uggestive representation of pain,
inflicted or suffered, suffices to give sexual gratification.[100]

A brief discussion of the terms "sadism" and "masochism" has imposed
itself upon us at this point because as soon as, in any study of the
relationship between love and pain, we pass over the limits of normal
manifestations into a region which is more or less abnormal, these two
conceptions are always brought before us, and it was necessary to show on
what grounds they are here rejected as the pivots on which the discussion
ought to turn. We may accept them as useful terms to indicate two groups
of clinical phenomena; but we cannot regard them as of any real scientific
value. Having reached this result, we may continue our consideration of
the love-bite, as the normal manifestation of the connection between love
and pain which most naturally leads us across the frontier of the
abnormal.

The result of the love-bite in its extreme degree is to shed blood. This
cannot be regarded as the direct aim of the bite in its normal
manifestations, for the mingled feelings of close contact, of passionate
gripping, of symbolic devouring, which constitute the emotional
accompaniments of the bite would be too violently discomposed by actual
wounding and real shedding of blood. With some persons, however, perhaps
more especially women, the love-bite is really associated with a conscious
desire, even if more or less restrained, to draw blood, a real delight in
this process, a love of blood. Probably this only occurs in persons who
are not absolutely normal, but on the borderland of the abnormal. We have
to admit that this craving has, however, a perfectly normal basis. There
is scarcely any natural object with so profoundly emotional an effect as
blood, and it is very easy to understand why this should be so.[101]
Moreover, blood enters into the sphere of courtship by virtue of the same
conditions by which cruelty enters into it; they are both accidents of
combat, and combat is of the very essence of animal and primitive human
courtship, certainly its most frequent accompaniment. So that the
repelling or attracting fascination of blood may be regarded as a
by-product of normal courtship, which, like other such by-products, may
become an essential element of abnormal courtship.[102]

Normally the fascination of blood, if present at all during sexual
excitement, remains more or less latent, either because it is weak or
because the checks