CHAPTER XVIII
PARAESTHESIA
Paraesthesia sexualis covers all possible forms of perversion or perversity of sexual feeling and sexual activity.
Perverse sexual activity with normal feeling and inclination is present in the anomalies, masochism, sadism, fetichism, and exhibitionism.
Masochism.—One of the most peculiar phenomena in the perverse vita sexualis is met with in patients with a desire for unlimited submission to the will of a person of the opposite sex. This anomaly was named masochism by Krafft-Ebing after Sacher-Masoch, whose romances have as their particular object the description of this perversion. Schrenk-Notzing recommends the name “Algolagnie.” The distinguishing symptom of masochism is the wish of the patient to suffer pain at the hands of, and be subjected to force by the beloved person, to be this person’s complete slave. This mixture of pleasure and pain is one of the most peculiar and remarkable psycho-sexual anomalies. Pain, whether real or imaginary, becomes here a source of pleasure. Whether the subjection is expressed merely in symbolic acts or whether there is absolute desire to suffer pain at the hands of the beloved one, is a matter of subordinate importance. The characteristic of the perversion of masochism is that pain and submission, which to the normal individual causes a certain degree and anguish, are in these patients turned into a source of lust.
The submission to pain or subjugation in itself is in no wise pathognomonic of masochism. It may not be pathological at all. Even entire sexual bondage is not, properly taken, pathological, if it be only the means of obtaining or retaining possession of the coveted person. It is not perversion, if fear of losing the companion and the desire to keep him or her always amiable, content, and inclined to love, are the motives for submission. The henpecked man is not a pervert. It is not abnormality, but cunning if, to satisfy selfish desires, the person in subjugation performs acts of bondage at the command of the ruling individual, but in its innermost is rebelling against this enforced slavery. Sexual bondage becomes pathological only when in itself the loss of all independent will-power and the unlimited submission awaken lustful sexual feelings, and this submission is hence desired. It then represents a pathological degeneration.
In masochism the motive, underlying the suffering of the person in question, is the charm afforded by the tyranny in itself. The acts performed at the command of the ruling person are an end in themselves. The very acts of tyranny are the immediate object of gratification, not the concubitus that may be received as a recompense. The idea of being treated as by a master, of being completely and unconditionally subjected to the will of the lover, of being humiliated and abused by him or her; this idea in itself is colored by lustful feelings.
The masochistic man has a perfect longing for subjection to any person whatsoever, especially to a woman. He craves to be dominated, controlled and abused by somebody. He is not fastidious in his choice. He revels in the thought of subjugation, without inclination to a particular woman. The following cases will serve as an illustration of these types of patients.
A man of forty, happily married, father of three children, college-bred and wealthy, was as a child already often punished for his cruelty to small animals. He would delight in tearing out the wings and cutting off the heads of flies. Later when he attended school he found great pleasure when he could see boys whipped.
At the time of puberty he began to practice flagellation upon himself. These practices induced ejaculation and orgasm. Towards the end of this period he began sese stuprare manu but he could not find any satisfaction except he imagined himself being whipped by a young woman in nudas nates.
For the last ten years habet meretricem in a luxuriously furnished apartment whom he visits once a week and whose duty it is to flog him in nudas nates until the skin is covered with bloody weals. At this moment ejaculation occurs. Thereupon he dresses and leaves the woman. He never has any concarnatio cum ea.
A similar case has been described by Pascal. A man forty-five years of age was used to visit regularly a priestess of the Venus vulgivaga, whom he paid ten francs for the following services:
While the windows were darkened, by letting down the blinds, the girl had to undress him completely. She then bound his feet and hands, hoodwinked him, and in this helpless condition led him to a lounge where he remained lying for about half an hour. After this time the girl loosened his fetters. He then dressed and left her satisfied.
The following case, similar to the author’s first one, is worth recording for the pronounced masochistic imagery. A young married man of thirty-five, father of two healthy children, visits regularly once a month, for the last ten years, fornicem. There he picks out pulcherrimam puellam to give him a flogging in nudas nates. This procedure gives him satisfaction. He never has any carnal connection with the woman. His relation to her is that of the slave to the mistress whom he would not dare to touch even in his imagination.
During his childhood he had quite remarkable masochistic ideas, which, however, have never been put into effect by him. As a small boy he loved to see animals or children whipped. At the time of puberty he began manu stuprum and during these acts he revelled in his imagination in scenes of cruel subjugation. He imagined lying on his abdomen, and a pretty, very strong girl applying a cane or whip upon his naked back and nates. Post castigationem, puella, induta solum in interula, ponente in pectore suo pedem nudum, quem vehementissime osculat et gratias puellæ agit pro castigatione. Nonnunquam imaginabatur puellam in pectore suo sedere, capite inter puellæ femora ita, ut vulva tangeret os suum. Tum linguam suam in vaginam intromisit, labia minora suxit et clitoridem puellæ lambit. Denique anum osculavit.
The last action in his fancy is symbolical of the highest degree of humility, which does not shrink back even from the loathsome and disgusting, but on the contrary, considers it a high honor and favor to be allowed to approach even this unaesthetic part of the human anatomy. The anal kiss, for that reason, played a prominent rôle in the ceremonies of the witches’ vigil. The anal kiss is well known in fornicibus, frequented by masochists. In men every masochistic desire is at once recognized as pathological; in women the dividing line between the normal and pathological masochistic tendencies is not so easily determined.
It is entirely within the physiological limit that playful taps and light blows should be taken by the woman for caresses. “Like the lover’s pinch, which hurts and is desired,” says Shakespeare. In one of the letters of Abélard to Héloïse, the teacher writes to his pupil and mistress: “Verbera quandoque dabat amor, non ira magistralis, quaeque omnium gaudiorum dulcitudinem superarent.” Subordination to a certain extent is quite a normal manifestation in the loving woman; with her it is a physiological phenomenon. It is the subordination of weakness to strength. A certain amount of subordination depends upon the woman’s passive rôle in procreation. The aggressor always controls the subjected in love as in war. The element of pleasure found in passivism and ideal submission is, therefore, peculiar to the feminine sex. The custom of unnumbered generations also has given her an instinctive inclination to voluntary subordination.
Ideas of submission are, therefore, in the woman normally connected with the idea of sexual relations. They form the harmonies of the tone quality of feminine feeling, says Krafft-Ebing. We women, says Schiller, can only choose between ruling and serving, but the highest pleasure power affords is but a miserable substitute if the greater joy of being the slave of a man we love be denied us. Goethe’s Dorothea says: In time shall the woman learn to serve in accord with her destiny, for only by serving she finally gains the reins and the power that is rightly hers in the household. In fact, intelligent women have scant respect for slavish men, and exaggerated gallantry is distasteful to them.
A moderate degree of submission to the wishes and the will of the man she loves is, therefore, characteristic of the feminine nature and is not abnormal. Many a young woman worships her husband and wishes nothing better than to kneel before him. This is done because her husband means for her the whole sex and his importance to her becomes very great. But in masochism there exists the desire to be subjected and abused by any man without any inclination to a particular object of love. A further pathognomonic symptom of masochism is that, as a rule, the girl begins to dream of subjugation at a time when she is yet too young to have any perception of love.
The best examples of female masochism are given in Krafft-Ebing’s two cases.
The first case is of a girl, twenty-one years of age. From her earliest youth she fancied herself being whipped. She simply revelled in these ideas and had the most intense desire to be severely flogged. This desire originated at the age of five when a friend of her father laid her playfully across his knees, pretending to whip her. Since then she had longed for the opportunity of being whipped. To her great regret her wish had never been realized. She imagined herself absolutely helpless and fettered. The mere mention of the word cane or whip caused her intense excitement.
For the last two years she associated these masochistic ideas with the male sex. Previously she only thought of a severe school-mistress or simply a hand. Now she wishes to be the slave of a man she loved. She would kiss his feet, if he would only whip her. She imagines herself lying before the man of her fancy; he puts one foot on her neck, while she kisses the other. In the meantime she revels in the idea of being whipped by him. She takes the blows as so many tokens of love. She fancies him first as being extremely kind and tender and then, in excess of his love, he beats her. She also fancies that beating her for love’s sake gives him the highest pleasure. She often dreams that she is the beloved man’s slave. The patient never understood that these manifestations were of a sexual nature.
The second case is that of a woman, thirty-five years of age, of a greatly tainted family. For some years past she had been in the initial stage of paranoia persecutoria. This sprang from cerebral neurasthenia, the origin of which was found to be sexual hyperexcitation. Since her twenty-fourth year she had been given to manu stupro, the result of a disappointment from a broken engagement. To appease her intense sexual excitement, she began the practice of manu stuprum and of mental erethism by fancying herself to be in concarnatione.
The story of her youth reads as follows: At the age of six to eight years she conceived the desire to be whipped. She had never been whipped nor present when others were thus punished. Hence she cannot understand how she came to have this strange desire. With the idea of being whipped she had a feeling of actual delight. She pictured in her fancy how fine it would be to be whipped by one of her female friends. She never had any thought of being whipped by a man. She revelled in the idea only and never attempted any actual realization of her fancies, which disappeared after her tenth year of age.
Here we have a young masochist whose ideas of humiliation are associated with her own sex. The reason for the patient’s fancy for female friends lay in the fact that the masochistic desire was present in the mind of the child before the psychic vita sexualis had developed and the instinct for the male awakened. Had the desire lasted until puberty the association of these ideas with the male would have been established.
The ideas of humiliation of the masochistic sufferers are in the beginning often associated with their own sex. Not that they are in any way homosexual at the same time, but because genuine, complete masochism, being a hereditary taint, the feverish longing for submission begins in early youth at a time when the child is as yet unconscious of the difference of sex.
Sometimes the masochistic tendency is not fully developed. The desire to suffer pain at the hands of the lover has only the end in view to increase the natural libido in congressu.
One of the author’s patients, a sexually hyperaesthetic woman of thirty years of age, who always had a supply of lovers besides her husband, found great delight in jacendo nuda in genibus amati et ab eo verberata in nudis natibus. When first told about this peculiar desire, the author attributed this desire to her natural hyperexcitation. In this state every impression, produced by the consort, independently of the manner of its production, is per se attended with lustful pleasure. But later on, when he learned that she found more satisfaction in concubitu if preceded by such a spanking, and that the husband often had to gratify her in this manner even in the middle of the night, there was no doubt that hers was a case of a psychical anomaly in which the sexual instinct was partly made insensible to the normal charms of the consort. Her perverse desire was, therefore, of a masochistic nature.
Of the same masochistic nature was the frigidity of the Duchess Leonore Gonzaza of Mantua. Aloisia Sigea says that her frigidity could only be removed by a flagelation by her mother ante coitum: “Virgis Leonora, parentis suae manu ad hanc diem nullam ex Venere ceperat voluptatem. Hoc vero temporis momento vehementissime mota est, lacessiti iterum verberibus lumbi, clunes et femora ad venerem incensi.”
Generally, female masochistic patients are unconscious of the abnormality of their desires and never come to the physician’s office. Their pathological condition is only accidentally discovered, when complicated with other anomalies.
It may be also noted that the courts of justice never or very rarely have any dealings with cases of masochism, whether in men or in women, as may happen in sadism. The patient will never go so far in his or her perverse desire for suffering that the injury inflicted may become criminal. For the extreme consequences of masochism, such as murder and serious injury, as sometimes found in sadism, are avoided through the instinct of self-preservation.
Sadism.—While masochism is a pathological growth of specifically feminine mental elements, where the patient finds delight in suffering pain, in sadism the patient seeks lustful excitement in inflicting pain. Sadism hence represents a pathological intensification of the masculine mental character. Sadism is so-called after the Marquis de Sade, who during the French Revolution devoted himself to the writing of obscene books which had lust and cruelty for their theme.
Sadism is characterized by the impulse to cruel and violent treatment of the opposite sex and the coloring of the idea of such acts with lustful feelings.BB It is hence a non-feminine trait and is less frequently found in women than in men. Woman’s modesty causes her to keep herself on the defensive until the moment of surrender, while under normal conditions man meets with obstacles in his wooing which it is his part to surmount. He is aggressive, and aggressiveness is closely related to the infliction of pain. It affords men great pleasure to win and conquer women. Nature has given the man for that purpose strength and combativeness. In sadism this aggressiveness is intensified and excessively developed. The patient is dominated by the wish to subdue the object of his desire with cruelty.
Bain explains this love of inflicting cruelty as springing from the pleasure the individual finds in the knowledge of the power and domination it has over the maltreated mate.
The need of the subjugation of the consort forms a constituent symptom in sadism and may be intensified to such a degree that the patient will not shrink even from murder. Sadism is hence mostly found in men, although in rare instances it also affects women.
The anomaly of sadism shows different degrees of intensity. The first degree represents Platonic sadism. The patient does not go any further in his abnormal desires than to commit violent acts in his phantasy only or to draw and paint scenes of violence or to describe such scenes in verse or prose.
In the second degree the patient seeks to satisfy his abnormal impulse by striking light blows, or by biting and pricking different parts of the mate’s body.
In the third degree of sadism serious wounds are inflicted upon the mate. The patient does not shrink back from mutilating the body of his victim or from committing murder.
The fourth degree shows the most abnormal enormities of cruelty, such as emboweling the victim or the ablation of its genitals, evisceration, dismembering the victim, sucking its blood or devouring its flesh.
Cases of Platonic sadism are very frequently met with in all classes of society. But since the patients do nobody any harm, such cases never come to the notice of the judge or even of the physician, and are hence never recorded. They are discovered in the course of the anamnesis, at the examination for some other anomaly.
One of the author’s patients who was suffering from psychic impotence, a talented painter, in his leisure hours, while sitting in the beer-garden or while conversing with his friends, used to draw on pieces of paper horrible scenes of war and murder, of wounds and blood. When asked about this peculiarity, he confessed that in his imagination he spanks, whips and lashes women until they bleed.
Sadistic acts of the second degree sometimes come to the notice of the physician, when he is called upon to treat the wounds inflicted by the patients.
The author was once called upon by a young bride to be treated for a wound in her left breast which was inflicted through the bite of her husband in the bridal bed, at the acme of his orgasm. It took several weeks to cure this love-bite.
All such acts of the two first degrees still stand on the border-line of the normal and pathological. The acts of the last two degrees are, as a rule, only found in psychopathic degenerates. The best example of sadistic acts of the third degree is found in a recent celebrated murder case in New York city.
The patient has been twice tried for murder and has been sent to an asylum for the criminal insane. Playing the rôle of a theatrical agent, the patient used to lure young girls to his apartment by advertisement and then gratify his abnormal desires by subjecting the innocent girls to flagellation. He would sometimes have eight to ten girls in the dining-room of his boarding house and would beat one with a whip. The landlady saw poor young girls all welts and bruises from these cruel whippings. On one occasion, she found a girl of fifteen years of age in his room, whose clothing was torn and arms cut from the maltreatment. The wealthy degenerate then paid these girls hush-money to keep quiet. All these facts are in the records of the Supreme court where a habeas corpus order was argued.
An example of the fourth degree of sadism is the celebrated case of Nathan Schwartz.
On July 6, 1912, the patient, a former prize-fighter, twenty-three years of age, accidentally meets with a girl, only twelve years of age, but unusually well developed. He accosts the child and lures her to his father’s flat. There he chokes her to insensibility, undresses her, except to her union suit, and carries her to the roof of the house and hence down to the bathroom of a vacant flat. There he makes twenty jabs in her back with a knife, slashes her throat and forearms and stabs her in the heart. The union suit had forty-one rents, all made by his knife. He then puts her into a soap box where she was found by the police. Twelve days later the patient committed suicide, while the police was still looking for him.
This case may throw some light upon the brutality of the prize-fight. The study of the psychology of the votaries of this brutal sport may lead to some important discoveries. Some sadistic trait may be discovered in every one of these fighters, showing that it was not their profession that made them brutal, but that on account of an innate cruelty, they chose the cruel profession.
Another example of the fourth degree of sadism is the case reported by Boas (Archiv f. krimin. Anthropologie und Kriminalistik, v. 35, p. 195).
A nine-year-old girl is lured by a shoemaker into a cellar. There the patient abuses and kills the child by choking her with a pillow. The murderer thereupon thrusts a cane into the child’s vagina, which perforates the posterior vaginal wall and penetrates into the bowels.
Such extreme cases of cruelty as the last two are never found in sadistic women, at least none are on record. The woman playing the passive rôle can naturally have no use for a dead mate. She needs an active live one. Hence only the first three degrees are found in women.
Moraglia claims that some women’s features manifest cruelty during conjugation. At the beginning of the orgasm the face becomes distorted, and by showing her teeth such a woman assumes a certain ferocity of expression that is sometimes frightening.
One of the author’s patients, a woman of twenty-six years of age, mother of two children, would take on a cruel look at the height of her sexual excitement immediately before the orgasm. This frightened the husband so that he sought medical advice. She would also grasp with her teeth her consort’s lips and tongue and bite them.
Slight sadistic features are, therefore, not uncommon in women. Especially in modern times, with the increasing effemination of men and the corresponding masculination of women, the aggressive woman is not so great a rarity. The biting and scratching of the companion during sexual excitement is, therefore, not uncommon and falls yet within physiological limits. But when the individual is driven to whip, pinch and prick the body, or, particularly the genitals of her companion, in the blind impulse to satisfy sexual desire, such expression of gratification does not correspond with the natural purposes, and the acts become perverse. Such uncontrollable emotions may even lead the individual to homicidal thoughts.
Phylogenetically it is significant that sadism is found even among the lower female animals. At the time of sexual union, crabs tear off limbs from the bodies of their consorts. Spiders often bite off the heads of their mates. It is the male spider who impregnates the female at the risk of his life, and sometimes perishes in the attempt. It is the male bee that after conjugium with the queen falls dead from the fatal embrace, leaving her to fling aside his entrails and calmly pursue her course. Sadism may, hence, be considered a kind of atavism. It shows man to be, as Schopenhauer puts it, in reality a wild, cruel animal. We only see him in a tame state, which we call civilization.
In history it is known that not only the degenerated Caesars, like Nero or Tiberius, took great pleasure and delight in having youths and maidens slaughtered before their eyes, but the same is also reported of women, who did not shrink from committing sadistic acts. Valeria Messalina and Catherine de Medici found great pleasure in having the ladies of their courts whipped before their eyes. Branton relates that Catherine loved to whip with rods the prettiest ladies of her court only to satisfy her lust.
Among the cases reported in recent medical literature the case of Krafft-Ebing is remarkable.
This author saw a man with numerous scars and cuts on his arm. Every time, the man explained, he wished to approach his young wife he first had to make a cut in his arm. She would then suck the wound and during this act become violently excited sexually.
Blumroder saw a man bitten in the breast by his consort during conjugation in the great sexual excitement at the acme of libido.
One of the author’s patients, a lady of good social standing, thirty years of age, took great delight, while sitting on her consort’s lap, in biting the lobes of his ears or his arms, until he screamed with pain. He always carried marks of her teeth on his body. Post initum the face of this otherwise pretty woman became distorted. She lay for some time with open mouth, showing her teeth, and her face assuming an ironical, cruel expression.
In Moll’s case absolute frigidity is combined with sadism. The woman, twenty-six years of age, has been married for eight years and has one child. She presents signs of hysteria and neurasthenia. She never had any desire congressionis and until her marriage remained ignorant of any knowledge of sexual matters. Initus to her is not only no pleasure but on the contrary a distasteful act, and the repugnance of it has constantly increased. She can not conceive how the lumbus can have anything to do with love. She loves her husband and finds decided pleasure in kissing him. But while kissing him she experiences great lust when allowed to bite him. She would find the greatest pleasure if she could so bite him that his blood would flow. She was better satisfied, if instead of having commixtio she was bitten by her husband and allowed to bite him. When her biting caused her husband too much pain she regretted the act.
A few years ago the author treated a patient, a French lady of thirty-five years of age, who had normal genital organs and was otherwise well, except that she was laid up in a hospital in Paris for eight weeks with rheumatism. She found great delight in having her consort sugere et osculare mammas. She always requested him to continue this practice for a considerable length of time. At the height of the orgasm in complexu venereo, her face becomes distorted by ferocity, taking on a cruel look and showing her teeth. At the same time she has spasms of the muscles of the back, by which the entire body is bent backwards, the spinal column forming a convex arc at the anterior aspect, the veritable opisthotonus often seen in grand hysteria. After the paroxysm she invariably tries to choke her consort, but desists from her intent before she has done any real harm or having caused him any real pain.
Hausler reports the case of a pregnant woman who had a great desire for her husband’s blood. Several times, while he was asleep, she stabbed him and sucked his blood.
In Kiernan’s case the patient would hack herself all over her body with any instrument she could conveniently lay her hands on, not for suicidal purposes, but because she experienced a fascinating pleasure whenever she drew blood.
Here is a case of pleasure in cruelty, directed against the patient’s own person.
Fetichism.—The word fetichism denotes the condition in which an object by virtue of association with sentiment, personality, or ideas exerts a charm. Erotic fetichism makes an idol of physical or mental qualities of an individual of the other sex or even of objects used by this individual. Erotic fetichism is physiologic in nature. Hence pathologic fetichism is generally, like masochism and sadism, not so easily diagnosed. Sometimes it is almost impossible to define sharply the beginning of the perversion. Fetichism of a considerable high degree is found in normal love as well. The preference for some particular physical or psychical characteristic in a person of the opposite sex is not pathological. The breasts and hips of a woman are not seldom made the object of a fetich, still this fact does not denote pathological fetichism. One man may be charmed by the sweet voice of his beloved, another man is raving over her soft blond hair. Some man is enchanted by the delicate white arm, another is enraptured at the sight of her dainty foot, or is fascinated by the fairy-like nimble gait of his girl and sobs out of excitement when inhaling the sweet odor of her hair. Many a girl becomes extremely excited when kissed by mustached and bearded lips, while a smooth face leaves her cold. Another girl is thrilled when looking into the serious, thoughtful eyes of a man.
Hence the enthusiasm extended to certain portions of the body or to articles of attire, still lies within the limits of physiological fetichism, if the awakened powerful emotions are associated with a certain beloved person. When the royal singer in the Bible (Solomon’s Song, chap. 4) extols the dove’s eyes of his bride and praises her comely speech, when he compares her hair to a flock of goats, her teeth to a flock of shorn sheep, her lips to a thread of scarlet, her temples to a piece of pomegranate, her neck to the tower of David, and her two breasts to two young twin roes; when he tells us that milk and honey lie under her tongue and that the smell of her garment is like the smell of the Lebanon, no one would declare him for that reason a degenerate fetichist. The sweet, red, coral-like, quivering, laughing lips of the mother of the human race have been extolled in verse and prose since the dawn of history.
Hence if certain parts of the body of a certain person or certain pieces of its clothing are worshipped because they arouse strong sexual emotions, this fact, as such, does not prove pathological fetichism. It may still be normal. But with the normal individual the main attraction is after all the man or the woman themselves with their respectively primary and secondary characteristics. Every part of the body excites and even the clothes that may cover the part. But there must be a personality behind these clothes or such parts. When, however, the stimulation emanating from these parts or their coverings is entirely independent from the personality, when the fetichist abstracts the part from the whole or the clothing from the wearer, then such emotions become pathological.
In pathological fetichism the creation of lust is effected through a certain part of the body or through a certain piece of clothing of the other sex without any reference to any personality. The fetich creates tumescence which may lead to the desire of effecting detumescence either concarnatione aut stupro manu. Not seldom the libido enjoyed by the fetich affords the patient complete satisfaction and nothing more is sought or desired. In the latter case the anomaly is complete. The more the normal desire concubitus recedes, and the fetich becomes the only aim, the more the fetichistic desire becomes pathological. This pathological condition, wherein some part or physical peculiarity of the person or a part of its attire is the object of erotic desire to the exclusion of everything else, is oftener found in men than in women. Fetichism in men often reaches the extremes in its pathological aspects. The patient goes sometimes so far in his fetich-worship of women’s hair as to stealthily cut off tresses on crowded streets, or his fetich for women’s handkerchiefs leads him to become a thief.
The following case offers a very good illustration to which extremes the fetichist may go:
A man of thirty, married, father of two children, gets peculiar attacks every two to three months which generally last no longer than three to five days. During this time he has the irresistible impulse se stuprare while fondling a woman’s handkerchief. His desire for procuring women’s handkerchiefs is so strong and irresistible that he steals them whenever opportunity is afforded. In this way he accumulates hundreds of handkerchiefs during the three to four days of each attack. After the attack is over he destroys the ill-gotten articles. He is very unhappy and miserable over this anomaly. He is constantly in fear that some day he might be caught and thus cause a scandal which will disgrace his prominent family.
Dühren relates the case of an Englishman who kept up pulchram puellam for the following purpose: At certain hours of the day she had to undo her hair so that he could run his hands through them. This action gave him the highest libido.
In Blinet’s case a young man becomes sexually very excited at the mere sight of the pretty hand of a woman.
The author once treated a student who, while separated from his girl, would take along her petticoat with him and would place it under his pillow when going to bed at night. Otherwise he could not fall asleep. A few years later he died in a sanitarium from an abscess of the brain.
A man, thirty-five years of age, married, father of two children, as a very young boy, saw his governess taking off her shoes and making a few steps in her stockings. Since then he gets excited at the sight of women’s stockings. When once in a department store, he saw a woman in her stockings trying on a new shoe, the excitement caused ejaculation and orgasm. At puberty he began to practise stuprum manu. During the practice he always managed to handle a woman’s stocking. He assured the author that even the stockings in the store windows are able to excite him sexually.
In another case a young man of twenty-five saw as a child the servant-girl of the family washing her feet. Since then he gets excited when he happens to see pretty naked feet of a woman. He has then the irresistible impulse contrectandi et osculandi eos. He is unable to go bathing at the seashore; for some fair bather’s feet may provoke in him the most violent desire to touch and kiss the same. Sometimes he visits fornices, ubi puellam pulcherrimam pedum eligit who has to take off her shoes and stockings so that he may fondle and kiss her feet. He never has any other carnal relations with her.
The perversion of fetichism is, like sadism, a rare anomaly in women. In most cases recorded, the woman, as a rule, makes a fetich of the entire person, not of one of its parts or of its clothing. Still there are some cases of fetichism even among women where the fetich is directed toward articles of attire.
The case of a young woman, twenty-one years of age, came under the author’s observation wherein the patient, whose lover died several years previously, kept for years thereafter his drawers under her bed-pillows. Otherwise she could not find the desired sleep. At times she experienced great sexual excitement when fondling them.
In Howard’s case of a woman thirty-nine years of age, the patient stole a pair of trousers of a certain man and by fondling them lovingly induced orgasm.
Howard relates of another case of a young woman of twenty-seven years of age, of a good family, who up to the time mentioned had had undifferentiated sexual feelings. At a summer resort, she met a man who was very attentive to her in an upright manner. The first evening she met the man, he unconsciously displayed a portion of the garter that held up his silk hose. At the time the patient simply noticed the carelessness of the act and had no other feelings in the matter.
Upon her return to her home, there began for the first time in her life distinct, clear and culminative erotic dreams. These commenced by subconscious visualizing of the blue garter. The association of the garter with the night reveries increased to day ideation. One day the patient went into a shop to buy a present for a friend and, on the counter, saw an exact duplicate of her fetich. It was instantly appropriated and the patient went immediately to her bed-room, where she gave way to the effect the fetich had upon her. She soon found herself a victim of fetichistic manu stuprum. This was never practised without the psychical aid of the garter, and to have the act culminate satisfactorily she must have a new garter each time, which must be attained unseen surreptitiously. A garter purchased would have no effect upon her sexual nerves.
The most remarkable cases are those of urolagnic and coprolagnic fetichism, almost exclusively found in men, of which Burton says: “Immo nec ipsum amicae stercus foetet.” But occasionally such cases are also found in women, as proven by the case reported by Magnan.
The patient, a young girl of eighteen, of good intellectual development, but of alcoholic heredity, seduced a boy younger than herself ad stuprandum mutuum. On one occasion, lying on the ground et tollens vestes petivit eum ut commingeret in eam.
Moraglia relates the case of a beautiful woman, eighteen years of age, who, married about a year, experienced only very little libido in initu et præferrebat stuprum manu. She became highly excited by the odor of fermented urine. So strong was this fetich that when she passed a street urinal she was often obliged to go aside se stuprare manu. Once she went for this purpose into the urinal itself and was almost discovered in the act. On another occasion stuprandum ei manu in ecclesia. Her perversion caused her much worry because of the fear of detection. She preferred, when she could, to obtain a bottle of urine, which must be old and of a man’s, and to shut herself up in her room, holding the bottle in one hand and repeatedly se stuprare with the other.
Such cases are exceptional in women. As a rule, fetiches of women do not relate to inanimate objects or to certain parts of the body, but to the whole individual. In such cases an impulsive desire complexus venerei with a certain man imperatively demands gratification.
In Magnan’s case the young woman, mother of three children, told her husband frankly one day that she was in love with a certain other man and that she would kill herself if her relations with him were interfered with. She promised to return to her husband and children after six months if only permission were given her to live with this man for this period in order to quench the fire of her passion. As she was then, husband and children had no place in her heart.
In another case of Magnan’s the patient, a woman twenty-two years of age, mother of two children, one day met a boy of thirteen, a pupil of the public school, and immediately fell in love with him. Driven by an irresistible passion, she put all modesty aside and asked permission of the boy’s parents conjungendi cum puero. By way of reply, the family promptly drove her from their house and broke off all relations with her. The patient then passed her time before the school of her beloved boy, watching for the opportunity to see him and speak to him.
When a sexual preference has reached such a degree of intensity and power, the condition is of a pathological nature.
While the pathological condition lasts, there is absolute indifference and even hatred for husband and children, if the woman happens to be married. She jeopardizes the dignity of her wife- and motherhood in order to satisfy her desires. The unmarried girl of the best family elopes with her father’s coachman, the crown-princess of an important state elopes with the teacher of her children and sacrifices her future and her family’s standing and reputation in the quest of gratification of her sexual impulse. The man exercises over her a fetich-like charm, which is entirely out of proportion with the normal attraction of sex. When a cultured woman like the princess Chimay leaves husband and children, abandons her refined associations, gives up her exalted position in society, so dear to the feminine heart, and marries an ignorant gypsy, such an action transcends the limits of the normal love-charm.
When the fetich takes possession of the patient she generally becomes sexually frigid toward all other men except the fetich.
Krafft-Ebing records two cases, where there was absolute impotency of experiencing libido and of voluptas toward the husband, while the mere touch of the beloved man’s hand produced orgasm, and commixtio with him the acme of pleasure.
Such phenomena can only be explained by the fetich-like charm the lover exercises over the patient. She is not suffering from sexual hyperaesthesia, for she is indifferent toward any other man except her fetich. She is not a libidinous Messalina, for she is the mistress of one man only, and her intercourse is strictly monogamic. On the other hand, the irresistibility and impulsiveness wherewith the patient expresses her desire prove that she is not attracted by the normal charm that love generally exerts.
Exhibitionism.—The patient suffering from the perversion of exhibitionism finds sexual satisfaction by exposing virilia aut muliebria to the sight of persons of the opposite sex. Sometimes the exposure is preliminary to or associated with stupro manu.
The impulse of exhibition is, as a rule, sudden and irresistible. At the sight of an individual of the other sex, the patient is suddenly seized by the unconquerable desire to expose pudibilia, even if the patient happens to be in the street or in a public garden. If the patient tries to oppose the impulse, he is generally seized with a feeling of anxiety and fear, of oppression in the chest and with palpitation of the heart.
Ch. Laseque (Union Médicale, 1877, p. 709), who first named this anomaly “exhibitionism,” remarks that the exhibitionist finds enough pleasure and satisfaction in this platonic manifestation and does not look for more direct relations with the person to whom he shows virilia sua.
The cases of exhibitionism, says Krafft-Ebing, thus far recorded are exclusively those of men who ostentatiously expose virilia sua to persons of the opposite sex, and whom in some instances they even pursue, without, however, becoming aggressive.
The following few cases of male exhibitionism may serve as illustrations of this strange anomaly:
George Verret (Annales Médico-Psychologiques Séc. 101; 1912, p. 554) reports the case of a physician who, on different occasions, exhibited virilia sua before women and children. At these exhibitions mentula remained invariably in a flaccid condition. Sometimes he stood before the window of his bed-room and exposed his virilia to young girls who lived in an opposite house, who happened to be at their window. At other times he exhibited his organs in public and private gardens. At some occasions he showed virilia sua to his female patients in his office. The doctor was tried, found guilty and sent away to the penitentiary for three months.
The following case, observed by the author, is remarkable on account of the prominence of the patient. One of the most prominent gynaecologists of a certain city, occupying a chair at the medical school, after the examination of a young married woman, resolvit bracas et mentulam protrahens posuit in manibus mulieris.
This sudden exhibition took the young lady so by surprise that she was completely stunned and could not utter a word. When she came to the realization what had happened, she gave one scream and left the room, leaving the professor still standing virilibus expositis in manibus suis.
Before going home, the young lady immediately called upon the author, who had sent her to the professor, and told him what had happened. She was advised not to tell anybody, not even her husband, about the disagreeable affair until the author had communicated with the professor. When the latter was called up by telephone, he immediately hastened to the author’s office and cried and begged the author to exert his influence with the young lady not to expose him and ruin his entire career. He excused himself, that being abstinent, the examination of the beautiful young woman excited him so that he did not know what he was doing.
The young modest woman who belonged to a very prominent family was shown that if the affair became public it would raise a public scandal and would expose her to the jokes and witticisms of the profanum vulgus, and that her husband in his rage may commit some rash act which would bring him in collision with the criminal courts. She then consented to keep the affair secret and forget it.
Another case known to the author is that of a man of forty with an hereditary taint, who was always nervous since his childhood. He suffered from enuresis nocturna until after puberty. He began to practise stuprum manu when he was only eleven years of age. At present he shows all the signs and symptoms of hystero-neurasthenia. The pupillary reaction is retarded, there is a fibrillary tremor of his tongue, and when standing with closed eyes there is a considerable tottering. The knee-reflex on the left side is more pronounced than on the right. Very often there is a profuse outbreak of perspiration on the left side of the entire body, while the right side remains perfectly dry. At certain periods the patient suffers also from attacks of anxiety and fear.
One evening, while in a public park, the patient let his trousers fall down, lifted his shirt and exposed his flaccid genitals to several women and girls. The women seem to have considered the affair a big joke and nothing happened to him. But another time se stupravit manu in the presence of two girls in the hall of a fashionable apartment. The frightened girls began to scream, the patient was apprehended and arrested. Through the influence of political friends, the case was quashed.
Another case known to the author is that of a married man of a highly tainted family. His father was potator, his mother hysteric, one sister is epileptic and the other committed suicide. The patient’s two children seem to be healthy. The patient often suffers from congestions to his head, headaches and exophthalmus. The knee-reflexes are greatly exaggerated.
On repeated occasions, the patient exposed virilia in parks and other public places before women and girls, calling their attention by whistling. At one occasion he showed virilia to women on the street through the window of his room. At another occasion se stupravit manu under the electric arc-light at night where the women passing on the street could not help seeing him.
Another patient, observed by the author, forty-two years of age, married, father of two children, modest and respectable, was arrested one evening for exhibiting virilia sua before girls passing the streets. He used to hang around girls’ schools, following the girls after they used to leave school and attracting their attention ad virilia exposita. At one occasion he ran about in a public park at dusk virilibus expositis. Once when he saw a young woman standing at the window of the opposite house, he immediately exposuit virilia et cœpit se stuprare, standing before his own window so that the young lady was forced to notice him.
The anomaly of exhibition is found almost exclusively in men. It is exceedingly rare in women. The girl’s education at home and in school has developed in the woman the sentiment of modesty and chastity in a degree out of all proportion with the same sentiment in men. The woman must be entirely insane before she will expose herself for the sake of lubricity.
For this reason the few cases of genital exhibitionism in women, thus far recorded, were all cases of general paralysis. They are found in asylums for the insane where the patient, during a maniacal excitement, tollens interulam medico præterienti concubitum proponit. Still in some women the hyperexcitation of the sexual desire may be of such an intensity that it will lead to exhibitionism in an otherwise normal individual, as the following case of Ungewitter shows:
The patient, a servant, twenty years of age, quæ præter amatum suum concumbebat filio matronæ sedecim annos nato sæpissime exponebat muliebria in the presence of boys, eight to ten years of age. In the barn or on porches or even in the open field, tollebat vestes et nudam vulvam pueris monstrabat convertens animos dicendo; “Contemplamini hunc locum! Ea est vulva mea. Jam crines ibi habeo; venite et tangite eam!” She never touched the boys nor did she have any carnal relations with them.
The defendant servant was found guilty of attempted offence against morality and was sentenced to two months’ penitentiary.
Homosexuality.—The world is governed by certain fixed laws. This must be admitted even by the mechanistic theory of life. In sexual matters the law of sexual-homologous development is almost as binding as the law of gravitation. The cerebral centre of voluptas corresponds with the sexual glands in the inverse sense. The normal inclination of the individual is directed toward the bearer of the glands of the opposite sex. The male is attracted by the female and vice versa.
Every individual being has to pass through all the grades of the evolution of animal life. The remote ancestors of the human race were bisexual. The same bisexuality exists in the embryo, represented by the Wolffian and Müllarian ducts or the bisexual “Anlage.” Later in the development, there arises, so to say, a struggle between the male and female elements. When one element has been conquered a monosexual being evolves whose mental inclinations correspond with the sexual glands. The basis for the yearnings and longings of one sex for the other would thus be the desire for perfection, for the completion of those sides of our being which are present in the bisexual “Anlage” or the “ground-work” of sex, but failed in development, and for this reason can not be brought to a realization of ourselves. It is, as if in the accord of our being some tones are kept in suspension and are only allowed to chime in with the tones of the other half. Then, and then only, there is a perfect harmony.
Sometimes, however, functional retrogression or atavistic recurrence into the earlier hermaphroditic forms of the animal kingdom may take place, or traces of the conquered sexuality, at least so far as the mental characteristics are concerned, may remain; and it is these that provoke the manifestations of inverted sexuality. Individuals, thus affected, have a sexually abnormal instinct which is out of harmony with the physical sex and its rôle in the function of procreation. The man thus organized feels utter indifference to women, and conversely the woman to men, but they have a strong preference and pronounced sexual inclination toward their own sex. The man easily understands why a woman should love a man but he can not understand how a man could love a woman. The same is the case with the homosexual woman. She is at a loss to understand how a woman could love a man.
The anomaly of homosexuality is as old as history and was, in fact, oftener found among the ancients than it is nowadays. Plato, in his Banquet, tries to explain the enigmatical manifestation of homosexuality in men in the following poetical way: There is an Aphrodite without an Eros, but there are two goddesses of that name. The older Aphrodite, being the daughter of Uranos, and thus called Urania, came into being without a mother. The younger Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus and Artemis and is called Pandemonia. The Eros of the former is Eros Uranos, of the latter is Eros Pandemos. Eros Uranos did not choose a female, but a male, as his companion. Hence, whoever is inspired with the love of this deity turns to the male sex.
This Platonic explanation takes no notice of the existence of Lesbian love. His explanation of Lesbianism would have been that Aphrodite Urania did not choose a male but a female as her companion, and the woman inspired with the love of this deity turns to the female sex or Lesbian love. Lesbianism was as much in vogue in Greece in the days of Plato as paederastia.BC
The homosexual feeling is an abnormal, congenital manifestation of the cerebral part of the vita sexualis. The essential feature of this manifestation is the want of sexual sensibility for the opposite sex, even to the extent of being inspired with horror by it. This disease must not be confounded with vice. Perversity is not perversion. Sexual acts with the same sex are no proof of the presence of a real perversion. Homosexuality is prevalent in boarding-schools and colleges of both sexes, yet very few or none of these boys or girls are real inverts. Perverse acts occur when obstacles are in the way of natural sexual satisfaction. When the obstacles are removed the individuals return to normal sexual functions.
The perversity of homosexual acts is very common. Even among domesticated animals it is easy to find evidences of homosexual attraction in the absence of the other sex.
Male dogs, rams and bulls, when isolated, become restless and attempt conjugium together. Male monkeys when long kept away from their females will try conjugium.
Female monkeys behave in a sexual way to each other.
Deville found that female dogs, when isolated, become restless, and when in the state of sexual excitement attempt conjugium. The presence of the opposite sex restores at once normal conditions.
In cows the sexual desire is often directed to the same sex.
Buffon observed that the females of doves or other birds when set together would soon begin to have conjugium among themselves.
Bailly-Maitre, a breeder of great knowledge, wrote to Girard that the Belgian carrier-pigeons are strange creatures in their manners. Conjugium between males and still more frequently between females often occurs at an early age, up to the second year. Among hens and ducks it has been occasionally observed by the author that the female assumed male sexual tendencies.
Following the example of their animals, savages are extensively addicted to homosexuality.
Homosexuality has been found among almost all the American Indian tribes. In some of these tribes the homosexual practices are a part of their religious ceremonies. For this purpose, a strong man is chosen who jugiter manibus stupratur for hours every day and is also forced to ride horseback in his free time, until in the course of time virilia are degenerated, and he becomes entirely effeminate. He is then dressed in female clothes and made to do feminine work among the women of the village. This androgynos is then used as homosexual pathicus at the annual religious ceremonies.
In Bali homosexuality is common among men and women. The method of gratification adopted among the latter is either digital or lingual, or else by bringing the parts together (tribadism proper).
In Zanzibar the negro women, in addition to tribadism and cunnilingus, sometimes use an ebony or ivory phallus to which not seldom a kind of glans is appended. Some have a longitudinal perforation through which warm water can be injected.
In New Zealand native women were found who practised Lesbianism. Male homosexuality is the custom of the country.
A like state of things was found among the Brazilian tribes.
Eram found homosexuality widely spread among the male population in the Orient. Tribadism is also most common among the young girls there.
Historically considered, homosexuality was frequently practised among the ancients. In Greece, during the period of its highest ethical as well as intellectual vigor, the homosexual tendencies were not only condoned, but even fostered as a virtue, especially among the higher classes of society.
Most of the disciples of the great Greek philosophers were given to homosexual practices. Homosexuality was also very common among the women of Greece. It was widely spread on the island of Lesbos, where the celebrated poetess Sappho is said to have first taught and glorified the practice of tribadism. “Aiunt turpitudinem quae per os agit fellationis opinor vel irrumationis, primum a Lesbiis autoribus fuisse profectam,” says Erasmus. From the prevalence upon the island of Lesbos, homosexuality among women is called Lesbianism, while sentimental homosexuality is called Sapphism.
The philosophy of Sappho taught that each sex should restrict itself to its own sex, and perish in the sterile embrace. Omitting the homosexual practice which the sensual Greek poetess could not dispense with, Tolstoy also advocates the extinction of the human race through abstinence in the “Kreutzer-Sonate.” Like Tolstoy, the poetess called normal love a weakness and a shame. Her teachings were followed throughout Greece and her colonies, especially by the courtesans, meretrices and dancers at the festivals.
Lucian describes a tribade woman, Megilla, who, living with her friend Demonassa ut maritus maritaque invitat Leænam secum pernoctare. It is her wish not to be designated as a female. She calls Demonassa her wife.
“Μή με καταθήλυνε ἔφη. Μέγιλλος γὰρ ἐγὼ λέγομαι καὶ γεγήμακα πρόπαλαι ταύτην τὴν Δημώνασσαν καὶ ἔστιν ἐμὴ γυνὴ.”
Later on homosexuality was taken up in Rome. Especially during the empire, the homosexual vice flourished in Rome and in its colonies. Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Titus, Domitian, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Commodus, and Heliogabalus all practised homosexuality. Philo Judeus (Opera II, p. 465) says: “Some of the men had such esteem for youthful beauty that they desired complete transformation into females and effected it by castration and amputation of the penis and by dressing themselves in purple garments.”
According to Ploss those Roman women, who with the abnormally long clitoris could practise concarnatio among themselves, were called tribades. The fellatores and cunnilingui of both sexes were so numerous in Rome that Juvenal could exclaim: “Oh, noble descendants of the goddess Venus, soon you will not find enough chaste lips to address to her your prayers.”
Among the Hebrews homosexuality must have been a very rare occurrence. Possibly because such practices were punished by death. “Qui dormierit cum masculo coitu femineo, uterque operatus est nefas morte moriantur” (Levit. XX, 13). The Bible never mentions these practices to have existed among the Jews.BD Lesbianism seems to have been entirely unknown. The Mosaic law is silent about this anomaly. If tribadism were known at that period it is difficult to assume that the law would not have forbidden it, as it forbids bestiality among women (Levit. XX, 15, 16). Still silence of the law is no proof of the non-existence of the crime, for paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code punishes paederastia and bestiality but not tribadism, in a country where there are as many tribade women as paederastic men.
In the Middle Ages paederastia and tribadism were practiced chiefly in France. Paris, says Sanval, was full of Lesbian women. The sister of Louis XV., a prioress, practised tribadism with the young nuns of her convent.
In our days homosexual practices can be found in every part of the world, and are forbidden by law, as far as men are concerned, in every civilized country. Concerning women the criminal code is, as a rule, silent in most countries. The reason for this defect in the criminal laws may be ascribed to the ignorance of the law-making power of the existence of this anomaly. The layman generally does not even surmise its existence. A woman is by nature not aggressive, and the inverted complexus venereus among women is not so easily detected as in men. Women’s attachments are considered mere friendships by outsiders. We are accustomed to much greater familiarity and intimacy among women than among men. We are, therefore, less apt to suspect the existence of abnormal passions among women. On the contrary, such friendships are often fostered by parents and guardians, such attachments are praised and commended. They are not in the least degree suspected of being of a homosexual origin. If two men were to lock themselves into a bathroom for a certain length of time, it would appear to us very queer indeed, but we are accustomed to look upon the same action in women as a matter of course.
For this reason homosexuality among women is very seldom detected. Even physicians have very rarely opportunity to learn anything about this anomaly. Entirely normal women are most reticent regarding the manifestations of their sexual life. It is hence far more difficult to gain the confidence of sexually perverse women. Then again, sexual inversion does not render the woman impotent for copulation, so that she needed a physician’s advice which some invert male may seek.
There are thus many reasons for the existing ignorance about homosexuality in women. No outsider suspects the hidden meaning of an advertisement worded, e. g., “Wanted by a lady, a lady friend and companion.” Yet ninety per cent of such advertisements are inserted in the columns of the newspapers by homosexual women.
Homosexual perversity.—Homosexual practices have various reasons. From the outset we have to differentiate between perversity and perversion. It is of great importance to have a clear conception of what constitutes an anomaly. What is abnormal, says Ellis, does not, of necessity, mean pathological. Genius and criminality are anomalies, but they are not, for that matter, diseases. Virchow says that an anomaly may constitute a disposition to a disease, but it is not always the disease itself. The study of anomalies, i. e., pathology, is not the same as the study of diseases, nosology.
In the study of homosexuality we must hence distinguish between perversity and perversion. In perversity the anomaly is not congenital. It develops by degrees at a certain age, sometimes after normal intercourse. It is, furthermore, not permanent or absolute. Affection may return to normal channels at any time. Lastly, perversity is not attended by anything that is irresistible and impulsive, as is the case in perversion.
Homosexual feeling, therefore, means the feeling for the same sex, not the sexual acts with it. The mere homosexual act does not constitute a perversion. It may be called a perverted instinct, for it is directed outside of the limits within which it is capable of serving its natural purpose; but so is masturbation, which is never considered a perversion. An untainted boy or girl, seduced at the beginning of puberty by persons of the same sex to homosexual practices, may continue them later on for want of opportunity for normal intercourse with the opposite sex. But neither the boy nor the girl will become sexually inverted, although it cannot be denied that there are exceptions to the rule. It may happen that a boy chooses a girlish-looking boy and seduces him to homosexual practices, or that a girl selects a mannish-looking female for her friend and suffers herself ut constupretur ab ea. This practice may become deeply rooted in them, and the result may be the incapability of finding gratification in concarnatione. Yet such cases are exceptions. Generally, as soon as the extrinsic influences cease, the seduced individuals return to normal sexual functions.
Necessity.—In the majority of cases men and women resort to the homosexual mode of gratification for “faute de mieux.” For that reason homosexuality flourishes chiefly in places where great numbers of males or females are segregated. Among the peasants and shepherds in Switzerland, who live for months segregated in the mountains with no opportunity for natural sex activity, homosexuality is very common.
For the same reason homosexual relationships are very prevalent in boarding-schools, academies and in convents for young girls. In the great majority of cases the tender and demonstrative attachments between two boys or between two girls are of a sensual nature, although they seldom arouse the suspicion of educators or parents.
The boys, as a rule, practise stuprum mutuum, but not seldom they are also given to “insertio fascini in rectum,” or the real act of paederastia. The stronger boy generally plays the active part, the younger boy is the pathicus; or they often change rôles during the same sitting. Among girls the rule is that the girl of weak sexual instinct is, in these attachments, satisfied with kissing and hugging her female friend, and induces in this way orgasm and even ejaculation. Those girls of a strong sexual impulse are given to stuprum mutuum and cunnilingus, and when the clitoris allows it, resort ad imitationem commixtionis.
Next to boarding-schools and convents, prisons and factories are hot-beds for the practice of paederastia, respectively lesbianism. The young men, respectively the young women, form relationships and satisfy their sexual desires as soon as opportunity offers. Their passions are exalted and they experience all the sufferings of jealousy as in normal love.
All such attachments are dissolved as soon as opportunity for the exercise of normal sexual activity is offered, as the following case of the author shows:
A man thirty years old, healthy, strong, sensual, began se stuprare early in life, when only twelve years old. At the age of fifteen he was seduced by a friend ad stuprum mutuum manu. At this occasion he had his first ejaculation. Since this time he has practised with his school friends not only stuprum mutuum manu but also paedicatio. At the age of nineteen he began to associate with puellae publicae and gave at once up all unnatural practices.
Fear.—Apart from necessity, one of the main causes for perverted homosexual practices among normal boys is the fear of venereal infection. In girls is added to the fear of infection the dread of pregnancy. The majority of such girls eschew men because they fear the shame and the consequences of an accidental pregnancy. An unmarried girl in possession of all her normal sexual desires is, nevertheless, afraid to indulge in normal love affairs as male bachelors do. Hence she looks for a friend of her own sex where no consequences are to be feared.
How the fear of infection by the impure female may be the cause of the transfer of his affections to individuals of the same sex shows the following case:
A young man of twenty-two years of age, strong and healthy, qui magnum mulierum numerum habebat at his disposal and never showed any homosexual tendencies, one day contracted a very bad infection of gonorrhoea, which after a few days became complicated by orchitis and epididymitis and which took eighteen months to be cured. Since then he is afraid to go near a woman. It did not take very long before he made the acquaintance of a homosexual pathicus with whom he is now living in a bachelor apartment. He assured the author that, he will never touch a woman again, except he should get married to a healthy, respectable girl.
Female homosexuality is not seldom caused by the fact that the young girl does not need to fear the opposition of her guardians when choosing a female friend. The companionship of a female friend does not arouse the suspicion of the natural guardians, and the girl is watched less by them. They would never allow their ward to sleep in one room with a man alone, but they suspect nothing if she sleeps in the same bed with a female friend. Thus indulgence with female friends do not offer so many obstacles and entail no consequences. Many a girl is hence induced to transfer her attentions to friends of her own sex.
Homosexuality out of lust.—Another cause for homosexual practices among men and women is lust and lechery. There are individuals whose only aim in life is the satisfaction of their sexual desires. All their activities aim at this end. They sacrifice everything to this instinct. After they have tasted all the varieties congressus normalis, sexual activity with the other sex becomes stale, and satiety ensues. They then feel the need for stronger excitements and stimulations of the diseased nerves and resort to paederastia and lesbianism. The following case will best illustrate this point:
A man thirty years of age, healthy and strong, began se stuprare manu when fifteen years of age but soon gave up the practice on account of the following incident: The beautiful servant girl in the family one evening surprised him in his practices. “Ita concitata est aspectu actionis venereæ, ut se jaceret ad grabatum et incitavit puerum, ut coitum cum ea efficeret. Qua ex die puerum noctu in lectum secum quotidie deduxit, et ambo indulserunt excessibus sexualibus exquisitimis, e. g., fellatio, cunnilingus, mamillae suctus, coitus per anum, etc.” After a number of years the girl left the house, and he began to associate with venal women and continued the same practices with the learned priestesses of Venus. By the time he was thirty years old he had tasted all the salacious practices these women are able to teach. Thereupon he turned to homosexuality in the houses for that purpose. There he plays, as a rule, the active part.
The overstimulated women who indulge in homosexuality are chiefly found among the venal class. It is known that lesbianism is very prevalent among the meretrices of Paris. In the relation of the prostitute with men, there is no scope for the exercise of feminine affections and devotions. Hence they resort for that to their female friends. This reason, given by Chevalier, for the prevalence of homosexuality among fornicatrices may hold good in some instances, but in the majority of cases the choice of a female friend for the indulgence of sexual pleasures is actuated by lust and entirely devoid of sentiment. Overstimulation has simply destroyed natural gratification, and artificial pleasures are sought. The following case of Rosse is the best proof of this assertion:
In Rosse’s case a young, unmarried woman conceptavit a sorore nupta, quæ commisit simulacrum concarnationis cum ea statim post congressionem cum marito.
Overstimulation and lust are also the causes of the homosexual love affairs observed among women of high society. Friendships between prominent ladies and obscure chorus or dancing girls, or between the prominent female painter and her female model are always suspicious.
Homosexuality as a profession.—The lecherous men and the exclusive ladies often resort to fornices to gratify their diseased desires. In this way they create a certain demand for paederasts and lesbians that has to be supplied. The last part of the army of homosexual individuals is hence recruited from those who practise homosexuality as a profession and for lucre. There is not a large city of any importance that does not harbor such houses filled with males, kept there to satisfy the demand of homosexual men. One-fourth of all the fornicatrices of Paris serve as tribadists for the rich women who patronize fornices.
A man, thirty-two years of age, was treated by the author for gonorrhoea. One day, when wishing to examine the prostate, the author noticed the gaping nature of the anus. The diameter of the opening was about half an inch. Asked about the cause of this opening, the patient confessed that he had just come from a hotel where he served as a pathicus for a wealthy patron and that he makes his living by going from one hotel to another and offering himself as pathicus to homosexual men, who are loathe to visit fornices, populated by males for these purposes.
Rosse relates the case of a meretrix who, from curiosity, visited several women who make a specialty of the vice. By way of experiment, she submitted herself to the lingual and oral manoeuvres of the performance and had such a violent hystero-cataleptic attack that she was a long time in recovering from the same.
Fiaux, in his report to the municipal council of Paris in 1887, made special mention of such a house in the rue de Chabanais, where society women and rich demi-mondaines frequented for the sole purpose of satisfying libidinem cum puellis.
Chevalier says that the kind of meretrices who exploit women may be met with in all streets and boulevards of Paris, in the theatres and at balls, at the races and exhibitions of every kind. The little girls, between the ages of ten and fifteen, who may be seen selling flowers in the restaurants and cafés of Paris, are also, to a large extent, in the service of lesbianism.