Garnier applied the term sadi-fetichism to active flagellation and many similar manifestations such as we are here concerned with, on the grounds that they are hybrids which combine the morbid adoration for a definite object with the impulse to exercise a more or less degree of violence. From the standpoint of the conception of erotic symbolism I have adopted there is no need for this term. There is here no hybrid combination of two unlike mental states. We are simply concerned with states of erotic symbolism, more or less complete, more or less complex.

The conception of exhibitionism as a process of erotic symbolism, involves a conscious or unconscious attitude of attention in the exhibitionist's mind to the psychic reaction of the woman toward whom his display is directed. He seeks to cause an emotion which, probably in most cases, he desires should be pleasurable. But from one cause or another his finer sensibilities are always inhibited or in abeyance, and he is unable to estimate accurately either the impression he is likely to produce or the general results of his action, or else he is moved by a strong impulsive obsession which overpowers his judgment. In many cases he has good reason for believing that his act will be pleasurable, and frequently he finds complacent witnesses among the low-class servant girls, etc.

It may be pointed out here that we are quite justified in speaking of a penis-fetichism and also of a vulva-fetichism. This might be questioned. We are obviously justified in recognizing a fetichism which attaches itself to the pubic hair, or, as in a case with which I am acquainted, to the clitoris, but it may seem that we cannot regard the central sexual organs as symbols of sex, symbols, as it were, of themselves. Properly regarded, however, it is the sexual act rather than the sexual organ which is craved in normal sexual desire; the organ is regarded merely as the means and not as the end. Regarded as a means the organ is indeed an object of desire, but it only becomes a fetich when it arrests and fixes the attention. An attention thus pleasurably fixed, a vulva-fetichism or a penis-fetichism, is within the normal range of sexual emotion (this point has been mentioned in the previous volume when discussing the part played by the primary sexual organs in sexual selection), and in coarse-grained natures of either sex it is a normal allurement in its generalized shape, apart from any attraction to the person to whom the organs belong. In some morbid cases, however, this penis-fetichism may become a fully developed sexual perversion. A typical case of this kind has been recorded by Howard in the United States. Mrs. W., aged 39, was married at 20 to a strong, healthy man, but derived no pleasure from coitus, though she received great pleasure from masturbation practiced immediately after coitus, and nine years after marriage she ceased actual coitus, compelling her husband to adopt mutual masturbation. She would introduce men into the house at all times of the day or night, and after persuading them to expose their persons would retire to her room to masturbate. The same man never aroused desire more than once. This desire became so violent and persistent that she would seek out men in all sorts of public places and, having induced them to expose themselves, rapidly retreat to the nearest convenient spot for self-gratification. She once abstracted a pair of trousers she had seen a man wear and after fondling them experienced the orgasm. Her husband finally left her, after vainly attempting to have her confined in an asylum. She was often arrested for her actions, but through the intervention of friends set free again. She was a highly intelligent woman, and apart from this perversion entirely normal. (W. L. Howard, "Sexual Perversion," Alienist and Neurologist, January, 1896.) It is on the existence of a more or less developed penis-fetichism of this kind that the exhibitionist, mostly by an ignorant instinct, relies for the effects he desires to produce.

The exhibitionist is not usually content to produce a mere titillated amusement; he seeks to produce a more powerful effect which must be emotional whether or not it is pleasurable. A professional man in Strassburg (in a case reported by Hoche[[59]]) would walk about in the evening in a long cloak, and when he met ladies would suddenly throw his cloak back under a street lamp, or igniting a red-fire match, and thus exhibit his organs. There was an evident effort—on the part of a weak, vain, and effeminate man—to produce a maximum of emotional effect. The attempt to heighten the emotional shock is also seen in the fact that the exhibitionist frequently chooses a church as the scene of his exploits, not during service, for he always avoids a concourse of people, but perhaps toward evening when there are only a few kneeling women scattered through the edifice. The church is chosen, often instinctively rather than deliberately, from no impulse to commit a sacrilegious outrage—which, as a rule, the exhibitionist does not feel his act to be—but because it really presents the conditions most favorable to the act and the effects desired. The exhibitionist's attitude of mind is well illustrated by one of Garnier's patients who declared that he never wished to be seen by more than two women at once, "just what is necessary," he added, "for an exchange of impressions." After each exhibition he would ask himself anxiously: "Did they see me? What are they thinking? What do they say to each other about me? Oh! how I should like to know!" Another patient of Garnier's, who haunted churches for this purpose, made this very significant statement: "Why do I like going to churches? I can scarcely say. But I know that it is only there that my act has its full importance. The woman is in a devout frame of mind, and she must see that such an act in such a place is not a joke in bad taste or a disgusting obscenity; that if I go there it is not to amuse myself; it is more serious than that! I watch the effect produced on the faces of the ladies to whom I show my organs. I wish to see them express a profound joy. I wish, in fact, that they may be forced to say to themselves: How impressive Nature is when thus seen!"

Here we trace the presence of a feeling which recalls the phenomena of the ancient and world-wide phallic worship, still liable to reappear sporadically. Women sometimes took part in these rites, and the osculation of the male sexual organ or its emblematic representation by women is easily traceable in the phallic rites of India and many other lands, not excluding Europe even in comparatively recent times. (Dulaure in his Divinités Génératices brings together much bearing on these points; cf.: Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, vol. i, Chapter XVII, and Bloch, Beiträge zur Psychopathia Sexualis, Teil I, pp. 115-117. Colin Scott has some interesting remarks on phallic worship and the part it has played in aiding human evolution, "Sex and Art," American Journal of Psychology, vol. vii, No. 2, pp. 191-197. Irving Rosse describes some modern phallic rites in which both men and women took part, similar to those practiced in vaudouism, "Sexual Hypochondriasis," Virginia Medical Monthly, October, 1892.)

Putting aside any question of phallic worship, a certain pride and more or less private feeling of ostentation in the new expansion and development of the organs of virility seems to be almost normal at adolescence. "We have much reason to assume," Stanley Hall remarks, "that in a state of nature there is a certain instinctive pride and ostentation that accompanies the new local development. I think it will be found that exhibitionists are usually those who have excessive growth here, and that much that modern society stigmatizes as obscene is at bottom more or less spontaneous and perhaps in some cases not abnormal. Dr. Seerley tells me he has never examined a young man largely developed who had the usual strong instinctive tendency of modesty to cover himself with his hands, but he finds this instinct general with those whose development is less than the average." (G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence, vol. ii, p. 97.) This instinct of ostentation, however, so far as it is normal, is held in check by other considerations, and is not, in the strict sense, exhibitionism. I have observed a full-grown telegraph boy walking across Hampstead Heath with his sexual organs exposed, but immediately he realized that he was seen he concealed them. The solemnity of exhibitionism at this age finds expression in the climax of the sonnet, "Oraison du Soir," written at 16 by Rimbaud, whose verse generally is a splendid and insolent manifestation of rank adolescence:—

"Doux comme le Seigneur du cèdre et des hysopes,
Je pisse vers les cieux bruns très haut et très loin,
Avec l'assentiment des grands héliotropes."

(J. A. Rimbaud, Œuvres, p. 68.)

In women, also, there would appear to be traceable a somewhat similar ostentation, though in them it is complicated and largely inhibited by modesty, and at the same time diffused over the body owing to the absence of external sexual organs. "Primitive woman," remarks Madame Renooz, "proud of her womanhood, for a long time defended her nakedness which ancient art has always represented. And in the actual life of the young girl to-day there is a moment when by a secret atavism she feels the pride of her sex, the intuition of her moral superiority, and cannot understand why she must hide its cause. At this moment, wavering between the laws of Nature and social conventions, she scarcely knows if nakedness should or should not affright her. A sort of confused atavistic memory recalls to her a period before clothing was known, and reveals to her as a paradisaical ideal the customs of that human epoch." (Céline Renooz, Psychologie Comparée de l'Homme et de la Femme, p. 85.) It may be added that among primitive peoples, and even among some remote European populations to-day, the exhibition of feminine nudity has sometimes been regarded as a spectacle with religious or magic operation. (Ploss, Das Weib, seventh edition, vol. ii, pp. 663-680; Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, fourth edition, p. 304.) It is stated by Gopcevic that in the long struggle between the Albanians and the Montenegrians the women of the former people would stand in the front rank and expose themselves by raising their skirts, believing that they would thus insure victory. As, however, they were shot down, and as, moreover, victory usually fell to the Montenegrians, this custom became discredited. (Quoted by Bloch, Op. cit., Teil II, p. 307.)

With regard to the association, suggested by Stanley Hall, between exhibitionism and an unusual degree of development of the sexual organs, it must be remarked that both extremes—a very large and a very small penis—are specially common in exhibitionists. The prevalence of the small organ is due to an association of exhibitionism with sexual feebleness. The prevalence of the large organ may be due to the cause suggested by Hall. Among Mahommedans the sexual organs are sometimes habitually exposed by religious penitents, and I note that Bernhard Stern, in his book on the medical and sexual aspects of life in Turkey, referring to a penitent of this sort whom he saw on the Stamboul bridge at Constantinople, remarks that the organ was very largely developed. It may well be in such a case that the penitent's religious attitude is reinforced by some lingering relic of a more fleshly ostentation.