He noticed, occasionally, that this looking at him caused him sexual excitement, and induced erection, and even ejaculation. He now found more pleasure in this kind of sexual gratification, and became indifferent about coitus, satisfying himself only in this manner. He felt that all his thought was ruled by this, and he dreamed only of exhibitions, with pollutions. His attempts to control his impulse became more and more ineffectual. It came over him with such force that he noticed nothing around him, and saw and heard nothing, and was like one “devoid of reason,”—like “a bull trying to butt his head through a wall.”
X. has an abnormally broad head. Small penis; the left testicle deformed. Patellar reflex absent. Symptoms of neurasthenia, especially cerebral. Frequent pollutions. For the most part, his dreams are about normal coitus, only infrequently about exhibition before little girls.
With reference to his sexual acts, he states that the impulse to seek and approach little girls is primary; only when he has succeeded in attracting their attention to his exposed genitals do erection and ejaculation occur. He does not lose consciousness in the act. After it he is troubled about his deed, and, if undiscovered, says to himself, “Once more I have escaped the authorities.”
In prison he did not have the impulse; there, he was troubled only with dreams and pollutions. In freedom he had daily sought opportunity to satisfy himself with exhibition. He would give ten years of his life to be free from the thing; “this life of constant anxiety, this alternation between freedom and imprisonment, is unendurable.”
The opinion assumed a congenital (?) perversity of the sexual instinct, with unmistakable hereditary taint, neuropathic constitution, asymmetry of cranium, and defective development of the genitals.
It is also worthy of remark that the exhibition began when the epilepsy ceased; so that one might think of a vicarious phenomenon.
The sexual perversity developed, with predisposition, through accidental association of ideas of sexual content (children looking at him while urinating) with an act that, in itself, was purposeless.
The patient was not sentenced, but sent to an asylum. (Dr. Freyer, Zeitschr. f. Medicinalbeamte, 3 Jahrg., No. 8.)
Case 179. At 9 o’clock at night, in the spring of 1891, a lady, in great trepidation, came to the policeman in the city park of X., with the statement that a man, absolutely naked in front, had approached her from the bushes, and she had run away, frightened. The officer went at once to the place indicated, and found a man, who exposed ventrem et genitalia nuda. He attempted to escape, but was overtaken and arrested. He stated that he had been sexually excited by alcohol, and had been on the point of going to a prostitute. On his way through the park, however, he recalled the fact that exhibition gave him much greater pleasure than was afforded him by coitus, in which he seldom, and only faute de mieux, indulged. After drawing up his shirt, he posted himself in the bushes, and, when two women came up the path, he approached them with exposed genitals. In such exhibition he had a pleasurable feeling of warmth, and the blood mounted to his head.
The accused works in a manufactory, and his employer states that he is faithful, saving, sober, and intelligent.