possess a psychic value, and, so long as the nervous system is kept in perfect health, they do not seem to have the power to injure, but rather one is able to utilize the passionate emotions as weapons for pleasure and work."
Various parts of the skin surface appear to have special sexual sensitiveness, peculiarly marked in many individuals, especially women; so that, as Féré remarks (_L'Instinct Sexuel_, second edition, 1902, p. 130), contact stimulation of the lips, lobe of ear, nape of neck, little finger, knee, etc., may suffice even to produce the orgasm. Some sexually hyperæsthetic women, as has already been noted, experience this when shaking hands with a man who is attractive to them. In some neurotic persons this sensibility, as Féré shows, may exist in so morbid a degree that even the contact of the sensitive spot with unattractive persons or inanimate objects may produce the orgasm. In this connection reference may be made to the well-known fact that in some hysterical subjects there are so-called "erogenous zones" simple pressure on which suffices to evoke the complete orgasm. There is, perhaps, some significance, from our present point of view, in the fact that, as emphasized by Savill ("Hysterical Skin Symptoms," _Lancet_, January 30, 1904), the skin is one of the very best places to study hysteria.
The intimate connection between the skin and the sexual sphere is also shown in pathological conditions of the skin, especially in acne as well as simple pimples on the face. The sexual development of puberty involves a development of hair in various regions of the body which previously were hairless. As, however, the sebaceous glands on the face and elsewhere are the vestiges of former hairs and survive from a period when the whole body was hairy, they also tend to experience in an abortive manner this same impulse. Thus, we may say that, with the development of the sexual organs at puberty, there is correlated excitement of the whole pilo-sebaceous apparatus. In the regions where this apparatus is vestigial, and notably in the face, this abortive attempt of the hair-follicles and their sebaceous appendages to produce hairs tends only to disorganization, and simple _comedones_ or pustular acne pimples are liable to occur. As a rule, acne appears about puberty and dies out slowly during adolescence. While fairly common in young women, it is usually much less severe, but tends to be exacerbated at the menstrual periods; it is also apt to appear at the change of life. (Stephen Mackenzie, "The Etiology and Treatment of Acne Vulgaris," _British Medical Journal_, September 29, 1894. Laycock [_Nervous Diseases of Women_, 1840, p. 23] pointed out that acne occurs chiefly in those parts of the surface covered by sexual hair. A lucid account of the origin of acne will be found in Woods Hutchinson's _Studies in Human and Comparative Pathology_, pp. 179-184. G.J. Engelmann ["The Hystero-neuroses," _Gynæcological Transactions_, 1887, pp. 124 et seq.] discusses various pathological disorders of the skin as reflex disturbances originating in the sexual sphere.)
The influence of menstruation in exacerbating acne has been called in question, but it seems to be well established. Thus, Bulkley ("Relation between Certain Diseases of the Skin and the Menstrual Function," _Transactions of the Medical Society of New York_, 1901, p. 328) found that, in 510 cases of acne in women, 145, or nearly one-third, were worse about the monthly period. Sometimes it only appeared during menstruation. The exacerbation occurred much more frequently just before than just after the period. There was usually some disturbance of menstruation. Various other disorders of the skin show a similar relationship to menstruation.
It has been asserted that masturbation is a frequent or constant cause of acne at puberty. (See, e.g., discussion in _British Medical Journal_, July, 1882.) This cannot be accepted. Acne very frequently occurs without masturbation, and masturbation is very frequently practiced without producing acne. At the same time we may well believe that at the period of puberty, when the pilo-sebaceous system is already in sensitive touch with the sexual system, the shock of frequently repeated masturbation may (in the same way as disordered menstruation) have its repercussion on the skin. Thus, a lady has informed me that at about the age of 18 she found that frequently repeated masturbation was followed by the appearance of _comedones_.
FOOTNOTES: FOOTNOTES: [4] Numerous passages from the theologians bearing on this point are brought together in _Moechialogia_, pp. 221-220.
II.
Ticklishness--Its Origin and Significance--The Psychology of Tickling--Laughter--Laughter as a Kind of Detumescence--The Sexual Relationships of Itching--The Pleasure of Tickling--Its Decrease with Age and Sexual Activity.
Touch, as has already been remarked, is the least intellectual of the senses. There is, however, one form of touch sensation--that is to say, ticklishness--which is of so special and peculiar a nature that it has sometimes been put aside in a class apart from all other touch sensations. Scaliger proposed to class titillation as a sixth, or separate, sense. Alrutz, of Upsala, regards tickling as a milder degree of itching, and considers that the two together constitute a sensation of distinct quality with distinct end-organs, for the mediation of that quality.[5] However we may regard this extreme view, tickling is certainly a specialized modification of touch and it is at the same time the most intellectual mode of touch sensation and that with the closest connection with the sexual sphere. To regard tickling as an intellectual manifestation may cause surprise, more especially when it is remembered that ticklishness is a form of sensation which reaches full development very early in life, and it has to be admitted that, as compared even with the messages that may be sent through smell and taste, the intellectual element in ticklishness remains small. But its presence here has been independently recognized by various investigators. Groos points out the psychic factor in tickling as evidenced by the impossibility of self-tickling.[6] Louis Robinson considers that ticklishness "appears to be one of the simplest developments of mechanical and automatic nervous processes in the direction of the complex functioning of the higher centres which comes within the scope of psychology,"[7] Stanley Hall and Allin remark that "these minimal touch excitations represent the very oldest stratum of psychic life in the soul."[8] Hirman Stanley, in a somewhat similar manner, pushes the intellectual element in ticklishness very far back and associates it with "tentacular experience." "By temporary self-extension," he remarks, "even low amoeboid organisms have slight, but suggestive, touch experiences that stimulate very general and violent reactions, and in higher organisms extended touch-organs, as tentacles, antennæ, hair, etc., become permanent and very delicately sensitive organs, where minimal contacts have very distinct and powerful reactions." Thus ticklishness would be the survival of long passed ancestral tentacular experience, which, originally a stimulation producing intense agitation and alarm, has now become merely a play activity and a source of keen pleasure.[9] We need not, however, go so far back in the zoölogical series to explain the origin and significance of tickling in the human species. Sir J.Y. Simpson suggested, in an elaborate study of the position of the child in the womb, that the extreme excitomotory sensibility of the skin in various regions, such as the sole of the foot, the knee, the sides, which already exists before birth, has for its object the excitation and preservation of the muscular movements necessary to keep the foetus in the most favorable position in the womb.[10] It is, in fact, certainly the case that the stimulation of all the ticklish regions in the body tends to produce exactly that curled up position of extreme muscular flexion and general ovoid shape which is the normal position of the foetus in the womb. We may well believe that in this early developed reflex activity we have the basis of that somewhat more complex ticklishness which appears somewhat later.
The mental element in tickling is indicated by the fact that even a child, in whom ticklishness is highly developed, cannot tickle himself; so that tickling is not a simple reflex. This fact was long ago pointed out by Erasmus Darwin, and he accounted for it by supposing that voluntary exertion diminishes the energy of sensation.[11] This explanation is, however, inadmissible, for, although we cannot easily tickle ourselves by the contact of the skin with our own fingers, we can do so with the aid of a foreign body, like a feather. We may perhaps suppose that, as ticklishness has probably developed under the influence of natural selection as a method of protection against attack and a warning of the approach of foreign bodies, its end would be defeated if it involved a simple reaction to the contact of the organism with itself. This need of protection it is which involves the necessity of a minimal excitation producing a maximal effect, though the mechanism whereby this takes place has caused considerable discussion. We may, it is probable, best account for it by invoking the summation-irradiation theory of pain-pleasure, the summation of the stimuli in their course through the nerves, aided by capillary congestion, leading to irradiation due to anastomoses between the tactile corpuscles, not to speak of the much wider irradiation which is possible by means of central nervous connections.
Prof. C.L. Herrick adopts this explanation of the phenomena of tickling, and rests it, in part, on Dogiel's study of the tactile corpuscles ("Psychological Corollaries of Modern Neurological Discoveries," _Journal of Comparative Neurology_, March, 1898). The following remarks of Prof. A. Allin may also be quoted in further explanation of the same theory: "So far as ticklishness is concerned, a very important factor in the production of this feeling is undoubtedly that of the summation of stimuli. In a research of Stirling's, carried on under Ludwig's direction, it was shown that reflex contractions only occur from repeated shocks to the nerve-centres--that is, through summation of successive stimuli. That this result is also due in some degree to an alternating increase in the sensibility of the various areas in question from altered supply of blood is reasonably certain. As a consequence of this summation-process there would result in many cases and in cases of excessive nervous discharge the opposite of pleasure, namely: pain. A number of instances have been recorded of death resulting from tickling, and there is no reason to doubt the truth of the statement that Simon de Montfort, during the persecution of the Albigenses, put some of them to death by tickling the soles of their feet with a feather. An additional causal factor in the production of tickling may lie in the nature and structure of the nervous process involved in perception in general. According to certain histological researches of recent years we know that between the sense-organs and the central nervous system there exist closely connected chains of conductors or neurons, along which an impression received by a single sensory cell on the periphery is propagated avalanchelike through an increasing number of neurons until the brain is reached. If on the periphery a single cell is excited the avalanchelike process continues until finally hundreds or thousands of nerve-cells in the cortex are aroused to considerable activity. Golgi, Ramón y Cajal, Koelliker, Held, Retzius, and others have demonstrated the histological basis of this law for vision, hearing, and smell, and we may safely assume from the phenomena of tickling that the sense of touch is not lacking in a similar arrangement. May not a suggestion be offered, with some plausibility, that even in ideal or representative tickling, where tickling results, say, from someone pointing a finger at the ticklish places, this avalanchelike process may be incited from central centres, thus producing, although in a modified degree, the pleasant phenomena in question? As to the deepest causal factor, I should say that tickling is the result of vasomotor shock." (A. Allin, "On Laughter," _Psychological Review_, May, 1903.)
The intellectual element in tickling conies out in its connection with laughter and the sense of the comic, of which it may be said to constitute the physical basis. While we are not here concerned with laughter and the comic sense,--a subject which has lately attracted considerable attention,--it may be instructive to point out that there is more than an analogy between laughter and the phenomena of sexual tumescence and detumescence. The process whereby prolonged tickling, with its nervous summation and irradiation and accompanying hyperæmia, finds sudden relief in an explosion of laughter is a real example of tumescence--as it has been defined in the study in another volume entitled "An Analysis of the Sexual Impulse"--resulting finally in the orgasm of detumescence. The reality of the connection between the sexual embrace and tickling is indicated by the fact that in some languages, as in that of the Fuegians,[12] the same word is applied to both. That ordinary tickling is not sexual is due to the circumstances of the case and the regions to which the tickling is applied. If, however, the tickling is applied within the sexual sphere, then there is a tendency for orgasm to take place instead of laughter. The connection which, through the phenomena of tickling, laughter thus bears to the sexual sphere is well indicated, as Groos has pointed out, by the fact that in sexually-minded people sexual allusions tend to produce laughter, this being the method by which they are diverted from the risks of more specifically sexual detumescence.[13] Reference has been made to the view of Alrutz, according to which tickling is a milder degree of itching. It is more convenient and probably more correct to regard itching or pruritus, as it is termed in its pathological forms, as a distinct sensation, for it does not arise under precisely the same conditions as tickling nor is it relieved in the same way. There is interest, however, in pointing out in this connection that, like tickling, itching has a real parallelism to the specialized sexual sensations. Bronson, who has very ably interpreted the sensations of itching (New York Neurological Society, October 7, 1890; _Medical News_, February 14, 1903, and summarized in the _British Medical Journal_, March 7, 1903; and elsewhere), regards it as a perversion of the sense of touch, a dysæsthesia due to obstructed nerve-excitation with imperfect conduction of the generated force into correlated nervous energy. The scratching which relieves itching directs the nervous energy into freer channels, sometimes substituting for the pruritus either painful or voluptuous sensations. Such voluptuous sensations may be regarded as a generalized aphrodisiac sense comparable to the specialized sexual orgasm. Bronson refers to the significant fact that itching occurs so frequently in the sexual region, and states that sexual neurasthenia is sometimes the only discoverable cause of genital and anal pruritus. (Cf. discussion on pruritus, _British Medical Journal_, November 30, 1895.) Gilman, again (_American Journal of Psychology_, vi, p. 22), considers that scratching, as well as sneezing, is comparable to coitus.
The sexual embrace has an intimate connection with the phenomena of ticklishness which could not fail to be recognized. This connection is, indeed, the basis of Spinoza's famous definition of love,--"_Amor est titillatio quædam concomitante idea causæ externæ_,"--a statement which seems to be reflected in Chamfort's definition of love as "_l'échange de deux fantaisies, et le contact de deux epidermes_." The sexual act, says Gowers, is, in fact, a skin reflex.[14] "The sexual parts," Hall and Allin state, "have a ticklishness as unique as their function and as keen as their importance." Herrick finds the supreme illustration of the summation and irradiation theory of tickling in the phenomena of erotic excitement, and points out that in harmony with this the skin of the sexual region is, as Dogiel has shown, that portion of the body in which the tactile corpuscles are most thoroughly and elaborately provided with anastomosing fibres. It has been pointed out[15] that, when ordinary tactile sensibility is partially abolished,--especially in hemianæsthesia in the insane,--some sexual disturbance is specially apt to be found in association.
In young children, in girls even when they are no longer children, and occasionally in men, tickling may be a source of acute pleasure, which in very early life is not sexual, but later tends to become so under circumstances predisposing to the production of erotic emotion, and especially when the nervous system is keyed up to a high tone favorable for the production of the maximum effect of tickling.
"When young," writes a lady aged 28, "I was extremely fond of being tickled, and I am to some extent still. Between the ages of 10 and 12 it gave me exquisite pleasure, which I now regard as sexual in character. I used to bribe my younger sister to tickle my feet until she was tired."
Stanley Hall and Allin in their investigation of the phenomena of tickling, largely carried out among young women teachers, found that in 60 clearly marked cases ticklishness was more marked at one time than another, "as when they have been 'carrying on,' or are in a happy mood, are nervous or unwell, after a good meal, when being washed, when in perfect health, when with people they like, etc." (Hall and Allin, "Tickling and Laughter," _American Journal of Psychology_, October, 1897.) It will be observed that most of the conditions mentioned are such as would be favorable to excitations of an emotionally sexual character.
The palms of the hands may be very ticklish during sexual excitement, especially in women, and Moll (_Konträre Sexualempfindung_, p. 180) remarks that in some men titillation of the skin of the back, of the feet, and even of the forehead evokes erotic feelings.
It may be added that, as might be expected, titillation of the skin often has the same significance in animals as in man. "In some animals," remarks Louis Robinson (art. "Ticklishness," _Dictionary of Psychological Medicine_), "local titillation of the skin, though in parts remote from the reproductive organs, plainly acts indirectly upon them as a stimulus. Thus, Harvey records that, by stroking the back of a favorite parrot (which he had possessed for years and supposed to be a male), he not only gave the bird gratification,--which was the sole intention of the illustrious physiologist,--but also caused it to reveal its sex by laying an egg."
The sexual significance of tickling is very clearly indicated by the fact that the general ticklishness of the body, which is so marked in children and in young girls, greatly diminishes, as a rule, after sexual relationships have been established. Dr. Gina Lombroso, who investigated the cutaneous reflexes, found that both the abdominal and plantar reflexes, which are well marked in childhood and in young people between the ages of 15 and 18, were much diminished in older persons, and to a greater extent in women than in men, to a greater extent in the abdominal region than on the soles of the feet;[16] her results do not directly show the influence of sexual relationship, but they have an indirect bearing which is worth noting.
The difference in ticklishness between the unmarried woman and the married woman corresponds to their difference in degree of modesty. Both modesty and ticklishness may be said to be characters which are no longer needed. From this point of view the general ticklishness of the skin is a kind of body modesty. It is so even apart from any sexual significance of tickling, and Louis Robinson has pointed out that in young apes, puppies, and other like animals the most ticklish regions correspond to the most vulnerable spots in a fight, and that consequently in the mock fights of early life skill in defending these spots is attained.
In Iceland, according to Margarethe Filhés (as quoted by Max Bartels, _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1900, ht. 2-3, p. 57), it may be known whether a youth is pure or a maid is intact by their susceptibility to tickling. It is considered a bad sign if that is lost.
I am indebted to a medical correspondent for the following communication: "Married women have told me that they find that after marriage they are not ticklish under the arms or on the breasts, though before marriage any tickling or touching in these regions, especially by a man, would make them jump or get hysterical or 'queer,' as they call it. Before coitus the sexual energy seems to be dissipated along all the nerve-channels and especially along the secondary sexual routes,--the breasts, nape of neck, eyebrows, lips, cheeks, armpits, and hair thereon, etc.,--but after marriage the surplus energy is diverted from these secondary channels, and response to tickling is diminished. I have often noted in insane cases, especially mania in adolescent girls, that they are excessively ticklish. Again, in ordinary routine practice I have observed that, though married women show no ticklishness during auscultation and percussion of the chest, this is by no means always so in young girls. Perhaps ticklishness in virgins is Nature's self-protection against rape and sexual advances, and the young girl instinctively wishing to hide the armpits, breasts, and other ticklish regions, tucks herself up to prevent these parts being touched. The married woman, being in love with a man, does not shut up these parts, as she reciprocates the advances that he makes; she no longer requires ticklishness as a protection against sexual aggression."
FOOTNOTES: [5] Alrutz's views are summarized in _Psychological Review_, Sept., 1901.
[7] L. Robinson, art. "Ticklishness," Tuke's _Dictionary of Psychological Medicine_.
[8] Stanley Hall and Allin, "Tickling and Laughter," _American Journal of Psychology_, October, 1897.
[9] H.M. Stanley, "Remarks on Tickling and Laughter," _American Journal of Psychology_, vol. ix, January, 1898.
[10] Simpson, "On the Attitude of the Foetus in Utero," _Obstetric Memoirs_, 1856, vol. ii.
[11] Erasmus Darwin, _Zoönomia_, Sect. XVII, 4.
[12] Hyades and Deniker, _Mission Scientifique du Cap Horn_, vol. vii. p. 296.
[13] Such an interpretation is supported by the arguments of W. McDougall ("The Theory of Laughter," _Nature_, February 5, 1903), who contends, without any reference to the sexual field, that one of the objects of laughter is automatically to "disperse our attention."
[14] Even the structure of the vaginal mucous membrane, it may be noted, is analogous to that of the skin. D. Berry Hart, "Note on the Development of the Clitoris, Vagina, and Hymen," _Transactions of the Edinburgh Obstetrical Society_, vol. xxi, 1896.
[15] W.H.B. Stoddart, "Anæsthesia in the Insane," _Journal of Mental Science_, October, 1899.
[16] Gina Lombroso, "Sur les Réflexes Cutanés," International Congress of Criminal Anthropology, Amsterdam, _Comptes Rendus_, p. 295.
III.
The Secondary Sexual Skin Centres--Orificial Contacts--Cunnilingus and Fellatio--The Kiss--The Nipples--The Sympathy of the Breasts with the Primary Sexual Centres--This Connection Operative both through the Nerves and through the Blood--The Influence of Lactation on the Sexual Centres--Suckling and Sexual Emotion--The Significance of the Association between Suckling and Sexual Emotion--This Association as a Cause of Sexual Perversity.
We have seen that the skin generally has a high degree of sensibility, which frequently tends to be in more or less definite association with the sexual centres. We have seen also that the central and specific sexual sensation, the sexual embrace itself, is, in large measure, a specialized kind of skin reflex. Between the generalized skin sensations and the great primary sexual centre of sensation there are certain secondary sexual centres which, on account of their importance, may here be briefly considered.
These secondary centres have in common the fact that they always involve the entrances and the exits of the body--the regions, that is, where skin merges into mucous membrane, and where, in the course of evolution, tactile sensibility has become highly refined. It may, indeed, be said generally of these frontier regions of the body that their contact with the same or a similar frontier region in another person of opposite sex, under conditions otherwise favorable to tumescence, will tend to produce a minimum and even sometimes a maximum degree of sexual excitation. Contact of these regions with each other or with the sexual region itself so closely simulates the central sexual reflex that channels are set up for the same nervous energy and secondary sexual centres are constituted.
It is important to remember that the phenomena we are here concerned with are essentially normal. Many of them are commonly spoken of as perversions. In so far, however, as they are aids to tumescence they must be regarded as coming within the range of normal variation. They may be considered unæsthetic, but that is another matter. It has, moreover, to be remembered that æsthetic values are changed under the influence of sexual emotion; from the lover's point of view many things are beautiful which are unbeautiful from the point of view of him who is not a lover, and the greater the degree to which the lover is swayed by his passion the greater the extent to which his normal æsthetic standard is liable to be modified. A broad consideration of the phenomena among civilized and uncivilized peoples amply suffices to show the fallacy of the tendency, so common among unscientific writers on these subjects, to introduce normal æsthetic standards into the sexual sphere. From the normal standpoint of ordinary daily life, indeed, the whole process of sex is unæsthetic, except the earlier stages of tumescence.[17] So long as they constitute a part of the phase of tumescence, the utilization of the sexual excitations obtainable through these channels must be considered within the normal range of variation, as we may observe, indeed, among many animals. When, however, such contacts of the orifices of the body, other than those of the male and female sexual organs proper, are used to procure not merely tumescence, but detumescence, they become, in the strict and technical sense, perversions. They are perversions in exactly the same sense as are the methods of intercourse which involve the use of checks to prevent fecundation. The æsthetic question, however, remains the same as if we were dealing with tumescence. It is necessary that this should be pointed out clearly, even at the risk of misapprehension, as confusions are here very common.
The essentially sexual character of the sensitivity of the orificial contacts is shown by the fact that it may sometimes be accidentally developed even in early childhood. This is well illustrated in a case recorded by Féré. A little girl of 4, of nervous temperament and liable to fits of anger in which she would roll on the ground and tear her clothes, once ran out into the garden in such a fit of temper and threw herself on the lawn in a half-naked condition. As she lay there two dogs with whom she was accustomed to play came up and began to lick the uncovered parts of the body. It so happened that as one dog licked her mouth the other licked her sexual parts. She experienced a shock of intense sensation which she could never forget and never describe, accompanied by a delicious tension of the sexual organs. She rose and ran away with a feeling of shame, though she could not comprehend what had happened. The impression thus made was so profound that it persisted throughout life and served as the point of departure of sexual perversions, while the contact of a dog's tongue with her mouth alone afterward sufficed to evoke sexual pleasure. (Féré, _Archives de Neurologie_, 1903, No. 90.)