Occasionally, the sexual appetite may be preserved for a long time in old men, or reappear for a time, with or without sexual power, but as a rule, the paradoxy of old men is the initial symptom of senile dementia. As this disorder is only commencing when sexual excitation occurs, it is not noticed, and the patient is regarded as an immoral, vicious or criminal individual. I have seen a patient of this kind masturbate openly in an asylum, so great was his sexual excitation.
In most old men affected with senile sexual paradoxy, the sexual appetite is directed toward very young girls or even children, which aggravates their case from the legal point of view. Very often this appetite is perverted and assumes one of the forms we shall speak of later. Some of these old men are still capable, but others are not, and then their excitation only manifests itself in manipulations of the genital organs, etc. Such cases play a considerable part in law scandals. The patient (for so he must be called) often becomes the victim of blackmail on the part of vicious girls or children, incited by unnatural parents. One often sees also, at the onset of senile dementia, an old man become enamored of some prostitute or adventuress who makes him marry her and thus takes possession of his fortune. The law generally makes the matter valid, under the pretext that individual liberty must be respected. Such sanction consists in reality in sacrificing a patient for the profit of a female swindler.
SEXUAL ANÆSTHESIA OR CONGENITAL ABSENCE OF THE SEXUAL SENSE AND APPETITE
Sexual sensations are so intimately connected with the sexual appetite that it is difficult to separate them. No doubt in the adult a certain degree of sexual appetite may exist without any voluptuous sensation, but this is a secondary phenomenon.
Complete sexual anæsthesia is very rare in man; it is not a special form of anomaly, but the reduction to zero of a normal sensation and the appetite which corresponds to it. The characteristic feature of these cases is that, contrary to what occurs in eunuchs and cryptorchids, not only the testicles, but all the correlative sexual attributes (the beard, voice, character, etc.) are normally developed, and are in no way inverted as in homosexual individuals. Sexual anæsthesia causes no more suffering than color-blindness, but like the latter it occasions individual troubles resulting from misunderstanding. The sexual anæsthetic, having a more or less false idea of marriage, often marries in complete ignorance, and the results are then disastrous, thanks to our laws and customs.
In women, sexual anæsthesia is very common. Krafft-Ebing is wrong in maintaining that in all such cases the women are always neurotic. A number of absolutely normal and intelligent women remain all their life completely cold from the sexual point of view, apart from the normally passive character of the female sex in coitus. It is rather the very libidinous woman who is pathological.
We have seen that the normal sexual sentiment of woman is developed rather in the direction of love, and desire for children. Erotic men often complain of the sexual coldness of their wives, which is disagreeable to them; for pleasure in one sex excites and completes that of the other. Cold women submit to coitus as a duty, or at any rate only mentally enjoy their husband's caresses.
Sexual anæsthesia occurs normally in old age. It may occur at an earlier age, owing to destruction or atrophy of the sexual glands, great excesses, or on the contrary, extreme continence. Certain diseases and psychoses may also cause it.
The following are a few examples of sexual anæsthesia:
(1). A normally built man, of high culture and moral sense, was affected with complete sexual anæsthesia since birth. He occasionally had nocturnal emissions, and also matutinal erections, but no erotic images. When he arrived at mature age he had no idea of sexual intercourse, and was completely indifferent to everything concerning sexuality. He did not even comprehend anything relating to sexual affairs, and his replies reminded me of conversations with color-blind persons on the distinction between red and green! According to his ideas, marriage was an intellectual and sentimental union in which children came by themselves!