discovered by her family and leading to ineffectual attempts at
suicide. But the association of pain with love, which had
developed spontaneously in her solitary dreams, continued in her
actual relations with her lovers. During coitus she would bite
and squeeze her arms until the nails penetrated the flesh. When
her lover asked her why at the moment of coitus she would
vigorously repel him, she replied: "Because I want to be
possessed by force, to be hurt, suffocated, to be thrown down in
a struggle." At another time she said: "I want a man with all his
vitality, so that he can torture and kill my body." We seem to
see here clearly the ancient biological character of animal
courtship, the desire of the female to be violently subjugated by
the male. In this case it was united to sensitiveness to the
sexual domination of an intellectual man, and the subject also
sought to stimulate her lovers' intellectual tastes. (_Archivio
di Psichiatria_, vol. xx, fasc. 5-6, p. 528.)

This association between love and pain still persists even among the most
normal civilized men and women possessing well-developed sexual impulses.
The masculine tendency to delight in domination, the feminine tendency to
delight in submission, still maintain the ancient traditions when the male
animal pursued the female. The phenomena of "marriage by capture," in its
real and its simulated forms, have been traced to various causes. But it
has to be remembered that these causes could only have been operative in
the presence of a favorable emotional aptitude, constituted by the
zoölogical history of our race and still traceable even today. To exert
power, as psychologists well recognize, is one of our most primary
impulses, and it always tends to be manifested in the attitude of a man
toward the woman he loves.[73]

It might be possible to maintain that the primitive element of more or
less latent cruelty in courtship tends to be more rather than less marked
in civilized man. In civilization the opportunity of dissipating the
surplus energy of the courtship process by inflicting pain on rivals
usually has to be inhibited; thus the woman to be wooed tends to become
the recipient of the whole of this energy, both in its pleasure-giving and
its pain-giving aspects. Moreover, the natural process of courtship, as it
exists among animals and usually among the lower human races, tends to
become disguised and distorted in civilization, as well by economic
conditions as by conventional social conditions and even ethical
prescription. It becomes forgotten that the woman's pleasure is an
essential element in the process of courtship. A woman is often reduced to
seek a man for the sake of maintenance; she is taught that pleasure is
sinful or shameful, that sex-matters are disgusting, and that it is a
woman's duty, and also her best policy, to be in subjection to her
husband. Thus, various external checks which normally inhibit any passing
over of masculine sexual energy into cruelty are liable to be removed.

We have to admit that a certain pleasure in manifesting his power over a
woman by inflicting pain upon her is an outcome and survival of the
primitive process of courtship, and an almost or quite normal constituent
of the sexual impulse in man. But it must be at once added that in the
normal well-balanced and well-conditioned man this constituent of the
sexual impulse, when present, is always held in check. When the normal man
inflicts, or feels the impulse to inflict, some degree of physical pain on
the woman he loves he can scarcely be said to be moved by cruelty. He
feels, more or less obscurely, that the pain he inflicts, or desires to
inflict, is really a part of his love, and that, moreover, it is not
really resented by the woman on whom it is exercised. His feeling is by
no means always according to knowledge, but it has to be taken into
account as an essential part of his emotional state. The physical force,
the teasing and bullying, which he may be moved to exert under the stress
of sexual excitement, are, he usually more or less unconsciously persuades
himself, not really unwelcome to the object of his love.[74] Moreover, we
have to bear in mind the fact--a very significant fact from more than one
point of view--that the normal manifestations of a woman's sexual pleasure
are exceedingly like those of pain. "The outward expressions of pain," as
a lady very truly writes,--"tears, cries, etc.,--which are laid stress on
to prove the cruelty of the person who inflicts it, are not so different
from those of a woman in the ecstasy of passion, when she implores the man
to desist, though that is really the last thing she desires."[75] If a man
is convinced that he is causing real and unmitigated pain, he becomes
repentant at once. If this is not the case he must either be regarded as a
radically abnormal person or as carried away by passion to a point of
temporary insanity.

The intimate connection of love with pain, its tendency to approach
cruelty, is seen in one of the most widespread of the occasional and
non-essential manifestations of strong sexual emotion, especially in
women, the tendency to bite. We may find references to love-bites in the
literature of ancient as well as of modern times, in the East as well as
in the West. Plautus, Catullus, Propertius, Horace, Ovid, Petronius, and
other Latin writers refer to bites as associated with kisses and usually
on the lips. Plutarch says that Flora, the mistress of Cnæus Pompey, in
commending her lover remarked that he was so lovable that she could never
leave him without giving him a bite. In the Arabic _Perfumed Garden_ there
are many references to love-bites, while in the Indian _Kama Sutra_ of
Vatsyayana a chapter is devoted to this subject. Biting in love is also
common among the South Slavs.[76] The phenomenon is indeed sufficiently
familiar to enable Heine, in one of his _Romancero_, to describe those
marks by which the ancient chronicler states that Edith Swanneck
recognized Harold, after the Battle of Hastings, as the scars of the bites
she had once given him.

It would be fanciful to trace this tendency back to that process of
devouring to which sexual congress has, in the primitive stages of its
evolution, been reduced. But we may probably find one of the germs of the
love-bite in the attitude of many mammals during or before coitus; in
attaining a firm grip of the female it is not uncommon (as may be observed
in the donkey) for the male to seize the female's neck between his teeth.
The horse sometimes bites the mare before coitus and it is said that among
the Arabs when a mare is not apt for coitus she is sent to pasture with a
small ardent horse, who excites her by playing with her and biting
her.[77] It may be noted, also, that dogs often show their affection for
their masters by gentle bites. Children also, as Stanley Hall has pointed
out, are similarly fond of biting.

Perhaps a still more important factor is the element of combat in
tumescence, since the primitive conditions associated with tumescence
provide a reservoir of emotions which are constantly drawn on even in the
sexual excitement of individuals belonging to civilization. The tendency
to show affection by biting is, indeed, commoner among women than among
men and not only in civilization. It has been noted among idiot girls as
well as among the women of various savage races. It may thus be that the
conservative instincts of women have preserved a primitive tendency that
at its origin marked the male more than the female. But in any case the
tendency to bite at the climax of sexual excitement is so common and
widespread that it must be regarded, when occurring in women, as coming
within the normal range of variation in such manifestations. The
gradations are of wide extent; while in its slight forms it is more or
less normal and is one of the origins of the kiss,[78] in its extreme
forms it tends to become one of the most violent and antisocial of sexual
aberrations.

A correspondent writes regarding his experience of biting and
being bitten: "I have often felt inclination to bite a woman I
love, even when not in coitus or even excited. (I like doing so
also with my little boy, playfully, as a cat and kittens.) There
seem to be several reasons for this: (1) the muscular effect
relieves me; (2) I imagine I am giving the woman pleasure; (3) I
seem to attain to a more intimate possession of the loved one. I
cannot remember when I first felt desire to be bitten in coitus,
or whether the idea was first suggested to me. I was initiated
into pinching by a French prostitute who once pinched my nates in
coitus, no doubt as a matter of business; it heightened my
pleasure, perhaps by stimulating muscular movement. It does not
occur to me to ask to be pinched when I am very much excited
already, but only at an earlier stage, no doubt with the object
of promoting excitement. Apart altogether from sexual excitement,
being pinched is unpleasant to me. It has not seemed to me that
women usually like to be bitten. One or two women have bitten and
sucked my flesh. (The latter does not affect me.) I like being
bitten, partly for the same reason as I like being pinched,
because if spontaneous it is a sign of my partner's amorousness
and the biting never seems too hard. Women do not usually seem to
like being bitten, though there are exceptions; 'I should like to
bite you and I should like you to bite me,' said one woman; I did
so hard, in coitus, and she did not flinch." "She is particularly
anxious to eat me alive," another correspondent writes, "and
nothing gives her greater satisfaction than to tear open my
clothes and fasten her teeth into my flesh until I yell for
mercy. My experience has generally been, however," the same
correspondent continues, "that the cruelty is _unconscious_. A
woman just grows mad with the desire to squeeze or bite
something, with a complete unconsciousness of what result it will
produce in the victim. She is astonished when she sees the result
and will hardly believe she has done it." It is unnecessary to
accumulate evidence of a tendency which is sufficiently common to
be fairly well known, but one or two quotations may be presented
to show its wide distribution. In the _Kama Sutra_ we read: "If
she is very exalted, and if in the exaltation of her passionate
transports she begins a sort of combat, then she takes her lover
by the hair, draws his head to hers, kisses his lower lip, and
then in her delirium bites him all over his body, shutting her
eyes"; it is added that with the marks of such bites lovers can
remind each other of their affections, and that such love will
last for ages. In Japan the maiden of Ainu race feels the same
impulse. A.H. Savage Landor (_Alone with the Hairy Ainu_, 1893,
p. 140) says of an Ainu girl: "Loving and biting went together
with her. She could not do the one without the other. As we sat
on a stone in the twilight she began by gently biting my fingers
without hurting me, as affectionate dogs do to their masters. She
then bit my arm, then my shoulder, and when she had worked
herself up into a passion she put her arms around my neck and bit
my cheeks. It was undoubtedly a curious way of making love, and,
when I had been bitten all over, and was pretty tired of the new
sensation, we retired to our respective homes. Kissing,
apparently, was an unknown art to her."

The significance of biting, and the close relationship which, as
will have to be pointed out later, it reveals to other phenomena,
may be illustrated by some observations which have been made by
Alonzi on the peasant women of Sicily. "The women of the people,"
he remarks, "especially in the districts where crimes of blood
are prevalent, give vent to their affection for their little ones
by kissing and sucking them on the neck and arms till they make
them cry convulsively; all the while they say: 'How sweet you
are! I will bite you, I will gnaw you all over,' exhibiting every
appearance of great pleasure. If a child commits some slight
fault they do not resort to simple blows, but pursue it through
the street and bite it on the face, ears, and arms until the
blood flows. At such moments the face of even a beautiful woman
is transformed, with injected eyes, gnashing teeth, and
convulsive tremors. Among both men and women a very common threat
is 'I will drink your blood.' It is told on ocular evidence that
a man who had murdered another in a quarrel licked the hot blood
from the victim's hand." (G. Alonzi, _Archivio di Psichiatria_,
vol. vi, fasc. 4.) A few years ago a nurse girl in New York was
sentenced to prison for cruelty to the baby in her charge. The
mother had frequently noticed that the child was in pain and at
last discovered the marks of teeth on its legs. The girl admitted
that she had bitten the child because that action gave her
intense pleasure. (_Alienist and Neurologist_, August, 1901, p.
558.) In the light of such observations as these we may
understand a morbid perversion of affection such as was recorded
in the London police news some years ago (1894). A man of 30 was
charged with ill-treating his wife's illegitimate daughter, aged
3, during a period of many months; her lips, eyes, and hands were
bitten and bruised from sucking, and sometimes her pinafore was
covered with blood. "Defendant admitted he had bitten the child
because he loved it."

It is not surprising that such phenomena as these should
sometimes be the stimulant and accompaniment to the sexual act.
Ferriani thus reports such a case in the words of the young man's
mistress: "Certainly he is a strange, maddish youth, though he is
fond of me and spends money on me when he has any. He likes much
sexual intercourse, but, to tell the truth, he has worn out my
patience, for before our embraces there are always struggles
which become assaults. He tells me he has no pleasure except when
he sees me crying on account of his bites and vigorous pinching.
Lately, just before going with me, when I was groaning with
pleasure, he threw himself on me and at the moment of emission
furiously bit my right cheek till the blood came. Then he kissed
me and begged my pardon, but would do it again if the wish took
him." (L. Ferriani, _Archivio di Psicopatie Sessuale_, vol. i,
fasc. 7 and 8, 1896, p. 107.)

In morbid cases biting may even become a substitute for coitus.
Thus, Moll (_Die Konträre Sexualempfindung_, second edition, p.
323) records the case of a hysterical woman who was sexually
anesthetic, though she greatly loved her husband. It was her
chief delight to bite him till the blood flowed, and she was
content if, instead of coitus, he bit her and she him, though she
was grieved if she inflicted much pain. In other still more
morbid cases the fear of inflicting pain is more or less
abolished.

An idealized view of the impulse of love to bite and devour is
presented in the following passage from a letter by a lady who
associates this impulse with the idea of the Last Supper: "Your
remarks about the Lord's Supper in 'Whitman' make it natural to
me to tell you my thoughts about that 'central sacrament of
Christianity.' I cannot tell many people because they
misunderstand, and a clergyman, a very great friend of mine, when
I once told what I thought and felt, said I was carnal. He did
not understand the divinity and intensity of human love as I
understand it. Well, when one loves anyone very much,--a child, a
woman, or a man,--one loves everything belonging to him: the
things he wears, still more his hands, and his face, every bit of
his body. We always want to have all, or part, of him as part of
ourselves. Hence the expression: I could _devour_ you, I love you
so. In some such warm, devouring way Jesus Christ, I have always
felt, loved each and every human creature. So it was that he took
this mystery of food, which by eating became part of ourselves,
as the symbol of the most intense human love, the most intense
Divine love. Some day, perhaps, love will be so understood by all
that this sacrament will cease to be a superstition, a bone of
contention, an 'article' of the church, and become, in all
simplicity, a symbol of pure love."

While in men it is possible to trace a tendency to inflict pain, or the
simulacrum of pain, on the women they love, it is still easier to trace in
women a delight in experiencing physical pain when inflicted by a lover,
and an eagerness to accept subjection to his will. Such a tendency is
certainly normal. To abandon herself to her lover, to be able to rely on
his physical strength and mental resourcefulness, to be swept out of
herself and beyond the control of her own will, to drift idly in delicious
submission to another and stronger will--this is one of the commonest
aspirations in a young woman's intimate love-dreams. In our own age these
aspirations most often only find their expression in such dreams. In ages
when life was more nakedly lived, and emotion more openly expressed, it
was easier to trace this impulse. In the thirteenth century we have found
Marie de France--a French poetess living in England who has been credited
with "an exquisite sense of the generosities and delicacy of the heart,"
and whose work was certainly highly appreciated in the best circles and
among the most cultivated class of her day--describing as a perfect, wise,
and courteous knight a man who practically commits a rape on a woman who
has refused to have anything to do with him, and, in so acting, he wins
her entire love. The savage beauty of New Caledonia furnishes no better
illustration of the fascination of force, for she, at all events, has done
her best to court the violence she undergoes. In Middleton's _Spanish
Gypsy_ we find exactly the same episode, and the unhappy Portuguese nun
wrote: "Love me for ever and make me suffer still more." To find in
literature more attenuated examples of the same tendency is easy.
Shakespeare, whose observation so little escaped, has seldom depicted the
adult passion of a grown woman, but in the play which he has mainly
devoted to this subject he makes Cleopatra refer to "amorous pinches," and
she says in the end: "The stroke of death is as a lover's pinch, which
hurts and is desired." "I think the Sabine woman enjoyed being carried off
like that," a woman remarked in front of Rubens's "Rape of the Sabines,"
confessing that such a method of love-making appealed strongly to
herself, and it is probable that the majority of women would be prepared
to echo that remark.

It may be argued that pain cannot give pleasure, and that when
what would usually be pain is felt as pleasure it cannot be
regarded as pain at all. It must be admitted that the emotional
state is often somewhat complex. Moreover, women by no means
always agree in the statement of their experience. It is
noteworthy, however, that even when the pleasurableness of pain
in love is denied it is still admitted that, under some
circumstances, pain, or the idea of pain, is felt as pleasurable.
I am indebted to a lady for a somewhat elaborate discussion of
this subject, which I may here quote at length: "As regards
physical pain, though the idea of it is sometimes exciting, I
think the reality is the reverse. A very slight amount of pain
destroys my pleasure completely. This was the case with me for
fully a month after marriage, and since. When pain has
occasionally been associated with passion, pleasure has been
sensibly diminished. I can imagine that, when there is a want of
sensitiveness so that the tender kiss or caress might fail to
give pleasure, more forcible methods are desired; but in that
case what would be pain to a sensitive person would be only a
pleasant excitement, and it could not be truly said that such
obtuse persons liked pain, though they might appear to do so. I
cannot think that anyone enjoys what is pain _to them_, if only
from the fact that it detracts and divides the attention. This,
however, is only my own idea drawn from my own negative
experience. No woman has ever told me that she would like to have
pain inflicted on her. On the other hand, the desire to inflict
pain seems almost universal among men. I have only met one man in
whom I have never at any time been able to detect it. At the same
time most men shrink from putting their ideas into practice. A
friend of my husband finds his chief pleasure in imagining women
hurt and ill-treated, but is too tender-hearted ever to inflict
pain on them in reality, even when they are willing to submit to
it. Perhaps a woman's readiness to submit to pain to please a man
may sometimes be taken for pleasure in it. Even when women like
the idea of pain, I fancy it is only because it implies
subjection to the man, from association with the fact that
physical pleasure must necessarily be preceded by submission to
his will."

In a subsequent communication this lady enlarged and perhaps
somewhat modified her statements on this point:--

"I don't think that what I said to you was quite correct.
_Actual_ pain gives me no pleasure, yet the _idea_ of pain does,
_if inflicted by way of discipline and for the ultimate good of
the person suffering it_. This is essential. For instance, I once
read a poem in which the devil and the lost souls in hell were
represented as recognizing that they could not be good except
under torture, but that while suffering the purifying actions of
the flames of hell they so realized the beauty of holiness that
they submitted willingly to their agony and praised God for the
sternness of his judgment. This poem gave me decided physical
pleasure, yet I know that if my hand were held in a fire for five
minutes I should feel nothing but the pain of the burning. To get
the feeling of pleasure, too, I must, for the moment, revert to
my old religious beliefs and my old notion that mere suffering
has an elevating influence; one's emotions are greatly modified
by one's beliefs. When I was about fifteen I invented a game
which I played with a younger sister, in which we were supposed
to be going through a process of discipline and preparation for
heaven after death. Each person was supposed to enter this state
on dying and to pass successively into the charge of different
angels named after the special virtues it was their function to
instill. The last angel was that of Love, who governed solely by
the quality whose name he bore. In the lower stages, we were
under an angel called Severity who prepared us by extreme
harshness and by exacting implicit obedience to arbitrary orders
for the acquirement of later virtues. Our duties were to
superintend the weather, paint the sunrise and sunset, etc., the
constant work involved exercising us in patience and submission.
The physical pleasure came in in inventing and recounting to each
other our day's work and the penalties and hardships we had been
subjected to. We never told each other that we got any physical
pleasure out of this, and I cannot therefore be sure that my
sister did so; I only imagine she did because she entered so
heartily into the spirit of the game. I could get as much
pleasure by imagining myself the angel and inflicting the pain,
under the conditions mentioned; but my sister did not like this
so much, as she then had no companion in subjection. I could not,
however, thus reverse my feelings in regard to a man, as it would
appear to me unnatural, and, besides, the greater physical
strength is essential in the superior position. I can, however,
by imagining myself a man, sometimes get pleasure in conceiving
myself as educating and disciplining a woman by severe measures.
There is, however, no real cruelty in this idea, as I always
imagine her liking it.

"I only get pleasure in the idea of a woman submitting herself to
pain and harshness from the man she loves when the following
conditions are fulfilled: 1. She must be absolutely sure of the
man's love. 2. She must have perfect confidence in his judgment.
3. The pain must be deliberately inflicted, not accidental. 4. It
must be inflicted in kindness and for her own improvement, not in
anger or with any revengeful feelings, as that would spoil one's
ideal of the man. 5. The pain must not be excessive and must be
what when we were children we used to call a 'tidy' pain; i.e.,
there must be no mutilation, cutting, etc. 6. Last, one would
have to feel very sure of one's own influence over the man. So
much for the idea. As I have never suffered pain under a
combination of all these conditions, I have no right to say that
I should or should not experience pleasure from its infliction in
reality."

Another lady writes: "I quite agree that the idea of pain may be
pleasurable, but must be associated with something to be gained
by it. My experience is that it [coitus] does often hurt for a
few moments, but that passes and the rest is easy; so that the
little hurt is nothing terrible, but all the same annoying if
only for the sake of a few minutes' pleasure, which is not long
enough. I do not know how my experience compares with other
women's, but I feel sure that in my case the time needed is
longer than usual, and the longer the better, always, with me. As
to liking pain--no, I do not really like it, although I can
tolerate pain very well, of any kind; but I like to feel force
and strength; this is usual, I think, women being--or supposed to
be--passive in love. I have not found that 'pain at once kills
pleasure.'"

Again, another lady briefly states that, for her, pain has a
mental fascination, and that such pain as she has had she has
liked, but that, if it had been any stronger, pleasure would have
been destroyed.

The evidence thus seems to point, with various shades of
gradation, to the conclusion that the idea or even the reality of
pain in sexual emotion is welcomed by women, provided that this
element of pain is of small amount and subordinate to the
pleasure which is to follow it. Unless coitus is fundamentally
pleasure the element of pain must necessarily be unmitigated
pain, and a craving for pain unassociated with a greater
satisfaction to follow it cannot be regarded as normal.

In this connection I may refer to a suggestive chapter on "The
Enjoyment of Pain" in Hirn's _Origins of Art_. "If we take into
account," says Hirn, "the powerful stimulating effect which is
produced by acute pain, we may easily understand why people
submit to momentary unpleasantness for the sake of enjoying the
subsequent excitement. This motive leads to the deliberate
creation, not only of pain-sensations, but also of emotions in
which pain enters as an element. The violent activity which is
involved in the reaction against fear, and still more in that
against anger, affords us a sensation of pleasurable excitement
which is well worth the cost of the passing unpleasantness. It
is, moreover, notorious that some persons have developed a
peculiar art of making the initial pain of anger so transient
that they can enjoy the active elements in it with almost
undivided delight. Such an accomplishment is far more difficult
in the case of sorrow.... The creation of pain-sensations may be
explained as a desperate device for enhancing the intensity of
the emotional state."

The relation of pain and pleasure to emotion has been thoroughly
discussed, I may add, by H.R. Marshall in his _Pain, Pleasure,
and Æsthetics_. He contends that pleasure and pain are "general
qualities, one of which must, and either of which may, belong to
any fixed element of consciousness." "Pleasure," he considers,
"is experienced whenever the physical activity coincident with
the psychic state to which the pleasure is attached involves the
use of surplus stored force." We can see, therefore, how, if pain
acts as a stimulant to emotion, it becomes the servant of
pleasure by supplying it with surplus stored force.

This problem of pain is thus one of psychic dynamics. If we
realize this we shall begin to understand the place of cruelty in
life. "One ought to learn anew about cruelty," said Nietzsche
(_Beyond Good and Evil_, 229), "and open one's eyes. Almost
everything that we call 'higher culture' is based upon the
spiritualizing and intensifying of _cruelty_.... Then, to be
sure, we must put aside teaching the blundering psychology of
former times, which could only teach with regard to cruelty that
it originated at the sight of the suffering of _others_; there is
an abundant, superabundant enjoyment even in one's own suffering,
in causing one's own suffering." The element of paradox
disappears from this statement if we realize that it is not a
question of "cruelty," but of the dynamics of pain.

Camille Bos in a suggestive essay ("Du Plaisir de la Douleur,"
_Revue Philosophique_, July, 1902) finds the explanation of the
mystery in that complexity of the phenomena to which I have
already referred. Both pain and pleasure are complex feelings,
the resultant of various components, and we name that resultant
in accordance with the nature of the strongest component. "Thus
we give to a complexus a name which strictly belongs only to one
of its factors, _and in pain all is not painful_." When pain
becomes a desired end Camille Bos regards the desire as due to
three causes: (1) the pain contrasts with and revives a pleasure
which custom threatens to dull; (2) the pain by preceding the
pleasure accentuates the positive character of the latter; (3)
pain momentarily raises the lowered level of sensibility and
restores to the organism for a brief period the faculty of
enjoyment it had lost.

It must therefore be said that, in so far as pain is pleasurable,
it is so only in so far as it is recognized as a prelude to
pleasure, or else when it is an actual stimulus to the nerves
conveying the sensation of pleasure. The nymphomaniac who
experienced an orgasm at the moment when the knife passed through
her clitoris (as recorded by Mantegazza) and the prostitute who
experienced keen pleasure when the surgeon removed vegetations
from her vulva (as recorded by Féré) took no pleasure in pain,
but in one case the intense craving for strong sexual emotion,
and in the other the long-blunted nerves of pleasure, welcomed
the abnormally strong impulse; and the pain of the incision, if
felt at all, was immediately swallowed up in the sensation of
pleasure. Moll remarks (_Konträre Sexualempfindung_, third
edition, p. 278) that even in man a trace of physical pain may be
normally combined with sexual pleasure, when the vagina
contracts on the penis at the moment of ejaculation, the pain,
when not too severe, being almost immediately felt as pleasure.
That there is no pleasure in the actual pain, even in masochism,
is indicated by the following statement which Krafft-Ebing gives
as representing the experiences of a masochist (_Psychopathia
Sexualis_ English translation, p. 201): "The relation is not of
such a nature that what causes physical pain is simply perceived
as physical pleasure, for the person in a state of masochistic
ecstasy feels no pain, either because by reason of his emotional
state (like that of the soldier in battle) the physical effect on
his cutaneous nerves is not apperceived, or because (as with
religious martyrs and enthusiasts) in the preoccupation of
consciousness with sexual emotion the idea of maltreatment
remains merely a symbol, without its quality of pain. To a
certain extent there is overcompensation of physical pain in
psychic pleasure, and only the excess remains in consciousness as
psychic lust. This also undergoes an increase, since, either
through reflex spinal influence or through a peculiar coloring in
the sensorium of sensory impressions, a kind of hallucination of
bodily pleasure takes place, with a vague localization of the
objectively projected sensation. In the self-torture of religious
enthusiasts (fakirs, howling dervishes, religious flagellants)
there is an analogous state, only with a difference in the
quality of pleasurable feeling. Here the conception of martyrdom
is also apperceived without its pain, for consciousness is filled
with the pleasurably colored idea of serving God, atoning for
sins, deserving Heaven, etc., through martyrdom." This statement
cannot be said to clear up the matter entirely; but it is fairly
evident that, when a woman says that she finds pleasure in the
pain inflicted by a lover, she means that under the special
circumstances she finds pleasure in treatment which would at
other times be felt as pain, or else that the slight real pain
experienced is so quickly followed by overwhelming pleasure that
in memory the pain itself seems to have been pleasure and may
even be regarded as the symbol of pleasure.

There is a special peculiarity of physical pain, which may be
well borne in mind in considering the phenomena now before us,
for it helps to account for the tolerance with which the idea of
pain is regarded. I refer to the great ease with which physical
pain is forgotten, a fact well known to all mothers, or to all
who have been present at the birth of a child. As Professor von
Tschisch points out ("Der Schmerz," _Zeitschrift für Psychologie
und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane_, Bd. xxvi, ht. 1 and 2, 1901),
memory can only preserve impressions as a whole; physical pain
consists of a sensation and of a feeling. But memory cannot
easily reproduce the definite sensation of the pain, and thus the
whole memory is disintegrated and speedily forgotten. It is quite
otherwise with moral suffering, which persists in memory and has
far more influence on conduct. No one wishes to suffer moral pain
or has any pleasure even in the idea of suffering it.

It is the presence of this essential tendency which leads to a certain
apparent contradiction in a woman's emotions. On the one hand, rooted in
the maternal instinct, we find pity, tenderness, and compassion; on the
other hand, rooted in the sexual instinct, we find a delight in roughness,
violence, pain, and danger, sometimes in herself, sometimes also in
others. The one impulse craves something innocent and helpless, to cherish
and protect; the other delights in the spectacle of recklessness,
audacity, sometimes even effrontery.[79] A woman is not perfectly happy in
her lover unless he can give at least some satisfaction to each of these
two opposite longings.

The psychological satisfaction which women tend to feel in a certain
degree of pain in love is strictly co-ordinated with a physical fact.
Women possess a minor degree of sensibility in the sexual region. This
fact must not be misunderstood. On the one hand, it by no means begs the
question as to whether women's sensibility generally is greater or less
than that of men; this is a disputed question and the evidence is still
somewhat conflicting.[80] On the other hand, it also by no means involves
a less degree of specific sexual pleasure in women, for the tactile
sensibility of the sexual organs is no index to the specific sexual
sensibility of those organs when in a state of tumescence. The real
significance of the less tactile sensibility of the genital region in
women is to be found in parturition and the special liability of the
sexual region in women to injury.[81] The women who are less sensitive in
this respect would be better able and more willing to endure the risks of
childbirth, and would therefore tend to supplant those who were more
sensitive. But, as a by-product of this less degree of sensibility, we
have a condition in which physical irritation amounting even to pain may
become to normal women in the state of extreme tumescence a source of
pleasurable excitement, such as it would rarely be to normal men.

To Calmann appear to be due the first carefully made observations
showing the minor sensibility of the genital tract in women.
(Adolf Calmann, "Sensibilitütsprufungen am weiblicken Genitale
nach forensichen Gesichtspunkten," _Archiv für Gynäkologie_,
1898, p. 454.) He investigated the vagina, urethra, and anus in
eighteen women and found a great lack of sensibility, least
marked in anus, and most marked in vagina. [This distribution of
the insensitiveness alone indicates that it is due, as I have
suggested, to natural selection.] Sometimes a finger in the
vagina could not be felt at all. One woman, when a catheter was
introduced into the anus, said it might be the vagina or urethra,
but was certainly not the anus. (Calmann remarks that he was
careful to put his questions in an intelligible form.) The women
were only conscious of the urine being drawn off when they heard
the familiar sound of the stream or when the bladder was very
full; if the sound of the stream was deadened by a towel they
were quite unconscious that the bladder had been emptied. [In
confirmation of this statement I have noticed that in a lady
whose distended bladder it was necessary to empty by the catheter
shortly before the birth of her first child--but who had, indeed,
been partly under the influence of chloroform--there was no
consciousness of the artificial relief; she merely remarked that
she thought she could now relieve herself.] There was some sense
of temperature, but sense of locality, tactile sense, and
judgment of size were often widely erroneous. It is significant
that virgins were just as insensitive as married women or those
who had had children. Calmann's experiments appear to be
confirmed by the experiments of Marco Treves, of Turin, on the
thermoesthesiometry of mucous membranes, as reported to the Turin
International Congress of Physiology (and briefly noted in
_Nature_, November 21, 1901). Treves found that the sensitivity
of mucous membranes is always less than that of the skin. The
mucosa of the urethra and of the cervix uteri was quite incapable
of heat and cold sensations, and even the cautery excited only
slight, and that painful, sensation.

In further illustration of this point reference may be made to
the not infrequent cases in which the whole process of
parturition and the enormous distention of tissues which it
involves proceed throughout in an almost or quite painless
manner. It is sufficient to refer to two cases reported in Paris
by Macé and briefly summarized in the _British Medical Journal_,
May 25, 1901. In the first the patient was a primipara 20 years
of age, and, until the dilatation of the cervix was complete and
efforts at expulsion had commenced, the uterine contractions were
quite painless. In the second case, the mother, aged 25, a
tripara, had previously had very rapid labors; she awoke in the
middle of the night without pains, but during micturition the
fetal head appeared at the vulva, and was soon born.

Further illustration may be found in those cases in which severe
inflammatory processes may take place in the genital canal
without being noticed. Thus, Maxwell reports the case of a young
Chinese woman, certainly quite normal, in whom after the birth of
her first child the vagina became almost obliterated, yet beyond
slight occasional pain she noticed nothing wrong until the
husband found that penetration was impossible (_British Medical
Journal_, January 11, 1902, p. 78). The insensitiveness of the
vagina and its contrast, in this respect, with the penis--though
we are justified in regarding the penis as being, like organs of
special sense, relatively deficient in general sensibility--are
vividly presented in such an incident as the following, reported
a few years ago in America by Dr. G.W. Allen in the _Boston
Medical and Surgical Journal_: A man came under observation with
an edematous, inflamed penis. The wife, the night previous, on
advice of friends, had injected pure carbolic acid into the
vagina just previous to coitus. The husband, ignorant of the
fact, experienced untoward burning and smarting during and after
coitus, but thought little of it, and soon fell asleep. The next
morning there were large blisters on the penis, but it was no
longer painful. When seen by Dr. Allen the prepuce was retracted
and edematous, the whole penis was much swollen, and there were
large, perfectly raw surfaces on either side of the glans.

In this connection we may well bring into line a remarkable group of
phenomena concerning which much evidence has now accumulated. I refer to
the use of various appliances, fixed in or around the penis, whether
permanently or temporarily during coitus, such appliance being employed at
the woman's instigation and solely in order to heighten her excitement in
congress. These appliances have their great center among the Indonesian
peoples (in Borneo, Java, Sumatra, the Malay peninsula, the Philippines,
etc.), thence extending in a modified form through China, to become, it
appears, considerably prevalent in Russia; I have also a note of their
appearance in India. They have another widely diffused center, through
which, however, they are more sparsely scattered, among the American
Indians of the northern and more especially of the southern continents.
Amerigo Vespucci and other early travelers noted the existence of some of
these appliances, and since Miklucho-Macleay carefully described them as
used in Borneo[82] their existence has been generally recognized. They are
usually regarded merely as ethnological curiosities. As such they would
not concern us here. Their real significance for us is that they
illustrate the comparative insensitiveness of the genital canal in women,
while at the same time they show that a certain amount of what we cannot
but regard as painful stimulation is craved by women, in order to heighten
tumescence and increase sexual pleasure, even though it can only by
procured by artificial methods. It is, of course, possible to argue that
in these cases we are not concerned with pain at all, but with a strong
stimulation that is felt as purely pleasurable. There can be no doubt,
however, that in the absence of sexual excitement this stimulation would
be felt as purely painful, and--in the light of our previous
discussion--we may, perhaps, fairly regard it as a painful stimulation
which is craved, not because it is itself pleasurable, but because it
heightens the highly pleasurable state of tumescence.

Borneo, the geographical center of the Indonesian world, appears
also to be the district in which these instruments are most
popular. The _ampallang, palang, kambion_, or _sprit-sail yard_,
as it is variously termed, is a little rod of bone or metal
nearly two inches in length, rounded at the ends, and used by the
Kyans and Dyaks of Borneo. Before coitus it is inserted into a
transverse orifice in the penis, made by a painful and somewhat
dangerous operation and kept open by a quill. Two or more of
these instruments are occasionally worn. Sometimes little brushes
are attached to each end of the instrument. Another instrument,
used by the Dyaks, but said to have been borrowed from the
Malays, is the _palang anus_, which is a ring or collar of
plaited palm-fiber, furnished with a pair of stiffish horns of
the same wiry material; it is worn on the neck of the glans and
fits tight to the skin so as not to slip off. (Brooke Low, "The
Natives of Borneo," _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_,
August and November, 1892, p. 45; the _ampallang_ and similar
instruments are described by Ploss and Bartels, _Das Weib_, Bd.
i, chapter xvii; also in _Untrodden Fields of Anthropology_, by a
French army surgeon, 1898, vol. ii, pp. 135-141; also Mantegazza,
_Gli Amori degli Uomini_, French translation, p. 83 et seq.)
Riedel informed Miklucho-Macleay that in the Celebes the Alfurus
fasten the eyelids of goats with the eyelashes round the corona
of the glans penis, and in Java a piece of goatskin is used in a
similar way, so as to form a hairy sheath (_Zeitschrift für
Ethnologie_, 1876, pp. 22-25), while among the Batta, of Sumatra,
Hagen found that small stones are inserted by an incision under
the skin of the penis (_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1891, ht. 3,
p. 351).

In the Malay peninsula Stevens found instruments somewhat similar
to the _ampallang_ still in use among some tribes, and among
others formerly in use. He thinks they were brought from Borneo.
(H.V. Stevens, _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1896, ht. 4, p.
181.) Bloch, who brings forward other examples of similar devices
(_Beiträge zur Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis_, pp. 56-58),
considers that the Australian mica operation may thus in part be
explained.

Such instruments are not, however, entirely unknown in Europe. In
France, in the eighteenth century, it appears that rings,
sometimes set with hard knobs, and called "aides," were
occasionally used by men to heighten the pleasure of women in
intercourse. (Dühren, _Marquis de Sade_, 1901, p. 130.) In
Russia, according to Weissenberg, of Elizabethsgrad, it is not
uncommon to use elastic rings set with little teeth; these rings
are fastened around the base of the glans. (Weissenberg,
_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1893, ht. 2, p. 135.) This
instrument must have been brought to Russia from the East, for
Burton (in the notes to his _Arabian Nights_) mentions a
precisely similar instrument as in use in China. Somewhat similar
is the "Chinese hedgehog," a wreath of fine, soft feathers with
the quills solidly fastened by silver wire to a ring of the same
metal, which is slipped over the glans. In South America the
Araucanians of Argentina use a little horsehair brush fastened
around the penis; one of these is in the museum at La Plata; it
is said the custom may have been borrowed from the Patagonians;
these instruments, called _geskels_, are made by the women and
the workmanship is very delicate. (Lehmann-Nitsche, _Zeitschrift
für Ethnologie_, 1900, ht. 6, p. 491.) It is noteworthy that a
somewhat similar tuft of horsehair is also worn in Borneo.
(Breitenstein, _21 Jahre in India_, 1899, pt. i, p. 227.) Most of
the accounts state that the women attach great importance to the
gratification afforded by such instruments. In Borneo a modest
woman symbolically indicates to her lover the exact length of the
ampallang she would prefer by leaving at a particular spot a
cigarette of that length. Miklucho-Macleay considers that these
instruments were invented by women. Brooke Low remarks that "no
woman once habituated to its use will ever dream of permitting
her bedfellow to discontinue the practice of wearing it," and
Stevens states that at one time no woman would marry a man who
was not furnished with such an apparatus. It may be added that a
very similar appliance may be found in European countries
(especially Germany) in the use of a condom furnished with
irregularities, or a frill, in order to increase the woman's
excitement. It is not impossible to find evidence that, in
European countries, even in the absence of such instruments, the