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

by R. von Krafft-Ebing

Patient is delicate, and his whiskers and moustache, which made their appearance in his twenty-eighth year, are thin. Externally, with the exception of a weaving gait, he presents nothing which would point to his feminine nature. He asserts that he has often been joked about his feminine gait. His conduct is in all respects decent. His genitals are large, well developed, and normal in all respects, and the growth of genital hair is abundant; the pelvis is masculine. The head is rachitic, somewhat hydrocephalic, with prominence of the parietal bones. The face is remarkably small. The patient says that he is irritable and easily angered.

Case 125. On May 1, 1880, G., Ph.D., and a writer, was brought to the clinic for mental diseases, at Graz, by the public authorities. While on his return from Italy, G. found a soldier in Graz who gave himself up to him for hire, but ultimately denounced G. to the police, because G. had openly confessed his love for men. The authorities considered his mental condition doubtful, and sent him to alienists for examination. To the physicians G. related, with cynical openness, that years before, in M., he had had just such an affair with the police, and was in prison fourteen days. In the South there was no danger from such people; it was only in Germany and Austria that the thing was regarded as an evil.

G. is fifty years old, tall, powerful, and has a humerous expression, and a cynical, coquettish manner; the eye has a neuropathic, swimming expression; the teeth of the under jaw stand far back from those of the upper jaw. The cranium is normal, the voice masculine, and the beard abundant. The genitals are well formed, though the testicles are somewhat small. With the exception of slight emphysema of the lungs and external fistula in ano, there are no remarkable anomalies of the vegetative organs. G.’s father was subject to periodical insanity. His mother was a high-strung person, and she had an insane sister. Of the children, four died in childhood.

With the exception of scrofulosis, G. asserts that he was healthy. He obtained the degree of Doctor of Philosophy; at twenty-five, he had hæmoptysis, and went to Italy, where he has since lived, with slight interruption, by writing and by giving private lessons. G. says that he often has congestions, and also some spinal irritation,—i.e., pain in his back,—but otherwise he has a genial disposition; only he is not much of a financier; and at the same time, like all old prostitutes, he has a very good appetite. Further, he states, with great satisfaction and remarkable cynicism, that he has congenital contrary sexual instinct. When only five years old, it was his greatest pleasure to get sight of a penis, and he hung about appropriate places, in order to enjoy that pleasure. Even before puberty he practiced masturbation. At the time of puberty he noticed an inward feeling for friends. An obscure impulse pointed out to him the way his love would take. He was actually impelled to kiss young men, and now and then to caress their genitals. When twenty-six years old, he first began to have sexual intercourse with men, toward whom he felt like a woman. Even as a child, it was his greatest delight to put on female attire. He was often chastised by his father because, in the effort to satisfy this impulse, he put on his sister’s clothing. If he happened to see a ballet, only the male dancers interested him. Since he could remember, he had had a horror feminæ. If he happened to visit a brothel, it was only to see young men. He was, indeed, a rival of prostitutes. If he saw a young man, he just looked at his eyes; in case these pleased him, then came the mouth—whether it was well formed for kissing; then he would look at the genitals—whether they were well developed. G. pointed, with great feeling of self-satisfaction, to his poetical works, and tried to make it appear that persons with natures like his were poetically endowed. He gave as examples Voltaire, Frederick the Great, Eugene of Savoy, and Plato, as well as numerous distinguished men of the present, who, according to his opinion, were urnings. His greatest pleasure was to have a sympathetic young man read his verses to him. During the last summer he had had such a lover. When he had to part with him, he was quite undone, and he did not eat or sleep until gradually he had regained his former condition. He said that the love of urnings was a passionate, inner fire. According to his statement, in Naples the effeminelli lived in a quarter together, just as in Paris the grisettes live with their lovers. They sacrifice themselves for their lovers, and care for the household, just as the grisettes do. On the other hand, an urning repels an urning, “just as one prostitute does another—that is the curse.”

The need of intercourse with males occurs about once a week with G. He is happy in his peculiar sexuality, which he, it is true, considers peculiar, but which he will not regard as abnormal or wrong. He thinks that nothing remains for him and those like him but to raise what is unnatural in themselves to the supernatural. He looks upon the love of urnings as the higher, the ideal, as godlike, an abstract love. When shown that such a love is far from the purpose of Nature and the preservation of the race, he expresses the pessimistic thought that the world should die out, and the earth turn round its axis without men, who were on it only for trouble. As reason and explanation of his unnatural sexual feeling, G. refers to Plato, “who certainly was no beast.” Plato expressed allegorically the idea that men were originally balls. The gods had divided these into two hemispheres. For the most part, man is suited to woman, but sometimes man to man. In the latter case, the impulse to union is quite as powerful as in the former, and they strengthen each other in the same way. G. further relates that his dreams, when they were erotic, never had women, but only men, for their subjects. Male-love was the only kind that could satisfy him. He considered it disgusting for one human being to be prodding about in the abdomen of another with his penis, since he had heard that in this disgusting fashion coitus was usually carried out. He had never had the curiosity to inform himself concerning the female genitals; the subject was disgusting to him. The indulgence of his sexual appetite he did not consider a vice, but the result of a natural impulse which compelled him to it. It conduced to self-preservation. Onanism was a poor substitute, and, moreover, injurious, while urning-love was morally elevating and conducive to physical well-being.

With moral indignation, which in contrast with his cynicism in other directions appeared ridiculous, he protested against the classification of urnings with those who indulged in pederasty. He looked on the podex with disgust, as it was a secreting organ. The intercourse of urnings always took place in front, and was combined onanism.

This was the extent of G.’s disclosures, whose mental condition was certainly congenitally abnormal. As proof of this, may be cited his cynicism; his incredible frivolity in his application of his vices to religion, in which direction we cannot follow him without overstepping the bounds set by scientific inquiry; his perverse philosophical ideas with reference to his sexual perversion; his perverse manner of looking at the world; his ethical defect in all directions; his vagabondage; and his perverse mind and exterior. G. makes the impression of an original paranoiac. (Personal case. Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie.)

Case 126. Taylor had occasion to examine a certain Eliza Edwards, aged 24. It was discovered that she was of masculine sex. E. had worn female clothing from her fourteenth year, and also been an actress. The hair was worn long after the manner of females, and parted in the middle. The form of the face was feminine, but otherwise the body was masculine. The beard was carefully pulled out. The masculine, well-developed genitals were fixed in an upward position by an artful bandage. The condition of the anus indicated passive pederasty.

Case 127. An official of middle age, who for some years had been happy in family life, and was married to a virtuous woman, presented a peculiar manifestation of contrary sexual feeling.

One day, through the indiscretion of a prostitute, the following scandal became public: About once a week X. would appear in a house of prostitution, and there dress himself up as a woman, always requiring, as a part of his costume, a coiffure. When his toilet was completed, he would lie down on the bed, and have the prostitute perform manustupration. But he very much preferred to have a male person (a servant of the house). This man’s father was hereditarily tainted, had been insane several times, and was afflicted with hyperæsthesia and paræsthesia sexualis.