Qu’on la voit, béante, se tordre—dans un baiser de rage et mordre—
En hurlant des mots inconnus!”
[43]. During the excitement of battle the idea of lust forces its way into consciousness. Comp. the description of a battle by a soldier, by Grillparzer:—
“And as the signal rang out, the armies met, breast to breast—lust of the gods!—here, there, the murderous steel slays enemy, friend. Given and taken—death and life—with wavering change—wildly raging in frenzy.”
[44]. Schulz (Wiener Med. Wochenschrift, No. 49, 1869) reports a remarkable case of a man, aged 28, who could perform coitus with his wife only after working himself into an artificial fit of anger.
[45]. Concerning analogous acts in rutting animals, vide Lombroso, “The Criminal.”
[46]. Among animals it is always the male who pursues the female with proffers of love. Playful or actual flight of the female is not infrequently observed; and then the relation is like that between the beast of prey and the victim.
[47]. The conquest of woman takes place to-day in the social form of courting, in seduction and deception. From the history of civilization and anthropology we know that there have been times, as there are savages to-day that practice it, where brutal force, robbery, or even blows that made a woman powerless, were made use of to obtain love’s desire. It is possible that tendencies to such outbreaks of sadism are atavistic.
[48]. In the Jahrbücher für Psychologie, ii, p. 128, Schäfer (Jena) refers to the reports of two cases by A. Payer. In the first case states of great sexual excitement were induced by the sight of battles or of paintings of them; in the second, by cruel torturing of small animals (vide Case 24). It is added: “The pleasure of battle and murder is so predominantly an attribute of the male sex throughout the animal kingdom, that there can be no question about the close relation existing between this side of the masculine character and male sexuality. I believe, too, that by unprejudiced observation I can show that, in men who are absolutely normal mentally and physically, the first indefinite and incomprehensible precursors of sexual excitement may be induced by reading exciting scenes of the chase and war,—i.e., they give rise to unconscious longings for a kind of satisfaction in warlike games (wrestling), in which, also, the fundamental sexual impulse to the most perfect and intense contact with a companion is expressed, with the more or less clearly defined secondary thought of conquest.”
[49]. It sometimes happens that an accidental sight of blood, etc., is what first excites the preformed psychical mechanism of the sadistic individual, and awakens the instinct.