ake of a few minutes' pleasure, which is not long
enough. I do not know how my experience compares with other
women's, but I feel sure that in my case the time needed is
longer than usual, and the longer the better, always, with me. As
to liking pain--no, I do not really like it, although I can
tolerate pain very well, of any kind; but I like to feel force
and strength; this is usual, I think, women being--or supposed to
be--passive in love. I have not found that 'pain at once kills
pleasure.'"

Again, another lady briefly states that, for her, pain has a
mental fascination, and that such pain as she has had she has
liked, but that, if it had been any stronger, pleasure would have
been destroyed.

The evidence thus seems to point, with various shades of
gradation, to the conclusion that the idea or even the reality of
pain in sexual emotion is welcomed by women, provided that this
element of pain is of small amount and subordinate to the
pleasure which is to follow it. Unless coitus is fundamentally
pleasure the element of pain must necessarily be unmitigated
pain, and a craving for pain unassociated with a greater
satisfaction to follow it cannot be regarded as normal.

In this connection I may refer to a suggestive chapter on "The
Enjoyment of Pain" in Hirn's _Origins of Art_. "If we take into
account," says Hirn, "the powerful stimulating effect which is
produced by acute pain, we may easily understand why people
submit to momentary unpleasantness for the sake of enjoying the
subsequent excitement. This motive leads to the deliberate
creation, not only of pain-sensations, but also of emotions in
which pain enters as an element. The violent activity which is
involved in the reaction against fear, and still more in that
against anger, affords us a sensation of pleasurable excitement
which is well worth the cost of the passing unpleasantness. It
is, moreover, notorious that some persons have developed a
peculiar art of making the initial pain of anger so transient
that they can enjoy the active elements in it with almost
undivided delight. Such an accomplishment is far more difficult
in the case of sorrow.... The creation of pain-sensations may be
explained as a desperate device for enhancing the intensity of
the emotional state."

The relation of pain and plea