Part 6 (1/2)

CASE 12.--Y., twenty-five years of age, h.o.m.os.e.xual, with a special preference for soldiers. In early childhood he noticed in himself a great fondness for handsome men. When walking in the streets of the town as a small boy, it was the soldiers, in especial, from among the men he met, who made a strong impression upon him. He remembers that when he was seven years of age, he allowed a soldier to take him on his knees, and that it gave him great pleasure to stroke the man's cheeks. The roughness of the cheeks gave him an extremely agreeable sensation, and he sought every opportunity of renewing this sensation. He found cavalry soldiers especially stimulating. From the age of eleven dates his peculiar delight in the well-rounded nates of a cavalry soldier. As he himself puts it, with the lapse of time, this has become to him a genuine fetich. Subsequently, young men-servants also aroused his interest, but never to the same degree as cavalry soldiers. The h.o.m.os.e.xual tendency has persisted into adult life.

CASE 13.--Z., twenty-seven years of age, has several times been prosecuted, on account of his attempts to spy upon women in public lavatories. It is his custom, when in such a place he can observe the genital organs of a woman in the act of defaecation, to m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e. He states that this tendency was well marked in him at the age of thirteen years. He believes, indeed, that at this time he was inspired mainly by curiosity--by a desire to see what the genital organs of a female were like. But he recalls that when a child, at about the age of eight or nine years, he experienced s.e.xual stimulation when a girl cousin of six sat on his face; and he thinks that when only five or six years old he crawled under the petticoats of a servant girl, in order to lay his face against her nates. Even as early as this he experienced great pleasure in the act.

CASE 14.--X., is now twenty years of age. He always experiences s.e.xual excitement when he thinks of the act of whipping. It is unnecessary for him to play any active part in this himself; and it is a matter of indifference to him whether a man beats a woman, a woman beats a man, or an adult of either s.e.x beats a child. In all cases alike the sight induces s.e.xual excitement; and the imaginative reproduction of such a scene is his customary stimulus during masturbation--this being a fairly frequent occurrence. He traces back to childhood the stimulus exercised on him by a whipping seen or imagined. When from seven to nine years of age, he began to find such experiences s.e.xually stimulating; by the age of ten, he was quite clear as to the existence of this peculiarity in himself. At this early age he struck himself with a stick, under the influence of an obscure impulse to arouse voluptuous sensations by means of the blows; he did this fairly frequently.

As regards his s.e.xual sensibilities in general, he is by no means indifferent to members of the opposite s.e.x. He gladly seeks social intercourse with females, and likes to kiss them; but he does not experience any definite s.e.xual impulse towards them, such as might culminate in s.e.xual intercourse. Three times he has had actual intercourse, but on each occasion he has been able to effect erection and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n only by means of all kinds of artificial stimulation. It is a noteworthy fact that when he was fifteen or sixteen years of age he became intimate with the members of a h.o.m.os.e.xual circle, and only by considerable effort was he able to free himself from these a.s.sociations.

In autobiographical literature we from time to time come across accounts of such perverse modes of s.e.xual sensibility. Ulrich von Lichtenstein, in whom m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic inclinations were unmistakably present, relates that when he was barely twelve years of age he became the devoted slave of a grown woman; and he describes his sentiments, at this early age and subsequently, towards this woman, who was well born, good and beautiful, chaste in mind and body, and in every respect virtuous. Well known, too, is the case of Rousseau, of which I shall have to speak again later; this writer traces his m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic perversion back to the seventh year of his life. I may allude also to Retif de la Bretonne, who was born in 1734, and certainly experienced s.e.xual sentiments in very early childhood. In his _Monsieur Nicolas_,[58] which must be regarded as an autobiographical work, Retif relates the beginnings, in the years 1743-44, of his fetichistic fondness (which endured throughout his life) for women's feet and women's shoes. In purely fictional works, a.n.a.logous cases are also described. Thus, in his _Pour une Nuit d'Amour_, Zola depicts a s.a.d.i.s.tic-m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic relations.h.i.+p between two children:--

”From earliest childhood Therese von Morsanne used Colombel as the scapegoat and the sport of her caprices. He was about six months older than she. Therese was a dreadful child. Not that she was wild and uncontrolled, like the ordinary unruly child; on the contrary, she was extraordinarily serious, with the outward aspect of a well-brought-up young lady. But she had most remarkable whims and caprices, When she was alone, she would from time to time utter inarticulate cries or angry howls.

”From the age of six she began to torment little Colombel. He was small and weakly. She would lead him to the back of the park, to a place where the chestnut-trees formed an arbour; here she would spring on his back and make him carry her about, riding sometimes round and round for hours. She compressed his neck, and thrust her heels into his sides, so that he could hardly breathe. He was the horse, she was the lady on horseback. When he was tired out, and ready to drop from exhaustion, she would bite him till the blood flowed, and would cling to her seat so tightly that her nails sank into his flesh. And the ride would thus start once more. The cruel queen of six years old, borne on the back of the little boy who served her as beast of burden, hunted thus on horseback with her hair streaming in the wind. Afterwards, when they were with their parents, she would pinch him secretly, and by repeated threats would prevent him from crying or complaining. Thus in secret they led a life of their own, very different from that which was apparent to the eyes of others. When they were alone, she treated him as a toy, to be broken to fragments at her pleasure, simply to see what might be inside. Was she not the Marquise? Were not people on their knees before her? And when she was tired of tyrannising over Colombel in private, she would take a peculiar pleasure, when a number of others were present, in tripping him up, or in running a pin into his arm or leg, whilst at the same time she forbade him with a fierce glance of her black eyes to show even by the movement of an eyelid that she was to blame.

”Colombel bore his martyrdom with a dull resentment. Trembling, he kept his eyes on the ground, to escape the temptation to strangle his young mistress. And yet he did not dislike being beaten; it gave him a bitter delight. Sometimes, even, he actually sought for a blow, awaiting the pain with a peculiar thrill, and feeling a certain satisfaction in the smart when she p.r.i.c.ked him with a pin.”

I have now recounted a number of cases in which the perversions observed in adults can be traced back to early childhood. I have shown that it remains doubtful, when the specific perversion first makes its appearance, whether it results from a congenital predisposition which is merely aroused to activity by an outward stimulus, or whether the outward stimulus is also the true determinant. A further point has now to be considered, and it is one which, as far as I know, has. .h.i.therto been completely ignored in the literature of the subject. The majority of s.e.xual perverts trace back the origin of their perversion to a time at which the detumescence impulse had not yet been awakened. Thus, the h.o.m.os.e.xual tells us of a peculiar impulse he felt in childhood to kiss his tutor; we learn from the hair-fetichist that when still a child he loved to play with girls' hair; and so on. And we are told that these impulses, voluptuously tinged, occurred at a time when erection and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n had not yet taken place, and that there was not as yet any of that peripheral voluptuous sensation which can be clearly differentiated from the purely psychical voluptuous sensation. The question then arises, was this voluptuous sensation excited during childhood of a truly s.e.xual nature at this early age? Was the boy's impulsive desire to kiss his tutor a s.e.xual impulse? From the fact that later in life such an impulse is unmistakably s.e.xual, the conclusion is often drawn that the earlier inclinations, and the pleasurable sensations a.s.sociated with the corresponding mental processes, were also s.e.xual. The inference is an obvious one, and is doubtless justified in many instances. But the following point must be taken into consideration. It is a fact that the psychos.e.xual processes of the child are less sharply differentiated from other psychical processes than is the case in the adult; and it is therefore possible that the specific s.e.xual perversions, and the specific s.e.xual sensibility, develop out of a corresponding sensibility in the child which is not yet of a s.e.xual character. The observation of Stanley Hall[59] that children display a peculiar interest, not only in their own feet, but also in the feet of other persons, would appear to confirm this view. He writes: ”Quite small children often display a marked fondness for stroking the feet of others, especially when these feet are well formed; and many adults testify to the persistence of such an impulse, whose gratification gives them a peculiar pleasure.” It may readily be supposed, in many cases of foot-fetichism, that this unmistakably s.e.xual phenomenon has originally developed out of such a non-s.e.xual fondness for feet.

Unquestionably, many of the processes of childhood are not to be regarded as s.e.xual, although they are closely related to the s.e.xual life. This statement applies to many of the friends.h.i.+ps between boys or between girls, such as are formed during the period in which the s.e.xual impulse is still undifferentiated, or after its differentiation has occurred--and such friends.h.i.+ps must not be identified with s.e.xual feelings. At this period of life, we occasionally observe a desire in boys to form romantic friends.h.i.+ps with others of their own s.e.x; and the same is true also of girls. In many cases of this kind, there is no question of the presence of any s.e.xual element, and we have no right, therefore, to regard as manifestations of the s.e.xual impulse such instances of enthusiastic friends.h.i.+p during the period of undifferentiated s.e.xual impulse. Each case must be separately a.n.a.lysed, in order to determine its nature. On the other hand, the s.e.xual character of an inclination may sometimes be recognised in the early years of childhood, even in cases in which the boy's own genital organs are in no way involved. It may happen that a boy of eight will display a marked interest in the genital organs of youths or of men, and will seize every opportunity of peeping at them; and in such a case we are as a rule justified in a.s.suming the existence of a h.o.m.os.e.xual tendency, even when there is no reflection of s.e.xual disturbance to the boys own genital organs. But we must guard against the mistake of seeing a s.e.xual element in every friends.h.i.+p between boys.

As with human beings, so also with the lower animals, it is not always possible to differentiate friends.h.i.+p from the s.e.xual impulse. Robert Muller has collected a number of interesting observations bearing on this matter.[60] He states that the so-called animal friends.h.i.+ps, friends.h.i.+ps between animals of different species, are in many cases determined by s.e.xual feelings. He mentions the case of a dog ten months old, which made s.e.xual attacks on hens, and thereby killed them; in another instance, a thorough-bred dog, two years old, exhibited a similar perversion, and had a lasting s.e.xual relations.h.i.+p with a hen. He also quotes a case of which a man named P. Momsen was the witness, in which a gander attempted to pair with a b.i.t.c.h. These examples show that in the cases of animal friends.h.i.+p so often reported in the newspapers, the existence of an element of perverse s.e.xuality is at least possible.

But it does not, of course, follow that every strange animal friends.h.i.+p is of a s.e.xual nature.

This is true, also, of other perversions--of sadism, for instance. The tendency to cruelty appears in early childhood, and it is only subsequently that this tendency becomes definitely a.s.sociated with the s.e.xual life. But even though this a.s.sociation (of cruelty with the s.e.xual life) is demonstrable in so many instances, we are not for this reason justified in regarding every brutal act, all deliberate cruelty, as manifestations of sadism; and this reservation applies no less to adults than to children. Thus, delight in the sufferings of others, though it may be regarded as a.n.a.logous with sadism, has no necessary connexion with the s.e.xual impulse. Just as little can we a.s.sume that the deliberate ill-treatment of animals, whether on the part of children or on that of adults, is necessarily the outcome of sadism.

Felix Platter relates in his autobiography that when as a boy verging on maturity he had already chosen his future profession as a medical man, he came to the conclusion that he ought to accustom himself to the sight of disagreeable things; with this end in view, to habituate himself to see without emotion the heart and other viscera, he frequented the slaughter-house. Subsequently he experimented on a little bird, to ascertain if it had blood-vessels, and if it could be ”bled”; he opened a vein with a penknife, and the little bird died. He did the same thing with various insects--stag-beetles, c.o.c.k-chafers, and the like. Actions of this kind performed by children have, of course, no connexion with the s.e.xual life. When a child tears off the feet of an insect, or mutilates any other animal, the motive is often simply that with which the same child will pull a watch to pieces. The same act may result from various motives; and for this reason we must guard against the misconception which might lead us, from every cruel act performed by a child, to diagnose the existence of sadism, or the certainty of a subsequent s.a.d.i.s.tic development.

In a case of rose-fetichism, which I have published elsewhere, the subject was a philologist, thirty years of age, who had never m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed during his school days, and until he was nineteen or twenty had remained s.e.xually neutral, experiencing s.e.xual inclination neither towards females nor towards members of his own s.e.x. But he had from an early age exhibited a very great interest in flowers, and while still a child used to kiss them. He is unable, however, to recall the existence in this connexion of any s.e.xual excitement. When about twenty-one years old he was introduced to a young lady who at the time was wearing a large rose fastened into the front of her jacket. Henceforward, in his s.e.xual sensibility, the rose a.s.sumed extraordinary importance. Whenever he was able, he bought roses, kissed them, and took them to bed with him. The act of kissing a rose induced an erection of the p.e.n.i.s. In his seminal dreams, the image of the rose always played a leading part.

This case is extremely instructive. A great love for flowers, leading to the act of kissing, occurs in many children without any subsequent a.s.sociation, when these children have grown up, of s.e.xual sentiments with flowers. Such persons will lay little stress on their memories of such occurrences in childhood--indeed, in adult life these incidents are for the most part forgotten. But to X., who when grown-up became affected with rose-fetichism as a sequel of a specific experience, it seems that his s.e.xual fetichism is causally dependent upon his childish love of flowers--and probably he is right in so thinking. But we must not for this reason a.s.sume that his childish preference had any s.e.xual character. It is more likely that the abnormally great fondness for flowers, beginning in childhood, was a favouring factor of the subsequent development of the rose-fetichism. What applies here to a pathological instance, may also be a.s.sumed to be true of the normal s.e.xual life. _That is to say, the experiences of childhood, which have not as yet any relations.h.i.+p with s.e.xual life, are nevertheless of great significance in relation to the subsequent upbuilding of the s.e.xual life, and above all in relation to the development of the psychos.e.xual sentiments._

For the sake of completeness I must allude here to two additional processes which are also related to the s.e.xual life of the child, viz., exhibitionism and skatophilia. As regards exhibitionism, Lasegue[61]

describes as exhibitionists those persons who display their genital organs to others from a certain distance, without attempting any other improper manipulations, and above all without making any endeavour to effect s.e.xual intercourse. Kovalevsky[62] contends that the tendency to exhibitionism is observed in the male s.e.x especially during childhood at the approach of p.u.b.erty, and in old age. He records the following case: ”The headmistress of a boarding-school one day brought to see me a boy fourteen years of age, very well behaved and intelligent, who experienced from time to time an irresistible impulse, when he met one of the little girls of the school, to expose his p.e.n.i.s. As a rule he was able to withstand this terrible impulse, but occasionally he yielded to it. He then experienced a sense of confusion in his head and his vision, and his whole body seemed to become tense, whilst at the same time he experienced a voluptuous sensation in the p.e.n.i.s and in the body generally. This state lasted for one or two minutes, and was succeeded by a moderate sense of weakness and a very distressing sense of shame.

The acts of exhibition were never accompanied with seminal emission, although he sometimes had such emissions during the night.” I have myself hardly ever observed this form of exhibitionism in children.

Somewhat commoner, however, is the mutual and perfectly voluntary exhibition of their genital organs by children, generally boys and girls together; in these cases, as previously explained (p. 71), the acts are determined rather by curiosity than by the s.e.xual impulse. It is necessary to insist upon this fact, as distinguis.h.i.+ng exhibitionism in children from exhibitionism in adults. A like question arises regarding the skatological inclinations and interests of children, which are a.s.sumed by Havelock Ellis[63] to be intimately connected with the s.e.xual life. It is an undoubted fact that many children before p.u.b.erty are greatly interested in the excretions from the bladder and the intestine.

Stanley Hall,[64] to whom Havelock Ellis refers, is of opinion that ”micturitional obscenities, which our returns show to be so common before adolescence, culminate at ten or twelve, and seem to retreat into the background as s.e.x-phenomena appear.” He distinguishes between two cla.s.ses of cases: ”fouling persons or things, secretly from adults, but openly with each other,” and, less often, ”ceremonial acts, connected with the act or the product, that almost suggest the skatological rites of savages.” I can myself, as a result of numerous inquiries, confirm the existence of skatophilia in children. But I have not yet been able to satisfy myself that these processes always, or even usually, have any connexion with the s.e.xual life. Such a connexion unquestionably exists in some cases, but no less certainly it is not an invariable one.

Skatological acts--those, that is to say, in which the more disgusting excreta play a part--arise in some instances out of a m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic mode of sensibility. In cases in which adult m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.ts have such inclinations, it is often impossible to trace their existence back into childhood. It rather appears, in most of the instances of skatological inclinations which have come under my own observation, that these inclinations have been superimposed upon other m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic tendencies, and these latter may sometimes be traced back to the days of childhood.

But in a few cases I have found skatological perversions to have originated very early in life. A man with a university education, with an inclination to the practice of cunnilinctus, a.s.sured me that this inclination began in childhood. Another man, whose interest in the female nates and a.n.u.s was unquestionably not the result of any excesses, stated positively that he was able to refer the origin of this inclination to a definite experience of his childhood. When only seven years of age, he experienced the impulse to look at the nates of a servant-maid; and he believes that this inclination, which in his case was certainly generalised at a very early age, arose from a still earlier experience, viz., the chance sight of his mother's nates, when she urinated in his presence. His whole account of the matter suggests the existence of a fetichism directed to the nates, impelling him to the most disgusting acts, which he has several times performed. A similar case, but on a h.o.m.os.e.xual basis, will be found recorded as Case 20 in my work on s.e.xual Inversion.[65]

No detailed account of other pathological manifestations of the s.e.xual life will now be attempted, since this work professes to deal only with subjects of a wide and general significance. We cannot consider those cases, for instance, in which there is developmental defect of the reproductive organs; those, for example, in which there is no discoverable development of the reproductive glands. But some reference may be made to hermaphroditism. In the human species true hermaphroditism is a very rare occurrence, whereas apparent hermaphroditism, the so-called pseudo-hermaphroditism, is comparatively frequent. The s.e.xual life of pseudo-hermaphrodites has in some instances been very carefully studied, more especially with reference to the relations.h.i.+p of pseudo-hermaphroditism to the direction of the s.e.xual impulse. It appears that in a number of cases of pseudo-hermaphroditism, not only did the secondary s.e.xual characters exhibit an inverted or contrary s.e.xual development, but the s.e.xual impulse was also inverted--was directed, that is to say, towards individuals of the same s.e.x as that to which the pseudo-hermaphrodite really belonged. Beyond question, cases have been observed in which pseudo-hermaphrodites with t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es have had s.e.xual inclination towards males; and pseudo-hermaphrodites with ovaries, s.e.xual inclination towards females.

In many of these cases, such contrary s.e.xual tendencies could be traced back into childhood. We have, of course, to reckon with the fact that in the case of pseudo-hermaphrodites the diagnosis of the s.e.x is usually based upon the formation of the external genital organs, and without any expert examination of the reproductive glands; thus they are often brought up as members of a s.e.x to which they do not really belong, and in consequence of this their education is s.e.xually inverted. In such cases it may reasonably be suggested that the h.o.m.os.e.xuality is the result, not so much of a congenital inversion of the s.e.xual impulse, as of the contrary s.e.xual education.

For a detailed treatment of the subject of hermaphroditism, reference should be made to the special literature of the subject, and above all to the exhaustive and laborious work of Neugebauer.[66]

Chapter VI

ETIOLOGY AND DIAGNOSIS

The last chapter dealt with pathological phenomena in the s.e.xual life of the child. From the considerations urged in this and in earlier chapters, it will have become apparent that s.e.xual manifestations in childhood are not necessarily to be regarded as pathological. This conclusion does not conflict with the a.s.sumption that certain factors influence the s.e.xual life of the child. The numerous individual differences suffice to indicate the existence of such factors. Many of these are of a pathological character, but others have no connexion with the domain of pathology. Among the factors thus influencing the s.e.xual life of the child, we can distinguish those affecting the germinal rudiments from those which exercise their influence later. Those of the former group first demand our attention.

In certain families, the early awakening of s.e.xuality is observed with remarkable frequency. These are often neuropathic or psychopathic families, and moreover the early awakening of the s.e.xual life is frequently a.s.sociated with neuropathic or psychopathic symptoms. But this is by no means always the case, and often enough such persons belong to healthy families and are themselves healthy. We are therefore not ent.i.tled to regard the occurrence of s.e.xual manifestations in childhood as a proof of degeneration or of a morbid inheritance. But equally erroneous is the opposite view, that the early awakening of s.e.xuality is an indication of exceptional endowments. It is true that in many persons of genius premature s.e.xual pa.s.sion has been observed, and such manifestations are by no means always confined to the contrectation impulse. We learn, too, in our consulting rooms, that not infrequently the most diligent schoolboys exhibit at a comparatively early age the phenomena alike of contrectation and of detumescence. But the fallacy of drawing general conclusions from this fact is shown by the additional fact that in idiots and imbeciles premature awakening of the s.e.xual life is also of common occurrence. In cases such as were formerly described as moral insanity, but which in Germany to-day are cla.s.sed with imbecility, s.e.xual a.s.saults on others are very common at an early age.