam o’Shanter, and I declare that it will never suit me. But on putting it on I find myself very pretty, and I place the corner at different angles, pulling here and there, making one or another lock of hair appear, turning before the glass under the eyes of the man, who approves. Then I try a sky-blue velvet ribbon round the Tam o’Shanter but it does not suit it. Suddenly I see the shopman, who is strangely like my grocer, leaning over his counter and whispering mysteriously to a pretty little lady close to me, “She [that is to say I] will tell you how that goes; she bought one of them the other day.” I understand that it is a syringe for very intimate injections, and I protest, a little embarrassed, that I have not it with me; but, smiling in a cunning way, the tradesman to my great astonishment points to the instrument in the basket on my arm. It is in fact there, brilliantly new and exposed in all its nudity. Very surprised I exclaimed, “I must have left it in my basket all these days.” The tradesman very affably hastens to say to us: “If the ladies would go to the back of the shop it would be easier for them to show how it works.” We are now in a pretty little room like a hall, apparently at the back of the shop, where I feel it will be easier to explain than in the shop before a man, but to my horror I suddenly see that my grocer is still there, although he makes himself small and is always very obsequious; he never leaves us for an instant. He is seated on the last step of an oak staircase behind us, and is of course listening without seeming to, and always preserving his polite tradesman’s smile. He makes me feel horribly uncomfortable but I begin my explanations in a firm voice and scientific manner. The lady is seated before me, a large black hat shading her face; I am turning my back to the grocer. I explain, “Here you place a tube which goes . . .” I see the tube but the explanation is confused. I cannot explain where the tube goes and I try vainly to convey the idea of a tank of water. There is another tube which also goes towards the water; I see the water but my explanations are not forthcoming; I am awkward and cannot explain what I want to. But suddenly I see the sexual parts of a woman opening like a flower. Whether they are my own I do not know, for now I only see delicious fountains arising, I know not whence. 330 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. but without doubt from me, for I am covered with the drops which f a H fojiclc I am cold; I awake to cover myself; I still want to urinate, but more moderately; I do not do it, however; the dream is so stupid that I get into bed without doing it in order to see what will hap¬ pen, but nothing happens. Dream CXXI: In the first part of the dream I had been vainly waiting at a railway station for my sister. After having seen many trains pass, I said to myself: “It was ridiculous to invite her when she is just starting for America; of course she is very busy and has gone out shopping.” Then the idea came to me: How does one translate into French “she has just gone out shopping .— Elle est partie faire des courses.” And therewith I am logically transported into my classroom, making my pupils translate, She has just gone out shopping.” The head master is in the room, grave and solemn. He says, “Now, now, what is the French for that sentence. Sud¬ denly I feel a terrible desire to urinate. What can I do. Brilliant idea! I will sit on one of the benches as I often do, and then I will let it all flow. But I shall have to raise my skirt; I skilfully do so and sit down with assurance and dignity. There are spaces between the boards of the bench. It comes! What a torrent, what a noise, and what a relief! In spite of myself an expression of beatitude passes over my face. The children must know nothing, so I repeat in a very loud voice, “Elle est partie faire des courses, and the head master, who has mentally changed into my friend F.—although in appearance he still remains the head master of real life—this ambiguous F. becomes my accomplice, repeating in a very loud voice: “Voyons, mesdemoiselles, elle est partie faire des courses. But I cannot keep it up, the noise is too terrible, the cascade too impetuous, and my happiness too great; in spite of all F.’s affectionate little signs of encouragement, I am silent and given up to my enjoy¬ ment F. tries hard to drown the sound, he talks loudly, he is agitated, but one terrible little girl has discovered everything by leaning over, and while F. continues to repeat, “Voyons, mes¬ demoiselles, elle est partie faire des courses,” and when I at last stand up, our pupils are all leaning over towards the pool and point¬ ing it out to each other. Then I wake with a feeling of laziness, astonished that I have no wish to urinate, and wondering whether in spite of appearances it was really a vesical dream. I half turn round and fall asleep on my stomach to a new dream which begins with a slight caress at a region so excited that it must after all have wanted to urinate as it always is so when one wants to badly. I say to myself, “I would like to be whipped a little, that would be delightful,” and I raise my nightdress. THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 331 A light hand seems to give me two little slaps and then wander over my buttocks. I can no longer contain my enjoyment. I am shaken by great thrilling movements. I awake in the midst of an orgasm; my nightdress is raised but my hands are not near, so that I can hardly believe that I raised it myself, though I am not sure. Anyhow I then had to urinate. Dream CXXII: It seems to me that there was a green and soft lawn and near this lawn a small cottage. My mother and I and a third person (who was vague but I think a woman) were on the lawn and were much worried how to undress and go to bed (though there was no bed there). Our worry was due to the cottage being inhabited by a witch who seemed to be able to see everything and whose chief concern was to torment people. One of her tortures was to prevent rest. I cannot recall actually seeing the witch but I felt her as a constant presence, wicked and obsessing, small with a crooked chin, extremely swift and active, able to see everything and to know everything. By what miracle we had escaped her vigilance I cannot tell. But anyhow we succeeded in undressing and conceal¬ ing ourselves beneath the flowers, my mother beneath a rose, a single great red rose on a bare, slender rose-tree, without any other flower or any leaves, and I under another rose, I think, but am not sure, while our companion seemed to have disappeared. Our flowers, however, were not a protection for long; the witch saw us and prepared our punishment, which was to consist in an avalanche of water suddenly falling on us from above. A benevolent spirit (also felt but not seen) wished to save my mother and sud¬ denly her rose and rose-tree began to grow until they reached fabulous proportions. I had the feeling of being drawn up from above, while I saw the rose-tree growing as if magic fingers armed with a magnetic fluid were making it rise and rise and rise. I was wonder-struck and I believe that my rose-tree, too, was growing (although that is vague), but suddenly, coming from above, a flood of clear rustling water fell heavily on my mother’s rose-tree. Poor mother came from under her rose, falling like an ant beneath the gale, and like an ant she was small and frail and of course dripping with water, a dress of black taffetas clinging to her body and shining with reflections of silk and water. I seemed to have escaped the flood; my only anxiety was my mother and my fear lest she should catch cold, etc. I awoke and had to urinate. The evening before I had been reading the chapter on magicians, kings, and gods in Edward Carpenter’s Christian and Pagan Creeds. It may be remarked that “aller cueillir une rose” (to go and gather a rose) was formerly in France, as the English equivalent in England, a polite euphemism for to go aside and urinate. 332 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. Dream CXXIII: I dreamed that a troop of comedians bearing the name of my own family, of whom it chiefly consisted, was giving a representation of some old-fashioned play and I was very anxious that it should be successful, since, though not acting myself, the reputation of my relations was at stake. I was in the audience. . The play must have been Greek, and was acted, as it ought to be, m an open theater with seats in a semicircle on a hillside. The actors down below looked small and their efforts seemed to me rather to miss the mark. I was afraid this great drama would not be finely interpreted by these people who were so dear to me. My anxiety was great. Suddenly my friend F. appeared on the stage as one of the troop. He was dressed as a hunter, carrying a kind of primitive rifle with a great beard spread fan-like, looking fierce and terrible and puffing in a frightful way to imitate the noise of the rifle. His cheeks were puffed out like those of a cherub when represented as blowing to produce the North Wind. Everyone thought how silly he looked, but after a moment’s hesitation I disagreed with every¬ one, thinking that no greater artist had ever been born and that this realistic way of imitating the spitting crack of a rifle could not be surpassed. In place of an altar in the middle of the stage was a small build¬ ing looking like a Y. M. C. A. hut and reserved for lavatories. Between two acts I decided to disappear there and found at the end of a long corridor a closet where, standing over the seat and slightly bent forward, I let fall a great stream. Coming out in the corridor I found that I was not yet relieved and looking behind I saw another closet which, however, did not seem inviting, so I resolved to empty myself in a huge foot-bath on the floor in the corridor. This I did in a standing position, legs each side of the bath and skirts held up thinking how enormous these streams were. Then I awakened with an urgent desire to urinate. Dream CXXIV: She dreams that she is with an early boy friend P He has done something wrong in his French lesson. His punish¬ ment is to be changed into a fish, rather like a haddock, but very large, and to swallow an enormous quantity of water which he must retain; if he fails to do so he will die. The water seems to come from a spring or waterfall and the fish is placed underneath it with gaping mouth trying to catch it all. All the time the dreamer is conscious that the fish is P. and that she must save him from death as she is fond of him. But he is unable to retain the water which flows out from near his tail. He wriggles about and is very wretched, as is the dreamer. The only way to save him if he can¬ not retain the water is to collect it in a bucket as it flows from his tail and not a drop must fall outside the bucket or he will die at THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 333 once. In her anxiety the dreamer puts him in the bucket, holding him under the stream and watching the bucket getting full, fright¬ ened lest it should overflow, and perpetually changing the bucket as soon as full. Then she awoke with a desire to urinate. The same dream—almost identical in details—had occurred to her once, and she thinks twice, before. Most of her vesical dreams are pleasant, but this with its anxiety and the disagreeable sensation of touching the fish was unpleasant. The next dream, dating some two years later, is the last of this group recorded. Dream CXXV: I was with my friend F., very happily and lovingly walking in the country, and suddenly I wanted to urinate. F. said to me: “Nothing easier; there is no one about; you could even raise your skirts.” So I stood with raised skirts, and the stream jetted forwards just like a boy’s, and I enjoyed it like a mischievous boy. The wind suddenly raised my skirts behind, though without wetting them, for I held them firmly, and at the same time by its force drove the stream to one side, in what seemed a deliciously play¬ ful way, so that I had to make a sudden movement of the hips to bring it into a straight line again, and even at the same time, just like a boy, I seemed to use my hands to guide it, as though furnished with a boy’s little apparatus. The wind repeated its game, and I mine, several times in succession, to our great amusement, for it seemed as if the stream would go on forever. Then the scene became vague, the operation ceased, I dimly saw people in the dis¬ tance and wondered if they had been able to see me. Then I lost sight of F. and went in search of him. It will be seen that, with the eight supplementary dreams, the present series includes twenty-two dreams of vesical type. This is possibly the largest series of mostly consecutive dreams of this type so far brought forward, and it may well enable us to form fairly certain conclusions concerning such dreams in their broad outlines. They form, we may well be entitled to believe, an unusually large proportion in the dreams of this subject, and that not because she belongs to the urolagnic type, abnormally sensitive to what I term Undinism—although that may be so in a slightly and scarcely abnormal degree—but simply because of an acquired irritability of the bladder, the result of childbirth. This fact is, however, itself instructive. It enables us to realize clearly—what surely might have been PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 334 suspected—that the vesical dream exists in its own right and is not a disguised form of some other type of impulse. Many years ago Jung stated dogmatically that the vesical dream is in children an infantile sexual surrogate and in adults the garment of a sexual impulse . 1 In other words, whether as substitute or disguise, the vesical dream is always erotic. It is probable that Jung has since modified that view. He has pei- haps realized, at all events, that the impulse of vesical contrac¬ tion is often of imperative urgency, and that no day-dreams about a sexual-surrogate are needed to account for it. But this view is still worth noting, as perhaps not yet entirely ex¬ tinct. The wide survey afforded by the present investigation shows us that, for ordinary vesical dreams, no such far-fetched explanation is demanded. We see that in a subject whose erotic dreams are very plain and undisguised, vesical dreams form, for the most part, a distinct class and they form a large class for a definite reason which involves no sexual factor. It were strange if it were otherwise. We are concerned with an excretory function which is zoologically more ancient than sexual conjunction and is capable of existing in the absence of sexual organs. The supposition that it has no psychic autonomy is too fantastic for serious consideration. I have, however, been careful to point out that while vesical dreams inevitably form an independent class, we can¬ not say more than that they are “for the most part” distinct from other classes: They are without doubt often closely con¬ nected with sexual impulses; that fact is as inevitable as their fundamental independence. In both sexes the vesical sphere and the genital sphere are bound together. When an impulse arises from one of these spheres there is always a possibility that it may involve the neighboring sphere. Whether it does so, and how far it does so, naturally depends largely on the condition of that neighboring sphere and the extent of its irritability at the moment. In one direction it is a fairly familiar fact, both to men and women, that a full bladder 1 Jung, “L*Analyse des Reves L’Annee Psychologique, 1909. THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 335 heightens sexual feeling, while, in the reverse direction, it was known even to Brantome, four centuries ago, that in a woman sexual orgasm may occasionally cause sudden and involuntary expulsion of the contents of a full bladder. These phenomena of waking life occur, as we should expect, on the psychic plane of sleeping life in a much more vivid, dramatic, and picturesque way than is possible in waking life, for now the mind is on its receptive side in delicate and precise adjustment to the stimuli that reach it, without being liable to deformation or repression, in one direction or another, by inhibiting influences from its own higher controlling centers. The facility of association be¬ tween the vesical and sexual centers is probably, it seems to me, indicated by the usually pleasurable and sometimes romantic character of vesical dreams. There seems no obvious reason why a purely excremental somatic need should become idealized and pleasurable before its fulfillment. As a matter of fact, the dreams aroused by the need for defecation (and those that proceed from the gastro-intestinal canal generally) do not seem to be idealized or to become pleasurable (see, for instance, the three dreams of this kind in the present series, LV, LXX, LXXXII), and this is intelligible when we bear in mind that little or no involvement of the sexual sphere is here possible. (The anus comes within the sexual sphere, but the anus is not here involved.) In the dreams of the present subject, it will be noted, vesical dreams follow closely after erotic dreams and flying dreams (which we have seen reason to associate in many cases with erotic dreams) by the large proportion con¬ taining elements of a romantic and pleasurable character. There are many indeed which are not of this character, and these we may perhaps regard as of more exclusively excre¬ mental origin, not involving in any degree the sexual sphere. About 12 out of the total of 22 may be said to be of this char¬ acter, and were either commonplace, as when a water-tap is seen or a bath or visions of children urinating, or else actually distressing as when alarming floods seem to be taking place. The rest, of which five (3 per cent, in the original series) were definitely erotic, are of pleasurable and often charming 336 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. nature. 1 The subject is enjoying the spectacle of fountains and rivers and lakes in Nature or she herself is urinating copiously and sometimes producing fantastically beautifu y fountains. There are three of this last type (which occurs in the dreams of other women) and one of them erotic. n- other of them must be specially mentioned (CXXY ) because it belongs to a type of dream otherwise unrepresented in t is subject’s dreams. , , ,. , The tendency to adopt the mental attitude and habits and costume of the opposite sex is one that I term sexo-esthetic inversion, or, more simply, Eonism. It is a tendency which, in a slight degree, is found in otherwise perfectly normal people, especially girls and young women. I have elsewhere in this volume described a case in which it existed only in the dreams of a young married woman. The present subject has shown no clear trace of this tendency, either in waking life or generally in her dreams. But in this dream, which stands alone, we find a distinct trace of this tendency emerging, and the dreamer imagines herself as urinating like a boy and finds great pleasure in so doing. It may be noted that Adler has already referred to this practice in girls, or the attempt at it, as a common in¬ dication of what he terms “masculine protest,” though it must not be supposed that the adoption by woman of the erect atti¬ tude for urination is to be regarded as necessarily or com¬ monly a “masculine protest.” 2 It is often adopted and even with great satisfaction by women who are completely hetero¬ sexual ; thus a sexually normal young woman doctor notes: “I have discovered that this posture gives me an enormous and curious pleasure/’ When we survey the whole series of vesical dreams here i It is possible that some of the dreams classed as erotic (like Dream VI) may be of partly vesical origin. But we cannot say that a dream is of vesical type when it contains no actual or manifestly s>m- b ° llC 2Karl Abraham went much further and fancied (Klinische Beit - raqe p 301) that in a woman to dream of floods of urine itself neces¬ sarily indicated a strongly marked “masculine complex. There was no sue/complex in the present case, and to have imagined it would have led us entirely astray. THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 337 presented we may see that they include nearly all forms, direct and indirect, realistic and symbolic, which such dreams tend to take. In five of them the dreamer pictures herself as fantastic¬ ally or more prosaically performing the act; but in all the other dreams the act is either objectified or symbolized, so that there is no indication in the dream that the dreamer is herself experiencing the desire for it. In two dreams children are seen urinating. But in all the remaining dreams—some two- thirds of the whole number of such dreams, and as many as twelve out of fourteen of the original series—the idea of urina¬ tion is never presented to dream consciousness at all. We may say, indeed, that there is perhaps no class of dreams in which the underlying motive is more often concealed and presented dramatically and picturesquely in a symbolic form than in vesical dreams. The test of such a dream is, of course, the sensation of vesical pressure on awaking or the presence of an urgent desire to urinate. That was nearly always verified by the subject in the present investigation. But even in the ab¬ sence of such verification, when we are once familiar with these dreams we cannot easily fail to recognize their vesical source. Rivers, fountains, lakes, reservoirs, baths, water-taps, fish, swans—such images, well illustrated by the present subject, seem to be those commonly called up to dreaming conscious¬ ness by a full bladder. That was noted as regards some of these symbols by Schemer in Germany in the middle of the last century, 1 so it would seem that these symbols are largely independent of the subject’s age and nation and rooted in the mechanism of the human mind. It must not, of course, be concluded that in ascertaining the somatic stimulus that arouses a set of symbols, even when these symbols tend to be widely spread among very different people, we have said all that there is to say. It is well recog- 1 R. A. Schemer, Das Lebcn des Traums, 1861, pp. 187 et seq. He showed much insight in tracing the vesical symbolism of dreams and noted that it included fear of danger from floods and (in case of a mother), drowning of her child, when vesical distension was extreme, though the dream was pleasurable if distension slight. 22 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 338 nized now that a dream may tell us far more than the source of the stimulus that evoked its symbolism. Even the sym¬ bolism thus directly evoked may differ widely, and differ significantly, in its character. Thus in another married woman Mrs. C., of about the same age as Mrs. N., a frequent vesica dream is of being pregnant or in childbirth. 1 It seems an entirely natural vesical dream, the pressure of the bladder be- ing interpreted by sleeping consciousness as pressure of the womb. But here an interesting and perhaps deeply significant fact emerges. Mrs. N„ who has had two children, with dif¬ ficult confinements, and therefore might be expected to experi¬ ence such a dream, but who has no wish for more children, has no dream of this type to record; it is Mrs. C., who has never had a child but who would much like to have one, to whom the dream is liable to occur. This not only brings out clearly that it is not merely the nature of the stimulus to the dream, but the disposition of the dreamer on whom the stim¬ ulus acts, which fashions the dream, but it also seems to in¬ dicate a great fundamental truth concerning the nature of dreaming. Dreams are not only based on the past, with its actual experiences and ingrained impressions, they are also based on the future with its merely desired experiences and impressions. Dreams are not determined solely by a force from behind, but also by a force from in front. In a large number of dreams, even when the fact may not be immediately apparent, we are really concerned with a wish-fulfilment. It is noteworthy that Mrs. N.’s numerous dreams of water seldom became associated with fire, although the combination of fire and water is very common, and is recognized in various countries. The following dream by another lady may serve to illustrate this asso¬ ciation: She seemed to be in a wood with a man friend (with whom she had actually walked through a wood a fortnight earlier) and proposed that they should lie down together on the grass. She then noticed the ground was wet, and the friend objected, but they re¬ mained lying. She next observed splashes of fire between the trees, 1 she writes, for instance: “Last night I dreamt again that I was having my much desired baby. I needed to micturate badly on rising; hence the congested feeling that started the dream. THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 339 but her friend said it was water. She thereupon realized that it was water, coming towards them and threatening to overwhelm them, and was frightened. She could now plainly see approaching streams of water and woke with a strong desire to urinate (having drunk much water the previous evening), but with no consciousness of sexual excitement. It will be noted that the fire is spoken of as appearing in “splashes,” as though it were water, and it is evident that there are many links between fire and water, the one calls up the other, the sensation of water is sometimes “burning,” and smoke resembles steam. Freud refers to this association in dreams as connected with earlier nocturnal enuresis {Die Traumdeutung, 1911, p. 204), as also Adler, and Ernest Jones {Essays in Applied Psy¬ chology, p. 306). Epilepsy has been recorded with enuresis and dreams of fire {Ztbltt f. Psychoanalyse, 11 Jahrgang, Heft 9, p. 535). In Japan there is considered to be a connection between enuresis and fire (Krauss, Geschlechtsleben der Japaner, p. 188). Westermarck has been impressed by the associations in popular belief in Morocco of fire and water {Marriage Customs in Morocco, pp. 121-2), and else¬ where {Ritual and Belief in Morocco, vol. i, p. 300) states that in Morocco it is held bad to play with fire at night, and he who does so, especially if a child, will wet the bed. As far away as Ancient Mexico the belief in the unity of fire and water was marked. The Fire-God was the patron of water, and the Fire-Goddess was marked by the sign for rain. The Comanches expected rain from the Sun-God, and the Tarahumari of today pray to the Sun-God for rain (K. T. Preuss, “Der Ursprung der Menschenopfer in Mexico,” Globus, Bd. 86, 1904, p. 117). Dreams of Eating . Dreams of sexual and allied origin have of recent years attracted such wide attention—by a reaction from the almost complete neglect which was formerly meted out to them—and they have aroused so many interesting and debatable problems, that there is a tendency to neglect the dreams which have their source of stimulation in other organic impulses. When, how¬ ever, we are concerned with the synthesis of dreams we are compelled to recognize impartially the whole of the sources from which dreaming proceeds. If we do this, it is not sur¬ prising to find that the great fundamental function of eating is almost as conspicuous as that of loving; if indeed we include the whole digestive process, the incidence is about the same. 340 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. In the present series, against the 20 erotic dreams, we have 15 that are concerned with eating, and 3 of intestinal origin, m all 18. When, however, we remember that we have seen reaso to conclude that the purely erotic group must be enlarge y additions from the vesical group as well as from that of dreams of flying, it may seem that food and digestion, which consti¬ tute so much more regular and constant an element in life than sex interests usually furnish, is inadequately represented. But, it must be pointed out, that is precisely the reason why eating plays a relatively small part in dreaming. t is strong and irregular impulses that are likely to a ect ream ing most conspicuously, while the constant and r yt mic ac ion of the heart and lungs, so long as they are not stirred into un¬ usual activity, fails to touch dream life. In the person o sound digestion, living a simple and normal life, eating in respect tends to become more analogous to breathing than o sexual activity. No doubt there are individual variations, an in the dreams of another woman, in whose life, it may be, the question of food is more interesting, dreams of eating have a larger place, being 26 per cent. , , , , It must not be supposed, however, that the food dream presents no problems. . . , , Two of the food dreams in this series have indeed no obvious significance and no known relation to the actual con¬ dition of the dreamer’s digestion at the time. But o t le res it is noted that 8 took place after a light or early supper, and 5 after a heavy supper, often immediately before going to bed. Two of the dreams of food after a light supper were merely a repetition of what had taken place during the day, and they may not, therefore, have had any reference to the dreamer s condition at the time of dreaming. The other dreams were either of preparing food or of seeing others eat or of being present at a meal or in a restaurant. It is probable that some of these dreams were associated with the actual readiness of the dreamer’s organism for a meal. It is well known that a state of hunger or of semi-starva¬ tion conduces to dreams of large and delicious meals. Ex- THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 341 amples have been recorded in the narratives of many travelers who have undergone privations. 1 Some have been brought forward by Freud, as well as by earlier investigators of dream¬ ing, although, as Freud rightly points out, the significance of such dreams is not necessarily exhausted in the statement of their primary somatic source of stimulation. These dreams are, obviously, dreams of wish-fulfilment in its simple and direct, so-called infantile, form. But, as we shall see, there are other dreams of food which cannot thus be explained as dreams of wish-fulfilment. They form a large and common group, and they are conveniently ignored by the writers who believe that wish-fulfilment is the key that will unlock all d,oors in the world of dreams. We find that 5 of the dreams of copious meals, or of dining at a restaurant or of seeking a restaurant, occurred after partaking of a large meal or on going to bed immediately after a meal. It is evident that this group of dreams cannot be regarded as of wish-fulfilment. If wish-fulfilment is the rule in dreams then they must be regarded as exceptions to the rule. But, as Darwin was wont to insist, apparent “exceptions” are highly significant; they cannot attract our attention too strongly, for they indicate that our rule is not large enough, and that we need a more fundamental rule. It may be quite obviously true that the stimulus to the dream, in a large group of food-dreams, has been furnished by the wish for food. But a wish, it must be remembered, is a non-intellectual conation, outside the sphere of reasoning, and dreaming is essentially a process of reasoning —the fundamental process, that is to say, in the minds of men and other animals 2 —and the wish can only be an external stimulus which has chanced to set the reasoning process to work. When the organic state is that of 1 So also among half-starved war prisoners; see, for example, Dr. Amadeo dalla Volta, Studi di Psicologia e di Psichiatria sulla Prigionia di Guerra, Florence, 1919. 2 “Our conceptual logic,” Jules de Gaultier truly observes (La Sen- sibilite Metaphysique, 1924, p. 28) “exists virtually in the mentality of other biological species than man. It is not reason, pure reason, which distinguishes man from other animals; it is, on the contrary, that which he has in common with them.” 342 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. hunger, the reasoning process, answering to the wish the or¬ ganism transmits to it, sets up the appropriate mental process. And when the organism transmits an impression of repletion the reasoning process again begins to work. But this time it is not to fulfill a wish, it is to explain, which is an equally native function of the reasoning process. When a sensation of repletion is transmitted to the sleeping mind the natural mental reaction is a picture of eating, the dreamer imagines that he must be engaged in absorbing a copious meal, although —unlike the case of the really hungry dreamer—the picture may not be agreeable, and the food eaten sometimes seems un¬ pleasant or disgusting, even filthy. This class of dream is by no means confined to the present dreamer. It may be found in the experience of many, if not all, dreamers, although its significance has not always been apparent to dream analysts. It may most easily be discovered in the dreams of those whose digestion is imperfect, especially when they have been tempted to indulge in a too late or too unwholesome meal. The three intestinal dreams, which presented the act of de¬ fecation, were probably due to a slight impulse to the ful¬ filment of that act. In two of them there was slight colic on awaking, and the third occurred on going to bed immediately after supper. The food dreams of this subject are confirmed by the ex¬ perience of another subject—the woman dreamer previously mentioned—of whose dreams I possess a very long series. Thus, on one occasion, she had indigestion and nausea from eating just before going to bed food which did not agree with her. On falling asleep she dreamed of large dishes of food which, although not hungry, she was eating, very slowly, in order not to waste it. Then the dream continued with the discovery of lice which she killed with much disgust. Here we see clearly how dreaming is fundamentally a process of reasoning. The message of repletion is sent to the mind which thereupon, to account for these phenomena, assumes the act of eating. But as absence of hunger is reported the mind is obliged to assume that eating is due to a sense of duty, and, further, in order to THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 343 account for the disgusted feeling of nausea experienced, the mind argues that something very disgusting must have hap¬ pened, and supposes it to have been the discovery of lice, a supreme symbol of disgust to the modern civilized mind. In other dreams of the same subject belonging to this group filth and excrement are introduced to account for the dreamer’s sensations. In my book, The World of Dreams, I endeavored to make clear the essential part played by the logical process of reason in all dreaming which goes beyond the mere presentation of disconnected images. It is common to speak of dreams as lack¬ ing in logic and reason, but it is actually the reverse; they are full of logic and reason. There is ground for bringing that fact forward in this place since the reaction of the sleeping mind to gastric repletion furnishes such definite evidence of a logical process. A wish —and especially a wish for explana¬ tion —furnishes the motive force in the elaboration of the im¬ pressions and memories present to sleeping consciousness. It is strictly a conation, the movement of an impulse in a par¬ ticular direction. But it cannot furnish an explanation of the dream itself or reveal its mechanism. It is, if we like, the fuel; but it is not the engine. That is in the sphere of reason, and though we may often (not always) find the reasoning bad— sometimes wildly or fantastically bad—because of the limited, peculiar, or distorted nature of the material which sleeping con¬ sciousness has to deal with, it is still reason. If the logical process of reason could be abolished during sleep there could be no coherent dreaming at all, nothing but unrelated impres¬ sions and memories. Dreams of Clothing . Dreams of clothing and dressmaking and embarrassing ab¬ sence of dress may here be mentioned, since food and dress are to be considered as associated needs, alike resting on a phy¬ siological basis. The dreams in which dress is merely noted without becoming a guiding motive in the dream may be dis¬ regarded. We then find dress may be said to be an active part 344 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. of the dream in 12 per cent, of this series. I do not propose to discuss the various aspects of these dreams of clothing, merely remarking that the subject may probably be said to possess a fairly average and feminine interest in the subject of dress and that she frequently makes her own dresses. Bear¬ ing this in mind the part played* by clothing in her dreams seems by no means excessive, being rather less than that played by food. It may be of interest to compare her in this respect with the other woman dreamer of whom I have a long series of dreams. This subject has taken an active interest in dress and in dress reform; she is also rather unusually interested in food. In her dreams clothing (as well, it has already been noted, as food) plays a large part, in no less than 34 per cent, of the dreams, so that with her, though interest in food is un¬ usually marked, interest in clothes is even larger. A certain amount of attention has been given by some writers to dreams of embarrassing absence of dress. In its typical and pronounced form it hardly seems that the dream of this type comes into Mrs. N.’s experience. There are, how¬ ever, two dreams of undress (II and XXXII) and these are instructive as showing the origin of this type of dream. It is probable, indeed, that careful examination would usually reveal the real source of such dreams and that there is little need to devise any fantastic explanation of them. The dreamer really is in a state of undress, and it would be strange indeed if the consciousness of that fact failed at some moments of semi¬ awakening to penetrate to consciousness and cause embarrass¬ ment. 1 Both these dreams, it is instructive to note, occurred on going to bed immediately after a hot bath, and one was accompanied by a sensation of cold ultimately followed by a reaction of heat and then became erotic; this succession seems 1 Professor Maurice Parmelee has mentioned to me the perhaps significant fact that while he formerly had such dreams, they have not occurred since he has investigated the German Nacktkultur Societies and became used to being naked in the presence of persons of both sexes. When the fact of being naked is no longer associated with embarrass¬ ment, we may suppose, it no longer makes any impression on dreaming consciousness. THE SYNTHESIS OF DREAMS. 345 natural. Freud regards such dreams as exhibitionistic. 1 I have no evidence for this explanation, which will not suit the present case. Dreams of Traveling. It may be thought strange to introduce this group. There seems to be, however, from observation of many dreamers, good reason to believe that such dreams—with which I in¬ clude dreams of preparing to travel and preoccupation with luggage—have, in a large proportion of cases, a common origin, which is really organic. This need not seem surprising when we consider their number. In the present dreamer’s experience we find that they account for 13 per cent, of the whole number of dreams, so that dreams of traveling were more frequent than dreams of clothing and almost as frequent as dreams of eating. No doubt a certain proportion of such dreams are simple memories, determined along paths which have no trace¬ able relation to the dreamer’s present organic condition, just as some of the dreams of food certainly are, and most of the dreams of dress. The present subject, during the war, in the years immediately preceding this series of dreams, had been obliged to undertake numerous journeys in France, sometimes under difficult and painful conditions, and memories of these experiences might easily recur to sleeping consciousness. But there is a considerable group of traveling dreams which I regard as the rationalization by the sleeping mind of an actual organic condition of the blood-vessels of the head and the nervous system. This can often be demonstrated. Thus in another subject, who had been living for many weeks far from railway trains and noisy thoroughfares, I have a record which is to this point: he went to bed, and woke up with a slight headache and during the night dreamed that he was wandering about a busy thoroughfare where many trains were passing along, and he was vainly seeking to find one going in 1 S. Freud, Die Traumdeutung, 1919, pp. 167-71. 346 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. his own direction. It is fairly obvious that to sleeping con¬ sciousness the throbbing head recalls the vibrating railway train and finds in it the symbol, and the explanation, of the sensations actually experienced. In Mrs. N.’s records no note was made of the presence or absence of headache or other similar cause of the numerous dreams of traveling, with, how¬ ever, two exceptions, but they happen to be crucial. These dreams (XLVII and XLVIII) occurred on two successive nights when quinine had been taken as a prophylactic before going to bed. It is well known that ringing of the ears, or pro¬ nounced pulsation of the blood-vessels of the head, tends to occur after a dose of quinine, and its occurrence is specially noted in the record of the second dream. During both nights the dreamer was haunted by images of luggage or railway trains. There can be no doubt that, in our society, the railway train is a normal symbol of a throbbing heart. With the in¬ crease of aviation the aeroplane will probably tend to take the place of the railway train in this type of dreams. It would be easy to consider other aspects of this series o dreams. That, however, the reader if he chooses, may easily do for himself. The object of the present study has not been to investigate a particular person, and still less to analyze a particular case. The object has been to illustrate a method. This has been rendered possible by the gracious and highly in¬ telligent assistance of a charming lady who has condescended for this occasion to become the corpus vile in which ex pen¬ men turn fiat. Therewith, it has, I hope, been made clear that, while the value of dream-analysis remains unquestioned, there are yet certain pitfalls into which when too narrowly followed it may sometimes lead, and that an important complementary guide to knowledge is furnished by the method of what I have termed dream-synthesis. ; VI. THE CONCEPTION OF NARCISSISM. The figure of Narcissus had wandered down from classic times to modern times, from legend into literature, and thence into popular phrase, long before it entered into sexual psy- c io ogy. I do not propose to trace these wanderings. It can¬ not even be said that they always help us to understand the scientific re-incarnation of Narcissus. But it is worth while to note a few of the sign-posts on the road. The history of Narcissus in classic times was long ago traced by Wieseler. He considered that Narcissus belonged to the Thracians, being specially associated with places that were their seats or closely connected with them, this being also sup¬ ported by the relationship of Narcissus to Selene and Endymion who were specially honored among the Thracians. The myth thus, he believed, originated from the symbol, the kernel of the myth being nothing else than the history of the flower. Narcissus had a water-god as father because the flower grows by the water, and his mother was Liriope because the flower is a lily. The name of the personification is the name of the being’s symbol, and the name indicates the effects of frost, terror, syncope, death, these effects being attributed to the action of the plant. To the ancients generally Narcissus came to represent not only cold self-love but praiseworthy abstin¬ ence, while later some philosophers of the Platonic schools found in this figure a deep sense and a morality for life. 1 But for the most part Narcissus continued to be, as commonly represented in ancient art, a beautiful nude youth by a pool, languishing for love of his own fair image. How far the modern psychological conception implicit in this figure was vaguely apprehended remains obscure. 1 F. Wieseler, Narkissos, 1856. ( 347 ) 348 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. It has, however, recently been suggested that there really was present in the Greek mind the idea of Narcissus as em¬ bodying an attitude of mind which would now be termed auto¬ erotic. In a fragment of a comedy by Kratinos there is an uncertain phrase which Meineke reads as “the olisbos of Narcis¬ sus.” 1 The olisbos, as we know, was primarily an instrument for the sexual gratification of women. But there is reason to believe that even in the days of Greek myth it was recognized that such a device could have a masculine use per mum, and there is a story of Dionysus in point. 2 Kratinos would thus be making fun of a Narcissist, though as he wrote in the spirit of caricature and parody he was only concerned with a physical manifestation of that disposition. The figure of Narcissus was, however, clearly predestined to be the emblem of the absorbed self-love of youths and maidens who had not yet reached the stage of falling in love with another person of the opposite sex. It has, moreover, always been familiarly at hand, for it has chanced to assume its most charming and elaborately detailed shape at the hands of Ovid, 3 who has come down, alike through medieval and Renaissance days, as the most attractive and popular of all the poets of antiquity. In Ovid’s poem we see Narcissus, the beautiful youth who has disdained the love of Echo, 4 —herself, as Otto Rank expresses it, “the personification of corresponding acoustic self-mirroring,”—condemned, for punishment, to fall 1 Quoted by Athensus, Bk. XV, 676. (In the English translation by Yonge, vol. iii, p. 1080, where the phrase is left in the original.) As regards this instrument, see Havelock Ellis, Studies, vol. l; also Herodas, edited by Headlam and Knox, 1922, p. 288, and F. S. Krauss, Das Geschlechtslebcn der Japaner, 2d ed., Ch. XIV. ... ... 2 See Hans Licht, “Olisbos und Narcissismus, Zeitschnft fur Sexualwissenschaft, Dec., 1925. Prof. Licht regards Meineke s reading as highly probable. . 3 Ovid, Metamorphoses, lib. in, 339 et seq. 4 It is interesting to note that it is Echo who brings us to the Greek explanation of the origin of masturbation. Pan was in love with Echo but could never succeed in laying hands on her, and his father Hermes, out of pity for his unsatisfied desire, mercifully taught him the secret of masturbation, hitherto unknown. But masturbation was known to other gods before the days of Hermes and the Greeks, for among the Egyptians we hear of “masturbating gods.” See W. Max Muller, Die Liebespoesie der Alter Jbgypter, 1899, p. 7. THE CONCEPTION OF NARCISSISM. 349 in love with the image of a beautiful youth he saw in the water, not knowing that it was his own image. Through Ovid, Narcis¬ sus has entered the European poetic tradition. Calderon in Spain, in the middle of the seventeenth century, may be said to effect the transition between the classic and the modern approach to Narcissus. It was a subject that appealed to Calderon's romantic love of the dream-like and the visionary which he often dealt with so happily. In Eco y Narciso he narrates, in three “J orna clas,” following the general outline of the ancient story, the life of Narcissus, the unre¬ turned love for him of Echo, his relation to his mother, and his own self-love, the nature of which his mother explained to him. The whole is related in Calderon's beautiful musical verse, in a sort of pastoral drama of which, in English, Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess is the type; but no clear modern interpretations are yet revealed. An important stage was reached when Milton, a few years later in the seventeenth century, represented Narcissus in that feminine shape to which in modern times his attitude has al¬ ways seemed best fitted, and showed the first Mother of Man¬ kind in the typical Narcissistic attitude of adolescence before she had met Adam. Later, Eve tells Adam how she had heard a murmuring sound of waters from a cave, flowing to form a silent pool. She proceeds: “I thither went With unexperienct thought, and laid me downe On the green bank, to look into the cleer Smooth Lake, that to me seemed another Skie, As I bent down to look, just opposite, A Shape within the watry gleam appeard Bending to look on me, I started back, It started back, but pleasd I soon returnd, Pleasd it returnd as soon with answering looks Of sympathie and love, there I had fixt Mine eyes till now, and pin’d with vain desire, Had not a voice thus warned me, What thou seest, What there thou seest fair Creature is thyself, With thee it came and goes.” 1 1 Paradise Lost, Bk. IV, 456-469. At a much later date Doughty described his Adoma in the same situation. 350 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. It may not be out of place to remark here that the poets, alike in dwelling on water as a mirror and as revealing the presence of what seems an independent being, are true to the facts of primitive life. Thus Ehrenreich, in his expedition to Brazil among tribes untouched by civilization, found that the Bakairi were not impressed by a mirror; they called it water. Water is the primitive mirror, the only way primitive man has of objectifying himself, of seeing his own soul. Holmberg, re¬ ferring especially to the Lapps, remarks on this as explaining the early belief in spirits that dwell in the water, and points out that when the Lapps say that the soul dwells in the water they mean that man sees his own image there. 1 2 A similar relation¬ ship is today seen in the dreams of youth. Thus in Forrest Reid’s autobiographical book, Apostate, which contains, much about dreaming in early life, a dream is recorded in which the youth imagined himself gazing at his own image in a pool, an image, however, entirely unlike his real self which caused him no surprise—but much more like that he would wish to be. The dream was so vivid that on awaking he had to get out of bed to look at himself in the glass to make sure no miracle had occurred. 3 This dream would now be regarded as exquisitely “Narcissistic.” It can scarcely surprise us to find that Rousseau, who was so great a pioneer in the discovery of the modern soul, had not failed to invoke Narcissus. It is certainly remarkable, how¬ ever, that it was when he was himself at the age of adolescence that his attention was drawn in this direction. Narcisse ou L’Amant de lui-meme was a comedy, not performed until 1752, but stated by Rousseau to have been written at the age of eighteen. In the scanty extant letters of Rousseau in youth I find no indications that point to Narcisse. He had just then first met Madame deWarens, but one gains the impression that his life was much disturbed. At the age of nineteen. 1 P. Ehrenreich, Zt. f. Eth., 1890, Heft 3, p. 97. 2 Uno Helmberg, Die Wasscrgottlmten dcr Ftnmsh-Ugrtschen Volker, 1913, p. 45. 3 Forrest Reid, Apostate , 1926, p. 102. THE CONCEPTION OF NARCISSISM. 351 however (in 1731), he was occupied with plans of idylls and beginning to think that music and musical composition would be his career in life. 1 It is here that we must place the origin of A arcisse, but we may be permitted to believe that, when he produced it twenty years later, it had been much revised. It was produced anonymously at the Comedie Franqaise, though Rousseau acknowdedged the authorship immediately afterwards and professed much indifference as to the play and its fate. 2 Rext year (1753) it was published. The long Preface, how¬ ever, tells us little about the play. The story is of a young man, engaged to be married, who is much occupied with his own personal appearance and with feminine details of the toilette in the care of it. His sister, to tease him, secretly has a portrait of him painted in which he is dressed as a woman and this is placed in his room. He fails to recognize it as him¬ self, falls in love with it, and cannot rest until he has seen the original, meanwhile trying to postpone his marriage. All ends well, however, with his discovery of the trick, and his marriage. We may leap over more than a century to the Genio y Figura of the distinguished Spanish writer, Juan Valera. This is one of Valera’s best novels, and reminiscent of his own life as Ambassador to the Argentine. We are here only con¬ cerned with one passage in the book, but to that passage special significance attaches. The heroine, Rafaela la Generosa, a Spanish courtesan of the higher grades, writes here, in her “Confidencias,” of the admiration she aroused in her Argentine maid: “But I do not think she flatters me when I get "out of my bath and she dries me and looks at me with a thrill of pleasure and says: Ah, my child, every day you grow more beautiful. Lucky the man who may look at you like this!’ The fact is that I also look at myself with much complacency in large opposite mirrors and feel in full agreement with Petronila’s opinion. I will confess all: when Petronila has left me alone, I do a childish thing which whether it is innocent or vicious I hardly know. I only know that it is a purely con- 1 Correspondance Generate, vol. i, p. 14. 2 Correspondance, vol. ii, pp. 33 et seq. 352 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. templative act, a disinterested admiration for beauty; what I do is not out of gross sensuality but aesthetic Platonism. I imitate Narcissus; and to the cold surface of the mirror I ap¬ ply my lips and kiss my own image. This is the love of beauty for beauty’s sake; the expression of affection in a kiss towards what God has made manifest in that disembodied reflection. 1 Novelists have not only noted the spirit of Narcissus in their creations, they have sometimes demonstrated it in them¬ selves, consciously or unconsciously. This is perhaps true of Oscar Wilde, the author of Dorian Gray: It is indeed supposed by Merejkovski to be also true of one of the greatest of novel¬ ists, Tolstoy. 2 But the evidence for this statement is far from clear, and it is hardly supported by Tolstoy’s Childhood, Boy¬ hood and Youth, which is generally regarded as a truthful picture of the author’s own intimate feelings in early life. At the beginning of the section on Youth in this book he has a passage much to the point where the writer says that when nearly sixteen he spent much time in looking at himself in the mirror: “However I always turned away with a vague feeling of depression, almost of repulsion. Not only did I feel sure that my exterior was ugly, but I could derive no comfort from 1 Tuan Valera, Genio y Figura, 1897, p. 181. How true to life is Valera’s narrative may be seen by quoting a few sentences from the statement to Sadger ( Die Lehre von den Geschlechtsverirrnngen, pp. 448 ct sea.) of a young actress of 21: “I like being naked, as in the morning when washing; I take everything off, and at last wash myself, or usually let a chamber-maid do it, as formerly my mother did. As she washes and dries me I like looking in the mirror and it does me good, as though it were massage. When I am alone I like lying down and reading with my hand held to my breast. As a small child I liked running about the house naked and was not at all ashamed. h.or am I ashamed today before anyone. I have a longing to go walking in the moonshine with my friend [a handsome young officer], both of us naked, and to know how he would behave when he saw me quite naked. I once served as a model to a painter and hoped he would want me to take all my clothes off. At last he did. I stood naked and looked at myself in a mirror, and admired the picture in the mirror so much that I quite forgot the presence of the man. . . . When I have been manicured, and my hand looks beautiful, I kiss it. I also kiss myself in the mirror 2 Merejkovski remarks ( Tolstoy as Man and Artist p. 69): We may say of-him that from the moment when, as a child of three, he first noticed and admired his own young naked body, he has never ceased to worship it.” THE CONCEPTION OF NARCISSISM. 353 any of the usual consolations under such circumstances.” It seemed to him that he was quite commonplace, just like a simple moujik, with the same big feet and hands. “All this seemed to me very shameful.” Here we have described for us an attitude which seems that of the real Tolstoy throughout, a sensitive admiration of beauty, a constant preoccupation with self, at the same time an anxious self-dissatisfaction. It was Tolstoy s attitude even to the end and it seems to indicate not so much self-worship as defective Narcissism, though it must be added that from a psychoanalytic standpoint it would be quite possible to regard it as excessive Narcissism. Tolstoy, whose insight into others was so profound, had no corresponding insight into himself. We admire his self-description; we are less sure of his self-comprehension. Marie Bashkirtseff, though not a novelist, was an artist in psychology and not only knew how to describe herself but also how to comprehend herself. She was an exquisite type of a mental state which had not yet been named, but she herself in¬ voked the name of Narcissus in connection with it. In the very last of her letters she refers to “this unique and marvel¬ lous me, by which I am enchanted, and which I adore like Narcissus.’' 1 It is a state of mind, which, as we shall have to recog¬ nize, is common in women, and another Russian woman, Madame Merejkovsky (“Zenaide Hippius”), wife of the well- known writer, and herself described as a charming person and accomplished writer, has written: “I love myself; I am my God.” All these writers, when describing in themselves or in the creatures of their imagination the mental state of Narcissus, had no thought of presenting a condition of mind, which formed, or could properly form, a subject of study for the student of sexual psychology, normal or abnormal. But after the middle of the nineteenth century, when sexual psychology was beginning to become a recognized study, we find—under 1 Lettres de Marie Bashkirtseff , p. 277. 23 354 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. one name or another or under no definite name at all-various references which here concern us. Thus in Italy, Nicefero in 1897 described numerous cases, all in adolescent Italian youths, which we should now consider to have an extreme or even morbidly Narcissistic character. One, a healthy boy of fifteen with good heredity, would derive pleasure from the spectacle of his penis becoming erected, and . even the idea of this would give him voluptuous emotions; he would also draw and color a picture of the organ and gaze at 1 when masturbating. Another youth had no pleasure in mas¬ turbating unless at the same time he could see his legs. A third youth of sixteen, in good health, had much pleasure in masturbating before a mirror which showed his sexual organs and he said that this practice was quite common in his college. In Germany, about the same time, Moll described the oc¬ currence of more or less erotic self-admiration in several cases, especially in connection with homosexuality. Thus le te s in detail of a man of 43, with a high degree of sexual hyper¬ esthesia and sexually attached to both men and women, who found much pleasure in gazing at his own image naked in a mirror, and who would compare his shape with that of other men he knew. 1 2 , In France, Fere, about the same time, gave the name ot auto-fetichism to the case of a girl who was in the habit of kissing her own hand and at the same time experiencing sexual excitement. 3 All such cases, even if scarcely representing true or complete Narcissism, suggest its presence. We are ap¬ proaching the point at which the conception began to take more precise shape. Like other people, I had of course been familiar with so well-known a poetic figure as Narcissus. I had, moreover, read on publication with much admiration Valera’s novel Genio y Figure, and been impressed with his description of Rafaela. It was, therefore, inevitable that when I became acquainted in 1 Nicefero, Le Psicopatie Sessuale PP-25, 27. 2 A. Moll, Untersuchungeu uber die Libido Scxuahs, lovo, p. oW. 3 F6re, L’Instinct Sexual, 2d. ed., pp. 271, 275. THE CONCEPTION OF NARCISSISM. 355 real life with a woman who possessed these characteristics in a high degree I should recall the image of Narcissus. This woman, perfectly healthy, by none regarded as anything but normal, and clever in business, I described in 1898 (the year after the publication of Genio y Figura), in the earliest paper to which I gave the name of ‘‘Auto-erotism/’ as the extreme type of the tendency. She is still living, nearly thirty years later, still unmarried, and now able to retire from business to a country estate she has purchased in her native county. She has never known—though it might please and would certainly amuse her to know—the stimulus she has provided to psycho¬ logical conceptions. In this first paper, “Auto-Erotism, a Psychological Study,” in the St. Louis Alienist and Neurologist , vol. xix, April, 1898, I wrote: To complete this summary of the main phenomena of auto-erotism, I may briefly mention that tendency which is sometimes found, more especially perhaps in women, for the sexual emotions to be absorbed, and often entirely lost, in self-admiration. This Narcissus-like tendency, of which the normal germ in women is symbolized by the mirror, is found in minor degree in some feminine-minded men, but seems to be very rarely found in men apart from sexual attraction for other persons, to which attraction it is, of course, normally sub¬ servient. But occasionally in women it appears to exist by itself, to the exclusion of any attraction for other persons.” etc. In the volume of my Studies, containing the study of Auto-Erotism, which appeared in the following year, this discussion was further elab¬ orated along the same lines. At this point comes in Nacke, although not in time to be men¬ tioned in my Study. I had been in friendly relations with Dr. Paul Nacke, Superintendent of the Asylum at Hubertusberg near Leipzig, for many years. He was accustomed to send me his publications when they appeared, and I to send him mine; he would summarize mine in German medical periodicals and I would summarize his in the English Journal of Mental Science. He was a man of vigorous and pioneering intellect who did much good work along various lines, though not of a specially original character, and was quick to take up and elaborate, though often in a critical spirit, the ideas struck out by other workers. Himself born, in what was then St. Peters¬ burg, of a German father and French mother, he was international in his outlook and delighted to keep in touch with fellow-workers in other lands; we never met though from time to time he wanted me 456 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. September, 5th October, 7th October, 11th October, 17th October, 21st November, 16th December and (if we include the snake dream) 23d January. The subject believed that the dream of the 19th July was on the exact menstrual date. That, however, could scarcely be the case. There seems, however, to be a rough menstrual periodicity, for, putting aside October, a dream occurred every month. But the interval is not regular, and October, with its four dreams, flagrantly contra¬ dicts any menstrual rules. It is interesting to note, however, that none of the October dreams were accompanied by strong excitement or orgasm, the periodic sexual storm having been, as it were, broken up on this occasion. On the whole it would seem that a tendency to menstrual periodicity is a real influence in the causation of these erotic dreams. But we are clearly concerned with a periodic nisus which is easily deflected. Its existence, therefore, by no means puts other causative factors out of court. I. It will have been observed that in my comments on these dreams I have regarded them as presenting images which are fre¬ quently symbolic of the physical sexual phenomena arousing or accompanying the dream. To many this may seem a hazardous if not altogether unjustifiable proceeding. I have elsewhere 1 argued, with copious illustrations, that dream¬ ing is necessarily symbolic. That is to say that the conditions under which consciousness acts during sleep make it impossible for any stimulus reaching consciousness from within or from without to be perceived, directly and immediately, for what it is. The rich store of mental imagery is drawn upon to supply sleeping consciousness with an image which appears to correspond to the unrecognizable stimulus, somatic or psychic, which is knocking at the door of the brain. The birds* song evokes the image of an orchestral concert; the laboring respiration leads to ideas of rhythmic flight; a breath of cold air suggests a mountain ascent. All these images are symbols which mirror and represent actual facts. It is of such symbols that dreaming is made up, for even psychic stimuli—the wishes and fears and other emotional impulses which surge into sleeping conscious¬ ness—act in precisely a similar way. We cannot, however, play at random with our symbols. If we wish to be on sure ground we must proceed from the facts to the symbols, and not from the symbols to the facts. The latter course may merely lead us into a fantasmagoric world from which science is banished. Let us be sure of our facts; then we may perhaps be able to recognize the symbols. Otherwise we may be liable to 1 The World of Dreams , passim. UNDINISM. 457 assume that all dreaming is symbolic of the digestive process, or the respiratory process, or the vesical process, or of any other organic process—it will most likely be the sexual—which happens to interest us. reams are « there can be little doubt, symbolic of all these and any other physiological or emotional process, but of which process “ any . g,ven f se we . cannot be sure unless we have evidence that there is special organic activity present at the time. If we go beyond this firm ground we enter the sphere of undemonstrable (though not necessarily unprofitable) speculation. a „„^ ha , t . iS f 'T hy> . in interpreting these dreams, I have hesitated to assume that the imagery exhibits any sexual symbolism unless there dmp gI Th n< ! t0 i bel . leve u that sexual act >vity was really present at the ‘™ , , That> aIs °’ ,s v ' hy 1 have left open the question of the erotic y 10 ism of the snake dream. This seems a sound and reasonable position, which no extravagance of symbolic interpretation we may chance to have heard of should lead us to abandon. II. Another preliminary point is the nature of the organic sexual process accompanying these dreams. The subject was fairly explicit on this point, and there seems to have been some degree of physical “ T ar l y CVery drCam ’ W ' th the a,most certa!n exception °' t f he ,, fina Snake dream - In some cases the subject definitely notes that there was orgasm on awakening. But the dreamer herself whose powers of self-observation were considerable, had no belief in the possibility of sexual satisfaction for a woman during sleep. “I 6 /eve 1 a m safe m drawing the conclusion,” she wrote with special reference to the first dream of this series, “that a woman is never satisfied by a sexual dream, while a man may be.” This is by no means an isolated personal experience. Many women, having full experience of sexual satisfaction in normal coitus during waking life are emphatic in stating that the sexual excitement of sleep fails to produce sexual satisfaction and seems usually to be only a manifes¬ tation of sexual desire. No absolute law can here be laid down If orgasm is really occurring as the dreamer awakes-and the phenomena experienced certainly indicate that this is sometimes the case—it is difficult not to believe that some relief of sexual tension has taken place. • It seems evident, however, that while the auto-erotic experiences of men during sleep are sometimes depressing and unsatisfactory it is still more difficult for a woman to achieve spontaneous sexual satisfaction during sleep. That indeed is a conclusion that might almost have been anticipated. The conditions required for detumes¬ cence in men, when once tumescence has been attained, are simple and involve little more than such pressure as may easily occur during sleep. But in women they are much more complicated, and PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 358 1914. 1 He assigns to Rank the credit of having given to Narcissism “a place in the regular development of human be¬ ings, M Narcissism, he imagines, having previously been merely a perversion. 2 By this extension, Freud more carefully and more characteristically states, it becomes “the libidinal comple¬ ment to the egoism of the instinct of self-preservation, a meas¬ ure of which may justifiably be attributed to every living creature/’ Especially in persons whose libidinal development has suffered disturbance, their own selves are taken as the model. They seek themselves as a love-object and their type of choice of love-object may be termed Narcissistic. The human being has two primitive sexual objects—himself and the woman (usually his mother) who tends him. “Thereby we postulate a primary Narcissism in everyone.” In the end it may sometimes dominate the object-choice. So there are two types of object-choice: (1) the cinaclytic (Anlehnungstypes) the leaning up against preference—of which the mother is the primary embodiment, and (2) the Narcisstic. Complete love of anaclytic type is properly characteristic of men. In women, there is more likely to be an intensification of the original Narcissism. “There arises in the woman a certain self- sufficiency (especially if she ripens into beauty) which com¬ pensates her for the social restrictions on her object-choice. But in childhood this is normal. “The charm of a child lies largely in his Narcissism, his self-sufficiency and inaccessibility, just as does the charm of certain animals.” In the Narcissistic object-choice there are various alternatives, according as a person loves (a) what he is himself, (b) what he once was, (c) what he would like to be, (d) someone who was once part of himself. Adler’s “masculine protest,” Freud adds, contrary to 1 S. Freud, “Ueber Narzissismus Jahrbuch fur Psychoanalytische Forschutigen, Bd. vi. It was some years later reprinted in Freud’s Sammlung, Fourth Series, and translated into English in Freud’s Col¬ lected Papers, vol. iv, pp. 30-59. , 2 On this statement I may comment that while Narcissism was hrst put forward by me as the extreme form of auto-erotism, auto-erotism in my sense is not a perversion. THE CONCEPTION OF NARCISSISM. 359 what Adler himself believes, is really Narcissistic, though de¬ rived, Freud considers, from the castration complex. In later writings Freud has frequently introduced inci¬ dental references to Narcissism extending, or sometimes modi¬ fying, the earlier psycho-analytic conception. Thus in 1916 he stated that the libido of the early Narcissistic phase is not completely transferred to objects; “a certain degree of Narcis¬ sism continues”; the libido can flow backwards and forwards between object and ego, and in so doing is performing a healthy function. In the same year, writing of the Narcissism of sleep, he makes this point clearer: “Narcissism and egoism are one and the same; the word Narcissism is only employed to em¬ phasize that this egoism is a libidinal phenomenon as well; or to put it in another way, Narcissism may be described as the libidinal complement of egoism.” Near the end of his Lectures Freud explains the Narcissism of dreams: “In the sleeper the primal state of the libido distribution is again reproduced, that of absolute Narcissism, in which libido and ego-instincts dwell together still, unified and indistinguishable in the self-sufficent Self.” It was inevitable that, in Freud’s conception, Narcissism should become a characteristic of primitive man, and thence that he should trace to it the origin of magic, as an exercise of excessive Narcissism. But the general Narcissism of man has, Freud considers, received three blows from science: (1) Copernicus destroyed the belief in the centrality of the earth and so gave human self-love a cosmological blow. (2) Evolu¬ tion, through Darwin, taught that man is an animal, and so Narcissism received a biological blow; and finally (3) psycho¬ analysis showed that man is not, as he thought, master in his own house, but subject to instincts and influences from the sub¬ conscious not completely under his own control, and so Narcis¬ sism received a psychological blow. In the fourth edition (1920) of the Drci Abhandlungen Freud presents Narcissistic ego-libido as the great reservoir out of which object-love is put forth and into which it is again withdrawn, the primitive condition realized in the first child- 360 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. hood, and still maintained beneath later outgrowths of the libido which merely conceal it. It may be added that other psycho-analysts of Freud’s school usually speak in the same general sense on this matter. Thus Sadger refers to Narcissism as “a frontier conception, in which the separation of the sexual impulse from the ego-impulse is reduced to a fundamental unity.” He regards it as es¬ sentially normal, only its fixations and extravagances as patho¬ logical. A certain degree of Narcissism is compatible with object-love, for “everyone is in some degree in love with him¬ self.” But he adds the significant observation that what we can place to normal egoism should not be reckoned to Narcis¬ sism. We must sharply distinguish between self-seeking egoism and libidinous Narcissism which rests on an over¬ valuation of the subject’s own body. It is an attitude char¬ acteristic of the child, and the attitudes of his elders favor it; Sadger quotes a remark of Friedjung that to get on with a child, as in clinical examination, one must appeal to his Narcis¬ sism. In women, Sadger believes, love usually remains at this stage. “It is herself she is loving in love, and with a man only because he loves her and not on account of his own qualities. She does not need to love but to be loved. On that account she is free from the sexual over-valuations which are peculiar to men in love.” Sadger also thinks that friendship is not so much, as some have supposed, a spiritualized homosexuality but an extended Narcissism, and we speak of our friend as our “alter ego.” 1 Even the psycho-analysts who have fallen away from strict Freudian orthodoxy, usually continue to attach great im¬ portance to Narcissism. Thus Stekel, even in his later volum¬ inous writings, still gives an ever greater importance to Narcis¬ sism, though along his own lines. He regards hate as more primitive, more primary, than love, which he considers a “Kulturprodukt.” Love is originally directed only towards the self. Every creature is originally oriented in a Narcisstic 1 Sadger, Die Lehre von den Geschlechtsvcrirrungen , pp. 21, 74-5. 361 THE CONCEPTION OF NARCISSISM. direction. Thus Narcissism becomes the source of altruistic feelings: I love you because you give me pleasure. Hence the love of the suckling to the mother or nurse. In another direc¬ tion, Stekel regards Narcissism as offering the explanation of all sexual perversions: they are all manifestations of wounded self-love. The Masochist, the Sadist, the Fetichist, are all really occupied with themselves, although apparently the object of their desire is outside themselves. “All the various morbid variations of the sexual impulse are but mirror pictures of the morbid inner nature.” 1 Saclger s brief discussion of Narcissism, while that of an orthodox Freudian psycho-analyst, brings out points of dif¬ ficulty in its definition which Freud himself, who avoids defi¬ nitions because his conceptions are always growing and ex¬ panding, had left undecided. But they have not been disre¬ garded by others, outside the field of psycho-analysis, and have perhaps induced some psychologists to be shy of Narcissism on account of the vast and shadowy outlines it has sometimes as¬ sumed. McDougall in his Abnormal Psychology, while most sympathetic towards Freud’s general conceptions, gives but small space to Narcissism. Rohleder, indeed, places it (pre¬ ferably with the awkward name of “automonosexualism”) among the three fundamental sexual impulses: Narcissism (sexual feeling towards the self), homosexuality, and hetero¬ sexuality. But he regards it as rare, having only met with a few cases, and he defines it strictly. He holds that it does not exist unless there is definite sexual feeling. Otherwise we merely have an exaggerated vanity. He regards it as related to other anomalies, to transvestism and especially to fetichism. His cases, one a very complete type, are all in men. He believes that the cause may be an inborn defect in the sex-center of the brain. 2 This standpoint is obviously far removed from that W. Stekel, Sadtsmus und Masochismus, 1925, pp. 15, 486 In his Psychosexualler Infanhhsmus (1922), Ch. XXII, Stekel discusses Narcissism at length, defimng it as the condition of being in love with Narcissist n ° rma m the chl,d > whlIe most acl ults have a period of Jf JSST'/mTS*! ilftt. l" g "’ Mt *» PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 362 of Freud, for whom Narcissism is a normal stage of develop- ment. Hirschfeld in the main agrees with Rohleder—though not regarding the phenomenon as so rare—and uses his term, automonosexualism, to cover Narcissism, with other extensions towards transvestism, fetichism, exhibitionism, etc., not usually so covered. Hirschfeld decisively rejects the Freudian doctrine ^ that Narcissism is a normal stage of all psycho-sexual develop- ment, or that the Narcissist belongs to a definitely youthful stage in which he permanently remains. The failure to react to sex attractions is a specific defect which must have an ex¬ ceptional and weighty cause we do not yet know. It is a well-defined sexual perversion, with relationships to other per¬ versions, especially scoptophilia. Hirschfeld suggests that there is a kind of splitting of personality, one part looking on at the other, an “ideal partner,” as Petermann had previously supposed, to account for the mirror fascination. 1 One may note, however, that this “ideal partner,” another self, is normal and not uncommon in the day-dreams or even the actual dreams of children, who invent an entirely imaginary companion to share their feelings and experiences. 2 Freud, as we have seen, was not to be held back by any precise practical clinical considerations. In his hands the con¬ ception of Narcissism took on a new significance and became of immense importance. Everything that Freud has touched that indeed is always the mark of genius—takes on a new significance and becomes of importance. For my own part, I regard this transformation as a legitimate application of the original observation from which Narcissism started. For me Narcissism was the extreme form of auto-erotism, which, it must be remembered, was a term devised to cover all the spon¬ taneous manifestations of the sexual impulse in the absence of a definite outer object to evoke them, erotic dreams in sleep be¬ ing the type of auto-erotic activity. Auto-erotism was thus not 1M. Hirschfeld, Sexual pathologic, Part I, Ch. VI. 2 This phenomenon has often been described, recently by borrest Reid in his autobiographic book, Apostate, Ch. X. THE CONCEPTION OF NARCISSISM. 363 properly a perversion though it might become so when deliber¬ ately pursued at the expense of the normal objects of sexual attraction. The psycho-analysts in adopting the term “auto¬ erotism” have given it a different meaning which I regret, as be¬ ing both illegitimate and inconvenient. For the psycho-analyst auto-erotism generally means sexual activity directed towards the self as its object. 1 That is illegitimate, for the ordinary rule is that a word compounded with “auto” (like automobile or auto¬ nomous) means not toward itself but by itself. It is incon¬ venient because if we divert the term “auto-erotism” to this use we have no term left to cover the objectless spontaneous sexual manifestations for which the term was devised. However this may be, having narrowed and changed the conception of auto-erotism it was difficult for Freud to retain Narcissism within its limits. Narcissism became a later stage of what in the infant had been auto-erotism. And while I had regarded all these manifestations as, though in origin natural, not of invariable occurrence in the life of every in¬ dividual, Freud sought to establish them as almost inevitable stages in the development towards adult sexual maturity, per¬ haps normally indispensable. 2 It was an impressive and fruit¬ ful conception, though when thus universalized, it could not but be regarded by many as somewhat speculative. That indeed has been the attitude of many of the most able and cautious of the older representatives of sexual psy¬ chology outside psycho-analysis. Thus Lowenfeld, whose opinion always deserves attention, after tracing the conception of Narcissism back to my earliest observations, and remarking that it only becomes a perversion when it leads to actual sexual excitement, adds that he cannot agree with the psycho-analysts that Narcissism is a normal stage of transition between auto¬ erotism and object-love, though inclined to agree with Rank that it rather favors homosexuality. 3 Within the Freudian 1 B V t „P r - . Ernest J ones states that he regards auto-erotism as object¬ less, and Narcissism as distinguished by having an object, the self. -Jahr bitch fiir Psychoanalytisclic Porschungen, Bd. iii, pp. 53-4. 3 Lowenfeld, Sexualleben und Nervenlciden, 5th ed., 1914. PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 364 School that latter view has from the first been specially main¬ tained by Sadger. “We can say of homosexuality, ! ” he ob¬ serves, “that it is the Narcissistic perversion par excellence ” adding that the chief characteristic of inverts is their vanity (a statement, however, that is not always true) and that they never forgive a wound to their Narcissism . 1 The classic Narcissus was a youth, though always repre- \ sented as of rather feminine type. My own first observation was in a woman, as was that of Rank, who remarked that this characteristic forms a good piece of the whole normal feminine disposition, especially in constituting vanity. One may recall, with Roheim, the Japanese saying, that the sword is the soul of man and the mirror the soul of woman. As it is a man who is speaking there may be interest in turning to a feminine psychologist. Dr. Else Voigtlander, who is not a psycho-analyst, in dealing with the problem of sexual differentiation has some remarks that are worth quot¬ ing, and the more so as she seems to show no awareness of the existence of the conception we are here discussing. After pointing out that masculine activities are directed definitely to an object, confined to that object, not streaming out beyond it, and ceasing with the attainment of the object, she continues: ‘‘Feminine activity has not the same clear relationship to an object; it is lived out in quite another way, in itself, exhaust¬ ing itself in its own movement, in its own excitement, having its course in itself, in its own interior, and therein the woman lives and moves, swimming as it were, in her proper element .” 2 It seems evident that by this statement, which is further de¬ veloped, a feminine distinction is indicated which may perhaps 1 Sadger, Die Lehre von den Geschlechtsverirrungen, p. 148. A special association between Narcissism and homosexuality is also asserted by K. W. Gerster, a pupil of Stekel’s (“Beziehungen des Nar- cissmus zur Homosexuality,” Fortscliritte der Sexualwissenschaft, Bd. ii, 1926). He believes that in homosexual persons there is a polar ten¬ sion between the masculine and feminine elements of the personality, and that this can only be bridged over by Narcissism. . 2 Else Voigtlander, “Zur Problematik der Geschlechtsunterschiede, Zeitschrift fur Sexualwisscnschaft, July, 1923. THE CONCEPTION OF NARCISSISM. 365 be more simply and clearly expressed by saying that women are more Narcissistic than men. Another woman psychologist, this time an acknowledged psycho-analyst, Dr. Sabrina Spielrein, also accepts Narcissism as a peculiarly feminine characteristic. It is so, she subtly seeks to explain, because it is connected with a womans need to lose herself in the object of a man’s love, out of instinctive identification with him.* So that, as Rank found, in the Narcissistic woman object-love would be circuitous, only here the circuit is in the opposite direction, not through the woman’s person to the lover, but through the lover to the woman’s person. In both cases, however, there is object-love. So that evidently we must not too hastily generalize that Narcissism, at all events in woman, is a stage antecedent to object-love; it can exist without ever reaching the stage of object-love, or it may simply be the accompaniment of such love. At the other end, it is recognized that Narcissism may sometimes develop \er> early. Jekels tells of a little German girl of twenty-seven months who showed great pleasure in her own image naked in a mirror and said: Trudi schon .” 1 2 * Abraham, indeed, regard¬ ing it as normally an infantile characteristic, would define Narcissism as that stage in the development of the libido in which the child is himself the center of his own narrow world and in which he receives proofs of love from other persons without himself giving any return.” Abraham also puts ob- ject-love back into infancy, though at a later age.** He would, further, accept a middle stage, between the two, of a partial object relationship, a kind of fetichism . 4 It is to Abraham that we owe an interesting—even if at times rather questionable—extension of the conception of Narcissism. It is important, however, because he uses it in a highly ingenious and plausible way to explain the widespread 1 Jahrbuch fur Psychoanalytische Forschungen, Bd. iv 1912 p 483 o {**• Z ett ? chri fU: ° ertzlichc Psychoanalyse, 1913, Heft iv,’ p. 375* 6 K. Abraham, Klimsche Beitrdge, p. 269. The paper from which this passage is quoted was originally published in 1916. 4 K. Abraham, Versuch einer Entwicklungsgeschichte der Libido, PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 366 defect of ejaculatio prcccox. Abraham argues that Narcissism in infancy may take the form of an over-valuation of the penis, leading to an exaggerated urethral pleasure, with the result that the infant enjoys wetting the persons with whom he is asso¬ ciated, and he mentions infants who seem to select special pre¬ ferred persons for their favor. When this disposition is pre¬ served in later life, Abraham proceeds, instead of passing on - to the normal adult stage of sexual activity the penis deals with semen as in infancy with urine; the partner then is merely wetted and no intercourse takes place . 1 The theme is developed by Abraham with many interesting elaborations. He admits that the treatment based on this theory is difficult. He regards it as the aim of the treatment to free the patient from his Narcissism and bring him into a normal state. But the tend¬ ency is increasing to magnify the place of Narcissism in normal life, and Abraham himself later sometimes lent himself to that view, as by regarding an injury to Narcissism as the cause of war neuroses. It leads to “a deep-seated sense of inferi¬ ority.” The patient is compelled to react against his repressed Narcissism by assuming “a jerky conceitedness to take its place . 2 So that if a psycho-analyst succeeds in exorcising a patient’s Narcissism without beneficial results the resources of psycho-analysis must not be regarded as exhausted, since it may be equally successful in restoring the lost Narcissism. Or vice versa. Nor can the practitioner in other and older depart¬ ments of medicine fail to recognize the orthodoxy of this ambi¬ valent attitude of psycho-analysis. In every department of medicine, from the beginning of medical history, directly op¬ posite methods of treatment have been applied to disease, even to the same disease. Nor can it be said that this is not still true today. One of the elaborations in Abraham’s paper is an exten¬ sion of his view of ejaculatio prcccox to women by seeing its 1 K. Abraham, “Ueber Ejaculatio Praecox Klinische Beitrage. This paper was first published in 1916. 2 E. Jones, “Mother-right,” hit. Jour. Psycho-analysis, April, 1925, p. 129. THE CONCEPTION OF NARCISSISM. 367 precise analogue in feminine frigidity. Ernest Jones has also subsequently remarked that sexual anesthesia in women is asso¬ ciated with an exaggerated tendency to Narcissism, partly as a cause, partly as a result of the anesthesia; “the woman, un¬ able to give what the man most wants, attaches in a compensa¬ tory way an excessive value to her other charms . 1 * Narcissism is again invoked by Abraham in the course of the paper, so fruitful in ideas, just quoted, to explain a fairly common aberration, exhibitionism. Stekel, also, who empha¬ sizes the persistence of an infantile element in exhibitionism, regards exhibitionism as a specialized form of Narcissism, a belief in the magical power of bodily charm . 3 The supposition of such a connection easily presents itself, and in the instinctive and casual exhibitionism of the child it may probably be ac¬ cepted. But in exhibitionism as an adult sexual aberration, the phenomena are much more complicated. Here, too, an early Narcissistic trait may sometimes have persisted as a basis for the anomaly, but it is by no means a necessary assumption in every case. In a typical exhibitionist the act is prompted, consciously or instinctively, by the desire to gain sexual pleas¬ ure by the spectacle of emotion—whether of corresponding pleasure or of confusion or of horror—in a person of the op¬ posite sex. This impulse may well be favored by a Narcissistic attitude, but it may also easily exist in the absence of that attitude . 3 The part of Narcissism in the girl and woman, we have seen, has scarcely been disputed. But the conception of the castration-complex, which has more recently attracted atten¬ tion, has had a certain repercussion on the earlier conception of Narcissism. It has involved some re-adjustment—though we may regard the castration-complex itself as having a Narcis¬ sistic basis—and this has been attempted by, for instance, Harnik of Berlin, working on the lines of Freud and Ferenczi'. There is an original Narcissism, and in the purest and truest l £'r Papers on Psycho-analysis, 2d ed., p. 550. W. Stekel, Twelve Essays on Sex and Psychoanalysis, 1922 n 247 See the discussion of Exhibitionism in vol. v, of these Studies PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 368 feminine types, Harnik agrees, this undergoes an intensifica¬ tion at puberty. But before puberty the sex life of women has bad a masculine trend with concentration of excitability in the clitoris; the girl had virtually possessed a penis. With the coming of puberty there is a reinforcement of sex inhibi¬ tions and a development of the secondary sex characters. The consciousness of beauty correspondingly develops, and Narcis- _ sism is intensified. The young woman’s “beauty” and “charm” compensate her for the loss of her infantile masculinity. The male, on the other hand, retains the Narcissistic estimation of his penis, not transferring his self-admiration to his face, though the underlying bisexuality renders possible in the male also a secondary Narcissism extending to the whole body and resembling that of the female. Harnik recognizes in the male also another secondary Narcissism—though it might better be regarded as a primary and normal phenomenon appearing as “manliness.” In women, also, this may exceptionally occur as a transference to athleticism . 1 It will not have escaped some readers that in this dis¬ cussion there is already assumed the existence of a conception of which no definite account has been given, the conception, that is, of the individual psyche itself as arising from a Narcissistic source. Rank was here again the pioneer in a study of the hallucination of the “double,’ published three years after his first study . 2 But before dealing with Rank’s study, some reference should be made to an earlier writer, the distinguished English investigator of primitive thought. Sir J. G. Frazer, who was a pioneer on this side of the Narcissistic conception and is fre¬ quently quoted by Rank. Indeed by the very title of the section of his great work entitled “The Soul as a Shadow and a Reflection” Frazer had obviously already set forth the germ of some of the large future developments of Narcissism and 1 G. Harnik, “The Developments of Narcissism in Men and in Women.” Int. Jour. Psycho-Analysis, Jan., 1924 . 2 0 Rank, “Der Doppelganger,” Imago, 1914, reprinted in the same author’s Psychoanalytische Beitrdge zur Mytherforschung, 1919, pp. 267-354. THE CONCEPTION OF NARCISSISM. 369 assumed an origin for them in the individual’s reaction to the vision of his own image. 1 The savage, says Frazer, “often re¬ gards his shadow or reflection as his soul,” and he gives various examples from many parts of the world. Frazer believes that mirrors are turned to the wall after a death for fear the soul if pi ojected on the glass may be carried off by the dead man’s ghost not perhaps a very plausible or even intelligible view— and on referring, in this connection, to the Greek belief that one must not look at one’s reflection in water lest the water- spirits should drag that reflection, which is the soul, under water, and leave the man soulless, he remarks: “This was probably the origin of the classical story of the beautiful Narcis¬ sus, who languished and died through seeing his reflection in the water. The explanation that he died for love of his own fair image was probably devised later, after the meaning of the story was forgotten.” Rank considers that this view is possible, and that if so the later development is connected with pain in accepting the idea of death. Rank’s approach to the question is not, however, mainly from the primitive side though he recalls that in the previous year (1913) Freud had accepted and emphasized the view that the primitive man, like the child, is “frequently Narcissistic. He begins with an extensive discussion, aided by his wide acquaintance with literature, of the idea of the “double” (the shadow, the mirror image, the embodiment of the soul) as manifested in poems and novels, as well as in the actual lives of some poets, for, as is well known, Goethe, Shelley, Alfred de Musset, and others had the experience of meeting their own doubles. This approach is justified on the ground that the artist reproduces the primitive man. In this connection Rank gives due prominence to Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, which illustrates various aspects of Narcissism, to a greater extent probably than any other imaginative work in English literature, and in it Wilde directly invokes Narcis¬ sus. Rank quotes the saying of Schlegel that “the poet is c I 1 ,/ - G ^o Frazer ’ The Golden Bough, “Taboo and the Perils of the boui, pp. 7o et seq. 24 370 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. always a Narcissus,” and, following the view of Freud that paranoia is “a fixation of Narcissism,” he shows how on this side the poet may become psychically morbid. But m his normal aspects Rank asserts (with Freud) that the poet repre¬ sents the theme of creation based on the tendency of man to perceive the surrounding world as a repetition of himself. Rank thus branches out in various directions from his mitia topic of the “double” in his usual discursive, fruitfully sug¬ gestive, and always well-informed way. He here blends the sexual-psychological thread of Narcissism as presented by me with the general psychological and pathological threads of Freu and the folkloristic of Frazer, for all of them enter into the later conception of Narcissism. Starting from Rank’s study, Dr. Geza Roheim of Buda¬ pest, in an elaborate and learned volume, has carried this con¬ ception into a special region of folk-lore, the superstitions and charms connected with the mirror in many parts of the world. 1 “Truly, he who has seen, heard, understood, and recognized his own Self, to him this whole world is known”; that saying from the Upanishad is the motto of the book, and Dr. Roheim _working out at one special spot the Freudian idea that Narcis¬ sism lies at the basis of magic—seeks to show that the chief popular practices and beliefs in connection with the mirror the occasions when it should or should not be looked at, the significance of breaking it, etc—have an unconscious Narcis¬ sistic reference, the mirror being regarded (and the guardian- angel likewise) as the representative of Narcissism. For Dr. Roheim the taboos placed on children with respect to mirrors are forms of the repression of Narcissism and exhibitionism, and mirror-gazing is the emergence of the uninhibited impulse. The adult seers who use mirrors in magical rites can dispense with the aid of children as they themselv.es retain traces of infantile Narcissism. The custom of looking into the mirror for the image of the lover, again, indicates the progression of libido from Narcissism to object-love, the lover being chosen i Geza Roheim. Spiegelsauber, Internationale Psychoanalytische Bibliothek, 1919. THE CONCEPTION OF NARCISSISM. 371 on a Narcissistic basis. The mirror, further, by magical sub¬ stitution, can become identical with the person whose image it shows, hence the significance of breaking a mirror, the break with Narcissism being, however, primarily thus indicated. A key to all the collective representations and rites which center in the mirror is thus found in Narcissism. And as that stage of psycho-sexual development belongs essentially to childhood, mirror taboos are largely concerned with the child; and when the adult finds his own infantile stage in his child, mirror-gaz¬ ing leads to re-incarnation. The problems of mirror folklore, which had primarily been explained by animism, are here explained by the individual- psychological principle of Narcissism, the psyche being re¬ garded as the Narcissistic image of man, for what in the life of humanity has been called Animism corresponds in the evolution of the individual to Narcissism. Herewith, Dr. Roheim concludes, we do not overthrow the results already ob¬ tained ; on the contrary we find for them a new support. The only difference is that the new methods go deeper, explain more, and reveal more intimate impulses. 1 2 We thus approach the imposing final development of the conception of Narcissism. This has sometimes been dubiously traced back notably by Abraham in the important paper on Ejaculatio precox already mentioned—to a primitive infantile origin in coprolagnia and urolagnia.- The primitive concep¬ tion of “the almightiness of thought,” Abraham states, is parallel with the conception of “the almightiness of the blad¬ der and bowel functions” (as illustrated by the little boy with constipation who dreamed in the night of pressing out the uni¬ verse in an action of the bowels) : in both conceptions the same Narcissistic self-overvaluation is visibly expressed. But there is some confusion here and a lack of psychological subtlety in precise differentiation. In all self-valuation or self-overvalua- 1 Op. ext., p. 263. 2 K. Abraham. Klinische Beitrage, p. 268, and especially another paper in the same volume written four years later (1920), “Zur Nar- zisstischen Bewertung der Exkretionsvorgange.” PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 372 tion, such as Narcissism essentially is, there must, consciously or unconsciously, always he an implied comparison, or at al events selection; otherwise the gratification experienced can scarcely be called Narcissistic. Abraham himself in another place clearly realized this by speaking definitely of Narcissism as a sense of the individual’s superiorities, that is to say over other individuals (“die eigene Vorziige”). For the psycho- ^ analysts it was doubtless an outburst of extreme Narcissism when a German boy, on the eve of a serious operation on is mother, opened the window, shook his fist towards the s^y, and exclaimed: “You Dog, if you let my mother die, you will have to deal with ME!” 1 He had instinctively assumed that he was himself the superior of God. But the enjoyment of an elementary physiological function in its simple form can scarcely be Narcissism; it involves no preference for the self nor any comparison of the self with other selves, such as is. in volved, implicitly or explicitly, in all Narcissism. The enjoy¬ ment of an inhalation of the lungs in the bright morning, even if it suggests to us that we are inspiring the spirit of the uni¬ verse, involves no Narcissistic comparison; and the expulsive force'of the bowels, whatever magnificent ideas it may sug¬ gest, is. in its origin, 2 equally apart from Narcissism. The satisfaction of these physiological functions brings the self into union with other selves rather than set the individual self apart from them. The implication of comparison and selec¬ tion and preference, even superiority, lies, consciously or un¬ consciously, at the basis of Narcissism. If, therefore, we are to bring these large alleged, exten¬ sions of Narcissism legitimately within its frame, we must understand that we are no longer concerned with the Narcis¬ sism of the individual self. We shall have to recognize group- Narcissism, then, especially National Narcissism and Specific 1 Walter von Molo reports this of his brother in boyhood, “Mein religiose Fiihlen,” Kunstwart, Dec., 1925. 2 it is scarcely necessary to make clear that by a secondary de- velopment Narcissism may in either case come in as when it is a ques- tion of comparing the relative cubic capacity of the lungs or when little boys compare the distance to which they can project the urinary stream. THE CONCEPTION OF NARCISSISM. 373 Narcissism. Patriotism and the vulgar hatred of foreigners would thus be manifestations of National Narcissism, 1 while every glorification of humanity and the future of mankind would be a manifestation of Specific Narcissism. In the wide sense, Narcissism, as now understood by psycho-analysts, tends to be identified with the whole develop¬ ment of the self, and thus to be a normal and essential part, even the whole part, of all individual development. 2 Its more special development occurs just before puberty when, accord¬ ing to Kapp, it gives way, on the one side, to object attachment and, on the other side, to a revaluation of early sensational ele¬ ments. “Each increase in the child’s Narcissism represents an achievement, a triumph of activity over passivity, of accom¬ plishment over auto-erotism. It has been won at the sacrifice of an indulgence. These activities stand between him and his repressed auto-erotism and fill him with a sense of right-doing. It is largely this sense of right-doing which carries along the Napoleons of this world (who are strongly Narcissistic types) and enables them to carry other people along with them.” It is this feeling which shows itself in the normal boy just before the genital stage is reached. “He embraces outdoor exercise and positively worships bodily fitness. He despises courting as being ‘soft and womanly.’ ” So that all sport and athletic¬ ism become a form of Narcissism. The youth, Kapp says, is thus fighting against the biologically necessary return of sexual feelings because they seem to him a regression to the earlier auto-erotic forms of sensation. Kapp would call this the ascetic or asocial Narcissistic stage. Following a hint of 1 The necessity for the definite distinction of National Narcissism is recognized by some psycho-analysts, as Roheim ( Int. Jour. Psycho- analysis, March, 1922, p. 103). It is a Narcissistic ego-ideal, Roheim believes, strongly marked in savage men, which forms the affective back¬ ground of the group; “the group is that part of the world which has been introjected into the Ego.” This becomes National Narcissism, and glorifies the humble past of a nation into an age of heroic activity, and at periods of danger from external foes results in patriotism. 2 Reginald Kapp, “Sensation and Narcissism,” Int. Jour. Psycho¬ analysis , July, 1925. Walder, in the same number of this Journal, similarly identifies Narcissism with ego-development. 374 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. Walder’s, he recalls that Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Newton, Spinoza and Nietzsche were unmarried, and suggests that we may regard them as Narcissists who have found the right outlet for their Narcissism in developing the internal as¬ pects of the outer world. It is inevitable that along these lines we should reach the conception that all creation is essentially an exercise of Narcis¬ sism. That is clear when we realize that typical creation is the making of things in the image of the creator, as the world it¬ self is fabled to have been made. “In reality Man creates God after his own image,” Roheim remarks, “but in the myth God creates Man after his own image. Every psychic crea¬ tion can arise from a projection of the personality of the creator, and that is why the Gods create Man after their own image.” 1 It is of the essence of Narcissism, Walder states, “to create a world for oneself, sich seine Welt zu dichten, to use a fine phrase of Strindberg’s Totentanz; we may call a method Narcissistic if it allows us to build constructions out of our own minds, comparatively freely and arbitrarily.” This is a function, Walder insists, which may be exercised in a way entirely compatible with reality, as it is, for instance, in the mathematical sciences, which may thus be termed Narcissistic. It is doubtless in this spirit that Ernest Jones speaks of the belief in immortality as “an originally Narcissistic conviction,” which we extend to those we love or respect. 2 Lord Balfour has lately pointed out, though certainly without deliberate in¬ tention, how unconquerable the element of personal Narcissism has here become: “No man really supposes that he personally is nothing more than a changing group of electrical charges.” 3 As Dr. Malinowski, the penetrating psychologist of the savage mind, remarks in the same volume: “The more closely a case 1 G. Roheim, Spiegelzauber, p. 113. 2 E. Jones, Papers on Psycho-analysis , 2d. ed., p. 661. The opposite view, it need scarcely be pointed out, is at least equally tenable; that is to say that at the outset primitive man was more concerned with the per- sistance or the death of those he loved or feared or respected than with his own personal immortality. 3 Science, Religion and Reality, ed. by Joseph Needham, Sheldon Press, 1925. THE CONCEPTION OF NARCISSISM. 375 has to do with the person who considers it, the less will it be ‘natural/ the more ‘magical/ ” Even yet we have not reached the limits to which it is now sought to extend the conception of Narcissism. All human efforts, and man's most sublime aspirations, are brought with¬ in the Narcissistic sphere. But it is further suggested that Narcissism extends far beyond Man, far beyond even the range of comparative psychology, and is the guiding motive of Nature herself. Thus Ferenczi, one of the most daring pioneers of psycho-analytic speculation, has hazardously suggested that Narcissism is part of the process of evolution, not only in the formation of special organs, as in the apparatus for produc¬ ing sounds and music, for instance, but in the whole process of evolution and adaptation to environment, which would thus be on a thoroughly Lamarckian foundation; and consequently Narcissism would be a factor also in pathology, concentrating the libido by a process he calls pathoneurosis into the imperilled part of the body for its repair in disease. It will be seen that we have moved a long way since the days, only a few years ago, when the classic figure of Narcissus —the beautiful youth who gazed in the stream with desire at sight of his own image—was invoked to symbolize what seemed a rather rare and not specially profitable aspect of human invention. VII. UNDINISM. “Toute civilisation consiste en somme a jouer avec l’eau.” —Jean Giradoux. I. The remote ancestors of Man, we cannot doubt, were salt-water animals. Their deepest experience of life was in- extricably mingled with the contact and movement of salt water. That ancient fact is preserved in the whole constitu¬ tion of human embryonic life, and in a few vestigial traces even in the adult, such being the ocular conjunctival fold called the plica semi-lunar is, a relic of the nictitating membrane which in fishes is needed to cleanse the eye in the water. 1 The future human being in the early stage is a rather frog-like creature which cannot breathe, though it may possess rudimentary gills, and passes its whole time in a medium of salt water,—so con¬ stituted by passing through the fetus’s kidneys,—not to emerge until birth. In recent years a distinguished physiological in¬ vestigator, Rene Quinton, has emphasized this function of salt water and shown its significantly beneficial influence even in human therapeutics today. The first animal cellules were of marine origin; the original marine environment remains the vital environment of the cells, even in vertebrates, even in Man. Sea water is the organic environment throughout the whole animal series. Quinton was thus prompted to propose the substitution of sea water for saline fluid when required for in¬ jection in the blood in medical treatment. Sea water is found to be isotonic with the corpuscles of the blood, so that it is the 1 Most of the human embryonic structures reminiscent of fishes, such as gills, disappear in early development. But they are sometimes re¬ tained as abnormal adult features. See, for instance, Sir G. Bland Sutton, Evolution and Disease. ( 376 ) UNDINISM. 377 only medium in which the blood corpuscles can live for more than twenty-four hours, a very remarkable fact for it shows that sea water resembles the natural physiological serum of the blood, while, further, the salts of sea water are the same salts that are found in the body, and found, indeed, almost in the same proportion, except as regards the magnesium. 1 There can be no doubt that this fundamental organic sig¬ nificance of salt water has had a profound result on psychic disposition. The perpetual reverberation of that great primi¬ tive fact, constantly renewed in the developmental life of every individual, has imparted a rare emotional potency to water. Even in the highest civilization the charm of water, altogether apart from its utility, still persists, and water in some form or other makes a constant appeal to the poets. Indeed, “most of us, it has been said, “have a personal and, intimate memory of some far-away brook or lake of our childhood. 2 It is a significant fact that these memories should especially belong to childhood. In some regions this primitive association of the origin of Man with water has even become embodied in folk-lore, and in the beliefs of children, so that it is believed that babies come out of the water, or that the womb is a place of water. This is especially found in Germany, and German psycho-analysts have seen evidence in dreams of a symbolic connection between water and the womb, a connection which, as we know, really has a physiological basis. With regard to this wide-spread German idea that children come out of the water, Holmberg ob¬ serves in his study of the water deities of northern peoples: Schombach and M filler, among others, mention that it is very commonly believed that new-born infants come out of wells or 1 Rene Quinton, L’eau de Mer Milieu Organique, 1904, and an earlier communication by the same writer to the Societe de Biologie, May 1898 J. Jarricot has written a large book on the therapeutical virtues of sea¬ water (Le Dispensaire Marin: Un Organisme Nouveau de Puericulture Masson, Paris, 1921) based on the doctrine that sea water stimulates metabolism, assists in removing noxious products, and places the cells in a favorable environment for the performance of their functions T i 2 EX? 1 Burns sherman > “Writ in Water,” North American Review Inlv lCJld. ' 378 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. ponds, and that in nearly every district there are special ponds or wells of which this is said. After mentioning several, they remark of one fountain that ‘out of it a water-maiden fetches new-born children.’ According to A. Wuttke, also, it is e- lieved that human souls come out of fountains; ‘in northern, central, and north-western Germany nearly every town has its Baby-well.’ ”1 Holmberg adds that the origin of tms idea has . been variously explained and quotes Mogk as to its frequency in Saxony, especially in Hesse and Franken. It has become embodied in nursery-tales and associated with the stork and a lake full of babies. 1 2 Nor is it only as an interest of childhood that water makes its appeal. It is also an adolescent and adult interest. It has, moreover, a more or less vaguely felt erotic appeal which is evidently normal because it is not only experienced in civiliza¬ tion but is also felt by primitive peoples. The erotic suggestion of the fountain has been admirably embodied in Jean Lahovary’s poem, “La Vierge et le Jet d’Eau.” A girl wanders in the moonlight along an avenue to a fountain basin from which a great jet of water rises up into the air and “scatters its liquid kisses.” The young girl’s monologue is reproduced, becoming more and more emotional, ever closer to suggestions of love, its ravishing pursuits, its plaintive or exalted murmurs, its visions of radiant unknown paths. She is ravished in thought and comes nearer, 1 Uno Holmberg, Die Wasscrgottheiten der Finnisch-U grischen Vdlkcr Helsinki, 1913, p. 269. Otto Rank ( Der Mytlms von der Ceburt dcr Helden 1922, pp. 97 cl seq.) brings together a number of legends, etc., chiefly German, bearing on the connection between birth and a source in that the bladder is sometimes involved in this theory, at all events in Germany. Thus a very intelligent hysterical patient (a married woman) of Marcinowski’s, explaining in hypnosis a dream of l? nf rnitus on a ship, said: “Water is known to me in earlier dreams as a symbol of the mother’s body. When a child, I looked upon the urinary opening as also the sexual opening, and I know that many others also do, and that many therefore believe that in coitus one goes into the bladder, as it were into the water, and that the belief thus naturally arises that children come out of th e water. J. Marcinowski, Jahrbuch f. psychoanalytische Forsch., Bd. v, 1913, p. 34U. UNDINISM. 379 —“quand soudain, tremblante autant qu’une herbe, Le jet d’eau, triomphant, l’embrasse de sa gerbe. Ecoutez chanter 1’ame de la fille Qui connut l’amour du grand jet d’eau blanc.” 1 The intimate emotional potency of water, it cannot be doubted, is powerfully supported by the fact that even in the highest vertebrates a perpetually renewed fountain of salt water continues to bear witness to the marine environment which once surrounded our remote ancestors and is still needed to bathe and; vitalize the cells in our own bodies. The periodic eruption of the urinary stream, manifesting itself in child¬ hood with more or less involuntary force, is one of the most impressive facts of infantile life, the more so as at that age the volume of the stream, the energy of its expulsion, 2 and the extent to which vesical contraction fills the psychic field are relatively far greater than in later life. As puberty approaches, while the infantile urgency and impressiveness of the phe¬ nomenon may diminish, on the other hand it acquires a new in¬ terest and significance through the recognition of its intimate local association with the sexual life, and the facility with which it symbolizes, both physiologically and psychically, the sexual functions. But puberty is also the period of development of the in¬ tellectual activities and the ideal aspirations. These seek to thrust into the background any preoccupation with urination as being trivial or unworthy. In large measure that repression is successful and the urinary interest is transformed into a sexual interest. Yet the earlier interest is not entirely abolished, being supported by the fact that it is based on a fundamental vital need of the organism; when suppressed it may be driven 1 Le Monde Nouveau, 15 Jan., 1922. It may here be noted that among distinguished French writers Henri de Regnier has in his poems and novels constantly dwelt on the charm of water, especially in foun¬ tains, and occasionally in connection with urination. 2 Little boys of 8 or 10, as may be noted in the street, are some¬ times able, evidently by a deliberate effort, to urinate to a distance of between six and seven feet. 380 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. into the subconscious rather than completely transformed into the sexual; while in some cases its transformation is delayed or permanently inhibited, and in a yet larger number, it effected but is incompletely effected. In these ways urination comes within the sphere of modesty, and tends to be guarded with the same sensitive care as the sexual functions. In these ways, also, it tends to acquire some of the same interest which . belongs to these functions, to supply a similar material or curiosity, and at the same time to furnish a similar basis to the imagination. . r An important factor in the psychic significance of urine is the extreme emotional sensitiveness of the bladder in its contractions as well as of the kidneys in secretion. This is a familiar fact in ordinary life in its main manifestations, since it is well known to all how an emotional stress, sometimes when only of a few moment’s duration, may cause either increased urinary secretion or active contraction of the bladder. In a paper on “The Bladder as a Dynamometer,” published in the American Journal of Dermatology (May, 1902), I brought forward a systematic series of observations showing that the expulsive power of the bladder, when measured by the distance to which the stream can be expelled, is not only an index of individual energy but is subject to constant variations under the varying influences of daily life. A number of circumstances, including the state of the weather, were found to affect the expulsive energy of the bladder. Nervous depression tended to have a depressing vesical influence. A sea-bath had a powerful stimulating effect, sometimes not appearing at once but long prolonged. Placing the hands in cold water immediately beforehand also stimulated vesical energy, which accounts for the common experience of a wish to urinate following washing the hands. Sexual erethism was found to stimulate, and seminal emis¬ sions in sleep to diminish, vesical power. Both mental and physical exercise were stimulating. It was found that the energy of the blad¬ der tends on the whole to rise during the day (though it must be remembered that the morning distention is not favorable to expul¬ sive energy). No monthly curve was detected, but there was a weekly rhythm with a marked fall on Sundays, quickly recovering to a climax on Tuesdays. There was also a yearly curve, with a minimum in autumn, followed by a slow rise to a height maintained through the spring and reaching a climax in August. It was more UNDINISM. 381 difficult to make observations on women but one series on a nullip- arous woman of 32, of entirely feminine conformation and disposi¬ tion, made with the subject lying on her back with separated nymphas, showed as far as they went, concordant results. The average distance of the jet was 48 inches (which agrees with that of some women in the erect position) and the maximum, with very full bladder and some general excitement, as much as 75 inches, which indicates an energy probably not often exceeded by the female bladder. It may be added that the experiments of Vurpas and Buvat on the vesical reactions of a number of more or less insane subjects showed that the more sane and intelligent the subject is the more delicate are the bladder reactions. (A. Vurpas and G. Buvat, “Con¬ tribution a l’fitude de la psycho-physiologie de la Vessie,” Rev. de Psychiatric, Dec., 1901.) The sensitiveness of the bladder is, however, even greater than ordinary observation can indicate, for it responds in a minor degree to the faintest stimulus, to a touch or a word. This was clearly demonstrated by the classical experiments of Mosso and Pellacani on young girls in 1882. A catheter con¬ nected with a tube leading to a plethysmograph was inserted into the bladder, the subject lying quietly on her back, and it was found that the very slightest sensory emotional or mental stimulus could be measured and registered by its effect on the bladder. The conclusion was that “every psychic event and every mental effort is accompanied by a contraction of the bladder.” There is no more delicate aesthesiometer in the whole body. 1 The bladder has in modern times been called “the mirror of the soul,” while Elie Reclus mentions 2 that the Eskimo Innuit regard it as a chief seat of the soul. The Hebrews also, as appears from Driver’s glossary, regard the kidneys as “the springs of feeling”; “thou hast possessed my kidneys” says the Hebrew Psalmist (139 v. 13), though, in English, we generally prefer to say “my heart.” 1 Mosso and Pellacani, Arch. ital. dc Biologie, vol. i, 1882. H. Ellis, art. “Urinary Bladder, Influence of the Mind on the,” Hack Tuke’s Dictionary of Psychological Medicine, vol. ii. 2 E. Reclus, Primitive Folk, p. 18. 382 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. We have here a root, and it may well be the chief root, of the mythic and magic significance of urine. 1 In some of its aspects, even though much transformed by tradition, even though never thus clearly recognized, water, in its deeper sig¬ nificance, is urine. Inversely expressed, urine is water pa> excellence, and in it are concentrated all the supernormal qualities of water. Pure water and urine, both alike deriva- . fives from the ancient salt ocean which was the remote cradle of our primitive organic life, have reciprocally heightened each other’s potent qualities. The more primitive man frankly accepts the sacredness of urine, for it is more personal and organic, more richly various in its constitution, and he dimly realizes, perhaps, that it is more approximate to the original ocean. The less primitive man, acquiring a new disgust for the physiologically natural, and at the same time developing a new symbolic conception of purity, tends to transfer all the qualities of urine to pure water. In Christendom this is so even today; Protestant and Catholic alike symbolize the puri¬ fication and regeneration which every member of the Church must undergo in the sacred rite of Baptism by water. For those who believe they have outgrown the revelation of the ancient religions a belief in the symbolic significance of the ancient rites still often subsists. This is well illustrated by Feuerbach who wrote eloquently of the deep and true signifi¬ cance of baptism regarded as a symbol of the value of water itself, not merely of its physical but its moral and intellectual effects. “In the stream of water the fever of selfishness is al- 1 It is not easy to be sure that prehistoric and early historic man represented the act of urination in art, but the numerous rather crudely executed ancient bronze figures in which a man holds his hand usually the left, which may be significant—to his penis, has suggested this act, though this explanation is not accepted by Saloman Reinach. (Bourke, Krauss, Ihm, Der Unrat , p. 516). In his Repertoire de la Statuaxre, how¬ ever (Tome II, p. 65), Reinach reproduces figures of Silenus with his left arm around a nymph who watches him while with averted face he holds his right hand to his penis. Of female figures the crouched Venus sometimes suggests the act of urination, as in a figure represented by Reinach (op. cit., p. 372) in which the figure supports herself on her right heel and left foot and presses her hand against the inner part of her right thigh. UNDINISM. 383 layed. Water is the readiest means of making friends with Nature. The bath is a sort of chemical process, in which our individuality is resolved into the objective life of Nature. The man rising from the water is a new, a regenerated man.” 1 We can understand how it seemed reasonable to Stanley Hall, many years ago, to suppose that the influence of a life “that has been lived aquatically since its dawn should still make itself felt in the soul,” and leave occasional faint traces of struggle, traces of love and traces of fear. “Deepest of all the feelings for water,” he added, “is the old love, sometimes suddenly reinforced to the intensity of an imperative and un¬ controllable impulse by the recrudescence of the archaic ele¬ ment. 2 He referred to the love and fear of water so com¬ mon in children, and to the preference for suicide by drown¬ ing among women as due to the feminine organism being more conservative of archaic elements than the male. This may be connected with the greater tendency among women than among men of the psychic disposition we shall here be concerned with. It is in this way that we may most easily explain the peculiarly attractive, potent, and sometimes magic qualities which, even in civilization, water may under certain conditions possess. Water for lustral purposes, conferring purity or ef¬ fecting benediction, is found associated with the sacred rites of many peoples in various stages of culture in nearly all parts of the world. Among more primitive peoples, this lustral water may itself be urine, and even among peoples in higher stages of culture who employ water in sacred rites it undergoes modification which confers on it some property of urine. Salt, which to the primitive mind seems the essence of urine, ac¬ quires all sorts of magical properties in addition to its real 1 Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (Eng. trans. by George Eliot), p. 272. 2 Stanley Hall, “A Study of Fears,” Am. Jour. Psych., 1897, p. 169. A few years later Stanley Hall inspired a comprehensive study of “the influence that water has exerted in shaping and molding man’s psychic organism, from the early days of his pelagic ancestry onwards (F E Bolton, “Hydro-psychoses,” Am. Jour. Psych., Jan., 1899). This study touches on embryology, physiology, psychology, mythology, religion, philosophy, and folk-lore. 384 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. chemical qualities, as a result of its urinary origin or connec¬ tion. It is on this ground added to water, and the Cat 10 ic church has always attached special virtues to salt and water. Sometimes water is colored yellow in apparent imitation o urine. Sometimes the pure water alone retains the virtues which once belonged to urine. Thus in the opinion of many peoples water is the foe of evil demons as urine is among ^ the Indians of some parts of North America. Water some¬ times has the power to remove tabu. In India water las a strongly marked protective power, and sprinkling with wa was an important part of Babylonic ritual. In Islam, the bride and the bridegroom are sometimes sprinkled with water as a protection against Satan, just as in some parts o rica ey were sprinkled with urine. Holy water, as Ernest Jones con¬ cludes, “is the direct descendant of urine.” 2 Among the Hottentots, when they first became known to Europeans, Peter Kolben described (and illustrated) how the “priest” (as he termed him) urinated on the bridegroom and then on the bride in the wedding ceremony. 2 In the next century Mungo Park tells of his visit to a negro wedding in the Islamic region of Africa bordering the Great Desert. After he had returned to his hut “an old woman entered with a wooden bowl in her hand and signified that she had brought me a present from the bride. Before I could recover from the 1 The Church borrowed this custom from the Greeks and the Romans who used salt and water as a purifying charm. Thus T eo- eritus (xxiv 94) described the purificatory sprinkling on the ground of fountahl ’water mixed with salt. See eg J. J. Blunt, Vestiges of Ancient Manners and Customs in Italy and Sicily, p. y • 2 Frnest Tones “Die Bedeutung des Salzes, Imago, klett o, L»ec., 1912, and “The Symbolic Significance of Salt” m the same authors gS ” 4* A Rg ff&ra feft, fs’tiuSS' £ heidnischen und Christlicher Cultus, 1869, pp. 166 et‘ 3 p. IColben, Caput Borne Spei Hodternum, Nuremberg, 1719,, p. < Capt. Cook later referred to this “nuptial benediction of the Hottentots, Hawkesworth, Account of Voyages, 1775, vol. n. p. 533. Wedding ceremonies with similar sprinkling with urine still existed more recently among the Namaqua, as was ascertained by Theophilus Hahn (quoted by G. Fritsch, Die Eingeborenen Sud-Afnca s, lo/~, p. 33U.; UNDINISM. 385 surprise which this message created, the woman discharged the contents of the bowl full in my face. Finding that it was the same sort of holy water with which among the Hottentots a priest is said to sprinkle a new married couple, I began to sus¬ pect that the old lady was actuated by mischief or malice; but she gave me seriously to understand that it was a nuptial bene¬ diction from the bride’s own person; and which, on such oc¬ casions, is always received by the young unmarried Moors as a mark of distinguished favor. This being the case, I wiped my face, and sent my acknowledgments to the lady.” 1 In Central Africa the king’s bride cannot urinate too much, and the female attendant in the king’s bedchamber must urinate and wet his feet before he may safely rise in the morning. 2 J. G. Bourke, 3 refers to the Russian custom for the water in which the bride has washed her feet to be sprinkled on the bridal bed and over the guests, and to the old English custom for the bride to sell bride-ale, and it is suggested that all such customs are attenuations of the primitive customs associated with the magic qualities of nuptial urine, the priest’s or the bride’s, since, in the prog¬ ress of civilization, a time was bound to come when prim spinsterly aunts would declare that the original rite was ludicrous, and, in fact, “quite disgusting.” It is not surprising that while along the line of orthodox religion, holy water, with the advance of civilization, has be¬ come completely dissociated from urine, along the line of magic and witchcraft the association continued. Thus in French ritual witchcraft the Devil used holy water which was sometimes urine, and with this all present were aspersed. 4 The primitive religious use of urine extends beyond its 1 Mungo Park, Travels, 1817, vol. i, p. 205. 2 J. Roscoe, The Bakitara, pp. 92, 152. 3 Scatalogic Rites of All Nations, 1891, p. 231. 4 See, for instance, report of a case in Cologne, in 1614, as given by Miss M. A. Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, pp. 148, 248, also Dufour, Histoire de la Prostitution , vol. v, p. 124, quoting De Lancre! Montague Summers ( The History of Witchcraft and Demonology, 1826, pp. 154, 171), again, refers to the use by witches in France of holy water made of urine. 25 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 386 lustral employment as holy water; it enters, alike, into cere¬ monies of initiation and harvest festivals of generation Thus in the Papuan Gulf, in initiation ceremonies, the chief staris over the youth and urinates into his mouth; having passed this test the youth becomes eligible as a warrier and enters the final stage of initiation. 1 2 In some regions drinking urine, as well as eating dung, was once an essential part of certain re lgious festivals connected with the harvest. According to Preuss, a goddess was termed the Dung Eater, and those who incarnated her must follow her example, at the same time being drunk and exercising coitus. In a similar spirit German folk-lore terms the Corn-mother the “great whore. If we take a wider view of the psychic place of water in the history of civilization, it would appear that at many of the chief places of origin of the higher human cultures— Egypt, India, Persia, Greece 3 —water was often regarded, by a premonition of the modern scientific view of the pelagic origin of life, as the source of all things. This belief was some¬ times erotically tinged; Venus (Anadyomene) arose from the sea, and the classic nymphs had erotic associations, which are preserved and emphasized in the term nymphomania, while the connection of public baths with prostitution, which began in classic times and was pronounced in medieval times, is hard y yet extinct. Iwan Bloch, in his history of prostitution, deals with the original place of the bath as an adjunct of sexual intercourse and its subsequent association with prostitution; the flourishing period of bath-prostitution in Rome was at the end of the Republic with the introduction of mixed bathing (balnea mixta) by Agrippa, B. C. 32. 4 1 Rev. J. Holmes, Jour. Anth. Inst.. 1902, p. 424 2 K Th Preuss, Globus, vol. lxxxvi, 1904, p. <55o. 3 Forchhammer in his Hellcnika insisted on the influence of water on the Greek mind. He has since sometimes been held to have exaggerated this influence, and his views are now in part antiquated. But the influ¬ ence of water was certainly great, especially Greek philosophy. (See, To , Bolton, Am. Jour. Psych., Jan., 1899, pp. 189-195). When we recall that the Greeks were a sea-faring people, almost surrounded by the sea and never more than a few miles away from it, this influence cannot 4 1. Bloch, Die Prostitution, Bd. I, pp. 172-196. These pages are rich with historical facts and references. UNDINISM. 387 The more widely we observe the influence of water the more frequently we find that the special representative and symbol of water is held to be the urine. This is specially to be observed in the conception of cosmic phenomena. Thus in myth, saga, popular belief and speech, the analogy of rain with urine is familiar. Rain is indeed, as Ehrenreich has ob¬ served, with striking frequency conceived as the excretion (not always urine but sometimes sweat or spittle) of a heavenly being. 1 In many parts of the world, indeed, rain is regarded as the urination of a divine being, more usually though not always feminine, to whom is sometimes attributed the origin of seas and rivers in this way. (Young children, similarly, as Rank remarks with illustrations, often have the same idea.) Among some of the old Australian aborigines of Victoria, ac¬ cording to Brough Smyth, there was a belief in a primitive Deluge, when the great Bundjal, being angry with men, urin¬ ated abundantly for many days until all were drowned save a man and woman who were preserved to carry on the human race. 2 Among the American Indians, especially as Boas has shown, in the sagas of the Indians of British Columbia, urina¬ tion plays a large part. In South America, Alexander von Humboldt mentioned in his Kosmos, some Indian tribes call meteors “the urine of the stars,” while the ancient Mexicans represented the Butterfly goddess of fire, Itzpapalotl, as urinat¬ ing, while the two Bird-goddesses, and the Dog-god, Xolotl, are also represented as urinating Divine Water for the benefit of vegetation. 3 Similar conceptions may be traced more ob- 1 Ehrenreich, Die Allgetn. Mythologie, 1910, p. 140, quoted by O. Rank, “Ein Traum der sich selbst deutet,” Jahrb. f. psychoanal. Fors- chungen, Bd. ii, 1910, p. 532, and also in “Die Symbolschichtung in rnyfluschen Denken,” Psychoanalytische Beitrage sur Mythcnforschung, 2 Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, vol. i, p. 429; and see Van Gennep, Mythes et Legcndes d’Australie, p. 88. 3 K. Th. Preuss, “Der Ursprung der Religion und Kunst,” Globus, Bd. 86, 1904, p. 355. Father Joseph de Acosta in the sixteenth century (Natural and Moral History of the Indians, Bk. v, Ch. XXVII, trans¬ lated by Grimston) said that the Mexicans were accustomed not only to eat and drink in honor of the gods but “also to pisse in the honor of them.” In the Great Atlas the exposure of a woman’s urinary organs 388 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. scurely in the ancient religions of the old world. Goldziher de¬ rives the Arabic name, Kuzah, for the god of weather and rain from a word signifying to urinate, while the Hebrew word bul, rain may be collected with the Arabic bala to urinate. It has been held that the legend of the origin of Orion implied urina¬ tion of the gods, and though this opinion is regarded, as etymologically false, it may still, Otto Rank remarks, possess . a psychological rightness, and the Greek word for urination united the ideas of emitting both urine and semen, thus still further emphasizing the idea of impregnating the earth.- n folk-lore Preuss refers to popular sayings in East Prussia which indicate the continued existence of the primitive belief that urine is the source of rain, and he considers that the Man- neken-Pis at Brussels has a like reference to the same con¬ nection. Rank refers to the German word schiffen, to urinate, as being also used for rain, and in the paper already referred to, psychoanalysing a normal young woman, he finds that ram may stand for urine. Marconowski’s hysterical patient, al¬ so, once dreamed of her little girl (standing for herself, as often happens in dreams) with a stream of urine flowing from her drawers, while the child was soaked with rain, urine, and tears. 3 The psychic connection between rain and urine, more- over, may be two-sided. A friend tells me that having drunk more than usual in the evening she was awakened, without any conscious dream, by the need to relieve a full bladder and, then, retiring to bed and falling asleep again, she dreamed she was in the house of a friend, a doctor, near which she had passed the previous day, and had so strong a desire to urinate that she asked the doctor if she could go into his lavatory; he aids the rites for obtaining rain (Westermarck, Ritual and Belief in MOt \ Goldziher,’ DerAtythos bci der Hebraern , p. 89, quoted by Rank. 2 A. Berny, Imago, 1913, Heft 6, p. 543; O. Rank, Psychoanalytische Beitrdge zur Mythenf or seining, p. 102. . . f 3 She was accustomed to regard the desire to urinate as a sign of sexual excitement, and Marconowski would view all these three forms of water (after the manner cherished by psycho-analysts) as symbols of semen. UNDINISM. 389 replied this was impossible as it was being removed by work¬ men, and as he made no suggestion as to what she should do instead and she felt unable to control herself longer, she went into the front garden and immediately felt herself urinating as she stood outside the door. She awoke with some anxiety as to what had taken place in bed, and found no desire whatever to urinate, but rain was falling fast, and through a leak in the roof dripping on the floor of the room. Thus, not only may rain be the symbol of urine but urine the symbol of rain. \\ hen we recall ancient beliefs and the associations of urine it is easy to understand why, especially among the young, urine should be identified with semen. C. G. Jung has re¬ ferred to a girl of eleven who imagined that the husband urin¬ ates into the wife and that the embryo is thus formed. She had a dream of rain and storm and a stork connected with this belief, which has archaic and mythological associations.* Frink similarly tells of a young married woman in America, with an intense longing for a child, who had a craving at times to go out in the rain; when thoroughly soaked she would re¬ turn home greatly relieved and satisfied. As a girl of 8, an elder girl offered to explain to her how children are made, and, instructing her to lie down with raised skirts, lay down on top of her and discharged a stream of urine against her genitals. Naturally this method received support from the patient’s knowledge that water “makes things grow.” * 2 It is in this way that the attraction of urine for the primi¬ tive mind becomes subtly blended with the attraction of water. Behind that physiological source of water which man found in himself lay a subconscious sense of the beneficent and eman¬ cipating mystery of Nature s rain and oceans and rivers. Be¬ hind the natural sources of water in the world, on the other hand, lay a subconscious sense of the intimate personal mystery of this human stream, inevitably tinged by the place of its origin with generative and erotic associations. To the primitive mind, !,9; 9-Jung, Jahrbuch f. psychoanalyt. Forsch., vol. v, 1913, p. 436 2 H. W. Frink, Cornell Univ. Med. Bull., Oct., 1914. 390 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. too closely in contact with great natural facts to be touched by the refined disgusts of civilization, the urinary stream became a beautiful and sacred symbol. We shall meet with the sug¬ gestion that in the device of the fountain we have an attempt to imitate the stream of which human beings are the source, and the suggestion is perhaps not so absurd as at first it may seem. To the primitive and popular mind even today the fountain- like jet of a streamlet suggests urination, and this analogy is sometimes embodied in the names given to such streamlets; thus the jets which gush out from the cliffs near Etretat in Normandy are named “Les Pisseuses.” 1 There is a Cascade de Pisse-Vache” between Geneva and the Simplon. An U a Pissefontaine” is included by Paul Fort in his Tristesse de 1’Homme. . The opinion that the fountain of human art was suggested by the human urinary fountain and originally intended to imi¬ tate it was put forth by Sadger in the important study of urinary eroticism to which it will later be necessary to refer. “Fountains,” he asserted, “are merely an imitation of the urinary stream.” One’s immediate response to this view is not favorable. But on consideration there is much to be said for it. We have clearly to recognize that to the natural human mind, and still constantly to children, a little stream leaping out of its channels suggests, and is itself suggested by, the human urinary stream; this is indicated by ancient philology and is instinctively felt by modern children. Thus an American lady remarks to me that as a girl she liked looking at foun¬ tains but did not like anyone to see her doing so because she was conscious the fountain had an attractive resemblance to the act of urination. An English lady of pronounced urolagmc dis¬ position writes: “The attraction of water running into water 1 In English, by a reverse association of ideas, the name Piddle which was formerly used in England to designate a stream or small river has become attached among the feminine inhabitants of rural regions to the act of urination, to the complete exclusion of its chief and earlier sense, so that the inhabitants of Piddletown in Dorsetshire have in recent years sought to confer refinement on their town by calling it “Puddletown.” UNDINISM. 391 is, I suppose, universally admitted. In designs for fountains we frequently find a mass of center figures giving forth in some fashion or another jets of water that descend in elegant sprays into a basin of still water below. The charm of this is felt by most persons. Unconsciously perhaps we aimed at this effect when as children we urinated in the bath or better still out in the open in some secluded spot in the wood, where there was a brook. It is of course difficult to say how common this liking for urination and water may be since the persons most in secret enjoyment of it are just those most likely to be secretive/' It is significant that throughout its known history the fountain of artificial device tends to have the closest pos¬ sible resemblance, alike in size and in curve, to the urinary stream. We do not know who invented artificial fountains. 1 But their characteristics are the same at the earliest point at which we can observe them. No doubt they would only be¬ come common at a period in civilization when luxury and re¬ finement were beginning to appear, that is to say at a period when the urinary stream was beginning to be thought indecent in an untransformed shape, and not decorous to represent liter¬ ally, even in marble, except in children. Since Sadgers opinion was put forward I have noticed in San Vitale at Ravenna, on the left as one faces the choir apse, a large and beautiful bas relief (facing a corresponding one on the opposite side of the entrance to the apse), said to be taken from a frieze in the Roman temple of Neptune; two children, apparently boys, act as caryatids to support a platform on which are smaller children 1 The earliest artificial fountain mentioned in the article “Fountain” of the Encyclopedia Britamiica is a carved Babylonian basin, of about B.C. 3000, found at Tello, the ancient Lagash, while Layard mentions an Assyrian fountain he found in the gorge of the river Gomel. They were tery common in Greece, and dedicated not only to nymphs but to gods goddesses, and heroes. The nymph Piren shed such copious tears over her son slain by Orion, that she was changed into a fountain, an example of another physiological association of the fountain. At Corinth a statue of Poseidon stood on a dolphin from which the water issued, a kind of imagery frequently revived in the Italian Renaissance. The famous fountain of Callirrhoe at Athens was directed through nine pipes and was elegantly appointed as seen depicted on Greek vases. It still runs, though now it has become sordid and we may often see washerwomen of the lower class at work there. 392 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. with shells and tridents. Both the larger children have had their sexual organs struck out and this has revealed in eac a hole corresponding to the urethra (one filled up by a black- rod). It would appear that, at one time at all events, these children were fountains. The attitude of the children is en¬ tirely consistent with this view, especially that of the boy on the left, whose hands rest on his slightly separated thighs, while his face expresses attention; the other child stands with crossed arms. It is scarcely necessary to refer to the famous Manneken-Pis of Brussels, executed in the seventeenth century by Francois Dufresnoy, a sculptor of high distinction (born at Brussels and an enthusiastic student of the Renaissance m Rome), but probably continuing a much more ancient idea since this fountain is invested with an almost sacred character. The accepted Belgian legend, however, as given by Otto Rank (following Wolf) is that when Brussels was still a small town a nobleman of the place had an only son who as a punishment for his father’s offense in making violent love to the patron saint of the town, and the boy’s own impertinence in urinat¬ ing against the door of a holy hermit’s cell, was condemned never to grow up but to be turned into a stone image and to urinate forever. 1 The almost complete absence from statuary art of the posture of urination in women (unless we except the figures of the “Crouching Venus”) is naturally to be associated with the fact that at the time when European conventions in art were formed that posture was, as largely it still is, the humble squatting attitude which seldom lends itself easily to art. But it would be a mistake to suppose that that attitude has been everywhere and always cus¬ tomary with women, just as it would be a mistake to conclude from i There is an extensive literature concerning the Manneken-Pis. See Bourke, Krauss, and Ihm, Der Unrat, p. 509; Otto Rank, Ztbltt. f. Psychoanalyse, Heft 12, 1911, p. 578; and especially Dr G. Vcwteg, “Manneken-Pis,” Geschlecht und Gesellshaft, 1923, Heft 1. Vorberg refers to a counterpart of the Manneken-Pis formerly in Brussels, Les Trois Pucelles, three girls in stone, squatting to urinate and supplying water to the quarter of the Place des Trois Pucelles. When they became dilapidated they were replaced by three girls standing erect with streams issuing from their breasts, and these later were replaced by a simple corner-stone stream. The name of the Place was then altered to Marche aux Tripes. UNDINISM. 393 prevalent European custom that the erect attitude has been every¬ where and always prevalent among men. As a matter of fact there are widespread variations, though it is comparatively rare for both men and women to adopt the same attitude, and with the usual sexual contrariness, where the women adopt one attitude the men tend to adopt another, or vice versa, J. G. Bourke in his Scatalogic Rites of all Nations (1891, pp. 148 et seq. f G. Friederici, Bcitrdge cur Vdlker-und Sprachenkunde von Deutsch-Neuguinca in Mittlieil - ungen aus den Deutschen Scliutsgebicten, No. 5, Berlin, 1912, pp. 62-3; also Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, 6th ed., pp. 78-9, brought together some of the variations in different parts of the world, but it may be worth while here to give a further account of the matter. We are instinctively inclined in such matters to regard our own prevalent customs as the proper and “natural” method of the higher civilized races. But if we go back to Egypt we find Herodotus (Bk. ii, Ch. XXXV), after stating that “Egypt claims our admiration be¬ yond all other countries,” bringing forward the evidence to show that women enjoyed a freer and more active life than elsewhere, and mentioning that “women stand erect to make water, the men stoop.” (This seems to indicate that the Greek custom was opposite, though Hesiod says that a man should squat if not standing against a wall.) In another ancient centre of culture, Ireland, where also it may be said that women occupied an important place, Giraldus Cambrensis stated in his Topographia Hibernica {Opera, 1867, vol. v, p. 172) that “the men discharge their urine sitting; the women standing.” It may indeed be said that all round the world the primitive custom seems generally to have been the reverse of that which we have come to regard as normal: the women stand and very often the men squat. It was not only so among peoples like the Egyptians whom we place high in the scale of cultures but still more among the most primitive peoples. Thus among the Australians the native men in their aboriginal condition invariably squatted to urinate; this custom was rendered almost necessary by the Mika operation of splitting the penis, though Basedow states {Jour. Anth. Inst., 1927, p. 146) that among the sub-incised tribes both men and women either stand or squat. But the native Australian women in many regions stood to urinate. This was noted by the earliest scientific investigator of the intimate customs of the Australian aborigines, Miklucho-Maclay {Zt. f. Ethnologie, 1880, p. 86). Carl Lumholtz made a similar observation. In South Australia, Lindsay Crawford states {Jour. Anth. Inst., Nov., 1894, p. 180) that while the men squat the women stand, spreading their legs open. In Victoria, Mr. Justin Curr (son of the well-known writer on the aborigines, Edward Curr) informed me that various men who had lived among the 394 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. natives in their wild state told him that while the men squat there was no general rule among the women who would sometimes squat and sometimes stand. In Queensland, Dr. W. Roth states ( Ethno¬ logical Studies of the Queensland Aborigines, 1897, p. 184) both sexes always adopt the squatting position in micturition, scratching up a few handfuls of earth for this purpose (and not for defecation only), afterwards covering the spot with earth, and using sand to cleanse the person with. When camping small mounds of earth are made, scooped out at the top like a miniature volcano and beaten down, holding at least a quart; this is for the women to urinate into. In the Trobriand Islands of New Guinea, Dr. Malinowski informs me, the men now stand to urinate, the women stand or squat. In New Zealand, Mr. Edward Tregear, the leading authority on the Maoris, wrote to me in 1892: “It is quite useless for a modern observer to give any valuable evidence on this point as to New Zealand or Polynesia; the adoption of garments introduced by Europeans has altered the native custom. In New Zealand it is now invariably the rule for both sexes to squat down while urinating, that is, if wear¬ ing mats or blankets. In old days, although waist mats and shoulder mats were the common dress of men and women, the working and fighting dress was the maro or girdle, consisting of plaited string tied round the waist, to which strips of flax or tassels of fibre were sus¬ pended; it is the common waist-girdle of the savage, although the New Zealander’s love of beauty led him to refine his fringe. The women’s often come to the middle of the calf, the men’s to about two inches above the knee. The Maori men, who squat to urinate, have often told me that they thought European men fools to stand up to urinate as in that position the bladder is not completely emptied, and, they say, gravel results. It was common for the women to urinate standing; a Maori told me he has seen his nurse do it a hundred times. The natural position of the sexual organs makes it possible for a woman to urinate standing without wetting her clothes or exposing herself, but a man in a mat or robe would have to expose himself or wet his mat.” It may be added that at Tanna in the New Hebrides, the present practice is for the men to stand in micturition while the women and children sit ( Jour Anth . Institute , 1898, p. 129). In China in old times it was the custom for men to urinate standing; at all events that is what we are told by the Mohammedan traveller in China, Soleyman, as recorded by Hasan Ibn Yazid in the ninth century ( Relations des Voyages, tr. by Reinaud, 1845, vol. i, p. 118). “The Chinese,” it is here reported, “urinate standing. Such is the custom of the people among the natives. As for governors, generals, and notable persons, they use polished canes, a cubit long, UNDINISM. 395 and open at both ends, sufficiently large to introduce the penis. \\ hen one wants to make water, therefore, one stands and turning the tube away from oneself, one discharges the urine. The Chinese declare that this method of urinating is more salutary for the body, and the disorders of the bladder, especially stone, are solely due to squatting to urinate, adding that the bladder cannot be completely discharged unless one performs the operation standing.” It is not stated whether women adopted the same attitude. At the present t ' me ’ a « 0 . r ding to Friederici, the attitude for men, at all events in Aorth China, and the Canton Swatow region, is usually squatting m Japan it is the women who usually adopt the upright attitude for urination, according to Wernich, quoted by Ploss in Das Weib, and !t to a Peculiarity in the Japanese feminine urethra. V imam Anderson, the surgeon, my teacher in anatomy and still well known for his collection of Japanese art, informed me that Wernich a\ as correct in his fact but not in his explanation, as there was nothing peculiar in the Japanese feminine urethra; “the erect pos¬ ture, he wrote, “appeared to me a more convenient one for women in consequence of the tightness with which the skirts embrace the legs and the difficulty so opposed to raising the skirts.” But he added that it might be, as I had suggested, a survival of primitive custom, like the Japanese attitude in parturition. In Ceylon also the Tamil man squats to urinate, the woman stands, a resident medical man informs me, and the same statement is made in Untrodden Ftc ds of Anthropology, vol. i, p. 96. In Sumatra, as another doctor tells me, the men often squat to urinate, and never open their sarong or trousers for this purpose, believing that it is dangerous to expose the penis, or rather scrotum, and might lead to impotence; the women also squat to urinate and keep their legs close together in the act. As regards Africa the custom of the sexes in urination in ancient Egypt has already been mentioned. At the present day, while the old custom has not completely died out, and Egyptian fellaheen women, Sudanese women and Abyssinian women, I am told by a Cairo hospital surgeon, sometimes adopt the erect position the prevalent position is that of squatting; and at the hospital all the sanitary arrangements are of this kind and there is an attendant servant to show patients where and how to micturate and defecate It must be remembered that the general Moslem custom is for both sexes to squat to urinate and with the progressive march of Islam in Africa this custom has become widespread. The precepts of the Koran enjoin this position on good Mussulmans and an act of ablu¬ tion should follow. Minute instructions are given by Sidi-Kelil and other Moslem teachers. Dr. John Fryer (A New Account of East 396 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. India and Persia, 1672-1681, Hakluyt Society, vol. i, p. 94), says: “Among them all it is common to make water sitting, as when they evacuate the other way, and it is a shame for anyone to be seen otherwise, they sarcastically saying, Such a one pisses like a Dog (which is held unclean) standing”; and elsewhere he states with regard to the women squatting to urinate: “Nor do the women scruple to do their Occasions in Publick streets or Highways, going hand in hand for that purpose at Set-times of the day, and if any pass by in the interim will turn their bare Backside upon them, but will hide their Faces; and this at Sun-rise and Sun-set every day they do in Droves, Men by themselves and Women by themselves. He adds that they use the left hand for the subsequent ablution, “because they feed themselves with the right.” In Morocco, I have noted, it is common for a little group of women to squat for this purpose only a few steps off the public path, but quite modestly and without raising the garments, so that they feel no need to show any embarrassment. The men do the same, though not in groups. In British Central Africa, Sir H. H. Johnston (British Central Africa , p. 406) states that, except when Mohammedanism has introduced the squatting posture, the men stand, the women squat. But Dr. Stannus {Jour. Anth. hist., vol. xl, 1910, p. 288) states that, at all events south of Lake Nyassa in British Central Africa, among mixed peoples of Bantu stock, the men usually squat to urinate, while the women kneel, a rare modification of the erect attitude. But in some parts of Africa untouched by Islam, it would seem that what is perhaps the more primitive attitude is still preserved. Thus P. Reichard (Ausland, vol. lxiii, p. 428), states that among Negroes in some regions the men always squat and the women always stand. The Kavirondo women in East Africa, a medical man tells me, always urinate standing, and sometimes as they walk. In Angola, according to Bourke, both sexes stand to urinate. It is, however, when we turn to America that we find the most convincing evidence of the existence of that sexual distinction in the posture for urination which I am inclined to believe indicates primi¬ tive custom all over the world. Everywhere else we find occasional evidence, especially when we are able to look far back, that the men squat and the women stand, but in America nearly all the evidence from the extreme north down to South America indicates the gen¬ eral prevalence of the custom, which may well have been the custom which the early inhabitants of America carried with them from the early home of Man, whether (with Osborn) we place the early home in Central Asian plateaus or elsewhere. Writing of the Eskimo of Hudson’s Bay, Henry Ellis (A Voyage to Hudson's Bay in 1746 and 1747, p. 198) remarks: “They differ from almost all other nations in UNDINISM. 397 their manner of making urine; for here the men always squat down and the women stand upright.” Frere Sagard in his Histoire du Canada m 1636 (reprint of 1866, vol. i, p. 179), writing apparently of the Hurons at Rebec and describing them in their canoes, says: “I admired the honesty of their action in making water, for besides retiring aside they squat down with much modesty, in the manner of the ancient men of Egypt, in this more polite and honest than their women, who for this purpose stand upright, without going much aside.” The Apache men, Bourke states, always squat to urinate, while the women always stand; he adds that the Mojaves of the Rio Colorado follow the same rule. George Alsop in his book dating from 1666, A Character of the Province of Maryland (reprint of Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, 1880, p. 81), writes of the naked Susquehannas of Maryland: “It doth not become any man to piss running or eating. These Pagan men naturally observe the same Rule; for they are so far from running, that, like a Hare, they squat to the ground as low as they can, while the Women stand bolt upright with their arms a Kimbo, performing the same action, in so confident and obscene a posture as if they had taken their Degrees of Entrance at \ enice,” in other words as if they were courtesans. But Alsop was a wild and roystering youth, and it is scarcely necessary to remark that European prejudices have led him into injustice. He had himself just pointed out that the Susquehanna women are modest, chaste, and faithful to their husbands. So also in Florida, and Captain Bernard Romans wrote in 1775 in Jus Concise Natural History of East and West Florida (vol. i, p. 42): “A savage man discharges his urine in a sitting pos¬ ture and a savage woman standing.” Lionel Wafer at the Isthmus of Darien in 1699 (A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America, p. 141) neglects to mention the women but says of the men that they are ordinarily quite naked but wear a penis-case, of silver or gold or at least of a plaintain leaf, fastened by a string round the waist. “They leave the scrotum exposed, having no sense of shame with reference to that, as they have with respect to the penis, which they never show uncovered; but the men will turn away their faces even from one another, if by any accident it be uncovered; and when they would make water, they turn their backs to their companions and squatting down, slip off the funnel with one hand, and, having done, put it on again very nimbly.” (It may be remarked that the use of the penis-case here and in other parts of the world has been well and fully discussed by Friederici, op cit, pp. 154 et seq.) He adds that, with regard to defecation, “they have a great sense of shame,” and both men and women go down to the river for this purpose; “and in general they are both a modest and a charming people.” Pierre Barrere ( Nouvelle Relation de la France Equinoxiale, 1743, p. 398 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 164) says likewise of the Indian men of Guiana that they squat o urinate. Of the Indians of Nicaragua. Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes, writing in the middle of the sixteenth century (Historic General y Natural de las Indies (Madrid, 1855, vol. iv, p. 38), says that the men squat to urinate and the women stand, doing this wherever the need ta es them. I am not acquainted with other references to the custom in South America, but it seems probable that the general practice was the same in the south as in the north. I may add, however, that I hear from ^ an Englishman long resident in a rural district of Bolivia that he there sometimes observed a woman, without attempt to avoid observation, li t up while she walked, the numerous petticoats which Spanish women wear, tuck them round her waist, and proceed to urinate while still walking. At the present time in civilized countries there is a general recog- nition among men that the erect attitude is to be preferred. It is probable that the primitive attitude for men to squat for urination was associated with magic terrors and fears of exposure that were not pri¬ marily concerned with modesty but with the preservation of the genera¬ tive functions. We seem to see a lingering trace of this even in Greek civilization at the period of Hesiod who enjoined the avoidance of exposure during urination lest any divinity should be offended. But these fears would not be evoked in women who had no penis to expose, so that for them the squatting position would not be adopted until the closed garment or the supposed claims of modesty made it desirable or imperative. At the present time there is among civilized women a tendency to abandon the squatting position so long ago given up by civilized men. This need not be regarded (though by some it has been so regarded) as a sign of the masculinization, or still less the homo- sexualization, of women, but rather as part of the tendency to the social approximation of the sexes which marks civilization generally. (In the days of the Roman Empire women were gaining many of the rights and freedoms of men, and if we may judge by what Juvenal says of some ladies they were adopting the custom of urinating in the erect position, though, as we should expect, that old-fashioned satirist disapproved of the prac¬ tice.) It is largely based on practical and hygienic considerations, and the risks of dirty public conveniences are now recognized, while the serious accidents due to sitting on chamber vessels are familiar to all medical men. In January, 1910, The British Medical Journal published an editorial note advocating the provision at railway stations for urinals for women, in a similar way as for men, and numerous doc¬ tors supported this proposal, while “A Doctor’s Wife” wrote (in too unqualified a way) that lt we all stand. From a letter in this Journal (15 Jan.) I quote: “Apart from the fact that an arrange¬ ment of this kind, by saving time, would be a boon to women who UNDINISM. 399 Whr,"l nerV0U .i h f Ste t0 catch a train ’ !t is very un J‘ us t that women, who are usually less able to afford it, should be called upon to pay a tax which is never (since the days of Vespasian) demanded from en. All the tendencies of our civilization are in the direction of giving the same rights and privileges to women as to men; in this department, at all events, no one can grudge women their claim to c iua 1 \ o opportunity. The Railway Companies were induced to take up the matter, but not many arrangements of the sort desired were introduced, as it was found at that time that most women were sun, even when their garments permitted, too conservative or too awkward to appreciate the change. W e do not seem to find among the remains of antiquity a completely feminine statue presiding over a urinary stream, in part doubtless because a penis better lends itself to this de¬ vice, but largely because the erect position for urination was not at the period the traditional position. But we find a very near approach to it in a hermaphroditic statue of considerable artistic quality in the Capitoline Museum in Rome. It is 1 m. 20 in height and is placed on a pedestal in which there are three steps. The right thigh is slightly raised, probably to sup¬ port a shell or bowl born by the two hands which are extended forwards. Head, hair-dress, breasts, and contours, are en¬ tirely feminine, but the small sexual organs are ithyphallic, the penis transmitting a jet of water to fall into the shell or bowl. Behind and above the head is a lyre-like ornament ending above in a single horn which evidently acted as a conduit for the water. “Here we have a Manneken-Pis,” remark Amelung and Hiilsen, in communicating the facts to Reinach, “not the only one antiquity has bequeathed to us, but doubtless the only one of this type.” Reinach considers that the motive is Syrian or Alexandrian. 1 Among the abundant public fountains of southern Europe, largely of Renaissance origin and not seldom beautiful and ,, S; Reinach, Cultcs Mythes ct Religions, vol. ii. An illustration of the statuette is here given. Prof. Hans Licht has dealt with the indica tions of urination in Greek art (“Skatologishes in Griechenland ” Zt fur Sexmhmss March, 1927) and refers, for instance, to a vase in Berl n where a girl points to a scaph.on (the boat-shaped vessel used by women) which a handsome youth hastens to bring to her. y 1Cn ' 400 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. elaborate, we cannot expect to find much evidence of actual representation of the urinary stream. But the suggestion o such representation is common and sometimes very close, is well illustrated by Ammanati’s colossal Fontana de i e uno in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, a sixteenth cen ury work of the school of Giovanni da Bologna, the famous Douai sculptor. Here we see Neptune above, with Tritons, Nerei s, and Dolphins below. The Neptune shows a stream proceed¬ ing from between his legs just below the penis, though bubb¬ ling up rather than flowing down, and there are others around while one of the sea-goddesses has a dolphin from whose mouth pours a stream corresponding in size and curve to what her own might be and in some aspects appearing to come from her. At Bologna we may see in the Piazza del Nettuno a fountain by Giovanni himself (erected 1563-7) which, even more clearly than that of his pupil at Florence, suggests multiple urinary streams. The four Nereids at the ang es of the base send out streams from their breasts which their hands are squeezing, but between their thighs are dolphins which emit streams sideways from their mouths. Higher up at the angles of the pedestal on which Neptune stands four boys sit holding dolphins which emit streams from their mouths though from a side aspect they easily appear urinary. From Neptune’s feet spring four small jets rising as high as his head, but one of the jets strikes his penis and drips down thence. It seems evident that the sculptor de¬ sired to refrain from shocking the spectator’s modesty by too direct a representation of the urinary stream, while y et he has been constantly preoccupied with the effort to ap¬ proach as nearly as possible to such representation. Again at Bologna, in the fountain in the courtyard of the Palazzo Galvani (now the Museo Civico), I note the little boy who firmly puts forward his foot to press on the wine-skin resting on the pedestal between his legs, which sends up a curved stream such as little boys love to emit for themselves. Here, once more, we see the artist ob¬ viously inventing an ingenious method of attaining an end UNDINISM. 401 which he feels debarred from reaching by the direct and obvious method. 1 But it was sometimes reached and Falda represents the Fontana di Venere, a Baroque structure in Rome, with two children from whose sex organs large streams jet forth. It is worth while noting that the term “fountain” was used in connection with the human body at a very early period, possibly before Man began to make artificial foun¬ tains in the image of those of Nature. The human fountain gained significance at this early period because it had be¬ come the symbol of the sexual function to which it was so closely joined. This is clearly revealed in many passages of the Bible and other sacred writings of the Jews, as well as in the sayings of numerous peoples in various parts of the world. In Leviticus (Ch. 20: v. 18) we hear of uncov¬ ering a woman’s fountain,” by which is clearly meant the vulva. Elsewhere a woman herself is referred to as a “fountain.” Sarah was a cistern from which Israel flowed, and the heroine of the Song of Songs a fountain of living waters. Among the Romans, as well as in more remote lands, an identity between women and fountains is assumed. In men, also, the “stream” is likewise spoken of by the Hebrews and other peoples in a sense that was intended to express the seminal and procreative power. In the Talmud it is said: “His semen was like a running stream,” and the Romans also used the word “water” for semen 2 . The custom of regarding semen as “water,” or at all events of so speaking of it, is in¬ deed widespread, and we can scarcely help associating it with the belief that water itself may suffice to fertilize a woman. This belief is found as far away as New Guinea, and Mali- 1 Sadger refers to Hermann’s Brunnenbuberl and the Tugendbrunn at Nuremberg, where women send out streams from their breasts, as belonging to the same sphere of ideas. Occasional papers on scattered fountains have been written, and in 1675 G. B. Falda published a large illustrated work, Le Fontane di Roma, but a comprehensive and system¬ atic study of fountains seems never yet to have been attempted. 2 Ludwig Levy, “Die Sexualsymbolik der Bibel und des Talmuds,” Zt. f. Sexualwissenschaft, Nov., 1914. 26 402 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. nowski refers to a cycle of beliefs and ideas about reincar¬ nation in the Trobriand Islands which imply an association between the sea and spirit-children. Mature unmarried girls have to observe precautions, on this account, when bathing. There is, indeed, here believed to be an associa¬ tion between ordinary conception and bathing; the waiwaia (the embryo or river-incarnated spirit-child) most usually, it is thought, entering a woman while bathing. 1 2 3 It is not surprising that in connection with the sacred and mythological qualities of urine we should also find in nearly all stages of culture a tendency to attribute to it magic qualities. This may, for instance, be frequently noted in the legends of the Indians of the northwest coast. Thus in one of these a woman gives her lover some of her urine and says: “You may wake the dead if you drop some of my urine in their ears and nose.~ In Australia and among the now extinct Tasmanians, special virtues, it is said, were attributed to the urine of women. Among the Salish Indians of British Columbia, according to Hill Tout, in one story a young woman married to an owl begs to be allowed to come down from the tree to the earth to make water, and then escapes home, bidding her urine to tell her owl-husband that she is not yet ready to come up to him. Among the Tamans of Burma (who are considered to be probably of Chinese origin), “if a man wanted to turn him¬ self into a tiger he made water on the ground, stripped himself, and rolled in the earth he had wetted. He could then fight and kill other tigers. 4 1 Jour. Anth. Inst., vol. xlvi, 1916, p. 404. 2 Boas, Zt. fiir Ethnologic, 1894, Heft 4, p. 293. The power of urine is frequently referred to in these legends. They were collected among the Indians in British Columbia and the north Pacific Coast, and among the Eskimo, by Dr. Boas, and have so far been published in full only in German in the Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologic from 1891 to 1895. The editor of the yearly reports of the Washington Bureau of Eth¬ nology, Dr. Boas states, refused to publish these innocent and primitive stories, which are of much scientific value, in full, as being unsuited to the character of that publication. A sad confession! 3 Hill Tout, Jour. Anth. Inst., July-Dee., 1904, p. 347. 4 R. Grant Brown, Jour. Anth. Inst., vol. xli, 1911, p. 306. UNDINISM. 403 In Morocco, Westermarck, in his Ritual and Belief in Morocco , enumerates many magical properties of urine, and there are all sorts of occasions, times, and ways in which urination must be avoided by good Moslems. The Jews, who have devoutly preserved so many an¬ cient beliefs, have attached many magic properties to urine. As among all peoples, says Ludwig Blau, it plays an import¬ ant part among them. “It breaks every charm. Forty-day- old urine, if a little glass of it is drunk, heals wasp’s sting,” and larger doses produce still more powerful effects. “Old peoples urinated on everything which they believed to be dangerously enchanted.” Simon ben Jochai is quoted as saying that “there are four things which God hates and which I do not love: to enter one’s house suddenly; to hold the penis in the hand when urinating; to urinate naked before one’s bed; and to exercise coitus in the pres¬ ence of another person.” All these things are connected with magic, and for the same reason to urinate in prayer¬ time destroys the prayer’s efficacy, and holy books must not be used in the presence of urine unless a little water is first thrown into it. 1 2 In the sixteenth century Bodin quoted the case of a girl belonging to a village near Constance who, annoyed at not being invited to a village wedding and dance, went to a hill near by (transported thither by the Devil, it was be¬ lieved), made a hole, urinated into it, and uttered a certain magic formula. So at all events the neighbors believed, and a hailstorm which followed and caused the dancers to return home, was attributed to her machinations. The un¬ fortunate girl, suspected to be a witch, was compelled to confess, and was burnt alive.~ In Germany a newly mar¬ ried young woman will still sometimes pass a little of her urine into her husband’s coffee, believing that she will 1 Ludwig Blau, Das AItjiidische Zauberwesen , 1898, p. 162. Many examples of urinary magic are also brought together by Geza Roheim (“Das Selbst,” Imago , 1921, p. 17) who seeks to interpret it psycho- analytically. 2 Bodin, De la Demonomanie, 1593, Bk. ii, p. 220. PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 404 thereby intensify his love, and bind him to her forever. 1 Even among educated people a belief in the mysterious powers of the act of urination seems sometimes to survive in a playful form, and Stekel mentions a mother at Vienna who said to her little boy as she urinated: “Don’t look or you will become blind.” 2 At the present day in Europe it would seem to be among the Southern Slavs that are to be found the most prevalent and various ancient customs concerning the mys¬ terious power of urine and the act of urination still actively subsisting. As a kind of holy water, as a sort of initiatory rite, as a tabu, as a magical stimulus to vegetation and pro¬ creation, as a method of effecting harm or preventing harm —all the various beliefs concerning the potency of urine and the significance of the urinary act seem here to flourish, while there are many occasions in life when it is necessary to exert the influence of urination or to carefully refrain from doing so. 3 The belief in supernatural beings closely associated with streams, so easily developed among primitive peoples of mythopceic mind, greatly flourished in Europe. It was not by any means always, or even frequently, associated with the idea of urination, though, as we have seen, there is a natural tendency to associate the physiological aspects of water with its more cosmic aspects, and in myth, as still in dreams, the act of urination may easily be the source of a mighty stream; an early example is furnished by the dream of Astyages, King of the Medes, as narrated by Herodotus, in which that monarch imagined he saw his 1 Wittlich, “Sexualitat im Zigeunerleben,” Ztbltt fiir Menschen- kunde , 1925, Heft 8, p. 369. Bourke in his Scatalogic Rites has collected much material that bears on the supposed magic qualities of urine, this material being still further increased in the German translation, Der Unrat by Krauss and Ihm. 2 Jahrbnch f. psychoanalytische Forschungen , Bd. i, 1909, p. 484. But, it must be remembered, it is an ancient and familiar notion that blindness is the punishment for seeing any forbidden thing. 3 The condensed summary of these beliefs and practices by Dr. Krauss occupies many pages of Bourke, Krauss and Ihm, Der Unrat, Section LX. UNDINISM. 405 daughter, Mandane, inundate the whole of Asia by the stream of her urine; in the version of Ktesias, which, as Rank remarks, is more probable, the dream is ascribed to Mandane herself when already pregnant with Cyrus; it is typical alike of the process of dreaming and of a common primitive conception of rivers and floods. 1 In several parts of the world it is believed that the first woman created the sea by urination. There is, indeed, reason to believe that the ancient legends, already mentioned, concerning a primitive flood drowning the world—of which Noah’s flood with his ark is the familiar Biblical representative—are really connected with primi¬ tive dreams, and associated myths, of urination. This view appears to have been put forth both by Stucker and by W. Schultz, but it has been most elaborately developed from the psycho-analytic side, especially by Otto Rank, in the paper, already quoted, on the stratification of symbols in mythic thought, and his wide-ranging discussion of the subject seems to make this view probable. In accordance with his conception of symbols as falling into parallel lay¬ ers, Rank finds that a sexual and generative idea may also be concealed in such myths, with the significance of birth from the water, and in Hebrew (Rank states) the same word is used both for Noah’s ark and for the ark in which the infant Moses was found in the Nile. In some legendary literature the act of urination has a more simple human basis as furnishing an occasion for competition in trials of skill. Thus in an ancient version of the Ulster legend of Cuchulinn we are told how such a contest had fatal results for Derbforgaill whom that great 1 Herodotus, Bk. i, Ch. CVII. In the sixteenth century Moyen de Parvenir Beroalde de Verville records a French legend of a woman who, having obtained a magical promise that she would be able to spend the whole day on what she began doing in the morning, resolved to have a good day’s washing, but having taken what she considered the wise pre¬ caution of first going into her yard to urinate, it was in that act that she was compelled to pass the day, thus becoming the source of a great stream. This suggests a more primitive version of Goethe’s “Der Zauberlehrling,” which Dukas has put to music. 406 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. hero had given in marriage to his page Lugaid. “One day towards the end of winter there was a great fall of snow, and the men made a pillar of snow. The women went to the pillar and hit upon this device: ‘We will make water on the pillar to see which of us can melt it most. She will be best among us who is able to penetrate it through. They could not succeed in doing this. Then they called Derbforgaill for her to try. At first she would not for she was not foolish. But nevertheless she mounted on the pillar and melted it to the earth. When the men heard of this they could not endure her superiority over the others.” The conclusion was tragic; they mutilated her so that she died, and her husband also died, of grief, at the sight of her, whereupon Cuchulinn made a great slaughter fn re¬ venge for her death and sang over her a song. 1 In the great Irish epic, again, Queen Medb, at the head of her army fought for three days and nights with no chance of making water. At last she felt that she could hold it no longer. “ ‘Do thou, Fergus/ she said, ‘undertake a shield-shelter in the rear of the men of Erin till I let my water flow from me/ ‘By my troth/ replied Fergus, “tis an ill hour for thee to be taken so/ ‘Howbeit, there is no help for me/ Medb answered; ‘for I shall not live if I do not void water/ Fergus accord¬ ingly came and raised a shield-shelter in the rear of the men of Erin. Medb voided her water, so that it made three large dikes, so that a mill could find room in each. Hence the place is now known as Fual Medbha (Medb’s water)/ 2 Far away in a myth of the Salish Indians of British Colum¬ bia, given by Hill Tout, a contest between males is de¬ scribed as to which could urinate furthest and highest, 1 Zimmer, “Keltische Beitrage,” Zt. f. dcutsches Alterthum, Bd. 32, 1888, p. 218. Rhys considered that Derbforgaill (“the drop glistening in the sun”) was originally a goddess of dawn and dusk. I have elsewhere ( Studies , vol. v, Erotic Symbolism, p. 53) referred to a folk-tale of Picardy (again a somewhat Celtic region) telling how a princess worried the King, her father, by urinating high over hay-cocks, but became unable to perform this feat when she was finally seduced. 2 Tain Bo Cualgne. Translated by J. Dunn, p. 360, 1914. UNDINISM. 407 the victor, a shaman doctor, being able to make his stream rise over the mountain top. 1 Thus in the ancient Celtic world 2 we clearly find the physiological mystery of urine blended with the meteoro- logic mystery of rain and streams. In the mythology of the Slavs and Teutons, the physiological seems to recede, how¬ ever it may subsist in the unconscious, but the fascination of water as a mythic motive is all the more strongly pro¬ nounced. In pagan Germany it was believed that Heaven and Earth were formed from Water, the source of all Being, and would return to Water. The souls, that come out of springs of water at birth, would return to them at death. The water was also the clouds, and it was sometimes thought that Holda, the water-goddess, dwelt in the clouds. 3 It is notable that the associations of water in Nature-myths 1 Jour. Anth. Inst., July-Dee., 1904, p. 361. It may not be out of place to remark here that the old legends of vesical competitions, even though they may be the vestigial degradations of primitive religious myths, still possess an element of truth to human nature today. I have been told of a high class English ladies’ school where the elder girls— who, we may be sure, have never heard of Derbforgaill or the folk¬ tales of Picardy—were accustomed to engage in contests of urinary skill. On Saturday afternoons (a lady who was a pupil there states) the girls would buy chocolates, pool them, and engage in a trial of skill which consisted in attempting to perform the feat of urinating in the erect position into a bottle placed on the floor. The victor in the contest was entitled to carry off the chocolates. Quite similar contests of women were formerly held (I hear from a Belgian lady) at village Kcrmesscs in Belgium, but have now fallen into disuse. Reference is made to this old custom in Anthropophyteia, vol. x, p. 372, “In’t fleshken pissen.” There were two bottles in a case with funnels in them and the two competing women stood at a distance; the woman who most nearly filled her bottle carried off the prize. Men were not allowed to be present. The game is illustrated by figures in the Museum of Folk-lore at Antwerp. The spontaneous appearance of such manifestations at all stages of both barbarism and civilization indicates that they are rooted in human nature and must not be dismissed as marks of obscenity. 2 It need scarcely be said that the worship of water and water spirits in Europe is much older than Celtic times. Dechelette ( Manuel d’Archeologie, 1910, vol. ii, Part II, p. 452) quotes Gaidoz and Dottier to show that the nymphs of the waters in which ex-votos have been found in Gaul (Aventia, Divona, Ura, etc.) are seldom Celtic. 3 H. Pfannenschmid, Das Wcihwasser, 1869, p. 99. See also as re¬ gards water-spirits in primitive Germany, Gummere, Germanic Origins , pp. 398 et seq. 408 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. are chiefly with women and feminine spirits. 1 Not only among the Teutons and Celts is this so, but also among the Slavs, and the Russian Rusalkas are figures of much poetic charm though apt to be malicious. The Serbian Veele (Vela in the singular) are water nymphs of even greater charm and less malice. Traces of their worship may still be found in Serbia where they play a large part in superstitions. Ser¬ bian bards from the fourteenth century to the present day have glorified the Veele, describing them as beautiful and eternally young, robed in the finest white gauze, with shim¬ mering golden hair flowing over their snow-white bosoms; their voices are sweet and they love dancing and sometimes bear bows and arrows; they can be kind and helpful to men but are cruel if offended or irritated. 2 There was one type of water-maiden in whom the se¬ ductiveness, and the risks, of water were especially em¬ bodied. In modern literature she was given final classic shape in the figure of Lorelei. But the same figure appears in old German legends and in the tradition of allied or neighboring northern peoples under a great variety of dif¬ ferent names. Holmberg describes the slight variations of this water-maiden among numerous related peoples of Finno-Ugrian race and recognizes a probable or certain Germanic (or Slav) influence. The water-maiden is gener¬ ally seen, on the rocks or in the shade of a tree, combing with a golden comb her long golden or sometimes black or occasionally red hair. She is very beautiful and usually naked, though she may be dressed in white or more gorg¬ eous raiment. She may sing or dance, but she is shy and 1 Jacob Grimm ( Deutsche MytJiologie, 4th ed., vol. i, pp. 405 et seq. and English translation, Teutonic Mythology, vol. ii, pp. 583 et seq) deals with the German veneration of water and water-spirits which were nearly all feminine, though the Romans possessed river-gods. No male spirit of the Rhine is mentioned in ancient tradition. See also Mullen- hoff ( Deutsche Altertumskunde, vol. v, 1908, p. 106), who mentions that Asinius Pollio, one of the first witnesses for German antiquity, states that the wise women of Germany prophesied from the eddies of streams —so that wisdom, knowledge, and foresight dwelt in water. 2 Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, pp. 139 et seq; W. M. Petrovitch, Hero Talcs and Legends of the Serbians, 1914, pp. 16 et seq. UNDINISM. 409 speedily disappears in the water when seen by human eyes. But she has been known to love and even to marry men. She is found with different names among the Ostiaks, Wotiaks, Esths, Finns, Hungarians, and allied peoples. 1 In modern times this fascination has been embodied and per¬ petuated in the feminine figure of the Undine. The name Undine was used for water-nymphs in the sixteenth century by Paracelsus, in his Liber de Nymphis, Sylphis, Pygnuzis et Salamandris. The Undines had an erotic tinge. The earliest legends concerning them tell of their unions to human lovers of whom they were so jealous that they disappeared for ever to return to their own element immediately the lover became unfaithful, and H. Ehrlich believes that many a mediaeval story of Undines had be¬ hind it a real abbess or nun or noble maiden. It was Para¬ celsus s book which offered the suggestion which has made the name Undine famous as a designation for water-nymph, and especially a fourteenth century story of the Knight of Stauffenberg and a lovely Undine, met on a rock, who gave herself to him on condition he should never marry a human woman, lest he die. But at last he was persuaded to marry a king’s niece, whereupon the Undine left him with the warning that he would see a naked foot as a sign of his fate. At a feast a wondrously lovely woman’s foot ap¬ peared through an opening in the ceiling, and three days thereafter the knight died. 2 This legend touched the imag¬ ination of Friedrich, Baron de la Motte Fouque (born in Brandenburg in 1777) who belonged to an old French family of Huguenot refugees which had entered the service of the King of Prussia, and in the spring of 1811 appeared Undine which has never since failed to find readers. The peculiarities of those human water-folk with whom I am here concerned I propose to call by the rather arbitrary but convenient name of Undinism. , VF?? Die Wassergottheiten der Finisch-Ugrischen Vol- ker ’ B?' sl " k )’.i 913 ’ PP- 40 > 6S . 67, 98, 166, 173, 203, 204, 259. 2 W. Pfeiffer, Ueber Fouqne's Undine, 1903. We have so far been mainly concerned with the psychic influence of water in general, and urination in particular, on the normal life of humanity in the more primitive stages of culture, together with their extensions into civilization. We have seen that interest in the act of urination, and in urine as a sacred and even magical manifestation of the natural qualities of water, is deeply based on a biological foundation which finds its expression in custom, ritual, and belief. As civilization progresses that influence tends to become, on the one hand more secluded, more transmuted, if not altogether suppressed, while, on the other hand, against the background of this increasing obscurity of urinary psychology, it begins to be seen that in certain individuals the primitive and infantile importance of water in general and urination in particular con¬ tinues beyond puberty into adult life. This may happen either by delayed or inhibited development of the psycho-sexual activities, which normally replace or conceal these earlier mani¬ festations, or by incomplete substitution of the former for the latter, so that the merely subordinate position which the earlier interests normally tend to maintain in the adult, even in the sexual sphere with which they are intimately associated, be¬ comes unusually prominent, or else by inhibition or decay of the later activities appears as a regression to the earlier stage of de¬ velopment. This may be regarded as an infantile psychic con¬ dition because in civilization this tendency is found in the most marked and the most normal form among children. For chil¬ dren are nearer to primitive modes of thinking and primitive culture than are adults. In this way they habitually reveal primitive tendencies which in civilized adults are usually, though not always, transformed, submerged, or altogether lost, save, it may be, in the unconscious. Stanley Hall who, by the fruitful exploration he instituted, has opened up so many archaic strata in the psychic constitu- (410) UNDINISM. 411 tion of childhood, could not fail to come across this prevalent aspect of children s customs and rituals, however concealed as a secret mystery, and duly referred to it; he considered that it culminated at the age of ten or twelve, that is to say at the eve of puberty. 1 But he never dealt with the subject in detail or published the data at his command. The lacuna still re¬ mains unfilled. But it is easy from observation, from memories of childhood, and from the fragmentary incidents recorded in sexual histories, or similarly obtainable, to form a picture of the psychic activities which in childhood center in the act of urina¬ tion. Dr. H. von Hug-Hellmuth, from the psycho-analytic side, in her Study of the Mental Life of the Child, gave a number of details bearing on this point. 2 Tausk, again, stated that in his experience the sexual life of children at the latent period bears especially the character of a desire to see the pro¬ cess of excretion, and that this bodily function, since it invites an association with the genitals in a way corresponding to the child’s knowledge and to the necessities of the educational en¬ vironment, supplies the greater part of the sexual fantasies of the latent period. 3 The exploration of this matter could not fail to com¬ mend itself to psycho-analytic investigators. The first im-* portant step was taken by Sadger, one of Freud’s chief adherents, in 1910. 4 Freud had attached much importance to the already recognized fact that the anus—normally in chil¬ dren and occasionally in adults—is a sexually erogenous re¬ gion and had developed the idea that the individuals in whom p. 116; ib. “Early Sense of 1 G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence, vol. i, Self,” Am. Jour. Psych., Ap. 1898, p. 361. - English translation by James Putnam and Mabel Stevens, Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series , No. 29, Washington. See espe¬ cially pp. 26, 29, 39, 49, 91. She refers to the pleasurable interest of young children in the emptying of the bath tub and the gurgling of bath water, and believes that fondness for water means a strong urethral eroticism. 3 V. Tausk, Int. Zt. f. Aerts. Psychoanalyse, Sept., 1913. He gives dreams of an intelligent boy of 10 showing a desire to visit the w. c of the girls at the mixed school he attended. 4 J. Sadger, “Ueber Urethralerotik,” Jahrbuch fur Psychoanalytische Forschungen, Bd. ii, 1910, pp. 409-450. 3 C 412 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. this is most markedly the case tended to show a mental type with special psychic peculiarities so that it seemed possible to speak of anal eroticism (anal-erotik) A Sadger started from this point and proceeded to argue that there is a corresponding urethral eroticism ( urethral-crotik ) or, as a synonym, Urinary Eroticism (Ham-erotik ). He uses this term in a wide sense, to cover not only the urethra and urine but the erogenity of the whole peripheral urinary apparatus from the bladder to the external urethral orifice. At and shortly before puberty urethral eroticism not seldom presents the type of the whole later sexual life, even though infantile urinary eroticism is normally only a natural transition from one secretion to another secretion; and, similarly, urinary irregularities (like spermator¬ rhea and coitus interruptus) may be transferred from the urin¬ ary sphere. “Sexual neurasthenia,” also, in Sadger’s opinion, is fundamentally more a disturbance of the urinary than of the sexual functions, and Maximilian Steiner, the Viennese urologist, informed Sadger that his sexual neurasthenics com¬ plain less of disturbed sexuality than of disturbed urinary functions. 1 2 Urethral eroticism, Sadger argued, extends to the highest psychic sphere. It is in the regulation of the urinary and bowel functions that duty first appears to the infant. In well-bred children this duty may be imposed and obeyed before they have completed their first year. So that on the basis of this conception of Sadger’s it may be said that the moral attitude of adult life has a primary urethro-anal basis, and that children to whom these urethro-anal inhibitions are difficult will find difficulty in adjusting themselves to the normal moral attitude. In any case, children who at the third year or later have not been brought to accept this elementary duty are, Sadger found, for the most part decided urethral eroticists, and may also become anally erotic. They are often, even in early life, obliged to urinate fre- 1 S. Freud, “Charakter und Analerotik,” Sammhing kleiner Schriften zur Ncuroscnlchre, Second Series, 1909, pp. 132-137. 2 Sadger finds that urethral eroticism is, in a certain sense, hereditary; its subjects often descend from fathers with urinary troubles, and their mothers are specially interested in the subject, being apt to attend to the children’s wants in this matter even when the children are quite old enough to attend to themselves. UNDINISM. 413 quently, and this may be associated with polyuria, so that they have frequent occasion to realize how pleasurable urination and its product may be. This frequency may approach incontinence and continue to later years. For urethral-erotic children urine, as such, even when not in large amount, works erogenously, and this may occur also even in normal persons. Pathological enuresis only occurs Tiff Pleasure in urination is abnormally heightened. These children like to interrupt and so prolong the act. Wetting their own bodies is a great pleasure; for this reason they wet their clothes- one patient of Sadger’s still likes to urinate in his hand. There is significance also in an abnormally precocious irritability of the corpora cavernosa by the restrained urine, and this may lead to retention. The normal morning erections may be attributed to the action of the full bladder on the nervi erigentes. This may occur even in infants, and Sadger believes that small children may learn to practice retention for the sake of an erection which they find pleasurable. Such habitually exercised retention may be a prelude to later masturbation. It is also etiologically related to psychic impotence. The special pleasure of urination to such children is seen in the expression of the face—often a stupid, half mentally absent expres¬ sion, peculiar to the orgasm—and the spurting of the urine on their own bodies, and later onto the bodies of beloved persons. A child likes to show his love by urinating on a beloved person—parents, nurses, brothers and sisters. It is very seldom that a child urinates on anyone he dislikes. This may not only be observed, but may be recalled by some persons from their ow-n early memories. This view is confirmed, it may here be added, by Emil Schultze-Malkowsky (“Der Sexuelle Trieb im Kindesalter,” Gcschleclit und Gesellschaft, Bd. 11 , Heft 8, p. 372) who tells of a little girl of 7 who liked to' persuade her favorite girl companions to go on all fours and be horses for her to ride on their necks with naked thighs. With special friends she would ride backwards, leaning forward to embrace the body impulsively, pressing the neck tightly with her thighs and urinating, a kind of instinctive symbol of detumescence. This im¬ pulse is sometimes retained in adult life, and McGillicuddy, in his Disorders of the Nervous System in Women, refers to a married lady who always had an uncontrollable expulsion of urine in the marital act, whereby her husband was disgusted and desisted from coitus; nothing of the kind ever occurred at any other time. The notion that coitus consists in urination, Sadger describes as the child’s “classical” theory. Some children who are usually clean in their habits have occa¬ sional attacks of enuresis at night or even in the day. Sadger finds 414 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. that this occurs at periods of sexual excitement. The more active the child’s sexuality the later it is in acquiring cleanliness. The child regards urine as a sexual product, and Sadger believes that the sexual over-valuation of urine (together with anal erotic ideas) is also at the basis of the urinary and faecal therapy revealed by folk¬ lore. The fact that girls often wet themselves when laughing or crying or in states of nervous anxiety may perhaps be connected with a frequent association of giggling and nervousness with sexual thoughts and situations. (In boys and men anxiety more frequently affects the bowels, and recruits in their first battle often defecate in their trousers.) So also abnormal ticklishness in girls is not seldom associated with urinary eroticism, and they may not only urinate when tickled under the arms, but take pleasure in urinating on their own limbs. Sadger brings forward the case of a urinary eroticist, a man also subject to obsessions, who when a child and in great excitement or fear would urinate and thus procure enjoyment and consolation. Now, when sad or depressed, he masturbates or has coitus with his wife and thus attains the same ends. This man when a child would wet himself in bed in a half-sleeping state, not clearly realizing where he was. He married a girl who was also of strongly urinary erotic disposition. She wetted the bed when young and still some¬ times dreams that she wants to do so but must not now that she is married and in bed with her husband; on waking she finds that she has passed a few drops. Their two children are also urinary eroticists. The little girl, when only two years of age, was very fond of her father; she once took his portrait to bed with her, made water on it, and said that is what she would like to do to her father. If her father takes her out and leaves her for a little while she will wet her drawers, if he leaves her for a few weeks, on his return she will wet the bed. The contact of the urine with her thigh (as is the case with her father) seems to give her much pleasure. She likes her father or mother to tickle her and especially likes her father to tickle her neck. It is very difficult to make her urinate in the proper place; she much prefers to do it in her drawers or in bed, in spite of all threats of punishment. Her little brother behaves very similarly and likes to urinate from the bed in a long stream, if possible onto his mother whom he is very fond of. Freud had recognized the sexual associations of enuresis in children. Bleuler further showed that in some insane patients (schizophrenia or dementia precox) there is a connection be¬ tween sexuality and wetting the bed, and he added that this relation is often so plain that asylum attendants had noticed it UNDINISM. 415 ong before Freud. We here see an exaggerated form of the normal tendency of sexual emotion in healthy women to pro¬ duce a desire to urinate, and even occasionally actual involun¬ tary urination. Bleuler refers to one of his katatonic female patients who, when it was reported that she had again wetted the bed, was asked why she did it in bed. The usually torpid pa¬ tient laughed, gesticulated, and pronounced the name of Dr. N. hen asked what Dr. N. had to do with it she replied with a laugh, and an acutely sexual expression on her face: “Nothing; but when I dream of Dr. N. then I pee (brunzle) him.”*’ Healy records the interesting case in Chicago of a girl of 15 who was normal and healthy in childhood, but developed pre- matui ely at 12, menstruating and experiencing strong sexual feelings leading to masturbation. She was an attractive, neatly dressed girl, and was proud and concealed her sex feelings and practices. But her repressions broke out in all sorts of violent and destructive as well as thievish conduct at home, with “free fights,” so that some thought she must be weak-minded or mad. At the same time began the enuresis of which earlier there had been no trace. It was clearly the expression of repressed sexual emotion in a vigorous girl whose uncongenial and unsympathe¬ tic home offered no normal outlet for her emotions. When last seen she was passing out of this phase, and constantly im¬ proving, though doubtless still indulging at times in masturba- tion. * 2 It is interesting to remember, in connection with the close association between urination and sexual emotion in women, that in young children vesical excitement and genital excite¬ ment (whether or not accompanied by any feelings that could properly be called sexual) tend to be associated even in boys. Thus Max Flesch, discussing the sexuality of childhood, re¬ marks that in male infants the erections that sometimes take place may be followed by a jet of urine. He regards this as mo' p * 643 r ’ Jahrhuch fiir F sychoamlytische Forschungen, vol. ii, 2 W. Healy, Mental Conflicts and Misconduct, 1917, pp. 236-42. PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 416 having nothing to do with “sexuality” in the adult sense but as “an expression of the original connection between the uropoietic and genital apparatus before the division of the centers has taken place.” 1 It may be added that if we can rely on the experiments of Guyon on the controlling influence of the nervi erigentes over the bladder, both sensory and motor, there must always be a close connection between genital and vesical action. Sadger recognized the difficulty of distinguishing between the urinary and the sexual spheres and considered that pleas¬ ure associated with the former may easily belong to the un¬ developed sexual sphere. (Or, as Freudians would now say, it belongs to the large “Lust” group which is only called “sexual ’ in a broad sense). But he insisted on the typical pleasure asso¬ ciated with urine and the urinary act. He realized also—and this brings his observations into close connection with the con¬ ception of Undinism here presented—the intimate association of the interest in urine with the interest in water generally. “The love of so many children for anything connected with water shows plainly how widespread urethral eroticism is. He re¬ fers to their delight in sprinkling water, or playing with soda- water syphons, etc., as all related to urination. He is further inclined to see a sublimation of urinary eroticism in the choice of sports like swimming and boating. A similar sublimation, already discussed in the previous section, may be seen in art, especially in the fountain. The act of urination in children up to the age of six, and sometimes even beyond, occasionally in the adult, may be in¬ voluntary. But, we see, it may be exercised voluntarily, or in a semi-voluntary way, not from real need but as an expression of feeling, and for the relief of repressed emotions. Thus Frank tells of an intelligent little girl of six who began to wet the bed at the age of three when she found that her younger brother was being preferred to her by their father. Her mother took her away to travel and the enuresis disappeared, i Max Flesch, Sexual-Probleme, Oct., 1911, p. 694. UNDINISM. 417 but it came on again with the arrival of the father. When Frank talked to her in a friendly way, she was at first surprised at his explanation, that she was finding a compensation for her father’s neglect, but afterwards agreed with him and cured herself. 1 . Ferenczi refers to a hysterical woman whose sexual ioug its in childhood were especially concerned with the idea o er father urinating. 2 Federn considers that when in child¬ hood there is an unduly prolonged retention of urine, with con¬ sequent excitement, anxiety, and eventually shame, we have a source of masochism ; 3 but this seems very doubtful. Stekel has given considerable attention to urinary psychology, much insisting on its sexual associations. Following Raymond and Janet (in Les Obsessions) and later Freud, he regards nocturnal enuresis as corresponding to a pollution. He considers that micturition is the common ending of auto-erotic activity in childhood; that is to say that “orgasm first appears in the streaming of urine.” He believes that nocturnal enuresis thus becomes comprehensible. He adds that “enuresis beyond phy¬ siological limits only occurs when the feeling of pleasure in urination is notably heightened.”* The analogy between or¬ gasm and micturition has suggested the possibility of continu¬ ing this genetic origin into later sexual intercourse. The only contribution that can here be furnished comes from a cor¬ respondent who is known to me, as also his wife who is of undinist temperament: “This was first suggested to me by a servant girl with whom I had connection when a boy, as she said she imagined the sensation of the fluid running into her body would be pleas¬ ant. I ma de no attempt to do this at the time but later, in !, If' Frank, 1 out Liebes-und Sexualleben, vol. i, p. 110. Halfte, C iC n p Z 455 ahrbUCh Psychoanal ytische Forschungen, 1909, Bd. i, 4 p U dertzliche Psychoanalyse, March, 1914. sexualitiit.” Julf.S', urinating, the enuresis becoming a substitute for th/sex act. 8 27 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 418 manhood, I tried it with another girl. It was done on this occasion by starting the stream before entering for I can micturate during erection which I believe some [it should be said most] men find impossible. It never occurred to me to do this again until my wife spoke of it as an act that she thought could not be accomplished. I was able to show her that it was quite possible, in my case at any rate. This time it was done after intromission. I had to fix my mind on the operation and im¬ agine I was urinating in the ordinary way in the chamber utensil, as I have to do when I am in the presence of men, being shy in the company of my own sex. I was balked to some de¬ gree by my lady talking during my efforts, but on getting her to keep silence and concentrating my mind in the way I have in¬ dicated the stream at last came. She was unconscious of the inrush of the urine until a sense of fulness apprised her of my success. I think, with constant practice, this might be more easy.” It may be noted here that Ferenczi has put forward the view that coitus is made up of two factors; a discharging factor (urethral eroticism) and a retaining factor (anal eroticism). Coitus is thus regarded as an amphimixis of these two ero¬ ticisms. 1 But apart from the objection (brought forward by Tansley) that we have here an illegitimate use of Weismann’s term, this view is to be rejected. To explain one specific func¬ tion by reference to two other specific functions having com¬ pletely different objects, is purely fanciful. It casts no illumi¬ nation whatever on the nature of the sexual impulse. When we turn to adults the phenomena we are here con¬ cerned with seem to occur more frequently in women than in men, probably because psychic sexual activity under ci\ il- ized conditions is often developed later in women than in men and partly because the internal moral censorship inculcated in women tends to press more heavily in the sexual than in the urinary sphere, so that the imagination has more scope in the latter, while at the same time vesical needs are often more 1 Ferenczi, Versttch einer Genitaltheorie , Int. Psych. Bib., Bd. XV, 1924. UNDINISM. 419 urgent in women and social impediments to their gratification more numerous, so that feminine interest in the matter becomes more acute. Stekel considers that there are elements of urolagnia in about 20 per cent, normal adults. 1 2 3 But he recog¬ nizes that it is specially frequent in women, and if we con¬ sider women separately it seems to me that we ought to double that percentage. Kind, who holds that the micturition of the female is as a rule attractive to the male, in man as in other mammals, believes that only men experience urolagnia be¬ cause only women are liable to urinate during sexual excite¬ ment;- but not only is the statement completely false but the reason assigned for it has an entirely opposite significance, for if women possess the impulse to urinate at the time of sexual desire, that is simply another way of saying that they experience urolagnia. We are here in the presence of an in¬ timate expression of one of the peculiarly pleasurable associa¬ tions which water has for women: “Why do all women dip their hands in the water when they are in a boat?” asks one of the characters in a novel of Madame Colette’s and she at¬ tempts to deal with the problem.^ A fairly typical example of the urolagnic impulse within normal limits in a normal woman, and extending into old age, is recorded by Margarethe Petersen of Copenhagen in a married lady of her acquaintance, then aged 77. She liked, although saying she felt a little “ashamed” of the practice, to urinate on orange or apple rinds, enjoying the fragrant odor. She also liked going into the kitchen, turning on the tap, and then urinating with great 1 Psychosexueller Infantilismus, p. 182. Stekel remarks that “un¬ satisfied people especially women, must often urinate. Micturition is often pertormed by adults as a sort of substitute for coitus • and he mentions a married woman who is indifferent to coitus but who experiences a powerful orgasm when her husband urinates on her so that she almost loses consciousness. * 2 A. Kind, Die Weiberherrschaft in dcr Geschichte dcr Menschheit Erganzungsband, p 288. Kind himself inconsistently goes on to point out that the urethral opening in women, being close to the clitoris is an endogenous zone, so that urination is necessarily a pleasurable action in women. Pitres and Regis (Pror. Moscow hit. Med. Congress, vol. iv p. 19) consider that the desire to urinate always accompanies spontaneous* sexual excitement in women. *^ cuus 3 Colette, L'Entrave , p. 135. PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 420 pleasure. When pregnant she had always wanted to make water when she heard a stream of water falling. 1 here is a Narcisstic element combined with this urolagnia, and she is proud of still possessing beautiful legs. 1 To the special reasons why women should be more in¬ terested in urination than are men is to be added the fact that they are peculiarly liable to involuntary urination even apart from any sexual stimulation. Taylor and Watt estimate that 8 per cent, nulliparous women suffer from a disagreeable de¬ gree of urinary incontinence. This fact is also clearly demon¬ strated by statistical observations under nitrous oxide anes¬ thesia. Dr. Silk found that in 5000 cases among which the sexes were almost equal in number, involuntary micturition oc¬ curred only four times in males but twenty-three times in females; moreover only one of the males was an adult, but sixteen of the females were adults. 2 This tendency of women to involuntary micturition seems to be generally recognized, even outside of Europe, and in the Arabian Nights we are told of a sheik who promises to Haroun-al- Raschid’s Vizier a slave who will be so devoted to him that after his death when weeping over his body she will not be able to refrain from urinating on his face and beard. 2 The same liability occurs in sleep. Thus a friend, an un¬ married woman, dreamed, after having drunk several cups of tea late in the evening and also being rather worried, that she was talking to two men friends about an agitating and difficult mission she imagined she had to accomplish, which involved crossing the sea; in the course of this conversation she seemed, without any embarrassment, to draw a chamber vessel from under the bed and urinate into it. At this moment she was i M Petersen, “Harnerotik einer Greisin,” Zentralblatt f. Psycho¬ analyse,'July-Aug., 1912, p. 605. The case is here regarded, as one of ‘•infantile repression,” which is dearly incorrect since there is no reason to suppose it was not life-long, and as an ‘ obsession, which is Communicated by Dr. Silk, Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, 6th ed., p. 372. It is noteworthy that the liability to involuntary defecation was equally shared by the sexes. .. 3 Mardrus, Les Mille Nuits et line Nutt, vol. vn, p. 161. UNDINISM. 421 awakened, it seemed to her, by the sound of the falling stream, and found that she was lying on her side with legs drawn up; she got out of bed and made water copiously but discovered that she had previously begun to wet the bed. This would scarcely occur to a man. ti An interest in masculine urination is not necessarily urolagnia. “A Neapolitan dancer belonging to the San Carlo theater, and about twenty years of age, once told me,” writes a Russian correspondent who has long lived in Italy, “that one of her favorite pleasures was to look at gentlemen making water in public urinals. I asked her how long she had thus amused herself. “Why, ever since I was a child, da bambino" When my attention was thus drawn to the mat¬ ter, I was able to observe that in Italy young girls cast inquisitive eyes at the occupied urinals they pass. (This is easy in Italy where public conveniences are usually open.) Women of a certain age generally pay no attention. The most eager voycuses are girls be¬ tween twelve and fifteen. As regards urinals, I have noticed that, as a general rule, girls the more readily gaze at this spectacle the lower the social class they belong to. The great majority of better- class girls, after they reach the age of ten or twelve, turn their faces away when they pass the urinal. Girls of the very lowest class, that which dresses in rags, stare at the virile organ with cynical insist¬ ence, stand still to see better, turn round, laugh, and sometimes talk about it aloud among themselves. Girls of the more respectable low class watch for a favorable moment, cast a furtive glance, and only gaze attentively when they believe they are not observed. Often they adopt ruses; having noticed the male organ as they walk past the urinal, they will suddenly turn back as though they had for¬ gotten something and gaze at the object a second time. Or else when a few paces from the urinal, they will stop before a shop- window as though admiring the objects exposed there, but all the while looking out of the corners of their eyes at the object which really interests them. I once saw a little girl of about twelve stand for perhaps an hour before a poster announcing a representation of d Annunzio’s Figlia di Jorio, apparently absorbed in reading the an¬ nouncement but really devouring with her eyes the penes of the men who succeeded one another in the urinal beside her. Usually the erotic excitement of the young girls was manifested by signs that were not doubtful: Their eyes grew bright, their cheeks became colored or pale, their lips trembled. This excitement seems to be stronger if they see the organ erect with the glans uncovered. Once a young girl of about fourteen passed a urinal in which I was almost brushing me as she passed, but not seeing the organ, owing 422 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. to the angle; after passing she turned back, and could then see what before was hidden; this produced such an impression on her t a she could not repress an exclamation, and with haggard eyes she pressed her left hand to her heart. All the Italian prostitutes to whom I have spoken of the matter, confess that during childhood and early youth the spectacle of urinals has been to them an abundant source of enjoyment. One of them told me that at eighteen, when she was still a virgin, she cou see from the window of her lodgings in a urinal in the street below, the penes of the men who were making water. She would then say to herself: “Dio, come dev’ essere buono il toccare ed il maneggiare quello pesce crudo! Che cosa divina dev’ essere il coricarsi con gli uomini!” I may add in this connection that a correspondent tells me ot a friend, living in Germany, who was making water against a wall when a girl came up to him and asked, quite simply and naturally, if he knew when the next train went to town. In all such cases we may assume that it is the organ rather than the act that exerts fascination. The special liability of women to experience interest in this matter may be associated with a similar liability among men of the Church. Obscenity generally has often found its literary exponents among the clergy, both Catholic and Protestant, and they have shown a preference for scatologic obscenity, largely no doubt because of the moral riskiness of sexual obscenity, as well as because the solemnity of ecclesias¬ tical functions cannot fail to lead to a reaction in healthily constituted persons. At the same time, as also with women, this field is tempting to the sexually innocent. Scatologic pleasantries, Huysmans remarks in pointing this out, are dear to men of the Church, for they have the advantage of being innocent. 1 The case of Dean Swift, who dwells much on images of urination, especially in women, is perhaps special in its significance. “Swift is frequently coarse, dirty, even obscene, but he is never licentious or wantonly suggestive,” Dean Bernard remarks, and he considers that this scatologic tend¬ ency was “not improbably due to a diseased imagination, which 1 Huysmans, L’Oblat., p. 201. UNDINISM. 423 was the consequence of the physical infirmities that wrecked his life.” 1 There seems to be allusion here to an impotence which may well be the key to Swift’s unhappy love-history, and Stella might on this matter have been able to enlighten us. There is a well-known perverted form of urolagnia which only occurs in girls and young women: an interest in the function which leads them to pretend that they never do it and so attract attention to themselves. In such cases an orig¬ inal urolagnia is complicated by other tendencies which are also largely feminine and especially modesty and Narcissistic exhibitionism of a rather perverted kind. Such subjects are generally regarded as “hysterical.” Thus Binswanger mentions the case of a girl of thirteen, intellectually well-developed and of healthy family, who was said never to have urinated for five weeks. At last a wet streak was noticed on the outer wall of her room and it was discovered that she had urinated by squirt¬ ing the stream out of the window. After that the apparent anuria still continued till it was found that she did it behind the bedstead. Another patient, a woman of 27, would carry a little milk can about with her, urinating in small quantities and throwing it out of the window. 2 Putting aside, however, any special susceptibility of women or of ecclesiastics, we have to recognize, with Stekel, a general element of urolagnia too common to be considered as falling outside the normal range of feeling. In London, Dr. Norman Haire informs me that since his attention was called to the matter by a paper of mine, he has been surprised to find how common this element is. It is independent of social class or of historical period. In the collection of Magyar erotic rhymes collected among peasants in Hungary and brought to¬ gether in Anthropophytcia we find: “Yesterday I saw a young maid set herself down on the grass to urinate and my penis began to rise.” 3 And Brantome at the Court of France in the middle of the sixteenth century, mentions, without surprise, that 1 Introduction (p. xlviii) to Ball’s ed. of 2 Binswanger, Die Hysteric , 1904, p. 595. 3 Anthropophytcia, Bd. iii, p. 51. Swift’s Correspondence. 424 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. some of the greatest nobles of the Court one day “not knowing what else to do, went to see the girls [Court ladies] make water,” concealed, that is to say, beneath a floor with wide cracks. 1 In the eighteenth century many engravings were pro¬ duced, especially in France, in which women, indoors or out of doors, were depicted in the act of urination under various circumstances. 2 By the old English caricaturists also urination was represented, though more fantastically. There is no doubt that this act, not only pictured but in real life, has an erotic in¬ terest for many, though not for all, men; and mention is made of a tourist along the Rhine, where German peasant girls fre¬ quently urinate in the standing position, who, whenever he heard the descending stream, as he passed a girl in this act, would immediately experience erection and ejaculation. 3 The element of urolagnia within normal limits in civilization today may be illustrated by the following communication from a correspondent with whom I am acquainted, as also with his wife. He is a man of 44, healthy and vigorous, actively engaged in business and happily married, fairly to be regarded as sexually normal. He writes as follows: “I have noticed that neither your book, nor Dr. Long’s, outspoken as they are, says anything about urination in the Art of Love. I don’t know if it is regarded as a perverted taste, but my instinct (for what it is worth) tells me that it is a natural feeling. My pleasure in these practices is shared by my wife and I know of other men who feel the same attraction. (It is well known also that a 1 Brantome, Les Dames Galantes, ed. Jouast, vol. ii, p. 38. No doubt the interest of the men was stimulated by the modesty of the women in regard to this function. Pierre de la Porte, First Valet de Chambre to Louis XIV, tells in his Memoires (ed. Michaud, vol. viii, p. 19) how at the Court of Louis XIII, Mile. Louise de Lafayette, maid of honor to Anne of Austria, once laughed so much in the presence of the King and Queen that “she made water beneath her, so that for a long time she did not dare to rise.” At last the Queen made her get up, revealing “a large pool of water.” The other ladies to shield her said it was lemon juice. But the Queen commanded La Porte to smell it and then wanted to examine all the ladies. The importance of the incident lies in the anxiety to conceal it. Freud (Collected Papers, vol. iii, p. 572) considers it remarkable that shame is associated with involuntary urination, but not with defecation. But this (so far as it is true) is easily explainable by the intimate connection between the urinary apparatus and the sex organs and the lack of such connection in the case of the bowels. 2 See, for instance, numerous examples in Fuchs und Kind, Die Weiberherrschaftj Erganzungsband, pp. 274 to end. 3 Zt. f. Sexualwisscnschaft, Oct., 1910, p. 299. UNDINISM. 425 ag° S v ItUte 'V"- 86 ^ t0 lnterest a man by making water in her skirt ■ I an . S ln the street -) Before marriage, indeed, though I had t cornZ r° Unt ° f SCXUal CXPerienCe 1 had — of urination rid Tome Hull V T", !” faCt h WaS not until 1 had been mar- there h t,me ‘ hat 1 ^covered the delights of it. Not that married n ^ yneSS beUveen us - On the first night we were naturally 1 and'V f f l| Sat l°T i°. r th ' S purpose ^ uite simply and y ’ d 1 followed. And if we were in the country together county wren" t 7^ *“* by sidc ' The "< one da ^ * the her to sit on m l ^ I* 6 " . marned about four months, I invited knees hunched wl T"^’ " S 1 S3t ° n the g round with my lees hunched up When the smoking golden stream gushed forth she was irresistible, and it had hardly ceased when, to my wS a d.Se”r lib t- U ’ Ied ’’I" eagCrly baCk int ° my Iap and bestowed experience^ in ^kined “ ^ Af ‘ er ‘ hat We ° ftc " repeated the have h !°" ely COUntry Spots ' and to this da y. though we day feve" T a T ed e,g ‘ years and 1 have seen her niake water every fails llT l parted during the War) such an experience nevel fails to excite me powerfully. When we are in bed I sometimes Isk aid 1 “Tfc*- 3 bttle u ° n my hand or penis ' This induces excitement and also lubricates the vulva. Many may think this practice ‘filthy’ but it is an exquisite delight to feel the flow gushing out and little harm ,s done to the bed-clothes. In any case that would count fol whilfn COmpared W,th * he de % h t of the action. I should add that while my wife shares this pleasure, she tells me that she does not find any sexual excitement in the casual spectacle of men and bovs urinating, she thinks because the sight is too common. I have been intersted to observe how in France the country¬ women commonly make water standing. One sees a woman slop Is Sd .l S ’ 3 C3tar3Ct gUSheS d ° Wn ‘° the ground insl 'de her skirts and she walks on unconcernedly. Or a woman will stand talking to a friend and a stream flows from between her feet. Working in the Af elalMt is'l IT Standmg ’ n0t SqUatting lj ke an Englishwoman. After all, it is a decorous way, and a useful accomplishment in pub¬ lic. Since I have told her of the custom of Frenchwomen my wife her Sefa Huir th ° d> ^ ~ «"* -ting “•It has always seemed to me absurd that there should be so much secrecy about urination between the sexes. Absurd, too that when a woman wants to make water in a town she should have to pay to be locked up in a cell. It would be quite simple and decorous for a woman to stand facing the wall with projecting porcelain urinal, ike a man raising her skirts and holding aside her under¬ garments (if not of an impossibly closed type) with her hand. 426 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. “Women who have learned the trick of making water standing often find it convenient. And I’m sure my wife enjoys the doing of it, though she is English enough to be horrified if anyone perceives what she is doing. But that is only on account of the genera feeling, not of her own prudery. My sister-in-law learned when out of doors to go down on one knee and pretend to tie her shoe-lace; this she used to do very neatly and taught many of her women friends; later my wife taught her how to do it standing. In our cities, no doubt, there is need for urinals for women such as I have described. A friend tells me he has sometimes seen streams trickling across the pavement from theatre queues, and there would doubtless be a fascination in doing it unperceived in the midst of a crowd. My wife was once seized with an urgent desire to empty the bladder while on her way home; she just succeeded in reaching the house and when at the door of her room could contain herself no longer and let a torrent descend as she stood on the rug. From the way she described it, she evidently enjoyed the experience. She washed out the rug and nothing was the worse.” It was Sadger (with the psycho-analysts who have followed him) who first clarified the problem of vesical psychology—how¬ ever questionable his opinions on special points—by clearly separating what he termed “urethral eroticism” from anal eroticism. Up to then psychologists had roughly lumped the two together to con¬ stitute a kind of common excretionary psychic attitude. In reality the two functions, however closely allied physiologically, are psychically completely unlike. This is recognized even among peoples of lower culture. Thus the Bakitara royal bride, who is encouraged to urinate during the ceremonies, is disgraced if she defecates, and may even be put to death, while there are other peoples who look upon defeca¬ tion with favor, but not urination. In children, it is true, there may often be an associated interest in both functions together. But it is because, as Freud has phrased it, the child is polymorphously perverse, or, as I have put it, the child’s impulses are twisted and pressed together as the young fronds of fern are before they expand freely; for I question whether we are entitled to use the word “perverse” when we are dealing with a condition that is entirely normal. With the approach to puberty, and the development of the ideal emotions, both excretory functions alike normally recede into the background and neither is likely to be, as it frequently was before, a deliberate source of pleasurable interest. That new influence, however, works unequally on the two functions, powerfully on the bowel activity which is felt to be “dirty,” more weakly on the vesical activity, to which the same objection cannot be made, and which has about it nothing unsesthetic. Hence it is that some degree of urethral UNDINISM. 427 S' 81 ": 58 r ?, garded as cornin g within the normal sphere, while from the r f” °”' y S ° be brought in "hen it is held Tpan anuT tself VVh b ° we ' s and «®fined to the sensitivity of the us itself. When we find in adults an associated and marked endency to delectation in both the vesical activity and product and tLr a hkhdl^ ^ Pr ° dUC -’ WC arC inVanabIy C ° nCerned w“h t ler a high degree of perversity or mental aberration, or else with oanieTh grC f ° f ret , enti ° n ° f the infantile disposition, unaccom- W I inr> y n0rm p Sex “ a, . Ity - (Such a case is presented in detail by 473-494 .) ' dcr Sexwl ^enschaft, Bd. ii, 1926, pp. This distinction seems to be indicated by a book entitled Journal dune Enfant Viaeuse, published in Paris in 1909 and professing to be recently discovered manuscript of autobiographical character written by Madame de Morency in the eighteenth century. But it has no resemblance to the recognized writings of Madame de forency and is evidently a modern production written to pander to a perverse taste. The significant point in the present connection is that while this so-called Journal deals from beginning to end and urfeadon ^ defeCati ° n a ” d flage,,ation * scarcely mentions the tv 8 ! by „ Dr - Smhh EIy JelIiffe - conjunction with the subject herself, well illustrates this point. It shows how the coprolagnic element which in childhood may be associated with the urolagn.c largely falls away in later life, and how the Undinism which is left may become morbidly intensified under the influence of super- stitious fears. p Zenia X., who suffered from uncontrollable tic of the vagina, etc and other symptoms, wrote the valuable narrative of her experiences CuLTbfg g K i r C ° mpulsion Neurosis and Pr * ,n * tlv c 19141 H ' ’ •' {c lff j a ” d Zenia X- Ps y ch °™alytic Review, Oct., 9 4) .' Her age IS 3S - and she is described as “far above the average in P ysical, mental and moral endowments,” but hitherto her psycho- neurosis has rendered her life practically futile. “Among the earliest recollections of infancy and childhood, which have formed part of the chaotic content of my mental life,” she writes in the course of her narrative, “are those connected with fecal phantasies, which, with the re-animation of all infant experiences w.lh Which my Illness has bnsied itself, have continued in dreami and waking: thoughts of adult years. Even stronger in childhood and continuing with more tenacious grip upon me in adult life are the urinary fancies closely associated with the fecal, but revealing more distinctly the association that links the acts of defecation and 428 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. urination and the phantasies concerning them with reproduction and the childish phantasies that play about it.” She mentions how as a child with her brother they used to play that they were the Trinity creating a baby by defecation, and they liked doing it from the branch of a high tree whence the feces fell to the ground from a height and conveyed a sense of mysterious pleasure. “Here at once begins the association with the stronger urinary fancies. There was always a strange feeling of exhilaration and mysterious union with Mother Earth if in our play or on some picnic or excursion far from home we resorted to the soil for defeca¬ tion or urination. Even in adult life on one occasion about twelve years ago, just before the final conscious outbreak of my memories, I was alone in a wild and beautiful region away from human habitation and was compelled to resort to urination upon the earth. The same secret, pleasurable sensation was so marked, so vivid, that I feared to repeat the act, to put myself again in the way of this experience, and when only a year and a half ago it was once more necessary in a lonely spot, then at once arose the struggle wit sexual thoughts and feelings to which for many years my illness has driven me. Even the visiting of outhouses as a child—this was in the country years ago—if they were strange to me or picturesquely situated stirred in me such sensations, and there was the same mysterious feeling in the all too busy childish phantasies about the urination or perhaps the defecation of some imaginary person, an ideal lover it might be or some real person toward whom my affec¬ tions went out in extravagant fashion. At the age of nine or there¬ abouts, in play with a cousin, I let my imagination run riot con¬ cerning a make-believe husband of one of ourselves, or, rather, I think, of an equally imaginary wife, or perhaps it was even a lover with his sweetheart, whose buttocks were seriously injured so that before and after defecation they had to be unbandaged and then bandaged again by the woman, with exposure, particularly of the buttocks and back region, as I remember it, and with great interest in these parts attributed in imagination to her but actual in our¬ selves. I could not define the feeling accompanying these experiences; it was a mystery, a pleasure secreted in my own body, strange, exhilarating, seeming to draw on the secret springs of my being. I recall my pleasure in a little song or poem familiar to my early childhood, probably at six or seven years of age. It was the story of a little flower parched and thirsty for the wet rain, then at its coming revived and happy, able once more to hold up her head with joy. Innocent enough this little song, but in me it always stirred the same mysterious, half pleasurable, half longing sensations UNDINISM. 429 which were associated with urinary fancies and which in my dawning consciousness were beginning to be connected with sexuality. The gushing of water in a jet or spray, especially from a long garden lose, has always been highly suggestive to me, recalling the act of urination as witnessed in childhood in my brothers or even in other boys, and suggesting in phantasy, as I grew older, the same act in men, closely associated with the act of procreation.” She goes on to associate these fancies with the ideas of savage peoples regarding the principles of creative life and gives various examples. In all these instances we can see that the rain comes trom the Ghost charged with the power of life and fertility, and the mysterious association always so strong in my psychical experience becomes clearer as these practices and beliefs reveal the same fancies linking the reproductive power with urination and with the various excretory products of the body. ... We find thus in the savage mind the same ideas and fancies which have filled my ife. Other children have them, she says, but forget them. In her they were magnified, even in childhood, both the fascination of them and the accompanying sense of guilt, and retained through illness and they early became sexual in character. With regard to the general love of water and washing, Zenia X. writes of her childhood: “I was much given then to washing and cleansing my hands, was very fastidious in my aversion to a drinking vessel or food utensil that another had used, or to a common towel Not alone must hands, face and lips be cleansed from possible soil' the genitals themselves must be carefully bathed again and again.’ And again the clothing itself must be as fresh and clean as possible. 1 he fear, all this preparation for prayer, and the endlessly repeated prayers for cleansing, all served this purpose, to keep alive and to multiply the sexual thoughts and feelings against which I seemed to e fighting. So that in fact the whole ceremonial was a crowning device of my illness to perpetrate the sensations and phantasies upon which it was feeding. Religion had disguised all this under a fear or sense of sinful impurity before a Being white and pure, but the disguise slips away revealing a different explanation when one finds m the beliefs and ceremonials of the savages both a parallel animism magnifying a bit of secretion and making it a factor in what religious life is theirs, and also a resort to the ceremonials that serve as with me a twofold purpose.” The love of water had here become perversely disguised as a fear of impurity. In Zenia X, under the influence of early religious training, an element of urolagnia which might, if accepted, have been normal, was morbidly exaggerated by a moral struggle. For it is true here, as in other spheres, that what we fight against we fortify 430 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. Various authorities, especially among psycho-analysts, have made statements regarding the general pathological im¬ portance of early enuresis and of urethral eroticism. There is undoubtedly an element of truth in some of these statements, when carefully qualified. But more often, in the ligbt of the observations I have been able to make, such statements are rather fanciful, or greatly exaggerated, or entirely baseless. Thus Stekel has stated that all psychopathic persons are enuretic. 1 Much evidence would be needed to demonstrate this proposition, while on the other hand, since bed-wetting is normal in early life, it would be easy to show that enuresis is not always followed by psychopathy. Ernest Jones considered that agoraphobia is usually due to in¬ fantile urethral eroticism (Papers on Psycho-analysis, 2d ed., p. 30 ) but without giving evidence, and Abraham in his study of ejaculatio precox traced that condition on theoretical grounds to urethral eroticism and fixation of the libido on early urinary activities (while Tausk further thought that, if female frigidity may be held to cor¬ respond to precocious seminal emissions, which seems doubtful, it also should be put down to urethral eroticism). Abraham (“The Female Castration Complex/’ Int. Jour. Psycho-analysis, March, 1922) further argued that nocturnal enuresis in neurotic women is one of the most important determinants of the castration complex, fre¬ quently resting on a wish to urinate in the male way. In dreams this wish is represented in a disguised form and ends with the pleasur¬ able emptying of the bladder. Women, he believed, who are prone to nocturnal enuresis are regularly burdened with a strong resistance to feminine sex-functions. The desire to urinate in the standing position, he also imagined, rests on the idea of the possibility of an interchange of micturition and ejaculation; “the unconscious,tendency to wet the man in sexual intercourse has its origin here.” Karen Homey, again, more recently (“The Genesis of the Castration Com¬ plex in Women,” Int. Jour. Psycho-analysis, July, 1923 and Jan., ,1924), regards the castration-complex (with at its centre a penis-envy com¬ plex) as most obviously having among its factors an element of urethral eroticism, with a Narcissistic over-valuation of excretory processes such as is common in children. “Phantasies of omnipotence, especially of a sadistic character, are more easily associated with the male jet of urine. But the idea of urinating as a man has also other components—above 1 W. Stekel, Der Fetischismus, p. 591. UNDINISM. 431 all m active and passive scoptophilia. One patient exclaimed sud¬ denly, after remarking she had just seen a man urinating in the street, ‘If I might ask a gift of Providence it would be to be able just for once to urinate like a man.’ The third factor in the wish to urinate like a man is suppressed masturbational wishes (boys being allowed to handle penis regarded as a sort of permission to mas- H ‘ W - van Ophuijsen (hit. Jour. Psycho-analysis, Jan., ' believes t ^ lat there is in women a “masculinity complex” (apart from the castration complex associated with a sense of guilt), apt to appear as a protest against the absence of the male organ and leading to the desire to urinate like a boy; cases are brought for¬ ward, and the condition is connected with infantile masturbation and urethral erotism. Forsyth (Roy. Soc. Med,, Section of Psychiatry, vol. xiii, 1920) believes that the mouth zone, on the one hand, and the anal-urethral zone on the other represent rival influences that contend for pre- ommance the first leading to object-love and extroversion, the second to introversion and in extreme degree to dementia precox. Some psycho-analysts in emphasizing the distinction be¬ tween anal and vesical eroticism have gone further and have found that there is a vesical temperament and an anal tempera¬ ment, each with a distinct psychic character of its own. The alleged characteristics of the anal temperament were first set forth by Freud, 1 and included orderliness, cleanliness, economy, and pronounced egoism (Sadger insisting also on obstinacy and hatred), these characters being regarded in part as a reaction against an attraction to the subject of defecation and in part as a sublimation of it. We are not here concerned with the validity of the anal temperament. In this same paper, however, Freud briefly referred to the “ ‘burning’ ambition of former enuretics,” and this characterization has been repeated by numberless writers since. Hitschmann further associates it with a love of water generally and occupations connected with water, thus definitely bringing the urethral character into the condition I denominate Undinism. H. W. Frink, referring to the frequently asserted association between urethral eroticism Analerotik,” Psychiatrisch-N eurolog. Wochen- schnft, Jahrg IX, No 52, reprinted in second series of Sammlung Rleuier Schnften zur Neurosenlehre, 1909; also Sammlung, vol. v 1922 and Freud, Collected Papers, vol. iii, pp. 548-67. ’ 432 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. and ambition, gives a case in which the game of baseball proved a sublimation of urination, with its boyish competitions, the same feeling of power recurring, and even the same parabolic curves of the ball as of the stream \ but Frink is careful to add that he is unaware whether this is a general symbolism or merely true for a few individuals. 1 Stekel, again, truly points out, with reference to the alleged association between urethral eroticism and ambition, that ambition may be found in persons showing all kinds of sexual anomalies. 2 Probably it may also be found in persons showing no evidence at all of sexual anomalies. So far as I am aware, no convincing evidence, if indeed any evidence at all, has yet been brought forward to show any close and special connection between enuresis, or urethral eroticism, and ambition. The supposition has probably arisen in the notion that that was what the urinary competition among boys and the “penis-envies” of girls—imagined to be common in enuretic and urethrally erotic subjects—might be expected to lead to in the transformations of adult life. In some rare cases it is possible that this is what actually occurs. But in most cases the childish competitions of boys and the penis- envies” of girls are far too slight and transitory to lead to any¬ thing. When, moreover, we turn from aprioristic notions to facts, as revealed in the special group of Undinistic subjects, ambition is rarely found to be a pronounced element in the character. “Aggressiveness” has further been stated to be the dom¬ inant trait of the “urethral type” among women. 3 This seems, according to my observations, to be almost the opposite of the truth. Reversely, moreover, I have sometimes noted that in the women who are unsympathetically described as “aggres¬ sive,” whether or not inclined to homosexuality, there is a com¬ plete absence of urethral eroticism. It would almost have been more plausible to argue that urethral eroticism is a substituted activity for the absence of aggressiveness. 1 H. W. Frink, hit. Jour. Psycho-analysis, Oct., 1923, p. 481. 2 W. Stekel, Der Fetischismus, p. 59. 3 Schultze-Hencke, Art. “Urethral Erotikin Marcuse’s Hand- worterbuch der Sexualwissenschaft, III. It will have been seen that Sadger’s conception of Urethral T roticism may almost be superimposed on the conception of L ndimsm, and though my own observations and views of this anomaly began to be formed before the publication of Sadger’s paper, I have m some points been assisted by that paper. But a the same time Sadger’s conception may fairly be regarded as too narrowly based. The very name of “Urethral Eroticism” seems a little eccentric and even inaccurate, for—and this Sadger himself tacitly admits as he develops his theme—the urethra has, at the most, only an incidental and occasional con¬ nection with this condition, in which it may indeed be true that a psychic complex grows up around the act of urination but scarcely around the urethra. By thus concentrating his attention onto an anatomical point Sadger also failed to allow or the fact that we are here concerned with an attraction which tends to be associated with, and even merged into, the general power of water over the human mind. Sadger, as well as more recently Stekel,regarded a love of water generally as merely a “sublimated urolagnia ” When however we consider that man is descended from ancestors that bye m the water, and that water remains a prime necessity of a l life, it is clear that water must inevitably be a source of pleasure even if a specialized urinary function had no existence so that to trace the whole human love of water to a urinary source is a conception far too fantastic for serious discussion I he urinary function has its important place, but it is co- ordinate rather than supreme. That is why it seems better to indicate this psychic trait by a term like “Undinism” rather than by a narrower term like “Urethral Eroticism.’ Stekel has brought forward a detailed case, in ... .. ... " , “ m a man, which well illustrates the origin and nature of what I tern 1 Stekel, Psychosexuellcr Infantilismus, p. 184. 28 ( 433 ) PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 434 “Undinism.” 1 He regards it as a case of apron fetichism, and it is quite possible so to regard it. But, as the history shows, and as Stekel might himself admit, the apron in this case is merely a symbol and the underlying condition is that of Un¬ dinism. It is the more interesting because it shows how in Undinism the vesical element may remain in the background and any such label as “urethral eroticism” be altogether out of place. The case is that of a man aged 30, of high ability and organizing capacity in business, who in childhood wetted the bed and experienced pleasurable sensations in the wetness thus produced. At the age of 10 he once entered his mother’s bed¬ room without knocking, to see her wash herself. She was naked and held an old apron before her as she turned to tell him to go out. That was the origin of the fetichism, which was thus secondary, while the vesical interest has always been subordinate, and chiefly marked in recent years when he has become interested in urination (and also defecation) in chil¬ dren. He is attracted to women (but they should wear an apron) when they are wading or bathing or in wet clothes, or in bathing costume; sea-bathing with a woman is intensely exciting to him. But he has also found water in itself highly pleasurable from at least the age of ten, and apt to become sexually exciting, as when fishing. “Water always exerts a fas¬ cinating influence on me,” he stated; “I am always drawn to the water and especially to great sheets of water. For eight years I was a cyclist and always wanted to go to lakes. I would seek an inn or a cafe with a view over a lake, or a terrace over- looking it, and was immensely happy when I found it. I could sit lost in contemplation of it. I would fall into a kind of ecstatic day-dream. In Trieste I only stayed in rooms with a view over the sea, and spent all my spare time sailing, gazing for hours at the waves. Storms and the movement of the sea have a directly sexual effect on me.” There is a tendency, shown by Sadger, as well as by many who have followed him, to emphasize the sexual elements 1 W. Stekel, Dcr Fetischismus, 1923, Ch. XII. UNDINISM. 435 in the psychology of urination. Such elements undoubtedly exist and often play a highly important part, as may be seen in the histories that follow. But it is necessary to insist that they are not the whole of urinary psychology. We are con¬ cerned with a primary function which may exist independently of sex, and indeed actually existed long before sex appeared in the world. If the human species were propagated independ¬ ently of sex the urinary function would still exhibit many of the emotional and ideational reactions we may experience today. From the psycho-analytic standpoint Sadger claims that all pleasurable attractions, all lust feelings, constitute a whole in which the more specific sex feelings may be indistinguish- ably merged. Even if that contention may be accepted, it still presents us with a confusion rather than an explanation, a settlement of difficulties which is much too cheap to be helpful. It seems far more satisfactory to recognize that the Undinism of childhood, with its interest in water and in urine, while this may easily tend to become associated, or even identified, with specifically sexual interests, yet possesses at the outset an in¬ dependent basis. The earlier psycho-analytic view asserted that all children are sexual; the later lust theory left the question open; from a wider standpoint we may perhaps recognize a range of normal variation by which some children are stirred, and others not, by definitely sexual interests. But if we im¬ agined a being possessed of a urinary mechanism but no sexual mechanism, it cannot be doubted that the basis would be present for a pleasurable psychic complex. It is scarcely a hazardous assumption that in a great number of children, in whom specific sexual interests are still largely latent and un¬ developed, this is precisely what we witness. The sexual in¬ terest develops, sooner or later, on this urinary interest, and after puberty so overlays it that normally it becomes incon¬ spicuous or is soon driven altogether into the subconscious. But it is usually in some degree traceable. 1 It may be very clearly 1 1 have lately been told that in a large secondary co-educational school in the East End of London, some of the boys about the age of puberty will squirt urine (previously emitted into a can for the purpose) with a water pistol, on to girls of the school. PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. 436 traceable and definitely conscious in persons who, although they have developed normally at puberty, possessed at the outset a very strong urinary complex which was sexually colored in a high degree. This is well illustrated by the following history of a lady in the United States whom I never met but was in frequent correspon encc with till her death. She originally wrote to me in reference to paper I had published on the psychology of color, telling me own reactions, mostly pleasurable, to yellow, which she regarded as a color usually treated with undue contempt. Later there appeare a probable significance in her preference for this color. I replied in acknowledgment of this note, and three years later the writer of it sent me a longer and more intimate letter, accompanied by a history of her own early development. Thereafter she wrote a intervals, with further facts about herself, or incidents she en¬ countered, which she thought I might find of interest. The subject, Mrs. R. S., was at the time of sending her first letter aged thirty-two. She was a happy wife and mother and o good social position, leading a full and varied life, with many interests, but without any undue stress or strain. She was o ig intelligence, and possessed intellectual, artistic, and social aptitudes There are no known gross defects in the heredity. S e came o robust and philoprogenitive people who endowed her with a richly emotional life, keen sensibilities and much capacity for enjoyment, as well as a high character leading her to cherish lofty though not extravagant ideals. There were strong passions on the father s side; her mother was very cold, and she once wrote a minute and subtle account of the sensory, mental, and emotional differences between her mother and herself. There were, however, no traces of conflict or self-suppression in this subject’s character, for the many-sided vitality of her nature enabled her to radiate her energies after mar¬ riage into manifold healthy channels by an unusually easy process of sublimation. . , , At the same time she was not a robust child and had various illnesses which at times impaired her physical vitality. She was, however, a healthy baby, had no fits, and there is no history of nocturnal enuresis in childhood. As she had no brothers or sisters near herself in age she was often alone though she led a healthy outdoor existence, and her imaginative life was thereby fostered. Her earliest remembered sex-feelings date from the age of six or seven when a little boy with whom she was playing offered to show her what the placket in front of his kilt was for. I went accordingly one day with him,” she said, “to the closet and I looked UNDINISM. 437 with curiosity and admiration upon his penis during urination. We were discovered upon this or a subsequent occasion and threatened.” She remembered shortly after this playing with a little boy who was digging little wells in the soft soil. “We hunted for worms to place in the wells which the little boy filled with urine. But I only remember the interest with which I saw the worms wriggle and cannot recall seeing the child perform the act, which should have aroused interest as it was probaly the second time I had seen it done, and, as well as I can think, the last.” When about nine she stayed in a house with a girl and boy who were somewhat younger. The girl wished to play with her sexual parts but this was distasteful to her. The boy was playing with his penis. “I was eager to see the little boy playing with himself, and it gave me a decided pleasurable sensation. He was a Rubens cherub, all golden and brown, and I never forgot the picture.” Soon after this she invented a day-dream which she played in imagination for many years, until, if not beyond, the age of puberty. “I built up a town where freedom between men and women existed, but it was altogether in regard to urinating that the orgies were pictured. This act was a pleasure as well as a religious ceremony, and I revelled in inventing new ways and devices whereby these exhibitions were made more inviting. All my pleasurable sensations were connected with the bladder.” It is unnecessary to emphasize the significance of this pseudo-erotic ideal in the vesical psychology of early life. It is not an ideal that appeals to all chilldren. “I ventured once,” the subject wrote, “to tell a little girl with whom I had now to play, something of my town. But she was shocked, and that hurt me. I remember inducing this girl to let me get down and look at her, and I also attempted to discover in myself, by the use of mirrors, the position of those parts which gave me so much pleasure. I experienced longings to perform the act of urination in company. I liked best to stand or kneel, and I was desirous to be near a boy when I did it. This was never even remotely attempted. My last thought on going to sleep w*as of playing with a penis, although I had scarcely ever seen one and never the whole body. I was wild to hold one between my fingers.” She recalled the first time she saw a garden hose and was allowed to hold it in her hand. “It seemed delightfully like holding a penis, and familiarity did not detract from the sensation. 1 I recalled this the other day when using one and wondered if it was merely association that reminded me of the sen¬ sation of pleasure.” 1 Abraham (“Female Castration Complex,” Int. Jour. Psycho¬ analysis, March, 1922, p. 15) refers to “the great enjoyment many 438 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. She had other day-dreams in which the emphasis was all on the penis though still as a urinary organ. “I imagined that in a cottage near a yard we frequented there lived a woman, middle-aged and coarse, who had taken for her adopted son a boy of about my age. The woman looked like the witch in Hansel and Gretel. It was her delight, I fancied, to fondle his penis, and I planned all sorts of delightful ways of toying with it. I did not approve of the woman’s conduct, and I believe I made it a moral tale by having the boy leave her in indignation as soon as he had reached years of discretion. It must be added that at this time, and up to the full establishment of menstruation, she was unconscious of the existence of the vagina and knew nothing whatever of the sexual functions of the penis. During this period, before puberty, various girls of her own age tried to induce her to play with her own sexual parts, or with theirs, but this was not agreeable to her, and she never fully entered into any sport of this kind. She preferred her own dreams. Unlike the other girls, also, she could not bear to expose herself in the presence of other persons, though, at the same time or a little later, she had occasional unfulfilled impulses of self-exhibition in pretty underlinen. At the age of thirteen (a period when she was suffering from nervousness, depression, and loneliness) she began to menstruate. The facts of the sexual life now first became known to her. She also began to experience acute sexual desire before the onset of the periods; during one period of especially marked sexual restlessness she constructed a paper penis, without quite knowing its exact shape, and wore it; this gave her much satisfaction, and she felt that the organ belonged to her¬ self rather than to another person. It was at this time that she began to become liable to voluptuous dreams which she could not exactly recall, except that she often seemed to be possessed by a vague and monstrous being. During all her girl¬ hood she would often awake as in ecstasy clasping her own body as if it were that of an imaginary being and moving herself rhythmically as though in connection. (This evidently continued, it may be noted, after marriage; “during our early married life, particularly,” she wrote, “we not infrequently awoke to find ourselves in the sexual embrace, not in the least knowing how we had come there.”) She was sure, when she came to recall these experiences carefully, that such transports were often induced by a full bladder. Sometimes—this was always about the beginning of the menstrual period—she seemed when she awoke to be suckling a baby. She herself noted it as a significant fact that it was always a boy baby. This dream lasted through life. women obtain from using a hose for watering the garden, for here the unconscious experiences the ideal fulfilment of a childish wish.” Abraham failed to explain why he dragged in the “unconscious.” UNDINISM. 439 She now became ashamed of her vesical day-dreams; moreover, “during the next three years I was interested and occupied, and I did not have as many day-dreams as formerly.” Not only had definite sexual desire become established, but at the age of fifteen she was initiated, in an entirely beautiful manner through the study of botany, into all the secrets of reproduction. It would seem, however, that the vesical day-dreams had merely fallen into the background of conscious¬ ness ; although less indulged and now replaced by a stronger interest, the feeling of shame had not sufficed to destroy their powers of giving pleasure. Perhaps they had fallen less into the background at puberty than she herself came to believe. This is suggested by her remark on another occasion: “I realize that, had I not, at a fairly early age, fallen in love and led thereafter a normal sexual life, I might have cultivated the art of urination, for its own sake.” The more, as she herself ob¬ served, she tried to recall the impressions of her early sexual life the more she realized what an important part the bladder had played. “It is not so with my husband,” she adds; “he cannot recall ever being in¬ terested in it in the least, and yet his dreams at night frequently involve urinating.” It would seem, however, that urinary images had little part in her own erotic dreams. She could not give details on this point; “such things do not impress themselves upon my mind now because I realize their import and I can scarcely remember them in the morning.” But, so far as remembered, her adolescent erotic dreams were neither of urination nor coitus. “I do not believe urination played a part in my dreams and unconscious thoughts,” she wrote of this period, “but I cannot definitely say so. I cannot recall them so as to describe them further than that sometimes a powerful form seemed to possess me.” It is a highly significant fact that at least as early as puberty—she could not speak more definitely—the subject became aware that she secreted an unusually large amount of urine; this continued throughout life. She also regarded her bladder as unusually large and unusually sensitive, and she believed that the connection between the bladder and the sexual organs was in her case perhaps unusually intimate. Her erotic dreams before marriage she closely associated with a distended bladder; the association seemed less close after marriage, doubtless dis¬ guised by the normal sexual life she led. But the bladder continued to play a part in psychic life during adult years. “I some years ago discovered for myself that a slightly dis¬ tended bladder increased the excitement conducive to intellectual work of a creative kind: 1 I have of course noted that a full bladder increases sexual excitement. To urinate while swollen with sexual desire is highly 1 This has been noted by other women. Thus a lady, aged 30, tells me that she discovered for herself that a full bladder is a stimulus to intellectual activity, and has sometimes kept it full with this object. 440 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. enjoyable, and, were it not for aesthetic considerations, one might develop special forms of erotic satisfaction for these occasions. Any form of auto-eroticism is, however, detestable to me and such indulgence would therefore be impossible. [But this statement is qualified by a later statement.] I may say, however, that in itself a slightly distended blad¬ der is always gently exciting, and the act of relieving it is perhaps more of a pleasure than the discharge of any other usual function. While, therefore, puberty led to a recession of the vesical phantasies, it by no means eliminated the vesical element from psychic life. That element was, indeed, fostered by the tendency to polyuria which neces¬ sarily both heightened the pleasure of urination and increased the pres¬ sure of the bladder on the sexual organs. But this vesical psychic interest was henceforth consciously subordinated and controlled. During adolescence she was admired by various men, but she held them at a distance, for, as is usual with people capable of strong passion and deep attachment, she had no inclination for trivial flirta¬ tion. She was consequently regarded as cold. But she admired various men in secret. From the age of fifteen to seventeen, also, she loved a woman some years older than herself with the passionate absorption of her whole soul, though she was shy of revealing the extent of her love to its object. There was no definite sexual excite¬ ment associated with this adoration, which was, however, of a very jealous kind. From time to time she continued to suffer from periods of unsatisfied sexual tension, and at the age of seventeen or eighteen she spontaneously discovered the act of masturbation (practised with the finger). She was shocked at her own practice, which never became a frequent indulgence, for about this time she began to use a vaginal douche for menstrual pain and this proved an agreeable solace which replaced masturbation. At the age of eighteen she met and fell in love with the man whom a few years later she married. After that, whatever external trials she encountered, there were no sexual troubles or difficulties; the marriage proved throughout happy and congenial. In sending me the intimate narration of her own experiences, of which it has been here necessary only to use portions, she ended up with the words: “But the tale of my life is only begun.” Within a year of writing these words the tale of her life was ended. After her death her friends testified with enthusiasm to her varied intel¬ lectual gifts, to her social graces, to her personal fascination, to her beneficient activities in the service of others. With her letters before me, telling intimately of herself and constantly glancing of! in innumerable directions, written with the delight which reserved and sensitive people feel in being able to reveal their true selves, I have no doubt that these witnesses are true. UNDINISM. 441 The foregoing summary of what seem to be the chief relevant facts in the subject’s early life may suffice as an introduction to the dreams now to be presented. The record began with the fourth or fifth month of pregnancy, which occurred at an interval of many years after the previous pregnancy. Her attention was now for the first time, at my suggestion, fixed on her dreams. This attention, as she herself spontaneously noted, seemed to have no effect in render¬ ing^ the dreams more frequent or in changing their character. “When I am well and not over-tired,” she wrote, “I do not dream. I can almost foretell the date of my menstrual period by the coming on of dreams two or three nights before. Unless I am living with¬ out sexual satisfaction they are merely troubled dreams such as one might have if the digestion were disordered.” Pregnancy was a period lacking in sexual satisfaction; “any sexual excitement at such a time would be contrary to my convictions.” On the 27th August, when already four or five months pregnant, she wrote: “During the first two months I had two sexual dreams, induced by bladder pres¬ sure. I did not keep the dates nor do I remember anything about the dreams (without a distinct effort it seems impossible for me to recall a sexual dream in the morning), but it occurred to me that they might fall at regular periods. Then I had one on the 19th July, exactly the date I should have menstruated had I not been pregnant. But the next fell on the 26th August, so my idea of periodicity was dispelled.” This dream, therefore, which is the first of this series, was really the fourth erotic dream of the pregnancy. All the dreams are presented in the precise words of the dreamer, with her own com¬ ments included. Dream I. 26 th August. It may be noted, in order to explain the material of which this dream is built up, that (1) the evenings previously the subject had been discussing the emotional effects of poetry with an acquaintance who mentioned that her sister, under treatment for a nervous disorder, was compelled to refrain from reading poetry because of its effect upon her nerves; (2) during several previous nights she had seemingly been awakened by lines of poetry running through her head, and had even got out of bed to verify some of which she was not sure; (3) she had the day before spoken to her brother-in-law, just returned from a journey, of the death of a very remarkable cat during his absence. “This was a strange animal and uncommonly luxurious in his tastes. At night he went to bed with the children. When he desired to be fed he became so insistent that he caught at our dresses and untied our shoelaces and threw himself in our way. He was ever eager to be fondled and would 442 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. cry and twist as if in pain, and when noticed behave with voluptuous grace.” (4) This brother-in-law slept in a large antique four-poster bed, while she herself preferred a simple low bed; (5) the previous evening, when dressed for a ride, she threw off her jacket, while waiting, on account of the heat and lay on a lounge; her husband, thereupon, came in, sat beside her, admired her arms and kissed them. This gave her a glow of pleasure, but no excitement, and her husband, also (as he told her next day) had experienced no sexual excitement. “My dream began by bits of verse running in my head. I cannot recall it clearly, but it was old poetry, some isolated phrases I have always liked from Donne and this from Campion: “But still moves delight Like clear springs renewed by flowing, Ever perfect, ever in them¬ selves eternal.” (I had read no Jacobean poetry for years.) “Then I said to a man whose face was partially turned toward me and who seemed buried among manuscripts and books: “Once I made a parody on ‘To Dianeme.’ ” I said this in a flippant way, as though I were trying to cover a fault. “After a pause during which I grew more uncomfortable, he turned and said sadly, “That was sacrilege.” This man seemed like an accusing conscience, but his look of reproach was soon trans¬ ferred to the cat waiting to be fed. Its eyes had become large and human, but the tail had a humorous twist very like the cat that revealed the knavery of him who stole the tarts in the Caldecott picture book. After having given the cat milk and regarded its usual graceful airs, I said something apologetic to the man in the matter of my lack of taste, adding: “I have a copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets in my hand and it is a good edition.” I handled the familiar leather covers [no sexual association with the odor of leather, as she ex¬ plained later], and the pride in my book comforted me for the misery I felt about the parody. “Then I went to the high four-poster bed where my husband had already retired. I was irritated because I had to sleep there and the discomfort of climbing so high was very clear. I had the book of sonnets in my hand and, perceiving my companion to be in an indifferent mood, I turned on the light and began to read. My eye took in “When to the sessions of sweet silent thought,” not line by line, but the whole thing at once—a weird sensation. “I felt provoked to remain unnoticed and, feeling excited myself I thought, ‘If this keeps up, I can’t stand it. I believe he is becoming impotent. I shall have to get satisfaction from somewhere.* UNDINISM. 443 At that moment he began to kiss me and stroke my arms and my delight was but increased by my surprise. , Yet - feel 'ng he must be less desirous than I, I commenced to fondle and arouse him further. This I was unable to do for I cried ° U 7" at , lf ,/ were not gratified at once I should have hysterics. I snatched the penis and attempted to crowd it into the vagina but found this-owing, as I fancied, to my extreme state of excitement- difficult and painful. At this crisis I awoke to find myself in the unhappy condition of having a distended bladder and a hot, wet, and palpitating vagina. with AS a ^ ? Can tel1, 1 have never drea med of sexual intercourse ^ man bUt my husband ’ and among the mass of nothinTin 7 ntS 7 S at le / St agreeab,e to kn °w my dreams have expressed it ” * ” uncertified b 'ne,” as the Romany Chi This may well be so, but it is clear that other men besides her husband played a vaguely accessory part in the erotic imagery of her dreams That is to be expected in the erotic dreams even of the most whole-heartedly faithful wife or husband and must not be taken as having any profound significance. In this respect erotic dreams correspond to erotic revery in the daytime. A woman in her erotic day-dreams may experience sexual excitement (whether or not fol- owed by masturbation) in connection with the figure of an attractive male acquaintance who is not in love with her, with whom she is not in love, with whom she has never had or even desired to have any intimate relations, and while she is all the time in love with another man. r . Th 7 d k rea "? 7 11 ;i,ustrate s b °w the original vesical impulse (indicated by the lines referring to the flowing stream) arouses an erotic impulse which becomes predominant and draws to its service all recent related mental imagery, here, notably, first in the form of poetic sentiment, a nd then in the image of the cat which had clearly im- 1 Shakespeare’s sonnet XXX runs : “When to the sessions of sweet silent thought 1 summon up remembrance of things past, 1 sigh the lack of many a thing I sought.” ,, be added as to the appearance of a homosexual element in one of these dreams. I have elsewhere pointed out that a homosexual erotic dream is no necessary evidence of a geunine rrr 1 T PU ’ S \ bUt may be dUe 40 that confusi °" imagery which is part of the normal mechanism of dreaming, i In the present case, the subject disclaimed any homosexual influence in her life. It must be remembered, however, that in girlhood she had experienced a passionate devotion to a woman friend. It cannot therefore, be taken as certain that the homosexual element in the dream is accidental; there may quite likely have been latent traces from the early period when so often sexuality seems to be undiffer- entiated, not yet formulated as a conscious heterosexual impulse It is easy to observe how often in these dreams the dreamer is brought back to facts and emotional attitudes of infantile and pubertal life, as in the penis fetichism, the aggressive sexual attitudes, the almost forgotten memory embodied in the snake dream, etc. In this so far as I know, unique record of the auto-erotic mani¬ festations of sleep during pregnancy, we have what may probably be regarded as a definite type of erotic dreaming in a normal and healthy woman, with fully developed sexual emotions, during pregnancy. We see how such dreams tend to begin in a correct and conventional manner; we see how an attractive man who in real life has made no conscious impression on the subject may glide into the dream with faint obscure amorous suggestion; we see how a procession of symbols may present the underlying sexual process in ever clearer imagery; we see, as the actual physical excitement grows more acute and urgent, how the expression of erotic desire may force its way nakedly into the dream, this direct manifestation being aided by the fact that onl y accidental circumstances, not any intimate conflict of 1 Studies, vol. i. “A Study of Auto-erotism.” 462 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. impulses, had led to the repression of sexual desire during waking life; we see, notably, how the vesical element, in this case aided by a pronounced predisposition, attains a peculiar prominence under the special conditions of pregnancy. All this—though in many feminine erotic dreamers the earlier stages may be condensed or absent—is to be regarded as entirely normal and typical. While, however, in main outline the dreams are doubtless typical, in their details they illustrate more special problems. They show us how the germs of all sorts of aberrations or what are commonly regarded as aberrations—which in real life for the most part have long been left behind or else scarcely existed—may clearly emerge in dreams: homosexuality, narcissism, masturbation, fetichism. Espe¬ cially they illustrate the influence of the vesical impulse and the nature of its relationship to the sexual impulse. We realize how the sexual impulse and the vesical impulse are two closely allied yet distinct forces which tend, under these circumstances, to play power¬ fully upon sleeping consciousness, how each may arouse or further stimulate the activity of the other, how the two may become almost inextricably blended. We see in Mrs. R. S. a woman of strong sexual temperament in whom the urinary complex, taking on a definitely erotic tone, was highly developed, certainly to a greater degree than is usual, in child¬ hood. Yet there was nothing morbid in this development or in its manifestations, and it remained within the range of normal variation. This was conclusively shown at puberty. The sex emotions de¬ veloped in full vigor and the urinary ideas receded into the back¬ ground or fell altogether below the threshold of consciousness. A certain amount of pleasure and interest remained associated with the urinary function, but she never showed the slightest inclination to dwell on this, though there were at times vesically aroused dreams, and though the full bladder had also the power of arousing the sexual mechanism during sleep, which is, in more or less degree, an entirely normal phenomenon. We see here, throughout, a natural disposition towards Undinism which follows every path of least resistance in its manifestation. But the resistance yet always re¬ mains normal and effective because we are concerned with a healthy person, endowed with a rich, many-sided, and intellectual nature, and placed under singularly happy conditions. In the case of Miss E., which follows, circumstances were un¬ favorable to normal sexual development and throughout life she continued to show a pronounced urolagnia, with suggestions of the Undinist temperament, still not entirely freed from a coprophilic element and combined with some homosexuality and mild traces of other perversions. UNDINISM. 463 Miss E„ now nearly 60 years of age, is the daughter of a clergy¬ man and has always led a quiet and retired life, with few opportuni¬ ties for congenial society. Until recently she has lived with members ° Z fam ‘ ly 50 that she has alwa ys been under some re¬ straint. We are an awful ‘proper family,’ ” she writes, “all our uncles and our cousins, and grandfathers even, were clergymen, and T r u thC y ° Ung ™ en We used to know were curates; and now¬ adays [she was writing at the age of 52] everyone who calls on us is a vicar or a rector or someone specially worthy.” It has been difficult for her even to receive letters from a man which she is unuble to show to the family circle. She now lives by herself in a small seaside town, but at her present age she is shy of personal ap- proaches though by no means through any loss of sexual desire for she still feels that to have an attractive person with whom she could do what she liked in sexual gratification would be the greatest of p easures. She has thus never had any opportunity for close friend- ship, scarcely even for ordinary acquaintance, with a man, while she ooks so fearfully respectable,” she remarks, that a man would hesi¬ tate to make any advances to her. She has, however, been for some years m intimate correspondence with one man (whom she has never met) and with several intimate women friends, with whom she has had slight sexual experiences, never so much as she desired. She is inclined to be active in her advances towards women when she thinks they are not likely to be repelled. But with men she is shy, the more so now since she is no longer young (though “not hideous’’’’ she writes). It is on the correspondence with the man and one of the women—with both of whom I happen to have been at one time or another independently in correspondence—that the present im¬ perfect sketch of Miss E.’s history is based. She had no objection to these letters being shown to me but she was disinclined to enter into correspondence, stating in the only letter I received from her that there was nothing more to tell. Miss E. has had no need to earn her own living, nor apparently any impulse to do so. This has been a contributory cause of her extremely secluded life. She is, however, by no means lacking in intelligence and even possesses a skilful literary hand in the field of humor. Some years ago she was a rather frequent contributor of articles and verses to Punch, but in recent years her manuscripts have not proved acceptable. Miss E.’s sexual history is the direct outcome of her circum- stances and reflects the repressed and arrested conditions under which her whole life has been lived. She evidently possesses a sexual impulse of at least average, probably more than average strength, but the impulse has never attained on the psychic side a 464 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. fully adult form or had the opportunity for such a development. It remains to some extent sexually undifferentiated, with even, owing probably to the greater opportunities, a homosexual preference, and it is concentrated on the urinary sphere, and to some extent the scato- logic sphere generally, with a strong mixoscopic tone as regards men, women, and animals, while the only gratification attained has been by the auto-erotic method of masturbation. Nothing is definitely known of Miss E/s family history; her own health and general condition seem to her normal and satisfac- * tory. In anthropological type she is of medium pigmentation with brown hair inclining to fair on the pubes. Menstruation began at 12. She had been told nothing about it beforehand, and waking one morning to find her nightgown marked with blood she ran in alarm, and just as she was, to her mother’s room. Menstruation has always been very copious, so that she has to get out of bed several times during the night, but she has no pain or headache at the period, merely feeling limp and unable to go out of doors; when menstruation is passing off the sexual feelings tend to be strong. As a result of her retired life Miss E. had no early initiation into sexual matters, and throughout life her knowledge of these subjects has remained slight, though she not only reads French novels, such as Zola’s, but seems to have had access to some French erotic novels of rather pornographic type. But because of her ignorance, both theoretical and practical, her curiosity has remained all the more eager and vivid, while she is at the same time willing and pleased to write of all that she knows. She writes in a simple, natural, unaffected way, not using technical terms of which she is ignorant, but describing what she means clearly, though seldom coarsely. Notwithstanding the risky nature of the subjects she writes about, she turns her phrases deftly and neatly. As often happens—though not invariably—in women naturally prone to Undinism, she is evidently a person of feminine temperament, not lacking in refinement and charm of mind, in spite of the nature of the subjects that are so interesting to her. She cannot be described as vicious. She presents us with the picture of a woman possessing an insistent sexual impulse which has never been allowed the oppor¬ tunity of normal adult gratification, and therefore continues to seek such outlets as it can find in more youthful channels of relief, and especially in a form of Undinism, or at all events urolagnia. Her earliest experiences of sexual emotion, as casually recorded in her letters, seem to have been in connection with animals. She recalls how at the age of 11 a fox terrier that was temporarily in the charge of her family once stood on his hind legs and clasped her UNDINISM. 465 leg with his forelegs as she sat in the sitting-room, straining with such violence that he had to be pulled away by force. Even yet any ™ of sexual activity in animals is apt to be sexually exciting It was when she was nearly 20 that Miss E. first attained, spon¬ taneously and without premeditation, to that form of auto-erotic gratification—that is to say masturbation of urolagnic type—which as ever since constituted the main though not the sole trait of her sexual life. “I was sitting in a nice warm bath,” she writes, “and I felt I wanted to make water, and it was too much trouble to get out of the bath, and I suppose some vague sexual feeling made me first clasp my hand right over and against that part of me, and then I began to make water in my hand, and somehow it gave me a sort of anguish of tantalizing pleasure, and I instinctively moved my hand up and down it while the water poured through my fingers, and in a few second it happened.’’ By this incident—an incident which fre- quently proves significant in young women with tendencies to Undnnsm—the auto-erotic activities of Miss E.’s life became hence¬ forth consciously molded. Whether the urinary interest, as is prob¬ able, had appeared earlier is not clear from the extant information, but it was with this incident that masturbation began. She prefers to practice it with the minimum of actual contact, holding the vulva open, and with one finger at a little distance straining the body towards the finger until it is able to stir the stiff and excited parts. Tumescence and detumescence occur easily and even spontaneously with her, the clitoris projects and there is much emission of mucus, and complete orgasm follows with little delay. Friction seems, however to be necessary to her to attain detumescence, which however she sometimes avoids. “When I am thinking of exciting things in bed,” she writes, “sometimes I keep from touching myself at all—I lie on my back with my legs apart, and however much my thing opens and shuts and quakes and craves, I won’t touch it. It is more delicious than satisfying it would be and of course goes on much longer. Only it is very difficult to keep from touching.” A homosexual interest appeared, so far as the record goes, about the age of 25. At the time she had a friend, a girl of 15, for’whom she cherished a great passion. “But she was innocent and I was too conscientious to do anything but kiss and hug her.” For many years afterwards Miss E. never met her friend, though they remained in occasional correspondence. The friend is very religious and con¬ ventional, but, like Miss E. herself, she suffers from sexual repres¬ sion. Twenty-eight years later, when Miss E. wrote to her and referred to sexual satisfaction as possible between women, this friend after an interval of some months, replied confiding to Miss E. her 30 466 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. own sexual longings and proposing to come to her for a week if Miss E. would do what she could to satisfy these longings. “She said she had such wild feelings in her body, and her breasts had be¬ come so large and soft, and she was always playing with them; and that if she came I could do whatever I liked to her.” At this time of her life Miss E. seems to have acquired greater freedom of action. She took rooms in London and looked forward with great pleasure to her friend’s arrival. But at the last moment the friend hesitated and felt scruples. “‘Would it be considered a sin?’ So I had to say that it was considered a sin, but that / didn’t consider it sin, but simply natural pleasure. So she did not come and I felt an awful ass.’ The difficulty was discussed in letters during some weeks while the friend hesitated. “A few days ago,” writes Miss E. “she frightened me by a letter saying she was getting so desperate for relief for her sexual feelings that she had tried to hear of some ‘bad house where a man would have her. It seemed to me risky for a person of her age and respectable looks to do that; they would think she was a spy or she might get insulted.” Miss E. recommended masturbation as a method of relief, but her friend thought that too sinful. ‘ It seems,” comments Miss E., “that a man is the least sinful way out of her difficulty!” Miss E. considered whether it might not be pos¬ sible to bring her friend into contact with her male correspondent but the suggestion after further hesitation was rejected. “After a few weeks’ pause she wrote to say she had made up her mind it was better to be pure and wouldn’t I go and stay with her and talk it over? I refused as she had promised I might do every kind of thing to her and I didn’t see the fun of going to sit up and talk of purity.” That was the end of it. Miss E. clearly states the kind of gratifica¬ tion she herself desired with her friend. “When I wrote to her I said I should like to watch her stand and make water. She wrote back that it would shock her very much and she was sure she could never ‘unveil her body’ to me (though she had promised a few weeks ago that I might kiss her there), but she added that ever since receiving that letter she had longed to stand and make water and that any pressure against that front part made her want to go. I think this sensitiveness in wanting to pee is the beginning of the sex thrill which she had never felt, she says, only a great heat and pressure.” In another letter Miss E. writes: “If my friend had come here I should have hugged her and kissed her a lot, and then stroked and kissed her ‘large soft breasts’ and rubbed and kissed her under her arms. Then, when she was regularly stirred up and excited, I should make her lie back and I should turn up her clothes. I think I should like to lay my cheek against her thick hair and rub it. Then I would pull it apart and move my lips about on these UNDINISM. 467 parts, and then I should start kissing passionately. She would get pretty wild by that time! Do you think when she felt my lips press¬ ing against these inner parts it would make her pass water? Do women ever do it in bed when they are excited?” Her actual experi¬ ence with any woman had never gone as far as that, but had been confined to stroking the sexual parts and to kissing the breasts. ^ kere however, been another proposed adventure which had, i - e that already mentioned, come to nothing. In this case it was a grass widow of 28, whom Miss E. only knew by correspondence, and she had never been loved by a woman, but she seemed to like the idea: Will you really kiss me everywhere?” she wrote to Miss i * T ' d . ea ° f !t makes me hot a11 over to think of. It would be ovelj. Miss E. arranged for a meeting in London, but, again, on the other side it was postponed at the last moment on the pretext that Miss E. no longer seemed so “keen” about it. Later she again promised to come, but Miss E. allowed her to write three times before replying, and nothing came of it. “I don’t fancy we shall meet after all,” wrote Miss E. “I think she is too well supplied with men to trouble about me. She writes about once a fortnight instead of twice a week. She usually ends up her letters with: ‘Write me something sweet and warm.’ But she only writes about dances and dresses and admirers, which only bores me.” So it was that Miss E.’s homosexual desires were never gratified. “If only a woman would try to take liberties with me ! 7 have always done all the court¬ ing myself,” wrote Miss E., “and with practically no success.” Only, it seems, in one case had she been intimate with a woman—a mar¬ ried friend with whom she stayed in rooms in London—and on that occasion she stroked the sexual regions and kissed her breasts, and under the arms and indulged in furious colombine kisses until both were pale and exhausted (it is noteworthy, however, that she never experienced the orgasm), “and in the end when she had had enough she turned round and called me sensual!” Her heterosexual impulses attained even less gratification. She never met the man to whom she wrote the letters on which this account is mostly based. He seems to have been willing and she dallied pleasurably with the idea of a meeting he proposed, but she delayed, saying that she was craven-hearted and nervous, and finally decided that she was too old. “I suppose you wouldn’t think it worth the trouble to take an excursion here some day?” she wrote. “Though I should love to come to you, yet I believe I shouldn’t have the courage. This is a very quiet place and down on the beach under a breakwater we could be quite undisturbed. We couldn’t do much from your point of view, but to me it would be all wonderful and new and entrancing. You could let me see your thing 468 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. and I should want you to make water (don’t do it at the station when you arrive).I don’t wear closed combinations but open drawers, so if you put your hand up you could feel it at once. If you sat on the shingle and I stood in front of you, I could make water so that you might watch me. Perhaps we could manage for me to lie back so that I could be excited by you on me. If these are all castles in the air, they are lovely to think of.” “If I were with you,” she wrote again to him, “I should like to stand with my lower part bare and I should like you to kneel in front of me with your face against my part there and I should like to make water then . . . . And I should like you to stand about a yard in front of me and to make water from that distance, steadily, against my part.” She also expressed a wish to perform what amounted to fellatio, and added that it would give her great pleasure also to have cunnilinctus whether from a man or a woman, and she would also like to do it. “I have made water on this paper,” she adds in pencil to one of her letters to this correspondent; “I hope you don’t mind. I wanted to very much. Pee on your next letter a little. I should love it.” Her friend apparently indulged this wish, for she writes subsequently: “It was only a bit washy but it pleased me.” She remarks elsewhere that she had desired one of the women friends already mentioned to urinate on her letter before sending it. Her ideal seems more often to be homosexual than heterosexual, but this is partly, though not perhaps entirely, because she was in closer contact with women than with men. “What darlings women are!” she writes, “you wonder how it is I have had no experience with men. Well, really and truly, I have never cared two pence about them. For one thing I never came into contact with them. But the chief reason is I always fell in love with some girl or other, and men had not the slightest interest for me. I daresay one is born like that, shouldn’t you think so? Indecent sights of men always excite me, but men as one finds them in ordinary society are such sexless-looking things. A woman has beauty and shows it. You are encouraged by her way of dressing to notice her breast outline. And at a dance, decolletes, how beautiful! And then the scent of under her arms! That always seems almost to madden me, though if it is of a plain woman, or one I dislike, it offends and dis¬ gusts me extremely. I don’t think I could ever have a passion for a man, though I should like to do indecent things with him. But for women I have quite violent passions.” She was, however, bisexual in the sense that she mingled the attractions of the two sexes. This is well indicated by a significant passage in a letter to her male cor¬ respondent: “I think I should like a man better if he was in woman’s clothes. I should like to turn up his petticoats in front as UNDINISM. 469 he stood, and pull apart his drawers, and get his chemise out of the way ; and directly his thing could be seen I should like him to begin making water instantly, as if he had been in a great hurry to do it.” It may be noted here that Miss E., who was sensitive, in a quite spontaneous way, to many erotic refinements, consciously realized the erotic significance of clothing. “It is much more exciting,” she writes in another letter, “when a person has clothes on. When I was in London in rooms with the married friend of mine, on a Sunday afternoon, she had on a black satin tight-fitting costume and soft white lisse frill round the neck and she lay on the sofa in the large drawing room we had and opened her bodice for me to kiss her breasts. She looked far more naked like that than in an ordinary blouse or in a bedroom. I like myself better, too, with clothes on. I wear the old-fashioned open drawers, and if I stoop down and put my hand in under my clothes from in front it gives a delicious unexpectedness to the thrill if my hand happens to reach through without pulling the drawers aside.” It is, however, perhaps a little misleading to describe Miss E.'s attitude as homosexual, heterosexual, or bisexual. It is mainly and fundamentally urolagnic and all “sexual” elements are preliminary or subsidiary to the urolagnic interest. It will be noticed how this interest is predominant even in all her conceptions of homosexual and heterosexual relationships. It also had an independent auto- erotic existence continued from the time of her first spontaneous discovery of sexual pleasure when urinating in the bath, a practice which seems to have continued. She also likes urinating out of doors in the standing position and in summer is accustomed to leave off the wearing of drawers; she has never been caught doing this and is indeed too nervous to risk being seen; when she attempts doing it out of doors in the crouching position, she says, she is so nervous she can hardly begin. Like many women with a tendency to Undinism—and of course many who are not—she is very shy, on account of the sexual associations of the act, about urinating in the presence of a friend. “When I was sleeping in the same bed¬ room with my married friend,” she writes, “she used to joke me about it every night before I got into bed. She would sit down and do it at once, as loudly as possible, and then skip into bed, and say to me, ‘What are you doing, dear? Hurry up or I’ll come and spank you.' I felt so embarrassed, I could only do it by small instalments, and I really blushed as I did it.” This shyness has pre¬ vented her even in private from urinating, as she would find pleasure in doing, in unusual or indecorous ways. “Sometimes in a remote country station,” she writes, “where there is just one w. c. and no attendant, one finds a whole lot of pee on the edge of the 470 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. seat and run down on the floor in a pool. I suppose a woman has done it on the edge of the seat on purpose. I have often felt I should enjoy doing that; or just stand up and hold up my clothes and do it straight down on the floor. But I feel I should look guilty if I met someone as I came out.” This confession seems to explain a condition of things found even in lavatories reserved for young women of good class and often shocking to those who are not im¬ pelled thus to violate propriety; the motive is not uncleanliness but a tendency to Undinism which is undoubtedly more prevalent than is usually realized. It is a pleasure for Miss E., and sometimes pro¬ duces definite sexual excitement, when she sees youths and girls urinating, especially if they playfully do it on each other, or if some trivial mischance occurs in the act. ‘‘Such things,” she remarks, “make me in a fearful hurry to do it in my drawers.” She relates with gusto in the course of her correspondence various little episodes of this kind—as well as in regard to defecation—she has seen or heard of. Occasionally she illustrates her narrative with crude little drawings of, for instance, a man urinating on the genital region of a woman, or of a dog attempting to mount a bitch, a sight which causes her physical excitement, and she constantly asks her correspondent to send her photographs of urination in men or in women, and of sexual acts, normal and abnormal. All indecency gives her pleasure and she has the impulses of a voyeuse. After describing a youth she had seen slowly walking along with his hands in his pockets and his penis exposed, urinating as he walked, she adds “It looked lovely,” and of another rather similar incident she says: “It excited me wildly.” Discussing the question more generally she writes: “I believe that, however they may look, in their hearts all women love to see a man exposing himself. They tell stories to each other of having come across a man in such and such a condition, and they say: ‘Wasn’t it dreadful, dear!’ But they gloat over all the details. We are all brought up to pretend not to like it, and we make ourselves ‘look the other way,’ as it were. If we get a chance to glance at anything we mayn’t even show by our face that we have seen. If as we look away we feel a passing of desire we daren’t show it. What a bondage we are in!” The whole picture presented by Miss E. herself in these letters is of one who has been all her life long in bondage, subject to repres¬ sion, and it is unnecessary to quote further. There has never in her life been even the fair possibility of a normal heterosexual relation¬ ship, not even within the bonds of affectionate friendship. It has thus come about that she has never attained the development which her fine intelligence and her delicately sensitive temperament seemed to promise. Naturally the repressed impulses sought escape as they UNDINISM. 471 could. Thus there was a tendency to a homosexual orientation; there were the impartially diffused inclinations of a voycuse; there was, more definitely, on account of the special circumstance under which the physical orgasm first occurred, a predominant urolagnia which was maintained throughout, though it never seems to have become a fully developed Undinism. All these impulses, though they have a natural basis, may be described as abnormal when developed as they have been in Miss E. Yet their variety and frequency, the freedom with which they have been in secret indulged, have really been the means of delivering Miss E. from more serious abnormality. She has neither suffered from any serious psycho-neurotic condition nor has she fallen into any gross perversity. The dammed up stream of natural instinct has found a variety of trivial outlets which have relieved the dangerous pressure of internal repression and enabled her to live a life, which, though maimed and incomplete, has been in a fair measure healthy and happy. We may now turn to a case, again a woman, in which the conditions also always failed to permit the normal sexual balance but in which such development as was reached was almost exclusively Undinistic. Here we have the full picture of Undinism. Miss A. P. was born in the country (Cornwall) and of working class parents. She possessed, however, a native intelligence above that of her class and family, and her parents desired, but were unable, to give her a superior education and make her a teacher. She also dis¬ played a correspondingly natural refinement and gracious distinction of manners, quite free from affectation, which caused even people of upper social class to regard her as a born “lady.” She began by earning her living as a nursemaid in the uncongenial atmosphere of a common tradesman’s family; this man once made some kind of attempt at a sexual approach which she never described but it evidently shocked her, and she resented it. She won the confidence and affection of later employers who afforded her opportunities for development. Finally, at the age of 32, she emigrated to Australia to join her married sister there in a business partnership; she died, after influenza, at the age of 36. Her father was a man of somewhat violent disposition and there was little affection between father and child. She was, however, much attached to her mother, a gentle and patient woman who during the last years of her life exhibited a mild degree of mental aberration of a senile type. There were three children in the fam¬ ily. The brother, stolid and hard-working, of excellent character 472 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. and normal disposition, was at one time, after an attack of influenza, liable to periods of depression; he married happily. The sister, the youngest of the family, was in every respect healthy, normal and commonplace; she married and had a large family. A. P. had convulsions in infancy. It has been frequently noted (as by R. O. Moon, “The Prognosis of Infantile Convulsions,” British Medical Journal, 17 Dec., 1908) that infantile convulsions tend to be associated with rather unusual habits of mind or character or some slight psychic peculiarity in later life. As a child she wetted the bed. It is well recognized that this early weakness of inhibition may be of considerable significance for later development. The terror of committing what is felt to be a shameful act, especially for a nervous and sensitive child, powerfully concentrates attention on the urinary function and heightens its normal aptitude to become a focus of emotional activity. Even some twenty years after she had outgrown this childish weakness, A. P. once dreamed that she had wetted the bed, and experienced an immense relief on recovering full consciousness to find that it was only a dream. A. P. grew up into a strong and fairly healthy girl and woman, tall and slender, muscularly powerful out of proportion to the size of her muscles which, however, though apparently delicate, were very firm. The hips were not largely developed but sexual develop¬ ment was apparently complete and normal, the mons veneris was well covered with dark hair and the darkly pigmented nipples were of full size. There were, however, somewhat infantile traits of feat¬ ure and expression traceable in the face, which was otherwise pleas¬ ing though not beautiful. It is quite likely that this suggestion of infantility was significant of a general slight though not obvious tendency to infantility which may help to explain A.P.’s Undinism. She always retained the excessive reserve and shyness of a child, though this was concealed by her natural good manners and her gracious formality with strangers. Her more homely sister, who might be considered prettier, possessed nothing of this modest re¬ serve and well-bred distinction, nor any of the same tastes. A.P. loved birds and flowers and fountains, and from such sources re¬ ceived the keenest enjoyment she was capable of. On the human side she was not highly developed. However sensitive and refined in some respects, she was not notably sympathetic, and not easily inclined to be friendly except with those she had known and become familiar with during many years, and even with them she remained so reserved that they rarely had any real knowledge of her. She seemed to them to be herself one of the birds she was so fond of, or even an elusive and non-human fairy. On the whole, by those who knew her and even by those who only casually met her, she was UNDINISM. 473 regarded as an unusual and attractive personality. A visitor to the house where she lived, knowing nothing about her, remarked that she seemed to belong to the race of mermaids, and one who knew er well said that her graceful figure gave the impression of a primi¬ tive being whose subconscious need was to fly or to swim. _ She was in fact fond of water and of being in the water. She delighted in sea-bathing, and when taking a bath indoors she would occupy an inordinate time over it, and on this account preferred a bath at night. One of her earliest recollections, as a child and little schoolgirl, was of a fondness for urinating into her bath and espe¬ cially into the streams and brooks near her home. This obscure im¬ pulse, a fundamental trait of Undinism, to mingle her own stream with the streams of nature, arose instinctively and was never clearly thought out. But it persisted throughout life. When a grown-up woman she admitted that it was still a fascinating idea to think of herself as standing in the moonlight on the bank of a river and send¬ ing forth a stream of her own to fall afar into the water, i For a feat of this kind she was, anatomically and physiologically peculiarly gifted. This is noteworthy, for it illustrates a point often overlooked but clearly to be seen on careful investigation: the nat¬ ural physical basis of many psychic “aberrations,” as we are usually inclined to consider them. We are too easily prone to content our¬ selves with some mere psychic explanation in trivial infantile experi¬ ence, while a keener insight shows that, beyond these, a deeper cause exists in the organism itself, and what seemed a psychic “aber¬ ration” was really the natural expression of organic constitution.2 I have elsewhere shown how, in the case of “Florrie,” the analytic unravelment of the psychic history may immensely help to explain the condition, but fail to explain it completely until we go deeper In A.P.’s case the nates were not largely developed and deviated from the common globular and protuberant type. The line of cur¬ vature began at the waist, following closely and firmly the curve of the sacrum, with no sudden expansion but some resemblance to the Spanish type of ensellurc or saddle-back. It was probably associa¬ ted with that form of pelvis and buttocks. Her figure, as sometimes occurs in Cornwall, was of Southern rather than Northern European type, and it has been noted, probably with truth, that in Southern women the genitals are placed more forward and upward than in Northern pe oples. In A. P. (as normally happens only in young 1 Is there some instinctive sexual association? A lady of Quite nor¬ mal disposition told me that after the orgasm her involuntary feeling is that she is lying beside a stream which is flowing past her - Alfred Adler refers (Fortschritte der Medizin, No. 16 1910) to the desire of women in “psychic hemaphroditism” to urinate standing 474 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. girls) the urinary stream was directed in an unusual degree forward, and also (which is again an infantile characteristic) with an unusual force. Her favorite method of urination when circumstances per¬ mitted was in the erect position with raised skirts. In doing this she had discovered the device of placing her open hands in the groins and drawing them slightly upwards and outwards, so separating the labia, and thereby both liberating the full energy of the stream, and securing a minimum wetting of the parts, a point to which she attached importance as she was fastidiously cleanly. It seemed to her that the special vesical powers she possessed were a legitimate source of satisfaction, from which she was entitled to receive all the enjoyment possible. She especially enjoyed the exercise of her powers in the garden in the dusk of evening and would brave even the risk of detection, which she always carefully sought to avoid, however, having no impulse of exhibitionism. She would sometimes take exact note of her own vesical force. Thus she once found that, standing erect in a raised position at one end of a long bath and separating the labia, the stream would be projected a distance of from 42 to 48 inches, striking the wall at the further end. In the garden her achievements were much more remarkable. Thus, on one occasion, she was able to spurt the stream to a distance of 75 inches. She was conscious of not exerting her full force on this occasion, and a few days later, with an effort, she attained a distance of 105 inches. At this time she was thirty years of age. There was slight polyuria (associated with absence of marked perspiration); this rather more than average need to urinate, accompanied by an excessive shyness, as well as laziness in seeking relief, contributed to attract her atten¬ tion to the urinary function. She sometimes found useful the dis¬ covery she had made, when lying in bed awaiting the hour to rise, that the desire to urinate could be temporarily relieved by simply imagining that the act was being accomplished—a discovery which, as Maeder and others have remarked, many people make uncon¬ sciously in their dreams. Throughout these years A. P. was leading an active and fully employed life, sometimes in London, occasionally abroad, but mostly in the country. She enjoyed the excitements of town life, theatres and picture galleries, showing indeed a discriminating natural taste in pictures. But country life appealed to her most, and she experi¬ enced a rapturous delight in old gardens, in flowers, in birds. Her and send out the stream to a distance, but makes no reference whatever to the anatomical and physiological conditions which alone render this possible. Since the work of Kretschmer and others the physical basis of psychic traits is receiving more of the attention it deserves, and Consti- tutionology is now a recognized field of investigation. UNDINISM. 475 tastes were otherwise somewhat exotic, and she was fond of various foreign foods for which the liking is usually only slowly acquired, and for the most part not at all by people of the class into which she was born. This delicacy and refinement of taste was probably con¬ nected with defective vitality, even if, as has been said, that defect was not obvious on the surface. The limitations of her strength, although within these limits there was no failure of energy, led to a sensitiveness which was not rooted in heredity, and at the same time induced a reflective tendency which imparted to her mind a quaintly philosophic caste, and a deliberate avoidance of those occasions for strong emotion which are an expenditure of energy. Her sexual and general affectional tendencies were in accordance with this disposition. While not seeking solitude or disliking com¬ panionship, she had no very intimate women friends and was not very susceptible to the attraction of men, although quite capable of feeling some attraction for a congenial man. She never had any wish to marry or bear children, and it is probable that she was never really in love. By most of those who knew her, indeed, she was regarded as probably insensible to sex feelings. Her extreme and skilful reserve favored that impression. She was capable of con¬ siderable affection and admiration for women, and it is possible that had her sexual nature developed it might have taken a homosexual direc¬ tion. As it was, however, her sexual feelings were of no great intensity and never led to masturbation or other active and definite auto-erotic manifestations. But she occasionally felt definite spontaneous and local sexual sensations. Moreover, at the age of twenty-eight, though never before, she once at least experienced spontaneous orgasm in sleep, after falling asleep with conscious sexual feelings. She was awakened by an entirely novel sexual explosion, with muscular twitchings, which somewhat disturbed and alarmed her. Sexual interests, however, never played any prominent part either in her thoughts or her life. It will be seen that in A. P. the urinary psychic life re¬ mained throughout more actively prominent, and a more defi¬ nite source of interest and pleasure, than the sexual psychic life. It was never, as normally happens, superseded by the sexual life, nor was it even merged into it. A. P. certainly believed that these two intimate pleasures, vesical and sexual, would naturally tend to go together in relationship to a loved person who had the insight to divine impulses she would not spontaneously divulge. But her own private urinary experi¬ ences, with her love of water generally, were a source of in- 476 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. dependent enjoyment, without sexual accompaniment. That is why A. P. may be regarded as a typical representative of what is here termed Undinism. It seems clear that constitutional conditions, and a some¬ what defective heredity, witnessed by infantile convulsions, combined to produce a predisposition which specially favored the establishment and preservation of the Undinist tempera¬ ment. It is notable that the aberrations were otherwise in the background, and never developed. Of special interest is the suggestion she gave to those who knew her of a “mermaid” or other spirit of the woods or the waters. That suggestion in¬ duced me to adopt, for the temperament she embodied, the name of Undinism. VIII. KLEPTOLAGNIA. By kleptolagnia is meant theft associated with sexual ex¬ citement, or sexual “kleptomania/’ 1 The question is thus at once raised whether it is to be regarded as a subordinate variety of kleptomania. This further leads to the inquiry as to what kleptomania is, a long debated psychiatric and medico- legal question. The subject of kleptolagnia is thus of consider¬ able practical as well as psychological interest, and it is desir¬ able to attempt in some degree to clear up its nature and position. This history of kleptomania begins in the eighteenth century. 2 Lavater incidentally referred to morbid thefts and Gall later (1825) dealt with the subject systematically. He re¬ garded the child as naturally a thief, the youthful tendency to ignore the rights of property being modified with growth by happy organization, the influence of education, habit, and the fear of punishment. But in some individuals the tend¬ ency is so strong that these motive forces are ineffective. The judge must therefore seek to fortify imperfect personal inhibi¬ tion by progressively aggravating the punishment. So that Gall would evidently have approved the judge who when a de- 1 The term “Kleptolagnia” or “Kleptolagnv,” to indicate theft asso¬ ciated with sexual emotion, was devised by the late Dr. J. G. Kiernan of Chicago, a pioneer in America of the study of sexual psychology, about 1917 or a little earlier, on the analogy of “Algolagnia,” and he advocated it in the Urologic Reviezv for that and some subsequent years. He had previously studied “Kleptomania” in the Alienist and Neurologist for 1912 and elsewhere and pointed out its frequent sexual associations. When he suggested the new term to me I immediately adopted it, and in the New York Medical Rcvieiv of Reviews for May, 1919, I published an article on “Kleptolagnia.” I similarly adopt (following Kiernan) the term Pyrolagnia for “sexual Pyromania.” Stekel has studied this anomaly in several chapters of his Peculiarities of Behaviour. 2 It has been summarized by Juquelier and Vinchon, “Histoire de la Kleptomanie,” Revue de Psychiatric , Feb., 1914. ( 477 ) 478 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. fence of kleptomania was pleaded before him observed: “That is what I am here to cure. ,, At that time the doctrine of dis¬ tinct “monomanias” was being set up by the psychiatrists, of whom Esquirol was the most distinguished, but neither he nor Pinel went so far as to assert positively the existence of a defi¬ nite kleptomania. That step was taken in 1840 by Marc who originated the term “kleptomania” and regarded the disorder as an instinctive monomania. The kleptomaniac, in his view, was a hereditarily morbid person whose resistance to theft was diminished by some occasional cause which permitted him to be distinguished from the delinquent; but Marc entered, at the same time, a warning of the dangers of a too large or irre- flective use of this doctrine. Trelat in 1861, also starting from Gall's doctrine of the normality of theft in childhood, held that if this natural tendency persisted after the age of thirteen there was a reason to fear its incurability and the subject would be a kleptomaniac. Marc in 1862, while admitting the delicacy and difficulty of the question, sought to give precision to the conception by insisting on the small value of the objects chosen, their often peculiar nature, the little use made of them, the social position of the thief, his heredity and mental state and physiological condition. In 1876, in the Dictionnaire Encyclo - pedique des Sciences Medicates, was set forth the doctrine of the day that, apart from the evidently insane, there exist kleptomaniacal persons whose acts are morbid and who on careful examination reveal signs of predisposition. Some years later, in 1900, KrafFt-Ebing, while disavowing the doctrine of monomanias, accepted an impulsive insanity on the basis of degeneration, and placed in it, aside from definite insanity, a true kleptomania, in which theft was the isolated impulse of psychic degenerates. There was, however, another stream of expert opinion definitely opposed to the conception of kleptomania as in any form a distinct monomania. On this side Morel was the leader in the middle of the last century. He only admitted the tend¬ ency to theft as associated with various other definitely in¬ sane symptoms, pathological manifestations, often periodic, of KLEPTOLAGNIA. 479 “instinctive mania.” Magnan popularized Morel’s conception, and kleptomania became, especially in France, one of the epi¬ sodic syndromes of degenerescence, rare in its true form, that is to say an irresistible obsession impelling to theft, with resist¬ ance, struggle, anguish, and finally, after the act is accom¬ plished, the relief of tension. In Germany Kraepelin also based kleptomania on a predisposition; it was for him a rare morbid impulse, connected, like other obsessions, with manic- depressive insanity. That tendency has been wide-spread, and Ballet so classes kleptomania together with all other obsessions. But many observers everywhere have also insisted on the asso¬ ciation of kleptomania with the early stages of general paralysis, and with epilepsy. The position in 1911 was summed up by Dubuisson and Vigouroux in their Responsabilite Penale et Folie. Kleptomania, they say, is becoming less and less in¬ voked as a defence since the pretended kleptomaniacs belong for the most part to categories already known, classed, and labelled. Cases may, however, they continue, still be admitted who seem to carry to the utmost the rule of “art for art” in theft, yet always with a motive, for it is difficult to find “true kleptomania” with an irresistible impulse to motiveless theft. On the whole it may be said that the idea of kleptomania or morbid theft arose towards the end of the eighteenth century, in the movement of humane individualism characteristic of that time, as against the unintelligent pressure of society and law. During the last century, however, a reaction took place; the claims of society were set up against the anti-social acts of the individual, and it was felt that the assertion of these claims acted as a wholesome inhibitory force even on a morbid tend¬ ency to theft. The definition of kleptomania, and the classifica¬ tion of its forms, became most variously modified, and it was no longer usual to describe it as an absolutely irresistible impulse. But in some form or another, and indeed in many forms, the conception persisted, however vaguely, though there has been no clear realization of the motives for the morbid theft, be¬ yond an attempt by Regis and others to regard it in its most 480 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. typical form as a mania of collectionism, and usually motives have been denied. It is from this confused but persistent mass of facts and opinions that the definite conception of kleptolagnia as a clear, positive, and demonstrable group of cases, has slowly emerged. It may be said to have cast its shadow be¬ fore. When Magnan and others described true kleptomania as an obsession with resistance, struggle, anxiety, followed by the act, with the satisfaction of relieved tension, they were describ¬ ing, without knowing it, the actual psychic state of tumescence and detumescence in the sexual process. Others, again, came near the spot when they referred to the frequency of sexual perversion in association with kleptomania, and Gamier came very near when, though he failed to suspect sexual excitation, he described the case of a man who would steal satinette for the sake of the agreeable physical sensation the stuff gave him. But it seems to have been Lacassagne of Lyons, always a pioneer with the insight of genius, who first realized (at the Geneva Congress of Criminal Anthropology in 1896) that the theft may be accompanied by sexual excitement due to the emotional radiation of the fear of detection, and that this voluptuous element in the act is its motive. Lacassagne’s illumi¬ nating statement seems to have attracted little or no attention. 1 The new situation was hardly grasped even by Zingerle who in Austria (in the Jahrbuch fiir Psichiatrie for 1900) made the next step forward by a careful medico-legal study of what we may now probably regard as a typical case of kleptolagnia. It concerned the young wife of an official, a woman with decidedly neurotic characteristics, who had no sexual satisfaction in marital intercourse but had experienced from her schooldays, usually at the end of the menstrual period, a high degree of sexual excitement when stealing various objects, especially if of brown leather. Afterwards she would destroy those objects or throw them away. Zingerle regarded the act as a sexual per¬ version, and concluded that the case was one of periodic and 1 It was Kiernan who, many years later, brought it effectively under my notice. KLEPTOLAGNIA. 481 brief acute psychosis in a psychic degenerate, involving irre¬ sponsibility. He made no reference to kleptomania but re¬ marked, evidently without grasping the dynamic connection, that in degenerates trifling ideas were sometimes associated with sexual excitement. During the next few years there was little progress, though the field was being prepared by the study of the sexual associations of anxiety. In dealing at some length with “Love and Pain in the third volume of my Studies, I brought to¬ gether much evidence showing how states of anxiety and allied emotional disturbances might overflow into the sexual sphere and produce sexual gratification, and that such methods of gratification were sometimes instinctively or deliberately em¬ ployed. I was describing precisely the mechanism that underlies kleptolagnia, but I was not aware of it, and no one else seemed to know any better. Janet made fruitful observations on the instinctive effort in states of depression to gain necessary stim¬ ulation by violent means, one of which was stealing; Cullerre in 1905 showed that anxiety could act as a sexual excitant; and Freud attributed to Angstneurosis a sexual origin. Pilcz in 1908 recognized kleptomania as a sexual anomaly manifested in voluptuous emotions. But even in 1909 P. Hospital, study¬ ing “Kleptomanes et Vols aux fitalages” in the Annales Medico-Psychologiques, made no reference to sexual excita¬ tion, and concluded that kleptomania is rare and belongs to “the group of essential impulsive monomanias,” though in the same year Kraepelin referred to the cases as numer¬ ous in which sexual excitement accompanied the act of stealing a sexual fetich, and in 1907 Gudden, who made one of the most careful and extensive studies of shop-lifters, con¬ cluded that they are mostly women near the menstrual period, yet he regarded the thefts as usually motiveless. The attitude of Kraepelin and Gudden is that maintained by Hirschfeld. 1 1 Hirschfeld, Sexual pathologic, 1920, Teil iii, pp. 252 et seq. He states that he has had considerable experience of kleptomania, that it occurs shortly before or after menstruation, and that it is frequently associated with voluptuous feelings. He brings forward two cases, both with neurotic heredity. 31 482 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. It is in France, however, where the conception of klepto¬ mania was originated and chiefly developed, that kleptolagnia was clearly demonstrated, first perhaps by Depouy in 1905 in the Journal de Psychologic Normale ct Pathologiquc. 1 Most of the French cases involve the stuff-fetichisms, especially the attraction of silk, and the theft usually occurred near the menstrual period. One woman, a case of Depouy’s, writes: ‘‘When I can steal silk, I am as it were intoxicated, I tremble; yet it is not fear, for I am not at all thinking of the horrible thing I have done; I only think of one thing: I go in a corner and crumple it at my ease, and then I have voluptuous feelings that are stronger even than I felt with the father of my chil¬ dren.” Another woman, who would steal silk and especially black corsets, said that even the sight of these articles in a shop would make her heart beat and her sexual parts become wet; when she took one she was as happy as if she had re¬ ceived a treasure, though her satisfaction was swiftly followed by shame and remorse. Even when describing her act to the doctor she grew animated, her eyes bright, her face colored, her respiration rapid. Clerambault also studied a number of somewhat similar cases. 2 One of these cases, a woman of forty, frigid with men but a masturbator, noticed once, when as a young woman she was seated in her room on a velvet chair, that the contact of the velvet produced an agreeable sensation. She thus fell into the habit of sitting astride the chair, obtain¬ ing sexual excitement by friction with the velvet and finally acquired a passion for stealing silk remnants which she would apply to her sexual parts and then throw away. But even the mere act of stealing them would itself give her sexual en¬ joyment. There was insanity in her family. Clerambault in¬ sists on the marked tactile element in all such cases and con- 1 It may, however, be remarked that Krafft-Ebing and other authors had described cases—without fully realizing their significance—which may fairly be described as coming under the head of kleptolagnia. Krafft-Ebing stated that erotic fetichism may lead to the crime of theft, but failed to grasp any intimate connection. 2 Archives d’Anthropologie Criminelle, June, 1908, and August, 1910. Clerambault was inclined to term this anomaly hephephilia or stuff- erotism. KLEPTOLAGNIA. 483 eludes that this condition tends to involve a combination of precocity, frigidity, and masturbation. He seems to have recognized the symbolic element, and thinks there is a tendency for women to like stuff fetiches that are stiff and for men to like soft ones. 1 Another French case, that of a Parisian woman leading a demi-mondaine s life, is reported by Vinchon. She had been a lively and sexually precocious child, but only began to steal at the age of 34, when the first signs of the menopause prema¬ turely began to appear. Her thefts were accompanied by sex¬ ual and general excitement. Vinchon further brings forward the case of a girl belonging to a Lyons silk-weaving family who came to Paris and worked at silk corsets. At the age of 17 she began to have a special taste for silk, and experienced a curious shudder on crumpling silk. She had a lover a few years later, an author, and bore several children. After ten years, when she was 31, her lover died and she began to masturbate with silk. It was at the age of 36, In convalescence after typhoid, that she began to steal, and the act gave her more vivid pleasure than she had ever experienced by ordinary masturbation with silk. Immediately after the act she would experience exhaustion with disgust and shame, and she disliked being questioned on the subject. 2 A more recent case in French literature comes from Copenhagen and is reported by Wimmer who believes that the frequency of this impulse is underestimated because it is most usually “platonic” and not actually executed. A married woman, aged 28, of neurotic heredity, during her pregnancies has a strong impulse to theft which she finds it very difficult to repress; if she succeeds in repressing it she vomits, and she cannot always succeed. The theft is followed by a powerful ^ Boas f‘ Ueber Hephephilia,” Archiv fur Krimiml-Anthropologie, Bd. 61) denies that cases like Clerambault’s are genuine fetichisms, and from the standpoint of the earliest conception of erotic fetichism’ that opinion seems sound. Sadger, on the other hand (Die Lehrc von den Geschlechtsverirrungen, 1921, p. 336), considers that they probably are fetichisms and the equivalent of the penis; that is to say that they are in my sense of the term, symbolic fetichisms. 2 Vinchon, Journal de Medecinc de Paris, 1914. 484 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. orgasm with a delicious sensation such as she has never experi¬ enced in coitus or otherwise. 1 Two other recent cases, from Italy, are of interest as be¬ ing both of men. They are reported by Dr. Benigno di Tullio, a prison surgeon in Rome. Two brothers, pickpockets, aged 34 and 20, both came under observation in prison. The hered¬ ity was neuropathic with a tendency to epilepsy, which is re¬ garded as significant. The elder brother presented numerous physiological anomalies and had never been able to learn a trade owing to psychic inaptitude for work. His prison career began at 12. He stated that he could not resist the impulse to steal and that when it seized him he seemed out of his mind. The act was accompanied by a feeling of pleasure, “so that I ejaculate as if I had been with a woman.” He added that normal coitus gave him little pleasure, but that it was in¬ creased if the woman insulted him in violent language. The other brother is also abnormal and unduly emotional; he has suffered from convulsions and partial paralysis. He began pocket-picking at the age of 14. “At the moment of stealing,” he said, “I feel full of mad joy; and as soon as I can get away I ejaculate; it seems as if I had been with a woman.” Benigno di Tullio regards these cases as a form of fetichism in subjects predisposed to epilepsy, and adds that psycho-analysis, which it was not possible to carry out, might have revealed a definite motive in sexual infantilism. 2 However that may be, we are certainly in the presence of kleptolagnia. The cases are in¬ deed highly typical and instructive, for we clearly see the mechanism at work. The normal sexual impulse is weak, and the nervous energy generated by the emotions accompanying the theft, in highly unstable organisms, overflows into the sexual sphere and excites the orgasm. Benigno di Tullio in¬ vokes the suggestion put forward by Ottolenghi in a lecture, that in such cases the association of sexual excitement with 1 August Wimmer. “De la Kleptomanie,” Annates Medico-Psycho- logiques, March, 1921. 2 Benigno di Tullio, “Un Raro Caso di Feticismo,” Rassegna di Stndi Sessuali, July-Aug., 1924. KLEPTOLAGNIA. 485 theft may be congenital and comparable to color-hearing. This suggestion seems unnecessary when we realize the dynamic mechanism at work. In the United States, immediately after Depouy’s first paper, but apparently in ignorance of it, W. L. Howard well illustrated the fetichistic clue to which so much importance has often been attached in the explanation of this group of cases. 1 He described the case of a young woman, of good birth and antecedents, quite normal, who, never having before experi¬ enced any developed sexual emotions, one evening, at a fashion¬ able summer resort, met an attractive man who was attentive to her. She flirted with him to a slight degree, and chanced to note, with no special feelings, that he was unconsciously dis¬ playing the blue garter which supported his silk hose. On returning home, for the first time in her life she began to have erotic reveries, which started with the subconscious visualiza¬ tion of the blue garter and led on to the vision of masculine virility. Erotic daydreams were, however, unsatisfactory, as it was difficult to picture the wearer of the garter. One day she saw in a shop an exact duplicate of her fetish. She instantly appropriated it, and on returning home immediately went to her bedroom and fondled it, and soon found herself masturbating with it. The practice continued; but in order to obtain orgasm it was necessary not only to have a new garter every time, but to obtain it in a surreptitious manner, corresponding, as Howard remarks, to a clandestine meeting with her ideal. She was finally detected, and on investigation her family found a large collection of such garters, ‘‘useless and trivial articles,” in her possession. Her acts were pronounced to be the symptoms of marked kleptomania, and she kept her own secret, for she knew she had been guilty of deliberate stealing for the sake of sexual gratification which she could not obtain, though she would have preferred so to obtain it, naturally. How many 1 W. L. Howard, “Some Forms of Kleptomania the Result of Fetichistic Impulses,” Medicine, Dec.,. 1906. He admitted that “strictly speaking the cases are not those of ‘Kleptomania’ for the object is secretly appropriated for a specific reason.” Howard would term it “physiological fetichism.” 486 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. cases of alleged motiveless “kleptomania,” supposedly due to “mental degeneration,” Howard asks, are really due to the care with which women have similarly kept their own secrets. Although kleptolagnia is specially found among women, it may also, as we have seen, occur in men. Glueck has re¬ corded the case of a colored American youth, aged 23, who began to steal at an early age. It is not actually clear that his thefts were originally prompted, consciously or unconsciously, by sexual motives, but it is stated that during his first act of stealing he experienced a feeling akin to sexual emotion. Later he began to steal objects for which he had no use, on one oc¬ casion a dozen bricks. Neither prison sentences nor the efforts of his father to break the habit by supplying him with all that he desired had any curative effect. He stole for the sake of the intense emotion and excitement he experienced when stealing. Before the act there was a peculiar restlessness growing in in¬ tensity; during the act there was much physical excitement, with panting respiration and perspiration, as if he had run a race; “after it is all over I feel exhausted and relieved.” He himself spontaneously compared these experiences to coitus. 1 The nature of kleptolagnia, as brought out by such cases as these, is fairly clear. The subject, though often neurotic, is not necessarily highly degenerate. The act, far from being motiveless or in a strict sense irresistible, has a definite and intelligible motive and is carried out with reasonable precau¬ tion. The instinctive desire is to secure sexual excitation which cannot be obtained—for whatever reason—in more normal ways, by reinforcing the feeble sexual impulse by the stimulus furnished by the emotions of fear and anxiety which neces¬ sarily accompany the perpetration of a theft. There is no de¬ sire to appropriate the stolen object for purpose of gain, and when its sexual effect has been obtained, either in the act of stealing or by subsequent masturbation, it is hidden away or destroyed. The question arises as to the exact place and status of kleptolagnia. We have seen that the conception really repre- 1 B. Glueck, Studies in Forensic Psychiatry , Ch. V, Boston, 1916. KLEPTOLAGNIA. 487 sents the outcome of two lines of investigation. On the one hand it has been reached through the medico-legal study of kleptomania, on the other hand by the psychological study of sexual aberrations. If we first consider its relation to kleptomania, we are faced by the alternative that either it is not a sub-division of kleptomania in any exact sense, or else we must certainly re¬ vise our conception of kleptomania. The former alternative is generally selected. Kleptomania, in the classic sense, is an irresistible and motiveless impulse to theft, at first regarded as a “monomania” standing by itself, but later (and even as early as Griesinger) as with wider relationship, now usually as an obsession or an imperative conception or a period in psycho¬ sis on a basis of “degeneration,” such as epilepsy, general para¬ lysis, manic-depressive insanity, or other profoundly morbid state. But kleptolagnia, far from being motiveless, is precisely motived, and, however powerful an impulse, can by no means be described as irresistible, for it is held in check until a favor¬ able moment for its gratification occurs. Thus Kiernan, who repeatedly discussed this subject, held that kleptolagnia is not kleptomania, and not even necessarily morbid since fully con¬ trollable, though this test of morbidity, I may remark, admits of question. We may go further and throw doubt upon the whole con¬ ception of kleptomania. When the idea first arose in the eighteenth century it was justifiable, and it was in accordance with the psychological knowledge of the time. It is no longer in accordance with our knowledge, and it is no longer needed for humane reasons since its alternative is now equally humane. We can no longer make any dogmatic statements about “irre¬ sistible impulses”; and if a theft may ever fairly be said to be due to an irresistible impulse we are then concerned with a sub¬ ject whose mental disintegration is so far advanced that the tendency to theft becomes a negligible symptom. Absence of motive is an even more unsound basis for classification. It tells us nothing about the case, it merely describes our own ignorance. The actions demanded by any complex process in 488 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. any sphere of life must seem to us to be marked by “absence of motive,” so long as we are ignorant. The stages in our knowledge of life are marked by a discovery of a motive where before we could see no motive. “Kleptomania,” Dubuisson has remarked, “is not an explanation: it is merely a word.” It is already sinking into the same obscurity as “pyromania.” Kleptolagnia, on the other hand, is a precise and intelligible psychic state, though its affinities are really only to a slight degree with the old kleptomania. The theft, which for the medico-legist was in kleptomania the great outstanding fact, is in the psychological conception of kleptolagnia a secondary and subsidiary fact. The condition more properly belongs to sexual psychology, and especially to the sphere of what I am inclined to term erotic symbolism under its subdivision of erotic fetichism. But under that heading it represents a dis¬ tinct and special class. The fetich is not necessarily a norm¬ ally desirable or attractive object associated with the opposite sex, but merely any object that has become accidentally asso¬ ciated with sexual emotion; that is in large measure why its stimulatory force needs to be reinforced by the additional stimulus derived from the explosive energy of the emotions generated by the theft. Hair-despoilers, who derive sexual gratification from the act of secretly cutting off girls’ tresses, form the link of connection between kleptolagnists and more normal erotic fetichists. There remain to be mentioned, finally, two closely allied combinations of sexual impulse with theft which yet must be clearly distinguished from kleptolagnia in the sense in which it has here been described. The first of these is the psycho¬ analytic conception of kleptomania as especially set forth by Stekel in 1908. Stekel was, indeed, preceded a year earlier, as he himself has pointed out, by Otto Gross, 1 but to him be- 1 O. Gross, Das Freudsche Ideogenitdtsmoment, 190 7. Gross re¬ ported the case of a healthy girl, living with an impotent man, who began to steal all sorts of objects. Her thefts were thus not fetichistic but Gross believes, symbolic, “secretly to take something forbidden.” When her lover s impotence was cured the impulse disappeared. KLEPTOLAGNIA. 489 longs the credit for setting out this conception clearly and fully . 1 Stekel is not dealing with erotic theft, that is with theft as a method of sexual gratification—making indeed no reference to kleptolagnia as here understood—but with theft as a sub¬ stitute for sexual gratification. It is, he believes, the result of repressed sexual emotion, apt to occur, for instance, in the wives of impotent men who crave a forbidden act. A theft is such a forbidden act. So that we are concerned with a transposition of emotions from the sexual into the criminal sphere. The sexual root of kleptomania is indicated, Stekel asserts, by the generally symbolic (not narrowly fetichistic) character of the objects stolen; they are frequently umbrellas (intended to be erected) and other objects which have a sexual symbolism. “The knowledge of sexual symbolism is the key to the comprehension of kleptomania.” Stekel finds that when the woman is restored to normal sexual relationship the thefts cease. It may well be that, as regards some cases, there is a real basis of truth in this theory. But, as sometimes happens with psycho-analytic investigators, Stekel gives it an undue ex¬ tension to cover all cases of “kleptomania,” even in children, who when they steal are to be regarded as sexually precocious, and however plausible, and in some cases probable, this con¬ ception remains, in its generalized form, rather speculative. In any case it fails to coincide with the cases of what is here called kleptolagnia, in which the theft is not perpetrated as a subconscious substitute for sexual gratification but as a direct means of obtaining it. It has also been truly pointed out by Kiernan that Stekel shows himself uncritical, and ignorant of the present position of psychiatry in his unquestioning accept¬ ance of the ancient doctrine of kleptomania and of the mono- ... „ W - Stekel, Die Sexuelle Wurzel der Kleptomanie,” Zeitschrift fur Sexualzinsscnschaft, Oct., 1908. Stekel has more recently (19?3) dealt with kleptomania in Der Fetischismus. He here states (p 39) that the kleptomanie impulse is a transformation of the sexual impulse when repressed by the incest-prohibition.” See also Stekel, Twelve Essays on nu a " rf rl Psychoanalysis, New York, 1922, and Peculiarities of Behaviour Chs. yil-X. Stekel finds that the subject is seldom conscious of the sexual motive; “the affective overtone is there but without the sexual counterpoint, and they live in a fairy realm. 490 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. manias generally. He unnecessarily vitiates his conception by grafting it into that discredited doctrine. Placzek’s conception of “kleptomania” may also be associated with Stekel’s as he traces it to sexual inhibition leading to theft as sub¬ stitute for the desired satisfaction; he considers it may be an experience of the normal life, though chiefly found com¬ bined with hysteria and menstrual disturbances, accom¬ panied by pseudologia phantastica . 1 That there may be an element of truth in Stekel’s con¬ ception, and that we have here a group of cases which it is proper to include in this connection, is indicated by another example of theft in a child brought forward by Mary Chad¬ wick of London . 2 A little girl from the age of five stole such objects as pins, pencils, and pennies. She really desired to ob¬ tain a baby, knowledge, and the penis. It is argued that her thefts were symbols of the things she coveted. She was not being intelligently brought up, and when rationally treated, and matters explained to her, she recovered. The other manifestation of pathological stealing associated with the sexual impulse, but to be clearly distinguished from kleptolagnia, is that which has been especially worked out and clearly demonstrated by Healy of Chicago in his great work on The Individual Delinquent and later in Mental Conflicts and Misconduct . 3 These cases occur in youths as well as girls, led into sexual temptations which yet seem to them intensely abhorrent and wicked, with a resultant conflict from which they subconsciously seek an escape by yielding to what they re¬ gard as the less reprehensible temptation of theft, so that Healy is inclined to regard the stealing as a kind of sexual symbolism. This conception moves in the psycho-analytic sphere and at a first glance it may seem indistinguishable from Stekel’s concep- 1 Placzek, Das Geschlechtslebcn der Hysterischen, 2d ed., 1922, p. 85. 2 Mary Chadwick, “A Case of Kleptomania in a Girl of Ten Years,” International Journal of Psycho-analysis, July, 1925. 3 W. Healy, The Individual Delinquent, 1915; Mental Conflicts and Misconduct, 1917; see in the latter work especially the cases beginning on pp. 125, 175, 204, 243. KLEPTOLAGNIA. 491 tion. It might indeed be possible so to formulate it as to make it appear identical with that. But it is really quite dis¬ tinct. The theft is not here a symbol of repressed sexual de¬ sire. That precisely is the source of the psychic trouble. The sexual temptation is yielded to, in act or at least in thought, and instead of the theft proving a substitute for sexual gratifi¬ cation the tendency to steal is apt to become more violent the more the sexual temptation is gratified . 1 Conflict is of the essence of the process, and the theft is an instinctive effort to solve the conflict by turning the psychic energies into an equally violent but, as it is felt, less evil channel. This is distinct from Stekel’s conception of theft as a symbolic gratification of re¬ pressed sexual desire. At the same time it is the very reverse of kleptolagnia, which is an effort to attain the direct gratifica¬ tion of the sexual impulse by the aid of the emotional energy generated by the excitement of the theft . 2 1 Perhaps to the same group, though here there was an absence of conscious sexual desire or gratification, belong those cases of theft in young women, whose histories are narrated by Dr. Edith Spaulding (American Journal of Insanity , Jan., 1920). In these cases, it is held, the thefts represent attempts to compensate for emotional repression associated with distressing mental conflict. 2 Kleptolagnia and allied conditions are so far only beginning to become of medico-legal interest. In Rhodesia, South Africa (Rhodesia Herald, Jan. 19, 1923, quoted in Jour. Ment. Science, July, 1923, p. 351), an unhappily married woman was charged with a long series of un¬ motived thefts. The defence was kleptomania (not insanity) due to sexual repression. This defence was not accepted by the magistrate who imposed a fine. IX. THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. I. The subject of marriage, regarded in its essential mean¬ ing, is of universal and everlasting interest. That proposition may look like a truism. But marriage in its narrow sense is a mere social institution, possibly of only local or temporary ex¬ istence. In its true biological sense alone is it no merely human institution but the substance of the process by which all the chief forms of life have persisted on the earth. Millions of years before Man appeared, supposing that self-consciousness ever arose, it is marriage that would have been a leading topic of meditation or of dispute. Still today the questions that most affect our well-being or even continuance on the earth as individuals, as families, as nations, or as a species,—the ques¬ tions of heredity, eugenics, sex education, birth control, ster¬ ilization, divorce, the place of woman and the care of the child,—they are all merely aspects of the central problem of marriage. Into the making of a proper account of marriage there enter biology, physiology and embryology, psychology, ethnography, folk-lore, the study of magic and religion, eco¬ nomics, law. A really adequate book on marriage must not only be a book of profound importance for the welfare of the race, it must also be one of the most absorbingly interesting for all who feel the smallest concern in themselves or their fellows. A completely adequate history of marriage we can hardly expect to see. No one person could master all the disciplines of study that must go to the making of it, and the separate work of a group of experts, each in his own field competent, could not be fused into any living and harmonious whole. But the nearest approximation to such a completely ( 492 ) THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. 493 adequate history is the great work of Professor Westermarck . 1 The foregoing remarks imply that the definition of what marriage” is cannot be taken for granted. To many people, no doubt, it may seem that no definition is needed. Yet that is far from being so, and it cannot even be said that among students of the subject there is yet quite a clear agreement as to what we are to understand by “marriage.” Westermarck stated the subject of his book to be “Human Marriage,” and that clearly involved a natural biological conception of mar¬ riage. In that sense, Westermarck has defined it as “a more or less durable connection between male and female, lasting beyond the mere act of propagation till after the birth of the offspring.” But short of this natural history sense of the term, marriage may be regarded in a narrower sense as a social in¬ stitution, “a union regulated by custom or law .” 2 In this special and more usual sense “marriage” is not simply a method of sexual association. It is an institution , and while it gives “the right to sexual intercourse it is not necessarily exclusive.” Dr. Malinowski, who today perhaps speaks with the best knowledge, both intimate and scientific, of savage life, con¬ firms Westermarck on this point, and even more explicitly . 3 Marriage, he holds, is not merely to be identified with “sexual appropriation.” It is to be regarded, rather, as “an institution based on complex social conditions,” of which sexual appropria- 1 The History of Human Marriage. Fifth edition, re-written. By Edward Westermarck, Ph.D., LL.D. London: Macmillan. Three volumes, 1922. There a short version of the History in one volume (1926). Two subsequent works on marriage, complementary to Wester- marck’s, may be mentioned, though written in complete independence of it and from other points of view: Die Vollkommene Ehe (1926) by a Dutch gynecologist, Dr. T. H. van de Velde, an elaborate treatise on marriage as primarily an erotic relationship, and Die Ehe (1927), a handbook on the physiology, psychology, hygiene and eugenics of mar¬ riage, written by a group of German physicians, men and women, and edited by Dr. Max Marcuse. I would add Briffault’s notable work, The Mothers, which contains many acute criticisms of Westermarck and must be studied by all interested in these questions. 2 Westermarck, Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, vol. ii, Ch. XL. History of Marriage , vol. i, Ch. I. 3 For instance in Nature, 22 April, 1922. 494 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. tion is not even the main aspect. The Trobriand Islanders of New Guinea, whom Malinowski has studied in minute detail, live in great sexual laxity; they are matrilinear, they satisfy their sexual inclinations by various forms of license which sometimes resemble “group marriage.” But they settle down to marry, and this not only, or even mainly, in order to possess a partner in sexual association, but out of personal attachment, to set up a household with economic advantage, and to rear children. Marriage, thus regarded, is not based on sex alone. Nor, it will be seen, when thus regarded, does it strictly ex¬ clude sex relationships outside marriage. It would follow that if marriage is thus to be defined as an institution, it can scarcely be strictly correct to refer to extra-marital sexual relations as 'immoral. 9 That, however, is not an aspect of the problem with which Westermarck is concerned in his History. It more properly belongs to his work on The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas , where it duly comes under consideration. Westermarck’s History of Marriage has been a standard book on its subject ever since it first appeared more than thirty years ago. It was, at that time, the youthful production of an unknown student from Finland who had but lately acquired the foreign language in which he wrote. In an Introductory note Alfred R. Wallace pointed out its fresh and valuable qualities. Its conclusions were at some points opposed to those of various eminent authorities, but the new investigator com¬ manded so immense a range of facts, he dealt with them in so critical, orderly, and scientific a spirit, he had so admirable a power of clear presentation, and was throughout so cautious and judicial, that his opinions could not fail to carry weight. It became clear, no doubt, as the years passed that there were some aspects of the subject the author has passed over too lightly; there were others that, when the book appeared, no one had sufficiently recognized. What some might regard as a capital defect was the absence of firsthand and intimate knowledge of the more primitive life and custom of any extra- European people. Dr. Westermarck proceeded to remedy this defect by spending six years in Morocco, learning to acquire, THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. 495 by contact with the natives, in their own language, not only a direct knowledge of customs and institutions, but an insight into habits of thought of comparatively primitive peoples un¬ touched by European civilization, yet remotely related to European stocks. How fruitful this experience proved is shown by Westermarck’s book, Ritual and Belief in Morocco, and various other publications. It was in Morocco that he learnt the large part that magic plays in the ritual of marriage, confirming what, since the first edition of his book was published, Sir James G. Frazer had shown of the place of magical beliefs and practices in all the gieat affairs of life, including marriage. So that whereas in the first edition Dr. Westermarck found a dozen pages enough for marriage rites he now finds three long chapters—and most delightful chapters they are—none too much. Yet, he tells us, notwithstanding the enormous influence of magical beliefs on marriage rites, of which he has become aware since living in Morocco, the value of such rites for the study of the primitive and fundamental forms of marriage seems to him even less than he thought it before. Although he has found it necessary to re-mould and re¬ write this work so thoroughly, Dr. Westermarck remains true to the method that guided him at first, and the two main points in this method are its biological basis and its inductive collec¬ tion of comparative facts. From his present standpoint he is more inclined to extend and to fortify this method than to abandon it. The biological conception of marriage leads on to psychology, though not in itself necessarily psychological, and the psychological element in the processes of marriage is far more elaborated now than before. That the comparative way of progression may sometimes have defects A-hen the facts col¬ lected are misunderstood or wrongly reported at the outset. Dr. Westermarck himself asserts, yet it remains the safest way, and when (as he rightly observes) we remember that Man, after all, is only a single species it is a completely legiti¬ mate way. Other ways have sprung up in recent years, and in a new introductory chapter, “On the Method of Investiga- 496 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. tion,” Dr. Westermarck discusses them and compares them with his own. There is the way of Dr. Rivers in England and of the French school founded by Durkheim. These and other investigators are disposed to regard a society as an or¬ ganism which must be studied by methods of “pure” sociology. Explanations on the comparative basis or on the psychological basis are regarded as too hazardous and quite unnecessary. But, as Westermarck points out, while such hazards undoubt¬ edly exist, the hazards of the other method are equal and even greater; Durkheim was prepared to draw conclusions concern¬ ing the religious conceptions of Man at large from the study of totemic Australian tribes, while Rivers, so opposed to psychological conjectures, was himself profuse in conjecture. But Dr. Westermarck, with the sanity and breadth which in¬ spire confidence in his work, is far from wishing to condemn methods to which he does not himself attach prime importance. He concludes that they are all helpful, each complementary to the others, and all likely to aid in enlarging and defining our knowledge. In its present and probably final state there is perhaps only one work with which The History of Human Marriage can be compared, and that is the now still more extensive Golden Bough, which has been the chief life-work of Sir James G. Frazer. The two works have obvious points of re¬ semblance ; they are both by men of immense learning who are concerned with the investigation of the operations of the primi¬ tive mind and the details of primitive human practice in order to trace the sources of the mental operations and social prac¬ tices of mankind today. The two investigations in fact often overlap. Frazer enters Westermarck’s sphere and there is no writer to whom Westermarck refers so often as Frazer. But when that is said, and we come to look closer, it is the differ¬ ences that we note. Frazer, in his discursive way, touches nearly every aspect of human thought and action, throwing out brilliant suggestions in many directions. Westermarck, though his net is cast as wide, or even wider, is only concerned to gather in what bears on one subject, and while dealing with the THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. 497 most diverse aspects of it, he is methodically seeking to eluci¬ date a single social institution of primary importance to man¬ kind. Frazer seems always to have instinctively before him the ideals of literary scholarship, Westermarck the ideals of biological science. Frazer is something of an artist; we di\ ine in him a certain pleasure in the charm and strangeness of some of his own speculations; he seeks after style, and is even willing, as in the last and oft-quoted paragraph of his great work, to attain a fine effect by a deliberate sacrifice of probability. For Westermarck there is no question of “purple patches ; he is manipulating a language which is not natively his own and is content to attain the scientific qualities of pre¬ cision and clarity; we realize, moreover, that these qualities of writing fit the qualities of his mind; he is not concerned with aesthetic effects, and, one imagines, would rather put forward no speculations at all than any which do not seem solidly based. So that while both these great works are of profound interest to a reader who has any intelligent care for the problems of human life and thought, he is likely to read the Golden Bough for its brilliance and excitement and far-reaching suggestion, and the History of Human Marriage for the steady illumina¬ tion and weighty judgment which it brings to the most vitally intimate of social institutions. If we compare this History in its full development with the other great work on which its author’s fame is chiefly based, The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, the latter work appears as in effect a series of monographs on the various human virtues or vices,—for what from one point of view is a virtue is sometimes from another a vice,—but it is its unity which makes the History so impressive. A number of different avenues are opened before us, but each of them leads to the same great central human institution, each en¬ ables us to see better from a fresh and illuminating point of view some essential aspect of it. Yet while the History is dominated by the sense of unity it is possible to find here a series of fascinating monographs on the most diverse, the most attractive, sometimes the most prac- 32 498 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. tical topics. Courtship, modesty, self-decoration by ornament and clothing, the primitive pairing season, and all the various forms of marriage, group-marriage, monogamy, polygyny, polyandry, as well as celibacy and divorce,—all these and many other topics render the History attractive to a multitude of various readers. This last subject of Divorce is dealt with at length, both in its savage and civilized aspects; Dr. Westermarck finds that marriage tends to be durable even among peoples in primitive stages of culture, as we should expect if it really rests on a natural biological basis. It is because marriage is so natural an institution that we need not fear to allow a large freedom of divorce, as well as of variation, for that freedom cannot destroy but will, rather, confirm its stability and purify its practice. It seems reasonable, Westermarck concludes, that “a contract entered into by mutual consent should also be dis¬ solved by mutual consent”; such freedom of divorce is neces¬ sary as “a means of preserving the dignity of marriage,” and is even necessary in the interests of the children. It is inevitable that, when the sections of the work are thus examined in detail, criticisms arise. The History was planned from the outset—as even its name indicates—on the broadest basis of natural science, but not only can we not expect to find an author, however painstaking and accomplished, pro¬ ficient in every scientific discipline involved, there cannot fail, also, to be aspects of the subject which, perhaps even deliber¬ ately, he leaves aside. Thus, though we find here chapters on celibacy as well as on divorce, there is no detailed consideration of the subject, even more germane to the central question, of the regulation of the size of the family, nor is there any men¬ tion of eugenics, although we are constantly brought close to unconscious eugenics . 1 Abortion and infanticide have been dealt with elsewhere by Dr. Westermarck, and are only in- 1 Almost immediately after the publication of this new edition of the History, Mr. Carr-Saunders published his work, The Population Prob¬ lem: A Study in Hinnan Evolution, which precisely fills this blank, and the more satisfactorily as its author writes in something of the same scientific and scholarly spirit as Dr. Westermarck. THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. 499 cidentally touched on here. But a chapter setting forth and elucidating the gradually progressive regulation and limitation of the size of the family, first by infanticide, then by abortion, and finally by deliberate contraception, would have been not only much to the point but of real help in an age when this as¬ pect of marriage has become so prominent and when so many people, who cling to the ideals of an earlier stage of civiliza¬ tion, yet experience terror and indignation in the presence of later forms of civilization. There is another form of marriage which Dr. Wester- marck has not included and could not include because it has hardly yet acquired historical position although it is becoming an increasingly common form of marriage, however unrecog¬ nized or illegitimate. The form in question is that which Dr. Knight has termed the “companionate.” That is to say the union of two people for sexual companionship without the in¬ tention of producing offspring . 1 It constantly happens under civilized conditions that a young man and woman may not desire, or may not be eugenic- ally entitled, or not able to afford, to rear a family, or even to depend, both of them, on the earnings of one, but they de¬ sire each other’s social and sexual companionship, while each earning his or her own living, under his or her own name, and retaining an individual relation to the state and to the tax- gatherer. Under present conditions the alternatives open to them are neither satisfactory. For they must either marry and accept all the obligations, disabilities, and compulsions which marriage, as at present constituted, imposes, or they must, as so often happens, form a more or less secret union, with all the difficulties and deceits it involves, and the risks of dis¬ covery and humiliation. Both alternatives are bad. They are not only socially unwholesome, but to both the individuals con¬ cerned, whose aim is altogether legitimate and honorable, they are alike absolutely unjust. The open recognition and accep- 1 M. Knight, “The Companionate and the Family: The Unobserved Division of an Historical Institution,” Journal of Social Hygiene New York, May, 1924. ’ 500 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. tance of a “companionate” is today an urgent demand of social hygiene. It is, under modern conditions, a great benefit to the individual, and it inflicts no injury on the community, but rather, indirectly, great benefits, not only in the sense that every benefit to individuals is necessarily a benefit to the com¬ munity they constitute but because it would increase social sincerity and at the same time form a powerful lever to aid in the removal of prostitution. It need scarcely be said that such a companionate could at any time be voluntarily ter¬ minated at the will of the parties concerned and that it would terminate automatically, and become legal marriage, by the birth of children. 1 Although it is impossible to contest Dr. Westermarck’s learning (to which indeed the list of “Authorities Quoted,” ex¬ tending to 120 pages, sufficiently testifies), and equally im¬ possible to doubt the well-considered weight of his judgments, points of detail must still remain open for criticism. There can never be complete agreement on some of the obscure prob¬ lems connected with the evolution of marriage, nor can anyone ever be completely competent to discuss all its varied aspects. The study of the psychological basis of marriage has in this new edition been greatly extended, with much care, and, it might be added, courage, for Dr. Westermarck holds that “the concealment of truth is the only indecorum known to science.” From the standpoint of sexual physiology and psychology there is, however, sometimes more to be said than is here brought forward; for instance, in the chapter on “Female Coyness” the physiological reasons for the need of courtship in the female require to be supplemented to complete the account of the processes probably involved; and a high degree of excitement in the female in sexual intercourse may be desirable not only to produce lubrication of the female passage but also to aid in providing the movements of the organs which favor conception. One may also note the almost complete absence of reference to 1 Judge Ben Lindsey has put forth a persuasive presentation of this view in his book, The Companionate Marriage (1927). THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. 501 the psycho-analytic explanations of sexual and social phenom¬ ena which have of recent years been put forward. No doubt it seemed hazardous to so cautious an investi¬ gator to venture into a field which has been invaded by the ignorant and the cranky. But that field has now also been entered by many serious thinkers, even sociologists, so that psycho-analytic explanations deserve at least consideration, the more so at Dr. Westermarck’s hands since they carry on those psychological lines of explanation to which he reasonably at¬ taches importance. Thus in elucidating the custom of the defloration of a bride by some other man than her husband (to which a whole chapter is here devoted) the view which Freud has worked out needs to be mentioned, however it is regarded. 1 He has found that, even at the present day, there is an in¬ stinctive antagonism on the woman’s part to the first approach of the man; that the first intercourse is more likely to bring disillusion than satisfaction, and that this frequently leads to a permanent alienation from the husband,—the man who has been compelled to put himself in this undesirable position,— and hence to many unhappy marriages. It was an advantage to the husband, and a security for successful marriage, if he transferred this instinctive hostility of the bride to some other man. In more civilized times such an arrangement was rend¬ ered impossible, in part by the development of a refinement of luxury which made the possession of a virgin seem pecu¬ liarly desirable, and in part by the growth of new moral con¬ ventions. But in earlier days the custom was widespread in many parts of the world, and assumed many disguises. Much ingenuity has been expended over its explanation. The fav¬ orite view has been that it is due to the magically dangerous results of intercourse with a virgin, and the most fantastic ideas have been put forward to explain why, if that is so, any one could be found to risk undertaking this operation for the husband’s benefit. An investigation into the attitude of women 1 S. Freud, Sammlung Kleiner Schiften sur Neurosenlehre, 4th Series, 1918, Beitrage zur Psychologie des Liebeslebens: Das Tabu der Virginitat, pp. 229-251. 502 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. in civilization shows, Freud believes, that there really is a “danger” here, so that the primitive man with his tabu of virginity was protecting himself against a rightly divined though really psychic danger. “The tabu of virginity is thus sensible enough, and we may understand that proscription which commanded the avoidance of these dangers to the man who desired to enter into a permanent union with a woman.” No doubt those who accept Freud’s explanation would admit that this custom, like so many other primitive customs, has been embroidered over with magic, but Dr. Westermarck, who is inclined to accept the old magical theory, seems to have for¬ gotten that he has elsewhere definitely stated that magic can only affect the mere rites of marriage, and we cannot dismiss defloration as a mere rite. Another point on which it is possible to differ from Dr. Westermarck is in regard to primitive knowledge of physio¬ logical paternity. Dr. Hartland in 1909, in his work on Primitive Paternity, developed the view that primitive man was ignorant of the physiological need of a father in the pro¬ duction of children. Some of the evidence he adduced was open to criticism, but evidence has since been brought forward by careful investigators tending to show that this ignorance may be found still, even when sexual intercourse is recog¬ nized as a valuable aid in the causation of children. Malinow¬ ski, especially, has investigated with much care, among the Trobriand Islanders, the primitive theory of conception. 1 Westermarck, however, while not reaching any absolute conclusions, confesses that he still has “some doubts as to the present existence of any savage tribe where child-birth is con¬ sidered to be completely independent of sexual intercourse.” It must certainly be admitted, as even Malinowski shows, that savage beliefs concerning the precise function of the father are sometimes very complicated. There are many such points at which it might be possible to carry further, or perhaps to qualify, the views put forward 1 See, for instance, B. Malinowski, “The Psychology of Sex in Primitive Societies,” Psyche, Oct., 1923, pp. 110 et seq. THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. 503 in this History. But they do not affect the solidity of a work elaborated with such patient care and thought, with so con¬ stant an eye to its larger outlines, that it constitutes one of the chief scientific monuments of our time. On some aspects of the history of marriage Dr. Wester- marck was from the first opposed to influential schools of thought. This was especially so as regards the theory of the origin of later marriage systems out of a primitive promiscuity. Many eminent authorities have adopted this theory, which owed much to the brilliant and learned work of the Swiss jurist, Bachofen, Das Mutt err edit, published in 1861. From Switzerland Rousseau in the eighteenth century brought a Romantic Movement into the world; from the same land in the same century Noverre came to renovate the ballet with the life-blood of romance; in our own century Swiss physicians have made a romantic religion out of psycho-analysis, much to the disgust of its founder. Similarly, it was from Switzer¬ land, in the last century, that Bachofen came to bring the Romantic movement into the origin of society, with his concep¬ tion of a free primitive community in which women ruled since they alone were recognizable as parents. 1 Dr. Westermarck here tells us that he had at first ap¬ proached this question with a disposition to accept the sexual promiscuity of early Man. But the evidence failed to con¬ vince him even when writing the first edition of his History. Now he has gone into the matter far more elaborately, devot¬ ing seven chapters to a careful examination of the facts and of the arguments based on them, and still maintains his former position. With so powerful a presentation of the case against the theory of primitive promiscuity, it should no longer be pos¬ sible for anyone to speak of that theory as “established.” It may be, however, that many will still be inclined to believe, though they cannot prove, that, improbable as actual promis¬ cuity may have been, early Man often passed through a stage, 1 A learned and elaborate work somewhat in the same sense is Briffault’s The Mothers, 3 vols, 1927. Much valuable material is here brought together, though it needs to be approached critically. 504 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. unlike that which prevails alike among the apes and among highly civilized peoples, marked by complex marriage re¬ lationships or some sort of group marriage. 1 We must not as¬ sume that early Man was monogamous because the apes fre¬ quently are. It is even possible that, if he had been, he would have remained much nearer to the apes. A complex marriage system, binding together a group of people, would not only constitute a valuable instrument for making associated progress in a still difficult world, but, without having any teleological end, it would form a highly important training in the discipline of the instincts, and the development of the intelligence. Later, when other methods for seeking those ends became possible, the stress of circumstance on the sexual instinct might well fall away and the later condition of Man in this respect again approach that which existed in the root-stock from which Man sprang. That is possible to believe, though it is not at present possible to prove. There is another important question, here dealt with through two chapters, on which Dr. Westermarck has not com¬ pletely succeeded in carrying conviction, and has now modified his statement in form though not in substance. That is the question of Exogamy, or the prohibition to marry within the group, which Westermarck reasonably (as I think) associated with, and explained by, the generally greater sexual attraction felt for persons outside one’s own domestic circle, and the consequent rarity of incestuous attraction. Unfortunately, however. Dr. Westermarck had placed the emphasis on the wrong side of this ambivalent attitude and asserted the ex¬ istence of an instinct of aversion.” The present writer—while, as Dr. Westermarck remarks, strengthening his position—many years ago objected that there was no need to assume any such instinct sinc e the phenomenon in question is merely the negative , ..Students of early society are, it is true, often very cautious about * he c exl . stence °* ff rou P marriage. Thus Malinowski remarks that when we find groups living in sexual communion we are not to jump to the conclusion that this is “group marriage.” But he admits that the Trobriand Islanders of New Guinea, whom he has himself specially studied, possess an institution nearly resembling group marriage. P 7 THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. 505 aspect of the positive facts of sexual attraction, only appearing as a pronounced “aversion” when it is definitely presented to the mind, and not instinctively.^ Now Dr. ^Yestermarck drops the assumption of an “instinct of aversion” and there¬ with the only serious objections to his position fall away, though it is possible that he might even put the matter a little more clearly and positively, a little less negatively. He refers to a boy in Finland who made a distinction between the girls of his own school, and other girls, the latter only being what he termed real girls. That boy was quite correct. There is no “aversion” from the women of one’s own group, far from it. Yet the girl with whom one has not grown up from child¬ hood, and become accustomed to, is best fitted to be to us, in the sexual sense, a real girl. That is to say, she alone pos¬ sesses those powerful stimuli to the sense of sexual desir¬ ability, never developed in the people one has grown uncon¬ sciously used to, which are essential to the making of a real girl. And the girl herself feels similarly. All this is bound up with the fundamental facts of sexual psychology in Man and lower animals alike, and there is good biological reason why it should be. Flow much Dr. Wester- marck gained by abandoning the “instinct of aversion” may be seen by the remarks of Freud, completely rejecting his original theory, which he here quotes. Freud states, quite truly, that psycho-analytically, it is impossible to accept an “innate aver¬ sion” to incestuous feeling. That rejection is no longer to the point; the Westermarckian view, as now stated, becomes even more coherent than the Freudian, for Freud regards the in¬ fantile incestuous tendencies to which he attaches importance as violently repressed in later childhood; but it is far more plausible to argue that, in the healthily born, they die out naturally and normally under the usure of familiar life, when stronger stimuli from outside are applied. There is no need to invoke any “violent repression,” save in exceptional rases. As Mapother states, perhaps even a little too emphatically: 1 Studies, vol. iv, p. 205. 506 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. “It seems very natural that the sexual tendencies of puberty should often be incestuous. There seems little need to regard this tendency as specific, or to dignify it with special names. [He is referring to the “Oedipus Complex,” the “Electra Complex,” etc.] The adolescent takes as the material for fantasy-production that which is available. If juvenile in¬ cest were a common cause of psychosis the mental hospitals would require considerable enlargement.” 1 The occasional slight sexual attraction between near relations in early life and its usual disappearance at puberty or adolescence are thus both alike natural and normal. Dr. Westermarck might have pointed out that, in our civilization, the examples of really pas¬ sionate incestuous attraction which now and then arise are nearly always between those persons who have been separated during the pubertal period, so that the dulling effect of familiar life on the development of sexual stimuli has been suspended. It is the simple fundamental impulses of normal life which all our customs and institutions and laws formulate and often emphasize. Human ingenuity sometimes moulds them into ex¬ travagant shapes and camouflages them with fantastic designs, but it is the fundamental natural impulses beneath them which are the driving force. This is what Dr. Westermarck in gen¬ eral clearly sees. He is thus easily able to refute Sir James Frazer’s rejection of his view. Frazer thinks that laws exist to forbid men to do the things their natural instincts incline them to do. Laws, it seems, are brought down to men, by the Mosaic method, from some inaccessible Sinai. Strange that so brilliant an investigator, whose researches have often elucidated superstitions, should himself fall a victim to a superstition so gross! There is a temptation, before this great and fascinating History, to linger over the problems the author seeks so care¬ fully and so learnedly to solve. It is indeed a varied panorama which is here spread before us. One never ceases to marvel over the endless modifications and elaborations and complexities 1 C. Mapother, Journal of Mental Science, Jan., 1922. THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. 507 into which the romantic and mighty human mind has success¬ ively moulded even so apparently simple and fundamental a biological fact as that of marriage. One cannot help wonder- ing, also, what new and fantastic shapes await our marriage system in the future. For Man never stands still; when he begins to stand still he is dying. Yet, we may be sure, the more marriage changes in form the more obviously it will in substance remain the same thing. II. We cannot help wondering, but we need not wonder al¬ together at random. The future history of marriage can only emerge from its present history. The seeds of tomorrow are being sown today. The big trees of the future are vigorously growing in the present, if only we are able to discern them. They are not always easily discerned because of the frequency among us of deliberate blindness and deep-rooted prejudice leading us, often with the most virtuous motives, either to deny the existence of these new growths or else to brand them as noxious weeds which will soon die out. It may be unwise to put oneself forward as so self-righteous as not to be influenced by these virtuous motives. Yet there are certain tendencies of today, so clear to the eyes of those who are moderately brave in facing the facts of life, that we can scarcely fail to mistake their significance for the future. Perhaps the most obvious of these tendencies is the move¬ ment to increase the legal facilities for divorce. This move¬ ment proceeds step by step with civilization and is found in all civilized countries. It exists not only in the lands of Protestant tradition, where we should expect to find it, but also in the lands of Catholic tradition. In no civilized country is there any progressive movement for adding to the legal im¬ pediments to divorce. If there were such a country we should probably be suspicious of its claim to be called civilized. And rightly. For in the absence of civilization, while there is room for choice,—since the members of no species are ever actually identical,—yet the chances of the two individuals who choose each other proving to be so unlike as to be incompatible are relatively small. Civilization means the differentiation of in¬ dividuals, so high a degree of individualization that the act of choice, unless it is made under conditions of prolonged in¬ timacy, is not likely to be effective. That is why it seems to (508) THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. 509 some that a marriage should not be made binding unless there has been a preliminary stage of noviciate, sufficiently intimate to ensure mutual knowledge. 1 Yet even with such a safeguard it would probably still be felt wiser to continue the movement for facilitating the exit from marriage. How far that movement will be continued it is impossible to foretell. We have to remember that in our western world, ever since the Reformation, it has received a constantly power¬ ful impetus forward, which the French Revolution, and every later movement of liberation from what seemed to be the legal fetters of the past (notably the Russian Revolution), has ac¬ centuated. The natural goal, already beginning to be reached here and there, is obviously divorce by mutual consent, pro¬ vided of course that no rights of the parties themselves or of the children are injured, for it would seem to be logical that the exit from marriage should not be made more dif¬ ficult than the entrance. And even if the logical conclusion is in this matter held to be unreasonable, it must certainly be accepted that if impediments are placed in the way of divorce it is essential that impediments should also be placed in the way of marriage, so as to diminish the need for divorce. The progressive movement for the legal facilitation of divorce may thus be accepted, to whatever extent it may proceed. It is probable that, however great the care shown in forming marriages, the complexities of personality de¬ veloped by our civilization will continue to introduce so many difficulties that the knot will still sometimes have to be cut because it cannot be unravelled. It is more likely that the movement for simplifying divorce will not proceed rapidly enough. That is where the opportunity arises for the formation of such non-legal unions as, under the name of “companionate,” have already been mentioned. Such unions are of course numerous. What we need is socially to recognize them as worthy. 1 Mrs. Havelock Ellis, “A Noviciate for Marriage,” The New Horizon in Love and Life. 510 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. We are called upon to admit openly—if we are sen¬ sible we already admit it in secret—that they are legiti¬ mate and beneficial. In many cases, no doubt, such unions are to be regarded as noviciates between two young people who eventually form a permanent marriage with each other. But it is not necessarily so. Young people, both youths and girls, are frequently, in the first place, attracted to persons some years older than themselves, occasionally much older, and doubtless by a natural instinct. Each craves to be brought in touch with a knowledge and experience, with a skill in loving, which they could not expect from one on their own level of crude youthfulness. It is indeed an immense benefit for a youth to be initiated into life by a woman whom to know, as it used to be said, is a liberal education. It is an immense benefit for a girl to be initiated tenderly and gently by an experienced man rather than run the risk of being shocked and perhaps irretrievably injured. 1 It is possible for both the men and the women to conduct this initiation with a reverence and tenderness for which they will receive enduring gratitude. But with that they should rest content. It is not desirable for a permanent relationship to be formed where there is any wide disparity in years. We witness, then, a tendency for the progressive legal relaxation of the bonds of matrimony, and we witness it without anxiety, even if it should go so far as to reduce legal marriage to a mere formality. But when we turn to the procreation of children we see a very different picture. The community is beginning to realize that it has no direct concern with the sexual relationships of its members. But the community is also beginning to learn that it has a very intimate concern indeed with the children produced by 1 It need scarcely be added that this is not to be regarded as always an ideal situation. The Countess de Choiseul-Meuse, who knew a great deal about the erotic art, wrote more than a century ago: “It i? not enough to be happy, the woman a man loves must share the tenderness and the pleasure she inspires; but men of ripe age are not so delicate; their aim is to enjoy, and they regard women as the instruments of their pleasures.” (Julie, 1807, vol. ii. p. 50.) That is still often true. THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. 511 its members. It is beginning to realize that when in old days it ordained rigid rules for marriage and left the pro¬ creation of children absolutely free, the emphasis was all wrong; it should have been the other way about, and end¬ less mischief resulted. The world is beginning to see that it is impossible to lay too light a legal hand on marriage and equally impossible to be too rigidly severe in regard to procreation. In this matter, indeed, not so much pro¬ gress has yet been made as with regard to divorce; but the indications are clear and the two movements are really bound together. The twentieth century was called by Ellen Key the century of the child. The child is indeed doubly a problem for our century. On the one hand we have to learn how to select the parents of the child (which of course can only be done by themselves), and how so to conceive and bear and rear it that every child brought into the community may be of such high quality that it will not lower but, rather, raise the level of that community; on the other hand we have to establish the strongest possible barriers against the incoming flood of unwanted children which marks our stage of civilization. That flood is due, not to any increase in the number of births but to indiscriminate breeding undern modern conditions; and of these conditions the most important is the improved hygiene which allows not only good but bad and indifferent children to reach maturity and so to lower the whole civilized level of the community. 1 This is a problem which the nineteenth century has, without intending it, bequeathed to our cen¬ tury. That century largely carried through the Herculean task it had received from the eighteenth, so clearing away the filth of our supposedly civilized world, and neutralizing 1 It is now recognized that the rise of population which began with the development of modern hygiene, and is still in progress, is not due to a higher birth-rate but to a lower death-rate. See c.g., M. C. Buer, Health , Wealth and Population in the Early Days of the Industrial Revolution, 1926. And see also the discussions in the Proceedings of the World Population Conference, 1927. 512 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. its diseases, that human lives have been rendered to an enormous degree safer and longer. The result is that the world now holds a vastly greater amount of human life than it knows what to do with. And this, not only because that excess of life is often of poor quality, and thus im¬ posing an intolerable burden on every community which permits it, but because it threatens to outgrow the means of subsistence. There is no need to emphasize the point here. It is becoming familiar. Mankind is, it has been said, at the cross-roads, and the authoritative book which Pro¬ fessor E. M. East has written under that title ought to be, it it is not already, in the hands of all thinking people who are alive to the problems of their own time. It is true that there are people of an elder generation who still try to soothe themselves with foolish dreams of new artificial foods or wild schemes for the reclamation of the inhospit¬ able regions of the earth, foolish because Man, under all his disguises, still remains a natural animal and requires a natural life and natural space to roam in. But the younger generation are, in large part, better informed, and the elder generation will soon be extinct. No doubt they may congratulate themselves that they have escaped a problem compared to which the regulation of marriage, which our forefathers were so solemnly concerned about, \\ as like an idle game. \ et when we hold the two sides of this great question of reproduction together—the new need for quality and the new refusal of quantity—we may see ground for believing that the future course of the race is quite likely to proceed harmoniously. It is true that the desire for children is almost universal. But a growing perception of the special qualities needed for sound phy^ sical parentage and the high training required for sound spiritual parentage can scarcely fail to induce—and are indeed already inducing—greater care and hesitation in accepting those responsibilities of conception which it is now being brought well within the competence of all to reject when rejection seems desirable. Such a situation is THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. 513 the best possible augury for success in that task of diminish¬ ing the gross number of births which is today laid upon the civilized countries of the world. 1 The chief failure to com¬ prehend this task is in France, where the State seems to be unaw are of the yet obvious fact that France already pos¬ sesses a high birth-rate—as high, indeed, as England’s— and that wdiat is needed, if it is desired to maintain the level of the population, is not more babies but a greater care in preserving those that are born; it is an evil policy to encourage the unfit to procreate, or to seek to adulterate the population of the country by the immigration of the scum of other lands.^ In the United States the govern¬ ment has been wiser, and by the strict limitation of im- migration it has not only declared to the world its own acceptance of the reality and the imminency of the danger of over-population but has warned other countries in the plainest way that the limitation of procreation is now the task placed before Man. The question of marriage and divorce has led on to the At one time much anxiety was ostentatiously expressed concerning what was called the differential birth-rate, or a higher rate of procrea¬ tion among the poorer (and supposedly inferior) social class as com¬ pared with the upper and more educated class. As might have been suspected, that is only a temporary phenomenon, mainly due to the greater facilities in limiting conception possessed by the better educated It is now becoming recognized that the birth-rates of upper and lower social classes are tending to become equalized. This has been clearly shown as regards London (see e.g., Nature , 27 August, 1927), and in Sweden, Dr. Karl Edin of Stockholm University, states ( Proc . World Population Conference , 1927, p. 205), the birth-rate of the upper class is now lower than that of the working class. As Raymond Pearl indicates {The Biology of Population Growth , 1926, Ch. VII) the equalization of environmental conditions tends to equalize the birth-rates. 2 The opposite error is committed by the State in Italy at the present time, h ranee thinks that she is not prolific enough and deplores it. Italy thinks she is too prolific—and glories in it. Mussolini has said* “The Italian people are too prolific. I am glad of it. I will never countenance birth control propaganda [it was strictly prohibited by law in 1926] As the country grows, only three roads are open to it: to addict itself to voluntary sterility—Italians are too intelligent to do that; to make war * or to seek outlets for the over-population.” So frank a statement shows as clearly as could be wished how a country that tolerates its excessive procreativeness is a deliberate menace to civilization and the declared enemy of all countries more favorably situated than itself. 514 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. question of children because that has hitherto been held to be the point to which mainly it ought to lead. Today this is beginning to seem less certain. Many marriages now are, deliberately or not, childless; and when children come they are not necessarily held an argument against divorce, since a single parent under happy conditions is better for a child than two parents under unhappy conditions; more¬ over, it is now generally accepted that where divorce takes place it is imperative to arrange for the welfare of the child. But, beyond these considerations, there is an aspect of marriage which transcends the question of the children it may lead to, and even goes beyond the whole question of the specifically sexual relationship included in marriage. There are many independent indications on various sides to show that this is beginning to be recognized. It is easy to understand how the recognition has been delayed. The great divorce movement, justifiable as it has been, was largely operative in this sense. That movement may be said to have been a revolt of the spirit of Protestantism, an assertion of individuality and freedom and truth in re¬ action against what seemed the fictions of the Catholic con¬ ception of marriage. As such, it has been accepted, and there is no occasion to undo what it is achieving. But in that achievement the sound core of the Catholic conception has often been overlooked. The Catholic con¬ ception of marriage as a sacrament effected by the two consenting parties, the priest being present only as a wit¬ ness, represented more than a union for purposes of sexual intercourse and propagation; it represented a certain state of life, a religious state, in which sexual union was only one of the bonds, and a bond not so supremely important that to break it involved the dissolution of the marriage. More¬ over, the Catholic with this conception of marriage was by no means peculiar; on the contrary, in other parts of the world, in other great civilizations, marriage has been an es¬ sentially similar institution. It was so with marriage in India; in China, where a primary importance was certainly THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. 515 attached to procreation, the erotic element was subordinate and love not always exclusive; even primitive peoples, such as those of New Guinea studied by Malinowski, had, as has already been noted, a large conception of marriage . 1 The peculiarity of the Catholic Church was in the fictions with which it supported its high conception. It assumed that if at the outset the two parties to the marriage had given a genuine consent, and no impediment existed, it was not possible for the consent to cease or new impediments to arise at any later stage; so the primary consent, if unim¬ peachable, constituted the marriage, and no fresh circum¬ stances could suffice to dissolve it. That was a daringly effective way of asserting the high dignity of marriage and its heroic supremacy over changing circumstances, but it was a fiction. To the Protestant mind that fiction has been clear for three hundred years. But it has not been clear that the Protestant conception of marriage is also founded on a fiction, and of an equally glaring and mischievous kind. The Protestant conception of marriage, which is that of the modern world generally, and is becoming that of the coun¬ tries once Catholic, is much vaguer than the Catholic con¬ ception. But on the whole it may be said to be, whether religious or civil, in its essence secular and in its popular atmosphere romantic. That is to say, it is narrowed down to a kind of legal sex-contract which is held to be suf¬ ficiently sanctified by the promise of exclusive and perman¬ ent mutual love . 2 Such a promise in the union of any \In the Trobriand Islands of New Guinea the girls grow up “in promiscuous free love which gradually develops into more permanent attachments, one of which ends in marriage.” The married woman, however, still retains considerable independence, as well as high con¬ sideration, and may not be strictly faithful. B. Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific, p. 42. Thus in a recent (1927) attack from the Protestant standpoint of the “artificial, fanciful, and often grotesque” conception of the Roman Catholic Church, Archdeacon R. H. Charles, preaching on divorce in Westminister Abbey, argued that fidelity is the one essential fact of marriage and that “unchastity broke the bond and cancelled a valid marriage.” 516 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. couple, even of the most devoted lovers, is a transparent fiction, which can never be kept, and if it is taken seriously as the foundation of marriage it inevitably casts a drop of poison, if not a fatal dose, into the marital cup. It is cer¬ tainly within the power of every sane and honest husband and wife to avoid having actual sex intercourse with other persons, and it is unnecessary to say that a vast number . of husbands and wives have avoided it. But there is a long gradation of acts short of that final act which permit the intimate expression of love, so intimate that they have often sufficed to furnish adequate legal evidence of adultery. Then, short of such definite actions, the devotion of love can be expressed in speech. Further, many a stern Puritan in our civilization, strong to hold in control all the impulses of action and speech, and worthily honored by the Church to which he belongs, has still, when he came to lie with his wife, found his thoughts concentrated on the vision of another woman. And from the Christian standpoint, as set forth by Jesus, that is adultery. There is no doubt about this: the promise of mutual ex¬ clusive and everlasting love is a promise that cannot be kept and should not be made. It cannot form a permanent basis of marriage, and good marriages subsist by being shifted on to other foundations. Yet there has been a general conspiracy not merely to preserve this fiction but to put it at the front as the primary condition for marriage. “Promise that you will never love any one but me!” Lovers are not taught to look upon this demand as wrong and silly. They are expected to make it; and expected to accept it. If they fail to do so the general feeling has been that this is not likely to be a “happy marriage.” The people who actively encourage this fiction regard it as furnishing the one essential foundation for marriage. All other considerations, though recognized as not without impor¬ tance, they treat as secondary. They look down on marriage not based on this foundation as a degradation of the lofty romantic idealism they proclaim. They have personally, no THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. 517 doubt, come to accept a less romantic and more realistic basis for themselves, but that they privately regard as a failure, not to be generally recognized, and they make up for it by pro¬ claiming all the more loudly the sound and only basis for marriage. Yet it may truly be said that of all the possible founda¬ tions for marriage this is the worst, the most likely to lead, if not to actual failure, to serious difficulties. It is the worst foundation because it is the most certain to give way. Ex¬ clusive passionate love, in the erotic sense, cannot furnish a sound foundation for a union that is meant to be permanent. That would perhaps have been long ago recognized but for the fact that, sooner or later, in the marriages that turn out well, the union is, as privately as possible, readjusted on to a more stable foundation. But that readjustment is often trouble¬ some, and even very painful for both parties to the union, the reason being that the first foundation had been put be¬ fore them in such glowing colors, with such exalted ideal¬ ism, fortified by all the romance of literature and tradition, that disillusionment comes as a shock, and the new founda¬ tion, if fortunately it is found, still seems like a disastrous fall to failure. The husband finds consolation in his work, perhaps varied by private little episodes with other women, whether or not carried far, while the wife seeks comfort in her children, if she has any, and for the rest cherishes a secret bitter discontent with her life, for she imagines it might have turned out better under different circumstances; so each “keeps hidden Love’s private tatters in a private Eden.” It is true that life in marriage may turn out better un¬ der some different circumstances, even if this does not involve a safe foundation from the outset. In Protestant countries, before the Reformation of the sixteenth century, the founda¬ tion was entirely different, but there is no good ground to be¬ lieve that marriage then turned out less well, in spite of the echoes of occasional scandals that have come down to us, and 518 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. the more conspicuously, perhaps, because they were excep¬ tions. In France, where the ancient attitude towards marriage has still been largely preserved, it is suitability rather than sexual passion which is regarded as the proper foundation for marriage; it is held that when that has been secured the right conditions exist for the development of love. More often than not that anticipation is sound, and the frequency of mutual de¬ votion and harmony in French domestic life has long been a commonplace among foreigners. It is so likewise in other parts of the world. In China, where procreation is the first duty in all families, and the erotic element, though frankly recognized, is never the reason for marriage, there are un¬ happy marriages, as elsewhere, and we are not called to re¬ gard the Chinese system as ideal; but Dr. Wilhelm, a great authority on China, is able to say that “it cannot be as¬ serted that even the most personal European marriage based entirely on mutual affection is any happier or more peace¬ ful than Chinese marriage, which rests on parental author¬ ity We constantly find, indeed, similar remarks made by competent observers concerning marriage systems based on this or similar principles. Yet their significance seems to be lost on us. It is true that there is no possible system which will not sometimes produce unsatisfactory or even deplorable marriages. But there is no community which does not contain unsatisfactory or even deplorable mem¬ bers, and they needs must bring their qualities into their marriages. It has been common in the past to talk of the prospect of a “happy marriage.” But the ideal of a “happy mar¬ riage” has often been far too cheap and easy. If we try to think of couples who enjoy this state of “happy marriage” —putting aside those who have reached it indirectly and without seeking it by passing through much tribulation— we shall often find that they constitute little isolated family groups consumed by greedy absorption and cut off from all generous contact with the world; or they are couples who cherish a narrowly sensual and selfish devotion to each THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. 519 other of which the final impression is painful; or they are just the good, simple, primitive, undifferentiated people who are, as it was said of old, born to consume the fruits of the earth. We gaze at them as we gaze at the occupants of a pig-sty, without contempt, quite cheerfully, but well aware that their happiness can hardly furnish the key to the solu¬ tion of our own more complex situation. We have to put aside the notion that any such happi¬ ness can rightly be the aim of marriage for us. Happiness may be the end of marriage, the deep satisfaction that comes of a long partnership carried through affectionately and courageously, with a full-hearted acceptance of the anguish as well as the joy that such partnership must inevitably bring. But a happiness that is placed as the initial aim of marriage,—the indefinitely prolonged honeymoon of old- fashioned novels which never even allowed for the fact that the honeymoon itself may be far from happiness,—this is a mere delusion. That is where the divorce movement, excellent as in itself it was, has unfortunately helped to narrow down and conventionalize the ideal of marriage, to fortify the old- fashioned romantic view which has no basis in the facts of life. The facility of divorce has served to support the notion that happiness is the aim of marriage and that, when difficulties appear, the one natural solution is separation; and it has concentrated attention on the erotic element as though that were not only a highly important element but the actual sole content of marriage, and its diversion an adequate reason for dissolving the marriage. It is true that many husbands and wives, when contemplating the ques¬ tion of divorce, draw back before deciding on it because they feel that they are too deeply attached to the conjugal partner to accept separation. But they regard this affec¬ tion as a hinderance to the just and proper solution of divorce rather than as an essential factor of the marriage union itself. 520 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. In the remarkable Book of Marriage which Count Keyser- hng put forth a few years ago, we find that the central con¬ ception of marriage therein embodied closely corresponds with the tendencies which in various directions we seem to see gain¬ ing force today. We are not here concerned with Count Keyserling s general attitude. It is enough to recognize that he is though often laying himself open to criticism—a thinker of weight and influence in our world, and that he has here, in a book to which some two dozen writers of different schools and various countries have contributed, so moulded the out¬ come that a harmonious conception is visible. The fact that his vision of marriage was largely inspired by the East, and especially by contact with India and China, is far from in¬ validating it. The vision has been evoked by the East, but it remains Western, only vitalized anew because it is a concep¬ tion which our recent past has overlaid. Count Keyserling reacts against the narrow conception of marriage which prevailed in the recent past and still sur¬ vives amongst us. Marriage, he insists, is not only a sexual bond but also a personal bond; we cannot, therefore, confine it within the sphere of morals and regard the existence of a sexual rupture as an adequate cause for divorce. Biology, esthetics, and religion are concerned with marriage, as well as ethics; by reducing marriage to the narrow moral basis we are ultimately only able to invoke “the sense of duty,” in place of that inner necessity which is the sound vital source of action. A hasty resort to divorce is a more serious failure than adultery, which has “existed all through the ages and was never looked upon as a real danger to marriage.” For it is not an easy domestic happiness which is the proper aim of mar¬ riage, and by pursuing that aim we solve neither the problem of marriage nor the problem of happiness. Marriage is es¬ sentially rather to be termed a tragic condition than a happy condition. It is by the intensity of life it produces that its success must be measured, and even its ultimate happiness. Unhappily married people more rarely harm their own souls than those who are happily married,” it is here pregnantly said. THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. 521 "Not only does an unhappy marriage promote self-develop¬ ment more positively than does a mere state of ease due to lack of experience, but in the end it leads more truly to that inward happiness which is the necesary consequence of achievement.” Thus the art of marriage is one of the most difficult of the arts, and one of the most arduous, and it becomes more and more so with the progress of civilization. It is not perhaps an art for all to attempt,—the artist in other fields, at all events, and the saint should alike avoid it,—yet an art that renders possible the joy of great performance, for "one can play only on tightened strings.” For Keyserling the marriage-partners constitute a unit, but a unit in a special sense which involves the freedom and independence of each partner and a high degree of distance and reserve. He tries to symbolize this conception as an elliptical field of force. The two foci are separate units, which can never merge and are always at a distance from each other. But the interpolar tension of the two units constitutes another higher unit, different from that of the two foci and of creative power. In the intensified life that thus arises, and not in any cheap comfort or mutual conjugal absorption, lies the deepest significance of marriage. Exactly the same conception of marriage is finely embodied in a different quarter, in Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet: “Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping, For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together but not too near together For the pillars of the temple stand apart.” It is interesting to recall that this conception of the rela¬ tion of the sexes in marriage, however modern it may seem, is only a new statement of the primitive conception of the dangers which the two sexes hold for each other and the pre¬ cautions with which so risky an adventure as marriage must be approached. Man has always surrounded sex with taboos, and carefully guarded changes in sex status with sacred rites . 1 1 The late Ernest Crawley in his important work, The Mystic Rose (1902, new and enlarged edition by Besterman, 1927) first clearly and convincingly demonstrated these taboos, and A. van Gennep has studied the rites connected with change of status in his Rites de Passage (1909). 522 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. It has here seemed worth while to present the central idea of Keyserling’s remarkable essay on “The Correct State¬ ment of the Marriage Problem” because it states in a definite fashion, and more boldly than is usual—too boldly some would say—certain tendencies which are now becoming manifest in the modern development of the conception of marriage. The view that marriage is properly a permanent and indissoluble union, though rightly to be brought to an end when it clearly stifles the development of the partners to it,—not formed by a single bond, however important that bond, but by various components that are all important, so that the failure of any one bond is not an adequate ground for dissolution, is here brought into relation with the considerations which are already becoming familiar. For the erotic element of marriage, while put aside as the sole content of marriage, is yet recognized as of enormous importance, and the lack of cultivation of the art of love declared to be a main reason of the frequent failure of marriage. The place of birth control, also, is seen to be es¬ sential in the cultivation of a fine marriage. Each of the partners is called upon to carry forward the task of self-de¬ velopment, not merely for his or her own individual sake but for the sake of the higher creative unity which together they constitute, for “marriage is impossible without discipline and art. For the same reason a certain distance and reserve are called for in the two partners, by no means in the sense of de¬ fective intimacy; “on the contrary, the more intimate they are the more strictly should they cherish their own individuality,” and to avoid the risk of encroaching on one another they should be careful to cultivate periods of absence. In that way mar¬ riage, when successful, may reach its highest point of creative spiritual unity, and, in the end, its highest point of happiness, even though in the process it must necessarily be a tragic state of tension. For if it is not that, it must fail to act as an en¬ nobling and harmonizing part of life, since life itself is a tragic state of tension, and we cannot play our proper part in life, or attain the deepest joy of living, unless we are brought into harmony with the processes of life. In this conception of mar- THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. 523 riage we may perhaps see a synthesis of the Catholic and the Protestant conceptions, brought on to a plane at which it be¬ comes acceptable to the realistic mind of the man of today. The union rendered indissoluble by an internal constraint is thus placed on that external foundation of complete freedom without which marriage is a fiction, possibly a useful fiction, but possessing no spiritual or moral meaning; just as life itself (of which marriage is the figure in miniature) would have no spiritual or moral meaning if we were not free, at any moment, to bring it to an end. It is true that, as thus presented, marriage hardly seems a vocation that can appeal to all. Not only the saint and the artist, but the comfort-loving, sensual, cultivated people —of whom there are so many in any civilized community— had often better avoid it. There are ways of sexual asso¬ ciation outside marriage. It is to the advantage of society —even, in the narrow sense, the moral advantage—that those who are not fitted for marriage should as early as possible discover that lack of fitness and refrain from marrying. The indiscriminate thrusting of men and women into marriage, without regard to the supreme question of their fitness to be the fine parents of a fine race, or to be the spiritual comrades of each other, could only lead to¬ wards racial degeneracy and moral disorder. It seems to be a mark of increased sanity in our time, so far at least as this matter is concerned, that there is no longer any reck¬ less insistence on the necessity of marriage for all, and that men and women may now lead their own lives in the world and select their own intimate friends of either sex. Not all, even of those who desire marriage, can be sure of their vocation to embrace marriage in communion with one particular person, just as not all who desire to enter the religious life can be sure of their vocation for union with Christ or the Virgin. If we apply to marriage the sound Catholic plan of a noviciate for the purpose of determining true vocation, there may, in time, be as few discontented persons in our marriage as in our mon- 524 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. asteries. And in thus limiting, and in so doing purifying, our marriage relationship, necessarily at the same time diminishing procreative activity, we shall be working to¬ wards the solution of that problem which from another side science now shows to be so urgent, the problem, that is, of the undue growth of the world’s population under modern conditions. Theory and practice, while each mov¬ ing within its own sphere, will thus be advancing hand in hand. Nor must it be supposed that in presenting the aim of real marriage as a difficult and even tragic quest, there is danger that but few will follow it. On the contrary! It is difficulty that allures us, and on every high path its dif¬ ficulty is proclaimed to allure the aspirant. “Our youths must be prepared for self-sacrifice, for arduous discipline, perhaps for the most heart-breaking rebuffs, for the stern and even bitter criticism of their fellows. But there never was a time so rich in promise, so laden with rewards for those who labor with sincerity and truth. The respon¬ sibilities which rest on them are enough to cause the stout¬ est sometimes to falter. Yet, armed with the sword of the spirit and the breastplate of faith, they will remember that the happiness of life lies in its responsibilities, that true joy is found in the search for what may after a weary journey prove unattainable.” It is a distinguished surgeon who is speaking, and it is devotion to science that he has in mind . 1 But may not the art of living claim as much de- votion as the art of knowing 1 ? It is likely that many will stumble at the point in this presentation of the marriage situation—only brought for¬ ward here as one of many possible presentations—at which they seem to see the condonation of adultery. That point, which Keyserling passes over lightly, is one of deep signifi¬ cance and needs to be made clear. It is easy to say that adultery has “existed all through the ages,” and therewith /oKr«a/! r i9^Feb^ 1 1927^° ynihan ’ Hunterian 0ration - British Medical THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. 525 to leave it as an accepted fact. It has not only existed, it has existed as a tragic fact, a cause of murder and of misery, a corroding poison in every age and every country in,—and often out of,—what was once called Christendom. “I found them one morning in each other's arms—and they died," wrote, three centuries ago, the high-spirited Spanish captain, Alonso de Contreras, of his wife and her lover, his own trusted friend . 1 Direct action of this kind has become less usual during the years that have followed, but the emotions experienced by the seventeenth century Spaniard are still often experienced today, even among presumably civilized persons, with a consciousness of com¬ plete justification. And still, also, they lead to action which, even if indirect, may be just as fatal to marriage. So that we can scarcely be content to leave the matter at that point. There is no need to leave it at that, and with the de¬ velopment of new conditions in life the reasons are accumu¬ lating why we should not. We may put aside the con¬ sideration that adultery of some kind—at least that of the eye or of the heart—is all but inevitable, and that romantic youthful vows of everlasting fidelity are only valid for the moment when they are uttered; because it is nevertheless probable that they will be continued to be uttered for some time to come. The conception of adultery is being more surely and more subtly undermined, and from various direc¬ tions. It is not necessary to attempt to enumerate them all here, because there is so little doubt about the fact. But two at least may be mentioned. In the first place, the facility of divorce has itself indirectly destroyed the ancient significance of adultery. It has done this even by the im¬ portance that has thus been attached to adultery. For if adultery (with or without one or two more or less fictitious accessory circumstances) is the recognized ground for divorce, there may indeed be some trouble and inconveni- 1 The Life of Captain Alonso de Contreras, translated by Catherine Phillips, 1926, p. 130. 526 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. ence caused, but the dissolution of the marriage will simply mean in the end the establishment of one or two perhaps more satisfactory marriages, and as the result of adultery all will be for the best. In fact, as at present generally established, the law itself insists on the adultery as a con¬ dition for the re-marriage, and it would be absurd to take tragically an act imposed by law. Again, from another side, the conception of adultery has been undermined by the whole modern woman’s movement and its gradual transformation of legal enactment and judicial attitude. Of old the wife was, in a more or less legal manner, the possession of the husband, and correspondingly, the hus¬ band became, in a less legal manner, the “possession” of the wife. But the slow legal emancipation of the wife, giv¬ ing her an increasingly greater control over her own person, is bringing her so near to the point where even adultery might be regarded as within her rights over her own person, that, however much it may arouse disapproval, adul¬ tery is no longer anywhere near being a crime. We are, further, today gaining a little more insight into the inner mechanism of human impulses, and we realize that when adultery occurs it is the partner we term innocent who is in nearly every case the cause of it, for it is that partner who has been least successful in the essential art of court¬ ship, the art of winning and holding love, and we no longer lay the penalty, without consideration, on the ostensibly guilty partner . 1 There are other influences of recent times which have led in the same direction, and notably the social aftermath of the Great War, so that adultery, which even Shakespeare had regarded, in mere suspicion, as an awful source of tragedy (but it is significant that Shakespeare, a ic PiI hU i! -j German ^°H ian 'awyer, Dr. Maria Munk (Der Ehebruch no S ;nfc h n SC t h fv, d » n *u Sg ™ nd ’ Zeltsc,m f‘ f tir Sexualwissenschaft, June, 1927) the in " ocent L P ar '>' >s often the true cause of the adultery, and adds that now when the old idea of the “sanctity” of marriage has , g ^ a ! y diminished, the deserted party who regards it as within his or offender for so doing" 0 n<> '° nBer be considered as a " THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. 527 though he was a few years older than Alonso de Contreras, thought it desirable to make his Othello a barbarian), may now seem to us perhaps a more fitting subject for comedy. To fortify the emotional side of adultery, it is true, there is, as Othello reminds us, jealousy. That is not touched by legal, social, or psychological considerations, and even lovers who are careful not to make rash vows may still feel its pangs when the moment for it arrives, as it doubtless will. For jealousy, however low we may rank it, is rooted in nature. It is a kind of greed which ultimately springs out of the instinct of self-preservation. It may be detected even among our domestic animals in relation to food, even though there is no longer any justi¬ fication for it. There is no longer any justification for jealousy in human love, but the impulse arises. To deal with it is part of the discipline of love. It is a very neces¬ sary part, for though jealousy may at first seem to its ob¬ ject an agreeable mark of devotion it quickly becomes fatal to the love it thus seeks to hold. The victim of jealousy falls to the level of the victims of passion gener¬ ally, the level of the dipsomaniac or the drug-addict, an object of pity perhaps, no longer fitted to be a master of life, or a master of love, which is the epitome of life. The conquest of jealousy must sometimes be hard, but without it there is no entering the kingdom of marriage. Today, however, there is more than that to be said. The intensity of jealousy, it is now possible to say, which we observe in the recent past was, in a large degree, an artificial product. The germ was natural, but the develop¬ ments were fostered by personal and social codes and ideals we now see to be false. It is enough to turn to the most intimate of these falsities, although we have already encountered it, for it is at the core of this matter: the pre¬ liminary vow of everlasting and exclusive mutual fidelity. That, at the outset, rendered difficult for all, and for many impossible, the exercise of a quality which is even more necessary at the foundation of marriage than love itself: 528 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. the quality of sincerity. If that fictitious preliminary vow were really the foundation of marriage it needed little in¬ telligence to see that the avowal of affectionate attraction to another person meant a crack in the foundation and a possible threat to the stability of the marriage itself. It was alarming, it aroused restless suspicions, terrible doubts. So such avowals were avoided, often indeed avoided with a show of virtuous justification, by people who were not aware that in destroying mutual sincerity they were inflicting a much deeper wound to their marriage union than in destroying ex¬ clusive sexual attraction. They seem to have understood this better in the eighteenth century, and the nineteenth century, with its hypocritical idealism, looked down on that century in consequence, with misplaced contempt. But in every age there are some lovers who know from the first that there cannot be a real marriage without a complete mutual trust, and that any private decision, on one side or the other, that such trust is not possible suffices alone to break the bond of union in any true sense; such lovers meet difficulties, and they feel at times the pang of jealousy, but it has lost its fatal sting, and the foundations of their marriage are rendered deeper and stronger by the victories over jealousy they have won. That result would be rendered easier and more frequent if lovers always avoided setting for themselves so dangerous a trap at the outset. The initial vow needs to be so enlarged that its essence can be summed up as erotic comradeship. That may well include an exclusive mutual erotic devotion, if, and in so far as, that proves possible. But it goes beyond such limited devotion; it means that the two lovers so love each other, and so trust each other, that it is natural and instinctive to tell each other of their feelings towards other persons. They are able to share, in sympathy if not always actually, the new affections that come into their lives, and thereby to increase and to affirm their affection for each other. Under such con¬ ditions jealousy, in well-proportioned natures, even if it arises, can do no hurt, and even the ground for it to arise is unlikely to be found, for where the new affection is seen and acknowledged THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. 529 at the outset the lovers are able to control and guide it together, to keep it within the established bounds of their own love. That, also, is a task which is easier than it was in the mediaeval world whence we have derived so many now de¬ cking traditions. In that world,—save in a few special circles which were really out of touch with their own time—the art of love had barely any existence. Sexual intercourse was ex¬ tremely well-known—better known, it may be, than now—but all the delicate gradations of courtship and intimate love, of which that intercourse is merely the final and perhaps never reached stage, were so unfamiliar that even the kiss seems often to have been scarcely known, as indeed among the peasantry it scarcely is, save in a rudimentary way, known today. It is be¬ coming realized how many marriages, even among would-be cultivated people, fail, or sink to a lower level, owing to a lack of knowledge of the art of love which is still frequently com¬ plete. But it is not yet realized how this defective art of love is responsible for the absence of wholesome and enlarging re¬ lationships with friends outside the marriage bond. If the alternative to a relationship of affectionate friendship is the sexual act or nothing then married life inevitably becomes either perilous or impoverished. But there is really a vast space between nothing and the complete physical surrender of sexual abandonment. In that space are many stages in af¬ fectionate confidence and intimacy at which friendships may be formed, to enrich the life of married lovers who are firm in the mutual trust of their erotic comradeship. Such an en- largement of affectionate relationship within marriage, is, moreover, by no means to be regarded as a permitted weak¬ ness, or a tolerated indulgence. On the contrary, it is the narrow mutual self-absorption of the old-time ideal which calls for indulgence, and is indeed unworthy of indulgence. Mar¬ riage, however convenient it may still remain, is without any high mission unless it brings those who contract it into a many- sided contact with the greater world, and that contact cannot be real and intimate if it excludes at the outset the possibility of other relationships that are affectionate. 34 530 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. Significant evidence of the impulses which are moving the husbands and wives of today has been furnished by Judge Ben Lindsey who has for many years been known throughout the world for his beneficent attitude as a judge and an adviser in matters that come before a domestic and juvenile court, so that he has constantly been called upon for counsel in the private affairs of life outside his Court. He has presented some of the results in his wise and helpful book, The Revolt of Modern Youth, and more recently he has set forth the experience he has acquired concerning the actions and feelings of husbands and of wives today, in these matters of adultery and jealousy and an enlarged conception of marriage. His evidence is the more valuable because, on the one hand, the married people he brings before us are ordinary citizens and not morbid or exceptional persons, and on the other hand because he is not desiring to put forward any revolutionary ideas about marriage. He is simply reporting what he has found, and himself seems sometimes a little surprised at the attitude towards these problems which he reveals. But for us there need be no surprise. The people in Colorado whom Judge Lindsey has been privileged to know intimately are simply moving in the direction in which the whole civilized world is moving, and the direction of their movement is condi¬ tioned by forces which a few of us may be permitted to see, but all of us are compelled to feel, stirring within us and instinctively guiding us along the path. If in the end this movement leads to the conquest of marriage over adul¬ tery—a conquest achieved, in the only way in which con¬ quest can be effectually achieved, by absorbing it—then one of the triumphs of mankind will indeed have been con¬ summated. That it should have been given to our time to place marriage on a sound foundation is not, for me at all events, any matter for surprise. At the outset of my course it seemed to me that the age-long problem of the place in life of the impulse of sex had at last been reached by Man in his course, and that it was specially set before our own age at length to solve it. Now, nearly half a THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. 531 century later, I would rejoice that the advance made has even gone beyond my dreams, and not feel called upon to grieve over any respectable idols of the past now falling in the dust. The way to that end, once almost impassable, has in modern times been made easy. It has been made easy because, now, young people, and especially young women, are accepting an attitude towards each other, and towards the things that concern the relations of the sexes, that has never been seen in our western world for many centuries, if ever. They have thrown aside the taboo which once rendered the things that pertain to sex too sacred or too obscene—nobody quite knew which—to be known; they seek to know these things and to know each other, calmly assuming their right to this knowledge and their equal right not to disclose, unless they think fit, the extent of their knowledge. To many people this attitude of the young is still a source of perplexity, if not of alarm and horror. But we have to recognize that it is the only proper preparation for marriage. There are many disabilities, physical and spiritual, which should be held as disqualify¬ ing for marriage, but it would be hard to find any so fatal as that which was once foolishly reverenced under the name of Innocence. There will be fewer Francescas for the Dante of the future to place in Hell, however populous he may otherwise render its circles. For we need not undertake to declare that the total sum of virtue in the world will be increased, but we may safely hazard the opinion that if we cease to blindfold the young they are less likely to fall into ditches. That blindfolding of the young, and of women even when no longer young, was once so common that it may be said to have been erected into a system, still accepted even by many yet living among us. How often do women of the younger genera¬ tion talk, with a smile, concerning men of an older genera¬ tion with whom they have come into relation, how these men refer vaguely and distantly to things which they sup- 532 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. pose women know nothing about, things not concerning them and likely to shock them, and really the things which intimately concern them and which often—not indeed al¬ ways—the women they are speaking to know as much about as they do themselves. No doubt these men had a sort of justification, for in their world the things that be¬ long to sex were degraded to a level which they them¬ selves, with a fine metaphorical felicity, termed “smutty.” Yet, surely, such an attitude will in the future seem an almost incredible feature of the past. It is impossible to write history in advance. One can only repeat that what today we call the future will to¬ morrow be the past and can bring nothing of which the vital germs are not vigorously growing among us today. \\ e see them, or we do not see them, in accordance with the measure of our vision. Strictly speaking, indeed, the present has no existence; the word that you form in your mind belongs to the future, but you have no sooner uttered it than it belongs to the past, as irrevocably as though it had been spoken by Adam. The present is merely an im¬ aginary line at which the past and the future meet and mingle. We are in the midst of both; past men and future men are here today. For my own part, notwithstanding various archeological interests, I find it tedious to be among those who are several centuries behind their own time, it has amused me more to share the disdain bestowed upon those who are a little in front.—I may be permitted, as I depart, to make this one personal observation. INDEX OF AUTHORS Abraham, K., 16, 44, 336, 365, 367, 371, 430, 437 Acosta, J. de., 387 Adler, A., 20, 41, 206, 336, 358, 473 Alsop, G., 397 Amelung, 399 Anderson, W., 395 Arrhenius, 221 Athenaeus, 348 Bachofen, 503 Bacon, 202 Balfour, Lord, 374 Ballet, 479 Barrere, P., 397 Basedow, 393 Bashkirtseff, Marie, 353 Bell, Blair, 110 Benigno di Tullio, 484 Berny, A., 388 Bernard, Dean, 442 Binswanger, 423 Blau, L., 403 Bleuler, 117, 414 Bloch, I., 116, 198, 386 Blunt, J. J., 384 Boas, 402 Boccaccio, 160 Bodin, 403 Bolton, F. E., 383, 386 Bourke, J. G., 382, 385, 392, 404 Brand, 29 Brantome, 335, 423 Briffault, 217, 493, 503 Brodie, Sir B., 112 Brown, R. Grant, 402 Brown-Sequard, 113 Buer, M. C., 511 Burchard, 44 Buvat, 381 Calderon, 349 Campbell, Harry, 223 Campion, 444 Carpenter, Edward, 12 Carr-Saunders, 223, 498 Chadwick, Mary, 490 Chambard, 113, 115 Charcot, 112 Charles, R. H., 515 Choiseul-Meuse, Countess de, 510 Clerambault, 482 Cleveland, Duchess of, 6 Colette, Madame, 419 Contreras, Alonso de, 525 Cook, Capt., 384 Crawford, L., 393 Crawley, A. E., 35, 103, 521 Crew, F. A. E., 110 Cullerre, 481 Curr, J., 393 Darwin, C., 341 Dechelette, 407 Depouy, 482 Doughty, 349 Driberg, 325 Dubuisson, 479, 488 Dufour, 385 Dunn, J., 406 Durkheim, 496 East, E. M., 512 Edin, K., 513 Ehlers, 34 Ehrenreich, 350, 387 Ellis, Mrs. Havelock, 509 Ellis, Henry, 396 Esquirol, 478 Falda, G. B., 401 Federn, 417 Fere 114 334 Ferenczi, 327, 375, 417, 418 Feuerbach, 382 Flesch, Max, 415 Fliess, 224 Flint, A., 10 Forschhammer, 386 Forsyth, 431 Fort, Paul, 390 Fox, H. Munro, 221 ( 533 ) 534 INDEX. Frank, L., 416 Frazer, Sir J. G., 34, 368, 496, 506 Freud, 16, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 196, 198, 203, 237, 316, 318, 323, 325, 326, 327, 341, 345, 356, 357, 359, 362, 411, 412, 414, 417, 424, 431, 481, 501, 505 Friederici, G., 393, 395, 397 Frink, H. W., 389, 431 Fritsch, G., 384 Fryer, J., 395 Fuchs, 424 Gaillardet, 3 Gall, 477 Gamier, 480 Gaultier, J. de, 341 Gennep, A. van, 521 Gerson, A., 214 et seq. Gerster, K. W., 364 Gibran, Kahlil, 521 Gilles de la Tourette, 113 Giradoux, J., 376 Giraldus Cambrensis, 131, 393 Glueck, 486 Goethe, 405 Goldmann, L., 26 Goldziher, 384, 388 Griesinger, 487 Grimm, J., 408 Groos, K., 107, 195 Gross, O., 488 Grosz, 109 Gudden, 481 Gummere, 407 Gutheil, 18 Guy on, 416 Haire, N., 232, 423 Hall, Stanley, 325, 383, 410 Haller, 222 Hamel, Frank, 6 Hammond, 8, 198 Hannover, 222 Harnik, 367 Hartland, S., 384, 502 Hasan Ibn Yazid, 394 Hawkesworth, 384 Headlam, 348 Healy, 415, 490 Herbert, S., 417 Herodas, 348 Herodotus, 131, 393, 405 Herrick, 443 Herzog, A. W., 15 Hesiod, 393, 398 Hirschfeld, M., 10, 11, 16, 17, 18, 31, 27, 28, 44, 101, 102, 105, 108, 110, 119, 362, 481 Hitschmann, 431 Holmberg, 350, 377, 378, 409 Holmes, J., 386 Homberg, O., 3 Horney, Karen, 96, 430 Hospital, P., 481 Howard, W. L., 485 Hug-Hellmuth, H. von, 411 Hiilsen, 399 Humboldt, A. von, 387 Hunter, J., 112 Huysmans, 422 Janet, Pierre, 14, 417 Jaricot, 377, 481 Jekels, 365 Jelgersma, 35 Jelliffe, S. E., 427 Johnston, Sir H., 396 Jones, Ernest, 26, 363, 366, 367, 374, 384, 430 Jourdran, 34 Jousselin, F., 3 Jung, C. G.. 204. 334, 389 Juquelier, 477 Juvenal, 398 Kammerer, 110 Kapp, R., 373 Karpath, 105 Key, Ellen, 511 Keyserling, Count, 520 et seq. Kiernan, 109, 477, 480 Kind, A., 419, 424 Knight, M., 499 Knox, 348 Kolben, P., 384 Kraepelin, 479, 481 Krafft-Ebing, 8, 17, 116, 206, 222, 478, 482 Kratinos, 348 Kretschmer, 474 Lacassagne, 480 Lacroix, Paul, 6 Lahovary, J., 378 Lao-tze, 204 Laquer, 14 Laurent, Emile, 8, 10, 28, 34 Lavater, 477 Leland, C. G., 11 INDEX. 535 Lelewer, 110 Letainturier-Fradin, 3 Levy, L., 401 Licht, H., 348, 399 Liebermann, 111 Lindner, 117 Lindsey, Judge Ben, 499, 530 Lippmann, W., 427 Lipps, 14, 107 Lombroso, 9 Lowenfeld, 117, 118, 363 Lumholtz, C., 393 Maeder, 41, 455 Magnan, 479, 480 Malinowski, B., 217, 374, 394, 493, 502, 504, 515 Mapother, 505 Marc, 478 Marcinowski, 378, 388 Marcuse, Max, 493 Meineke, 348 Merejkovski, 352 Merejkovski, Madame, 353 Middleton, 8 Miklucho-Maclay, 393 Milton, 349 Moll, A., 8, 14, 16, 101, 106, 117, 119, 354 Molo, W. von, 372 Morel, 478 Mosso, 381 Motte Fouque, Baron de la, 409 Mourly, Void J., 323, 325 Moynihan, Sir B., 524 Mullenhoff, 408 Muller, W. Max, 348 Munk, Maria, 526 Murray, M. A., 385 Myres, C. S., 325 Nacke, 12, 100, 105, 108, 355 Nelson, 226 Niceforo, 354 Nichols, Dr., 156 Onuf, 109 Ophuijsen, J. H. W., Van, 431 Ovid, 41, 348 Oviedo y Valdes, F. de, 398 Paracelsus, 409 Park, Mungo, 384 Parmelee, M., 195, 344 Paul, Adolf, 3 Pearl, R., 513 Pellacani, 381 Perry-Coste, F. H., 224, 226, 228 Petermann, 362 Petersen, M., 419 Petrovich, 408 Pettow, 2, 13, 32 Pfannenschmid, 384, 407 Pfeiffer, W, 409 Pilcz, 481 Pitres, 419 Placzek, 110, 490 Porte, Pierre de la, 424 Prandtl, 108 Preuss, K. T., 386, 387 Pudor, H., 105 Quinton, R., 376 Raffalovich, 101 Ralston, 408 Rank, O., 348, 357, 368, 369, 370, 378, 387, 392, 405, 452, 459, 460 Raymond, 417 Reclus, Elie, 381 Regis, 419 Regnier, Henri de, 379 Reichard, P., 396 Reid, Forrest, 350, 362 Reinach, S., 382, 399 Rencurel, 33 Rhys, Sir J., 406 Richardson, Frank, 105 Rivers, 496 Rock, 324 Roheim, Geza, 364, 370, 373, 374, 403 Rohleder, 12, 361 Romans, B., 397 Roscoe, J., 385 Roth, W., 394 Roundell, Julis, 6 Rousseau, 350 Sadger, 12, 17, 101, 106, 195, 197, 352, 357, 360, 364, 390, 401, 411 et seq., 426, 431, 433, 435, 483 Sagard, 397 Schemer, R., 337 Schrenck-Notzing, 198 Schultze-Henke, 432 Schultze-Malkowsky, 413 Scott, Colin, 103 536 INDEX. Seligman, C. G., 33, 35, 324 Semon, 303 Shakespeare, 443, 526 Sharp, W., 105 Sherman, E. B., 377 Siegel, 219, 223 Silk, 420 Smyth, Brough, 387 Spaulding, 491 Spielrein, S., 104, 365 Stannus, 396 Steiner, M., 412 Stekel, 12, 14, 17, 18, 32, 102, 205 ct seq, 325, 360, 367, 404, 417 419, 430, 432, 433, 488 Stendhal, 24 Stopes, Marie, 224 Strachey, Lytton, 6 Strindberg, 374 Sutherland, W. D., 230 Sutton, Sir G. Bland, 376 Summers, Montague, 385 Sydenham, 204 Tandler, 109 Tange, 94 Tans ley, 418 Tausk, 411, 430 Teller, J. B., 2, 3 Tilke, Max, 12 Tolstoy, 352, 527 Tout, Hill, 402, 406 Tregear, E., 394 Trelat, 478 Trotsenburg, 94 Valera, Juan, 351, 354 Valery, Paul, 237 Velde, T. N. Van de, 493 Vigouroux, 479 Vinchen, 477, 483 Vizetelly, E. A., 3 Voightlander, E., 364 Volta, A. dalla, 341 Vorberg, G., 392 Vurpas, 381 Wallace, A. R., 494 Wernich, 395 Werther, Ralph, 15 Westermarck, 214, 388, 403, 493 et seq. Westphal, 8 Whibley, 8 Whytt, 111 Wieseler, 347 Wilde, Oscar, 352, 369 Wilhelm, E., 10, 28 Willis, 111 Wimmer, 483 Wittlich, 404 Wolfe, H., 517 Wuttke, 378 Zimmer, 406 Zingerle, 480 INDEX OF SUBJECTS Adultery, the conception of, 524 et seq. Aesthetic emotion and sex emotion, 107 Agoraphobia, 430 Algolagnia, 207 Anal masturbation, 165, 198, 208, 348 Anal temperament, 431 Anus, sexual significance of, 151 et seq, 165, 411, 426 Art of love, 529 Astyages, 404 Auto-erotism, 355, 358, 362 Auto-flagellation, 122 et seq, 197 Baptism, significance of, 382 Barry, James, 6 Bashkirtseff, Marie, 353 Baths, prostitution and public, 386 Birth, folklore of, 377; from water, 402 Birth-rate, differential, 513 Bladder, and ideas of birth, 378; emotional sensitiveness of, 380; connection with genital sphere, 416 Bridal ceremonies, urine in, 385 Buttocks as a sex centre, 126, 197. And see Nates. Caenis, 41 Castration by Eonists, 94 Castration complex, 20, 41, 206, 367, 431 Childbirth-envy, 96 Choisy, Abbe de, 3 et seq. Clothing, dreams of, 343 et seq. Coitus, ideas concerning, 149, 174, 194; in primitive times, 215; theory of, 418 Companionate marriage, 499, 509, 530 Coprolagnia, 371, 427 Corset fetichism, 44, 52 Courtship, the place of, 220, 500 Cross-dressing, 12, 100; cere¬ monial, 35 Cruelty in relation to sexual emo¬ tion, 158, 163 Cutpurse, Moll, 8 Cycles in reproduction, yearly, 214 Day-dreaming, 132 et seq., 148 et seq., 156 et seq., 185 et seq., 362, 437 Deluge as a urination myth, 405 D’Eon, Chevalier, 1 et seq., 28, 108 Defecation, psychology of, 128, 426, 427 Defloration customs, 501 Derbforgaill, 406 Divorce, 498, 508 Double, hallucination of the, 368 Drawers, psychic significance of feminine, 130, 171 Dreams, 176 et seq., 208 et seq., 237 et seq., 350, 359; erotic, 167, 226 et seq., 304 et seq., 441 et seq.; vesical, 304, 328, 441 et seq. ; of flying, 318 seq., 445; of eating, 339 et seq. ; of clothes, 343; of nakedness, 344 Eating, dreams of, 339 Einfuhlung, 107 Ejaculatio prcecox, 366 Electra complex, 20 Enuresis, 414, 417, 430, 431 Eonism, 1 et seq. ; and fetichism, 18; and algolagnia, 21; and eunuchoidism, 109; as a form of femininism, 110; and hor¬ mones, 26, 110, 336 Erogenic zones, 111 et seq. Eunuchoidism and Eonism, 109 Exhibitionism, 367, 370 Exogamy, the explanation of, 504 Fetichism, 10, 18, 44, 361, 482, 485 Fire and water, association of, 358 ( 537 ) 538 INDEX. Flagellational obsessions, 152 et seq. Flying dreams, 318 et seq., 445 Fountains, erotic suggestion of, 378; alleged urinary origin of, 390 et seq., 399 et seq. ; as symbols, 401 Frigidity in women, 367, 430 Frith, Mary, 7 Hair-despoilers, 488 Hephephilia, 482 Hermaphroditism, psychic, 8, 28 Holy water, origins of, 384, 404 Homosexuality and Eonism, 17, 21, 53; in youth, 40; evidence of, 206; and Narcissism, 354, 363, 364; in dreams, 461; in woman. 465 et seq. Hormonic factor, 26, 110 Hysteria, 113 Hysterogenous zones, 112, 115 Incestuous attraction, 24, 505 Initiation ceremonies, urine in, 386 Inversion, sexo-aesthetic, 1 et seq.) sexual, 10, 53. And see Homosexuality. Jealousy, 527 Kleist, Ulrike, 7 Kleptolagnia, 477 et seq. Kleptomania, 477 et seq. Lorelei, 408 Lunar cycles, 213 et seq. Magic and Narcissism, 370: and urine, 382, 402 Mandane, 405 Manneken-pis, 388, 392, 399 Marriage, history of, 492 et seq.) definition of, 493; future of, 508 et seq. ; Catholic concep¬ tion of, 514; Protestant con¬ ception of, 515 Masculine protest, 20, 206, 336 Masculinity complex, 431 Masochism, 21, 207 Masturbation, anal, 165, 198; vul¬ var, 167; periodicity of, 230 et seq.) effects of, 233; in antiquity, 348; urolagnic, 465 Medb, Queen, 406 Menstruation, ideas concerning, 134; curve of, 213 et seq.) origin of, 214 Mirror, psychology of, 350, 355, 369 Mittelschmerz, 224, 235 Monogamy, 218 Monomanias, doctrine of, 478 Moon, supposed influence of, 213 et seq. Myths, urination in, 405 Nakedness, dreams of, 344 Narcissism, 29, 40, 347 et seq., 452 Narcissus, 347 Nates, in relation to urination, 171; as a sex centre, 197 Nipple as a sexual centre, 119 Noviciate for marriage, 509 Nymphomania, 386 Oedipus complex, 25, 505 Oestral period and menstruation, 223 Olisbos, 348 Paramnesia, 38 Paternity, primitive ignorance of, 502 Patriotism a form of Narcissism, 373 Penis-envy, 128, 206, 432, 437, 451, 461 Penis fetichism, 461 Periodicity, sexual, 213 et seq. “Perversion/’ use of word, 195 Play-instinct in sex sphere, 195 Population problems, 498, 511, 513 Promiscuity, primitive, 503 Prostitution and public baths, 386 Psycho-analysis, 26, 121 Pu-mea, 34 Pyrolagnia, 477 Rain, urine a symbol of, 387, 407 Retour a Venfmce, 14, 15 Robbins, James, 30 Russalkas, 408 Rutting season, 218 Sadism, 21, 206 Salt, sacred significance of, 383 Sarimbavy, 33 Scaphion, 399 Scatology, 422 INDEX. 539 Scoptophilia, 362 Sea-urchins, lunar periodicity in, 220 Sea-water, 376 Semen, identified with urine, 389; with water, 401 Sex emotion and aesthetics, 107 Sexo-aesthetic inversion, 1 et seq. } 27 Shame, sexual significance of, 140 et seq. Shoe fetichism, 44 Shyness, sexual significance of, 136 Snake as a symbol, 168, 453 et seq. Sport as Narcissism, 373 Stanhope, Lady Hester, 6 Stendhal, 24 Stuff fetichisms, 482 et seq. Symbolism in dreams, 337 Sympathy, doctrine of, 111 Thumb-sucking, 117 Ticklishness, 414 Tolstoy, 352 Transference, 202 Transvestism, 10, 11 et seq., 361. And see Eonistn. Travelling, dreams of, 345 Undine, 409 Undinism, 199, 376 et seq. Urethral eroticism, 412, 433 Urethral temperament, 431 Urination, psychology of, see Vesi¬ cal psychology; attitude in, 131, 138, 171, 188, 206, 393 el seq., 473; as a process of de- tuinescence, 141, 143; in rela¬ tion to nates, 171; in relation to sexual emotion, 174; dreams of, 328 et seq.; and origin of fountains, 390, 399 et seq.; competition in, 406, 432 Urine, in magic, 382; symbol of rain, 387, 407; identified with semen, 389 Urolagnia, 144, 171 et seq., 185, 198, 371, 419, 433, 469 Vesical, psychology, 127 et seq., 177 et seq.; dreams, 304, 328 et seq.; in childhood, 411 et seq.; in women, 418 et seq.; in ecclesiastics, 422; in men, 423 et seq. Vulvar masturbation, 167 Wagner, R., 105 Water, association of with fire, 338; as a mirror, 350; in folk¬ lore, 377; love of, 378, 433 Whip, the, 168, 194 Whipping interest in childhood, 193 Wilde, Oscar, 352 Witchcraft, urine in, 385, 403 The One Universally Recognized Authority Psychopathia Sexualis WITH ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO CONTRARY SEXUAL INSTINCT A Medicolegal Study of Sexual Insanity BY Dr. R. von KRAFFT-EBING Late Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology, University of Vienna. Authorized Translation from the German by CHARLES GILBERT CHADDOCK, M.D. Professor of Nervous and Mental Diseases, Marion-Sims College of Medicine, St. Louis, etc. Royal Octavo, 432 Pages. Price, Net, Cloth, $4.00. Sold only by Subscription to Physicians and Lawyers exclusively. General Scheme of the Book.—T. Fragment of a Psychology of the Sexual Life : The Sexual Instinct; Sensuality and Morality ; True Love. etc. II. Physiological Facts; Sexual Maturity; Control of the Sexual Instinct, etc. III. General Pathology; Importance of Pathological Manifestations; Sexual Perversion. IV. Special Pathology ; Abnormal Sexual Manifestations iu Mental Diseases; Insanity. V. Pathological Sexuality Before the Criminal Court; Frequency of Sexual Crimes; Increase; Loss of Responsibility, etc. FROM THE PREFACE.. “The purpose of this treatise is a description of the pathological manifestations of the sexual life and an attempt to refer them to their underlying conditions. The task is a difficult one. . . . But the importance of the subject for the welfare of society, especially forensic- ally, demands, however, that it should be examined scientifically. Only he who, as a medicolegal expert, has been in a position where he has been compelled to pass judgment upon his fellow-men, where life, freedom, and honor were at stake, and realized painfully the incompleteness of our knowledge concerning the pathology of the sexual life, can fully under¬ stand the significance of an attempt to gain definite views concerning it. “Even at the present time, in the domain of sexual criminality, the most erroneous opinions are expressed and the most unjust sentences pronounced, influencing laws and public opinion. “The following pages are addressed to earnest investigators in the domain of natural science and jurisprudence. “It is hoped that this attempt to present to physicians and jurists facts from an important sphere of life will receive kindly acceptance and fill an actual hiatus in literature.” F. A. DAVIS COMPANY, Publishers, 1914-16 Cherry Street. Philadelphia, Pa. Indispensable to Physicians and Lawyers Medicolegal Aspects of Moral Offenses BY L. THOINOT, M.D. Professor in the Medical Faculty of Paris; Physician to Laennec Hosoital • EXP< M t r°- the Trib ^ nf l I of tlie Seine; Member of the Academy of P Medicine and of the Society of Legal Medicine of Franc™ Translated from the original French and enlarged by ARTHUR W. WEYSSE, A.M., Ph.D. (Harvard), M.D. (Basel) Professor in Boston University; Member of the Boston Society of Medical Sciences, The Association of American * Anatomists: Fellow of the A. A. A. S etc Illustrated with 17 Engravings, Including 4 Charts and Diagrams. Second Edition. Authorized Translation into English. Royal Octavo, 487 Pages. Cloth, $4.00, Net. Sold only to Physicians and Lawyers. trM( S ensed Synopsis of Contents.— Outline of the subjects to be treated. Summary Facts of Anatomy; Rape (5 chapters); Indecent As¬ saults (3 chapters) ; False Assaults; Public Offenses Against Decency Perversions of the Sexual Instinct; Inversion of the Sexual Inst "net •’ Inversion of Degenerates or Uranism; Episodic Inversion of the Psy- choses; Inversion-vice; Exhibitionism; Fetichism; Sadism and Maso- chism; Bestiality; Necrophilia; Nymphomania; Satyriasis; Erotomania. the p" ^ r ' ^hoinot's course lectures delivered in the Medical School of Paris. In France and throughout Europe the fn this 5J35E fiefd aCkn ° Wledged 35 thC 1CadinS teacher and authori ^ . Wl ? ile there a number of excellent treatises on legal medicine I"nn Ur TV, ngUa ?L’ the Sub ^ ect °-\ sex , ual offenses has received scant atten- Uon The author may be said to have employed the “case method” of teaching now used in our leading law and medical schools. His prin¬ ciples, his deductions, are all based on cited cases; many of his cases are new, either from the practice of his colleagues or his own. , The legal aspects of the subject have been adapted to American usaee by Mr. Everett N. Curtis, S.B., LL.B., a member of the fhusetts bfr and a prominent practising attorney in Boston. There is an Annendiv on the laws of the United States, containing many valuable suggestions F. A. DAVIS COMPANY, Publishers, 1914-16 Cherry Street. Philadelphia, Pa. Studies in the Psychology of Sex By HAVELOCK ELLIS, L.S.A. (England) Complete in Seven Crown Octavo Volumes. Volumes may be purchased separately, but are sold only by subscription to physicians and lawyers. VOLUME I Modesty, Sexual Periodicity, Auto-Erotism Third Revised and Enlarged Edition. Crown Octavo, 355 Pages. Extra Cloth, $4.00, Net. The Evolution of Modesty.— The Definition of Modesty. Modesty Based on Fear. The Sexual Factor of Modesty. In Animals and in Men, etc. The Phenomena of Sexual Periodicity.— I. The Various Physiological and Psychological Rhythms. Menstruation, etc. II. The Question of a Monthly Sexual Cycle in Men. Periodicity in Disease, etc. III. The Annual Sexual Rhythm. In Animals. In Men. The Prevalence of Seasonal Erotic Festivals, etc. Auto-erotism : A Study of the Spontaneous Manifestations of the Sexual Impulse.— I. Definition of Auto-erotism. The Importance of this Study, Especially Today. Auto-erotic Phenomena in Animals, Savages, Bar¬ baric Races, etc. II. Hysteria and the Question of Its Relation to the Sexual Emotions, etc. III. The Prevalence of Masturbation. Reasons for the Sexual Distribution of Masturbation. The Immense Part in Life Played by Trans¬ muted Auto-erotic Phenomena, etc. Appendix A.— The Influence of Menstruation on the Position of Women. Appendix B.—Sexual Periodicity in Men. Appendix C.—Tho Auto-erotic Factor in Religion. Index. Diagrams (Fourteen). VOLUME II Sexual Inversion Third Revised and Enlarged Edition. Crown Octavo, 391 Pages. Extra Cloth, $4.00, Net. I. Introduction.— Homosexuality Among Animals. Among the Lower Human Races. Among Men of Exceptional Intellect, etc. II. The Study of Sexual Inversion.— Westphal, Hossli, Casper, Ulrichs, Tarnowsky, Krafft-Ebing, etc. III. Sexual Inversion in Men.— Relatively Undifferentiated State of the Sexual Impulse in Early Life. Classification of the Varieties, etc. IV. Sexual Inversion in Women.— Prevalence of Sexual Inversion Among Women. Physical and Psychic Characteristics of Inverted Women, etc. V. The Nature of Sexual Inversion.— Analysis of Histories. Methods of Sexual Relationship, etc. VI. The Theory of Sexual Inversion.— What is Sexual Inversion? Relation of Inversion to Degeneration, etc. VII. Conclusions.— The Prevention of Homosexuality. Co-education. The Treatment of Sexual Inversion. The State of the Law, etc. Appendix A.—Homosexuality Among Tramps. Appendix B.—The School Friendship of Girls. See two next pages for Vols. Ill to VI. F. A. DAVIS COMPANY, Publishers, 1914-16 Cherry Street. Philadelphia, Pa. VOLUME III Sexual Impulse. Love and Pain. Second Revised and Enlarged Edition. Crown Octavo, 353 Pages. Extra Cloth, $4.00, Net. Analysis of tiie Sexual Impulse.— Definition of Instinct, etc. I. Love and Pain.— The Chief Key to the Relationship Between Love tt . in to found in Animal Courtship, etc. 11. The Fascination of Blood, etc. tw’ Tn! US ? S °f Connection Between Sexual Emotion and Whipping, etc. 1 Y/ S h . e ^ ulsQ to Strangle the Object of Sexual Desire, etc. V. Pain Felt as Pleasure, etc. VI- Why is Pain a Sexual Stimulant? etc. VII. Summary of Results Reached, etc. THE SEXUAL IMPULSE IN WOMEN I. Introduction. The Primitive View of Women, etc II. Special Characters of the Sexual Impulse in Women, etc. III. Summary of Conclusions. Appendix A. —The Sexual Instinct in Savages. Appendix B.—The Development of the Sexual Instinct. VOLUME IV Sexual Selection in Man Crown Octavo, 270 Pages. Extra Cloth, $4.00, Net. THE FOUR SENSES INVOLVED PART I.—TOUCH I. The Primitive Character of the Skin. Touch the Earliest Source of Sensory Pleasure. The Characteristics of Touch. As the Alpha and Omega of Affection. IL Tickhshness. Its Origin and Significance. The Psychology of ttt mu Tickhshness. The Sexual Relationship of Itching, etc. HI. The Secondary Skin Centers. Orificial Contacts. The Kiss. The Significance of the Association Between Suckling and Sexual Lmotion, etc. IV. The Bath. Antagonism of Primitive Christianity to the Cult of the Skin. Its Cult of Personal Filth. The Reasons which Justified this Attitude, etc. V. Fundamental Importance of Touch. The Skin the Mother of All the Other Senses. PART IY.—VISION PART II.—SMELL. PART III.—HEARING. I. Primacy of Vision in Man. Beauty as a Sexual Allurement. The Objective Element in Beauty. Ideals of Feminine Beauty in \ arious Parts of the World. The Appeal of Beauty Common Even to Animals and Man. See preceding page and page following for Vols. I, II, V and VI. F. A. DAVIS COMPANY, Publishers, 1914-16 Cherry Street. Philadelphia, Pa. VOLUME V Erotic Symbolism III. Scatalogic Symbolism. Crown Octavo, 285 Pages. Extra Cloth, I. Definition of Erotic Symbolism. tt' £ oot / eti . chism and Shoe-fetichism. The Symbolism $4.00, Net. of Garments. IV. Animals as Sources of Erotic Symbolism. . Exhibitionism. Illustrative Cases. A Symbolic Perversion of Courtship. The Impulse to Defile. \ I. Forms of Erotic Symbolism—Simulacra of Coitus. THE MECHANISM OF DETUMESCENCE I. The Psychological Significance of Detumescence. The Testis and tt ° v ? ry * Sperm Cel1 and Germ Cell. 11. Ihe Object of Detumescence. III. The Constituents of Semen. IV. The Aptitude for Detumescence. THE PSYCHIC STATE IN PREGNANCY The Relationship of Maternal and Sexual Emotion. Conception and Loss of Virginity. APPENDIX Histories of Sexual Development. VOLUME VI Sex in Relation to Society Crown Octavo, 656 Pages. Extra Cloth, $5.00, Net. I. The Mother and Her Child. II. Sexual Education. III. Sexual Education and Nakedness. IV. The Valuation of Sexual Love. V The Function of Chastity. VI. The Problem of Sexual Abstinence. VII Prostitution. VIII. The Conquest of the Venereal Diseases. IX Sexual Morality. X. Marriage. XI. The Art of Love. XTT The . ^ ® ociuv, ovuoiuic uairiu ill ( could also interest themselves in this volume/’—B ex B. Lindsey. See two preceding pages for Vols. I to IV. F. A. DAVIS COMPANY, Publishers, 1914-16 Cherry Street. Philadelphia, Pa. At? Unique and Important Work Christianity and Sex Problems BY HUGH NORTHCOTE, M.A. A Nev>, Thoroughly Revised and Greatly Enlarged Edition. Crown Octavo, Nearly 500 Paces. Price, $3.00, Net. . J," neW ca Tf f " U y re .' ised and greatly enlarged edition the author »^ a j OVer “ the polnts dealt with in the first edition, and en¬ larged the discussions upon them. He has further handled a fresh series of subjects, has explored more fully the philosophical basis of sex morality, and has introduced a considerable additional amount of his- o ofn mat °r lal > 80 that the human interest of the subject should bring TABLE OP CONTENTS—CONDENSED. Ques I tk,n^ > ener T a? R R«uU t o i f Present l™^ SC j eD r 6 of , Se A.-literature on Sex of Responsibilitv— XIII Marriaee_ XIV «ddle Ages: Fertilty. Flesh the Flirting w£™ ale ’ , C0n( l ues t of, principle, nication: Biblical views ?f g demoranzatio ( n^fwi P ^f Dg V FolIy of girls. For- considerations; obligation of- ofXd- of wnm£. ^o Love ’ conjugal; moral superior to asceticism. Love-ecstasy a monS^atSSSi!^ 1 ’* ™ xual; ®P irit ualized; symbol; accessible to soldiers- age for- Chrfsnin 8 Maj-nage, a religious contrasted with concubinage Sex a fSEri? conception of. Marriage, civil; life, ethical ideals of- Ch^t and the fnZl 5 r a i n , egress; hunger; knowledge! Sexual ethics; Christian- evolution^exe^ln ° f V me taphysLcal basis of. tral of; gratification, how ?necS imS Jf 1 function, imperfect con- velopment of; spiritualized; inst^c^nTmoramy ^’* impunty: instinct - de- *. A. DAVIS COMPANY, Publishers, 1914-16 Cherry Street. Philadelphia, Pa. Date Due MAY lib., JAIV .4 1947 Mi 1 ,/ .8 1944 4-116'oS