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

PSYCHOLOGY OF SEXwomen. But the limits seem uncertain and narrow; wecannot at present regard either sex as the absolute creation,through "selection/' of the oppositesex.It is necessary to make clear this elementary preliminaryconsideration when approachingthe fundamental factsof sexual psychology. Even when the term "sexual selection"is used, what we are really concerned with is preferentialmating as mediated by the varying attractions of thesensory stimuli which evoke courtship.Courtship, we cannot make too clear, by no meansnecessarily involves, as some still believe, a struggle or achoice between rival candidates for a sexual partner. It isjust as pronounced and just as necessary, even though onlyin an abbreviated form, when rivalry is excluded, andthroughout the sexual life. The act of union is not accomplishedin an effective and happy manner except as theclimax of an ever fresh courtship. Even investigators likeEliot Howard who are most in doubt as to the significanceof sexual ''selection" among animals are emphatic in theirinsistence on those elaborate and prolonged phases ofexcitement in which courtship consists. For courtshipisinvolved in that whole process of tumescence and detumescencewhich isthe foundation of the sexual life.The senses concerned are touch, smell, hearing, andvision. There seems no good reason to include taste evenin abnormal individuals, when we have eliminated fromwhat are usually considered taste-sensations the large partreally furnished by olfaction through the posterior nares,There isprobably indeed good reason why taste propershould not have any share in this matter, for taste is theslave of the other great primary organic need, the need ofnutrition, and if taste had also become associated with theprimary need of reproduction, instinct might be confusedand the lover might seek to devour his partner rather than[40]