The sexual question

by Auguste Forel

Egoistic Love.—It is obvious that the psychic irradiations of the sexual sense are strongly influenced by the individuality of the one who loves. The egoist loves in a manner naively egoistic. He is not wanting in fine words, but in his opinion all sentiment and respect is due to his person, while he reduces to a minimum his duties toward the object of his love. He exacts much from the other and gives little. The good man with altruistic sentiments feels things in an inverse way; he exacts little from others, and much from himself.

Love differs in different natures, according as they are calm or lively, imbecile or intelligent, well educated or otherwise: the will plays a great part here. Weakness and impulsiveness are found in love, as well as energy and perseverance. In the last point woman is superior, owing to the greater constancy of her love. There is thus no domain of the mind which is not influenced by love, and which does not react on love in its turn.

Intellectual occupations are facilitated by a happy love, while they are usually hindered by the sorrows of love. Even men of science, so proud of their calmness, are often more influenced than one would think in their scientific opinions by their emotional sentiments. Without a man being aware of it, his sentiments insinuate themselves into the opinions which he believes to be of a purely intellectual nature, and direct them unconsciously with much more power than he generally imagines. Such influences act chiefly on individuals disposed to sentimentality. In love, these individuals resemble two-edged swords; the intensity of their emotional reactions and sentiments drives them from one extreme to another, from foolish happiness to despair or fury. The situation becomes still more grave when such storms burst among impulsive persons of weak will and limited intelligence. Under such circumstances ill-assorted alliances are formed which lead to violent quarrels, and sometimes even to crime. When jealousy comes on the scene the man often kills the woman and commits suicide.

It would seem that such crime can only arise from egoism; this is often the case, but not always. Despair may often lead to such acts, without any motive of vengeance, or even of jealousy. The storm of passion drives weak-minded persons to impulsive actions, the motives of which are very difficult to analyze. After these tragedies of murder preceding suicide, when the murderer survives, he often expresses himself as follows: "I was in such a state of despair and excitement that I saw no other issue than death for both of us."

Prudery. Modesty.—The sentiment of modesty originates in the fear of everything which is novel and unusual, and is complicated by natural timidity. This sentiment is especially strong in children. The sentiment of sexual modesty in man thus rests on timidity and on the fear of not doing as others do. It betrays itself toward women by awkwardness and bashfulness behind which eroticism is often ill concealed. The timid and bashful man carefully endeavors to hide his sexual feelings from others. The object of modesty is in itself immaterial to the psychology of this sentiment, and shame is sometimes inspired not only by very different things but even by opposite things. One youth is ashamed of appearing erotic, another of appearing too little erotic, according to the opinion of his neighbors.

Modesty depends on the custom of covering or exposing certain parts of the body, and people who live in a state of nature are as much ashamed of clothes as we are ashamed of nudity. Moreover, man soon becomes accustomed to fashion, and the same English girl who blushes at the sight of a few inches of bare skin in her own country, finds it quite natural to see naked negroes in the tropics.

The artificial and systematic cultivation of an exaggerated sentiment of modesty produces prudery, the bad results of which are, however, less than those of pornography. There are young people so modest that the simple thought of sexual matters overexcites them terribly. By associating their own erotic feelings, of which they feel ashamed, with sexual ideas, they invest these with terrifying attributes, and become quite unhappy; in this way they are often led to masturbation. They are, however, excessively frightened at this also and imagine its effects so terrible that they think themselves lost. Their exaggerated feelings of modesty often prevent them confiding in some charitable person. However, they rarely find reasonable consolers; some ridicule them, while others regard them as iniquitous, which only increases their terror and drives them to extremes.

The sexual sentiment of modesty very often becomes unhealthy, and is then easily combined with pathological sexual conditions.

Prudery is, so to speak, sexual modesty codified and dogmatized. It is indeterminate, because the object of modesty is purely conventional, and man has no valid reason to regard any part of his body as shameful. Normal man ought only to be ashamed of bad thoughts and actions, contrary to his moral conscience. The latter should be based on natural human altruism only, and not artificially misled by dogma.

The Old Bachelor.—The importance of the psychic irradiations of love is shown perhaps more clearly from the results of their presence in old bachelors than from any other consideration. In our time, no doubt, the state of the old bachelor rarely means the renunciation of the satisfaction of sexual appetite, although it generally entails the renunciation of love. There are, no doubt, two kinds of old bachelors, those who are chaste and those who are not. The old bachelor no doubt leads a less empty existence than the old maid, but the void exists none the less. Man also needs compensation for the absence of love and family, but his brain is more capable than that of woman of finding this compensation in hard intellectual work or in some other employment.