of these _Studies_.)

Moll subsequently restated his position with reference to my
somewhat different analysis of the sexual impulse, still
maintaining his original view ("Analyse des Geschlechtstriebes,"
_Medizinische Klinik_, Nos. 12 and 13, 1905; also _Geschlecht und
Gesellschaft_, vol. ii, Nos. 9 and 10). Numa Praetorius
(_Jahrbuch fuer Sexeuelle Zwischenstufen_, 1904, p. 592) accepts
contrectation, tumescence, and detumescence as all being stages
in the same process, contrectation, which he defines as the
sexual craving for a definite individual, coming first. Robert
Mueller (_Sexualbiologie_, 1907, p. 37) criticises Moll much in
the same sense as I have done and considers that contrectation
and detumescence cannot be separated, but are two expressions of
the same impulse; so also Max Katte, "Die Praeliminarien des
Geschlechtsaktes," _Zeitschrift fuer Sexualwissenschaft_, Oct.,
1908, and G. Saint-Paul, _L'Homosexualite et les Types
Homosexuels_, 1910, p. 390.

While I regard Moll's analysis as a valuable contribution to the
elucidation of the sexual impulse, I must repeat that I cannot
regard it as final or completely adequate. As I understand the
process, contrectation is an incident in the development of
tumescence, an extremely important incident indeed, but not an
absolutely fundamental and primitive part of it. It is equally an
incident, highly important though not primitive and fundamental,
of detumescence. Contrectation, from first to last; furnishes
the best conditions for the exercise of the sexual process, but
it is not an absolutely essential part of the process and in the
early stages of zooelogical development it had no existence at
all. 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.

Moreover, of the two processes, tumescence, which in time comes
first, is by far the most important, and nearly the whole of
sexual psychology is rooted in it. To assert, with Moll, that the
sexual process may be analyzed into contrectation and
detumescence alone is to omit the most essential part of the
process. It is much the same as to analyze the mechanism of a gun
into probable contact with the hand, and a mor