Advertisement
Not a member of Pastebin yet?
Sign Up,
it unlocks many cool features!
- Another case in point was that of the boy Jack, already
- mentioned in chapter seven. Jack, it will be remembered,
- suffered from some glandular disturbance, which seemed to
- over stimulate his dominance to the point where he could
- not be compelled to comply, even by physical injury. Yet,
- Jack responded submissively to his " class teacher ", who
- was a very gentle-mannered girl of twenty-three or twenty-
- four. Despite her soft and pleasing approach, however,
- Miss B. was very firm in her commands, and had a reputation
- for keeping excellent order among the children in her charge.
- Jack responded to this treatment more readily, even, than
- did somte of the other children. Jack and Miss B. were
- " great friends ". As we have already observed, Miss B.
- succeeded in obtaining Jack's promise to forego his youthful
- gangster activities, and this promise was kept for as long
- a time as the child's physical abnormality permitted. Jack's
- promise to Miss B., and his marked obedience to her com-
- mands in the school room, were clearly expressions of sub-
- mission and not of compliance. Jack admitted to me with
- some reluctance that he " liked to mind Miss B." Sub-
- mission, apparently, was even more pleasant to Jack than
- was dominance, though submission occupied a much smaller
- proportion of Jack's life than dominance, because he was
- stimulated to dominance much more continuously than to
- submission response.
- This initial point of contrast between submission and compliance response is brought out in the many cases of little
- boys, from three to seven years old, who respond obediently
- and affectionately to their mothers, or, sometimes to nursemaids and girls older than themselves, while they may react
- dominantly toward their fathers and toward older boys with
- whom they play. I have had occasion to study three or four
- cases of this type for short periods of time. One boy, aged
- four, in the public kindergarten obeyed the commands of
- an older sister, a girl between twelve and thirteen years old,
- without protest and apparently with considerable pleasure
- derived from the obedience itself. This same child, however,
- was reported as extremely rebellious toward his father's
- authority, and also caused some difficulty at school because
- of disobedience to a woman teacher whose manner was rather harsh, and whose attitude was that of a strict disciplinarian.
- Among cases of women dancers studied, physical love
- relationships with other women seem to be the rule rather
- than the exception. In several cases, well-adapted love
- relationships with husband and children were not felt to be
- sufficient, without supplementary love affairs with other
- women. The husband, in one case (an actor) reported that
- his own physical love contacts with his wife were more enjoy-
- able after passion responses had been evoked from her by
- another girl. In this case, also, love relationships between
- the mother and her two children seemed to be enhanced rather
- than diminished at such times, so far as one could observe.
- Girls and women who indulge in this form of love expression
- appear to feel no abnormality or unnaturalness about it, and,
- in fact, frequently are not restrained from free physical love
- contact with the woman lover even by the presence of other
- people. A male psychologist once reported to me a case of
- two girl lovers, who had been separated from one another
- for some weeks by the college authorities. These girls per-
- formed the love act unhesitatingly in his presence, manifesting
- intense passion and captivation emotion respectively. Accord-
- ing to this report, the girls regarded their love relationship as
- something peculiarly sacred, and though they were both
- reported as forming love relationships with males shortly
- after this occurrence, these relationships with men did not
- appear to detract in any way from their love for one
- another.
- Verified instances of the same type have come to my atten-
- tion in connection with love affairs of Parisienne dancers with
- both males and other girls. In one instance a girl begged her
- male lover to be allowed to perform a physical love act with
- another girl at the conclusion of her relationship with him,
- and in his presence. Recently an extremely able and emi-
- nently practical business-man told me with complete tolerance
- and lack of surprise, that two girl employees had been seen
- enjoying physical love relationship with one another, in a
- public portion of the office building, where the act was almost
- certain to be witnessed b^ other women workers. In reporting
- the general trend of female love relationships of this type, I
- have selected merely those cases illustrating the apparent
- supremacy of passion over other influences w^ich might be
- thought to have had the strongest inhibitory effect upon the
- physical love relationship between one girl and another. So
- long as a woman possesses two distinct love mechanisms,
- both stimulable from the environment by stimulus persons
- of different types, it seems highly probable that she will con-
- tinue to enjoy both types of love relationship whenever pos-
- sible, despite attempted social prohibition of one or both
- varieties of love behaviour.
- With regard to the possibly deleterious effect upon women's
- physical health of this type of love relationship with other
- women, I have been unable to verify a male medical opinion,
- given me at the beginning of my investigation, that such love
- affairs between girls were always injurious to their physical
- health. Some deleterious results appeared, however, in cases
- where the women who were carrying on the physical relation-
- ships in question were members of a segregated group in a
- penal institution. In this group of female prisoners studied,
- some twenty women or more, out of the total prison popula-
- tion (both white and negroes) of ninety-seven, were known
- to be carrying on love affairs with other women. Two of
- these women had shown loss of weight and general physical
- deterioration, as a result, seemingly, of the excessive amount
- of passion response repeatedly evoked by their female lovers,
- under circumstances preventing the women thus expressing
- passion from obtaining any counterbalance of love captivation
- excitement from relationships with males. In the other cases,
- the prison matrons and physician could determine no symp-
- toms of physical deterioration traceable in any way to a love
- relationship. In several instances, on the other hand, the
- emotional attitude of both women lovers toward prison
- discipline and compulsory work, was shown to have improved
- after the beginning of the love affair. Other cases of captiva-
- tion-passion relationships between girls which have been
- reported to me, where medical examinations were available,
- the cases being, of course, outside segretegad or institutional
- groups, seem to indicate that no emotional or physical results
- of a deleterious nature could be detected.
- A further problem presents itself in connection with women's
- expression of passion emotion in relationship with other women.
- I am free to confess that when I undertook to study this type
- of love relationship, I had not the slightest idea of its import-
- ance in the emotional life of women, nor of the prevalence of
- such relationships among women whose love conduct happened
- to be relatively uninhibited, due either to previous experience,
- or captivation and passion relationships between upper class
- college girls and freshmen, where no genital organ stimulation
- occurred. I was aware from personal observation that young
- women living together in a home might evoke from one another
- extremely pleasant and pervasive love responses, of both types, without bodily contact or genital excitement. Upon
- investigating, with the invaluable cid of my collaborators,
- the love relationships between girls and women outside the
- influence of college authorities and home life, however, I found
- that nearly half of the female love relationships concerning
- which significant data could be obtained, were accompanied
- by bodily love stimulation.
Advertisement
Add Comment
Please, Sign In to add comment
Advertisement