Acts of fornication with animals (zoophilia, bestiality) — Genuine zoophilia — A remarkable case thereof — Causes of bestiality — Its frequency in the country — Report of cases — Bestiality on the part of a woman — Reputed seduction of human beings by animals.
Acts of fornication with corpses (necrophilia) — Motives — Symbolic necrophilia — Love of statues — Influence of museums on uncultured individuals — Sexual intercourse with statues — Pygmalionism — Acts of fornication with objects resembling the human body — “Dames et hommes de voyage” — Exhibitionism — Morbid foundation of this — Other motives — Masturbation as a cause — A remarkable case of exhibitionism — “Frotteurs” — Example — Voyeurs — Secret sexual clubs — “Essayeurs” — “Stercoraires platoniques” — Pædication — Opium, hashish, and ether employed for sexual purposes — Use of these drugs in Paris — Sexual fantasies of the opium smoker.
Appendix: The Treatment of Sexual Perversions. — Importance of psychological factors in the treatment of sexual perversions — Management of the primary trouble — Psycho-therapeutics and suggestive therapeutics — Verbal suggestions — Confidence in the knowledge of the physician — Sexual perversions as diseases of the will — Need for the education of the will — Suggestion in the waking state — Suggestion by means of letters — By means of hypnosis — Special prescriptions.
CHAPTER XXIII
One of the most tragic, but unfortunately one of the most frequent, of occurrences is premature sexual intercourse on the part of children—partly resulting from acts of fornication by adults with children, partly resulting from premature awakening of the sexual impulse in children, and premature sexual activity on their part. These two varieties of premature sexual intercourse in children must be sharply distinguished each from the other.
The alleged increase of sexual offences in which children are concerned is by von Krafft-Ebing wrongly associated with the more widely diffused nervousness of recent generations. As a matter of fact, such offences have occurred at all times and among all peoples, with no less frequency than at the present day. “Erotic pædophilia” is a very widely diffused phenomenon. It arises from superstitious[638] grounds; as, for example, from the belief which prevails in many countries that venereal and other diseases are cured by copulation with an intact child. The primeval belief that intercourse with immature girls prolonged life, that an emanation from them rejuvenated old men (the so-called “Shunammitism”[639]), led in former times, and leads even at the present day, to acts of fornication with children. Less commonly do timidity and impotence on the part of adult men, rendering intercourse with adult women difficult or impossible, give rise to the seduction or rape of defenceless and unsuspicious children. The act of fornication with children as a popular custom is a symptom of a primitive degree of civilization, and is therefore met with, even at the present day, among savage nations, a matter regarding which Ploss-Bartels gives detailed accounts.
Passing to consider the cause of acts of fornication with children at the present day, and the means by which such acts are effected, unquestionably opportunity plays an important part in their production. All those persons who by their occupation are brought into prolonged diurnal and nocturnal association with children, and are frequently alone with them, such as menservants, nursemaids, governesses, housekeepers, schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, the directors and other officials of orphan asylums, etc., constitute a disproportionately large contingent of those who commit offences under § 1763 and § 182 of the Criminal Code. This does not arise from exceptional criminality on the part of these persons as compared with those belonging to other professions, but simply and solely from the fact that they are continually alone with children, and that any sexual excitement which may arise is thus directed towards these, because no adult is there. Sometimes a morbid neuropathic or psychopathic constitution plays a part; but more commonly we have to do simply with lasciviousness and sensuality, which avails itself of the opportunity thus offered.
Rétif de la Bretonne warned parents regarding menservants and nursemaids as seducers of children. These persons are apt to execute unchaste acts with children in the very first years of life; in order to gratify their own voluptuousness, they play with the genital organs of these poor innocents, and thus prematurely awaken sexual sensibility, and often give rise to premature onanistic habits. These acts of impropriety carried on with small children—which must be sharply distinguished from those with older children, the cases being classified as relating in the first place to children under six years of age, and in the second place to children between the ages of six and fourteen years—are far commoner than is usually imagined, and perhaps even more dangerous in respect of the bodily and mental development of the child, than the second variety of unchaste acts, with older children. In most cases it is persons of the female sex who misuse small children in this way, and often this arises from the fear of impregnation resulting from intercourse with an adult man. Generally we have to do with a lascivious disposition, as, for example, in the following cases, which came under my own observation:
In one of these cases a woman seduced a boy four years of age to the performance of systematic improper acts; in the other case, a boy of five years of age was taken (horribile dictu) by his own mother into her bed, and taught to perform coitus with her, in so far as this was possible, and also to perform manipulations with her genital organs. The little boy repeated this practice with his sister, three years of age, and, being caught in the act, he confessed the whole history.