[CHAPTER XV]
PARADOXIA
The pathology of love treats only of sensual love or of sensuality. The anomalies of sentimental love lie more properly within the province of the metaphysician or sociologist. Hence only the pathologic aspect of sensuality will be considered in the following part.
The analysis of sexuality has revealed the great complexity of the sexual instinct. No wonder, therefore, that the intricacies of love show many and varied anomalies. The anomalies based upon anatomical defects may easily be omitted. The number of works written on this subject is legion. They could fill whole libraries. But the psychical anomalies of love have enjoyed until very recently scanty attention at the hands of medical writers. Especially has modern gynaecology hitherto entirely neglected the psychical part of its specialty and has directed its attention only upon diseases that require surgical interference or other local manipulation.
The anomalies of the sexual impulse which will be analyzed in the following chapters are those based upon some defects in either of the three regions of the sexual sphere, the spinal cord, where the centres of erection and ejaculation are situated; the cerebellum, the seats of the impulses of voluptas and of libido and of the sensations of touch, sight, smell, and hearing, which usually provoke the impulses; and the cerebrum, with the higher sensations, as the sentiment of beauty, of affection, of admiration, of worship and of respect.
The anomalies based upon defects in these nervous centres properly belong within the province of the neurologist and alienist. Yet in a treatise on sex-attraction such anomalies should not be passed in silence. All the peculiarities of the woman’s body and mind, her nutrition and nerve activity are only a dependency of the ovary. The same may be justly said of the man. Almost all of the activities of the normal man stand in some relation to the testicular functions. The knowledge of the abnormal psychical elements of the sexual instinct is, therefore, of such importance to the general health and well-being of the public and to the whole social structure, that every physician and student of law or pedagogy ought to acquire a general knowledge of the anomalies of sexual affections. The man and woman who do not experience connubial satisfaction will often seek a substitute for their unrequited love. The whole foundation of society, the family, will begin to sag, if in our nervous age the anomalies of sexuality are prudishly overlooked and their study neglected.
The pathology of the sexual affections is, therefore, not only a proper study for every student of medicine but for every student of education, law and sociology as well. Krafft-Ebing’s general classification of the anomalies of the sexual instinct will also be followed here with more or less minor modifications. Krafft-Ebing divides the pathology of sexuality into four parts.
I. PARADOXIA.
It means sexual activity in individuals who should normally present no sexual manifestations, as the occurrence of sexual excitation before the physiological age.
II. ANAESTHESIA.