CHAPTER XXIII
One of the most tragic, but unfortunately one of the most frequent, of occurrences is premature sexual intercourse on the part of children—partly resulting from acts of fornication by adults with children, partly resulting from premature awakening of the sexual impulse in children, and premature sexual activity on their part. These two varieties of premature sexual intercourse in children must be sharply distinguished each from the other.
The alleged increase of sexual offences in which children are concerned is by von Krafft-Ebing wrongly associated with the more widely diffused nervousness of recent generations. As a matter of fact, such offences have occurred at all times and among all peoples, with no less frequency than at the present day. “Erotic pædophilia” is a very widely diffused phenomenon. It arises from superstitious[638] grounds; as, for example, from the belief which prevails in many countries that venereal and other diseases are cured by copulation with an intact child. The primeval belief that intercourse with immature girls prolonged life, that an emanation from them rejuvenated old men (the so-called “Shunammitism”[639]), led in former times, and leads even at the present day, to acts of fornication with children. Less commonly do timidity and impotence on the part of adult men, rendering intercourse with adult women difficult or impossible, give rise to the seduction or rape of defenceless and unsuspicious children. The act of fornication with children as a popular custom is a symptom of a primitive degree of civilization, and is therefore met with, even at the present day, among savage nations, a matter regarding which Ploss-Bartels gives detailed accounts.
Passing to consider the cause of acts of fornication with children at the present day, and the means by which such acts are effected, unquestionably opportunity plays an important part in their production. All those persons who by their occupation are brought into prolonged diurnal and nocturnal association with children, and are frequently alone with them, such as menservants, nursemaids, governesses, housekeepers, schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, the directors and other officials of orphan asylums, etc., constitute a disproportionately large contingent of those who commit offences under § 1763 and § 182 of the Criminal Code. This does not arise from exceptional criminality on the part of these persons as compared with those belonging to other professions, but simply and solely from the fact that they are continually alone with children, and that any sexual excitement which may arise is thus directed towards these, because no adult is there. Sometimes a morbid neuropathic or psychopathic constitution plays a part; but more commonly we have to do simply with lasciviousness and sensuality, which avails itself of the opportunity thus offered.
Rétif de la Bretonne warned parents regarding menservants and nursemaids as seducers of children. These persons are apt to execute unchaste acts with children in the very first years of life; in order to gratify their own voluptuousness, they play with the genital organs of these poor innocents, and thus prematurely awaken sexual sensibility, and often give rise to premature onanistic habits. These acts of impropriety carried on with small children—which must be sharply distinguished from those with older children, the cases being classified as relating in the first place to children under six years of age, and in the second place to children between the ages of six and fourteen years—are far commoner than is usually imagined, and perhaps even more dangerous in respect of the bodily and mental development of the child, than the second variety of unchaste acts, with older children. In most cases it is persons of the female sex who misuse small children in this way, and often this arises from the fear of impregnation resulting from intercourse with an adult man. Generally we have to do with a lascivious disposition, as, for example, in the following cases, which came under my own observation:
In one of these cases a woman seduced a boy four years of age to the performance of systematic improper acts; in the other case, a boy of five years of age was taken (horribile dictu) by his own mother into her bed, and taught to perform coitus with her, in so far as this was possible, and also to perform manipulations with her genital organs. The little boy repeated this practice with his sister, three years of age, and, being caught in the act, he confessed the whole history.
A boy aged four played freely with his own genital organs, and also made peculiar coitus-like movements in bed, and in contact with his mother. When the latter, greatly alarmed, asked him how he had learned to do this, he explained that a young woman twenty years of age, living in the house, had performed these manipulations with him.
Magnan also reports (“Lectures on Mental Disorders,” Nos. 2 and 3, p. 41) the case of a lady, twenty-nine years of age, who performed sexual acts with her nephew, aged five.
These cases rarely attain publicity, because they usually remain undiscovered. Fornicatory acts with children, such as are frequently alluded to in the newspapers, chiefly concern children between the ages of six and fourteen years. In these cases the offences are most often committed by schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, or by private tutors and governesses. We further often find other women undertaking such acts, displaying a sexual activity which they have no opportunity of satisfying in intercourse with full-grown men. In the third place, debauchees and exhausted roués seek new and piquant excitement by intercourse with such fruits verts. Of such Laurent writes:[640]
“They have used and misused woman; they have explored all the stages of natural and unnatural love; they have visited Lesbos and Paphos; and they have experienced every possible sexual artificiality. Their sexual desires have become torpid, their manliness is on the decline, and sexual death approaches. But the more exhausted they are, the less willing are they patiently to acquiesce in their loss. It is with them as with inebriates who are full to the throat and still continue to drink. One day they notice a little girl in the street and feel stimulated by her youthful charms. Thus their love begins.”
The blameless, the natural, and the pure, in the essence of the child and of the intact virgin, has a stimulating influence upon such perverted individuals: it acts as a contrast to their own sexual shamelessness and artificiality. The contrast, in fact, has the effect of a most powerful stimulus. Nor can we fail to recognize the existence in such cases also of a sadistic element in the performance of coitus with a defenceless child, and in the sanguinary act of defloration of an immature individual. In the eighties there flourished in England such a “mania for defloration,” the scandalous details of which were illustrated in a lurid light by the revelations of the Pall Mall Gazette.[641] With regard to this sadistic element in acts of fornication with children, we must take into account the possibility that in the corporal punishment of children by the teacher may have originated the awakening of the latter’s sexual activities,[642] and that in this we may find the cause of the beginning of sexual relationships between teacher and pupil.
Other not infrequent causes of the sexual misuse of children are to be found in alcoholic intoxication and in senile dementia. Tramps, also, who have for a long time been deprived of the opportunity of intercourse with women, are apt to gratify their long-repressed libido on the body of the first child they meet. Child labour in factories also offers opportunities for fornicatory acts with children.
A few especially striking instances of acts of fornication with children are appended:
1. The son of a greengrocer, A., twenty years of age, living in the Keibelstrasse, had for a long time immoral intercourse with the eight-year-old daughter of the milkman W., in the same street. He had not only violated her, but had committed other injuries. The young fellow continued his immoral conduct after he had become infected with venereal disease, and therefore naturally infected the girl. She became so ill that she had to be confined to bed, and the doctor who was called in diagnosed venereal infection. Notwithstanding this, the little girl continued to lie about the matter, and only after a whipping did she admit having had intercourse with A. The latter, a man with a crippled foot, as soon as he saw that his misconduct had been discovered, concealed himself in an outhouse, and was only arrested by the police after a prolonged search. He is now in prison.
2. The model and friend of a painter, during the absence of the latter from home, seduced his son, twelve years of age, after preliminary repeated masturbation, to coitus and cunnilinctus.
3. A celebrated actress, now in advanced age, in the case of a boy who sought a situation in her house, gave rise by various manipulations to an erection of the penis, and seduced him to coitus; she invited him repeatedly to visit her, and continued this scandalous practice with him for eight years.
4. The governess Friederike B. was accused of improper conduct and seduction of the little boy Szepsan, and was condemned to six months’ rigorous imprisonment. In April, 1900, Szepsan disappeared through her connivance; she had him confined under false names in various cloisters. The accused denied all blame, and declared that she was the benefactress of Szepsan, whom she intended to bring up as a priest. The evidence, however, sufficed for her conviction.
5. A very scandalous affair is reported by Le Matin. Some time ago the Parisian police arrested a young fellow on account of an offence against certain civil and natural laws. The accused thereupon denounced an old Count W., and others of his friends, and also Baron A., who daily waited the coming out of the boys from certain Parisian schools, and then took them in his automobile to his own house or to that of Count W. The police, having received information, kept under observation the sons of certain distinguished families attending the school in question, and ascertained that the statements were true. The Count and his friends carried off the boys, among whom were three sons of an engineer, the eldest thirteen years of age, to the Avenue MacMahon or the Avenue Friedland. A., who is engaged to a young lady belonging to the Parisian aristocracy, was arrested; Count W. has escaped. The examination of their dwelling disclosed all kinds of compromising materials.
In view of the wide diffusion of acts of fornication with children, we must always keep one point clearly before our minds, on account of the great forensic importance of the matter. That is the question whether the initiative to the improper act proceeded in the first place from the child, in consequence of a premature awakening of the sexual impulse. [See, for example, Emil Schultze-Malkowsky, “The Sexual Impulse in Childhood,” in the periodical Sex and Society, 1907, No. 7, pp. 370-373. He reports five sexual scenes dating from the year 1864, the heroine of which was a little girl seven years of age!]
In a certain proportion only of such cases have we to do with a degenerative, morbid, inherited state; in many instances this sexual perversity occurs in children who in other respects are perfectly healthy,[643] and is evoked by seduction, bad education, and chance causes, such as intestinal worms, etc. This is to be observed also in children of savage races, among whom this phenomenon of sexual prematurity is perhaps more frequent, in part owing to climatic conditions. In the country the observation of sexual acts on the part of animals, frequently occurring under their very eyes, makes children early acquainted with the fact of sexual intercourse. In large towns prostitution and overcrowded dwellings, in ways to which we have already alluded in detail, give rise in many cases to a very early initiation of children into a knowledge of the facts of sexual life.
Apart from the question of child prostitution, to which we shall allude presently, we can observe such early mature types of children also in every class of the population of large towns. Among the circles of the middle classes, and among the “upper ten thousand,” we have the type of the demi-vierge, which recently Hans von Kahlenberg has so admirably described in his “Nixchen.” In the female sex this early sexual maturity is much more clearly manifest. In an essay entitled “The Zoo as an Educator,” in the weekly newspaper Der Roland von Berlin (No. 27, July 5, 1906), we find a striking description of such a type:
“We find definite types of early-ripe girls, which we must regard as a peculiar acquirement of the twentieth century. We distinguish without difficulty the simple, hot-blooded, sensual variety from the thoroughly developed perverse types. A short-legged, buxom type is the most predominant. Such girls seem extraordinarily energetic, and appear also to excel in mental powers their pale-cheeked and half-alive male companions. Their dress is extremely conspicuous, and they wear highly ornamented hats. Whilst, when we look at them from behind, their whole figure suggests the age of fifteen or seventeen years, the front view suggests that they are at least eight years older. They prefer to lace very tightly, in order to display their rounded hips, and to make their already strongly developed breasts all the more imposing. But this development displays their mental and physical corruption, especially when undeveloped shoulders and thin arms show beyond question that they are really of a very tender age. The sharply-cut features, with the sparkling black eyes, which at once fascinate us, plainly indicate the lines which the passions are about to engrave on their features; we discern, also, that by the age of thirty they will already be old women.”
Sexual intercourse on the part of children with one another, or with grown persons in cases in which the invitation has proceeded from the child, are by no means rare occurrences. The following remarkable cases may illustrate this:
1. Some years ago a schoolboy, K. J., thirteen years of age, was accused in Berlin of several acts of sexual intercourse with girls of from six to eight years. The guilt of the accused was fully proved. He was sent to a reformatory.
2. A young man made the acquaintance of a girl sixteen years of age. Although greatly impassioned, he did not dare to touch the girl, because he was deceived by her sweet and blameless demeanour, and did not wish to be her first seducer. Soon afterwards he learned that this angel had had sexual intercourse for several years with a married man forty years of age!
3. Legroux showed in 1890, at the weekly meeting of the physicians of the Hospital St. Louis, a boy, eleven years of age, who, after three months’ sexual intercourse with a syphilitic girl aged seven years, had been infected in the ordinary manner, per vias naturales (reference in Unna’s Monatsheft für Dermatologie, 1890, vol. x., p. 335).
4. In Paris, in December, 1906 (according to the Vossische Zeitung of December 15, 1906, No. 558), a band of youthful street and shop thieves, ten in number, of ages varying from eleven to fourteen years, were arrested. Their leaders were a boy of twelve and a girl of thirteen years, the latter, Eliza Cailles by name, known generally by the nickname of “Beautiful Aliette.” This Aliette, a strikingly pretty little person, in a long dress of extremely fashionable cut, with a wonderful hat and most elegant gloves, ruled her band with the most exemplary self-confidence. They were all smart fellows; they were all of them her lovers, and with these ten husbands she was the happiest of wives.
Acts of fornication with children also explain the melancholy phenomenon of the existence of a widely diffused child prostitution in all large towns of the old and new world, regarding which, in the previously mentioned works on prostitution in these towns, detailed accounts will be found.[644] The little flower-girls of Paris, the Berlin match-sellers and wax-candle-sellers or “music pupils”—all these provide a large contingent to child prostitution. To a great extent they are associated with equally youthful criminals and souteneurs, and avail themselves for blackmailing purposes of the existence of § 1763 and § 186 of the Criminal Code. Among them there are even individuals given to peculiar sexual “specialities,” who gratify perverse lusts in various artificial ways. Social misery, bad example, and seduction are, indeed, often to be blamed as causes of this early sexual depravity, but it is precisely in respect of child prostitution that Lombroso’s doctrine of the born prostitute has considerable justification.
In exceptional cases only does incest—sexual intercourse between those nearly related by blood, either in the same generation, as between brother and sister, or in the ascending and descending line—depend upon pathological causes. The origin of the dread and horror inspired by incest remains “a moot question of historical research.”[645] Within historical times and among savage peoples incestuous intercourse was permitted and widely diffused. Without doubt, racial hygienic experience regarding the pernicious effects of this extreme form of incest gave rise to the recognition of the fact that incest must be forbidden. At the present day incest occurs almost exclusively as the result of chance associations—as, for example, in alcoholic intoxication, in consequence of close domestic intimacy in small dwellings, in the absence of other opportunity for sexual intercourse. In such circumstances not infrequently among the lower classes of the population we observe, as a favouring factor, a complete absence of any conception of the immorality of incest.
Remarkable is the tendency to incestuous unions in certain epochs—as, for example, in the period of the French Rococo, when it was introduced by suggestion on a large scale, and manifested itself with alarming frequency. Numerous credible historical examples of this I have recorded in my “Recent Researches concerning the Marquis de Sade” (pp. 165-168). Mirabeau, and especially Rétif de la Bretonne (see my work on Rétif, pp. 381-382), luxuriated in horribly blasphemous incestuous ideas.[646] According to Theodor Mundt, who speaks of these tendencies in his sketches of “Paris during the Second Empire” (vol. i., pp. 141, 142; Berlin, 1867), it appears that the French nature is not repelled to the same degree as the German by the idea of sexual union between those nearly related by blood. Eugene Sue relates, in his “Mysteries of Paris,” that among the lowest strata of the population fathers often have intercourse with their own daughters.
But such things also happen in Germany. In August, 1907, a manual labourer, forty-seven years of age, was condemned to three years’ imprisonment because he had had incestuous intercourse with his daughter, now twenty-seven years of age, during the previous fifteen years (!), and had continued this incestuous relationship after he had himself remarried. The girl had been for several years living in intimate sexual relationship with her father, who watched jealously to prevent his daughter having anything to do with another man. Among many Indian tribes of Central America incest is said to be always practised when the eldest daughter accompanies the father for a few days into the mountains, in order to prepare his maize bread for him.
Relations somewhat analogous are those in which parent and child have sexual intercourse with the same person—when, for example, mother and daughter have the same lover. Other peculiar combinations are possible, and are actually observed. Unique, however, would appear to be the case reported by d’Estoc (“Paris-Eros,” p. 209), in which a young man had sexual intercourse with a woman, with her two daughters, and also utilized the father of this family as a passive pæderast! In a manuscript novel, which I once saw, a man was made the lover of both husband and wife.
One of the most remarkable of sexual aberrations, in the reality of which, as Mirabeau[647] remarked, it is hardly possible to believe, is fornication with animals—zoophilia and bestiality.[648]
We will first describe zoophilia, a sexual inclination towards animals without actual sexual intercourse. Genuine zoophilia, or “animal fetichism,” as a perversion monopolizing the human being’s circle of sexual ideas, is very rare. Until recently, only a single case has been published—that recorded by Dr. Hanc in 1887, in the Wiener Medizinische Blâtter, and quoted also by von Krafft-Ebing. But I myself, in the year 1905, observed a second case of genuine zoophilia, and have recorded it elsewhere.[649] This extraordinarily rare case may as well be once more detailed here:
The person concerned was a farmer, forty-two years of age, of a large and imposing appearance, a healthy aspect, and normal conformation. His family history did not show any points of importance throwing light on the peculiar development of his vita sexualis. In the family several unhappy marriages had occurred. The patient’s parents had also lived in such an inharmonious marriage. His mother had a masterful manner; he felt no love for her. He knew nothing of any sexual abnormalities in his family. He lays especial stress upon the fact that when an infant he was brought up on the bottle, and that in this way he missed the first unconscious natural sexual stimulations which, according to the theory propounded by S. Freud, proceed from the suckling at the maternal breast. To this he mainly ascribes his lack of sexual sensibility towards the female sex. When he was a boy twelve years of age, the patient experienced sexual excitement for the first time when riding on a fine horse. Since that time his sexual sensibility as a whole has been closely connected with the idea of fine horses, in this way, that merely to look at them produced libidinous excitement, so that for years, once a week, while riding, he had an ejaculation, accompanied by intense voluptuous sensations. It is, however, remarkable that he never had any erotic dreams connected with horses. As already stated, his sexual sensibility regarding the human female, and also the human male, is non-existent. His views regarding women are Schopenhauerian. The few attempts he had made at intimate intercourse with women—in most cases these were puellæ publicæ—were repulsive to him; he had on these occasions no erection at all, or only a very slight one. The vita sexualis of the patient is, speaking generally, by no means an active one. He does not experience nocturnal pollutions, and is completely satisfied sexually by the weekly ejaculations and libidinous excitement which occurs when riding on horseback. For several years the patient has suffered from frequent insomnia, the cause of which he considered to be material troubles combined with gloomy thoughts about his abnormal sexual condition. Bromides, veronal, and other hypnotic drugs, are of little use to him, for habituation soon sets in; on the other hand, cold foot-baths have a better effect. The patient, who, as he himself says, has a strong antipathy to normal sexual intercourse, which he regards as a “bestial act,” believes that he might perhaps attain a normal sexual condition if he could meet with a wife who would be sympathetic, and would be in harmony with him mentally and physically. He is, however, in this respect extremely sceptical, since he is well aware of the rarity of that complete harmony which is the indispensable prerequisite of a happy marriage. The patient exhibited no symptoms whatever of “degeneration.” The genital organs were normal, and nervous sleeplessness in a man forty-two years of age, dependent upon material cares and emotional depression, cannot be regarded as a symptom of degeneration, when we reflect how frequently in persons who are otherwise quite healthy such nervous insomnia may make its appearance, as a result of the struggle for life, at or near the age of forty years.
True zoophilia is a typical sexual perversion, and appears to occur principally in men. The use of animals (dogs) for purely onanistic purposes, in the way of licking the female genital organs, cannot be included in this connexion. In French novels and moral studies of recent times such types of zoophilous women are, indeed, described; thus, for example, in Octave Mirbeau’s “Badereise eines Neurasthenikers” (1902) we find a description of Princess Karagnine as such a perverse woman, endowed with a peculiar “passion for animals,” especially for stallions, who caresses them with obvious signs of sexual excitement. And in the de Goncourts’ “Diary” I find the following remark:
“Every time I visit the Zoological Gardens, I am struck by the number of bizarre, remarkably eccentric, exotic, indefinable women we meet here, to whom the contact with the animal world of this place appears to constitute an adventure of physical love” (Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, “Leaves from a Diary,” 1851 to 1895).
R. Schwaeblé also gives an interesting account of the zoophilous tendencies of Frenchwomen (“Les Détraquées de Paris,” pp. 203-212).
Unquestionably, modern zoological gardens offer even more than country life opportunities to women of zoophilous instincts, and can in this respect become dangerous. I remember from my own schooldays in Hanover remarkable scenes in the much-visited zoological gardens of that town—scenes which at that time we naturally did not really understand, but on which the above remarks and observations throw a clear light.
Thus we shall no longer be surprised by the following extremely remarkable case of zoophilia in the female sex:
Kleptomania in a Girl aged Thirteen.—A girl thirteen years of age, who is incurably affected with kleptomania, and who at the same time has a morbid inclination towards horses, is the most recent phenomenon in the province of decadence. The unfortunate child is the daughter, Frida, of a married couple living in the Höchstestrasse. She had committed a number of thefts of vehicles, which might have been attributed only to skilled professional thieves. The morbid tendency compels the child to take the horse by the bridle and lead it away. She does not appear to have any tendency to sell the animal, or to steal anything from the carriage. Her love for horses led her in earlier years to unusual acts. Thus she took the horse of a dairyman in the Elbingerstrasse out of its stall, mounted it, and rode away. The child has been under medical treatment for a long time on account of her extremely unusual tendency, and we understand that the medical evidence shows that she cannot be held legally responsible for the offences she has committed (Berliner Tageblatt, No. 352, July 14, 1906).
Passing now to consider definite acts of fornication with animals (Sodomie—see note [648] to [p. 640], bestiality),[650] there is hardly any animal which has not been in some way and at some time utilized for the gratification of human lust; but naturally in most cases the animals always available were employed, such as dogs, cats, sheep, goats, hens, geese, ducks, horses. Martin Schurig, as early as 1730, in his “Gynæcologia” (pp. 380-387), recorded a large number of cases of bestial aberrations in which, in addition to the animals above mentioned, apes, bears, and even fishes were employed. In antiquity snakes were often the objects of unnatural lust on the part of women, playing the part of the modern lap-dog. Bestiality is very widely diffused.[651] Countries especially celebrated for the frequency of this practice are China and Italy; in the former country geese, in the latter goats, are preferred for sexual malpractices. In India, and also among the Southern Slavs, horses and donkeys play the principal part as objects of bestial love.[652]
Acts of fornication with animals are due to various causes; in exceptional cases only can they be referred to morbid predisposition. In the lower classes of the population, and among many races—as, for example, among the Southern Slavs and among the Persians—the superstitious belief that venereal disease can be cured by intercourse with animals occasionally gives rise to bestiality. More frequently the lack of opportunity for normal gratification of the sexual impulse is the cause of bestiality; and it is naturally of more frequent occurrence in the country, for the reason that there human beings live in closer association with animals than they do in the town. The herdsman alone with his herd in a solitary place, the groom who in the stable suddenly finds himself in a state of sexual excitement, the peasant whose wife is perhaps ailing—all these indulge in bestiality simply from opportunity. Friedrich S. Krauss learned from a trustworthy authority that in the Austrian cavalry Slavonic soldiers frequently gratified their sexual impulse upon mares. When they are caught doing this, they excuse themselves by saying that they are too poor to pay a woman. Commonly these fellows escape punishment. In brothels, also, bestial practices are common; in some cases debauchees themselves take part in these practices, in others prostitutes make a display of bestial intercourse. Frequently, also, sadistic impulses, similar to those which find expression in the torturing or slaughtering of animals during coitus, play a part in bestial intercourse.
An eyewitness describes such a brothel scene, which took place in the Via San Pietro all’ Orto at Milan. An old roué played the principal part in this; he had become so depraved that he had sexual intercourse with a duck, the throat of which was cut during the bestial act!
Some forty years ago, in the Karntnerstrasse in Vienna, a prostitute was found in her room, murdered, and her chambermate and professional companion was condemned to imprisonment as guilty of the murder. After some years, however, the real murderer was discovered, and he was detected by the fact that he was only able to have an erection of the penis when he killed a hen. He was known among the prostitutes as “the hen-man.”
Another case of sadistic bestiality was recently reported by the veterinary surgeon Grundmann, at Marienburg in Saxony (the reference will be found in the Berliner Tierärztliche Wochenschrift for September 14, 1906):
A man, thirty-eight years of age, of bad reputation, one night found his way into a byre in order to gratify his sexual desires by intercourse with a cow. First he introduced his penis into the vagina of a heifer nine months old; then he tried the same thing on a cow, which threw him off, and he fell to the ground. In a rage at this, he seized a pitchfork and forcibly thrust one of the prongs, first into the anus of the heifer, and then into that of the cow. The cow died speedily, whilst the heifer had to be slaughtered next day. In the cow, in addition to a laceration of the rectum about 11⁄2 inches in length, there was found laceration of the capsules of the right and left kidneys, perforation of the mesentery, of the colon, of the liver, and of the diaphragm, also a laceration 11⁄2 inches long and equally deep in the right lung. These extensive injuries showed that the pitchfork must have been thrust in repeatedly. The appearances in the body of the slaughtered heifer were similar to those found in the cow. The accused was condemned to imprisonment for two years and three months, part of this term being for the offence against morality and part for the injury to property.
The following extremely rare case of bestiality on the part of a woman was seen by Krauss (op. cit., p. 281):
“If I can venture to credit the reports I have so frequently heard (and it is difficult to believe that they are pure inventions), among the Southern Slavs intercourse between women and horses or asses is comparatively common. How they go to work in this matter I do not know from personal observation. I did, however, once see a Chrowot woman of ideal beauty, who stood at night completely naked in front of a lighted lamp, and in this position had intercourse with a tom cat. She experienced so intense an orgasm that she did not notice me, although I watched the scene barely two paces from the window.”
The part played by lap-dogs in the case of many ladies has been previously mentioned.
Formerly the question was quite seriously discussed, whether a human being could be seduced or violated by an animal, and Hufeland relates a fantastic story of copulation between a dog and a sleeping little girl, which I have criticized in another work;[653] but there are, as a matter of fact, no proofs of such an occurrence, or of its possibility. In brothels, certainly, dogs are from time to time trained to have intercourse with prostitutes.[654]
Much rarer than acts of fornication with animals are similar acts with corpses, the so-called “necrophilia.” In the works of de Sade, we find references to the algolagnistic factor of this rare sexual aberration, to the sadistic or masochistic element in necrophilia, inasmuch as in the case of the dead individual we have to do with a completely helpless and defenceless being, who is totally unable to resist the act; sadism is also manifested in the not uncommon mutilation of the corpses;[655] and the sadistic impulse further obtains gratification from the idea of decomposition, from the smell, the cold, and the horror. In the case of necrophilia opportunity also plays a part. Soldiers and monks who are occupied in watching the dead, and who chance to be seized with sexual excitement, have gratified themselves with female corpses.
Sexual acts with corpses are, indeed, not so rare as was formerly assumed, but they belong to the class of sexual aberrations regarding which we have but few authentic observations, most of these derived from French authors. Remarkable is the following recent case, which occurred in April, 1901:[656]
The following hardly credible case of necrophilia is reported from Schonau: In the cemetery of that place Frau Maschke, thirty years of age, was buried in the morning, but the grave was not completely filled in. In the evening an inhabitant visited the grave of a relative, which was close to that of Frau Maschke, and she noticed with alarm that the top of the coffin in which the corpse of Frau Maschke was lying was moving up and down. The discoverer of this alarming occurrence hastened to the sexton, and reported the fact. The sexton hurried to the cemetery with several workmen, and there, to their horror, they surprised an inmate of the poorhouse named Wokatsch as he was in the act of violating the woman’s corpse. The bestial criminal was at once arrested. Soon afterwards a judicial investigation took place, for which purpose the corpse was removed from the grave and taken to the mortuary in order to determine how far the criminal had actually proceeded in his attempt on the body.
In folk-lore, mythology, and belles-lettres, necrophilia plays a large part, a matter to which I have referred at greater length in another work (“Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis,” vol. ii., pp. 288-296). The idea of intercourse with a dead body, and also that of intercourse with an insensible human being, somewhat frequently gives rise to peculiar forms of sexual aberration. First of all in this connexion we have to consider symbolic necrophilia, in which the person concerned contents himself with the simple appearance of death. A prostitute or some other woman must clothe herself in a shroud, lie in a coffin, or on the “bed of death,” or in a room draped as a “chamber of death,” and during the whole time must pretend to be dead, whilst the necrophilist satisfies himself sexually by various acts. Cases of such a nature are reported by de Sade, Neri, Taxil, Tarnowsky, etc.
Closely allied to these necrophilist tendencies is the remarkable “Venus statuaria,” the love for and sexual intercourse with statues and other representations of the human person. Here also, apart from certain aesthetic motives,[657] which may predominate in the case of statues of exceptional artistic perfection, we have to do, for the most part, with the same motives that give rise to necrophilia—sadistic, masochistic, and fetichistic. In the case of individuals who are sexually extremely excitable, a walk through a museum containing many statues may suffice to give rise to libido. Of this we have examples. Generally, however, we have to do with immature, youthful, and, above all, uncultured individuals, who are devoid of all æsthetic sensibility, and have grown up also in a state of prudery and horror of the nude. It is of similar persons that the Catholic moral theologian Bouvier speaks, when, in his “Manuel des Confesseurs” (Verviers, 1876), he discusses the case of masturbation before a statue of the Holy Virgin. We have previously given examples of the fact that direct sexual intercourse with a statue occurs as part of a religious fetichism and phallus cult ([p. 101]). In such cases the statue is taken for the divinity, but in a profane statue-love it is taken for the living human being, as in the celebrated case of the gardener who attempted coitus with the statue of the Venus of Milo. The idea of the life of the statue is even more distinctly manifest in the so-called “pygmalionism,” an imitation of the ancient legend of Pygmalion and Galatea, and a utilization of this legend for erotic ends. Naked living women, in such cases, stand as “statues” upon suitable pedestals, and are watched by the pygmalionist, whereupon they gradually come to life. The whole scene induces sexual enjoyment in the pygmalionist, who is generally an old, outworn debauchee. Canler has described such practices as going on in Parisian brothels, on one occasion three prostitutes appearing respectively as the goddesses Venus, Minerva, and Juno.[658]
In this connexion we may refer to fornicatory acts effected with artificial imitations of the human body, or of individual parts of that body. There exist true Vaucansons in this province of pornographic technology, clever mechanics who, from rubber and other plastic materials, prepare entire male or female bodies, which, as hommes or dames de voyage, subserve fornicatory purposes. More especially are the genital organs represented in a manner true to nature. Even the secretion of Bartholin’s glands is imitated, by means of a “pneumatic tube” filled with oil. Similarly, by means of fluid and suitable apparatus, the ejaculation of the semen is imitated. Such artificial human beings are actually offered for sale in the catalogue of certain manufacturers of “Parisian rubber articles.” A more precise account of these “fornicatory dolls” is given by Schwaeblé (“Les Détraquées de Paris,” pp. 247-263). The most astonishing thing in this department is an erotic romance (“La Femme Endormie,” by Madame B.; Paris, 1899), the love heroine of which is such an artificial doll, which, as the author in the introduction tells us, can be employed for all possible sexual artificialities, without, like a living woman, resisting them in any way. The book is an incredibly intricate and detailed exposition of this idea.
A comparatively common sexual aberration is “exhibitionism,” first described by Lasègue,[659] the exposure of the genital organs, or other naked parts of the body, or the performance of sexual acts in public places, either in order, by the public exposure, to produce sexual excitement, or else as a result of the blind yielding to sexual impulse, regardless of the fact of publicity. In these cases we have almost always to do with a morbid phenomenon, dependent upon epileptic or other mental disorders. Thus, Seiffer, among eighty-six exhibitionists, found eighteen epileptics, seventeen dements, thirteen “degenerates,” eight neurasthenics, eight alcoholics, eleven “habitual” exhibitionists, and in ten cases various other morbid conditions. Of the eighty-six cases, eleven concerned persons of the female sex.[660] Recently, Burgl, in a careful and critical work upon exhibitionism,[661] has suggested the terms “exhibition” and “exhibitionism,” the former to be employed to denote an isolated act of exhibition, the latter to denote the repeated or customary act of exposure of the genital organs coram publico. This distinction is important, because exhibition occurs in mentally healthy persons, as well as in those suffering from mental disorder; exhibitionism, on the other hand, is, if we except extremely rare instances in debauchees not suffering from mental disorder, met with only in insane or mentally defective individuals.
In the case of these latter we have always to do with the actions of weak-minded persons; or with impulsive actions in persons in a state of epileptic or alcoholic confusion; or, finally, with coercive ideas in neurasthenic or hysterical persons, in paranoia, in general paralysis of the insane, or in some other form of insanity. But cases of exhibition or exhibitionism may sometimes occur from other motives in more or less healthy persons. Among the Slavonic peoples, exposure of the genital organs or of the buttocks is frequently an expression of contempt towards some one, or also an act of superstition (Krauss). Exhibitionism as a popular custom occurred at medieval festivals, and also in connexion with the “obscene gestures” of the ancients.[662] By habituation in early childhood the tendency to exhibitionism can be favoured, we learn from the case reported by von Schrenck-Notzing,[663] in which the person concerned had as a boy taken part in childish games in which the children passed by one another with bared genital organs. In his monograph upon the anomalies of the sexual impulse, which abounds in fine touches, Hoche (op. cit., p. 488) very rightly refers to the manner in which the exhibitionist tendency is favoured by habitual masturbation. Through the practice of masturbation the sense of shame in respect to one’s own body is certainly destroyed, and thus, in the case of an onanist, when some unusual impulse impells him, for example, to expose his genital organs in the presence of a person of the other sex, certain powerful inhibitory impulses are lacking, which, in non-onanists, would immediately overcome this impulse.
Of the two following cases of exhibitionism, that of a homosexual officer, twenty-five years of age, is certainly the most remarkable. In youth this patient had also masturbated to great excess, and he gives the following report of his exhibitionist tendencies:
“As a boy seven to ten years of age (that is, before I began to masturbate), it was a pleasure to me to go barefoot, and to show myself to others in this way. This impulse suddenly disappeared. But at about the age of fifteen or sixteen years (the time when I began to masturbate) this impulse reappeared, and has continued down to the present time. Inasmuch as time and opportunity were generally wanting, I could only satisfy these desires in my own home, when I went home on furlough. Since in the neighbourhood of my home I was very well known, I endeavoured by taking extremely long walks, or by little journeys to neighbouring parts, to reach places where I might hope to remain unrecognized. I was accustomed on these occasions to wear a shooting jacket and knickerbockers; the knickerbockers were wide and loose, and of as thin cloth as possible, so that I could easily roll them up in order that my thighs might be bare (for if the thighs remained covered the whole affair would have given me no pleasure). Further, on these occasions I was accustomed to wear no ordinary underclothing, but only a nightshirt. As soon as I reached the desired place, and had hidden the jacket, stockings, and shoes in a suitable place, the nightshirt was arranged as a blouse. Usually I had beforehand tried the arrangement of the dress at home. Often I went up to people who were engaged in field labours (I was especially fond of haymakers), and begged them to allow me to help them, which they were usually willing enough to do. I then took off my coat and bared my feet, and then, although there seemed no apparent reason for that, I took off my knickerbockers, until ultimately I was in the costume above described. I must, however, as already said, be seen; common people or workmen had usually to suffice me; but when people of education (for example, visitors at health resorts) saw me, this was what I greatly preferred. When once one gentleman said to another, ‘Look at his beautiful legs! what lovely legs he has!’ and I heard this by chance, I was extremely happy. I was then eighteen years of age, but even now I look back upon that incident with great pleasure. I also loved to show myself entirely naked; in such cases I always remained quite close to a pond or a stream, in order, if necessary, to be able to make the excuse that I had just been bathing. Frequently, however, I lay down close to a railway in a suitable place quite naked in an artistic posture, and enjoyed the pleasure of seeing the trains go by.
“I commonly did this only in warm, fine weather; but I also did it sometimes in snowy weather. When going about like this in very little clothing, or entirely naked, I had extremely agreeable sensations. The affair usually ended in my masturbating until ejaculation occurred; after which I returned, as it were, to reality. Otherwise I believe I should never have been able to bring myself to resume my normal clothing. For in this state I was almost insensitive to hunger, thirst, fatigue, heat, etc.; it was, in fact, a trance-like, extremely happy state.
“The desire to be photographed naked came later. I should have been extremely delighted to play the part of a naked model. I tried with great energy in various places (Vienna, Leipzig, and Hamburg) to get such a photograph as I wanted; but I was always turned away with a shrug of the shoulders or a shake of the head. Finally I succeeded in Erfurt, at a small photographer’s, in having my wish fulfilled.” (The patient sent a copy of this photograph.)
As the description clearly shows, we have here to do with exhibitionism upon an epileptic or neurasthenic basis. The patient describes the “confusional state,” out of which he awakens to “reality,” very vividly. An objection, however, to the idea of epilepsy is to be found in his very complete memory of these transactions.
Without doubt, in the following case, reported by von Schrenck-Notzing (op. cit., p. 96), we have to do with a case of neurasthenic exhibitionism:
The patient, a portrait-painter thirty-one years of age, was accused in the law-courts of repeated acts of exhibitionism. The imagination and sensuality of the accused have been abnormally excitable since earliest youth. For the last twenty years he has masturbated to excess almost every day, with imaginative representation, when masturbating, of male and female genital organs. In coitus he obtained no gratification. He preferred to expose his own genital organs to persons of the female sex, in the belief that he would in this way produce in them sexual excitement. This exhibitionism is a central point in his sexual life, and has acquired the character of a coercive impulse. He is profoundly neurasthenic, and exhibits extensive changes of character, loss of energy, lachrymosity, ideas of suicide, etc. Exhibits signs of mental weakness. Exhibitionism is to him a complete equivalent to ordinary sexual enjoyment, and is performed owing to an organic compulsion. Ethically, his personality is weakened. The accused was discharged on account of greatly diminished criminal responsibility.
As a sub-variety of exhibitionists, we must refer to the so-called “frotteurs,” individuals who rub their genital organs, either bared or covered, against persons of the opposite sex, and thus obtain sexual gratification. In their case also we almost always have to do with morbid conditions. The following case (Vossische Zeitung, No. 258, June 6, 1906) was recently observed in Berlin:
The architect, Eduard P., was accused of offences committed in the opera-house of Berlin. In February and March, 1906, he had repeatedly soiled ladies’ clothing in a disgusting manner. At a time when the ladies had their whole attention directed to the stage, the offender, standing or sitting behind them, contaminated their clothing, and disappeared in the next interval. The whole mode of procedure suggested the activity of a man with an abnormal morbid predisposition, who in this place yielded to certain perverse impulses. Several complaints having been made, some detectives were dispersed through the audience, until finally the accused was caught in the act. During the second act of a performance of “Lohengrin,” the detective Brumme observed the accused pressing up from behind against a lady, and, in the semi-obscurity of the performance, acting in the manner already mentioned. P. was arrested, and admitted that he had repeatedly acted in this way. Before the judge the accused also confessed that he had done the same thing on other occasions. How he had been led to do it he could not say. Each time after committing the offence he had suffered very bitter remorse.
The accused was acquitted of the criminal charge on the ground of mental disorder.
The psychical element of exhibitionism also plays a part in the practice of the so-called “voyeurs”[664] and “voyeuses,” that numerous group of male and female individuals who are sexually excited by regarding the sexual acts of other persons (active voyeurs), or who allow themselves to be watched by others when themselves performing sexual acts (passive voyeurs). In many brothels, apertures in the wall or other arrangements have been made for these voyeurs or gagas, through which they watch sexual scenes. In fashionable dressmakers’ shops, men are also said to watch ladies trying on dresses—at least, so I have been informed by a Parisian. Recently women also have been more and more inclined to see such spectacles, so that Schwaeblé devotes a special chapter to the voyeuses in his book on the perverse women of Paris. Messalina compelled her court ladies to prostitute themselves in her presence. Not infrequently male and female voyeurs unite to form societies and secret sexual clubs, in which all the sexual acts are performed in public.
Thus, in the end of September, 1906, in Graz, a “Secret Society for Immoral Purposes” was discovered by the police. At the head of this club was a merchant, thirty years of age, B——, jun. A number of other persons of good position belonged to this sexual club. They met in the great restaurant “Zum Königstiger.” Under the title of “An Assembly of Beauty,” festivals were held in the magnificent garden of this restaurant, which were concluded as orgies behind closed doors. The beautiful gardens of the Schlossberg were also the scene of many meetings of the club.[665]
A remarkable category of voyeurs is constituted by the so-called “stercoraires platoniques,”[666] individuals who obtain sexual enjoyment by observing the acts of defæcation and micturition performed by persons of the other sex, and seek opportunities for such observations in brothels or public lavatories. In the closet of one of the Berlin railway-stations such a stercoraire recently made a small artificial opening in the wall, through which he was able to watch other persons when engaged in the act of defæcation!
Here also we may refer to heterosexual pædication, to coitus analis, which, according to the reports of French authors (Tardieu, Martineau, and Taxil), appears to be especially common in France, but which is by no means rare also in other countries. It becomes comprehensible only in view of the fact that the anus may itself be an erogenic zone. Details regarding this matter are given by Freud.[667] Krauss, also, in the second volume of his “Anthropophyteia” (p. 392 et seq.), has given numerous examples of pædication. Among others, he reports two cases related to him by the ethnologist Friedrich Müller, in which men had coitus with their wives only per anum.
Finally, we must refer to a practice which appears to be confined to France, the customary use of opium, hashish, and ether, for the purpose of inducing sexual excitement, regarding which Schwaeblé (op. cit., pp. 19-36) and d’Estoc (op. cit., pp. 151-158) give very interesting reports. There exist in Paris special opium-houses, hashish-houses, and ether-houses, some for men and some for women. Three opium-houses are to be found, for example, in the Avenue Hoche, the Avenue Jéna, and the Rue Lauriston; there is an ether-restaurant in Neuilly; one for opium, hashish, and ether in the Rue de Rivoli. All these means of enjoyment evoke after a time sexual ideas and fantasies of an extremely peculiar character, associated with actual voluptuous sensations. Opium gives rise to “ardent, brilliant pictures of an excessively stimulated imagination,”[668] frequently of a perverse character; hashish has a similar but even stronger influence; and ether gives rise to a more powerful stimulation of the sexual organs, to a “vibration of the flesh and of the soul.” The interior of these unwholesome places of exotic enjoyment, in which frequently homosexual acts also occur, is vividly described by both the above-named French authors.[669]
APPENDIX
THE TREATMENT OF SEXUAL PERVERSIONS
In the treatment of sexual perversions and anomalies, always a matter of great difficulty, knowledge of mankind, tact, and the finer understanding of the physician for the psychological peculiarities of each individual case, must play a greater part than any definite method of medical treatment. An exact understanding of the true nature of the sexually abnormal personality is the indispensable preliminary to our exercising a favourable influence upon morbid impulses and practices. Unquestionably, the physician must in the first place treat all actual diseases underlying the sexual abnormalities, by means of the physical and pharmacological therapeutical methods open to us in such abundance. Bodily and mental repose is here often the first need we have to satisfy; and for this purpose a change of environment, climatic cures, and such drugs as bromide and camphor may be very useful. But the principal matter must remain psychical, suggestive treatment. The mere discussion of the matter with the physician, the possibility at length of confiding in one capable of taking a thoroughly objective, calm, comprehensive view of the matter, one who by his profession is instructed in all secrets of the human spiritual and impulsive life, and who is aware of all the bodily necessities—this by itself suffices to restore to these unhappy beings, who are tortured by the evil demon of their unhappy impulse, who are often in a state of spiritual despair and hypochondria, to restore to them an inward confidence and a healing repose. This is the great triumph of medical research in this hitherto tabooed, and yet so enormously important, department, which only crass ignorance or evil-minded hypocrisy could designate as “improper” or “unworthy.” We have passed beyond the fruitless and dangerous method of “moral preaching,” to attain a scientific understanding of sexual anomalies; we have exposed the roots of these anomalies, lying deep in the physical and psychical nature of humanity, and we have recognized their connexion with so many other phenomena of the civilization of our time. When I speak of a “treatment” of the common, widely diffused sexual anomalies, it appears to me that that standpoint is the best which regards them as pure diseases of the will, which have been diffused in all times, but have never been more distinctly manifest, and never have possessed more importance, than they do at the present day, when will, energy, has become the most important weapon in the ever more violent struggle for existence. As Napoleon III. said, it is not to the apathetic man, but to the energetic man, that the future belongs, to the man with the will of iron. But nothing paralyzes the will so much as the dominance of blind and, above all, of abnormal, impulses. Unquestionably they conceal within themselves, when frequently gratified, feelings rather of pain than of pleasure, and become the unconquerable source of hypochondria and self-contempt. The stronger the impulse becomes, the longer the habit has lasted of yielding to that impulse, the greater is the loss of will from which the individual suffers. The first and most important task of the physician is, therefore, to weaken the impulse by means of strengthening the will. He must consistently and methodically educate the will, in order to assist the patient to obtain the victory over his impulse. As Goethe says in his “Epimenides”:
“Noch ist vieles zu erfüllen,
Noch ist manches nicht vorbei:
Doch wir alle, durch den Willen
Sind wir schon von Banden frei.”
[“Much there remains to fulfil,
Many things have yet to be endured:
Still, all of us, by the exercise of will
Can to a large extent free ourselves from our fetters.”]
The best way to attain this is to employ personal influence by means of suggestion. We must recommend frequent conversations on the part of the patient with the physician, which can be powerfully supplemented by epistolary communications on the part of the physician, of which an excellent example will be found in the “Psychotherapeutic Letters” by H. Oppenheim (Berlin, 1906).[670] Hypnosis is also of value, although it does not appear to do any more in these cases than is effected by suggestion in the waking state.[671]
It is not so easy to transform a Hamlet into a man of action. We must impose tasks upon the will, tasks both mental and physical; we must regulate the mode of life; we must give to the individuality special prescriptions adapted to the particular case, and we must call to our assistance, whenever advisable, the friends and associates of our patient. The great enemy of the will, alcohol, must be absolutely prohibited; on the other hand, the taste for finer enjoyment and also for easy sports and pastimes must be stimulated.[672] The vita sexualis needs repose in every case, and, above all, masturbation must be energetically resisted. If we succeed in diminishing the intensity of the impulse, and in increasing the power of the will, we have already done much. In isolated cases, we must also always make the attempt to conduct the libido and its activity very gradually into normal channels, perhaps with the assistance of suggestive ideas in coitu, for which, above all, the assistance of the sexual partner is indispensable. Only an experienced physician can here hit the mark.
[638] The Public Prosecutor Amschl reports in the Archives for Criminal Anthropology, 1904, vol. xvi., p. 173, a gross case of this character, in which a peasant affected with venereal ulcers, having been advised that a cure could only be obtained by intercourse with a pure virgin, had sexual intercourse with his own daughter, and—was cured!!
[639] See 1 Kings i. 1-4.
[640] E. Laurent, “Morbid Love: A Psycho-Pathological Study,” pp. 183, 184 (Leipzig, 1895). Cf. also P. Bernard, “Des Attendants à la Pudeur sur les Petites Filles” (Paris, 1886).
[641] A detailed description of this affair is given in my “Sexual Life in England,” vol. i., pp. 350-381 (Charlottenburg, 1901).
[642] Compare in this connexion more especially the apt remarks of J. P. Frank, “System of a Medical Polity,” vol. vi., pp. 94, 95 (Frankenthal, 1792).
[643] Cf. Sollier’s remarks on this subject in Von Schrenck-Notzing’s “Die Suggestions-Therapie,” p. 7.
[644] Regarding child prostitution in Berlin, numerous details are to be found in the work, “Child Prostitution in Berlin: Unvarnished Revelations and Moral Pictures by an Initiate” (Leipzig, 1895).
[645] G. Schmoller, “Elements of General Political Economy,” vol. i., p. 233 (Leipzig, 1901).
[646] Such relations can become actual, even at the present day, as we learn from the case reported by the Public Prosecutor, Dr. Kersten, in the Archives for Criminal Anthropology (1904, vol. xvi., p. 330), of a Moor, sixty-five years of age, who, in intercourse with his step-daughter, procreated a daughter, and later with this daughter of his own, when she was thirteen years of age, had sexual intercourse!
[647] G. Mirabeau, “Erotika Biblion,” p. 91 (Brussels, 1868).
[648] German authors use the word Sodomie to denote sexual relationships between human beings and animals. Mr. Havelock Ellis informs me (in a private letter) “the German use of ‘sodomy’ to include ‘bestiality’ is quite ancient, and no doubt had a theological origin. I imagine the confusion was made with the idea of throwing on to ‘bestiality’ the same reprobation as the Bible metes out to ‘sodomy.’” There is, of course, no mention of bestiality in connexion with the destruction of Sodom. The sin for which the city was destroyed was the desire for carnal knowledge of the two angels in the house of Lot (Gen. xix. 5). The signification of the various terms used to denote unnatural intercourse is thus defined by Mann, in his work on “Forensic Medicine”: Sodomy means unnatural sexual intercourse between two human beings, usually of the male sex.... Tribadism, the gratification of the sexual instinct between two human beings of the female sex.... Pederastia is that form of sodomy in which the passive rôle is played by a boy, the active agent being man or boy. Bestiality means sexual intercourse between mankind and the lower animals. Generally speaking, in this translation the terms mentioned are used as above defined. If there is any variation from that use, the context will manifest it. In any case, Sodomy has never been employed in the translation as an equivalent of the German Sodomie, the latter term having been invariably rendered by Bestiality.—Translator.
[649] Iwan Bloch, “A Remarkable Case of Sexual Perversion (Zoophilia),” published in Medizinische Klinik, 1906, No. 2.
[650] Of the recent literature on this subject I may refer to G. Dubois-Dessaulle, “Étude sur la Bestialité au Point de Vue Historique, Médical, et Juridique” (Paris, 1905); F. Reichert, “The Significance of Sexual Psychopathy in Human Beings, in Relation to Veterinary Practice,” Inaugural Dissertation (Bern and Munich, 1902); Franz Hora, “A Case of Unnatural Fornication with a Goose,” published in the Tierärztliches Zentralblatt, 1903, No. 13, p. 197; R. Froehner, “Sadistic Injuries to Animals,” published in the Deutsche Tierärztliche Wochenschrift, No. 1, 1903, p. 153; same author in Der Preussische Kreistierarzt, vol. i., pp. 487-491 (Berlin, 1904); Grundmann, “A Case of Bestiality and Sadism,” published in the Deutsche Tierärztliche Wochenschrift, 1905, No 45. A very painstaking and critical study of unnatural fornication with animals is published by Haberda in the Vierteljahrsschrift für Gerichtliche Medizin, 1907, vol. xxxiii., supplementary number. It deals with 162 medico-legal cases. Among these, two only concern girls of sixteen and twenty-nine years of age respectively, persons who have had improper relations with dogs. Most of the male offenders were persons whose occupations brought them much into contact with domestic animals; about half of them were under twenty years of age. The animals concerned were cattle, goats, horses, dogs, pigs, sheep, and hens. In the majority of cases there were fornicatory acts—acts analogous to sexual intercourse—less commonly other sexual contacts. The girl of sixteen was caught in the act of intercourse with a dog. The majority of male offenders made use of female animals. In two cases young men allowed dogs to have intercourse with them per anum, the dogs having been trained to do this, and in both of them were found lacerations of the anus and rectum. Only in a few of the 172 cases of bestiality was there any reason to doubt the mental integrity of the person concerned. In those cases there was senile dementia, epilepsy, or alcoholism. The principal causes for the practice of bestiality were enhanced opportunities, the lack of possibility in the country for conjugal or extra-conjugal normal sexual intercourse, or, finally, superstition (belief in the possibility of curing of venereal disease by intercourse with animals).
[651] Regarding the ethnology of bestiality, consult my “Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis,” vol. ii., pp. 272-276.
[652] Cf. F. S. Krauss, “Bestial Aberrations,” published in “Anthropophyteia,” vol. iii., pp. 265-322.
[653] Iwan Bloch, “The Origin of Syphilis,” part i., p. 22 (Jena, 1901).
[654] The following authentic case, which occurred in the year 1902, appears to be unique. A man compelled his wife, who was amiable but somewhat weak-minded, to have intercourse with a male pointer, which he himself prepared for the act, and in course of time he made the animal complete coitus with his wife five or six times whilst he looked on (“A Horrible Case,” published in the Archives for Criminal Anthropology, vol. xiii., pp. 320, 321). A case of bestiality with a rabbit is reported by Boëteau (“Un Cas de Bestialité,” published in France Médicale, 1891, vol. xxxviii., p. 593). Regarding passive bestiality with dogs, cf. A. Montalti, “La pederastia tra il cane a l’ uomo,” published in Sperimentale, 1887, vol. lx., p. 285; Delastre et Linas, “Sodomie Bestiale” (Societe de Médecine Lègale, 1873-74, vol. cxi., p. 165); Brouardel, “Pédérastie d’un Chien à l’Homme,” (published in the Semaine Médicale, 1887, vol. vii., p. 318); Féré, “Note sur un Cas de Bestialité chez la Femme” (published in Archives de Neurologie, 1903, p. 90).
[655] The belief in vampires is in part dependent upon necrophilia. In Southern Slavonic countries the corpses of young women and girls were sometimes found which had been disinterred. The necrophilist had misused them sexually, and had then cut off the breasts and torn out the intestines (F. S. Krauss, “Anthropophyteia,” vol. ii., p. 391). In the fifth decade of the nineteenth century the notorious necrophilist Sergeant Bertrand performed similar acts.
[656] Reported by A. Eulenburg, “Sadism and Masochism,” p. 56. Another case of necrophilia, with subsequent mutilation, occurred during the night of December 21-22, 1901, in the mortuary at Weiher, on the corpse of the wife of a day-labourer. The offender, who was arrested, had, on account of intense sexual hyperæsthesia, committed other sexual offences, among them bestiality (cf. “A Case of Necrophilia,” published in the Archives of Criminal Anthropology, 104, vol. xvi., pp. 289-303).
[657] These æsthetic motives were predominant in the cases of statue-love reported from antiquity.
[658] Cf. L. Fiaux “Les Maisons de Tolérance,” pp. 176, 177 (Paris, 1892). Moreover, the well-known tableaux vivants of the variety theatre can be regarded as a lesser form of such pygmalionistic spectacles.
[659] Ch. Lasègue, “Les Exhibitionistes,” published in L’Union Médicale, 1877, No. 50.
[660] Cf. A. Hoche, “Elements of a General Forensic Psycho-Pathology,” published in the “Handbook of Forensic Psychiatry,” p. 502 (Berlin, 1901).
[661] G. Burgl, “Exhibitionists before the Law-Courts,” published in the Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, 1903, vol. lx., Nos. 1, 2, pp. 119-144.
[662] Regarding this custom of obscene gestures, which is extremely remarkable from the point of view of the history of civilization, see the second volume, now in course of preparation, of my work on “The Origin of Syphilis.”
[663] Von Schrenck-Notzing, “Crimino-Psychological and Psycho-Pathological Studies,” pp. 50-57 (Leipzig, 1902).
[664] Not to be confused with the “essayeurs,” a speciality of the brothels of Paris. These are male individuals who are hired by the owner of the brothel, in order, in the presence of clients, to carry out indecent manipulations in association with the prostitutes, and thus to induce sexual excitement in the guests, and stimulate them to fornication (cf. L. Fiaux, “Lee Maisons de Tolérance,” p. 177).
[665] Regarding secret sexual clubs, see also my “Sexual Life in England,” vol. i., pp. 400-415.
[666] Cf. L. Taxil, “La Corruption Fin de Siècle,” p. 226 (Paris, 1904).
[667] S. Freud, “Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory,” pp. 40-42.
[668] L. Lewin, the article “Opium,” in Eulenburg’s “Realenzyklopädie der Heilkunde,” vol. xvii., p. 629 (Vienna, 1898).
[669] The following interesting reports, given by A. Wernichs (“Geographico-Medical Studies,” pp. 48-50), elucidate very exactly the nature of the sexual fantasies of the opium-smoker, which have the character of an indeterminate and by no means coercive sexual desire: “It is not necessary to proceed to gratification; one is almost disinclined to bring the series of beautiful pictures to an end in this way. All the joyful sexual experiences follow one another in a peculiar and fanciful admixture. Alluring forms appear in the most stimulating postures. Often one does not seem to take part in the matter oneself. Beautiful women whom one has seen in any part of the world, at the theatre, etc., move before one’s eyes, in the most beloved games of our youth. Everything that memory and the half-dream brings us is naked, shining, delicate, luxurious—and for us alone; for me these groupings, these fountains with bathing forms, these gestures, these embraces.” It is, therefore, not simply by chance that the majority of Chinese brothels have arrangements for opium-smokers, and that, contrariwise, many opium-dens provide opportunities for sexual enjoyment. Indeed, prostitutes are said to prefer opium-smokers, precisely because the latter, as long as the effect of the opium persists, do not come to an end of their enjoyment.
[These sexual fantasies of the opium-smoker probably occur only in the initial stages of indulgence in the drug. The confirmed opium-smoker, like the man habituated to the hypodermic injection of morphine, is probably, with rare exceptions, completely impotent. Sexual appetite and power return, however, when the habit is cured.—Translator.]
[670] I refer more especially to the last letter, one directed to an onanist (pp. 42-44), as instructive in this connexion.
[671] Cf. also Alfred Fuchs, “Therapeutics of the Abnormal Sexual Life in Men” (Stuttgart, 1899).
[672] In such cases music, more especially the more emotional music of Wagner, must be employed only with great care.
Supplementary Note.—With regard to offences against morality, see the comprehensive work by Mittermaier, “Crimes and Offences against Morality” (Berlin, 1906) (gives a comparative description of the legislation of various countries). See also J. Werthauer, “Offences against Morality in Large Towns” (Berlin, 1907).
CHAPTER XXIV
OFFENCES AGAINST MORALITY FROM THE FORENSIC STANDPOINT.
“In view of the peculiar character of sexually perverse acts, or rather in view of the widely diffused interest in sexual questions and of the hypocrisy which seems inseparable from their consideration, it is easily comprehensible how to these acts there is commonly ascribed a forensic importance greater than that which properly attaches to them. And it is precisely this hypocrisy with which all questions connected with sexuality are treated on the public platform, which hinders a natural mode of regarding them, and renders so difficult an unprejudiced judgment regarding all the relevant facts.”—J. Salgó.