E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland
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In this volume the terminal phenomena of the sexual process are discussed,before an attempt is finally made, in the concluding volume, to considerthe bearings of the psychology of sex on that part of morals which may becalled "social hygiene."
Under "Erotic Symbolism" I include practically all the aberrations of thesexual instinct, although some of these have seemed of sufficientimportance for separate discussion in previous volumes. It is highlyprobable that many readers will consider that the name scarcely sufficesto cover manifestations so numerous and so varied. The term "sexualequivalents" will seem preferable to some. While, however, it may be fullyadmitted that these perversions are "sexual equivalents"—or at all eventsequivalents of the normal sexual impulse—that term is merely adescriptive label which tells us nothing of the phenomena. "SexualSymbolism" gives us the key to the process, the key that makes all theseperversions intelligible. In all of them—very clearly in some, as inshoe-fetichism; more obscurely in others, as in exhibitionism—it has comeabout by causes congenital, acquired, or both, that some object or classof objects, some act or group of acts, has acquired a dynamic power overthe psycho-physical mechanism of the sexual process, deflecting it fromits normal adjustment to the whole of a beloved person of the oppositesex. There has been a transmutation of values, and certain objects,certain acts, have acquired an emotional value which for the normal personthey do not possess. Such objects and acts are properly, it seems to me,termed symbols, and that term embodies the only justification that in mostcases these manifestations can legitimately claim.
"The Mechanism of Detumescence" brings us at last to the final climax forwhich the earlier and more prolonged stage of tumescence, which hasoccupied us so often in these Studies, is the elaborate preliminary."The art of love," a clever woman novelist has written, "is the art ofpreparation." That "preparation" is, on the physiological side, theproduction of tumescence, and all courtship is concerned in building uptumescence. But the final conjugation of two individuals in an explosionof detumescence, thus slowly brought about, though it is largely aninvoluntary act, is still not without its psychological implications andconsequences; and it is therefore a matter for regret that so little isyet known about it. The one physiological act in which two individuals arelifted out of all ends that center in self and become the instrument ofthose higher forces which fashion the species, can never be an act to beslurred over as trivial or unworthy of study.
In the brief study of "The Psychic State in Pregnancy" we at last touchthe point at which the whole complex process of sex reaches its goal. Awoman with a child in her womb is the everlasting miracle which all theromance of love, all the cunning devices of tumescence and detumescence,have been invented to make manifest. The psychic state of the woman whothus occupies the supreme position which life has to offer cannot fail tobe of exceeding interest f