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

PSYCHOLOGY OF SEXto look even children in the eye, or to make advances towomen, or to urinate in the presence of others.Hirschfeld has sought to overcome some of the difficultiessurrounding the definition of sadism and masochismby introducing the term metatropism, meaning thereby akind of reversed or exchanged sexual attitude, the mantaking on and exaggerating the normal feminine attitudeof the woman, and the woman taking on and exaggeratingthe normal masculine attitude of the man. So that sadismin a man would merely be a heightening of the normalmale sexual attitude, and masochism in a woman a heighteningof the normal female sexual attitude, both sadismand masochism becoming totally different conditions accordingas they occur in a man or in a woman. Masculinesadism and feminine masochism are thus for Hirschfeldsimply hyperesthetic or erotomanic excesses of the normalsexual impulse, while in the opposite sex they becomecomplete metatropic deviations from normality. This conceptionhas not, however, been generally accepted. It awkwardlycomplicates the matter; it is based on a conceptionof normal sexuality which not all will accept; Hirschfeldoften the reversehimself admits that the sadistic man isof virile, and the masochistic man the reverse of femininein temperament, so that the ismetatropic conception butlamely applicable.It still seems most convenient to speakof algolagnia, with its two opposite but often related formsof sadism and masochism, whether we are concerned withmen or women.A difficulty has been created out of the experiencing ofpain as pleasure. In algolagnia, however, it is not the painitself which is pleasure but the sexual emotion which itarouses. Algolagnic subjects are usually to be regarded asunder-sexed rather than over-sexed, they present the reverseof the hyperesthetic or the sexually athletic state.[200]