Of the same masochistic nature was the frigidity of the Duchess Leonore Gonzaza of Mantua. Aloisia Sigea says that her frigidity could only be removed by a flagelation by her mother ante coitum: “Virgis Leonora, parentis suae manu ad hanc diem nullam ex Venere ceperat voluptatem. Hoc vero temporis momento vehementissime mota est, lacessiti iterum verberibus lumbi, clunes et femora ad venerem incensi.”
Generally, female masochistic patients are unconscious of the abnormality of their desires and never come to the physician’s office. Their pathological condition is only accidentally discovered, when complicated with other anomalies.
It may be also noted that the courts of justice never or very rarely have any dealings with cases of masochism, whether in men or in women, as may happen in sadism. The patient will never go so far in his or her perverse desire for suffering that the injury inflicted may become criminal. For the extreme consequences of masochism, such as murder and serious injury, as sometimes found in sadism, are avoided through the instinct of self-preservation.
Sadism.—While masochism is a pathological growth of specifically feminine mental elements, where the patient finds delight in suffering pain, in sadism the patient seeks lustful excitement in inflicting pain. Sadism hence represents a pathological intensification of the masculine mental character. Sadism is so-called after the Marquis de Sade, who during the French Revolution devoted himself to the writing of obscene books which had lust and cruelty for their theme.
Sadism is characterized by the impulse to cruel and violent treatment of the opposite sex and the coloring of the idea of such acts with lustful feelings.[BB] It is hence a non-feminine trait and is less frequently found in women than in men. Woman’s modesty causes her to keep herself on the defensive until the moment of surrender, while under normal conditions man meets with obstacles in his wooing which it is his part to surmount. He is aggressive, and aggressiveness is closely related to the infliction of pain. It affords men great pleasure to win and conquer women. Nature has given the man for that purpose strength and combativeness. In sadism this aggressiveness is intensified and excessively developed. The patient is dominated by the wish to subdue the object of his desire with cruelty.
Bain explains this love of inflicting cruelty as springing from the pleasure the individual finds in the knowledge of the power and domination it has over the maltreated mate.
The need of the subjugation of the consort forms a constituent symptom in sadism and may be intensified to such a degree that the patient will not shrink even from murder. Sadism is hence mostly found in men, although in rare instances it also affects women.
The anomaly of sadism shows different degrees of intensity. The first degree represents Platonic sadism. The patient does not go any further in his abnormal desires than to commit violent acts in his phantasy only or to draw and paint scenes of violence or to describe such scenes in verse or prose.
In the second degree the patient seeks to satisfy his abnormal impulse by striking light blows, or by biting and pricking different parts of the mate’s body.
In the third degree of sadism serious wounds are inflicted upon the mate. The patient does not shrink back from mutilating the body of his victim or from committing murder.