Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 is a collection of essays by Havelock Ellis that explores modesty, sexual periodicity, and auto-erotism from psychological and evolutionary perspectives. Written in a reflective, scientific style, it examines human sexuality as a subject worthy of serious study. It remains a significant historical document in the development of sexology.
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Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
STUDIES IN THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX VOLUME I THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY THE PHENOMENA OF SEXUAL PERIODICITY AUTO-EROTISM BY
HAVELOCK ELLIS
THIRD EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED
1927
GENERAL PREFACE.
The origin of these Studies dates from many years back. As a youth I was faced, as others are, by the problem of sex. Living partly in an
Australian city where the ways of life were plainly seen, partly in the solitude of the bush, I was free both to contemplate and to meditate many things. A resolve slowly grew up within me: one main part of my life-work should be to make clear the problems of sex.
That was more than twenty years ago. Since then I can honestly say that in all that I have done that resolve has never been very far from my thoughts. I have always been slowly working up to this central problem; and in a book published some three years ago—Man and
Woman: a Study of Human Secondary Sexual Characters—I put forward what was, in my own eyes, an introduction to the study of the primary questions of sexual psychology.
Now that I have at length reached the time for beginning to publish my results, these results scarcely seem to me large. As a youth, I had hoped to settle problems for those who came after; now I am quietly content if I do little more than state them. For even that, I now think, is much; it is at least the half of knowledge. In this particular field the evil of ignorance is magnified by our efforts to suppress that which never can be suppressed, though in the effort of suppression it may become perverted. I have at least tried to find out what are the facts, among normal people as well as among abnormal people; for, while it seems to me that the physician's training is necessary in order to ascertain the facts, the physician for the most part only obtains the abnormal facts, which alone bring little light. I have tried to get at the
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