The impulse of exhibition is, as a rule, sudden and irresistible. At the sight of an individual of the other sex, the patient is suddenly seized by the unconquerable desire to expose pudibilia, even if the patient happens to be in the street or in a public garden. If the patient tries to oppose the impulse, he is generally seized with a feeling of anxiety and fear, of oppression in the chest and with palpitation of the heart.
Ch. Laseque (Union Médicale, 1877, p. 709), who first named this anomaly “exhibitionism,” remarks that the exhibitionist finds enough pleasure and satisfaction in this platonic manifestation and does not look for more direct relations with the person to whom he shows virilia sua.
The cases of exhibitionism, says Krafft-Ebing, thus far recorded are exclusively those of men who ostentatiously expose virilia sua to persons of the opposite sex, and whom in some instances they even pursue, without, however, becoming aggressive.
The following few cases of male exhibitionism may serve as illustrations of this strange anomaly:
George Verret (Annales Médico-Psychologiques Séc. 101; 1912, p. 554) reports the case of a physician who, on different occasions, exhibited virilia sua before women and children. At these exhibitions mentula remained invariably in a flaccid condition. Sometimes he stood before the window of his bed-room and exposed his virilia to young girls who lived in an opposite house, who happened to be at their window. At other times he exhibited his organs in public and private gardens. At some occasions he showed virilia sua to his female patients in his office. The doctor was tried, found guilty and sent away to the penitentiary for three months.
The following case, observed by the author, is remarkable on account of the prominence of the patient. One of the most prominent gynaecologists of a certain city, occupying a chair at the medical school, after the examination of a young married woman, resolvit bracas et mentulam protrahens posuit in manibus mulieris.
This sudden exhibition took the young lady so by surprise that she was completely stunned and could not utter a word. When she came to the realization what had happened, she gave one scream and left the room, leaving the professor still standing virilibus expositis in manibus suis.
Before going home, the young lady immediately called upon the author, who had sent her to the professor, and told him what had happened. She was advised not to tell anybody, not even her husband, about the disagreeable affair until the author had communicated with the professor. When the latter was called up by telephone, he immediately hastened to the author’s office and cried and begged the author to exert his influence with the young lady not to expose him and ruin his entire career. He excused himself, that being abstinent, the examination of the beautiful young woman excited him so that he did not know what he was doing.
The young modest woman who belonged to a very prominent family was shown that if the affair became public it would raise a public scandal and would expose her to the jokes and witticisms of the profanum vulgus, and that her husband in his rage may commit some rash act which would bring him in collision with the criminal courts. She then consented to keep the affair secret and forget it.
Another case known to the author is that of a man of forty with an hereditary taint, who was always nervous since his childhood. He suffered from enuresis nocturna until after puberty. He began to practise stuprum manu when he was only eleven years of age. At present he shows all the signs and symptoms of hystero-neurasthenia. The pupillary reaction is retarded, there is a fibrillary tremor of his tongue, and when standing with closed eyes there is a considerable tottering. The knee-reflex on the left side is more pronounced than on the right. Very often there is a profuse outbreak of perspiration on the left side of the entire body, while the right side remains perfectly dry. At certain periods the patient suffers also from attacks of anxiety and fear.
One evening, while in a public park, the patient let his trousers fall down, lifted his shirt and exposed his flaccid genitals to several women and girls. The women seem to have considered the affair a big joke and nothing happened to him. But another time se stupravit manu in the presence of two girls in the hall of a fashionable apartment. The frightened girls began to scream, the patient was apprehended and arrested. Through the influence of political friends, the case was quashed.
Another case known to the author is that of a married man of a highly tainted family. His father was potator, his mother hysteric, one sister is epileptic and the other committed suicide. The patient’s two children seem to be healthy. The patient often suffers from congestions to his head, headaches and exophthalmus. The knee-reflexes are greatly exaggerated.
On repeated occasions, the patient exposed virilia in parks and other public places before women and girls, calling their attention by whistling. At one occasion he showed virilia to women on the street through the window of his room. At another occasion se stupravit manu under the electric arc-light at night where the women passing on the street could not help seeing him.
Another patient, observed by the author, forty-two years of age, married, father of two children, modest and respectable, was arrested one evening for exhibiting virilia sua before girls passing the streets. He used to hang around girls’ schools, following the girls after they used to leave school and attracting their attention ad virilia exposita. At one occasion he ran about in a public park at dusk virilibus expositis. Once when he saw a young woman standing at the window of the opposite house, he immediately exposuit virilia et cœpit se stuprare, standing before his own window so that the young lady was forced to notice him.
The anomaly of exhibition is found almost exclusively in men. It is exceedingly rare in women. The girl’s education at home and in school has developed in the woman the sentiment of modesty and chastity in a degree out of all proportion with the same sentiment in men. The woman must be entirely insane before she will expose herself for the sake of lubricity.
For this reason the few cases of genital exhibitionism in women, thus far recorded, were all cases of general paralysis. They are found in asylums for the insane where the patient, during a maniacal excitement, tollens interulam medico præterienti concubitum proponit. Still in some women the hyperexcitation of the sexual desire may be of such an intensity that it will lead to exhibitionism in an otherwise normal individual, as the following case of Ungewitter shows:
The patient, a servant, twenty years of age, quæ præter amatum suum concumbebat filio matronæ sedecim annos nato sæpissime exponebat muliebria in the presence of boys, eight to ten years of age. In the barn or on porches or even in the open field, tollebat vestes et nudam vulvam pueris monstrabat convertens animos dicendo; “Contemplamini hunc locum! Ea est vulva mea. Jam crines ibi habeo; venite et tangite eam!” She never touched the boys nor did she have any carnal relations with them.
The defendant servant was found guilty of attempted offence against morality and was sentenced to two months’ penitentiary.
Homosexuality.—The world is governed by certain fixed laws. This must be admitted even by the mechanistic theory of life. In sexual matters the law of sexual-homologous development is almost as binding as the law of gravitation. The cerebral centre of voluptas corresponds with the sexual glands in the inverse sense. The normal inclination of the individual is directed toward the bearer of the glands of the opposite sex. The male is attracted by the female and vice versa.
Every individual being has to pass through all the grades of the evolution of animal life. The remote ancestors of the human race were bisexual. The same bisexuality exists in the embryo, represented by the Wolffian and Müllarian ducts or the bisexual “Anlage.” Later in the development, there arises, so to say, a struggle between the male and female elements. When one element has been conquered a monosexual being evolves whose mental inclinations correspond with the sexual glands. The basis for the yearnings and longings of one sex for the other would thus be the desire for perfection, for the completion of those sides of our being which are present in the bisexual “Anlage” or the “ground-work” of sex, but failed in development, and for this reason can not be brought to a realization of ourselves. It is, as if in the accord of our being some tones are kept in suspension and are only allowed to chime in with the tones of the other half. Then, and then only, there is a perfect harmony.