The emotions connected with mixoscopy or the bawdry complex is oftener found in women than in men. There are even mothers who aid and favor the love-affairs of their daughters, where no material advantage could in any way accrue to themselves or to their daughters, simply out of lust which they expect to experience when being present at or thinking of the erotic incidents between their children and their lovers. The following history well illustrates this point:
Mrs. O., forty-five years of age, married for the last twenty-five years, never had a child. She was operated upon a few years after she was married, and uterus and ovaries were removed at that operation. Twenty years after her castration, when the impotence of libido must have been complete, a nephew of hers, nineteen years old, came to live with his aunt and uncle. The aunt soon induced the mere boy to engage himself with a young lady of twenty-three years of age. Although the aunt well knew that certain legal obstacles prevented the boy from marrying the young lady, still, in order to enjoy the love-making of the young people, she did not rest until she effected the engagement. When the young fiancée left for the West where she was to stay for a considerable length of time, the aunt induced the boy to dissolve the engagement and procured him another young lady with whom he again had to become engaged. When the nephew left for a foreign country where he was to stay several years, the castrated aunt had no use any longer for the second fiancée either, began to quarrel with her and finally forbade her to enter her house.
These actions plainly show that her interest in the young people was founded upon the selfish longing to participate in their pleasure at the lovers’ dalliance, caressing, kissing, etc., which, as an old castrate, she could not experience any longer. Hers was, therefore, the kind of bawdry from love of the subject. It was the only way this voluptuous woman—but impotent of experiencing libido—could yet partake of any sexual pleasure by identifying herself with the female lovers of her young nephew. She had no other advantage to gain by her match-making.
Panderism or bawdry presumes a complete absence of jealousy of any kind. Patients, suffering from this anomaly, love to assist at erotic scenes, enacted between females among themselves where the emotion of jealousy is absent.
The love of sensual people to look at obscene pictures or to read obscene books is also based upon the impulse of mixoscopy. Sometimes the intensity of the desire to assist at erotic scenes reaches such a degree that the patients hire furnished rooms in fornicibus observandi causa actiones between the inmates and their callers, through holes in the walls of adjoining rooms, and thus participate in their libido.
To this impulse of mixoscopy may also be attributed the indulgent behavior of many a husband towards the family friend. If the world is ignorant of their wives’ relations, and ridicule is avoided, some husbands not only close their eyes to their wives' doings but even favor their flirtations. The history of the following case shows how far a husband can go in his indulgence, as to himself procuring a lover for his wife:
Mr. E., twenty-four years of age, decides to leave his country and go to America. While waiting a few days for his boat to clear the port, he spent one evening in a restaurant. After sitting there for some time, he noticed a couple entering the same hostelry. The woman was about thirty years of age, the man about twenty-five her senior. The couple soon left the place. About an hour later the man returned, sat down at the same table where E. was sitting and soon entered into a conversation with him. In the course of their talk, the old man asked E. whether he would like to have female company for the evening. Upon the affirmative answer, the old man took E. to an aristocratic apartment in a distinguished part of the city. There E. met with the young lady he saw entering the restaurant, et cum ea pernoctavit, the old man spending all this time in an adjoining room. The following day the old man prevailed on E. to give up the trip to America for a while and stay with them. E. stood this idle life for six months, but finally his rôle as a commaritus or rather as a fornicator came home to his conscience and he left for America. While he was staying there he learned that the elderly man and the young woman were husband and wife. E. gave the author the assurance that during the entire six months the husband, this he is positively sure, never approached his wife sexually. He left her to E. without manifesting the least trace of jealousy.
The only explanation for such a strange phenomenon is that the husband was impotent and that the only way for him to experience at least some pleasure from his wife was by identifying himself with the lover. Such cases represent the extreme degree of mixoscopy.
Erotomania.—The increased sexual desire in hyperaesthesia is not always directed upon the physical gratification. Sometimes it is more of an ideal nature, as in erotomania.
Physiological erotomania is often found in individuals of both sexes, especially in young girls, at the time of puberty. Many a youth and maiden are highly erotic, at this period, although, if reared in purity and attended with vigilance, they never think yet of the physical contact.