The kiss
is a typical example of these contacts, while the nipple is of special
interest in this connection, because we are thereby enabled to bring the
psychology of lactation into intimate relationship with the psychology of
sexual love.
The extreme sensitiveness of the skin, the readiness with which its
stimulation reverberates into the sexual sphere, clearly brought out by
the present study, enable us to understand better a very ancient
contest--the moral struggle around the bath. There has always been a
tendency for the extreme cultivation of physical purity to lead on to the
excessive stimulation of the sexual sphere; so that the Christian ascetics
were entirely justified, on their premises, in fighting against the bath
and in directly or indirectly fostering a cult of physical uncleanliness.
While, however, in the past there has clearly been a general tendency for
the cult of physical purity to be associated with moral licentiousness,
and there are sufficient grounds for such an association, it is important
to remember that it is not an inevitable and fatal association; a
scrupulously clean person is by no means necessarily impelled to
licentiousness; a physically unclean person is by no means necessarily
morally pure.
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