irect result of this is that a group of
phenomena with which cruelty and the infliction of pain must inevitably be
more or less allied is brought within the sphere of courtship and rendered
agreeable to women. Here, indeed, we have the source of that love of
cruelty which some have found so marked in women. This is a phase of
courtship which helps us to understand how it is that, as we shall see,
the idea of pain, having become associated with sexual emotion, may be
pleasurable to women.

Thus, in order to understand the connection between love and pain, we have
once more to return to the consideration, under a somewhat new aspect, of
the fundamental elements in the sexual impulse. In discussing the
"Evolution of Modesty" we found that the primary part of the female in
courtship is the playful, yet serious, assumption of the role of a hunted
animal who lures on the pursuer, not with the object of escaping, but with
the object of being finally caught. In considering the "Analysis of the
Sexual Impulse" we found that the primary part of the male in courtship is
by the display of his energy and skill to capture the female or to arouse
in her an emotional condition which leads her to surrender herself to him,
this process itself at the same time heightening his own excitement. In
the playing of these two different parts is attained in both male and
female that charging of nervous energy, that degree of vascular
tumescence, necessary for adequate discharge and detumescence in an
explosion by which sperm-cells and germ-cells are brought together for the
propagation of the race. We are now concerned with the necessary interplay
of the differing male and female roles in courtship, and with their
accidental emotional by-products. Both male and female are instinctively
seeking the same end of sexual union at the moment of highest excitement.
There cannot, therefore, be real conflict.[63] But there is the semblance
of a conflict, an apparent clash of aim, an appearance of cruelty.
Moreover,--and this is a significant moment in the process from our
present point of view,--when there are rivals for the possession of one
female there is always a possibility of actual combat, so tending to
introduce an element of real violence, of undisguised cruelty, which the
male inflicts on his rival and which the female views with satisfaction
and delight in the prowess of the successful claimant. Here we are brought
close to the zooelogical root