Love and Pain/4

There is another impulse which it may be worth while to consider briefly here, for the sake of the light it throws on the relationship between love and pain. I allude to the impulse to strangle the object of sexual desire, and to the corresponding craving to be strangled. Cases have been recorded in which this impulse was so powerful that men have actually strangled women at the moment of coitus.[120] Such cases are rare; but, as a mere idea, the thought of strangling a woman appears to be not infrequently associated with sexual emotion. We must probably regard it as, in the main,--with whatever subsidiary elements,--an aspect of that physical seizure, domination, and forcible embrace of the female which is one of the primitive elements of courtship.[121]

The corresponding idea--the pleasurable connection of the thought of being strangled with sexual emotion--appears to occur still more frequently, perhaps especially in women. Here we seem to have, as in the case of whipping, a combination of a physical with a psychic element. Not only is the idea attractive, but, as a matter of fact, strangulation, suffocation, or any arrest of respiration, even when carried to the extent of producing death, may actually provoke emission, as is observed after death by hanging.[122] It is noteworthy that, as Eulenburg remarks, the method of treating diseases of the spinal cord by suspension--a method much in vogue a few years ago--often produced sexual excitement.[123] In brothels, it is said, some of the clients desire to be suspended vertically by a cord furnished with pads.[124] A playful attempt to throttle her on the part of her lover is often felt by a woman as pleasurable, though it may not necessarily produce definite sexual excitement. Sometimes, however, this feeling becomes so strong that it must be regarded as an actual perversion, and I have been told of a woman who is indifferent to the ordinary sexual embrace; her chief longing is to be throttled, and she will do anything to have her neck squeezed by her lover till her eyeballs bulge.[125]

The imagined pleasure of being strangled by a lover brings us to a group of feelings which would seem to be not unconnected with respiratory elements. I refer to the pleasurable excitement experienced by some in suspension, swinging, restraint, and fetters. Strangulation is the extreme and most decided type of this group of imagined or real situations, in all of which a respiratory disturbance seems to be an essential element.[126]

In explaining these phenomena we have to remark that respiratory excitement has always been a conspicuous part of the whole process of tumescence and detumescence, of the struggles of courtship and of its climax, and that any restraint upon respiration, or, indeed, any restraint upon muscular and emotional activity generally, tends to heighten the state of sexual excitement associated with such activity.

I may here quote, as bearing on this and allied questions, a somewhat lengthy communication from a lady to whom I am indebted for many subtle and suggestive remarks on the whole of this group of manifestations:--

"With regard to the connection between swinging and suspension, perhaps the physical basis of it is the loss of breath. Temporary loss of breath with me produces excitement. Swinging at a height or a fall from a height would cause loss of breath; in a state of suspension the imagination would suggest the idea of falling and the attendant loss of breath. People suffering from lung disease are often erotically inclined, and anesthetics affect the breathing. Men also seem to like the idea of suspension, but from the active side. One man used to put his wife on a high swinging shelf when she displeased him, and my husband told me once he would like to suspend me to a crane we were watching at work, though I have never mentioned my own feeling on this point to him. Suspension is often mentioned in descriptions of torture. Beatrice Cenci was hung up by her hair and the recently murdered Queen of Korea was similarly treated. In Tolstoi's _My Husband and I_ the girl says she would like her husband to hold her over a precipice. That passage gave me great pleasure.[127]

"The idea of slipping off an inclined plane gives me the same sensation. I always feel it on seeing Michael Angelo's 'Night,' though the slipping look displeases me artistically. I remember that when I saw the 'Night' first I did feel excited and was annoyed, and it seemed to me it was the slipping-off look that gave it; but I think I am now less affected by that idea. Certain general ideas seem to excite one, but the particular forms under which they are presented lose their effect and have to be varied. The sentence mentioned in Tolstoi leaves me now quite cold, but if I came across the same idea elsewhere, expressed differently, then it would excite me. I am very capricious in the small things, and I think women are so more than men. The idea of slipping down a plank formerly produced excitement with me; now it has a less vivid effect, though the idea of loss of breath still produces excitement. The idea of the plank does not now affect me unless there is a certain amount of drapery. I think, therefore, that the feeling must come in part from the possibility of the drapery catching on some roughness of the surface of the slope, and so producing pressure on the sexual organs. The effect is still produced, however, even without any clothing, if the slope is supposed to end in a deep drop, so that the idea of falling is strongly presented. I cannot recollect any early associations that would tend to explain these feelings, except that jumping from a height, which I used frequently to do as a child, has a tendency to create excitement.

The idea of being chained and fettered appears to be not uncommonly associated with pleasurable sexual feelings, for I have met with numerous cases in both men and women, and it not infrequently coexists with a tendency to inversion. It often arises at a very early age, and it is of considerable interest because we cannot account for its frequency by any chance association nor by any actual experiences. It would appear to be a purely psychic fantasia founded on the elementary physical fact that restraint of emotion, like suspension, produces a heightening of emotion. In any case the spontaneous character of such ideas and emotions in children of both sexes suffices to show that they must possess a very definite organic basis.

Original footnotes
[120] An attenuated and symbolic form of this impulse is seen in the desire to strangle birds with the object of stimulating or even satisfying sexual desire. Prostitutes are sometimes acquainted with men who bring a live pigeon with them to be strangled just before intercourse. Lanphear, of St. Louis (_Alienist and Neurologist_, May, 1907, p. 204) knew a woman, having learned masturbation in a convent school, who was only excited and not satisfied by coitus with her husband, and had to rise from bed, catch and caress a chicken, and finally wring its neck, whereupon orgasm occurred.

[121] Even young girls, however, may experience pleasure in the playful attempt to strangle. Thus a lady speaking of herself at the time of puberty, when she was in the habit of masturbating, writes (_Sexual-Probleme_, Aug., 1909, p. 636): "I acquired a desire to seize people, especially girls, by the throat, and I enjoyed their way of screaming out."

[122] Godard observed that when animals are bled, or felled, as well as strangled, there is often abundant emission, rich in spermatozoa, but without erection, though accompanied by the same movements of the tail as during copulation. Robin (art. "Fecondation," _Dictionnaire Encyclopedique des Sciences Medicales_), who quotes this observation, has the following remarks on this subject: "Ejaculation occurring at the moment when the circulation, maintained artificially, stops is a fact of significance. It shows how congestive conditions--or inversely anemic conditions--constitute organic states sufficient to set in movement the activity of the nerve-centers, as is the case for muscular contractility.... Everything leads us to believe that at the moment when the motor nervous action takes place the corresponding sensitive centers also come into play." It must be added that Minovici, in his elaborate study of death by hanging ("Etude sur la Pendaison," _Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, 1905, especially p. 791 et seq.), concludes that the turgescence of penis and flow of spermatic fluid (sometimes only prostatic secretion) usually observed in these cases is purely passive and generally, though not always, of post-mortem occurrence. There is, therefore, no sexual pleasure in death by hanging, and persons who have been rescued at the last moment have experienced no voluptuous sensations. This was so even in the case, referred to by Minovici, of a man who hanged himself solely with the object of producing sexual pleasure.

[123] Eulenburg, _Sexuale Neuropathie_, p. 114.

[124] Bernaldo de Quiros and Llanos Aguilaniedo (_La Mala Vida en Madrid_, p. 294) knew the case of a man who found pleasure in lying back on an inclined couch while a prostitute behind him pulled at a slipknot until he was nearly suffocated; it was the only way in which he could attain sexual gratification.

[125] Arrest of respiration, it may be noted, may accompany strong sexual excitement, as it may some other emotional states; one recalls passages in the _Arabian Nights_ in which we are told of ladies who at the sight of a very beautiful youth "felt their reason leave them, yearned to embrace the marvelous youth, and _ceased breathing_." Inhibited respiration is indeed, as Stevens shows ("Study of Attention," _American Journal of Psychology_, Oct., 1905), a characteristic of all active attention.

[126] The exact part played by the respiration and even the circulation in constituting emotional states is still not clear, although various experiments have been made; see, e.g., Angell and Thompson, "A Study of the Relations between Certain Organic Processes and Consciousness," Psychological Review, January, 1899. A summary statement of the relations of the respiration and circulation to emotional states will be found in Kuelpe's _Outlines of Psychology_, part i, section 2, � 37.

[127] The words alluded to by my correspondent are as follows: "I needed a struggle; what I needed was that feeling should guide life, and not that life should guide feeling. I wanted to go with him to the edge of an abyss and say: 'Here a step and I will throw myself over; and here a motion and I have gone to destruction'; and for him, turning pale, to seize me in his strong arms, hold me back over it till my heart grew cold within me, and then carry me away wherever he pleased." The whole of the passage in which these lines occur is of considerable psychological interest. In one English translation the story is entitled Family Happiness.