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that has left the body. 17 It was not only the ancient Greeks who contemplated this association.
Christian writer, Tertullian, based his theory of the soul on the phenomenon of orgasm.
Tertullian states that:
[Do we not]…in that very heat of extreme gratification when the
generative fluid is ejected, feel that somewhat of our soul has gone
out from us? And do we not experience a faintness and prostration
along with a dimness of sight? 18
Therefore, the association with orgasm and death was firmly rooted in medical theory, practical
application, and common belief in the nature of the soul. This association remained strong
throughout the centuries, up until the late-eighteenth century. Examples of how this belief and
association not merely lingered, but formed the foundation of medical and sexual understanding
can be seen throughout the arts. A particularly poignant example can be found in the sixteenth-
century secular madrigal, where topics of love and death, laden with implications of sexual
intercourse, invoke both the humorous quality of a private joke and the serious philosophical
conundrum presented by the deeply rooted fear of death as connected with sex.
17 Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1990), 46.
18 Ibid, 47.
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