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

THE BIOLOGY OF SEXdition to respond adequately to the demand of the child'sat the earliest moment after birth. Suction ofsucking lipsthe nipple causes objectively a reflex contraction of thewomb. On the subjective side no one seems to havelecorded that the act of suckling tends to produce inwomen voluptuous sexual emotions until Cabanis, in theearly nineteenth century, noted that several sucklingwomen had told him that the child in suckling producedsuch 1feelings. It is easy to see why this normal associationof sexual emotion with suckling should have come about,It is essential for the preservation of the lives of youngmammals that the mothers should have an adequate motivein pleasurable sensation for enduringthe trouble ofsuckling. The most obvious method for obtaining thenecessary degree of pleasurable sensation, beyond the reliefof the tension caused by the secretion, lay in utilizing thereservoir of sexual emotion, with which channels of communicationmight already be said to be open, through theaction of the sexual organs on the breastsduring pregnancy.It must be added that while the connection betweenthe nipple and the sexual apparatus thus appears to be sointimate it isprobably not specific.Kurdinovski found byexperiments on rabbits that the stimulation of other orifices,as the ear, will also produce strong contractions ofthe womb. Perhaps any stimulus anywhere applied to theevoke a uterine contraction.periphery may by reflex pathsThis suppositionis in relation with the general sexual1 1 should like to point out, however, that, before Cabanis, C. Bonnetin 1764 (in his Contemplation de la Nature), had remarked on "thesweet commotion accompanied by a feeling of pleasure," as supportingthe natural affection of the mother for the child, "if it is not one of theprincipal causes," while for creatures below the mammals, he added,"we have also to consider the agreeable reciprocal warmth of motherand offspring."[49]