Psychology of sex - Total No. of Records in System :: 2032

PSYCHOLOGY OF SEXnot only parts of the body but inanimate things whichmay acquire special erotic significance is practically infinite.There is indeed nothing that may not take on suchsignificance. That is why the legal attempt to suppress"obscenity," regarded (according to the judicially recognizeddefinition) as a tendency to "deprave and corruptthose whose minds are open to such immoral influences,"iscompletely unworkable. Thus Dr. Jelliffe's patient,Zenia X, wrote that sex symbols became insistent at theage of thirteen and fourteen: "From this time on, thoughmore fully in later years since the struggle has been moreconsciously sexual and thus more violent, I have beensurrounded by symbols, particularly of the phallus: agarden hose in use or a jet of water, pears particularly orother elongated fruits, long pendant catkins, the pistilin the center of a flower, a stick or stick-shaped objectthrust into a round hole, the lobe of the ear with whichIhave toyed since birth, my teeth, and my tongue whichthe others,I have nervously pressed against them until weary, afinger which seemingly in order to suppress a suddensexual thought I have many times pointed before me andthen in quick correction have drawn in and folded withinthe thumb which again involuntarily in a repressiveeffort is folded close within the fingers, certainletters of the alphabet. These are some of the symbolswhich have beset me on every hand, thrusting themselvescontinually before me, to remind me of the phallus orof the actual contact of the organs male and female."The manifold complexity of sexual symbols is againbrought out in a case described by Marcinowski, a highlyintelligent married woman of 27, who was neurotic withslight germs of morbid deviation. The symbols were aptto occur in her dreams which she was skilful in interpreting:ships in haven were often the symbol of coitus,[166]