A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love between the Sexes

By Sanford Bell, Fellow in Clark University.
“Yet it is unreasonable to take normal phenomena for granted here as in any other region of medicine. A knowledge of such phenomena is as necessary here as physiology is to pathology or anatomy to surgery. So far from the facts of normal sex development, sex emotions and sex needs being uniform and constant, as is assumed by those who consider their discussion unnecessary, the range of variation within fairly normal limits is immense, and it is impossible to meet with two individuals whose records are nearly identical.
“There are two fundamental reasons why the endeavor should be made to obtain a broad basis of clear information on the subject. In the first place, the normal phenomena give the key to the abnormal, and the majority of sexual perversions, including even those that are most repulsive, are but exaggerations of instincts and emotions that are germinal in normal human beings. In the second place, what is normal cannot be determined until the sexual life of a large number of healthy individuals is known, and until the limits of normal sexuality are known the physician is not in a position to lay down any reasonable rules of sexual hygiene.”
The analyses thus far given by scientists are limited to the emotion as it is manifested in the adult. A few writers have referred to it in dealing with the psychology of adolescence, but in this connection refer to it as one of the many ways in which the adolescent spirit shows its intensity, turbulence and capriciousness. I know of no scientist who has given a careful analysis of the emotion as it is seen in the adolescent. It is true that it has been the chosen theme of the poet, romancer and novelist. But in the products of such writers we may look for artistic descriptions of the emotion and for scenes and incidents that very truly portray its nature; we have no right to expect a scientific analysis.
Adults need only to recall their own youth or to observe even briefly our grammar and high school boys and girls, to be convinced that love between the sexes is one of the emotions that become conspicuously apparent in early adolescence. This is what might reasonably be expected since the emotion is derived from the sex instinct, and pubescence marks the period of rapid acceleration in the growth of the sex organs. With the increase in size and vigor of the reproductive organs there comes the strong impulse for the organs to function. Before civilization developed the system of sex inhibitions that are considered an essential part of the ethical habits of our young people, the impulse to function was not repressed and pubescence marked the beginning of the distinctively sexual experience of both sexes. This was true of primitive peoples, and is generally true of the lower races that are living to-day. It is, however, not limited to these races. A very large percentage of both sexes of the civilized races begin their sexual life during early adolescence. This is particularly true of the male half of the races. The system of sex inhibitions which has gradually been developed by civilization has been along the line of evolution and has been doing away with promiscuity, polygamy and polyandry; it has been establishing monogamy and postponing marriage until a period of greater physiological and psychological maturity of both sexes. This same inhibition of early sex functioning has lead to an increase in the prevalence of such substitutes as masturbation, onanism, pederasty, etc. Such facts bear upon the physiological results of inhibition. On the psychological side are to be mentioned courtship and those sex irradiations that have so profoundly influenced art, literature, religion, polite society, sports and industry. Many of the pathological sex psychoses, such as love for the same sex, erotopathia, sexual anæsthesia, etc., are to be explained, at least in part, by reference to the results of these social inhibitions trying to establish themselves.