As a sub-variety of exhibitionists, we must refer to the so-called “frotteurs,” individuals who rub their genital organs, either bared or covered, against persons of the opposite sex, and thus obtain sexual gratification. In their case also we almost always have to do with morbid conditions. The following case (Vossische Zeitung, No. 258, June 6, 1906) was recently observed in Berlin:
The architect, Eduard P., was accused of offences committed in the opera-house of Berlin. In February and March, 1906, he had repeatedly soiled ladies’ clothing in a disgusting manner. At a time when the ladies had their whole attention directed to the stage, the offender, standing or sitting behind them, contaminated their clothing, and disappeared in the next interval. The whole mode of procedure suggested the activity of a man with an abnormal morbid predisposition, who in this place yielded to certain perverse impulses. Several complaints having been made, some detectives were dispersed through the audience, until finally the accused was caught in the act. During the second act of a performance of “Lohengrin,” the detective Brumme observed the accused pressing up from behind against a lady, and, in the semi-obscurity of the performance, acting in the manner already mentioned. P. was arrested, and admitted that he had repeatedly acted in this way. Before the judge the accused also confessed that he had done the same thing on other occasions. How he had been led to do it he could not say. Each time after committing the offence he had suffered very bitter remorse.
The accused was acquitted of the criminal charge on the ground of mental disorder.
The psychical element of exhibitionism also plays a part in the practice of the so-called “voyeurs”[664] and “voyeuses,” that numerous group of male and female individuals who are sexually excited by regarding the sexual acts of other persons (active voyeurs), or who allow themselves to be watched by others when themselves performing sexual acts (passive voyeurs). In many brothels, apertures in the wall or other arrangements have been made for these voyeurs or gagas, through which they watch sexual scenes. In fashionable dressmakers’ shops, men are also said to watch ladies trying on dresses—at least, so I have been informed by a Parisian. Recently women also have been more and more inclined to see such spectacles, so that Schwaeblé devotes a special chapter to the voyeuses in his book on the perverse women of Paris. Messalina compelled her court ladies to prostitute themselves in her presence. Not infrequently male and female voyeurs unite to form societies and secret sexual clubs, in which all the sexual acts are performed in public.
Thus, in the end of September, 1906, in Graz, a “Secret Society for Immoral Purposes” was discovered by the police. At the head of this club was a merchant, thirty years of age, B——, jun. A number of other persons of good position belonged to this sexual club. They met in the great restaurant “Zum Königstiger.” Under the title of “An Assembly of Beauty,” festivals were held in the magnificent garden of this restaurant, which were concluded as orgies behind closed doors. The beautiful gardens of the Schlossberg were also the scene of many meetings of the club.[665]
A remarkable category of voyeurs is constituted by the so-called “stercoraires platoniques,”[666] individuals who obtain sexual enjoyment by observing the acts of defæcation and micturition performed by persons of the other sex, and seek opportunities for such observations in brothels or public lavatories. In the closet of one of the Berlin railway-stations such a stercoraire recently made a small artificial opening in the wall, through which he was able to watch other persons when engaged in the act of defæcation!
Here also we may refer to heterosexual pædication, to coitus analis, which, according to the reports of French authors (Tardieu, Martineau, and Taxil), appears to be especially common in France, but which is by no means rare also in other countries. It becomes comprehensible only in view of the fact that the anus may itself be an erogenic zone. Details regarding this matter are given by Freud.[667] Krauss, also, in the second volume of his “Anthropophyteia” (p. 392 et seq.), has given numerous examples of pædication. Among others, he reports two cases related to him by the ethnologist Friedrich Müller, in which men had coitus with their wives only per anum.
Finally, we must refer to a practice which appears to be confined to France, the customary use of opium, hashish, and ether, for the purpose of inducing sexual excitement, regarding which Schwaeblé (op. cit., pp. 19-36) and d’Estoc (op. cit., pp. 151-158) give very interesting reports. There exist in Paris special opium-houses, hashish-houses, and ether-houses, some for men and some for women. Three opium-houses are to be found, for example, in the Avenue Hoche, the Avenue Jéna, and the Rue Lauriston; there is an ether-restaurant in Neuilly; one for opium, hashish, and ether in the Rue de Rivoli. All these means of enjoyment evoke after a time sexual ideas and fantasies of an extremely peculiar character, associated with actual voluptuous sensations. Opium gives rise to “ardent, brilliant pictures of an excessively stimulated imagination,”[668] frequently of a perverse character; hashish has a similar but even stronger influence; and ether gives rise to a more powerful stimulation of the sexual organs, to a “vibration of the flesh and of the soul.” The interior of these unwholesome places of exotic enjoyment, in which frequently homosexual acts also occur, is vividly described by both the above-named French authors.[669]