THE SENSES IN LOVE
Friedlander has wisely remarked that there is more sensuality than
sexuality in love. Which after all means that sex is only a small part
of love. It is only after the various senses have reported to the
central nervous system the presence of numerous fetishes symbolising
peace and safety, that the sex union is not only possible, but
extremely attractive and creates a durable bond between two human
beings.
=Sight= is naturally the most important of the senses. Like hearing, it
is a long distance sense, which does not require close proximity like
smell, nor close contact like taste and touch.
Thru association of memories, sight becomes the perfect, all embracing,
descriptive sense, able to substitute for all the other senses.
A glance reveals not only the color, size and shape of an object, but
its consistency, firmness or softness, its state of preservation or
deterioration, its probable odor and taste, etc.
Sight perceives the exposed and obvious fetishes and, thru memory
associations, imagines those which are neither exposed nor obvious.
Visual sensations are the most powerful experienced by the organism;
a slight injury to the optic nerve produces a greater shock than
major injuries to any other nerve of the body. The popularity of
the movies is based upon that characteristic. To the unimaginative,
primitive people who relish that childish form of entertainment, visual
sensations replace and suggest almost every other form of sensory
gratification.
I have shown in Chapter III that the large majority of fetishes are
visual, being impressions of color and size, which were produced on the
child's visual nerves thru close proximity with the mother's body.
=Auditory Sensations= which enhance erotic states also hark back very
obviously to infancy. The caressing tone of the lovers' voices, the
well modulated words of praise which they speak to each other in a low
monotonous sing-song during their embraces, the baby talk in which so
many lovers indulge, remind one unavoidably of the crooned lullabies
with which the loving mother created a state of peace and safety that
would enable the nursling to doze off.
=Smell.= In animals the sense of smell plays probably a more important
part than the sense of sight. In man the olfactory sense has become
more negative and protective than positive. It enables him to avoid
rather than to locate certain objects. This partial atrophy of the
positive olfactory capacities is undoubtedly due to the progress of
hygiene and cleanliness in human life.
The child whose mother is carefully shampooed and bathed will not
consider strong odors emanating from hair or arm pits as a symbol of
safety. On the contrary, they will be something foreign to him, hence
suggestive of danger.
In ancient times, bodily odors were frequently mentioned as love
stimulants. The Homeric poems, the Song of Songs, the Kamasutra and
other Hindoo erotic works, the Arabian Perfumed Garden and even in more
recent times, poems like Herrick's "Julia's Sweat," extolled strong
body odors which at the present day not only are deemed offensive but
cannot be mentioned except in medical writings.
The modern bathroom has exiled olfactory allusions from literature.
Odors can be, not only fetishes but very often powerful antifetishes.
This is partly due to a repression of the child's interest in his
excretions which later burst forth in the use of perfume by women,
smoking by men and women. Cigar smoking for instance supplies an outlet
for a number of childish polymorphous perversions, to use Freud's
expression.
In this case as in many others, violent repugnance to odors good or bad
in adulthood may be traced to a morbid craving for them in childhood.
=The Sense of Taste= is not very important in love, altho some
experienced lovers detect a distinct flavor in the skin of various
parts of one woman's skin, cheeks, arms, etc.
Taste observed in purely nutritional activities reveals constantly
its unconscious infantile origin. However completely we may have been
weaned, we constantly pay a tribute of appreciation to our first food.
The exaggerated and unjustified importance we attribute to milk in
the diet of adults, the way in which we designate a white complexion
as "milky" or "creamy," and in which we praise many tender foods by
stating that they are "like cream" or "melt in our mouth" illustrates,
together with the popularity of breast fetishism, the influence which
infantile gustatory impressions have made on all of us.
=Touch= is probably as important as sight for physico-chemical reasons.
All animals seem to enjoy the close contact of other animals of their
own species. Even on very warm days, puppies, kittens and young birds
derive a very great comfort from being huddled together in kennel,
basket or nest.
There are two reasons for that craving for contact. The safest period
of our life which our automatic nerves remember is the fetal period
during which the contact of the child with the womb is constant and in
perfect relation to the fetus' growth.
Also, contact facilitates the electrical exchanges between human
beings, especially between male and female, exchanges which owing to
the removal of organic inhibitions, must be singularly powerful between
lovers.
=Holding Hands.= Whenever conditions separate their bodies, lovers
generally revert to the childish practice of holding hands, which to
the child meant an assurance of safety when led by the strong parents
and also facilitated electrical exchanges of distinct value to the
young and old alike.
=The Kiss.= This brings us to the consideration of a love
manifestation in which sensations of a tactile, gustatory and olfactory
character are combined: the kiss.
The kiss, curiously enough, is found both in certain animal and human
races but not in all human races.
Many mammals, birds and insects exchange caresses which remind one of
the human kiss. "Love birds" seem to spend much of their time kissing
each other.
On the other hand, Eastern races do not seem to relish the caress which
Western peoples call a kiss. In China a form of affectionate greeting
corresponding to our kiss consists in rubbing one's nose against the
cheek of the other person after which a deep breath is taken thru the
nose with the eyes half-shut.
In some primitive races the equivalent for our "kiss me" is "smell me."
In other races, the kiss is a manifestation of respect rather than a
proof of love. Anglo Saxons on certain occasions kiss the Bible. In the
early Christian and Arab civilisations, the kiss was a ritual gesture
and has remained so in certain Catholic customs: kissing the pope's
foot, relics, a bishop's ring, etc.
In certain races, kissing is a proof of affection but not of love.
Japanese mothers kiss their children but Japanese lovers do not
exchange caresses of the lips, according to Lafcadio Hearn.
The dark races of Africa are ignorant of that caress and so are the
Malays, the aborigines of Australia and many other primitive tribes.
=The Birth of the Kiss.= It appears that even among the kissing races,
the kiss is a relatively recent development. It is rarely mentioned in
Greek literature. In the Middle Ages it was a sign of refinement, being
almost unknown among the lower classes.
Some analysts have come to the conclusion that the kissing habit is
derived from sucking the mother's nipple.
If this was the proper explanation, all the races would naturally
indulge in it.
The kiss is infinitely more complicated than that. The Freudian
explanation should not be discarded entirely but it does not explain
everything.
The kiss has grown in importance with the restrictions placed by
civilisation on sexual activities. The more primitive the races, the
more promiscuous they are and the less they kiss.
The kiss seems to have become among the more repressed and advanced
races a displacement upward of the act of possession, a sublimation of
intercourse. It is, next to sexual union, the closest contact which the
male and female may attain.
=Kisses and Electricity.= If we adopt Crile's theory according to
which the life stream is an electric current produced by the brain and
constantly discharging itself, we may realise concretely the import of
the kiss.
The physical union is probably the neutralisation of two electric
currents, positive and negative, altho we do not know as yet what
correspondence there is between sexes and opposite electric currents.
Anyone familiar, however, with experiences in galvanotropism, some of
which I have mentioned in Chapter II, will when reflecting upon the way
in which the spermatozoon directs itself infallibly toward the egg,
conclude that it is headed toward a strong electric current issuing
from the woman's womb and ovaries.
The kiss is only a milder, less complete neutralisation of the currents
issuing from two human beings.
If the kiss on the lips is preferred by lovers, it is because the
moist mucus of the lips is a better conductor of electrical current
than the skin. In very passionate kisses, the lovers' tongues play a
double part, a symbolic part, representing the mother's nipple, and
a physico-chemical part, securing a closer connection, like plug and
socket in electric appliances.
In Anglo-Saxon fiction which does not countenance descriptions of
lovers' embraces, a very passionate kiss is always symbolical of
complete surrender. Physiologically this symbolism is quite accurate.
The temporary exhaustion which follows a protracted kiss is often equal
to that following a lovers' embrace and this can be easily understood
when we remember the protracted electrical discharge which must follow
the contact of the conductive surfaces of the mucus of the lips.