Psychopathia sexualis: With especial reference to contrary sexual instinct / A medico-legal study

1. “Meanwhile, until Philosophy shall at last unite and maintain the world, Hunger and Love impel it onward.”

2. Hartmann’s philosophical view of love, in the “Philosophy of the Unconscious,” p. 583, Berlin, 1869, is the following: “Love causes more pain than pleasure. Pleasure is illusory. Reason would cause love to be avoided if it were not for the fatal sexual instinct; therefore, it would be best for a man to have himself castrated.” The same opinion, minus the consequence, is also expressed by Schopenhauer (“Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung,” 3. Aufl., Bd. ii, p. 586 u. ff.).

3. “No physical or moral misery, no suffering, however corrupt it may be, should frighten him who has devoted himself to a knowledge of man and the sacred ministry of medicine; in that he is obliged to see all things, let him be permitted to say all things.”

4. The Latin is left untranslated.

5. The works of Moll and von Schrenck-Notzing have since appeared.—Trans.

6. Die Suggestions-Therapie, etc., F. Enke, Stuttgart, 1892.

7. Comp. Lombroso, “The Criminal.”

8. Comp. Westermarck, “History of Human Marriage.” McMillan & Co., 1891.

9. This generally entertained idea, also held by many historians, requires some limitation, in that the symbolic and sacramental character of marriage was first made clear and unequivocal by the Council of Trent, even though there was ever in the spirit of Christianity that which would free woman and raise her from the inferior position occupied by her in the ancient world and the Old Testament.

That this took place so late may well be due in part to the traditions of Genesis of the secondary creation of woman from the rib of man, and of her part in the Fall, and the consequent curse: “Thy will shall be to thy husband.” Since the Fall, for which the Old Testament made woman responsible, became the corner-stone of the fabric of churchteachings, the wife’s social position could but remain inferior until the spirit of Christianity had gained a victory over tradition and scholasticism.

It is remarkable that, with the exception of the interdiction of putting away a wife (Matt. xix, 9), the gospels contain nothing favoring woman. Gentleness toward the adulteress and the repentant Magdalene does not affect the position of the wife in itself. The Epistles of Paul specifically declare that the position of woman shall not be altered (II Corinth. xi, 3–12; Ephes. v, 22: “Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands;” and 33, “And the wife see that she reverence her husband”).

Passages in Tertullian show how the Fathers of the Church were prejudiced against woman by Eve’s guilt: “Woman, thou shouldst forever go in sorrow and rags, thy eyes filled with tears! Thou hast brought man to the ground!” St. Hieronymus has nothing good to say of woman. He says, “Woman is a door for the devil, a way to evil, the sting of the scorpion.” (“De cultu feminarum,” i, 1.)

Canonical Law declares: “Only man was created in the image of God, not woman; therefore, woman should serve him and be his maid!”

The Provincial Council of Macon, in the sixth century, earnestly debated the question whether woman had a soul.

The effect of these ideas in the Church on the peoples embracing Christianity was direct. Among the Germans, after the acceptance of the new faith, for the foregoing reason, the weregild for a wife—the simple expression of her value—decreased (J. Falke, “Die ritterliche Gesellschaft,” p. 49. Berlin, 1862). Concerning the value of each sex among the Jews, vide Leviticus, xxvii, 3 and 4.

Moreover, polygamy, which is expressly recognized in the Old Testament (Deut. xxi, 15), is nowhere explicitly interdicted in the New Testament. Christian princes (e.g., the Marovingian kings, Clotar I, Childebert I, Pepin I, and many of the royal Franks) lived in polygamy; and at that time the Church made no opposition to it (Weinhold, “Die deutschen Frauen im Mittelalter,” ii, p. 15). Comp. also Unger, “Die Ehe,” etc., and the excellent work by Louis Bridel, “La femme et le droit,” Paris, 1884.

10. Comp. Friedländer “Sittengeschichte Roms.” Wiedemeister, “Der Cäsarenwahnsinn.” Suetonius. Moreau, “Des aberrations du sens génésique.”

11. These statements, however, are opposed to Friedreich (“Hdb. d. gerichtsärztl Praxis,” i, p. 271, 1843), and also Lombroso (op. cit., p. 42), according to whom pederasty is very frequent among the uncivilized Americans.

12. Comp. Friedreich, “gerichtl. Psychologie,” p. 389, who has collected numerous examples. Thus the nun Blanbekin was always troubled with the thought about what had become of the part lost at the circumcision of Christ. Veronica Juliani, canonized by Pope Pius II, in memory of the divine lion, took an actual lion in her bed and kissed it, and let it suck from her breast; and even secreted a few drops of milk for it. St. Catherine, of Genoa, often burned with such inward fire that, in order to cool herself, she would lie down on the ground and cry “Love, love, I can endure it no longer!” At the same time she felt a peculiar inclination for her confessor. One day she lifted his hand to her nose and smelled an odor which penetrated to her heart, “a heavenly perfume, so delightful that it would wake the dead.” St. Armelle and St. Elizabeth were troubled with a similar longing for the child Jesus. The temptations of St. Anthony, of Padua, are well known. An old prayer is significant: “O, that I had found thee, Holy Emanuel; O, that I had thee in my bed to bring delight to body and soul. Come and be mine, and my heart shall be thy resting-place.”

13. Comp. Friedreich, “Diagnostik der psych. Krankheiten,” p. 347 u. ff.; Neumann, “Lehrb. d. Psychiatrie,” p. 80.

14. The relation of this trio finds its expression not only in the events of real life, as above indicated, but also in romance, and even in the sculpture of degenerate eras. As an example we may point to the group of St. Theresa, by Bernini, who “sinks in an hysterical faint on a marble cloud, with an amorous angel plunging the arrow (of divine love) into her heart” (Lübke).

15. A Russian religious sect.