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

PSYCHOLOGY OF SEXdull, insensitive, and unfastidious peasants. It flourishesamong primitive peoples and rural communities. It is thevice of the clodhopper who is unattractive to women orof culture it is not ainapt to court them. In some stagesvice at all. Thus, when in Sweden at the end of the thirteenthcentury it was first made an offense by the Swedishpagan provincial laws, it was still only as an offense againstthe owner of the animal, who was entitled to compensation.Among still simpler peoples such as the Salish ofBritish Columbia, animals are regarded as no lower in thescale of life than human beings, and in some respectssuperior,so that there is noplace for our conception of"bestiality."Three conditions have favored the extreme prevalenceof bestiality: (i) primitive conceptions of life whichbuilt up no great barrier between man and the other animals;(2) the extreme familiarity which necessarily existsbetween the peasant and his beasts, often combined withseparation from women; (3) various folk-lore beliefs suchas the efficacy of intercourse with animals as a cure forvenereal disease,etc.Bestiality in the country is far from infrequent. Forthe peasant, whose sensibilities are uncultivated and whomakes but the most elementary demands from a woman,the difference between an animal and a human being inthis respect scarcely seems to be very great. "My wife wasaway too long/' a German peasant explained to the magistrate,"and so I went with my sow/* It is certainly anexplanation that to the peasant, ignorant of theologicaland juridical conceptions, must often seem natural andsufficient. Bestiality thus resembles masturbation andother manifestations of the sexual impulse which may bepracticed merely faute de mieux, and not as, in the strictsense, deviations of the impulse. In this wayit is found