things, and I think women are so more than men. The idea of
slipping down a plank formerly produced excitement with me; now
it has a less vivid effect, though the idea of loss of breath
still produces excitement. The idea of the plank does not now
affect me unless there is a certain amount of drapery. I think,
therefore, that the feeling must come in part from the
possibility of the drapery catching on some roughness of the
surface of the slope, and so producing pressure on the sexual
organs. The effect is still produced, however, even without any
clothing, if the slope is supposed to end in a deep drop, so that
the idea of falling is strongly presented. I cannot recollect any
early associations that would tend to explain these feelings,
except that jumping from a height, which I used frequently to do
as a child, has a tendency to create excitement.

"With me, I may add, it is when I cannot express myself, or am
trying to understand what I feel is beyond my grasp, that the
first stage of sexual excitement results. For instance, I never
get excited in thinking over sexual questions, because my ideas,
correct or incorrect, are fairly clear and definite. But I often
feel sexually excited over that question of the inheritance of
acquired characteristics, not because I can't decide between the
two sets of evidence, but because I don't feel confident of
having fully grasped the true significance of either. This
feeling of want of power, mental or physical, always has the same
effect. I feel it if my eyes are blindfolded or my hands tied. I
don't like to see the Washington Post dance, in which the man
stands behind the woman and holds her hands, on that account. If
he held her wrists the feeling would be stronger, as her apparent
helplessness would be increased. The nervous irritability that is
caused by being under restraint seems to manifest itself in that
way, while in the case of mental disability the excitement, which
should flow down a mental channel, being checked, seems to take a
physical course instead.

"Possibly this would help to explain masochistic sexual feelings.
A physical cause working in the present would be preferable as an
explanation to a psychological cause to be traced back through
heredity to primitive conditions. I believe such feelings are
very common