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

THE BIOLOGY OF SEXprocess of evacuation comparable to the emptying of thebladder, and the other which urges each partner to physicaland psychic contact with the other partner. The firstcomponent Moll terms the impulse of detumescence, thesecond the impulse of contrectation, Both these componentsmay be traced back to the sexual glands, the firstbeing primary and the second secondary, but they aredistinct and each may exist separately. Their union constitutesthe complete normal sexual impulse.Moll's analysis had much to commend it, as a scientificand comprehensive statement, and it has in consequencebeen widely accepted. It presents, however, certain difficulties:it is, for instance, less satisfactory when appliedto women than to men, and it has the disadvantage,pointed out by Robert Miiller, Saint-Paul, and others,that it divides the sexual process. In order to avoid thisand other difficulties, the theory of Moll was by me somewhatmodified with the aid of the least contested part ofthe Darwinian doctrine of sexual selection. If we look intothe sexual process as it exists among animals generally,and among men in the savage state, we soon realize that wecannot start with detumescence. Before detumescence cantake place, tumescence must be achieved. In domesticatedanimals and in civilized man that is often an easy process.It is not usually so in the natural state. There it is achievedthrough much activity and display on the part of themale, and long contemplation and consideration on thepart of the female, the part taken by each in this processserving to increase tumescence alike in both. "Contrectation,"whether physical or psychic, has at its end theheightening of tumescence and may be regarded as partof the process.It isduring the slow process of tumescence that sexualselection is decided, the crystallizations of love (as