The Development of the Sexual Instinct
by Havelock Ellis

Case histories from the classic text, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volumes II through V
E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

Volume V, Appendix, History IV

1927 Full text from Project Gutenberg

Go to the listing of case histories.

     When I was 9 years old a boy at the preparatory school, which I attended, showed me the act of masturbation, which he said he had practiced for a long time, and which he urged me to imitate, if I wished to become a father when I grew up, and married! Boy-like I believed him and tried, but the sensation obtained was not a pleasant one (I suppose that I was too rough with myself) and I desisted.

     When I was about 12 years old, a schoolfellow told me that he had seen his nurse copulating with the groom, and he and I used to haunt the woods in the hope that we might see an amorous couple so engaged, but without success. We often talked of the act, as to how it was done. Neither he nor I had any clear ideas on the subject, save as to the organs involved. I was about 15 when a maidservant of the house in which I was a boarder, came to my bedroom one night and taught me how to masturbate her. She said that this was a good thing for me to do, and warned me never to "play with myself" as it would kill me, or drive me mad. I told her that I had tried it, but could not bring on a pleasurable feeling, so she did it to me, and although I did not have an emission, I derived great pleasure from the act. She told me that it never did a boy any harm to let a girl play with his parts, and promised that if I would keep the secret, she would often do this for me. Naturally I promised to say nothing, and she often came up to my room. Later on she used to insert my penis into her vulva, while she was rubbing it, at the same time giving me a pigeon kiss. This modus operandi was much appreciated by me. One night, after we had been together thus, I dreamt of her and her maneuvers and had my first emission. I was very proud of this, as I considered that I had at last attained to man's estate, and told her of it. She never allowed me to insert my penis into her vulva after that, alleging that she did not want to have a baby.

     I was about 16½ years old when I had my first real coitus, my partner in the act being a girl some two years older than I, who lived near us. I enjoyed the act very much, as she permitted, nay insisted on, emission intra vaginam, and told her that this was much nicer than my amours with the maidservant which of course I had confided to her. She laughed, and said: "Of course." We often copulated, as long as I was at home, and then I lost sight of her. Of all the women with whom I have had to do, save one, she had the most copious secretion of mucus, which in those days I believed was the woman's semen. Her thighs used to be wet with it.

     At the University I had regular relations with women of all sorts, rarely missing a week. Two of them were married women, one the wife of a solicitor, the other of a doctor. How proud I felt of my first intrigue with a married woman! I felt that I was really a man of the world now!

     But though my friends used to tell me all about their love affairs, and I longed to confide in them, I did not do so. This was because when I went up to the University, my uncle said that he would give me a word of advice and hoped that I would follow it—never to give away a woman, and never to refuse to respond to a woman's advances, whoever she were. To neglect this advice would, he said, be foolish, and to break the rules "damned ungentlemanly." I wish I had always followed advice proffered, as closely as I have followed this. One night, when I was somewhat disguised in liquor, as our grandfathers would have put it, I picked up a girl, who was a private prostitute, if the phrase be permissible. She declined copulation, and proposed other means of satisfaction. I insisted, being stubborn in my cups. Had I been sober I should have done as she suggested, for I have always made it a point to allow the woman to choose the method of gratification, and not to demand, or even suggest, anything myself. I like to please women, and I have always been curious as to their wants and desires, as revealed, without outside influence, by themselves. The result of my refusing all methods of gratification save the most ordinary was that the girl, who must have known that she was not all right, but shrank from saying so in so many words, gave me a gonorrhœa, which lasted nine weeks and much interfered with my amours, as I naturally declined to run the risk of infecting my partner, a risk which to my certain knowledge many a young fellow has run, with disastrous consequence to the confiding woman. As it was due to my tipsy obstinacy, I could not blame the girl, but resolved never to drink too much again, a resolve which I have kept, save once, unbroken. In those days we youngsters thought that it was manly to be able to carry one's liquor well, and did all in our power to attain to the seasoned head; but I considered that the risks entailed were too serious to be neglected.

     I was well on in my 26th year when I met a widow with whom I fell in love, with the result that I married her. She is a most sensible woman, and it was her intellectual gifts which were the attraction to me. In my amours intellect has never played a part. She has all along been cognizant of, and lenient to, my polygamous tendencies; for she recognizes the fact that whatever fredaine I may have on hand makes not the slightest difference in my love and respect for her. Were she a more sensual woman, perhaps things would be different.

     In all I have had to do with 81 other women, of whose special characteristics I kept a careful note at the time. Twenty-six were normal women with whom my liasons have lasted long, so I know more about them than I do about the other fifty-five, who were prostitutes, and with some of whom my dealings were but for an afternoon.

     The races represented have been these, for I have seen a bit of the world: English, Scotch, Irish, Welsh, French, German, Italian, Greek, Danish, Hungarian, Roumanian, Indian, and Japanese. Taking them all round, the only difference that I found between old and young women is that the older ones are less selfish, and more complaisant, and less inclined to resent one's being unable to attain to the height of their desire, for from time to time I have been unable to "come up to the scratch" after a heavy night's labor, or when I was afraid of being caught in the act of coition, a fear which, in my experience, acts as a stimulus to desire in women, unlike its action in men. Of all the women with whom I have had to do the nicest in every way have been the French women. The English women of the town drink too much, and are far too keen on getting as much money as they can for as little as they can, to please me. Were the London girls to recognize that men do not like a tipsy woman, and that where there is so much competition the person who is most skillful and most polite gets the most custom, the alien invasion in Regent street would soon come to an end.

     Of the fifty-five prostitutes: eighteen informed me that they were in the habit of masturbating; eight of their own free will, without asking for reward, did fellatio; six asked me to do cunnilingus, which I naturally declined to do; three proposed anal coitus. Of those who did fellatio, two (one French and one German) told me that they had taken to it because they had heard that human semen was an excellent remedy against consumption, which disease had carried off some of their relatives, and that they had gradually come to like doing it. All who told me that they masturbated, asked me whether I did so too, and two desired me to show them the act, one alleging that she liked to see a man do it; she had been married late in life, after a "stormy youth" and had had, she said, a large experience of the male sex. They all seemed to think that however much the practice of self-excitement might hurt a man, and all thought that it would hurt him, a woman might masturbate as often as she liked, failing better means of satisfaction, as she had no such loss of substance as a man.

     Of the twenty-six normal women, whom I knew more intimately than I did the fifty-five prostitutes, thirteen, without being questioned by me, blurted out the fact that they were habitual masturbators, apparently all required to think of the loved person to obtain full satisfaction. Fellatio was proposed, and fully performed, by nine, of whom three experienced the orgasm as soon as they perceived that I had attained to it. All were more or less excited while doing it. One proposed anal coitus, "just to see what it was like;" and three proposed cunnilingus, one having been initiated by a girl friend, and one by her husband. The third had, I believe, evolved the act out of her own inner consciousness in her desire to experience pleasure with me. My relations with one of the twenty-six were confined to my masturbation of her, the while she did fellatio, as she said that she "had no feeling inside down there."

     With two exceptions my partings from these normal women have not been tragic and all whom I have met in after life (seven) have been very ready to resume relations with me, four of them having made the proposal themselves.

     One thing has struck me, and that is the, often great, difference that exists between what a woman's looks lead one to think she is, and what she is when one becomes her lover; the most sensual woman that I have met might have sat for her portrait as the Madonna, and she was the only one who took pleasure in hearing and relating "smoking-room stories," a form of amusement which, perhaps from their want of appreciation of humor and wit, women do not indulge in—at least in my experience.