Sexual symbolism
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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| - | [[Image:The Seashell 1912) - Odilon Redon.jpg|thumb|200px|right|''[[Shell|The Seashell]]'' ([[1912]]) by [[Odilon Redon]]]] | + | [[Image:The Seashell 1912) - Odilon Redon.jpg|thumb|200px|right|''[[La coquille (The Shell, Odilon Redon)|The Shell]]'' ([[1912]]) by [[Odilon Redon]]]] |
| [[Image:Paris at the 1900 World Fair.jpg|thumb|right|200px|[[Paris]] at the [[1900]] [[World's Fair]]: [[Exposition Universelle (1900)|Exposition Universelle]]]] | [[Image:Paris at the 1900 World Fair.jpg|thumb|right|200px|[[Paris]] at the [[1900]] [[World's Fair]]: [[Exposition Universelle (1900)|Exposition Universelle]]]] | ||
| [[Image:Sensuality.jpg|thumb|right|200px|''[[Sensuality]]'' ([[1891]]) - [[Franz von Stuck]]. The image of the [[serpent]] as [[phallus]] is left in little doubt in this painting that shows an enormous [[python]]-like creature passing between the legs of a [[nude woman]].]] | [[Image:Sensuality.jpg|thumb|right|200px|''[[Sensuality]]'' ([[1891]]) - [[Franz von Stuck]]. The image of the [[serpent]] as [[phallus]] is left in little doubt in this painting that shows an enormous [[python]]-like creature passing between the legs of a [[nude woman]].]] | ||
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Psychology has found that people, and even animals, can respond to symbols as if they were the objects they represent.
Contents |
History
Ancient times
Agriculture and topography have been popular sources of sexual symbolism from Ancient times.
Havelock Ellis noted in Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) (1927) that
- for the Latins especially the whole process of human sex, as well as the male and female organs, constantly presented itself in symbols derived from agricultural and horticultural life. The testicles were beans (fabæ) and fruit or apples (poma and mala); the penis was a tree (arbor), or a stalk (thyrsus), or a root (radix), or a sickle (falx), or a ploughshare (vomer). The semen, again, was dew (ros). The labia majora or minora were wings (alæ); the vulva and vagina were a field (ager and campus), or a ploughed furrow (sulcus), or a vineyard (vinea), or a fountain (fons), while the pudendal hair was herbage (plantaria).
Shakespeare
Shakespeare often incorporated phallic symbols into his plays; swords and knives, for example, were phallic symbols representing the masculinity of their wielders. For example, in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Theseus says to his fiancé Hippolyta "I wooed thee with my sword"
Psychoanalytic theory
Common psychological symbols include a gun to represent a penis or a tunnel to represent a vagina (David G. Myers, Psychology, Worth Publishers; 7th edition (June 6, 2004))
- "Sigmund Freud and Otto Rank interpreted that smooth walls . . . correspond to erect human bodies" and "staircases . . . represent the sexual act, while cellars and corridors stand for the female sexual organ." --The Haunted Screen
Phallic symbolism
Cylindrical, tubular forms and protrusions, such as stalks, sticks, rods, trees and towers. Also animals such as the snake, see serpent symbolism.
Yonic symbolism
Hollow and concave forms such as shells, holes, caves, tunnels, grottoes and cavities.
Sexual symbolism as euphemism
The use of euphemisms is at its highest in sexual matters. Sexual euphemisms are used to denote the sexual act or the genitalia.
See also
- Sexual euphemism
- Sexual ritual
- Symbolism
- Human sexuality
- Fertility symbol
- Life Symbols As Related To Sex Symbolism
- Sex symbol
- Phallic symbol
- Baseball metaphors for sex
- The birds and the bees
- Apple (symbolism)
- Forbidden fruit
- Language is full of metaphorical symbols of sex (Havelock Ellis)
