Havelock Ellis, the great English student of sexuality, and a pioneer
in that field, coined the phrase.
The sexual act, he maintains, is not a simple matter; it is part of an
art, the art of lovemaking. This is based on the fact that, normally,
the woman is more slow than the man to respond to sexual stimulus,
and must be aroused. The man is swift, ready and active; the woman
slow, unresponsive and passive. In order to bring her full response,
there must be an interval of wooing. And it is this, from Havelock
Ellis’s point of view, which makes sexuality a beautiful and a human
thing, raising the act, in his mind, to something almost sacramental,
something in which the poetry and mystery of existence participate.
While sexuality in its origin was merely an instinct aiming at
generation and reproduction, like every other instinct it has been
turned into an art by man and become a rich part of his life. Eating,
too, is an instinctive performance; yet very few find satisfaction in
eating alone and in a plain way. Man, at his best, has raised eating to
a joyous affair, where people not only share the food, but share each
other’s society. Even the food itself may be prepared and served in an
artistic manner and in pleasant surroundings.
So, too, sexuality, according to Havelock Ellis, has become an end in
itself: the joyous union of man and woman in the mystery of love. For
instance, he says, in India the art is well known, and the act often
prolonged for hours. The West he finds backward in both the knowledge
and the practice of this art.
The sexual act he divides into two parts: the forepleasure and the act
itself. The forepleasure is the preparation and wooing. It summarizes,
according to him, all those so-called childish things which taken
separately are called perversions. As we have seen, the child goes
through every phase: sucking, rubbing, looking, exhibiting, caressing,
etc., and in various ways. These, according to Ellis’s studies, are
found in the sexual act wherever it is practiced as an art. And he
finds them natural and good insofar as they contribute toward the
complete arousal of the woman and the final act itself.
They become perversions only, he says, where they are ends in
themselves. A man, for instance, who cares mainly for expression of the
mouth has a perverted sexuality; but if this is merely a step toward
complete sexuality, it is part of the natural process and enhances the
act.
In short, in the sexual act as an art the man and woman relive their
whole development from the stage of suckling to the act itself.
Havelock Ellis also maintains that the positions assumed by the man
and woman need not be the so-called normal, but any that is found
satisfactory. In fact, he believes that a sense of equality between the
sexes may be cultivated by the man assuming what is usually the woman’s
position.
However, there are those who do not accept completely some of these
contentions. Recently, a well-known New York psychologist said before
a large audience that he and his colleagues in investigating a large
number of cases, found a surprising proportion of sensitive people who
had no interest in the sexual act itself, but only in certain phases
of the forepleasure. These people were, he said, found to be normal in
every other way, and he advocated lifting off the stigma of shame which
still attaches to such acts.
What Jung says in this connection is that it isn’t the _form_ of the
sexuality that matters, but rather the attitude we have toward the
sexual. And, if we bear in mind the mixed nature of men and women,
that some men are more feminine, for instance, and some women more
masculine, it will readily be understood that sexuality means different
things to different people. With some the forepleasure is negligible,
with others it is the chief thing. Some women are like men, swift and
immediate; some men like women, slow and passive. It remains in each
case for those concerned to find their own way.