E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
()
This volume has been thoroughly revised for the present edition andconsiderably enlarged throughout, in order to render it more accurate andmore illustrative, while bringing it fairly up to date with reference toscientific investigation. Numerous histories have also been added to theAppendix.
It has not been found necessary to modify the main doctrines set forth tenyears ago. At the same time, however, it may be mentioned, as regards thefirst study in the volume, that our knowledge of the physiologicalmechanism of the sexual instinct has been revolutionized during recentyears. This is due to the investigations that have been made, and thedeductions that have been built up, concerning the part played byhormones, or internal secretions of the ductless glands, in the physicalproduction of the sexual instinct and the secondary sexual characters. Theconception of the psychology of the sexual impulse here set forth, whilecorrelated to terms of a physical process of tumescence and detumescence,may be said to be independent of the ultimate physiological origins ofthat process. But we cannot fail to realize the bearing of physiologicalchemistry in this field; and the doctrine of internal secretions, since itmay throw light on many complex problems presented by the sexual instinct,is full of interest for us.
HAVELOCK ELLIS.
June, 1913.
The present volume of Studies deals with some of the most essentialproblems of sexual psychology. The Analysis of the Sexual Impulse isfundamental. Unless we comprehend the exact process which is being workedout beneath the shifting and multifold phenomena presented to us we cannever hope to grasp in their true relations any of the normal or abnormalmanifestations of this instinct. I do not claim that the conception of theprocess here stated is novel or original. Indeed, even since I began towork it out some years ago, various investigators in these fields,especially in Germany, have deprived it of any novelty it might otherwisehave possessed, while at the same time aiding me in reaching a moreprecise statement. This is to me a cause of satisfaction. On sofundamental a matter I should have been sorry to find myself tending to apeculiar and individual standpoint. It is a source of gratification to methat the positions I have reached are those toward which currentintelligent and scientific opinions are tending. Any originality in mystudy of this problem can only lie in the bringing together of elementsfrom somewhat diverse fields. I shall be content if it is found that Ihave attained a fairly balanced, general, and judicial statement of thesemain factors in the sexual instinct.
In the study of Love and Pain I have discussed the sources of thoseaberrations which are commonly called, not altogether happily, "sadism"and "masochism." Here we are brought before the most extr