|
| |
| |
| |
11 Disturbances of the Sexual Sense
We termed an abnormal manifestation of the sexual sense in the chacma any behaviour which had as its ultimate purpose sexual satisfaction, but which deviated widely from the order found throughout nature and was clearly not beneficial - in that it was not directed to the preservation of the species. This seemed a common-sense definition, and the use of the word ‘abnormal’ is justified since, employed in this manner, it will always convey a definite meaning.
It is possible to classify these abnormal manifestations into two main groups:
| 1. | Where the end itself is ‘unnatural’; that is, sexual behaviour which aims at satisfacation of the sexual sense but which cannot result in reproduction. |
| 2. | Sexual activity which may result in reproduction but where the behaviour involved differs widely from what is normal in the mammalian family. |
Both types of abnormality are variations from type, and in both the crucial test is the absence of any benefit from the evolutionary point of view.
It will be recognised that these abnormal manifestations are the invariable accompaniment of protection from selection, just as somatic variations are. They occur in different degrees in domestic animals and man, and their common characteristic is always some form of deterioration. There is a loss either of the definite purpose of sexual activity, or of a clear direction as to its attainment. And in both instances the loss is disadvantageous since reproduction, the reason for all activity of the sexual sense in nature, is always adversely affected. It does not seem an irrational assumption that this process, if progressive in a species, must end in sterility, since individuals exhibiting extreme forms of these variations are certainly sterile. These sexual abnormalities must therefore be regarded as continuous psychological variations correlated to, and due to the same causes as, the physical variability described in Chapter 10.
Although I propose to deal chiefly with more or less extreme variations, the average expression of the sexual sense in the chacma - what would ordinarily be called the ‘normal’ - will also have to be treated in order to make clear the degree and nature of each variation. Now, this usual or average sexual behaviour is in itself in many respects quite abnormal - almost as abnormal as it is in man. In certain fundamental characteristics, sexual behaviour is uniform throughout nature, and it is in just these characteristics that primate behaviour often deviates widely. The nature and extent of these deviations in the chacma will become clear from the following description:
| |
| |
| |
General Sexual Behaviour
The predominant place which the sexual sense assumes in the life of the chacma is remarkable. There is nothing among the gregarious mammalia resembling it. ‘Lascivious as a baboon’ is a popular saying in this country, and although the accuser does not come into court with overclean hands, the implied charge is certainly not baseless.
The limitation of season, the determining condition of a natural outward stimulus, the exclusion of the extremely old, and the entire absence of the sexual sense prior to the maturing of the sexual organs, limit the actual activity of the sexual sense in gregarious mammals to a relatively small fraction of their lives. For the chacma these restraints no longer exist.
The common order in nature is that the operation of the sexual sense, in both male and female, is in the nature of a pure reflex. Among most gregarious mammalia, certain physiological changes take place in the female once annually and serve to excite her sexual sense. These changes in the female are communicated to the male, primarily through the sense of smell, and stimulate his sexual sense by reflex action. How completely reflex sexual activity is can be proved experimentally in most of the higher gregarious mammals. If the male is kept from contact with the female, the sexual sense remains dormant. There may be certain psychological disturbances which are generally associated with abstention during times when the female is usually in season, but sexual behaviour itself never becomes apparent. Also, if the sense of smell is destroyed, it can take several years before the sexual sense can be stimulated by sight alone, and even then there is a marked lessening in its responsiveness and vigour. If sight and smell are removed, the sexual sense is rendered permanently inoperative.
The chacma can be excited without natural outward stimulus, and even when all sensory contact with the outside world is cut off (except taste and touch) the sexual sense can still become active and find expression in behaviour. It would seem, therefore, that in the soul of the chacma these pleasurable sensations have become an ordinary causal memory and the sexual sense reacts to that memory. The chacma is, in other words, capable of being excited from within and is no longer dependent upon outward stimulation. This circumstance is responsible for a great deal of what is unusual and unnatural in the sexual behaviour of the species.
It is hardly necessary to state that the baboon is anything but monogamous. Indeed, a leading characteristic of their sexual life is an apparently inherent and insistent desire for change. Mating always commences with a great show of sexual passion, often more noticeable in the female than in the male. At this early stage the male is more genuinely altruistic than in any other relationship,
| |
| |
with perhaps one exception: his care and defence of the young members of the troop.25 He will guard the female of his choice with the utmost devotion and will even on occasion allow her to share his food - the highwater-mark of baboon unselfishness! This devotion lasts for perhaps a week.
In the female it may be of longer duration, but in the conscience of the male, conjugal fidelity has an airy existence. His roving eye soon begins to rest appraisingly upon the unattached females - if such there be - and, like a lordly pasha, he graciously permits them to display their charms competitively before him. What exactly determines his final choice is hard to surmise. Certainly there is no trace of human aestheticism under similar conditions. Youth and its comeliness have no special attractions for him. As often as not, he will discard a lusty young female for some ancient harridan, grey and scarred, who ought, judged even by a baboon standard, to be considered unspeakably ugly.
Nor is the female quite free from the reproach of conjugal infidelity - of an even worse type, because with her the element of furtiveness often becomes conspicuous. It is true that in many instances she will endeavour to retain the wandering affections of her mate by all the blandishments common to her sex, and will sometimes fall into paroxysms of jealous rage directed against her newly selected rival. But this single-hearted devotion to the temporary lord of her choice rarely illustrates her whole ‘love life’. She is frequently guilty of the grossest infidelity while the devotion of her master is at flood-tide, and we had many opportunities of studying her behaviour under these circumstances. The object of her guilty passion is generally some young male, nervous and extremely discreet, who has been watching the antics of the paired couple from a safe distance. With cleverness worthy of a better cause, the female will take instant advantage of a little laxity in her mate's watchfulness and entice the young cavalier to some safe and hidden spot, there to indulge in her illicit passion. Even the female who never seems to be unfaithful generally accepts with complacency the sequestration of her master's affection and she invariably calms down very quickly after her initial exhibition of jealous temper.
There is a continuous decline in sexual passion - in the male especially - as each mating runs its course. It becomes apparent that he suffers from ennui. The everlasting sameness begins to pall. It ends in complete indifference, abstention and even aversion, before the separation a mensa et toro is complete. But the scene alters when his overtures have been accepted by a new female. Then his passion is once more characterised by its original vigour. Nor does the female after such a divorce spend her days in unprofitable repining. She seeks, and generally soon finds, solace for her lacerated affections in the embrace of some other male.
It will be realised that in such a community male parental affection as it exists among monogamous animals is an unknown quantity; is inconceivable, for
| |
| |
even if true parental affection did exist, it would indeed be a wise baboon father who knew his own child. But a form of it does exist, and it is under the stress of this that males attain their highest manifestation of pure altruism. What, in the nature of things, they lack in individual parental affection is quite made up for by a common concern for all the young ones of the troop. It is a potent and real passion. The big males will cuddle and caress the young indiscriminately and will carry the heavier ones on long marches or flights after the mothers begin to show signs of exhaustion. If an infant is separated from its mother on the sudden appearance of danger, she will, if extremely hard pressed, desert her child - but only if the big males happen to be in her vicinity. She seems to know and to expect that they will carry it out of danger. And this they do, sometimes fearlessly and even recklessly risking their lives in the attempt to save a young one. If the big males are not present, the mother will desert her baby only as a last resort and never until she has made some attempt to hide it.
| |
Abnormalities
Duration of intercourse. It will have been gathered from the foregoing that for the male chacma there is practically no cessation of sexual intercourse. It is continuous throughout the year, unlimited by either season or organic conditions.26 But in the female sexual intercourse is, generally speaking, limited by pregnancy, although she certainly continues for a considerable period after conception. The actual time, however, varied greatly and it was difficult to arrive at an average under natural conditions. However, one thing was beyond doubt: intercourse continued for a longer period after conception than in any other mammal. In some extreme cases it took place at an advanced period of gestation.27 We even saw a case of abortion which my colleague was inclined to attribute to this extraordinary practice.
Barrenness in the female. There were only four mature females in our troop who had no babies and who did not give birth to any during the period of our observation. One of these will be described next as an example of gross physical and sexual aberration. One of the remaining three was the only individual in the troop who had an obvious physical disease: a large swelling on the side of the neck and throat. She was afterwards shot and it was found that the appearance was due to the enlargement of the right lobe of the thyroid gland, accompanied by a calcareous deposit. The degeneration was recognised by an expert as characteristic of goitre in the human subject.28
As in the normal males, so in these barren females sexual intercourse suffered no seasonal interruption.
| |
| |
Monstrosity. The fourth barren female was remarkable as regards both sexual and physical variation. She was the largest and heaviest member of the troop. I have certainly never seen as big a baboon anywhere else. She must have been extremely old. The hairs on the head and chest were quite grey, and at a distance appeared white. With the exception of sexual activity, her behaviour was quite masculine. She was originally mistaken for a male and classed as such in our records.
She was especially interesting because in sexual behaviour she was normally feminine, but in our mistaken classification she appeared to be the only instance of complete inversion of the sexual sense lasting into maturity. She associated with the dominant males only, took part in their battles and raids, and in times of danger showed real masculine courage and determination. Even after we discovered her true sex, she was still of interest, as regards both her sexual behaviour and her unending and restless activity. Her great bodily strength gave her a baboon right of interference in any mating which attracted her attention, and these were of daily occurrence. With determined threats of violence she would capture and carry off the unfortunate male and by the same means enforce his fidelity for perhaps half a day. When her true sex was discovered she was nicknamed ‘The Prostitute’ by a native servant and retained this title of distinction to the end.
After her behaviour had been carefully noted, she was separated from the troop and shot. It was then found that the shape of the body and musculature were normally masculine. The masculine occipital and orbital ridges were excessively developed and the condition of the masculine canine teeth testified to her great age. The mammae were quite undeveloped and masculine in shape. On dissection, no trace of hermaphroditism was disclosed. The ovaries and sexual organs generally were normally feminine.
Sexual periodicity. Sexual periodicity in the female chacma is generally of irregular occurrence, and frequency seems to be to a great extent determined by environmental conditions. During droughts and times of food scarcity the irregularity seemed to increase and the frequency to lessen. The opposite occurs during times of plenty and ease. The time of greatest sexual excitement in both male and female coincides with the sexual period in the female. In this the behaviour of the chacma is similar to that of all the non-primate mammals, but there the analogy ends.
Outside the order of primates, sexual activity is strictly limited by the duration of this period in the female. Even when conception does not take place, the organic changes which constitute the condition run a certain definite course and then cease, whereupon all intercourse stops. In other words, sexual activity in the male is only reactive to the sexual condition in the female, and in the
| |
| |
absence of that definite stimulus it remains dormant. In many gregarious mammals, males under natural conditions exhibit certain secondary types of sexual behaviour during the time the female would be in season, apparently even in her absence. ‘Calling’, restlessness and fighting with other males often reveals profound psychic disturbances. But one rule remains absolute in nature: there can be no excitation of primary sexual activity in the male without the presence of the female when her organic changes are in progress.
The behaviour of the chacma affords startling exceptions to this rule. Although the sexual period in the female initiates the greatest activity of the sexual sense in both male and female, intercourse is not limited by that occurrence. It can and does frequently take place outside the period; and although conception automatically puts an end to the condition in the female, conception itself, as I have said, is no immediate and final bar to further sexual intercourse, as is the case with all other mammals.
In most of the lower African primates the sexual period is characterised by turgescence in the female and a great increase in the brilliant sexual coloration which is generally common in both sexes. In the chacma this coloration is very inconspicuous when compared with that of lower forms. In the male it is absent and in the female it occurs only during the sexual period. In the African anthropoids it has been permanently lost in both sexes.
It is quite evident that in the lower mammalia the sexual period serves one, and apparently only one, beneficial purpose. The accompanying discharge is highly odoriferous and powerfully excites the sexual impulse in the male through his sense of smell. Where the sexes are normally segregated during the sexual period the males are able to follow and find the females, though often separated by vast distances, guided solely by the compelling odour. So it seems clear that the vivid sexual coloration in the primates, which invariably attains extreme brilliance in the female during the sexual period, is intimately connected with the degeneration of the sense of smell. None of the higher South African primates can trace the female by the sense of smell alone. A male chacma was not excited by a female during the sexual period when she was hidden a few feet from him behind a screen of matting. However, the moment he was allowed to see her sexual coloration he became strongly excited. It would seem, therefore, that as the sense of smell decayed, an appeal to the sense of sight was selected in its place. And in the chacma, the anthropoids and man (in whom the sexual sense can be excited without the need of any outward stimulation) even this sexual coloration appeal to sight has either been lost - as in the two latter species - or has become of comparatively little importance, as in the chacma.
It seems certain that somewhere in man's phyletic history this appeal, first to smell by means of sexual odours, and thereafter to sight by means of sexual col- | |
| |
oration, must have existed. It would be difficult to account for the persistence of half-orientated survivals in the human being on any other assumption. Deep in his psychic history lies the cause which determines his ‘aesthetic’ taste in colour and perfume. And this taste is beyond a shadow of doubt sexual in origin. Not by mere chance does the lady of Babylon select her glowing raiment or make her person fragrant with castor, musk and civet - the sexual perfumes common to all the lower mammalia. Dr. Havelock Ellis (Man and Woman) points out that in many women the whole skin becomes fragrant during the sexual period. This is clearly an organic survival which accompanies the psychological one I have described.
The gradual modification of the female sexual period in the primates can be studied in practically all its stages in existing species. In many lower forms the discharge is odoriferous and still serves to excite the male through his sense of smell. As one ascends to higher forms, the odour is lost and colour, often excessive and flamboyant, takes its place. There is always an accompanying and proportionate degeneration of the sense of smell. In the male the sense no longer serves any great sexual purpose, and in these higher forms it is also difficult to see any anatomical or environmental use in the female discharge. These modifications have reached an extreme point in the African anthropoids and man.
Birth. The female chacma about to give birth often separted herself from the troop and selected some secluded spot for the purpose. We noticed on several occasions that where she was accompanied by an independent older offspring she would persistently and often cruelly drive it away from her a few days previously. This always served as a sure indication that the birth was about to take place.
The degree of pain accompanying birth varied greatly. In some individuals - even in a first pregnancy - the infant made its appearance with ease and celerity and a minimum of trouble and pain, comparable only to the more happy condition of the lower mammals. In other cases there was deep maternal suffering quite human-like in its intensity and its methods of expression. It seems, however, quite beyond doubt that birth-pain is more severe in the chacma than in any other mammal outside the order of the primates. Some degree of pain apparently always exists in vertebrate reproduction; but there certainly seems to be a gradual increase in intensity from the higher mammals through the lower primates to man.
It is hardly possible to consider these facts without coming to the puzzling question of origin. Why should pain have been selected at all in connection with this supreme function of organic existence? What benefit was there to the individual or the race? There can be little doubt that in lower forms of organic
| |
| |
beings the process of reproduction is as simple as it is painless. Where, for instance, the expulsion of the ova takes place as simply and with as little accentuation in behaviour as any ordinary vital process, the presence of any sensation approximating pain is hardly conceivable. And it is in these cases where reproduction is unaccompanied by any manifestation of pain - where even the fertilisation of the ova is left to chance - that there is also an entire absence of the maternal instinct. The fate of the embryo is left to the tender mercies of its natural environment and the device of producing vast numbers has generally been selected, in place of the later-evolved maternal care, to ensure the continuation of the species. It is only in higher forms, with a greatly reduced birthrate, that the first indications of birth-pain are met, and as a sure and proportionate accompaniment there is always the care of the immature young by the mother. It seems safe to say that among species under natural conditions the greater the birth-pain, the higher becomes the maternal instinct.
Now, it is a rule in nature, which will be familiar to every student of comparative psychology, that every hereditary instinct needs an outward suggestion or stimulus to bring it into operation. The stronger this suggestion is, the more potent is the reaction of the instinct. This is especially so with instincts which become active in the mammalia only at a late stage of development, such as those connected with the procuring of food and the sexual sense. These cannot originally become operative except in response to a stimulus from without.29 This seems to me the selective purpose of birth-pain among higher organic forms. It serves to call into instant activity the maternal instinct. It seems reasonable to assume that in order to ensure the safety of the offspring - a thing of supreme importance to the race - an appeal should be selected to the most compelling sensation of which higher organisms are capable, and that this compelling sensation should serve the purpose of fixing the mother's attention on her helpless offspring and calling into being the complex of emotions constituting the maternal instinct.
The connection of birth-pain and maternal love is apparent as a dimly conscious idea in the human soul. In the first ‘yearning’ over her newborn babe, I suggest, there is often strongly present in the mind of the human mother a conviction that the love and tenderness she feels has some sure but dimly understood relation to the agony she has endured. The literature of all peoples and all times bears witness to this association of ideas.
At different times we observed and recorded several facts about mammalian reproduction which tended to corroborate this interpretation of the phenomenon of birth-pain. For instance, one season we kept under observation a herd of cattle and a flock of sheep in which the ‘casting away’ of calves and lambs was prevalent. The majority of the mothers who obstinately refused to receive or recognise their offspring were among those which we had classified
| |
| |
as having had an ‘easy and painless birth’. Those with a strong and correctly directed maternal instinct were invariably individuals which had shown suffering during parturition. It seemed as if in these cases the strength of the evoked instinct was in proportion to the degree of pain suffered.
Immature intercourse. The chacma often showed primary sexual activity sometime before reaching maturity and we recorded actual intercourse between immature males and females on several occasions. Even more startling was what amounted to forced intercourse between mature males and immature females. During our observations several such instances were observed, and they resulted in severe injuries to the immature female because of her desperate resistance and the violence of the mature male. These seemed to be in the nature of impulsive acts and were not characterised by the usual mating behaviour of the males. There was no evidence that this process was ever repeated by the same two individuals, perhaps chiefly due to the terror inspired in the young female by the first attempt. She took good care that there was no opportunity for a repetition. Other instances were observed where the dominant males intervened in defence of an immature female, and it is possible that these unnatural assaults would have been more frequent had it not been for this deterrent.
Homosexuality. Actual homosexual intercourse occurred among the young males that had just reached sexual maturity. It seemed that their inability to secure mature females until fighting powers were fully developed (and that was always long after sexual maturity) may probably have been one of the causes of this behaviour. But it must be borne in mind that the disadvantage which young males suffer in the sexual struggle is common to all the higher mammalia and yet outside the order of primates one looks in vain for actual homosexual intercourse under natural conditions. It is more likely that the real cause is psychological and is because the sexual sense in the chacma can be excited without natural outward stimulus. In homosexual encounters with the chacma, the younger and weaker male always voluntarily assumed the female role and the older and more mature, the male.
Similar homosexual tendencies were observed in immature females. Here it was always the outcome of long-established affectionate friendship. The physical completion of the act was, of course, impossible and it seemed more like an impulsive action in which there was no real sexual excitement involved. In this respect it differed very widely from male homosexual intercourse. This behaviour is, I think, very closely allied to a tendency often observed in captive baboons: attempted intercourse with non-primate mammals - that is, with domestic animals irrespective of sex. Both male and female chacmas reveal this tendency on occasion, accompanied by strong excitement.
| |
| |
A study of chacma behaviour makes it seem more than likely that the attitude of sexual exhibition, which is common throughout the mammalia and absolutely hereditary, has some connection with both male homosexual tendencies and intercourse with non-primate animals. The attitude of sexual exhibition is common and identical in both sexes of the chacma. Artificially reared babies adopt it from their earliest years. It is the common attitude not of sexuality but of conciliation both in captivity and under natural conditions, and is generally adopted in captivity for the purpose of begging or imploring. When a larger and stronger individual, male or female, pursues in anger a smaller and weaker baboon of either sex, the latter when cornered or exhausted will invariably assume the attitude of sexual exhibition. Its effect is often instantaneous and very remarkable. The anger of the pursuer usually subsides at once, and in most cases where the rage of the pursuer is not excessive, the threatened individual will escape chastisement by the adoption of this method of imploring pity. But its psychological effect is evidently varied. In most cases the pursuer becomes calm, and there is no behaviour to show that he takes any further notice of the object of his anger. In some cases, however, the attitude has the effect of immediately arousing the sexual sense of the pursuer and consequent behaviour clearly shows that sexual feeling is instantly substituted for rage. It is true that we never saw consummated homosexual intercourse under these conditions, but tentative efforts were common. It seems unlikely, therefore, that the homosexual habit (if we can speak of it as such) is acquired as a result of this behaviour. But all these circumstances certainly do seem to co-operate in the creation of homosexual habits. They are in the nature of favourable environmental circumstances reacting on a predisposed psychological condition.
One more observation remains to be mentioned which, from an analogous result in the case of man, would lead one to infer that it also had a great influence in establishing homosexual tendencies in the male chacmas of our troop. It must be made clear that the troop was completely isolated and had apparently been so for many years, and during the period of our observation the mature males always exceeded the mature females in numbers. In man the absence of females is undoubtedly a determining factor in the establishment of homosexual tendencies. Professor Edvard Alexander Westermarck (Origin and Development of Moral Ideas), who of all modern writers has compiled the most systematic, perhaps the most complete history of homosexuality from the anthropological point of view in man, repeatedly traces homosexual practices to this cause.30
Another interesting observation we made was in connection with acquired homosexuality and inversion of the sexual sense. No chacma, either in captivity or under natural conditions, exhibited a congenital and unchangeable in- | |
| |
version, nor was there any case where long-continued homosexual practices brought about an inversion. In all cases, as soon as heterosexual intercourse commenced, all homosexual tendencies ceased.
Whatever the condition of man may be, it seems to me very unlikely that there is such a thing as congenital inversion of the sexual sense in the chacma at all, or that acquired homosexuality in this primate exercises any permanent modifying effect on the sexual sense. We certainly obtained no evidence justifying such a conclusion.
Deorientation. While investigating the extent to which phyletic memories persist in the chacma, we came across the wholly unexpected fact that there are cases in which there is absolutely no hereditary orientation of the sexual sense. These experiments had necessarily to be made with artificially reared baboons. We found that in about half our subjects the most vital instincts were not transmitted, as they are in the lower African primates and in all non-primate mammals. These subjects did not know their natural food, nor when or how to look for it. They could not recognise any environmental danger, could not distinguish beasts of prey and showed no fear of snakes - the one thing that was certainly and strongly hereditary in many individuals. They were, in fact, quite helpless when released in their natural environment. What is known of the psychology of the anthropoids led us to anticipate some such condition in the chacma. But nothing had led us to anticipate that primary sexual behaviour would be other than hereditary.
The individuals lacking this most essential of all phyletic memories after attaining maturity had to gain their sexual knowledge with great difficulty under direct and continued suggestion. They had, in fact, to learn all that was necessary for sexual intercourse, just as they had to learn a new relation of cause and effect. Invariably the sexual sense was powerfully excited by a female, but there was absolutely no hereditary knowledge of the natural method of satisfaction. There is every reason to believe that this loss of the inborn direction of the sexual sense has proceeded much further than in the chacma. Whereas in the latter species the individuals who show a complete absence of all instinctive knowledge are rare, in man probably the great majority are subject to this singular psychological degeneration. And when we come to secondary sexual behaviour, then it is quite certain that no single human being comes into existence with any trace of inborn knowledge.31
In the lower primates and the mammalia in general, each individual is born completely equipped with both primary and secondary sexual direction. They know without the need of any experience or teaching the natural method of satisfying the sexual sense, they know the right season, the period of abstention and all the organic conditions of the female that begin and end sexual inter- | |
| |
course, and the behaviour is always identical in all individuals. Man has to be taught all this, and the teaching varies as widely as the races of mankind do. Most savage races have initiation ceremonies during which primary and secondary sexual behaviour is taught to both sexes as they reach maturity, and I do not think that there are any two tribes in which the teaching is identical. And what the savage teaches in sexual behaviour would certainly not find favour in our existing civilisations. It is quite common, for instance, among great numbers of savage peoples to teach and provide means for homosexual relations just as if they were the natural expression of the sexual sense in man. The teaching varies just as widely on such questions as monogamy, the continuance of intercourse after conception has taken place, cessation during menstruation, etc.
Two things are apparent in both the savage and the civilised sexual teachings of man, and both are of supreme interest to the comparative psychologist. First, there is a laborious striving after more natural behaviour. In other words, man, bearing no knowledge within himself, strives and strives to imitate the sexual behaviour of the lower animals. In all so-called scientific teaching as well, such behaviour has been set as a standard. It is, of course, the only standard available.
The second interesting fact is the idea of something wrong, something evil in the sexual sense itself. It is certainly apparent in all great religious systems. In Buddhism abstention is a virtue - indulgence a source of spiritual pollution. In the Mohammedan and Jewish religions sexual intercourse causes ceremonial impurity. The Hebrew myth of Adam and Eve has as a central idea the inherent evil of sexual intercourse. It is a forbidden thing, not only a sin in itself but imparting its contaminating influence to the individual resulting from it. The idea reaches its supreme point in the Christian religion, where it is regarded as an undesirable evil. The Apostle Paul teaches that it is a hindrance to man's spiritual regeneration, and in the Fourteenth Chapter of the Revelation of St. John the Divine, the description of a multitude of souls redeemed from the earth reads: ‘These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins.’ Hence, too, the doctrine of the immaculate conception and the continuous virginity of Mary. Christ, born of no natural sexual intercourse, was the one being who appeared on the earth uncontaminated by this thing that had fallen upon man as the primal and supreme curse.
But these ideas underlying man's sexual teaching, the idea of a natural standard and the idea of inherent evil in sexuality itself, are of interest to the comparative psychologist for the reason that both conceptions reveal the extent to which deorientation has progressed and the teaching become an ambiguous instruction. Phyletic memory being incomplete, man must look to causal memory for an answer. And man is left without firm moral direction derived from natural order.
| |
| |
Masturbation. Masturbation in some troops occurred among the younger mature members of both sexes. Outside the temporarily paired adults the average was somewhere in the neighbourhood of ten per cent of those sexually mature. Masturbation was more certainly idiosyncratic than homosexuality - that is, it was more certainly a habit of the individual and not, as in the case of homosexuality, apparently a tendency to which all were at times subject. It was often observed in our wild troop under certain definite circumstances. A young male would fall in love with a much older mated female, and would follow her persistently at a considerable distance. Any sexual advances by the older male who at the time happened to be the master of her affections would throw the watchful cavalier into a state of intense excitement, which, however, never exceeded the bounds of extreme discretion. Under such conditions masturbation was frequently resorted to. It sometimes happened that the female in question would make secret advances to her distant admirer, but if masturbation had become a habit he would very rarely take advantage of this natural means of satisfaction. The approach of the female would induce a state of nervous apprehension and he would generally assume the female sexual attitude, which was apparently protective. But if the young male had not resorted to the practice of masturbation, he would invariably take immediate advantage of the proffered natural means of satisfaction.
It must not be inferred, however, that these circumstances always accompanied or preceded the practice of masturbation in an individual. The most that my experience justifies me in saying is that we observed the connection between this definite set of circumstances and the practice in a great many instances. My colleague was inclined to the view that where the practice was indulged in for any length of time before the male succeeded in attaining sexual satisfaction naturally, it had certain well-marked neurotic results. Such an individual became solitary in his ways, morose, and vicious in temper. Physically, too, there was almost immediately a falling off in condition even when food was plentiful. I was not quite satisfied myself that this did occur under natural conditions. In captivity there is no doubt that the habit invariably produces a morose and vicious temper.
About two per cent of those addicted to the practice of masturbation at any one time were females.
Among older mature adults who had already mated it was never observed, but in captive baboons kept under conditions where the natural means of sexual satisfaction were wanting, masturbation was far more common and had no age limit, and very often the habit could be directly traced to initiation by example. On the other hand, we could not find any absolute proof that the habit ever occurred spontaneously in any individual. It is quite possible that it may have been conveyed to certain troops by baboons who had acquired the
| |
| |
habit in captivity. Among wild troops living remote from human habitation it was not observed.
Sexual impulses in captivity. A noticeable fact among baboons kept in captivity was the predominance of the sexual sense in older females kept from contact with males. This rose to fever pitch during the sexual periods. At such times a female will eagerly and persistently offer herself to every male human being who approaches her. She distinguishes between male and female, and towards women she often shows a vicious hostility. Masturbation in such cases - when it does occur, and it is very rare - seems to be generally a reaction to strong physical irritation.
In man the metamorphosis of emotion is even rarer than in the chacma. The best-known examples are the sexual perversions known as masochism and sadism, respectively. In masochism pain and humiliation are changed into sexual excitement, and in extreme types of sadism there occurs a transformation of sexual excitement into rage and bloodlust.
It must not be thought that by using the word ‘transformation’ any theoretical psychological explanation is implied. I must acknowledge that the tendency is a mystery to me. From an evolutionary point of view I am unable to explain it, and we found no facts from which its phyletic history could be inferred. The earlier observers into human sexual abnormalities explained sadism on the theoretical assumption that the sex and anger centres are nearly related and that in these cases either the stimulus is sent to the wrong centre, or the excitation of one centre affects the other, or the stimulus excites the nearly related afferent nerves much in the same way as an induced current does. The evolutionist would describe sadism as a phyletic survival of which the origin is seen in the sex-battles of the lower animals, and that is perhaps the same thing in other words. But even this explanation, such as it is, becomes doubtful when one realises that in lower primates the tendency is much more pronounced and that emotions are involved which are not in any way related.
|
|
Auteursrechtelijk beschermd