December 18th (fourth sitting), somnambulism occurred; the impulse to onanism and interest in men disappear.
At the eighth sitting “complete virility” was added to the above suggestions. The patient feels himself morally elevated and physically strengthened. The neuralgia of the testicles has disappeared. He now found that he was without sexual feeling.
He now believed himself free from masturbation and contrary. sexual inclination.
After the eleventh sitting he thought that further help was unnecessary. He wished to go home, and marry. He felt well and potent. Early in January, 1890, treatment ceased.
In March, 1890, the patient wrote: “I have since had several occasions on which it has been necessary for me to use all my moral strength in order to overcome my habit, and, thank God, I have been successful in freeing myself from this vice. Several times I have had opportunity for sexual intercourse, and I have found pleasure in it. I look calmly on my happy future.”
Case 135. Acquired Contrary Sexual Instinct. Marked Improvement under Hypnotic Treatment.—Mr. P., born in 1863, official in a manufactory. He comes of a highly respected patrician family of Middle Germany, in which nervousness and insanity have been of frequent occurrence.
His great-grandfather on the father’s side and his sister died insane; the grandmother died of apoplexy; father’s brother died insane, and a daughter of the latter died of cerebral tuberculosis. The maternal grandmother was melancholic for years; maternal grandfather, insane. A maternal uncle took his life in an attack of insanity. The patient’s father is very nervous. An elder brother is very neurasthenic, and has anomalies of the vita sexualis; another is the subject of Case 155; a third is eccentric in conduct, and is said to be subject to fixed ideas. A sister suffers with convulsions, and another died of them when a little child.
The patient is constitutionally predisposed; for he was early very peculiar, irritable, irascible, and impressed those around him as being abnormal.
His vita sexualis appeared very early and in great intensity, and was satisfied, without any seductions, in onanism. From his sixteenth year the prematurely developed boy visited brothels of the Capital, using his permissions to go out on Sundays and holidays for that purpose. He took pleasure in coitus, but during the week he satisfied himself with onanism. After his twentieth year, when he became independent, the patient indulged with prostitutes excessively, and fell ill with neurasthenia sexualis, becoming relatively impotent and unsatisfied in coitus, owing to weakness of erection and premature ejaculation. His sexual libido became more powerful than ever, and was satisfied in onanism. Early in 1888 the patient made the acquaintance of a young man. “By his pleasing face, his attractive manner, and his beautiful form, he conquered me entirely. I wished to speak to him, and was happy at mere sight of him. I was completely in love with him. With this, my love for women was extinguished. Any man could excite me to such an extent that, for some moments, I would feel my memory fail, and I would stammer.
“Soon after this I made the acquaintance of a gentleman who was likewise very attractive, and who had a decided influence on my future life. He was male-loving. I confessed to him that I no longer felt anything but aversion for the female sex, and that I was attracted to men.