Unconscious Powers Of Influence On Our Sexual Life

( Originally Published 1940 )

WE now come to the most intimate feelings of our psychic life. This is the realm of secret and magical powers, dating from the origin of humanity; powers -which have more influence over us than any others. This occult force is Iike a fairy godmother watching over us from our childhood, until we are old enough to shift for ourselves; and although she makes us rather timid of the good things, she often helps us to avoid the bad.

Every powerful emotion drives the blood with renewed energy through our blood vessels, and we have already mentioned (in chapter 20) how the sexual life, especially, is liable to affect our emotions and to cause congestion in our circulation. It is more especially the sexual impressions that so frequently conjure up the rosy blush on our cheeks. And the shyer a child is, the more charming we find such blushing which becomes much more intense at the time of puberty, even making us lose our presence of mind.

The intense sensitiveness of the youthful soul is often betrayed by it. Generally it is caused merely by some little surprise, because one finds oneself, for instance, suddenly in an unwonted situation.

Sexual impressions may easily give rise to a certain timidity if the sexual has developed late in life and only become customary in old age, so that it has lost its first natural charm, though indeed many an old roue at this latter stage of life, falls into the other extreme-a coarse cynicism.

And the young people who are most subject to this sort of thing are those from whose training, coeducation or friendly contact with the opposite sex, has been the most carefully excluded, and in whose case safety has been sought by keeping them from the "wicked" world. And on this account they feel a double need of sympathy and affection, but all is wrecked on the rocks of this stupidity! Many a tenderly blossoming young affection is thus nipped in the bud; and although it only leads to misery and disappointment, many of them seek consolation in loneliness.

Especially, also, must those young people suffer from this travesty of modesty, who from lack of natural modesty try to behave exceptionally well, and yet are so blinded by immodesty as to be unable to notice their own faults.

Very often in such cases, it is only a concomitant symptom of sexual abstinence.

So it is not at all difficult for us to understand how it is that a hardened Don Juan generally meets with success with the ladies; he has long forgotten how to blush and is never at a loss! Really, this indefinite modesty is of very doubtful value in our education. And it has a still worse effect when we find ourselves in had company, and we need all our strength of character not to give way to temptation; our blushing timidity leads us to brave it out, and to do the same as the others so that we shall not be thought stupid.

So it is modesty that warns us of the approach of every temptation; something like the warning that pain gives us of some physiological danger to our bodies. Both warnings are life-saving a hundred times over, and are the first condition necessary for self-preservation. When once the sick man no longer feels his pain, or one is so far on the downward path in life that he is lost to all shame, then both have gone too far to be rescued.

Because this blushing from guilt cannot be distinguished in appearance from the so-called blushing from embarrassment, we must not be surprised that both are called by the same name, and that we are so often really misled in our judgment of innocence or guilt. For both of them are accompanied internally by similar palpitation and a feeling of anxiety in the region of the heart. In very serious cases it seems to us as if our heart would cease to beat altogether; it very nearly does so, and then the deep blush on our cheeks suddenly fades away, and we are deathly pale. But often before it proceeds as far as this, the reflex comes to our relief, and the tears flow.

This shame feeling from guilt is the most faulty grounding that can be imagined for the moral training of the young.

I shall now endeavour to cite a few examples of how in the course of time the human shame-motives have been modified, corresponding to the stage of evolution, to living conditions, to the security of the laws, and to improved education.

In the primitive state of nature, when our savage forefathers constantly had death from hunger or violence before their eyes, all the various kinds of bloody ceremonies and customs then prevalent, such as human sacrifice and the eating of human flesh, were only reflections of these conditions, and these customs were perhaps indispensable for the preservation of the tribe. Any man who rebelled against them would surely have been put to death, or at any rate would be in constant fear of discovery. But, gradually, as the economic situation improved, these usages came more and more to be perpetuated only as traditional festivals; and anyone who tried to evade participation in them was only ashamed before the others on account of differing from them. As man reached a still higher stage of development, human consciousness of higher things led him to abandon such atrocities and to hold the view that fear of giving up such manners and customs was only false shame; until at last nothing is left of these traditional festivals but a few symbolical mysteries and sacraments whose origins nobody knows.

Another example. At first, the safety of a tribe, and, of course, that of each of its members, was only guaranteed by a complete solidarity among them; and at this primitive epoch there was no other way to keep this intact, except by forcing all the members to act similarly and simultaneously in all circumstances. Any failure to do this was necessarily regarded by the others as high treason, and was swiftly followed by exemplary punishment in the presence of the whole tribe. Anyone who had so rendered himself liable to capital punishment, perhaps died at once from consciousness of his own guilt.

And now, when we feel it our duty to act in defiance of public opinion, we know very well that the shame that prevents us from doing so is false shame.

Since, in the course of its evolution, the shame-motives have undergone such essential changes, it is quite evident that not every individual and class living in the same locality, and still less all the different races and sects that go to form a nation, can possibly have passed through the same stages of evolution with the same rapidity; their living conditions are far too varied. So, in the conception of shame, there develop sharp boundary lines between people at different stages of moral evolution which often conflict most bitterly.

Now we can far better realise the danger of taking the feeling of shame as the foundation of ethical education.

It is certain, for instance, that when a young man who has been brought up in a quiet and retiring little provincial town where rules of modesty and shame were instilled into him, comes up to town and is thrown into cosmopolitan society, he will surely not only throw over the shame-motives of his early days, but also others which he should always hold sacred.

The feeling of shame is honoured as the foundation of morality by those people who still affirm that one is only moral and correct when conforming to the traditional and universally accepted etiquette, morality or custom, a principle of morality that excludes in anticipation all evolution of the individual to a higher ethical standpoint. In such circles, false modesty is encouraged and held up as the most laudable of all virtues, so that they may wear the halo of extraordinary morality or of aristocratic ways, while in reality all this is only travesty on virtue. Thus the so-called feeling of shame becomes a barrier against which all real progress founders.

And the shame of nudity is quite typical. Formerly, when a family was so poor that the children were forced to run about bare-foot like savages, even in inclement weather, they felt terribly ashamed of their poverty; for of all social transgressions, none is so great as poverty.

Among those people who are a little better off in the world, it is considered perfectly shocking if they are not fully dressed, and when they are caught in the midst of their toilet, incompletely attired, they feel frightfully embarrassed before strangers.

Now, however, we have arrived at an era when the richer folks proudly lay aside certain articles of clothing which are useless from a hygienic point of view, but which were formerly held in high honor. They can thus flout public opinion, because everyone knows that they are not at all poor. So now our children run about very often with naked legs, and our young men without hats or taps, although in former times the head was covered (except during prayer) as a sign that one was a free-born citizen. And false shame in the presence of nudity is also beginning to disappear.

Only, at least in our cold northern climate, bashfulness in regard to denuding the whole body will persist for a long time, for reasons of expediency. For as soon as we throw off our last articles of underclothing, we feel all the cur-rents of cold air as something that is almost always uncomfortable and even disagreeable.

And to this must be added another motive actuated by our reason: the exposure to view of our sexual organs, which may lead to other complications. For in females it shows their fitness or otherwise for the married state, and in males their actual sexual feelings at the time, which in the presence of third parties may cause a suspicion of wilful provocation, or at any rate, the most undesirable associations of thought and feeling.

In this case there are not only the shame-motives of embarrassment to be taken into consideration, but also serious motives of reason, which in many cases render it a duty to observe the greatest reserve and discretion. And yet, in family circles and in the world of art 1 and science, for instance in medical consultations, all this shame of nudity has long been recognised as misplaced modesty, unless special contra-indications exist in these cases.

So now we find ourselves back again on our sexual theme, an here, above all, the feeling of shame has always reigned; but here also the force of natural evolution has worked the most striking changes, which are still progressing.

Originally the sexual life was not so much a source of friendly sentiments, as a focus of animal desire, an endless source of envy and conflict, leading to the use of force and murder, and naturally of shame and a feeling of guilt.

Later, with the advent of a more regular social and sexual organisation, the sexual shame-feeling is more especially produced if one has offended against traditional or conventional moral laws, whereby one soon acquires a bad name or may be involved in the greatest difficulties. And sometimes, if one has been informal or impolite, though often this is only false shame.

These various sets of shame-motives are as yet but little eliminated from our sexual life, because as we mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the sexual urge occurs so late in our lives, and, there-fore, always seems to us something unusual. And this is why, in the public eye, everything sexual is essentially shameful. And these vitally important organs have been dignified (in the Latin and German languages at least) with the epithet of our "shame"---(Pudenda and Scham). Shame! Why, we should only feel ashamed that we have wandered so far away from Nature. Evolution has certainly still a long way to go.

Now that we have read this review of the evolution of the feeling of shame as a general manifestation of the gradually increasing moral feeling of mankind, the way is cleared for a better understanding of our individual conception of what shame is. The most delicate touchstone of our own ethical viewpoint is the manner in which we regard this feeling of shame; and we shall thus be able to improve and to adopt a higher personal standpoint.

When we were quite young and felt ourselves dependent on our environment, we were ruled by motives of fear and sensitiveness, and this cost us many a bitter tear! But we have forgotten all this years ago. And because we idealise everything that belongs to an earlier state, and cast a halo around it, although as adults we have our consciousness of being quite grown up, we have not lost the habit of surrounding our childish false modesty with its halo.

As we grew up, we always sought to be more and more free and independent; and when finally we really became adult, we studied cause and effect and tried calmly and worthily to master our feelings.

As far as we were able to accomplish this, our shame-motives took less and less importance in our lives, until with our advancing years they ceased altogether.

So long, however, as hot young blood rushed through our veins, blushes suffused our cheeks, sometimes at awkward moments, with varying intensity and from the most different motives, which depended upon our education and moral development. How different the case may be: a terrible fear of being caught at something we ought not to do, bashfulness if we accidentally say something improper, and that false shame that we have of saying or doing anything not in accordance with custom, and so on.

And only now do we fully realise that that feeling of shame is not the highest ideal that we should really strive after. On the contrary, it is our duty to avoid everything that we could possibly be ashamed of; indeed we wish also to entirely conquer all false shame, and to rise superior to it. The more we bring our sexual life under the control of reason and of our full consciousness, the more will this vague feeling that we call shame retreat into the background, with all its poetry and danger.