"During the period of sexual activity they seek much more the care and
delicate attention of men than the genital act, which they often only
tolerate. Many households, begun under the happiest auspices--the bride
all the more apt to believe that she loves her betrothed in virtue of her
suggestibility, easily exalted, perhaps at the expense of the
senses--become hells on earth. The sexual act has for the hysterical woman
more than one disillusion; she cannot understand it; it inspires her with
insurmountable repugnance."[246] I refer to these hysterical phenomena
because they present to us, in an extreme form, facts which are common
among women whom, under the artificial conditions of civilized life, we
are compelled to regard as ordinarily healthy and normal. The frequent
painfulness of auto-erotic phenomena is by no means an exclusively
hysterical phenomenon, although often seen in a heightened form in
hysterical conditions. It is probably to some extent simply the result of
a conflict in consciousness with a merely physical impulse which is strong
enough to assert itself in spite of the emotional and intellectual
abhorrence of the subject. It is thus but an extreme form of the disgust
which all sexual physical manifestations tend to inspire in a person who
is not inclined to respond to them. Somewhat similar psychic disgust and
physical pain are produced in the attempts to stimulate the sexual
emotions and organs when these are exhausted by exercise.
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