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

THE BIOLOGY OF SEXfoundation occur in both men and women, such as thestuff-fetishisms (contacts with fur, velvet, silk, etc.)andmay have consequences of social importance, such as kleptolagnia;this is found chiefly in women. The specialas it is termed, on the other hand,perversion of frottage,isonly found in a pronounced degreein men and consistsin a desire to bring the clothed body, and usuallythough not exclusively the genital region, into close contactwith the clothed body of a woman, and in seekingto gratify this passion in places of publicresort withwomen who are complete strangers. Many women have atsome time, when standing in a crowd (as at the back ofa theater gallery or sometimes even in church), becomeunpleasantly aware of a deliberate contact of this kind.This morbid deviation is of medico-legal interest, and itsvictims may be otherwise fairly normal men of good socialposition and superior intelligence.Ticklishness may here be noted as a kind of by-productof tactile sensation, founded on reflexes developing evenbefore birth, which is closely related to sexual phenomena.It is, as it were, a play of tumescence, on which laughtercomes as a play of detumescence, to disperse undesiredsexual emotions often (as among bashful sex-consciousgirls) Ticklishness leads on to the more serious phenomenaof tumescence, and it tends to die out .afteradolescence, atthe period during which sexual relationshipsnormally begin.Such a view of ticklishness, as a kind of modesty of theskin, existing only to be destroyed,is indeed but one ofits aspects. Ticklishness certainly arose from a non-sexualstarting-point, and may well have protective uses, for, asLouis Robinson pointed out, in young animals the mostticklish regions are the most vulnerable and those mostneeding protection. Tickling, however, within the sexual[43]