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A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF THE EMOTION OF LOVE BETWEEN THE SEXES.[1]

By SANFORD BELL, Fellow in Clark University.


The emotion of love between the sexes has as yet received no thorough
scientific treatment. No writer so far as I can find has treated it
from a genetic standpoint. The literature upon the subject is
therefore meager. In his recent treatise upon "The Psychology of the
Emotions," Ribot[2] remarks: "The sex-instinct, the last in
chronological order with man and the higher animals, gives rise to
the emotion of love with its numerous individual varieties. Most
psychologists have been very sparing of details where it is
concerned, and one might mention certain voluminous treatises which
contain no mention of it. Is this through exaggerated delicacy? Or is
it because the authors think that their place has been usurped by the
novelists who have so obstinately confined themselves to the study of
this passion? But the novelist's mode of analysis is different from
the psychological mode, and does not exclude it." This author then
devotes one chapter of eleven pages to the treatment of the sexual
instinct, which includes what he has to say upon sex-love. Brief as
this treatment is, it is valuable, both for the facts it presents and
for the problems it suggests. Havelock Ellis, who has perhaps done
more than any other investigator in the field of the normal
Psychology of Sex says in his most recent work:[3] "It is a very
remarkable fact that although for many years past serious attempts
have been made to elucidate the psychology of sexual perversions,
little or no endeavor has been made to study the psychologic
development of the normal sexual emotions. Nearly every writer seems
either to take for granted that he and his readers are so familiar
with all the facts of normal sex psychology that any detailed
statement is altogether uncalled for, or else he is content to write
a few introductory phrases, mostly made up from anatomic, philosophic
and historical work.

"Yet it is unreasonable to take normal phenomena for granted here as
in any other region of medicine. A knowledge of such phenomena is as
necessary here as physiology is to pathology or anatomy to surgery.
So far from the facts of normal sex development, sex emotions and sex
needs being uniform and constant, as is assumed by those who consider
their discussion unnecessary, the range of variation within fairly
normal limits is immense, and it is impossible to meet with two
individuals whose records are nearly identical.

"There are two fundamental reasons why the endeavor should be made to
obtain a broad basis of clear information on the subject. In the
first place, the normal phenomena give the key to the abnormal, and
the majority of sexual perversions, including even those that are
most repulsive, are but exaggerations of instincts and emotions that
are germinal in normal human beings. In the second place, what is
normal cannot be determined until the sexual life of a large number
of healthy individuals is known, and until the limits of normal
sexuality are known the physician is not in a position to lay down
any reasonable rules of sexual hygiene."

Although very short, the analysis of the sex passions in adults by
Herbert Spencer[4] in a part of one section in his "Principles of
Psychology," is one of the best. Bain[5] devotes one chapter to the
Tender Emotion which he makes include Sex-love, the parental
feelings, the benevolent affection, gratitude, sorrow, admiration and
esteem. A very few pages are given to sex-love proper. Very
suggestive paragraphs bearing either directly or indirectly upon the
subject are to be found in the works of such writers as Moll, Sergi,
Mantegazza, James, Janet, Delboeuf, Fere, Boveri, Kiernan, Hartmann,
Dessoir, Fincke and others. There is a vast amount of literature upon
the pathological phases of the subject which is to be considered in
another chapter.

The analyses thus far given by scientists are limited to the emotion
as it is manifested in the adult. A few writers have referred to it
in dealing with the psychology of adolescence, but in this connection
refer to it as one of the many ways in which the adolescent spirit
shows its intensity, turbulence and capriciousness. I know of no
scientist who has given a careful analysis of the emotion as it is
seen in the adolescent. It is true that it has been the chosen theme
of the poet, romancer and novelist. But in the products of such
writers we may look for artistic descriptions of the emotion and for
scenes and incidents that very truly portray its nature; we have no
right to expect a scientific analysis.

Adults need only to recall their own youth or to observe even briefly
our grammar and high school boys and girls, to be convinced that love
between the sexes is one of the emotions that become conspicuously
apparent in early adolescence. This is what might reasonably be
expected since the emotion is derived from the sex instinct, and
pubescence marks the period of rapid acceleration in the growth of
the sex organs. With the increase in size and vigor of the
reproductive organs there comes the strong impulse for the organs to
function. Before civilization developed the system of sex inhibitions
that are considered an essential part of the ethical habits of our
young people, the impulse to function was not