The inclination to flagellation, both passive and active, is generally aroused by some chance occurrence, such as looking at a flogging, when the spectator finds himself to be in a state of sexual excitement and recognizes its cause—as, for example, in consequence of the official and ritual practice of flogging in schools, prisons,[607] barracks, monasteries, etc., also by whipping and giving blows in social games. Especially dangerous is the whipping of children, whose sexual impulse is only too often aroused by blows upon the buttocks, and then, unconsciously, this excitement is in their minds permanently endowed with a causal connexion with whipping, from which ultimately a perversion (flagellomania) is induced. Well known is Rousseau’s description of this connexion in his “Confessions.” I append the following description by a patient of this tendency to flagellation:
“In a similar way to that which you describe, flagellantism was unfortunately awakened in me in early youth. This was first developed in me by the fact that my parents allowed the maidservants to exercise a far-reaching right of chastisement. When I was fourteen years old, I still received whippings from the servants, with my father’s knowledge and consent; and these whippings, since my father had forbidden any other kind of chastisement as harmful to health, took place on the buttocks, and were always effected after this region of the body had been bared. I still remember most vividly that when I was at the age mentioned a maidservant who was hardly two years older than myself switched me in this region with especial zeal. I remember also that when I was in my ninth year, owing to the free use which the maidservants commonly made of their privilege, I had entirely ceased to dread this chastisement; indeed from that time I often intentionally incurred a whipping by the maids, which was not difficult; and from the age of fourteen years I personally gave the maidservants my permission to chastise me in the above manner without the knowledge of my parents, and was always thrown by it into a state of sexual excitement. Such excitement was also produced in me by merely witnessing the chastisement of my two sisters, who were somewhat younger than myself, both of whom were still beaten with a switch when they were fifteen years of age. As regards my two sisters, this did not lead to desire on their part that this procedure, which was always disagreeable to them, should be frequently repeated, but they were always glad to see me whipped; and, as a matter of fact, my own sensation of pleasure was greatly increased by their being present, and moreover, especially in later years, I always enjoyed it more if the maidservant whipped me in the presence of her friends or if one of them let me hold her hand during the process. I especially preferred being struck with the bare hands, although occasionally I endured severe whippings with the stick or with the dog-whip at my own special request.”
In a second case which came under my own observation, the person affected being a lawyer, then twenty-eight years of age, the cause of the development of his flagellomania was different and more indirect.
At the age of eleven or twelve years he was lying on the top of a dog-kennel and masturbating, and he had tied his feet to the top of the kennel, lest, when in a state of sexual excitement, he might fall off. Since then he had always felt an impulse to have himself tied, which he sought to satisfy in boyish games (robbers, police, etc.); this always induced in him agreeable sexual feelings, which were further increased by onanistic friction. At the age of fifteen there became associated with this desire to be tied a further need to be whipped while he was tied up. This patient has a disinclination to normal coitus and to the female genital organs, but he desires to receive flagellation only from women. Two successive attempts at normal sexual intercourse were unsuccessful. The patient induced in a maidservant the inclination to passive and active flagellation, and this woman, although she resisted at first, was subsequently, six months later, a passionate flagellant. In other respects the patient is thoroughly healthy, and has been through his one-year term of military service in the cavalry.
With regard to the origin of “schoolmaster’s sadism,” which is, unfortunately, very widely diffused, the well-known case of the schoolmaster Dippold recently gave a horrible example.[608]
The teacher or schoolmaster may, at the commencement of his activity, be entirely free from any flagellantic tendency. This tendency makes its appearance in the course of the customary exercise of his duties of physical chastisement. This gradually induces in him a sense of sexual pleasure. As long as these chastisements are kept within normal bounds, and only occasionally undertaken, we have to do merely with a tendency, with an aberration of sexual gratification, such as occurs in numerous healthy individuals, even when they are not teachers or schoolmasters, persons who seek and find an opportunity for the exercise of these tendencies in the brothel or with “masseuses.” When, however, a systematic flagellomania develops, and the person affected no longer merely chastises, but maltreats and tortures, and does this habitually and with bestial cruelty, as in Dippold’s case, we certainly have always to do with sadism developed in the soil of a morbid predisposition. The following cases appear to be of this nature:
1. A case which reminds us of that of Dippold recently appeared before the Second Criminal Chamber in Hamburg. The accused was a man belonging to the cultured classes, who had had a University education, had become a reserve officer, and had filled many other positions, finally that of the editor of a journal published by an advertising firm. The accused lived in Berlin in the years 1900 to 1903. There he formed an intimacy with a woman, whom he induced to entrust him with her son, for the continuance of his education. Going himself to live in Hamburg in July, 1903, the boy was sent to him in that town in January, 1904, and was placed in a boarding school. “In order not to be disturbed in his teaching,” the man also rented a room in the neighbourhood of the school. When engaging this room he asked the landlady if there were curtains to cover the windows. On the first day on which she visited the room the landlady noticed that the accused flogged the boy, and as she did not wish to allow this in her dwelling, she reported the matter to the police. After some time the woman learned by questioning the boy certain remarkable facts, especially with regard to the “educational methods” which the accused had carried out in Berlin, and in her report to the police she added certain details, which led to the arrest of the accused. The accused admitted that he had caned the boy severely, and he declared that he had done this only for educational reasons, as the boy was of a bad character. In this respect the statement of the accused was confuted by the evidence of the boy’s teacher in Berlin, that of his teacher in Hamburg, and that of the inmates of the pension in which he lived; all of these gave him a very good character. With respect to the mode of chastisement, the details of which were heard in camera, the court held that there was no doubt that the accused had chastised the boy, not for educational reasons, but on account of perverse tendencies of his own, and condemned him to imprisonment for one year and loss of civil rights for two years. It is a noteworthy fact that the accused, during the latter part of this period of association with the boy, had lived in a happy marriage with a young woman.
2. A disciple of Dippold. The following remarkable case was published in the Berliner Tageblatt, No. 629, December 11, 1903: A furniture-polisher of this town accosted boys whom he met in the street, gave them some trifling commission, and so arranged matters with them that they must ultimately return to him at his room. Here he gave himself out to be a detective officer, showed the boy a token which he pretended was his official commission, and then gave the boy a severe lecture. “He regretted,” he said in conclusion, that, owing to the misconduct of the lad, it would be necessary to fine his parents, unless the offences were condoned by the immediate chastisement of the boy. The “detective” easily persuaded his victims that it would be better to accept the immediate flogging. After he had stretched his victim across his knees and beaten him with a stick, he looked to see that the blows had not made too obvious marks, and sent the lad away with a further brief admonition. In most instances the boys who had been whipped concealed what had happened from their parents; but still the matter came to light, and this new Dippold is to be tried for causing grievous bodily harm, and for the false pretence that he occupied an official position. The accused is a young man, twenty-five years of age, and, with his small and slender figure and with a blonde moustache, he makes rather the impression of a young man of eighteen.
Very frequently the tendency to flagellation is at first artificially evoked in brothels. Hogarth, in his “A Harlot’s Progress,” has rightly depicted the switch as a necessary requisite of the interior of a brothel, and this simple instrument of flagellation is rarely absent from a prostitute’s dwelling. It appears to be England alone, the classical country of flagellomania, in which actual “flagellation brothels” have existed.[609] A historical example is that of the celebrated establishment of Theresa Berkley, the inventor of an especial apparatus for the whipping of men, the so-called “Berkley-Horse.” It appears that in England the female sex has a taste for active and passive flagellation; and we find that a German author[610] attributes to woman a greater inclination towards flagellomania than that exhibited by man. This tendency is encouraged by certain male flagellants, who obtain sexual gratification by the flagellation of women. Guénolé (op. cit., pp. 151, 152) reports the existence of secret places in Paris where young women and girls combine to form a kind of “school,” in which male sadists carry out “instruction” with the switch!
In connexion with flagellation we must consider the peculiar tendency to the fettering of the individual to be flogged, who desires to be rendered defenceless. For this purpose various apparatus exist of the same kind as the “fettering-chair” invented in the eighteenth century by the Duke of Fronsac.[611] Of the same nature also is the impulse to wear very tight shoes and gloves and very small corsets, the so-called “corset discipline,” in which the person affected, who may be of either sex, is laced up very tightly in a very small corset. This is met with chiefly in England, especially in association with sexual flagellation.