Notes on the Unconscious Significance of Perfume

Before any enquiry into the unconscious significance of the use of perfume it would seem desirable first to consider some quite general psychological attributes of odours, which may subjectively be classed as 'pleasant' and 'unpleasant', together with a few that are perhaps neutral. For example, there is general agreement that the odours of flowers are pleasant and those of a corpse unpleasant. But it is worthy of note that the Italian peasants find the smell of some

flowers unendurable, according to Norman Douglas (Old Calabria, 435), who also records that he has seen a man who professed to feel faint at the odour of crushed geranium leaves. (They ere 'fiori di morti': planted in graveyards.) And that the odour of a corpse is unpleasing to a necrophilist, is hardly to be supposed. It would seem probable that the affects aroused by odours are not invariable or absolute, but largely conditioned, if not wholly determined, by the states of emotion most associated with olfactory experiences, whether in infancy or later, and by attitudes arising out of social patterns. The above subjective description of odours is closely related to the conceptual 'good' and 'bad', in which latter terms they are very widely appreciated, and as such encountered in religious experience, ritual, and dogma (Jones, 1914).

The most evident function of the good or pleasant odour is to disguise or magically to combat the bad or unpleasant. Thus the sweet smelling Divine Ambrosia was, according to Homer, used by Apollo to preserve from putrefaction the body of Sarpedon: which property was in ancient times attributed to Myrrh, an aromatic in particular use among the Egyptians for the purpose of embalming corpses. And thus also did the more sensitive of the Elizabethans carry Pomanders to ward off the stench of sewage in their gutters. A bunch of flowers and herbs was carried in the hand as a prophylactic against the Plague and other maladies supposedly derived from evil vapours. Among