Why is Pain a Sexual Stimulant?--It is the Most Effective Method of
Arousing Emotion--Anger and Fear the Most Powerful Emotions--Their
Biological Significance in Courtship--Their General and Special Effects in
Stimulating the Organism--Grief as a Sexual Stimulant--The Physiological
Mechanism of Fatigue Renders Pain Pleasurable.
We have seen that the distinction between "sadism" and "masochism" cannot
be maintained; not only was even De Sade himself something of a masochist
and Sacher-Masoch something of a sadist, but between these two extreme
groups of phenomena there is a central group in which the algolagnia is
neither active nor passive. "Sadism" and "masochism" are simply convenient
clinical terms for classes of manifestations which quite commonly occur in
the same person. We have further found that--as might have been
anticipated in view of the foregoing result--it is scarcely correct to use
the word "cruelty" in connection with the phenomena we have been
considering. The persons who experience these impulses usually show no
love of cruelty outside the sphere of sexual emotion; they may even be
very intolerant of cruelty. Even when their sexual impulses come into play
they may still desire to secure the pleasure of the persons who arouse
their sexual emotions, even though it may not be often true that those who
desire to inflict pain at these moments identify themselves with the
feelings of those on whom they inflict it. We have thus seen that when we
take a comprehensive survey of all these phenomena a somewhat general
formula will alone cover them. Our conclusion so far must be that under
certain abnormal circumstances pain, more especially the mental
representation of pain, acts as a powerful sexual stimulant.
The reader, however, who has followed the discussion to this point will be
prepared to take the next and final step in our discussion and to reach a
more definite conclusion. The question naturally arises: By what process
does pain or its mental representation thus act as a sexual stimulant? The
answer has over and over again been suggested by the facts brought forward
in this study. Pain acts as a sexual stimulant because it is the most
powerful of all methods for arousing emotion.
The two emotions most intimately associated with pain are anger and fear.
The more masculine and sthenic emotion of anger, the more passive and
asthenic emotion of fear, are the fundamental animal emotions through
which, on the psychic side, the process of natural selection largely
works. Every animal in some degree owes its survival to the emotional
reaction of anger against weaker rivals, to the emotional reaction of fear
against stronger rivals. To this cause we owe it that these two emotions
are so powerfully and deeply rooted in the whole zoölogical series to
which we belong. But anger and fear are not less fundamental in the sexual
life. Courtship on the male's part is largely a display of combativity,
and even the very gestures by which the male seeks to appeal to the female
are often those gestures of angry hostility by which he seeks to
intimidate enemies. On the female's part courtship is a skillful
manipulation of her own fears, and, as we have seen elsewhere, when
studying the phenomena of modesty, that fundamental attitude of the female
in courtship is nothing but an agglomeration of fears.
The biological significance of the emotions is now well
recognized. "In general," remarks one of the shrewdest writers on
animal psychology, "we may say that emotional states are, under
natural conditions, closely associated with behavior of
biological value--with tendencies that are beneficial in
self-preservation and race preservation--with actions that
promote survival, and especially with the behavior which clusters
round the pairing and parental instincts. The value of the
emotions in animals is that they are an indirect means of
furthering survival." (Lloyd Morgan, _Animal Behavior_, p. 293.)
Emotional aptitudes persist not only by virtue of the fact that
they are still beneficial, but because they once were; that is to
say, they may exist as survivals. In this connection I may quote
from a suggestive paper on "Teasing and Bullying," by F.L. Burk;
at the conclusion of this study, which is founded on a large
body of data concerning American children, the author asks:
"Accepting for the moment the theories of Spencer and Ribot upon
the transmission of rudimentary instincts, is it possible that
the movements which comprise the chief elements of bullying,
teasing, and the egotistic impulses in general of the classes
cited--pursuing, throwing down, punching, striking, throwing
missiles, etc.--are, from the standpoint of consciousness, broken
neurological fragments, which are parts of old chains of activity
involved in the pursuit, combat, capture, torture, and killing of
men and enemies?... Is not this hypothesis of transmitted
fragments of instincts in accord with the strangely anomalous
fact that children are at one moment seemingly cruel and at the
next affectionate and kind, vibrating, as it were, between two
worlds, egotistic and altruistic, without conscious sense of
incongruity?" (F.L. Burk, "Teasing and Bullying," _Pedagogical
Seminary_, April, 1897.)
The primitive connection of the special emotions of anger and
fear with the sexual impulse has been well expressed by Colin
Scott in his remarkable study of "Sex and Art": "If the higher
forms of courting are based on combat, among the males at least
anger must be intimately associated with love. And below both of
these lies the possibility of fear. In combat the animal is
defeated who is first afraid. Competitive exhibition of prowess
will inspire the less able birds with a deterring fear. Young
grouse and woodcock do not enter the lists with the older birds,
and sing very quietly. It is the same with the very oldest birds.
Audubon says that the old maids and bachelors of the Canada goose
move off by themselves during the courting of the younger birds.
In order to succeed in love, fear must be overcome in the male as
well as in the female. Courage is the essential male virtue, love
is its outcome and reward. The strutting, crowing, dancing, and
singing of male birds and the preliminary movements generally of
animals must gorge the neuromotor and muscular systems with blood
and put them in better fighting trim. The effects of this upon
the feelings of the animal himself must be very great. Hereditary
tendencies swell his heart. He has 'the joy that warriors feel.'
He becomes regardless of danger, and sometimes almost oblivious
of his surroundings. This intense passionateness must react
powerfully on the whole system, and more particularly on those
parts which are capable, such as the brain, of using up a great
surplus of blood, and on the naturally erethic functions of sex.
The flood of anger or fighting instinct is drained off by the
sexual desires, the antipathy of the female is overcome, and
sexual union successfully ensues.... Courting and combat shade
into one another, courting tending to take the place of the more
basal form of combat. The passions which thus come to be
associated with love are those of fear and anger, both of which,
by arousing the whole nature and stimulating the nutritive
sources from which they flow, come to increase the force of the
sexual passion to which they lead up and in which they culminate
and are absorbed," (Colin Scott, "Sex and Art," _American Journal
of Psychology_, vol. vii, No. 2, pp. 170 and 215.)
It must be remembered that fear is an element liable to arise in
all courtship on one side or the other. It is usually on the side
of the female, but not invariably. Among spiders, for instance,
it is usually the male who feels fear, and very reasonably, for
he is much weaker than the female. "Courtship by the male spider"
says T.H. Montgomery ("The Courtship of Araneads," _American
Naturalist_, March, 1910, p. 166), "results from a combination of
the state of desire for and fear of the female." It is by his
movements of fear that he advertises himself to the female as a
male, and it is by the same movements that he is unconsciously
impelled to display prominently his own ornamentation.
We are thus brought to those essential facts of primitive courtship with
which we started. But we are now able to understand more clearly how it is
that alien emotional states became abnormally associated with the sexual
life. Normally the sexual impulse is sufficiently reinforced by the
ordinary active energies of the organism which courtship itself arouses,
energies which, while they may be ultimately in part founded on anger and
fear, rarely allow these emotions to be otherwise than latent. Motion, it
may be said, is more prominent than emotion.
Even normally a stimulant to emotional activities is pleasurable, just as
motion itself is pleasurable. It may even be useful, as was noted long ago
by Erasmus Darwin; he tells of a friend of his who, when painfully
fatigued by riding, would call up ideas arousing indignation, and thus
relieve the fatigue, the indignation, as Darwin pointed out, increasing
muscular activity.[136]
It is owing to this stimulating action that discomfort, even pain, may be
welcomed on account of the emotional waves they call up, because they
"lash into movement the dreary calm of the sea's soul," and produce that
alternation of pain and enjoyment for which Faust longed. Groos, who
recalls this passage in his very thorough and profound discussion of the
region wherein tragedy has its psychological roots, points out that it is
the overwhelming might of the storm itself, and not the peace of calm
after the storm, which appeals to us. In the same way, he observes, even
surprise and shock may also be pleasurable, and fear, though the most
depressing of emotional states, by virtue of the joy produced by strong
stimuli is felt as attractive; we not only experience an impulse of
pleasure in dominating our environment, but also have pleasure in being
dominated and rendered helpless by a higher power.[137] Hirn, again, in
his work on the origins of art, has an interesting chapter on "The
Enjoyment of Pain," a phenomenon which he explains by its resultant
reactions in increase of outward activity, of motor excitement. Anger, he
observes elsewhere, is "in its active stage a decidedly pleasurable
emotion. Fear, which in its initial stage is paralyzing and depressing,
often changes in time when the first shock has been relieved by motor
reaction.... Anger, fear, sorrow, notwithstanding their distinctly painful
initial stage, are often not only not avoided, but even deliberately
sought."[138]
In the ordinary healthy organism, however, although the stimulants of
strong emotion may be vaguely pleasurable, they do not have more than a
general action on the sexual sphere, nor are they required for the due
action of the sexual mechanism. But in a slightly abnormal
organism--whether the anomaly is due to a congenital neuropathic
condition, or to a possibly acquired neurasthenic condition, or merely to
the physiological inadequacy of childhood or old age--the balance of
nervous energy is less favorable for the adequate play of the ordinary
energies in courtship. The sexual impulse is itself usually weaker, even
when, as often happens, its irritability assumes the fallacious appearance
of strength. It has become unusually sensitive to unusual stimuli and
also, it is possible,--perhaps as a result of those conditions,--more
liable to atavistic manifestations. An organism in this state becomes
peculiarly apt to seize on the automatic sources of energy generated by
emotion. The parched sexual instinct greedily drinks up and absorbs the
force it obtains by applying abnormal stimuli to its emotional apparatus.
It becomes largely, if not solely, dependent on the energy thus secured.
The abnormal organism in this respect may become as dependent on anger or
fear, and for the same reason, as in other respects it may become
dependent on alcohol.
We see the process very well illustrated by the occasional action of the
emotion of anger. In animals the connection between love and anger is so
close that even normally, as Groos points out, in some birds the sight of
an enemy may call out the gestures of courtship.[139] As Krafft-Ebing
remarks, both love and anger "seek their object, try to possess themselves
of it, and naturally exhaust themselves in a physical effect on it; both
throw the psychomotor sphere into the most intense excitement, and by
means of this excitement reach their normal expression."[140] Féré has
well remarked that the impatience of desire may itself be regarded as a
true state of anger, and Stanley Hall, in his admirable study of anger,
notes that "erethism of the breasts or sexual parts" was among the
physical manifestations of anger occurring in some of his cases, and in
one case a seminal emission accompanied every violent outburst.[141] Thus
it is that anger may be used to reinforce a weak sexual impulse, and
cases have been recorded in which coitus could only be performed when the
man had succeeded in working himself up into an artificial state of
anger.[142] On the other hand, Féré has recorded a case in which the
sexual excitement accompanying delayed orgasm was always transformed into
anger, though without any true sadistic manifestations.[143]
As a not unexpected complementary phenomenon to this connection of anger
and sexual emotion in the male, it is sometimes found that the spectacle
of masculine anger excites pleasurable emotion in women. The case has been
recorded of a woman who delighted in arousing anger for the pleasure it
gave her, and who advised another woman to follow her example and excite
her husband's anger, as nothing was so enjoyable as to see a man in a fury
of rage[144]; Lombroso mentions a woman who was mostly frigid, but
experienced sexual feelings when she heard anyone swearing; and a medical
friend tells me of a lady considerably past middle age who experienced
sexual erethism after listening to a heated argument between her husband
and a friend on religious topics. The case has also been recorded of a
masochistic man who found sexual satisfaction in masturbating while a
woman, by his instructions, addressed him in the lowest possible terms of
abuse.[145] Such a feeling doubtless underlies that delight in teasing men
which is so common among young women. Stanley Hall, referring to the
almost morbid dread of witnessing manifestations of anger felt by many
women, remarks: "In animals, females are often described as watching with
complacency the conflict of rival males for their possession, and it seems
probable that the intense horror of this state, which many females
report, is associated more or less unconsciously with the sexual rage
which has followed it."[146] The dread may well be felt at least as much
as regards the emotional state in themselves as in the males.
Even when the emotion aroused is disgust it may still act as a sexual
stimulant. Stcherbak has narrated the instructive case of a very
intelligent and elegant married lady of rather delicate constitution, an
artist of some talent, who never experienced any pleasure in sexual
intercourse, but ever since sexual feelings first began to be manifested
at all (at the age of 18) has only experienced them in relation to
disgusting things. Anything that is repulsive, like vomit, etc., causes
vague but pleasurable feelings which she gradually came to recognize as
sexual. The sight of a crushed frog will cause very definite sexual
sensations. She has had many admirers and she has observed that a
declaration of love by a disagreeable or even repulsive man sexually
excites her, though she has no desire for sexual intercourse with
him.[147]
After all that has gone before it is easy to see how the emotion of fear
may act in an analogous manner to anger. Just as anger may reinforce the
active forms of the sexual impulse to which it is allied, so fear may
reinforce the passive forms of that impulse. The following observations,
written by a lady, very well show how we may thus explain the sexual
attractiveness of whipping: "The fascination of whipping, which has always
greatly puzzled me, seems to be a sort of hankering after the stimulus of
fear. In a wild state animals live in constant fear. In civilized life one
but rarely feels it. A woman's pleasure in being afraid of a husband or
lover may be an equivalent of a man's love of adventure; and the fear of
children for their parents may be the dawning of the love of adventure. In
a woman this desire of adventure receives a serious check when she begins
to realize what she might be subjected to by a man if she gratified it.
Excessive fear is demoralizing, but it seems to me that the idea of being
whipped gives a sense of fear which is not excessive. It is almost the
only kind of pain (physical) which is inflicted on children or women by
persons whom they can love and trust, and with a moral object. Any other
kind of bodily ill treatment suggests malignity and may rouse resentment,
and, in extreme cases, an excess of fear which goes beyond the limits of
pleasurable excitement. Given a hereditary feeling of this sort, I think
it is helped by the want of actual experience, as the association with
excitement is freed from the idea of pain as such." In his very valuable
and suggestive study of fears, Stanley Hall, while recognizing the evil of
excessive fear, has emphasized the emotional and even the intellectual
benefits of fear, and the great part played by fear in the evolution of
the race as "the rudimentary organ on the full development and subsequent
reduction of which many of the best things in the soul are dependent."
"Fears that paralyze some brains," he remarks, "are a good tonic for
others. In some form and degree all need it always. Without the fear
apparatus in us, what a wealth of motive would be lost!"[148]
It is on the basis of this tonic influence of fear that in some morbidly
sensitive natures fear acts as a sexual stimulant. Cullerre has brought
together a number of cases in both men and women, mostly neurasthenic, in
which fits of extreme anxiety and dread, sometimes of a religious
character and often in highly moral people, terminate in spontaneous
orgasm or in masturbation.[149]
Professor Gurlitt mentions that his first full sexual emission took place
in class at school, when he was absorbed in writing out the life of
Aristides and very anxious lest he should not be able to complete it
within the set time.[150]
Dread and anxiety not only excite sexual emotion, but in the more extreme
morbid cases they may suppress and replace it. Terror, say Fliess, is
transmuted coitus, and Freud believes that the neurosis of anxiety always
has a sexual cause, while Ballet, Capgras, Löwenfeld, and others, though
not regarding a sexual traumatism as the only cause, still regard it as
frequent.
It is worthy of note that not only fear, but even so depressing an emotion
as grief, may act as a sexual stimulant, more especially in women. This
fact is not sufficiently recognized, though probably everyone can recall
instances from his personal knowledge, such cases being generally regarded
as inexplicable. It is, however, not more surprising that grief should be
transformed into sexual emotion than that (as in a case recorded by
Stanley Hall) it should manifest itself as anger. In any case we have to
bear in mind the frequency of this psychological transformation in the
presence of cases which might otherwise seem to call for a cynical
interpretation.
The case has been recorded of an English lady of good social
position who fell in love with an undertaker at her father's
funeral and insisted on marrying him. It is known that some men
have been so abnormally excited by the funeral trappings of death
that only in such surroundings have they been able to effect
coitus. A case has been recorded of a physician of unimpeachable
morality who was unable to attend funerals, even of his own
relatives, on account of the sexual excitement thus aroused.
Funerals, tragedies at the theater, pictures of martyrdom, scenes
of execution, and trials at the law-courts have been grouped
together as arousing pleasure in many people, especially women.
(C.F. von Schlichtegroll, _Sacher-Masoch und der Masochismus_,
pp. 30-31.) Wakes and similar festivals may here find their
psychological basis, and funerals are an unquestionable source of
enjoyment among some people, especially of so-called "Celtic"
race. The stimulating reaction after funerals is well known to
many, and Leigh Hunt refers to this (in his _Autobiography_) as
affecting the sincerely devoted friends who had just cremated
Shelley.
It may well be, as Kiernan has argued (_Alienist and
Neurologist_, 1891; ibid., 1902, p. 263), that in the disturbance
of emotional balance caused by grief the primitive instincts
become peculiarly apt to respond to stimulus, and that in the
aboulia of grief the mind is specially liable to become the prey
to obsessions.
"When my child died at the age of 6 months," a correspondent
writes, "I had a violent paroxysm of weeping and for some days I
could not eat. When I kissed the dead boy for the last time (I
had never seen a corpse before) I felt I had reached the depths
of misery and could never smile or have any deep emotions again.
Yet that night, though my thoughts had not strayed to sexual
subjects since the child's death, I had a violent erection. I
felt ashamed to desire carnal things when my dead child was still
in the house, and explained to my wife. She was sympathetic, for
her idea was that our common grief had intensified my love for
her. I feel convinced, however, that my desire was the result of
a stimulus propagated to the sexual centers from the centers
affected by my grief, the transference of my emotion from one set
of nerves to another. I do not perhaps express my meaning
clearly."
How far the emotional influence of grief entered into the
following episode it is impossible to say, for here it is
probable that we are mainly concerned with one of those almost
irresistible impulses by which adolescent girls are sometimes
overcome. The narrative is from the lips of a reliable witness, a
railway guard, who, some thirty years ago, when a youth of 18, in
Cornwall, lodged with a man and woman who had a daughter of his
own age. Some months later, when requiring a night's lodging, he
called at the house, and was greeted warmly by the woman, who
told him her husband had just died and that she and her daughter
were very nervous and would be glad if he would stay the night,
but that as the corpse occupied the other bedroom he would have
to share their bed ("We don't think very much of that among us,"
my informant added). He agreed, and went to bed, and when, a
little later, the two women also came to bed, the girl, at her
own suggestion, lay next to the youth. Nothing happened during
the night, but in the morning, when the mother went down to light
the fire, the daughter immediately threw off the bedclothes,
exposing her naked person, and before the youth had realized what
was happening she had drawn him over on to her. He was so utterly
surprised that nothing whatever happened, but the incident made a
life-long impression on him.
In this connection reference may be made to the story of the
Ephesian matron in Petronius; the story of the widow, overcome by
grief, who watches by her husband's tomb, and very speedily falls
into the arms of the soldier who is on guard. This story, in very
various forms, is found in China and India, and has occurred
repeatedly in European literature during the last two thousand
years. The history of the wanderings of this story has been told
by Grisebach (Eduard Grisebach, _Die Treulose Witwe_, third
edition, 1877). It is not probable, however, that all the stories
of this type are actually related; in any case it would seem that
their vitality is due to the fact that they have been found to
show a real correspondence to life; one may note, for instance,
the curious tone of personal emotion with which George Chapman
treated this theme in his play, _Widow's Tears_.
It may be added that, in explaining the resort to pain as an emotional
stimulus, we have to take into account not only the biological and
psychological considerations here brought forward, but also the abnormal
physiological conditions under which stimuli usually felt as painful come
specially to possess a sexually exciting influence. The neurasthenic and
neuropathic states may be regarded as conditions of more or less permanent
fatigue. It is true that under the conditions we are considering there may
be an extreme sensitiveness to stimuli not usually felt as of sexual
character, a kind of hyperesthesia; but hyperesthesia, it has well been
said, is nothing but the beginning of anesthesia.[151] Sergeant Bertrand,
the classical example of necrophily,[152] began to masturbate at the age
of 9, stimulating a sexual impulse which may have been congenitally feeble
by accompanying thoughts of ill-treating women. It was not till
subsequently that he began to imagine that the women were corpses. The
sadistic thoughts were only incidents in the emotional evolution, and the
real object throughout was to procure strong emotion and not to inflict
cruelty. Some observations of Féré's as to the conditions which influence
the amount of muscular work accomplished with the ergograph are
instructive from the present point of view: "Although sensibility
diminishes in the course of fatigue," Féré found that "there are periods
during which the excitability increases before it disappears. As fatigue
increases, the perception of the intercurrent excitation is retarded; an
odor is perceived as exciting before it is perceived as a differentiated
sensation; the most fetid odors arouse feelings of well-being before being
perceived as odors, and their painful quality only appears afterward, or
is not noticed at all." And after recording a series of results with the
ergograph obtained under the stimulus of unpleasant odors he remarks: "We
are thus struck by two facts: the diminution of work during painful
excitation, and its increase when the excitation has ceased. When the
effects following the excitation have disappeared the diminution is more
rapid than in the ordinary state. When the fatigue is manifested by a
notable diminution, if the same excitation is brought into action again,
no diminution is produced, but a more or less durable increase, exactly as
though there had been an agreeable excitation. Moreover, the stimulus
which appears painful in a state of repose loses that painful character
either partially or completely when acting on the same subject in a more
and more fatigued state." Féré defines a painful stimulus as a strong
excitation which causes displays of energy which the will cannot utilize;
when, as a result of diminished sensibility, the excitants are attenuated,
the will can utilize them, and so there is no pain.[153] These experiments
had no reference to the sexual instinct, but it will be seen at once that
they have an extremely significant bearing on the subject before us, for
they show us the mechanism of the process by which in an abnormal organism
pain becomes a sexual stimulant.