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

PSYCHOLOGY OF SEXspring may show a tendency in the direction of femaleness,or, under other circumstances, the female offspringshow a tendency to maleness, the strain thus able to givean impress being termed "strong" and the other "weak."Here we see already, in a low zoological form, the conditionof inter-sexuality which when we proceed to Man andenter the psychological field has sometimes been considered(though incorrectly)to constitute an "intermediate"sex. It is, more strictly, the result of a quantitative disharmonybetween the male and female sex-determiningfactors. Being part of the hereditary constitution of theindividual, it is inborn, likely to become more pronouncedas development proceeds, and, in the higher mammals, tomanifest itself in the psychic sphere.When dealing with moths, it is found that this intersexuality,more simple than when occurring higher in thezoological scale, may be produced by mixing differentraces of the same species. When we approach nearer toMan, the forms of intersexuality differ, are less pronounced,or not at all, in the external physical aspect, andare due less to mixture of different races than to variedindividual deviations from the normal, while sometimesat all stages external factors may be influential.We begin to come closer to the actual mechanism bywhich intersexuality isproduced when we turn again tothe action of the hormones. We may view these as takingup the guidance of the sex process after the influence of1the initial sex-chromosomes, XX or XY, has been ex-hausted. The somatic, or general, tissues of the body possessthe potency of developing the characters of either sexunder the stimulus of the special complex of sex-hormoneswhich they receive. The ovary, indeed, it is believed, doesnot at any early stage exert any marked influence upon thesoma, the female development being seemingly innate,[226]