IV.
Animals as Sources of Erotic Symbolism—Mixoscopic Zoophilia—The Stuff-fetichisms—Hair-fetichism—The Stuff-fetichisms Mainly on a Tactile Base—Erotic Zoophilia—Zooerastia—Bestiality—The Conditions that Favor Bestiality—Its Wide Prevalence Among Primitive Peoples and Among Peasants—The Primitive Conception of Animals—The Goat—The Influence of Familiarity with Animals—Congress Between Women and Animals—The Social Reaction Against Bestiality.
The erotic symbols with which we have so far been concerned have in every case been portions of the body, or its physiological processes, or at least the garments which it has endowed with life. The association on which the symbol has arisen has in every case been in large measure, although not entirely, an association of contiguity. It is now necessary to touch on a group of sexual symbols in which the association of contiguity with the human body is absent: the various methods by which animals or animal products or the sight of animal copulation may arouse sexual desire in human persons. Here we encounter a symbolism mainly founded on association by resemblance; the animal sexual act recalls the human sexual act; the animal becomes the symbol of the human being.
The group of phenomena we are here concerned with includes several subdivisions. There is first the more or less sexual pleasure sometimes experienced, especially by young persons, in the sight of copulating animals. This I would propose to call Mixoscopic Zoophilia; it falls within the range of normal variation. Then we have the cases in which the contact of animals, stroking, etc., produces sexual excitement or gratification; this is a sexual fetichism in the narrow sense, and is by Krafft-Ebing termed Zoophilia Erotica. We have, further, the class of cases in which a real or simulated sexual intercourse with animals is desired. Such cases are not regarded as fetichism by Krafft-Ebing,[[33]] but they come within the phenomena of erotic symbolism as here understood. This class falls into two divisions: one in which the individual is fairly normal, but belongs to a low grade of culture; the other in which he may belong to a more refined social class, but is affected by a deep degree of degeneration. In the first case we may properly apply the term bestiality; in the second case it may perhaps be better to use the term zooerastia, proposed by Krafft-Ebing.[[34]]
Among children, both boys and girls, it is common to find that the copulation of animals is a mysteriously fascinating spectacle. It is inevitable that this should be so, for the spectacle is more or less clearly felt to be the revelation of a secret which has been concealed from them. It is, moreover, a secret of which they feel intimate reverberations within themselves, and even in perfectly innocent and ignorant children the sight may produce an obscure sexual excitement.[[35]] It would seem that this occurs more frequently in girls than in boys. Even in adult age, it may be added, women are liable to experience the same kind of emotion in the presence of such spectacles. One lady recalls, as a girl, that on several occasions an element of physical excitement entered into the feelings with which she watched the coquetry of cats. Another lady mentions that at the age of about 25, and when still quite ignorant of sexual matters, she saw from a window some boys tickling a dog and inducing sexual excitement in the animal; she vaguely divined what they were doing, and though feeling disgust at their conduct she at the same time experienced in a strong degree what she now knows was sexual excitement. The coupling of the larger animals is often an impressive and splendid spectacle which is far, indeed, from being obscene, and has commended itself to persons of intellectual distinction;[[36]] but in young or ill-balanced minds such sights tend to become both prurient and morbid. I have already referred to the curious case of a sexually hyperæsthetic nun who was always powerfully excited by the sight or even the recollection of flies in sexual connection, so that she was compelled to masturbate; this dated from childhood. After becoming a nun she recorded having had this experience, followed by masturbation, more than four hundred times.[[37]] Animal spectacles sometimes produce a sexual effect on children even when not specifically sexual; thus a correspondent, a clergyman, informs me that when a young and impressionable boy, he was much affected by seeing a veterinary surgeon insert his hand and arm into a horse's rectum, and dreamed of this several times afterward with emissions.
While the contemplation of animal coitus is an easily intelligible and in early life, perhaps, an almost normal symbol of sexual emotion, there is another subdivision of this group of animal fetichisms which forms a more natural transition from the fetichisms which have their center in the human body: the stuff-fetichisms, or the sexual attraction exerted by various tissues, perhaps always of animal origin. Here we are in the presence of a somewhat complicated phenomenon. In part we have, in a considerable number of such cases, the sexual attraction of feminine garments, for all such tissues are liable to enter into the dress. In part, also, we have a sexual perversion of tactile sensibility, for in a considerable proportion of these cases it is the touch sensations which are potent in arousing the erotic sensations. But in part, also, it would seem, we have here the conscious or subconscious presence of an animal fetich, and it is notable that perhaps all these stuffs, and especially fur, which is by far the commonest of the groups, are distinctively animal products. We may perhaps regard the fetich of feminine hair—a much more important and common fetich, indeed, than any of the stuff fetichisms—as a link of transition. Hair is at once an animal and a human product, while it may be separated from the body and possesses the qualities of a stuff. Krafft-Ebing remarks that the senses of touch, smell, and hearing, as well as sight, seem to enter into the attraction exerted by hair.
The natural fascination of hair, on which hair-fetichism is founded, begins at a very early age. "The hair is a special object of interest with infants," Stanley Hall concludes, "which begins often in the latter part of the first year.... The hair, no doubt, gives quite unique tactile sensations, both in its own roots and to hands, and is plastic and yielding to the motor sense, so that the earliest interest may be akin to that in fur, which is a marked object in infant experience. Some children develop an almost fetichistic propensity to pull or later to stroke the hair or beard of every one with whom they come in contact." (G. Stanley Hall, "The Early Sense of Self," American Journal of Psychology, April, 1898, p. 359.)
It should be added that the fascination of hair for the infantile and childish mind is not necessarily one of attraction, but may be of repulsion. It happens here, as in the case of so many characteristics which are of sexual significance, that we are in the presence of an object which may exert a dynamic emotional force, a force which is capable of repelling with the same energy that it attracts. Féré records the instructive case of a child of 3, of psychopathic heredity, who when he could not sleep was sometimes taken by his mother into her bed. One night his hand came in contact with a hairy portion of his mother's body, and this, arousing the idea of an animal, caused him to leap out of the bed in terror. He became curious as to the cause of his terror and in time was able to observe "the animal," but the train of feelings which had been set up led to a life-long indifference to women and a tendency to homosexuality. It is noteworthy that he was attracted to men in whom the hair and other secondary sexual characters were well developed. (Féré, L'Instinct Sexuel, second edition, pp. 262-267.)
As a sexual fetich hair strictly belongs to the group of parts of the body; but since it can be removed from the body and is sexually effective as a fetich in the absence of the person to whom it belongs, it is on a level with the garments which may serve in a similar way, with shoes or handkerchiefs or gloves. Psychologically, hair-fetichism presents no special problem, but the wide attraction of hair—it is sexually the most generally noted part of the feminine body after the eyes—and the peculiar facility with which when plaited it may be removed, render hair-fetichism a sexual perversion of specially great medico-legal interest.