CHAPTER XVII
In my “Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis,” published in the years 1902 and 1903, I for the first time attempted to deal systematically, from the standpoint of the anthropologist and ethnologist, with the great province of the so-called “psychopathia sexualis,” the field of sexual aberrations, degenerations, anomalies, perversities, and perversions. I started from the point of view that, in order to obtain new ideas regarding the nature of psychopathia sexualis, and in order to revise the old ideas in the light of recent knowledge, we must keep before our eyes, not one-sidedly “the sick man,” but comprehensively “man as man,” both as civilized man and as savage man.
Previously the doctrine of psychopathia sexualis had been dominated exclusively by clinical, purely medical conceptions. Observations had been limited to morbid phenomena, occurring in individuals with an abnormal vita sexualis. Thus there had arisen a general view of the nature of sexual anomalies, by which these anomalies were allotted almost entirely to the province of the physician, and were described as stigmata of degeneration. H. J. Löwenstein,[456] Häussler,[457] and Kaan,[458] in the third and fifth decades of the nineteenth century, were the first to adopt this medical point of view of sexual aberrations; and finally, in the last quarter of the same century, Richard von Krafft-Ebing[459] converted modern sexual pathology into a comprehensive scientific system,[460] which stands and falls with the idea of degeneration.
Von Krafft-Ebing is, and remains, the true founder of modern sexual pathology. Without wishing in the slightest degree to underestimate the value of the clinical researches he carried out in this province of research, characterized by precision and profound scientific zeal—without undervaluing for a moment these extraordinary services—I am compelled to point out that his purely medical view of sexual aberrations is one-sided, and to insist that it must be amplified and rectified by anthropological and ethnological researches.
Let us leave the hospital and the medical consulting-room; let us make a journey round the world; let us observe the sexual activity of the genus homo in its manifold phenomena, not as physicians, but as ordinary observers; let us compare the sexuality of the civilized human being with that of the savage: then we shall recognize the vast extension of our visual field for the comprehension of psychopathia sexualis; we shall see how the civilized and temporary phenomenon becomes absorbed into the general human phenomenon, presenting amid all local variations the same fundamental lineaments. Psychopathia sexualis exists everywhere and at all times. Culture, civilization, and diseases play only the parts of favouring, modifying, intensifying factors.
I do not go so far as Freud, who, on account of the now generally recognized wide diffusion of perverse sexual tendencies, is compelled to adopt the view “that the rudiments of perversions are the primeval general rudiments of the human sexual impulse, out of which the normal sexual mode of behaviour is developed in the course of evolution, in consequence of organic changes and psychical inhibitions”;[461] but I do maintain that sexual perversities and perversions appertain to the human race as such, and independently of civilization. I am convinced that they are supplementary to normal sexual manifestations, and that their diffusion among civilized and savage peoples extends far more widely than the circle of true degenerative phenomena.
The sexual impulse, as a purely physical function, is neither an object of comparison nor a distinctive characteristic between primitive and civilized humanity. The “elementary ideas” of humanity return everywhere again in the elementary manifestations of sexual aberrations.
From the investigations collected and published in the above-mentioned work I have been led to the firm conviction, which I must now put forward as a scientific truth based upon the teaching of anthropology, folk-lore, and the history of civilization, that at the present day, in our time so widely decried as “nervous,” “degenerate,” and “overcivilized,” not only are there no more sexually “perverse” persons than there were in former days—let us think only of the middle ages, with their frightful excesses, appearing in epidemic diffusion—but, further, that the greater part of the perversions of the present day are not to be regarded as “degenerations” at all; and, finally, that the factors which are to weaken and undermine the vital forces of a nation must be something other than purely sexual factors. For sexual aberrations alone have, taken as a whole, but a trifling influence in effecting the decadence of a nation. They first gain such an influence in combination with causes, which we cannot now discuss, of an economic and political nature.
As old as humanity is the fable of the good old times, of the golden youth of the human race, of the glorious past, to which an always corrupt, physically and morally rotten present is supposed to have succeeded.[462] The ancients held this view; it recurred at the time of the renascence; and since the time of Rousseau’s unfortunate condemnation of all civilization, it has been, in the hands of all zealots, moral fanatics, backsliders, and guardians of conventional morality, a greatly prized weapon, and one, also, of great power when used to influence the ignorant and easily misled. Anthropology, the history of primitive man, and the history of civilization in general, have utterly destroyed this beautiful dream of the good old times and of the better days of the past. Nothing has been left but the ever more beautiful present!
The critical and far-sighted Lessing opposed Rousseau’s hypothesis of corruption by means of “civilization.” It was true, he said, that Athens, standing so high in civilization, and at the same time so corrupt, passed away; but the virtuous Sparta, did not this also pass away? Rousseau himself had to admit that the destruction of civilization would be of no use, that the world would then relapse into barbarism, and that the corruption would none the less persist. The philologist Muff,[463] discussing this question, added that if civilization had not come, vice would still have been dominant, and that civilization, involving as it does intellectual progress, provides also the means for counteracting vice.
Physicians and natural philosophers have long protested against the theory of the corrupt and degenerate “present.” For instance, a countryman of Rousseau’s, Dr. Delvincourt,[464] exclaimed:
“How false is the assumption of the fanatics and the pious who attribute to the moral corruption of our century the majority of diseases, and, above all, venereal diseases; who maintain that the race is degenerating; and who thunder an anathema against modern young men, whom they would gladly muzzle as we muzzle an animal.”
Must we, then, he asks, at a moment when civilization is marching forward with giant strides, have our ears wearied with sophisms which can no longer deceive even the ignorant masses? And he shows how since primeval times, everywhere, all over the earth, vice has been diffused. He rightly points to the innumerable monuments de turpitude of all ages.
About the same time (be it noted, more than sixty years ago) in Germany the celebrated natural philosopher Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg, in an academic speech with the distinctive title “The Fear that Progressive Intellectual Development will Lead to Physical National Degeneration: A Demonstration that this Fear is entirely devoid of Scientific and Medical Foundation” (Berlin, 1842), opposed the belief in the unwholesome influence of civilization upon the popular strength and popular morals. Of special interest to us are his remarks upon the alleged deleterious influence of civilization upon sexuality. He says (p. 8):
“The occurrence of puberty in warm climates at a comparatively early age (from ten to fifteen years), in cold climates somewhat later (from fourteen to eighteen years), is a natural measure of human intelligence and power; and if our sexually mature youths at school, at the time at which their development has naturally progressed to this point, experience also sexual stimulation, this is entirely according to the nature of things, and only imposes upon those in charge of schools, and upon parents, the special duty of watchfulness in these respects. Even if secret vice becomes general anywhere among young fellows in a manner open to regret, still, this does not mean that our schools are the cause of physical weakness, of overstimulation, and of deterioration of the people and of the epoch; it merely indicates a local deficiency in energetic purposive education, and a lack of the necessary watchfulness over the youths in the particular institution in which the trouble has occurred, or that the family life of the children thus affected is less strictly moral than we could wish; and the evil is only to be overcome by counteracting its especial causes. In many cases we may compare outbreaks of premature sexuality with epidemics of disease, which also find entrance through lack of sufficient care. Just the same is it in respect of the great mass of adults who, by exhortation and example on the part of those whose business it is to give them counsel, are in most cases so easily led in the right direction, but who, in the absence of such judicious treatment, often give way to the most unbridled licentiousness. The student of popular history will easily find numerous instances of cause and effect, now of the former and now of the latter kind.”
Ehrenberg comes to the conclusion, most encouraging to ourselves and to our time, and one which may be unhesitatingly accepted, that the entire history of humanity, in so far as that history is open to us, leads us to believe, not that the progress of civilization[465] has given rise to infirmity or to nervous overstimulation of the people, but, on the contrary, that as the centuries pass, our bodies are as powerfully developed as formerly, and that there is an ever-happier development of all the nobler human activities, such as can only result from an improvement in our mental faculties.
At the fifty-ninth Congress of German Natural Philosophers and Physicians, held at Berlin in the year 1886, the celebrated physicist Werner von Siemens, discussing the same problem in a formal speech, proved the nullity of the hypothesis of the evil influence of civilization upon the physical and moral nature of humanity, and expressed himself as fully convinced that
“our activity in research and discovery conducts humanity to higher stages of civilization, ennobles humanity, and makes ideal aims more easily accessible; that the coming scientific age will diminish poverty and illness, will increase the enjoyment of life, and will make humanity better, happier, and more contented with its lot.”
“Has humanity degenerated?” asks a celebrated specialist,[466] who, owing to the nature of his speciality, has been able to obtain exhaustive information regarding what is often believed to be a symptom of degeneration—namely, falling out of the hair and baldness—and he answers:
“Certainly not! In the process of civilization, which has lasted for many thousands of years, our organization has not experienced any serious convulsion of its fundamental nature. Superficially only have the battles we have had to fight made any mark upon us.”
To a frightful extent in earlier times the great infective epidemic diseases decimated civilized humanity, to an extent which is hardly realized at the present day, and those of more powerful constitution were undoubtedly carried off quite as much as those endowed with weaker powers of resistance. Bubonic plague, small-pox, leprosy, the sweating sickness, scarlatina, cholera, and syphilis (which at its commencement was a far more severe disease than it is at the present day), have often annihilated the blossoms of youth; and yet mankind as a whole has not suffered therefrom. Formerly there were much more violent and obstinate nervous troubles than our modern “nervousness,” which, to a large extent, represents merely a phenomenon of adaptation, not a disease in the proper sense of the term. St. Vitus’s dance, the dancing mania, and similar psycho-nervous epidemics, disturbed medieval humanity, without, however, giving rise to any permanent injury, and without causing progressive degeneration. And the most frightful sexual excesses can do no harm to the strength of the nation.
With regard to this point, the reputed connexion between sexual excesses and the political downfall of a nation, Carl Bleibtreu[467] rightly remarks:
“Ancient Rome produced its greatest men during a period of moral degeneration. The finest blossoms of Hellenic civilization coincided with a period of fundamental immorality. We might easily urge that after Pericles, Phidias, Aristophanes, Euripides, Alcibiades, and Socrates, the decay of the Greek race began, notwithstanding the fact that much later in Greek history the vital force of the nation was proved by the appearance of men of the first rank, such as Alexander, Aristotle, and Demosthenes. But this rejoinder does not help us much, for in the earliest days of Greek history, in the legal codes of Solon and Lycurgus, we find the most notable and clear indications that precisely in respect of sexual relationship, and more especially in regard to marriage and the procreation of children, the morals of this fresh and youthful race were disordered to the greatest possible extent.
“Just the same do we find it at the time of the Italian renascence and at the time of the Hohenstaufen dynasty—a complete confusion of sexual relationships. The eighteenth century, also, notwithstanding all the justified jeremiads of Rousseau regarding the widespread unnaturalness of the time, and notwithstanding all the sorrows of the young Werther, was distinguished by the production of an incredible abundance of men of genius; and in contemporary France, the country which was most severely affected by this moral decay, there flourished the generation to which such men as Mirabeau and Napoleon belonged—men whose unparalleled vitality influences us to this moment.”
Finally, I must refer to two leading authors of recent years, Eli Metchnikoff and Georg Hirth, whose writings exhibit a remarkable similarity in respect of general philosophical foundation. Both have energetically opposed the unfounded fantasies of degeneration (there exists also a justified campaign against the continuously effective causes of degeneration in the form of alcohol, syphilis, etc.), and both have advocated a belief in life and in the life-force.
In his work “The Nature of Man” (English translation by Chalmers Mitchell; Heinemann, 1903), Metchnikoff advances an “optimistic philosophy,” in opposition to the pessimistic degenerative theory of our time, of which latter P. J. Möbius may be regarded as the chief advocate, and he proves how the imperfections and “disharmonies” of the human organism may give place to a further development and perfectibility of human nature, and this precisely in connexion with culture and civilization. It is now that humanity first begins really to live.[468] Mankind has not degenerated in consequence of civilization, but has, on the contrary, by means of civilization, first attained the possibility of establishing “physiological old age” and “physiological death.” Our device is not backwards, but forwards! The pessimists cry out: “Existence has no meaning! For what purpose do we live, and for what purpose do we die?” This dreadful “for what purpose” with which Friedrich von Hellwald concludes his history of civilization, disturbs day by day emotional minds. Metchnikoff proves that this problem is connected with the existence of the disharmonies of human nature. But evolution continues to transform these disharmonies into harmonies (“orthobiosis”). Thus the aim of human existence lies in “the completion of the entire physiological cycle of life with a normal old age, so that, with the cessation of the instinct to live, and with the appearance of the instinct for natural death, the cycle comes to an end.” This is, to a certain extent, the scientific formulation of the “superman” of Nietzsche, who based upon quite similar considerations his opposition to the hypothesis of degeneration, and who, out of the disharmonies, imperfections, and pains of life, also created the conviction of a progressive evolution, and thus, like Metchnikoff, thoroughly affirmed life. Metchnikoff’s ideal human being of the future is realizable, but only by means of the principles of science and intelligent culture.
Similar views to those of Metchnikoff are advanced by Georg Hirth. He, above all, has introduced into science the most felicitous conception of “hereditary enfranchisement.”[469] Thus to the pessimistic degeneration theories and the psychical paralysis evoked by the idea of “hereditary taint” (we now hear the expression from every mouth), Hirth opposes a word of power, a word expressing “an energetic opposing stream of tendency.” Thus the incontestable fact finds simple expression, that
“The requirements of all individuals through millions of generations constitute an inalienable, progressively influential common possession of the whole of humanity, an impulsive force based upon natural law, which marches victoriously forward over the sins and failures of individuals.... That is to say, that in our entire organism, so long as it continues to live, in addition to the disturbing influences which we have inherited or have acquired by our own faults, there exists also a mass of old and new constructive influences, which work towards the restitution of the former condition.... Enfranchisement by means of primevally old, healthy, and strong reproductive cells is stronger than the quite recent tainting by means of weakly and diseased germs. If it were not so, the entire human race would long since have passed away, for there can hardly exist a single family tree at the foot of which there are not somewhere worms gnawing.”
I cannot here examine more closely the extremely interesting foundation of this view, which rightly places in the foreground the capacity for self-regeneration, for the removal of morbid vital stimuli, and their replacement by new and healthy vital stimuli, and which notably limits the extension of hereditary “tainting.” The conclusion which Hirth draws from this view is identical with that of Metchnikoff—namely, that our life remains capable of upward progress, a view which Hirth everywhere happily employs in his battle “with the forces of obscurity and degeneration.”
The theory of degeneration finds a thorough scientific refutation also in the admirable work by Dr. William Hirsch, “Genius and Degeneration: a Psychological Study” (Berlin and Leipzig, 1904). At the end of the book (p. 340) the writer says:
“In view of the investigations I have made, we are necessarily led to the conclusion that the authors mentioned have by no means adduced proof of a general degeneration of the civilized nations. Humanity need not be alarmed with regard to the alleged ‘black plague of degeneration,’ and the world need be as little concerned by these fables of the ‘twilight of the nations’ as by Herr Falb’s prophecies of the approaching destruction of our planet.”
It cannot be denied that the wide diffusion of the deleterious means of sensual gratification (alcohol, tobacco, etc.), the increase in the number of large towns, and the rapid growth in their population, by means of which prostitution and the spread of venereal diseases are especially favoured, constitute important etiological factors for the degeneration of the race. Still, the wide diffusion of public hygiene, which is more and more brought under the notice of the individual, affords here an effective counterpoise. “Enfranchisement” in Hirth’s sense is here clearly manifested.
After we have seen that the “degeneration” of our time, to the medical idea of which we shall return to speak more exactly in the next chapter, is not greater now than it was in earlier epochs, and that sexual anomalies have always existed, let us return to consider this point, to the anthropological view of psychopathia sexualis.
In my “Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis” I have collected the general human phenomena of the sexual impulse in primitive and civilized states—that is, the everywhere recurring fundamental lineaments and phenomena of the vita sexualis peculiar to the genus homo as such.
As the principal result of this inquiry, the following propositions appear to me to be established:
Degeneration cannot be employed, as von Krafft-Ebing has employed it in his “Psychopathia Sexualis,” as a heuristic principle in the investigation, recognition, and judgment of sexual aberrations and perversions.
At the most, degeneration is no more than a favouring factor of the diffusion of sexual abnormalities, an influence which increases the frequency of their appearance.
On the contrary, the ultimate cause of all sexual perversions, aberrations, abnormalities, and irrationalities, is the need for variety in sexual relationships peculiar to the genus homo, which is to be regarded as a physiological phenomenon, and the increase of which to the degree of a sexual irritable hunger is competent to produce the most severe sexual perversions.
In contrast with this, “degeneration” or diseases play only a subordinate part, and can be invoked for the explanation of only a small number of sexual aberrations—at most for those which come to the notice of physicians on account of pathological conditions or in foro. In fact, the majority of cases of sexual perversions which come the way of the physicians in clinical or forensic relationships are pathological, but these constitute only a minority of all cases. The large majority of cases do not come within the scope of degeneration.[470]
Freud, in his “Three Essays on the Sexual Theory,” recognizes the justice of my view, and on p. 80 he writes:
“Physicians who have first studied perversions in well-marked examples and peculiar conditions are naturally inclined to regard them as signs of disease or as stigmata of degeneration, just as in the case of sexual inversion. Daily experience has shown that the majority of these transgressions—at any rate, the less marked of them—constitute a seldom lacking constituent of the sexual life of healthy persons. In favourable conditions the normal individual may exhibit such a perversion for a considerable length of time in the place of his normal sexual activity; or the perversion may take its place beside the normal sexual activity. Probably there is no healthy person in whom there does not exist, at some time or other, some kind of supplement to his normal sexual activity, to which we should be justified in giving the name of ‘perversity.’”[471]
A second important factor in the genesis of sexual anomalies is the ease with which the sexual impulse is affected by external influences, the associative inclusion of manifold external stimuli in sexual perception itself, the “synæsthetic stimuli,” as I myself have called them, in the amatory life of mankind. In this way gradually all the relations of art, religion, fashion, etc., to sexuality have developed, and they offer, in conjunction with the sensory impressions and the psychical and physical imaginative associations which accompany the sexual act, an incredibly rich material for the manifold realizations of the sexual need for variation.
The need for variety in sexual relationships, in conjunction with the sexual “demand for stimulation” (Hoche),[472] plays a great part, especially in the occurrence of sexual perversions in adult persons and at a more advanced age of life. The effect of external influences is most clearly noticeable in childhood, when it is experienced most deeply and in a most enduring manner, and when it can become permanently associated with sexual perception (Binet and von Schrenck-Notzing).
Alexander von Humboldt, in his “Cosmos” (vol. ii., Introduction), drew attention to the well-known experience that “sensual impressions and apparently chance occurrences are, in the case of youthful emotional individuals, often capable of determining the entire course of a human life.” Freud draws attention to the psychological fact that impressions of childhood, which have apparently been forgotten, may, notwithstanding, have left the most profound marks upon our psychical life, and may have determined our entire subsequent development. The impressions of childhood are often incorporated fate. For this reason, for example, the children of criminals become criminals themselves, not because they are “born” criminals, but because, as children, they grow up in the atmosphere of crime, and the impressions they here receive become firmly and deeply rooted in their natures. Hence the campaign against crime must in the first place take into consideration the education of the children of criminals!
From the need for variety in sexual relationships, and from the effect of external influences, we deduce the possibility and the actual frequency of the acquirement and the artificial production of sexual perversions and perversities; and these, in proportion to the intensity of the sexual impulse (very variable in strength in different individuals, according to the ease with which it is excited), will appear now earlier, now later, will be now transient and now enduring.
The third important etiological factor in the origination of sexual perversions is the frequent repetition of the same sexual aberration. There can be no doubt whatever that the normal human being can become accustomed to the most diverse sexual aberrations, so that these become perversions, which appear in healthy human beings just as they do in the diseased.
Fourthly, suggestion and imitation play an extremely important r?e in the vita sexualis alike of primitive and of civilized nations, in accordance with which certain aberrations in the sexual sphere become diffused with great rapidity, and make their appearance as customs, fashions, and psychical epidemics. Those who everywhere trace perversities from morbid rudiments underestimate the powerful influence which example and seduction exercise in the human sexual life. This is especially noticeable to-day in those sexual perversions which have become national customs. The most celebrated example is that of Hellenic pæderasty, reputedly introduced from Crete, but probably in the first place originated by a few genuinely homosexual individuals, who in their own interest transmitted artificially by suggestion their peculiar tendencies to a few heterosexual individuals, until at last the love of boys became a national custom which every heterosexual man adopted. The momentous part which modern prostitution, and more especially brothels, plays in the suggestion of perversions has already been mentioned. It is a matter to which we shall frequently have occasion to return. Schrank alludes (“Prostitution in Vienna,” vol. i., p. 285) to a prostitute who enjoyed a “European reputation” as an artist in sexual perversities of every kind, and who enjoyed the nickname of “the Ever-Virgin,” because she allowed men every possible kind of enjoyment except that of regular normal intercourse (which she avoided for fear of becoming impregnated).
Fifthly, the difference between man and woman in the essence, the kind, and the intensity, of sexual perception (sexual activity in man, sexual passivity in woman) constitutes a rich source of sexual aberrations, most of which belong to the provinces of masochism and sadism.
Sixthly, and lastly, in otherwise healthy individuals there occur at a very early age, and probably in consequence of congenital conditions, changes in the direction and the aim of sexual perception, variations from the type of differentiated heterosexual love. Genuine homosexuality is the principal phenomenon to be considered under this head. It occurs in perfectly healthy individuals quite independently of degeneration and of civilization; and it is diffused throughout the whole world.
From all these facts may be deduced the untenability of a purely clinical and pathological conception of sexual aberrations and perversions. We must now accept the point of view that, although numerous morbid degenerate and psychopathic individuals exhibit sexual anomalies, yet these identical anomalies and aberrations are extraordinarily common in healthy persons.
Ethnological research, for more exact details of which I may refer to my own work already mentioned, and to the pioneer works of Ploss-Bartels,[473] Mantegazza,[474] Friedrich S. Krauss,[475] and Havelock Ellis,[476] has adduced stringent proof that sexual aberrations and perversions are ubiquitous, diffused throughout the entire world, just as much among primitive races as among civilized nations, that on the psycho-physical side they are “elementary ideas” in Bastian’s sense, that they recur everywhere in a qualitatively identical manner as a result of similar conditions. As it is with prostitution, so it is also with sexual perversions—a tendency to sexual aberration is deeply rooted in human nature. It is a primitive, purely anthropological phenomenon, which is not strengthened by civilization, but, on the contrary, is mitigated thereby. Charles Darwin rightly points out that the hatred of sexual immorality and of sexual aberrations is a “modern virtue,” appertaining exclusively to “civilized life,” and entirely foreign to the nature of primitive man. Primitive man revelled in wild indecency (as Wilhelm Roscher also proves), in sexual perversions, and libertinism.[477] The sexual aberrations of civilized mankind are for the most part imitations of the examples given by primitive peoples.
Thus, the well-known “stimulating rings” of European rubber manufacturers (cf. Weissenberg, in the “Transactions of the Anthropological Society of Berlin,” 1893, p. 135) correspond to the “stimulating stones” of the Battaks (Staudinger, op. cit., 1891, p. 351), to the “penis stones” of the savage Orang Sinnoi in Malacca (Vaughan Stevens in the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1896, pp. 181, 182), the “ampallang” of the Sunda Islands (see Miklucho-Maclay in the “Transactions of the Anthropological Society of Berlin,” 1876, pp. 22-28). The “renifleurs” and “gamahucheurs” of the Parisian brothels and houses of accommodation find their typical analogues in the urine fetichists and cunnilingi of the Island of Ponape, in the Carolines (cf. Ploss-Bartels), who are, in truth, far removed from the fin-de-siècle life. And what a perverse imagination have the women of this same island! According to Otto Finsch (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1880, p. 316), the men of this island have all only one testicle, because in boys at the age of seven or eight years the left testicle is removed by a piece of sharpened bamboo. This is said to make the men more desirable to the women! Among the Masai, for similar reasons, circumcision is effected in such a manner that a portion of the prepuce is left behind to form a kind of firm button of skin. “This mode of circumcision is greatly prized by the women. Among the black races, indeed, everything turns round the question of sensual enjoyment” (“Medical Notes from Central Africa,” by M. C., published in the Deutsche Medizinische Presse, 1902, No. 14, p. 116). And how can our roués compete with the Tauni islanders of the South Seas? These select certain women, who are not allowed to marry, but are reserved as simple “objects of sensual pleasure,” and with these every kind of sexual artifice is practised (Dempwolf, “Medical Notes on the Tauni Islanders,” published in the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1902, p. 335).
Thus between primitive and civilized races in these respects there are no important differences; and according to recent researches we find the same may be said with regard to civilized nations, that there is no difference between town and country.[478] I quote here the account given by an experienced author sixty years ago:
“People usually believe that in the country morals are much better than in the towns, but this belief is quite erroneous. Brothels and professional prostitutes naturally cannot exist in the country, but nearly every peasant-girl in the country is equivalent to a secret prostitute. It is incredible what sexual excesses go on between the masculine and feminine inhabitants of the villages. Every barn, every shed, every haystack, every copse, bears witness to this. Especially disadvantageous to morals is it when in the heat of summer persons of different sexes work side by side, half undressed, in remote fields for the whole day, and lie down to rest side by side.”[479]
We may here allude to a fact that we shall have to discuss later—that young men, after the conclusion of their term of military service, carry back with them to the country the knowledge of sexual excesses and perversities which they have acquired in the town, and thus diffuse these tendencies more and more widely.
Since sexual anomalies constitute a phenomenon generally characteristic of humanity, race and nationality, as such, have less to do with the matter than is commonly imagined. The Mongol and the Malay are not less voluptuous than the Semites, or than many Aryan races. Among the Semites, the Arabs and the Turks are pre-eminently sexually perverse nations. They seek sexual gratification indifferently in the female harem and in the boys’ brothel (see numerous descriptions of travellers on the moral customs of Turkey, the Levant, Cairo, Morocco, the Arabian Soudan, the Arabs in Africa, etc.). Among the Aryan races the Aryans of India must be considered pre-eminent as refined practitioners of psychopathia sexualis, which they have reduced to a system. In addition to recognizing forty-eight figuræ Veneris (different postures in sexual intercourse), they practise every possible variety of sexual perversion; and they have in various textbooks[480] a systematic introduction to sexual immorality. Here there is manifestly no trace of morbid conditions, of degeneration, or of psychopathia; it is simply a matter of popular manners and customs. Sexual perversion among the Greeks and the Romans, two other Aryan nations, is too well known to need detailed description. In modern Europe the French were at one time believed to lead the way in sexual artifices. For a long time this has ceased to be true, and, in fact, never was true. They do, indeed, excel, if one may use the expression, all other nations in the outward technique and in the elegance of their sexual excesses. To them from very early times there has been ascribed a certain preference for the skatological element in the sexual life; but according to the recent researches of Friedrich S. Krauss regarding the Slavs, published in his “Anthropophyteia,” this alleged pre-eminence is extremely doubtful. That among the Slavs sexual perversions of every kind have an extraordinarily wide diffusion has been shown by this investigator by the collection of an enormous mass of material. It is also very generally known that the English from early days have exhibited a marked tendency to sadistic practices, and especially to flagellation. I will return later to this remarkable phenomenon. The French accuse the Germans of an especial tendency to homosexuality (le vice Allemand), but there are no sufficient grounds for this accusation. In psychopathia sexualis, the Germans are as cosmopolitan as they are in other respects.
With regard to the age of the individual in relation to sexual perversions, the frequency of these is greater after puberty than before,[481] and the frequency increases with advancing years. The time at which the imagination unfolds its greatest activity, the commencement of manhood, is extremely favourable to the origination of sexual aberrations, and to their becoming habitual practices; and, again, the age at which the sexual powers begin to decline, and when for their incitation new stimuli are needed, is one at which abnormal varieties of sexual gratification frequently originate.[482]
Which sex is more inclined to abnormalities of the sexual impulse, the male or the female?
The primitively more powerful sexual impulsive life of man in association with his greater use of alcohol makes him distinctly more inclined to follow sexual bypaths than woman, whose sexuality at first develops very gradually, and experiences, in consequence of motherhood, powerful inhibitions to the development of any sexual anomalies. On the other hand, the much more difficult development of voluptuous sensations in women, by means of normal coitus, is not rarely the cause of a tendency to perverse varieties of sexual intercourse. They often seduce man in this direction, and excel him in the discovery of sexual artifices. Among primitive races, where the relationships are clearest, this is still easily recognizable, whereas by civilization the matter is often obscured. All the artificial deformities of the male genital organs amongst savages, which give the man much more trouble than pleasure, but which, on the other hand, increase the voluptuous enjoyment of the woman during the sexual act, cannot otherwise be explained except on the ground of an original demand on the part of women. To this category belong incisions in the glans penis, and the implanting of small stones in the wounds until the skin has a warty appearance (Java); perforation of the penis to enable rods beset with bristles, feathers, rods with balls (the well-known “ampallang” of the Dyaks of Borneo), bodkins, rings, bell-shaped apparatus, to be inserted through these perforations; the wrapping up of the penis in strips of fur with the hair outwards, or enveloping it in a leaden cylinder, etc. The feminine imagination has proved inexhaustible in this direction. Miklucho-Maclay, the great authority on the sexual psychology of the savage races of the Malay Archipelago and the South Sea Islands, declares it to be extremely probable that all these customs and all these apparatus were invented by or for women. The women reject all men who do not possess these stimulating apparatus on the penis. Finsch and Kubary confirm this, and state that in most cases it is the frigidity of the women which makes them desire such means of artificial stimulation. Among civilized races, also, abundant material can be collected with regard to sexual perversities among women, as has recently been done by Paul de Régla in “Les Perversités de la Femme” (Paris, 1904), and by René Schwaeblé in “Les Détraquées de Paris” (Paris, 1904).
The following case shows that European women sometimes demand artificial changes in the male genital organs, in order to increase their voluptuous sensations. Some years ago a man, fifty years of age, was admitted into the syphilis wards of the Laibacher Hospital. The discharge from the penis was, however, found to be due merely to balanitis. On examination the greatly enlarged penis was found to be perforated by rod-shaped objects, and an incision through the skin showed that these were pins and hairpins. The pins were about two inches long, with brass heads the size of a peppercorn, and they were at least ten in number. One of the pins was run partly into the testicle. After the foreign objects had been removed, the man informed us that his mistress had stuck these in, in order that she might experience more ardent sensations. The pins were all subcutaneous; several of them ran right round the penis.
Social differences in respect of the frequency of sexual perversions do not exist. Sexual perversions are just as widely diffused among the lower classes as among the upper. A. Ferguson, Havelock Ellis, Tarnowsky, and J. A. Symonds are all in agreement regarding this fact, which, indeed, in view of the anthropological conception of psychopathia sexualis, does not require additional explanation.
Finally, we come to the last and most important point—to the question of the relation of culture and civilization to psychopathia sexualis. Even though psychopathia sexualis is in its essence independent of culture, is a general human phenomenon, still we cannot fail to recognize that civilization has exercised a certain influence upon the external mode of manifestation, and also upon the inner psychical configuration of sexual aberrations. Especially as regards the latter—the psychical relationships—the perversity of the civilized man is more complicated than that of primitive man, although in essence the two are identical.
The modern civilized man is in respect of his sexuality a peculiar dual being. The sexuality within him leads a kind of independent existence, notwithstanding its intimate relationship to the whole of the rest of his spiritual life. There are moments in which, even in men of lofty spiritual nature, pure sexuality becomes separated from love, and manifests itself in its utterly elementary nature beyond good and evil. I expressed earlier the idea that this frequent phenomenon reminded me of the “monomania” of the older alienists. “Il y a en nous deux êtres, l’être moral et la bête: l’être moral sait ce que mérite l’amour véritable, la bête aspire à la fange où on la pousse,” we find in a French erotic work (“Impressions d’une Fille” par Léna de Mauregard, vol. i., pp. 57, 68; Paris, 1900).
No other human impulsive manifestation is so ill adapted as sexuality to the coercion and conventionality which civilization necessarily entails. Carl Hauptmann, in an interesting socio-psychological study, “Unsere Wirklichkeit” (“Our Reality”; Munich, 1902), has described very impressively this frightful conventionality, especially characteristic of our own time, which so painfully represses the “reality” of love, suppresses everything primitive in it, banishes it into the darkness of its own interior, and only allows the conventionally sanctioned forms of sexual love to subsist. This coercion, this outward pressure, develops a volcano of elementary sexuality, which usually slumbers, but may suddenly break out in eruption, and give free vent to excesses of the wildest nature. Dingelstedt in his poem “Ein Roman,” has excellently described this condition:
“Wenn du die Leidenschaft willst kennen lernen,
Musst du dich nur nicht aus der Welt entfernen.
Such’ sie nicht auf in friedlicher Idylle,
In strohgedeckter und begnügter Stille...
Da suche sie in festlich vollem Saale
Bei Spiel und Tanz, an feierlichem Mahle,
Dort, eingeschnürt in Form und Zwang und Sitte,
Thront sie wie Banquos Geist in ihrer Mitte.”
[“If you wish to learn to know passion,
You must, above all, not remove yourself from the world.
Do not look for it in a peaceful idyll,
In padded and satisfied quietude....
Look for it in the full festal hall,
At the game and the dance, at the brilliant banquet;
There, entrapped amid form, and coercion, and custom,
Enthroned, like Banquo’s ghost, it sits amid the throng.”]
Similarly, Charles Albert[483] remarks:
“If love nowadays so often manifests itself in the form of aberration or passion, this is almost always to be explained by the hindrances of every kind which have been opposed to it. No other feeling is so hindered, opposed, detested, and loaded with material and moral fetters. We know how education makes a beginning in this way, declaring that love is something forbidden, and how the hardness of economic life continues the process. Hardly has a young man or a young girl gone out into life, hardly have they begun to feel their way into society, but they encounter a thousand difficulties which are opposed to their living out their life from a sexual point of view. How would it be possible that, in the limits of such a society, love could become anything else but a fixed idea of the individual, and how could it fail to give rise to continuous restlessness? Nature does not allow herself to be inhibited by our artificial social arrangements. The need for love within us remains active; it cries out in unsatisfied desire; and when no answer is forthcoming, beyond the echo of its own pain, it takes a perverse form. The love which is prevented from obtaining complete satisfaction and repose is to many an intensely painful torment.... The over-rich imagination and the unsatisfied longing give rise to the most horrible and abnormal forms of love. Above all, in a society which will make no room for love, the love-passion must give rise to the greatest devastation. The impulse to love which is repressed by the organization of society does not only fight violently for air—the inevitable consequence of any pressure—but it discovers also all those artifices and corruptions which are supposed to make the enjoyment of love more intense. Conscious of being despised by society, it endeavours to regain by violence what is wanting to it in sensuality.”
The struggle for reality in love, for the elementary and the primitive, manifests itself in the search for the greatest possible contrast to the conventional, to the commonly sanctioned mode of sexual activity. Love cries out for “nature,” and comes thereby to the “unnatural,” to the coarsest, commonest dissipation. This connexion has been already explained (pp. 322-325). Certain temporary phenomena exhibit also this fact—for example, the remarkable preference for the most brutal, the coarsest, the commonest dances, mere limb dislocations, such as the cancan, the croquette (machicha), the cake-walk, and other wild negro dances, which rejoice the modern public more than the most beautiful and gracious spiritual ballet. It was only when the above-described connexion became clear to me that I was able to understand the remarkable alluring power of these dances, which had hitherto been incomprehensible to me.
An additional factor which favours the origination of sexual perversions is the unrest always connected with the advance of civilization, the haste and hurry, the more severe struggle for existence, the rapid and frequent change of new impressions. Fifty years ago the celebrated alienist Guislain exclaimed:
“What is it with which our thoughts are filled? Plans, novelties, reforms. What is it that we Europeans are striving for? Movement, excitement. What do we obtain? Stimulation, illusion, deception.”[484]
There is no longer any time for quiet, enduring love, for an inward profundity of feeling, for the culture of the heart. The struggle for life and the intellectual contest of our time leaves the possibility only for transient sensations; the shorter they are, the more violent, the more intense must they be, in order to replace the failing grande passion of former times. Love becomes a mere sensation, which in a brief moment must contain within itself an entire world. Modern youth eagerly desires such experience of a whole world by means of love. The everlasting feeling of our classic period had been transformed, more especially among our leading spirits, into a passionate yearning to reflect within themselves truly the spirit of the time, to live through in themselves all the unrest, all the joy, all the sorrow, of modern civilization.
From this there results a peculiar, more spiritual configuration of modern perversity, a distinctive spiritualization of psychopathia sexualis, a true wandering journey, an “Odyssey” of the spirit, throughout the wide province of sexual excesses. Without doubt the French have gone furthest in this direction, and the names of Baudelaire, Barbey d’Aurevilly, Verlaine, Hannon, Haraucourt, Jean Larocque, and Guy de Maupassant, indicate nearly as many peculiar spiritual refinements and enrichments of the purely sensual life.
We have no longer to deal with the pure love of reflection, as in the case of Kierkegaard and Grillparzer, and in the writings of young Germany, where, indeed, reflection predominates, but which still more extends to the direction of higher love. Contrasted with this is the simple lust of the senses, by means of which new psychical influences are to be obtained. Voluptuousness becomes a cerebral phenomenon, ethereal. In this way the most remarkable, unheard-of, sensory associations appear in the province of sexuality—true fin-de-siècle products which are, above all, specifically modern, and could not possibly exist in former times. For it is always the same play of emotion, the same effects, the same terminal results: ordinary voluptuousness. The dream of Hermann Bahr, of “non-sexual voluptuousness,” and the replacement of the animal impulse by means of finer organs, is only a dream. The elemental sexual impulse resists every attempt at dismemberment and sublimation. It returns always unaltered, always the same. It is vain to expect new manifestations of this impulse. Such efforts end either in bodily and mental impotence, or else in sexual perversities. In these relationships the imagination of civilized man is unable to create novelties in the essence; it can do so only as regards the objective manifestations. This is confirmed by the increase of purely ideal sexual perversities in connexion with certain spiritual tendencies of our time. Martial d’Estoc, in his book, “Paris Eros” (Paris, 1903), has given a clear description of these peculiar spiritual modifications of sexual aberrations. (It is interesting to note that Schopenhauer remarks, in his “Neue Paralipomena,” pp. 234 and 235: “The caprices arising from the sexual impulse resemble a will-o’-the-wisp. They deceive us most effectively; but if we follow them, they lead us into the marsh and disappear.”)
APPENDIX
SEXUAL PERVERSIONS DUE TO DISEASE
It is the immortal service of Casper and von Krafft-Ebing to have insisted energetically upon the fact that numerous individuals whose vita sexualis is abnormal are persons suffering from disease. This is their monumentum ære perennius in the history of medicine and of civilization. Purely medical, anatomical, physical, and psychiatric investigations show beyond question that there are many persons whose abnormal sexual life is pathologically based.
I shall not here discuss the peculiar borderland state between health and disease, the existence of which can be established in many sexually perverse individuals; I shall not refer to the “abnormalities,” the “psychopathic deficiencies,” the “unbalanced,” etc.; nor shall I discuss the question of the significance of the stigmata of degeneration, because these will be adequately dealt with in connexion with the forensic consideration of punishable sexual perversions.
Here we shall speak only of actual and easily determined diseases which possess a causal importance in the origination and activity of sexual perversions. The great majority of these are, naturally, mental disorders.
Von Krafft-Ebing, to whom we owe the most important observations regarding the pathological etiology of sexual perversions, enumerates the following conditions: Psychical developmental inhibitions (idiocy and imbecility), acquired weak-mindedness (after mental disorders, apoplexy, injuries to the head, syphilis, in consequence of general paralysis), epilepsy, periodical insanity, mania, melancholia, hysteria, paranoia.
Among these, epilepsy possesses the greatest importance.[485] It comes into play much more frequently as a causal morbid influence in the case of sexually perverse actions and offences than has hitherto been believed. The psychiatrist Arndt maintains that wherever an abnormal sexual life exists, we must always consider the possibility of epileptic influence. Lombroso assumes that all premature and peculiar instances of satyriasis are instances of larval epilepsy. He gives several examples in support of this view, and also a case of Macdonald’s which illustrates the connexion between epilepsy and sexual perversity.[486] Especially in the so-called epileptic “confusional states” do we meet with sexually perverse actions; exhibitionism and other manifestations of sexual activity coram publico are frequently referable to epileptic disease. Similar impulsive sexual activities and similar confusional states are seen after injuries to the head and in alcoholic intoxication, also after severe exhaustion. Many cases of “periodic psychopathia sexualis” are due to epilepsy.
Senile dementia and paralytic dementia (general paralysis of the insane), also severe forms of neurasthenia and hysteria, often change the sexual life in a morbid direction, and favour the origin of sexual perversions.
It is a fact of great interest that Tarnowsky and Freud attribute to syphilis an important rôle in the pathogenesis of sexual anomalies. In 50 % of his sexual pathological cases Freud found that the abnormal sexual constitution was to be regarded as the last manifestation of a syphilitic inheritance (Freud, op. cit., p. 74). Tarnowsky observed that congenital syphilitics, and also persons whose parents had been syphilitic, but who themselves had never exhibited any definite symptoms of the disease, were apt later to show manifestations of a perverse sexual sensibility (Tarnowsky, op. cit., pp. 34 and 35). Obviously this is to be explained by the deleterious influence upon the nervous system (perhaps by means of toxins?) which syphilis is also supposed to exert in the causation of tabes dorsalis and general paralysis of the insane. When investigating the clinical history of cases of sexual perversion, it appears that previous syphilis is a fact to which some importance should be attached.[487]
From syphilis we pass to consider direct physical abnormalities and morbid changes in the genital organs as causes of sexual anomalies. In women prolapsus uteri sometimes leads to perverse gratification of the sexual impulse—for example, by pædication;[488] in men, shortness of the frænum preputii plays a similar part,[489] also phimosis. Wollenmann reports the case of a young man suffering from phimosis, who, at the first attempt at coitus, experienced severe pain, and since that time had an antipathy to normal sexual intercourse. He passed under the influence of a seducer to the practice of mutual masturbation. Only after operative treatment of the phimosis did his inclination towards the male sex pass away, and the sexual perversion then completely disappeared.[490]
[456] Hermann Joseph Löwenstein, “De Mentis Aberrationibus ex Partium Sexualium Conditione Abnormi Oriundis” (Bonn, 1823).
[457] Joseph Häussler, “The Relations of the Sexual System to the Psyche” (Würzburg, 1826).
[458] Heinrich Kaan, “Psychopathia Sexualis” (Leipzig, 1844).
[459] R. von Krafft-Ebing, “Psychopathia Sexualis” (Stuttgart, 1882).
[460] We must not omit to mention the fact that a little earlier the French physician Moreau de Tours published a comprehensive work upon psychopathia sexualis, entitled “Des Aberrations du Sens Génésique” (Paris, 1880).
[461] S. Freud, “Three Essays in Contribution to the Sexual Theory,” p. 70.
[462] Cf. the interesting remarks of G. H. C. Lippert, “Mankind in a State of Nature,” p. 1 et seq. (Elberfeld, 1818).
[463] Christian Muff, “What is Civilization?” pp. 30, 31 (Halle, 1880).
[464] G. L. N. Delvincourt, “De la Mucite Génito-Sexuelle,” p. 64 (Paris, 1834). Apt remarks on the alleged degeneration of the French are to be found also in the work of P. Näcko, “The Alleged Degeneration of the Latin Races, more Especially of the French,” published in Archives for Racial and Social Biology, 1906, vol. iii.
[465] As, for example, Immermann, in his work “Epigonen,” published at the same period (1836), assumes. In the mouth of the physician he puts the following words: “The physician has a great task to perform in the present day. Diseases, especially nervous troubles, to which for a number of years the human race has been especially disposed, are a modern product.” Cf. Leopold Hirschberg, “Medical Matters as dealt with in General Literature: the Judgment of a Member of the Laity regarding Nervousness in the Year 1876,” published in Medizinische Wochenschrift, 1906, No. 41, p 428. Seventy years ago the German people was “nervous”; thirty-four years before Sedan, thirty years after Jena! Therefore neither Jena nor Sedan can be connected with the nervous “degeneration.” The authors of the eighteenth century (!) made similar complaints of the nervousness of their time, upon which Cullen and Brown founded their medical theories.
[466] J. Pohl-Pincus, “The Diseases of the Human Hair, and the Care of the Hair,” third edition, p. 57 (Leipzig, 1885).
[467] Carl Bleibtreu, “Paradoxes the Conventional Lies,” sixth edition, pp. 1, 2 (Berlin, 1888).
[468] See “Nature and Man,” E. Ray Lankester’s Romanes Lecture, 1905.—Translator.
[469] G. Hirth, “Hereditary Enfranchisement,” published in “Ways to Freedom,” pp. 106-127 (Munich, 1903).
[470] Näcke’s thesis is in agreement with this, that “all sexual abnormal practices in an asylum are for the most part much more rare than the laity, or even many physicians, imagine.” Cf. P. Näcke, “Some Psychologically Obscure Cases of Sexual Aberrations in the Asylum,” published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, vol. v., p. 196 (Leipzig, 1903). See also, by the same author, “Problemi nel Campo delle Psicopatie Sessuali,” in Archivio delle Psicopatie Sessuali, 1896; “Sexual Perversities in the Asylum,” in the Wiener klinische Rundschau, 1899, Nos. 27-30.
[471] S. Freud, op. cit., pp. 19, 20.
[472] A. Hoche, “The Problem of the Forensic Condemnation of Sexual Transgressions,” published in the Neurologisches Centralblatt, 1896, p. 58.
[473] Ploss-Bartels, “Das Weib in der Natur- und Volkerkunde,” eighth edition, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1906).
[474] Mantegazza, “Anthropological and Historical Studies on the Sexual Relationship of Mankind.”
[475] F. S. Krauss, “Morals and Customs relating to Sexual Reproduction among the Southern Slavs,” published in “Kryptadia,” vols. vi.-viii. (Paris, 1899-1902); and in the larger work, “Anthropophyteia” (Leipzig, 1904-1906).
[476] In all his works.
[477] Cf. Charles Darwin, “The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex,” vol. i., p. 182 (2 vols., London, 1898).
[478] Cf. the inquiry of C. Wagner, containing extremely valuable material, “The Sexual and Moral Relationships of the Protestant Agricultural Population of the German Empire” (3 vols., Leipzig, 1897, 1898).
[479] “Prostitution in Berlin and its Victims,” p. 27 (Berlin, 1846).
[480] Cf. the detailed bibliography of these works in my “Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis,” vol. i., pp. 29, 30.
[481] Typical sexual perversions have, however, been observed even in children, and it is this fact which has chiefly given rise to the doctrine of the “congenital” character of sexual perversions.
[482] Cf. the remarks of the Marquis de Sade regarding the abnormal sexuality of elderly men, in my “New Research Concerning the Marquis de Sade,” pp. 421, 422 (Berlin, 1904).
[483] C. Albert, “Free Love,” p. 148.
[484] Joseph Guislain, “Clinical Lectures on Mental Diseases,” p. 229 (Berlin, 1854).
[485] Kowalewski, “Perversions of Sexual Sensibility in Epileptics,” published in the Jahrbücher für Psychiatrie, 1887, vol. vii., No. 3.
[486] C. Lombroso, “Recent Advances in the Study of Criminology,” pp. 197-200 (Gera, 1899).—Tarnowsky has even described a form of “epileptic pæderasty” (cf. B. Tarnowsky, “Morbid Phenomena of Sexual Sensibility,” pp. 8, 51; Berlin, 1886).
[487] E. Laurent (“Morbid Love,” pp. 43-45; Leipzig, 1895) regards tubercular inheritance as an important etiological factor of sexual anomalies, for these occur more frequently in blonde, weakly individuals, than in brunettes (?).
[488] Bacon, “The Effect of Developmental Anomalies and Disorders of the Female Reproductive Organs upon the Sexual Impulse,” published in the American Journal of Dermatology, 1899, vol. iii., No. 2.
[489] M. Féré, “Sexual Hyperæsthesia in Association with Shortness of the Frænum Preputii,” published in the Monatshefte für praktische Dermatologie, 1896, vol. xxiii., p. 45.
[490] A. G. Wollenmann, “Phimosis as a Cause of Perversion of Sexual Sensibility,” published in Der ärztliche Praktiker, 1895, No. 23. Matthaes has shown that morbid changes of the genital sphere or its vicinity are apt to give rise to offences against morality (“The Statistics of Offences against Morality,” published in the Archiv für Kriminalanthropologie, 1903, vol. xii., p. 319).
CHAPTER XVIII
MISOGYNY
“Thou priestess of the most flowery life, how is it possible that such things should draw near to thee—one of those pale phantoms, one of those general maxims, which philosophers and moralists have invented in their despair of the human race?”—G. Jung.