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

THE BIOLOGY OF SEXspectable theory sometimes put forward defined the sexualimpulse as an "instinct of reproduction." There is, however,strictly speaking, no such instinct, nor is it neededin bisexual organisms. All that is needed is the motorimpulse to bring male and female together in such a wayas to insure fertilization; that once produced, the futureof the offspringis ensured by the stimulus furnished tothe parental impulses; no instinct of reproductionis calledfor.In what has perhaps been the most popular manual ofits subject, Professor W. McDougall's Introduction toSocial Psychology, no treatment of sex was to be found atall (beyond a reference to the "instinct of reproduction")until the eighth edition appeared in 1914 with a supplementarychapter on "the sex instinct." It is here definedas a complex, innately organized, psycho-physical disposition,consisting of three parts, each subserving one of thethree phases that we distinguish in every complete mentalor psycho-physical process, namely the cognitive, theaffective, and the conative; three parts which, from thepoint of view of nervous function and structure, we maycall the afferent or sensory, the central, and the efferentor motor. He points out that on the cognitive side thereis involved an innate disposition to perceive or perceptuallydiscriminate those things towards which such reactionsare demanded by the welfare of the species; that isto say, an ability to discriminate the opposite sex, with,in the higher species,a chain of reactions to ensure completeadaptation in the sexual act.McDougall's definition is, as he himself remarks, thatwhich he would give for all instincts, and he defines instinctsas "certain innate specific tendencies of the mindthat are common to all members of any one species." It is,in fact, a generalized statement which scarcely helps us toF'5]