Studies on the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 by Havelock Ellis. - HTML preview

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Jules Bois (_Visions de l'Inde_, p. 86) describes the spectacle

presented in the temple of the cows at Benares: "I put my head

into the opening of the holy stables. It was the largest of

temples, a splendor of precious stones and marble, where the

venerated heifers passed backwards and forwards. A whole people

adored them. They take no notice, plunged in their divine and

obscure unconsciousness. And they fulfil with serenity their

animal functions; they chew the offerings, drink water from

copper vessels, and when they are filled they relieve themselves.

Then a stercoraceous and religious insanity overcomes these

starry-faced women and venerable men; they fall on their knees,

prostrate themselves, eat the droppings, greedily drink the

liquid, which for them is miraculous and sacred."

(Cf. Bourke,

_Scatalogic Rites_, Chapter XVII.)

Among the Chevsurs of the Caucasus, perhaps an Iranian people, a

woman after her confinement, for which she lives apart, purifies

herself by washing in the urine of a cow and then returns home.

This mode of purification is recommended in the Avesta, and is

said to be used by the few remaining followers of this creed.

We have not only to take into account the frequency with which among

primitive peoples the excretions possess a religious significance. It is

further to be noted that in the folk-lore of modern Europe we everywhere

find plentiful evidence of the earlier prevalence of legends and practices

of a scatalogical character. It is significant that in the majority of

cases it is easy to see a sexual reference in these stories and customs.

The legends have lost their earlier and often mythical significance, and

frequently take on a suggestion of obscenity, while the scatalogical

practices have become the magical devices of lovelorn maidens or forsaken

wives practiced in secrecy. It has happened to scatalogical rites to be

regarded as we may gather from the _Clouds_ of Aristophanes, that the

sacred leathern phallus borne by the women in the Bacchanalia was becoming

in his time, an object to arouse the amusement of little boys.

Among many primitive peoples throughout the world, and among the

lower social classes of civilized peoples, urine possesses magic

properties, more especially, it would seem, the urine of women

and that of people who stand, or wish to stand, in sexual

relationship to each other. In a legend of the Indians of the

northwest coast of America, recorded by Boas, a woman gives her

lover some of her urine and says: "You can wake the dead if you

drop some of my urine in their ears and nose."

(_Zeitschrift für

Ethnologie_, 1894, Heft IV, p. 293.) Among the same Indians there

is a legend of a woman with a beautiful white skin who found on

bathing every morning in the river that the fish were attracted

to her skin and could not be driven off even by magical

solutions. At last she said to herself: "I will make water on

them and then they will leave me alone." She did so, and

henceforth the fish left her. But shortly after fire came from

Heaven and killed her. (Ib., 1891, Heft V, p. 640.) Among both

Christians and Mohammedans a wife can attach an unfaithful

husband by privately putting some of her urine in his drink. (B.

Stern, _Medizin in der Türkei_, vol. ii, p. 11.) This practice is

world-wide; thus among the aborigines of Brazil, according to

Martius, the urine and other excretions and secretions are potent

for aphrodisiacal objects. (Bourke's _Scatalogic Rites of All

Nations_ contains many references to the folk-lore practices in

this matter; a study of popular beliefs in the magic power of

urine, published in Bombay by Professor Eugen Wilhelm in 1889, I

have not seen.)

The legends which narrate scatalogic exploits are numerous in the

literature of all countries. Among primitive peoples they often

have a purely theological character, for in the popular

mythologies of all countries (even, as we learn from Aristophanes, among the Greeks) natural phenomena such as the

rain, are apt to be regarded as divine excretions, but in course

of time the legends take on a more erotic or a more obscene

character. In the Irish _Book of Leinster_ (written down

somewhere about the twelfth century, but containing material of

very much older date) we are told how a number of princesses in

Emain Macha, the seat of the Ulster Kings, resolved to find out

which of them could by urinating on it melt a snow pillar which

the men had made, the woman who succeeded to be regarded as the

best among them. None of them succeeded, and they sent for

Derbforgaill, who was in love with Cuchullain, and she was able

to melt the pillar; whereupon the other women, jealous of the

superiority she had thus shown, tore out her eyes.

(Zimmer,

"Keltische Beiträge," _Zeitschrift für Deutsche Alterthum_, vol.

xxxii, Heft II, pp. 216-219.) Rhys considers that Derbforgaill

was really a goddess of dawn and dusk, "the drop glistening in

the sun's rays," as indicated by her name, which means a drop or

tear. (J. Rhys, _Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as

Illustrated by Celtic Heathendom_, p. 466.) It is interesting to

compare the legend of Derbforgaill with a somewhat more modern

Picardy folk-lore _conte_ which is clearly analogous but no

longer seems to show any mythologic element, "La Princesse qui

pisse par dessus les Meules." This princess had a habit of

urinating over hay-cocks; the king, her father, in order to break

her of the habit, offered her in marriage to anyone who could

make a hay-cock so high that she could not urinate over it. The

young men came, but the princess would merely laugh and at once

achieve the task. At last there came a young man who argued with

himself that she would not be able to perform this feat after she

had lost her virginity. He therefore seduced her first and she

then failed ignobly, merely wetting her stockings.

Accordingly,

she became his bride. (Kryptadia, vol. i. p. 333.) Such legends,

which have lost any mythologic elements they may originally have

possessed and have become merely _contes_, are not uncommon in

the folk-lore of many countries. But in their earlier more

religious forms and in their later more obscene forms, they alike

bear witness to the large place which scatalogic conceptions play

in the primitive mind.

It is a notable fact in evidence of the close and seemingly normal

association with the sexual impulse of the scatalogic processes, that an

interest in them, arising naturally and spontaneously, is one of the most

frequent channels by which the sexual impulse first manifests itself in

young boys and girls.

Stanley Hall, who has made special inquiries into the matter,

remarks that in childhood the products of excretion by bladder

and bowels are often objects of interest hardly less intense for

a time than eating and drinking. ("Early Sense of Self,"

_American Journal of Psychology_, April, 1898, p.

361.)

"Micturitional obscenities," the same writer observes again,

"which our returns show to be so common before adolescence,

culminate at 10 or 12, and seem to retreat into the background as

sex phenomena appear." They are, he remarks, of two classes:

"Fouling persons or things, secretly from adults, but openly with

each other," and less often "ceremonial acts connected with the

act or the product that almost suggest the scatalogical rites of

savages, unfit for description here, but of great interest and

importance." (G. Stanley Hall, _Adolescence_, vol.

i, p. 116.)

The nature of such scatalogical phenomena in childhood--which are

often clearly the instinctive manifestations of an erotic

symbolism--and their wide prevalence among both boys and girls,

are very well illustrated in a narrative which I include in

Appendix B, History II.

In boys as they approach the age of puberty, this attraction to the

scatalogic, when it exists, tends to die out, giving place to more normal

sexual conceptions, or at all events it takes a subordinate and less

serious place in the mind. In girls, on the other hand, it often tends to

persist. Edmond de Goncourt, a minute observer of the feminine mind,

refers in _Chérie_ to "those innocent and triumphant gaieties which

scatalogic stories have the privilege of arousing in women who have

remained still children, even the most distinguished women." The extent to

which innocent young women, who would frequently be uninterested or

repelled in presence of the sexually obscene are sometimes attracted by

the scatalogically obscene, becomes intelligible, however, if we realize

that a symbolism comes here into play. In women the more specifically

sexual knowledge and experience of life frequently develop much later than

in men or even remains in abeyance, and the specifically sexual phenomena

cannot therefore easily lend themselves to wit, or humor, or imagination.

But the scatalogic sphere, by the very fact that in women it is a

specially intimate and secret region which is yet always liable to be

unexpectedly protruded into consciousness, furnishes an inexhaustible

field for situations which have the same character as those furnished by

the sexually obscene. It thus happens that the sexually obscene which in

men tends to overshadow the scatalogically obscene, in women--partly from

inexperience and partly, it is probable, from their almost physiological

modesty--plays a part subordinate to the scatalogical.

In a somewhat

analogous way scatalogical wit and humor play a considerable part in the

work of various eminent authors who were clergymen or priests.

In addition to the anatomical and psychological associations which

contribute to furnish a basis on which erotic symbolisms may spring up,

there are also physiological connections between the genital and urinary

spheres which directly favor such symbolisms. In discussing the analysis

of the sexual impulse in a previous volume of these _Studies_, I have

pointed out the remarkable relationship--sometimes of transference,

sometimes of compensation--which exists between genital tension and

vesical tension, both in men and women. In the histories of normal sexual

development brought together at the end of that and subsequent volumes the

relationship may frequently be traced, as also in the case of C.P. in the

present study (p. 37). Vesical power is also commonly believed to be in

relation with sexual potency, and the inability to project the urinary

stream in a normal manner is one of the accepted signs of sexual

impotency.[26] Féré, again, has recorded the history of a man with

periodic crises of sexual desire, and subsequently sexual obsession

without desire, which were always accompanied by the impulse to urinate

and by increased urination.[27] In the case, recorded by Pitres and Régis,

of a young girl who, having once at the sight of a young man she liked in

a theater been overcome by sexual feeling accompanied by a strong desire

to urinate, was afterward tormented by a groundless fear of experiencing

an irresistible desire to urinate at inconvenient times,[28] we have an

example of what may be called a physiological scatalogic symbolism of sex,

an emotion which was primarily erotic becoming transferred to the bladder

and then remaining persistent. From such a physiological symbolism it is

but a step to the psychological symbolisms of scatalogic fetichism.

It is worthy of note, as an indication that such phenomena are

scarcely abnormal, that a urinary symbolism, and even a strictly

sexual fetichism, are normal among many animals.

The most familiar example of this kind is furnished by the dog,

who is sexually excited in this manner by traces of the bitch and

himself takes every opportunity of making his own path

recognizable. "This custom," Espinas remarks (_Des Sociétés

Animales_, p. 228), "has no other aim than to spread along the

road recognizable traces of their presence for the benefit of

individuals of the other sex, the odor of these traces doubtless

causing excitement."

It is noteworthy, also, that in animals as well as in man, sexual

excitement may manifest itself in the bladder. Thus Daumas states

(_Chevaux de Sahara_, p. 49) that if the mare urinates when she

hears the stallion neigh it is a sign that she is ready for

connection.

It is in masochism, or passive algolagnia, that we may most frequently

find scatalogic symbolism in its fully developed form.

The man whose

predominant impulse is to subjugate himself to his mistress and to receive

at her hands the utmost humiliation, frequently finds the climax of his

gratification in being urinated on by her, whether in actual fact or only

in imagination.

In many such cases, however, it is evident that we have a mixed

phenomenon; the symbolism is double. The act becomes desirable because it

is the outward and visible sign of an inwardly experienced abject slavery

to an adored person. But it is also desirable because of intimately sexual

associations in the act itself, as a symbolical detumescence, a simulacrum

of the sexual act, and one which proceeds from the sexual focus itself.

Krafft-Ebing records various cases of masochism in which the

emission of urine on to the body or into the mouth formed the

climax of sexual gratification, as, for instance (_Psychopathia

Sexualis_, English translation, p. 183) in the case of a Russian

official who as a boy had fancies of being bound between the

thighs of a woman, compelled to sleep beneath her nates and to

drink her urine, and in later life experienced the greatest

excitement when practicing the last part of this early

imagination.

In another case, recorded by Krafft-Ebing and by him termed

"ideal masochism" (_Op. cit._, pp. 127-130), the subject from

childhood indulged in voluptuous day-dreams in which he was the

slave of a beautiful mistress who would compel him to obey all

her caprices, stand over him with one foot on his breast, sit on

his face and body, make him wait on her in her bath, or when she

urinated, and sometimes insist on doing this on his face; though

a highly intellectual man, he was always too timid to attempt to

carry any of his ideas into execution; he had been troubled by

nocturnal enuresis up to the age of 20.

Neri, again (_Archivio delle Psicopatie Sessuali_, vol. i, fasc.

7 and 8, 1896), records the case of an Italian masochist who

experienced the greatest pleasure when both urination and

defecation were practiced in this manner by the woman he was

attached to.

In a previous volume of these _Studies_ ("Sexual Inversion,"

History XXVI) I have recorded the masochistic daydreams of a boy

whose impulses were at the same time inverted; in his reveries

"the central fact," he states, "became the discharge of urine

from my lover over my body and limbs, or, if I were very fond of

him, I let it be in my face." In actual life the act of urination

casually witnessed in childhood became the symbol, even the

reality, of the central secret of sex: "I stood rooted and

flushing with downcast eyes till the act was over, and was

conscious for a considerable time of stammering speech and

bewildered faculties.... I was overwhelmed with emotion and could

barely drag my feet from the spot or my eyes from the damp

herbage where he had deposited the waters of secrecy. Even to-day

I cannot dissociate myself from the shuddering charm that moment

had for me."

It is not only the urine and the fæces which may thus acquire a symbolic

fascination and attractiveness under the influence of masochistic

deviations of sexual idealization. In some cases extreme rapture has been

experienced in licking sweating feet. There is, indeed, no excretion or

product of the body which has not been a source of ecstasy: the sweat from

every part of the body, the saliva and menstrual fluid, even the wax from

the ears.

Krafft-Ebing very truly points out (_Psychopathia Sexualis_,

English translation, p. 178) that this sexual scatalogic

symbolism is precisely paralleled by a religious scatalogic

symbolism. In the excesses of devout enthusiasm the ascetic

performs exactly the same acts as are performed in these excesses

of erotic enthusiasm. To mix excreta with the food, to lick up

excrement, to suck festering sores--all these and the like are

acts which holy and venerated women have performed.

Not only the saint, but also the prophet and medicine-man have

been frequently eaters of human excrement; it is only necessary

to refer to the instance of the prophet Ezekiel, who declared

that he was commanded to bake his bread with human dung, and to

the practices of medicine-men at Torres Straits, in whose

training the eating of human excrement takes a recognized part.

(Deities, notably Baal-Phegor, were sometimes supposed to eat

excrement, so that it was natural that their messengers and

representatives among men should do so. As regards Baal-Phegor,

see Dulaure, _Des Divinités Génératrices_, Chapter IV, and J.G.

Bourke, _Scatalogic Rites of All Nations_, p. 241.

See also

Ezekiel, Chapter IV, v. 12, and _Reports Anthropological

Expedition to Torres Straits_, vol. v, p. 321.) It must be added, however, that while the masochist is overcome

by sexual rapture, so that he sees nothing disgusting in his act,

the medicine-man and the ascetic are not so invariably overcome

by religious rapture, and several ascetic writers have referred

to the horror and disgust they experienced, at all events at

first, in accomplishing such acts, while the medicine-men when

novices sometimes find the ordeal too severe and have to abandon

their career. Brénier de Montmorand, while remarking, not without

some exaggeration, that "the Christian ascetics are almost all

eaters of excrement" ("Ascétisme et Mysticisme,"

_Revue

Philosophique_, March, 1904, p. 245), quotes the testimonies of

Marguerite-Marie and Madame Guyon as to the extreme repugnance

which they had to overcome. They were impelled by a merely

intellectual symbolism of self-mortification rather than by the

profoundly felt emotional symbolism which moves the masochist.

Coprophagic acts, whether under the influences of religious

exaltation or of sexual rapture, inevitably excite our disgust.

We regard them as almost insane, fortified in that belief by the

undoubted fact that coprophagia is not uncommon among the insane.

It may, therefore, be proper to point out that it is not so very

long since the ingestion of human excrement was carried out by

our own forefathers in the most sane and deliberate manner. It

was administered by medical practitioners for a great number of

ailments, apparently with entirely satisfactory results. Less

than two centuries ago, Schurig, who so admirably gathered

together and arranged the medical lore of his own and the

immediately preceding ages, wrote a very long and detailed

chapter, "De Stercoris Humani Usu Medico"

(_Chylologia_, 1725,

cap. XIII; in the Paris _Journal de Médecine_ for February 19,

1905, there appeared an article, which I have not seen, entitled

"Médicaments oubliées: l'urine et la fiente humaine.") The

classes of cases in which the drug was found beneficial would

seem to have been extremely various. It must not be supposed that

it was usually ingested in the crude form. A common method was to

take the fæces of boys, dry them, mix them with the best honey,

and administer an electuary. (At an earlier period such drugs

appear to have met with some opposition from the Church, which

seems to have seen in them only an application of magic; thus I

note that in Burchard's remarkable Penitential of the fourteenth

century, as reproduced by Wasserschleben, 40 days'

penance is

prescribed for the use of human urine or excrement as a medicine.

Wasserschleben _Die Bussordnungen der

Abendländlichen Kirche_, p.

651.)

The urolagnia of masochism is not a simple phenomenon; it embodies a

double symbolism: on the one hand a symbolism of self-abnegation, such as

the ascetic feels, on the other hand a symbolism of transferred sexual

emotion. Krafft-Ebing was disposed to regard all cases in which a

scatalogical sexual attraction existed as due to "latent masochism." Such

a point of view is quite untenable. Certainly the connection is common,

but in the majority of cases of slightly marked scatalogical fetichism no

masochism is evident. And when we bear in mind the various considerations,

already brought forward, which show how widespread and clearly realized is

the natural and normal basis furnished for such symbolism, it becomes

quite unnecessary to invoke any aid from masochism.

There is ample

evidence to show that, either as a habitual or more usually an occasional

act, the impulse to bestow a symbolic value on the act of urination in a

beloved person, is not extremely uncommon; it has been noted of men of

high intellectual distinction; it occurs in women as well as men; when

existing in only a slight degree, it must be regarded as within the normal

limits of variation of sexual emotion.

The occasional cases in which the urine is drunk may possibly

suggest that the motive lies in the properties of the fluid

acting on the system. Support for this supposition might be found

in the fact that urine actually does possess, apart altogether

from its magic virtues embodied in folk-lore, the properties of a

general stimulant. In composition (as Masterman first pointed

out) "beef-tea differs little from healthy urine,"

containing

exactly the same constituents, except that in beef-tea there is

less urea and uric acid. Fresh urine--more especially that of

children and young women--is taken as a medicine in nearly all

parts of the world for various disorders, such as epistaxis,

malaria and hysteria, with benefit, this benefit being almost

certainly due to its qualities as a general stimulant and

restorative. William Salmon's _Dispensatory_, 1678

(quoted in

_British Medical Journal_, April 21, 1900, p. 974), shows that in

the seventeenth century urine still occupied an important place

as a medicine, and it frequently entered largely into the

composition of Aqua Divina.

Its use has been known even in England in the nineteenth century.

(Masterman, _Lancet_, October 2, 1880; R. Neale,

"Urine as a

Medicine," _Practitioner_, November, 1881; Bourke brings together

a great deal of evidence as to the therapeutic uses of urine in

his _Scatalogic Rites_, especially pp. 331-335; Lusini has shown

that normal urine invariably increases the frequency of the heart

beats, _Archivio di Farmacologia_, fascs. 19-21, 1893.)

But it is an error to suppose that these facts account for the

urolagnic drinking of urine. As in the gratification of a normal

sexual impulse, the intense excitement of gratifying a scatalogic

sexual impulse itself produces a degree of emotional stimulation