A peculiar form of sexual excitement associated with emotional disturbance has been described by Charles Féré, under the name of ergophilia (“Note sur une Anomalie de l’Instinct Sexuel: Ergophilie,” published in Belgique Médicale, 1905). The case was that of a woman, twenty-six years of age, who when a child of four had first experienced sexual excitement at a fair while watching a little girl juggler of her own age playing with three balls. Subsequently every time when this scene occurred to her memory she had a sexual orgasm; also when once at a circus she was watching some gymnasts whose performance was characterized by elegance and ease, she had the same experience. The same also occurred when she saw a man use a scythe. In a frigid marriage she always returned to these imaginations, as the only means of obtaining sexual gratification. Féré is right in distinguishing from sadism this form of sexual excitement induced by the view of elegant bodily exercises. The generally exciting view of movement had in this case a special exciting influence upon the genital organs of an obviously hysterical person. Perhaps also the case reported by Amrain (Anthropophyteia, vol. iv., p. 242) is similar to this—a case in which a man fifty-three years of age was sexually excited by the spinning round of prostitutes on rapidly rotating stools.
Helvetius, Bain, Lully, James, Herbert Spencer, Steinmetz, and many other psychologists and anthropologists, have endeavoured to explain on evolutionary grounds this intimate association between the emotions, and to establish an association between cruelty and sexuality. They suggest that the gratification of sexual needs is for the individual a love-battle, involving the sacrifice of numerous opponents in order to gain the favour of the beloved being. In this way there arose an association between the shedding of blood and sexual enjoyment; and the rage of battle, as Marro very rightly insists, may sometimes be suddenly transferred from the rival to the female herself, and thus assume a sadistic character. Definite traces of this connexion may still be observed among the popular customs of many nations, as, for example, in New Caledonia, where the girls are pursued by their lovers into the bush, and, after they have been overpowered, and after sexual intercourse has taken place, “they are brought back, bitten, bruised, scratched, covered with bites on the shoulders and the back of the neck.”
I regard the emotional theory of cruelty as the best, because it provides the easiest explanation of all the facts; and above all, because it also explains the frequently observed cruelty of woman, who, as the more easily excited creature, displays a higher, more artificial kind of cruelty than man, whose balance is not so easily disturbed by his emotions. Montaigne[600] makes the acute observation that cruelty is usually accompanied by a feminine softness. Havelock Ellis[601] also remarks that the most extreme, most elaborate degree of sadism is commonly associated with a somewhat feminine organization.
We might explain the cruelty of women, and that of enervated, effeminate voluptuaries from fear and cowardice, from the debasing consciousness of the weakness of their own personality, which by means of cruelty takes revenge on the strength of another, and transiently luxuriates in the associated intoxication of power, in the mere idea of superiority. It is certainly in this way that we must explain the horrible cruelty of worn-out debauchees, such as is described by de Sade in his romances. Such types also were Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Domitian, Heliogabalus, and Cæsar Borgia; among women, Catherine de Medici and those “delicate Creole women who, after enjoying voluptuous pleasure in intercourse with a negro slave, proceed to enjoy the further pleasure of seeing the man unmercifully flogged.”[602]
In addition, the blunting of the senses which results from long-continued sexual excesses demands the stronger stimulus of cruelty. Just as in the debauchee, so also in the prostitute, this blunting of the senses induces a predisposition to sadism. Many prostitutes and masseuses become sadists quite as much from inclination as from custom (the latter from intercourse with masochistic clients); and they find sexual pleasure in tormenting men, regarding themselves as incorporate ideals of “mistresses.”
Among Europeans, residence in hot climates gives rise to a peculiar form of tropical cruelty, the so-called “tropical frenzy.” The psychology of this condition is complex. Various predisposing causes must concur in order to produce tropical frenzy. In the first place, it occurs almost exclusively in Europeans who fill official positions giving them very extensive powers, such as they did not enjoy before leaving home. Those who become affected live usually in regions in which all the limitations of conventional morality and of social relationships with their fellow-countrymen are laid aside, so that the civilized man is in a position which enables him to follow without restraint his own inward impulses; also he finds himself in contact with an “inferior” race, which he regards and treats as half or completely animal.[603] The influence of climate is also of great importance, as Hans von Becker assumes. Owing, it may be, to the intense heat, disturbances of metabolism ensue, and by the formation of toxins, the central nervous system and the psyche are injured, and thus there is induced a “tropical moral insanity,” a morbid impulsiveness, associated with complete loss of understanding of ordinary ethical and moral principles. Or, again, it is possible that, as Plehn believes, the abnormally high temperature gives rise to acute outbreaks only in chronic alcoholists, taking the form of tropical frenzy. In any case, this disorder is with especial frequency characterized by marked sadistic practices, as is proved by the colonial scandals of every country. In connexion with this, we do not need any further demonstration of the manner in which the institutions of slavery and serfdom have always induced and furthered sadistic instincts, and, speaking generally, the same is true of all relationships by which isolated individuals are given uncontrolled powers over the bodies and lives of their fellow-men.
A chief cause of algolagnia, of active algolagnia, but more especially of the passive form, is to be found in the diverse sexual demeanour of man and woman respectively, and this, again, depends upon the difference between the masculine and feminine natures. Opposed to the stormy, eager activity of the man, we have the quiet passivity of the woman. The latter has aptly been compared to a magnet which, notwithstanding its own apparent immobility, still irresistibly attracts and holds fast the iron (the man), making the latter in a sense her slave; upon this passivity depends the unmistakable superiority of woman in purely sensual love. Physical nature alone gives her an advantage over man, just precisely in the point to which she outwardly appears subordinated to him. Thus, among the Indians of Central Brazil man is officially lord and master of woman—and does what she wills.[604] Thus it has always been in the highest grades of civilization also, wherever sensual relationships have been solely effective in determining the relative positions of men and women. The true “henpecked husband” (I say “true,” because there also exist such in appearance only) of our European civilization is the man who, from the beginning, has been subjected to the domination of his wife in consequence of his own immoderate sexual needs; by these needs he has been permanently placed under her control, and this control has secondarily been extended to other relationships. This is the psychological secret of the henpecked state, just as it is also of the “mistress rule,” which, beginning as a purely sexual relationship between king or prince on the one hand and his mistress on the other, later extends also to the domain of political activity. The greater the sexual passivity and coldness of the woman, the more readily does she gain dominion over the man. A favourite means for this purpose is the practice of “coquetry” (a matter previously discussed), which can also be defined as the activity of women in fettering men to themselves and in bringing them under feminine dominion. The Anglo-Saxon “flirt” is only a lighter shade of “coquette,” representing rather spiritual-æsthetic coquetry, whilst the true coquette makes use of purely sensual means, and speculates upon sex only, without reference to the intellectual qualities. “A truly coquettish woman listens with pleasure to the rankest flattery of the most insignificant individual; she takes the trouble to stimulate the desires of the most contemptible being, although she is daily surrounded by longing admirers.”[605] Joseph Peladan relates in one of his romances how a distinguished lady, while getting into her carriage, intentionally displayed her leg to a poor man standing by, although at the very same moment she was coquetting audaciously with a gentleman of her own rank. Woman instinctively aims at the subjection of man, and voluptuous stimulation serves her as the best-tried means of doing this. In so far as man becomes the “slave” and victim of his sensuality, does he exhibit a masochistic disposition; but, in so far as by his force and his intelligence he overcomes this sexual dependency, and by means of his natural activity and energy displayed also in sexual relationships, behaves heedlessly and brutally to the woman, who has now become completely passive, does the sadistic element preponderate in him. From this we are able to understand how it is that sadism and masochism may often appear in the same person; they are only the active and the passive form respectively of the algolagnia which lies at the basis of both of them, and in which the true essence of both these phenomena subsists.
When in the following paragraphs we briefly describe the individual phenomena and types of sadism and masochism, we do this always with the tacit implication that the majority of types are not pure forms either of sadism or masochism, but represent a mixture of both. This is especially true of the most widely diffused of all algolagnistic perversions, the so-called flagellomania (sexual desire for flagellation or flagellantism)—that is to say, flogging and whipping, or being flogged and whipped in order to induce sexual excitement. An elaborately critical account of sexual flagellantism in its physiological, psychological, literary, and historical relationships is to be found in the second volume of my work on “The Sexual Life in England,” pp. 336-481 (Berlin, 1903). In this passage there is a fairly complete collection, alike of the older and of the newer literary material devoted to this topic.[606]
Flagellation is, therefore, the principal means by which sadistic tendencies become active, because in this manner all the physiological sadistic accompaniments of sexual intercourse unite, and make their appearance with a stronger potentiality. It is an imitation and a conscious synthesis of these sadistic accompaniments, which in their most primitive form are to be seen in the lower animals. Especially in the case of tritons and salamanders we can observe a typical flagellation, effected by means of the tail, prior to coitus. The voluptuous gratification during flagellation varies in character according as the flagellation is active or passive. The nature of the latter is as follows: by vigorous friction and blows, especially in the region of the genital organs, and more particularly on the buttocks, a peculiarly increased voluptuous stimulus is induced by the painful sensations. Simple massage and friction of the skin suffices to produce such an effect, especially after warm baths, as has long been known in the East, and is employed in the so-called “Turkish baths.” More especially, the rubbing of the buttocks evokes a purely physical reflex stimulation of the spinal and sympathetic ejaculatory centre; still more rapidly is this produced by flogging and whipping of these parts (the so-called “lower discipline”). The painful sensations are said ultimately to undergo complete transformation into voluptuous sensations; unquestionably the imagination must here render much assistance, and the masochistic element is especially marked in those who undergo passive flagellation. The increased flow of blood to the genital organs, to which the flagellation necessarily gives rise, must also obviously play a part in evoking and strengthening the voluptuous sensation. Simultaneously also this congestion gives rise to erection of the penis; hence the very ancient employment of flagellation to relieve impotence, alluded to by Petronius in a celebrated passage of his “Satyricon.”
In the case of active flagellation, the voluptuous stimulation is mainly of a sadistic nature; the view of the parts quivering under the lash, becoming red or even bleeding, the cries of the person who is being whipped, the erotic influence of the kallipygian charms, here play the principal rôle.