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

THE BIOLOGY OF SEX/possesses in the lower animals. With that reservation therecan be no doubt that odor has a certain favorable or unfavorableinfluence in sexual relationships in all humanraces from the lowest to the highest. The fact that itmayand that for most people such odors cannot be abe so,matter of indifference in the most intimate of all relationships,is usually only to be learned casually and incidentally.There can be no doubt, however, that, as Kiernanpointsout, the extent to which olfaction influences thesexual sphere in civilized man has been much underestimated,though we need not run to the opposite extreme,with Gustav Jager, and regard the sexual instincteven in Man as mainly or altogether an olfactory matter.In Man, not onlyis the sexual significance of odor altogethermuch less than in lower animals, but the focus ofolfactory attraction has been displacedfrom the sexualIn thisregions themselves to the upper part of the body.respect the sexual olfactory allurement in man resembleswhat we find in the sphere of vision, for neither the sexualorgans of man nor of woman are usuallybeautiful inthe eyes of the opposite sex, and their exhibition is nowhereregarded as a preliminary stage in courtship. Thecareful concealment of the sexual region has doubtlessfavored this transfer. It has thus happened that when personalodor acts as a sexual allurement it is the armpit,in any case normally the chief focus of odor in the body,which chiefly comes into play, together with the skin andthe hair. We have further to recognize the significant factthat even those personal odors which are chiefly liableunder normal circumstances to come occasionally withinthe conscious sexual sphere, and indeed purely personalodors of all kinds, may fail to exert any attraction, butrather tend to cause antipathy,unless some degree of[55]