This abbreviated courtship by which tumescence is secured or heightened in the repetition of acts of coitus which have become familiar, is mainly tactile.
The act of exhibition itself gratifies the sexual impulse, and usually it suffices to replace both tumescence and detumescence.
It is, indeed, in the muscular release of accumulated pressures and tensions, involved by the act of liberating the stored-up excretion, that we have the closest simulacrum of the tumescence and detumescence of the sexual process.
It is not only the man who is supplied with erectile tissue which in the process of tumescence becomes congested and swollen.
It was inevitable that this should be so, for it is during the slow process of tumescence that sexual selection is decided, the crystallizations of love elaborated, and, to a large extent, the individual erotic symbols determined.
Courtship, as we commonly term the process of tumescence which takes place when a woman is first sexually approached by a man, is usually a highly prolonged process.
In some monkeys it would seem that the muscular movement which in man has become the smile is the characteristic facial expression of sexual tumescence or courtship.
The facial expression when tumescence is completed is marked by a high degree of energy in men and of loveliness in women.
The occurrence of the mucous flow in tumescence always indicates that that process is actively affecting the central sexual organs, and that voluptuous emotions are present.
In tumescence the organism is slowly wound up and force accumulated; in the act of detumescence the accumulated force is let go and by its liberation the sperm-bearing instrument is driven home.
A woman with a child in her womb is the everlasting miracle which all the romance of love, all the cunning devices of tumescence and detumescence, have been invented to make manifest.
Tumescence is the piling on of the fuel; detumescence is the leaping out of the devouring flame whence is lighted the torch of life to be handed on from generation to generation.
Effusion takes place into the cavity of the tunica vaginalis, and thereby the tumescence is still more increased, this tunic from its great dilatibility readily accommodating itself to the accumulation of fluid within.
At first it is soft and yielding, but after a time painful inflammatory tumescence supervenes, the violence and extent of which will depend on the severity of the injury, and very much also on the treatment to which the parts are subjected.
But there is diffused vascular and nervous tumescence and a state of exaltation comparable, though not equal, to that experienced in adolescent and adult age.
A limited number of mature women, some of them physicians, report having experienced in the pubertal years localized tumescence and other disturbances which made them definitely conscious of sexual instincts.
I refer especially to the frequent occurrence of involuntary sexual tumescence and to the occasional nocturnal emissions, which processes leave the boy in no doubt whatever as to the nature, source, and desirability of sexual pleasure.
Both the clitoris and the lips are filled with expandable blood vessels, and in a state of tumescence they are greatly enlarged by a flow of blood into the parts.
Close and prolonged contact of these regions, therefore, under conditions favorable to tumescence sets up a powerful current of nervous stimulation.
In so far, however, as they are aids to tumescence they must be regarded as coming within the range of normal variation.
These qualities, as well as its intimate and primitive association with the apparatus of tumescence and detumescence, make touch the readiest and most powerful channel by which the sexual sphere may be reached.
Body Odors in Civilization Tend to Cause Sexual Antipathy unless some Degree ofTumescence is Already Present.
Courtship, properly understood, is the process whereby both the male and the female are brought into that state of sexual tumescence which is a more or less necessary condition for sexual intercourse.
In man the process of tumescence and detumescence is simple.
Having thus viewed the matter broadly, we may consider in detail a few examples of the process of tumescence among the lower animals and man, for, as will be seen, the process in both is identical.
Tumescence and detumescence are alike fundamental, primitive, and essential; in resting the sexual impulse on these necessarily connected processes we are basing ourselves on the solid bedrock of nature.
A state of tumescence is not normally constant, and tumescencemust be obtained before detumescence is possible.
It is tumescence which is the really essential part of the process, and we cannot afford, with Moll, to ignore it altogether.
Tumescence must thus be obtained before desire can become acute, and courtship runs pari passu with physiological processes.
The conception of the psychology of the sexual impulse here set forth, while correlated to terms of a physical process of tumescence and detumescence, may be said to be independent of the ultimate physiological origins of that process.
