Psychopathia sexualis: With especial reference to contrary sexual instinct / A medico-legal study

by R. von Krafft-Ebing

The examination of the brain presented nothing unusual as far as architecture and arrangement of convolutions were concerned. Weight of brain 1150 grammes. Skull slightly asymmetrical. No anatomical signs of degeneration. External and internal genitals without anomaly.

3. Effemination and Viraginity.—There are various transitions from the foregoing cases to those making up this category, characterized by the degree in which the psychical personality, especially in general manner of feeling and inclinations, is influenced by the abnormal sexual feeling. In this group, fully-developed cases in men are females in feeling; in women, males. This abnormality of feeling and of development of the character is often apparent in childhood. The boy likes to spend his time with girls, play with dolls, and help his mother about the house; he likes to cook, sew, knit, and develops taste in female toilettes, so that he may even become the adviser of his sisters. As he grows older he eschews smoking, drinking, and manly sports, and, on the contrary, finds pleasure in adornment of person, art, belles-lettres, etc., even to the extent of giving himself entirely to the cultivation of the beautiful. Since women possess corresponding inclinations, he prefers to move in the society of women.

If he can assume the rôle of a female at a masquerade, it is his greatest delight. He seeks to please his lover, so to speak, by studiously trying to represent what pleases the female-loving man in the opposite sex,—sweetness, sympathy, taste for æsthetics, poetry, etc. Efforts to approach the female appearance in gait, attitude, and style of dress are frequently seen.

The female urning, even when a little girl, presents the reverse. Her favorite place is the play-ground of boys. She seeks to rival them in their games. The girl will have nothing to do with dolls; her passion is for playing horse, soldier, and robber. For female employments there is manifested not merely a lack of taste, but often unskillfulness in them. The toilette is neglected, and pleasure found in a coarse, boyish life. Instead of an inclination for the arts, there is manifested an inclination and taste for the sciences. Occasionally there may be attempts to smoke and drink. Perfumes and cosmetics are abhorred. The consciousness of being born a woman, and, therefore, of being compelled to renounce the University, with its gay life, and the army, induces painful reflections.

In the inclinations of the amazon for manly sports, the masculine soul in the female bosom manifests itself; and not less in the show of courage and manly feeling. The female urning loves to wear her hair and have her clothing in the fashion of men; and it is her greatest pleasure, when opportunity offers, to appear in male attire. Her ideals are historical and contemporary feminine personalities distinguished for mind and energy.

With reference to the sexual feeling and instinct of these urnings, so thoroughly permeated in all their mental being, the men, without exception, feel themselves to be females; the women feel themselves to be males. Thus they feel themselves to be antagonistic to persons of their own sex constituted like themselves; for, of course, they are like them in form. But, on the other hand, they are drawn toward those of their own sex that are homo-sexual or sexually normal. The same jealousy which occurs in normal sexual life also occurs here, when rivalry is threatened; and, indeed, since they are, as a rule, hyperæsthetic sexually, this jealousy is often boundless.

In cases of completely-developed contrary sexuality, hetero-sexual love is looked upon as a thing absolutely incomprehensible; sexual intercourse with a person of the opposite sex is unthinkable, impossible. Such an attempt brings on the inhibitory concept of disgust or even horror, which makes erection impossible. Only two of my transitional cases to the third category were able, with the help of their imagination, by thinking of themselves as men with reference to the woman, to have cohabitation; but the act, which was inadequate for them, was a great sacrifice, and afforded them no pleasure.

In homo-sexual intercourse the man always feels himself, in the act, as a woman; the woman, as a man. The means of indulgence, in the case of a man, where there is irritable weakness of the ejaculation centre, are simply succubus, or passive coitus inter femora; in other cases, passive masturbation, or ejaculatio viri dilecti in ore proprio. Many have a desire for passive pederasty; occasionally a desire for active pederasty occurs. In one attempt of this kind, the man desisted because of the disgust which seized him when the act reminded him of coitus.

There was never inclination for immature persons (boy-love). Not infrequently there were only platonic desires. The sexual satisfaction of the female probably consists of amor lesbicus, or active masturbation.

Case 119. Autobiography. “1. Descent: I am now in my twenty third year. I have chosen the study of the technical arts as an occupation, and am completely satisfied with it. I had but the mild diseases of children, while the other children, who are now healthy, had to pass through severe illnesses. My parents are both living, and my father is an advocate. He, like my mother, is, as we say, nervously hyper-sensitive. In my father’s family there were two other children, who died early.