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

SEXUAL DEVIATIONas Aristotle said, to be a master of metaphor, and here aGate of Hell is the wrong metaphor. We are not here onthe stage of a divine comedy such as Dante presented, butin the realm of biology, where the physiologicalis for everpassing into the pathological, and blending with it almostimperceptibly, without the opening of any gate.The elementsof pathology are already to be found in the physiological,and pathological processes are still following thelaws of physiology. Every normal man in matters of sex,when we examine him carefully enough,is found to showsome abnormal elements, and the abnormal man is merelymanifesting in a disordered or extravagant shape somephase of the normal man. Normal and abnormal, takenin the mass, can all be plotted as variations of differentdegree on the same curve. The loving woman whoexclaims: "I could eat you!" is connected by links, eachin itself small, with Jack the Ripper. We all possess withinus, in a more or less developed form, the germs ofatrocities.It is not, therefore, because it is "abnormal" that asexual act becomes reprehensible. That view once prevailed.A narrow conception of what is "natural" washeld; everything else was "unnatural" and to be vituperated,if not to be punished, even severely punished, for itwas perhaps a crime, almost certainly a sin.Now that our knowledge of what is "natural" hasgrown, and the existence of endless variations in naturehas to be admitted, a different conception is tending toprevail.We find that we have to discriminate. The questionis no longer: Is the act abnormal? It becomes: Is theact injurious? Society isnot concerned with the varietiesof sexual couples, but with the question of determiningthose variations which inflict injury. That question is ofsome importance since it is believed by experienced physi-