In the sexual domain the same extremes are produced in a very striking manner. Inflamed by love, a hysterical woman may exhibit phenomenal eroticism and the most violent sexual excesses, while indifference, disgust, or simply distraction by other ideas will render her absolutely frigid. Cold as ice toward other men, she may have insatiable sexual desire for the man she loves.
The question is often raised whether a woman can love more than once in her life. There is no doubt that many women are so monogamous by instinct that they cannot love more than once; but it is also certain that a hysterical woman is capable of loving several times, and very different persons at different periods of her life. The personality of certain erotic hysterical women is even so dissociable that they can love with all their strength several men at the same time. But the hysterical woman is also capable of hating a man with as much ardor as she formerly loved him; or, on the contrary, of loving the one she formerly hated, according to the suggestion of the moment. The same phenomena occur in hysterical men.
For the same reasons the quality of the sexual sensations and sentiments may vary in a hysterical subject according to the influences it is subjected to, and pass from the normal to the perverted state, or inversely. I have observed a case where a highly cultured hysterical subject, in her early youth, fell in love with another young girl. At this period her sentiments were purely homosexual; her love for the young girl was clearly inverted and accompanied by intense sexual desire, while she was absolutely indifferent to men. Later on, a man fell in love with her, and she yielded to him rather from pity and feminine passiveness than from love. Still later she fell passionately in love with another man, quite as much as she had been with the young girl of her early youth. Her latest love was both exalted and libidinous. Her sexual appetite had thus taken the normal direction under the influence of a hetero-sexual affection.
In hysterical men analogous changes occur less easily, on account of the nature of masculine sexuality which distinguishes more clearly between the mind and the appetite; but these changes are observed sometimes. In woman, the hysterical imagination and dissociation facilitate a polyandrous irradiation of the sexual appetite, which is otherwise rare in the female sex. In this respect the sexuality of hysterical women resembles that of men and differs from that of normal women. Hysterical men, on the other hand, become more feminine, not by their appetite being less polygamous, but by the more dissociated form of their thoughts and sentiments.
(9). A variety of the pathological love of abnormal individuals is imaginary love, not founded on delirious ideas. Certain psychopaths of both sexes are convinced that they love some one, but they suddenly perceive during their betrothal, or even only after marriage, that they are mistaken and that they have never loved the person in question. Such illusions are the cause of numerous broken engagements, divorce and conjugal bitterness.
(10). Amorous tyranny constitutes another variety in the pathology of love. Lovers of this kind constantly tyrannize and torment the object of their passion, by their desires, their observations, their sensitive temper, their contradictions, their exigencies and their jealousy. This atrocious manner of loving is common in both sexes; perhaps more so in women than men.
(11). The love of psychopaths is a subject which has no end. If human society was better acquainted with psychopathology a great deal of conjugal misunderstanding and misery would be avoided.
I have known a woman who would not allow her husband to shut himself in the water-closet, for fear he would take the servant with him! Another became madly jealous if a woman sat opposite her husband and cast the least glance at him; the unfortunate husband not knowing where to look, in the street or in hotels, so as to escape his wife's jealousy. It is still worse when the husband is jealous.
Other psychopaths torment the object of their love by the perpetual care they take over imaginary dangers or the slightest indispositions. Others again are affected with hyperæsthesia, and the least noise, the slightest touch, or any sudden sensation, is enough to throw them into excitement and make them a nuisance both to themselves and to their surroundings.
The pathological exaltation of sentiments, which causes the most trifling things to appear as deliberate offenses, and malicious intentions, is still more to be feared. The disproportion between love and sexual appetite also torments many psychopaths, either when a deep love is combined with sexual indifference or disgust at coitus, or even pain (vaginismus, in women, for example); or when an intense sexual appetite is combined with want of love or ferocious egoism (especially in men).