No further discussion of such disputed problems of the sexual life can now be attempted. What has been said should suffice, on the one hand, to prove that the experiences of childhood have important relationships to the occurrence of sexual perversions; and, on the other, to put the reader on his guard against numerous exaggerations. I will merely add that whilst the examples I have given concern only homosexuality and sadism, similar considerations will be found to apply, mutatis mutandis, to other sexual perversions.
Notes of a few cases will now be given in which more or less perverse tendencies can be traced back into the days of childhood, at least in so far as the memories of those concerned can be regarded as trustworthy.
Case 11.—X., thirty-one years of age, is a foot-fetichist. He believes that his preference for feet dates from the age of six years, when he began to regard with extraordinary interest the feet of a servant girl in his father's house when she was engaged in washing the floor. From the age of six to the age of eleven years, X.'s memories are somewhat confused. Thenceforward, however, in the matter of his fondness for feet, his memories are distinct enough. When he was twelve years old he saw in his parents' house a young girl standing bare-footed before the kitchen fire; he seized the opportunity of crouching down on the ground quite close to the girl's feet, giving as his excuse that he wanted to bask in the heat of the fire. While doing this, he yearned to touch or to kiss the girl's feet. Between the ages of thirteen and sixteen he was crazy about the naked feet of girls and women. He took every opportunity of seeing the servants' feet when they were scrubbing the floors, and this sight sufficed to induce in him erection of the penis. This foot fetichism has persisted, directed sometimes towards the feet of women, sometimes towards the feet of men. Since he grew up, X. has from time to time had normal heterosexual intercourse.
Case 12.—Y., twenty-five years of age, homosexual, with a special preference for soldiers. In early childhood he noticed in himself a great fondness for handsome men. When walking in the streets of the town as a small boy, it was the soldiers, in especial, from among the men he met, who made a strong impression upon him. He remembers that when he was seven years of age, he allowed a soldier to take him on his knees, and that it gave him great pleasure to stroke the man's cheeks. The roughness of the cheeks gave him an extremely agreeable sensation, and he sought every opportunity of renewing this sensation. He found cavalry soldiers especially stimulating. From the age of eleven dates his peculiar delight in the well-rounded nates of a cavalry soldier. As he himself puts it, with the lapse of time, this has become to him a genuine fetich. Subsequently, young men-servants also aroused his interest, but never to the same degree as cavalry soldiers. The homosexual tendency has persisted into adult life.
Case 13.—Z., twenty-seven years of age, has several times been prosecuted, on account of his attempts to spy upon women in public lavatories. It is his custom, when in such a place he can observe the genital organs of a woman in the act of defæcation, to masturbate. He states that this tendency was well marked in him at the age of thirteen years. He believes, indeed, that at this time he was inspired mainly by curiosity—by a desire to see what the genital organs of a female were like. But he recalls that when a child, at about the age of eight or nine years, he experienced sexual stimulation when a girl cousin of six sat on his face; and he thinks that when only five or six years old he crawled under the petticoats of a servant girl, in order to lay his face against her nates. Even as early as this he experienced great pleasure in the act.
Case 14.—X., is now twenty years of age. He always experiences sexual excitement when he thinks of the act of whipping. It is unnecessary for him to play any active part in this himself; and it is a matter of indifference to him whether a man beats a woman, a woman beats a man, or an adult of either sex beats a child. In all cases alike the sight induces sexual excitement; and the imaginative reproduction of such a scene is his customary stimulus during masturbation—this being a fairly frequent occurrence. He traces back to childhood the stimulus exercised on him by a whipping seen or imagined. When from seven to nine years of age, he began to find such experiences sexually stimulating; by the age of ten, he was quite clear as to the existence of this peculiarity in himself. At this early age he struck himself with a stick, under the influence of an obscure impulse to arouse voluptuous sensations by means of the blows; he did this fairly frequently.
As regards his sexual sensibilities in general, he is by no means indifferent to members of the opposite sex. He gladly seeks social intercourse with females, and likes to kiss them; but he does not experience any definite sexual impulse towards them, such as might culminate in sexual intercourse. Three times he has had actual intercourse, but on each occasion he has been able to effect erection and ejaculation only by means of all kinds of artificial stimulation. It is a noteworthy fact that when he was fifteen or sixteen years of age he became intimate with the members of a homosexual circle, and only by considerable effort was he able to free himself from these associations.
In autobiographical literature we from time to time come across accounts of such perverse modes of sexual sensibility. Ulrich von Lichtenstein, in whom masochistic inclinations were unmistakably present, relates that when he was barely twelve years of age he became the devoted slave of a grown woman; and he describes his sentiments, at this early age and subsequently, towards this woman, who was well born, good and beautiful, chaste in mind and body, and in every respect virtuous. Well known, too, is the case of Rousseau, of which I shall have to speak again later; this writer traces his masochistic perversion back to the seventh year of his life. I may allude also to Rétif de la Bretonne, who was born in 1734, and certainly experienced sexual sentiments in very early childhood. In his Monsieur Nicolas,[58] which must be regarded as an autobiographical work, Rétif relates the beginnings, in the years 1743-44, of his fetichistic fondness (which endured throughout his life) for women's feet and women's shoes. In purely fictional works, analogous cases are also described. Thus, in his Pour une Nuit d'Amour, Zola depicts a sadistic-masochistic relationship between two children:—
"From earliest childhood Thérèse von Morsanne used Colombel as the scapegoat and the sport of her caprices. He was about six months older than she. Thérèse was a dreadful child. Not that she was wild and uncontrolled, like the ordinary unruly child; on the contrary, she was extraordinarily serious, with the outward aspect of a well-brought-up young lady. But she had most remarkable whims and caprices, When she was alone, she would from time to time utter inarticulate cries or angry howls.
"From the age of six she began to torment little Colombel. He was small and weakly. She would lead him to the back of the park, to a place where the chestnut-trees formed an arbour; here she would spring on his back and make him carry her about, riding sometimes round and round for hours. She compressed his neck, and thrust her heels into his sides, so that he could hardly breathe. He was the horse, she was the lady on horseback. When he was tired out, and ready to drop from exhaustion, she would bite him till the blood flowed, and would cling to her seat so tightly that her nails sank into his flesh. And the ride would thus start once more. The cruel queen of six years old, borne on the back of the little boy who served her as beast of burden, hunted thus on horseback with her hair streaming in the wind. Afterwards, when they were with their parents, she would pinch him secretly, and by repeated threats would prevent him from crying or complaining. Thus in secret they led a life of their own, very different from that which was apparent to the eyes of others. When they were alone, she treated him as a toy, to be broken to fragments at her pleasure, simply to see what might be inside. Was she not the Marquise? Were not people on their knees before her? And when she was tired of tyrannising over Colombel in private, she would take a peculiar pleasure, when a number of others were present, in tripping him up, or in running a pin into his arm or leg, whilst at the same time she forbade him with a fierce glance of her black eyes to show even by the movement of an eyelid that she was to blame.