Friedlander has wisely remarked that there is more sensuality than sexuality in love. Which after all means that sex is only a small part of love. It is only after the various senses have reported to the central nervous system the presence of numerous fetishes symbolising peace and safety, that the sex union is not only possible, but extremely attractive and creates a durable bond between two human beings. Sight is naturally the most important of the senses. Like hearing, it is a long distance sense, which does not require close proximity like smell, nor close contact like taste and touch.
Thru association of memories, sight becomes the perfect, all embracing, descriptive sense, able to substitute for all the other senses.
A glance reveals not only the color, size and shape of an object, but its consistency, firmness or softness, its state of preservation or deterioration, its probable odor and taste, etc.
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Sight perceives the exposed and obvious fetishes and, thru memory associations, imagines those which are neither exposed nor obvious.
Visual sensations are the most powerful experienced by the organism; a slight injury to the optic nerve produces a greater shock than major injuries to any other nerve of the body. The popularity of the movies is based upon that characteristic. To the unimaginative, primitive people who relish that childish form of entertainment, visual sensations replace and suggest almost every other form of sensory gratification.
I have shown in Chapter III that the large majority of fetishes are visual, being impressions of color and size, which were produced on the child's visual nerves thru close proximity with the mother's body.
Auditory Sensations which enhance erotic states also hark back very obviously to infancy. The caressing tone of the lovers' voices, the well modulated words of praise which they speak to each other in a low monotonous sing-song during their embraces, the baby talk in which so many lovers indulge, remind one unavoidably of the crooned lullabies with which the loving mother created a state of peace and safety that would enable the nursling to doze off.
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Smell. In animals the sense of smell plays probably a more important part than the sense of sight. In man the olfactory sense has become more negative and protective than positive. It enables him to avoid rather than to locate certain objects. This partial atrophy of the positive olfactory capacities is undoubtedly due to the progress of hygiene and cleanliness in human life.
The child whose mother is carefully shampooed and bathed will not consider strong odors emanating from hair or arm pits as a symbol of safety. On the contrary, they will be something foreign to him, hence suggestive of danger.
In ancient times, bodily odors were frequently mentioned as love stimulants. The Homeric poems, the Song of Songs, the Kamasutra and other Hindoo erotic works, the Arabian Perfumed Garden and even in more recent times, poems like Herrick's "Julia's Sweat," extolled strong body odors which at the present day not only are deemed offensive but cannot be mentioned except in medical writings.
The modern bathroom has exiled olfactory allusions from literature.
Odors can be, not only fetishes but very often[Pg 59] powerful antifetishes. This is partly due to a repression of the child's interest in his excretions which later burst forth in the use of perfume by women, smoking by men and women. Cigar smoking for instance supplies an outlet for a number of childish polymorphous perversions, to use Freud's expression.
In this case as in many others, violent repugnance to odors good or bad in adulthood may be traced to a morbid craving for them in childhood.
The Sense of Taste is not very important in love, altho some experienced lovers detect a distinct flavor in the skin of various parts of one woman's skin, cheeks, arms, etc.
Taste observed in purely nutritional activities reveals constantly its unconscious infantile origin. However completely we may have been weaned, we constantly pay a tribute of appreciation to our first food.
The exaggerated and unjustified importance we attribute to milk in the diet of adults, the way in which we designate a white complexion as "milky" or "creamy," and in which we praise many tender foods by stating that they are "like cream" or "melt in our mouth" illustrates, together with the popularity[Pg 60] of breast fetishism, the influence which infantile gustatory impressions have made on all of us.
Touch is probably as important as sight for physico-chemical reasons. All animals seem to enjoy the close contact of other animals of their own species. Even on very warm days, puppies, kittens and young birds derive a very great comfort from being huddled together in kennel, basket or nest.
There are two reasons for that craving for contact. The s............