Case 2. Mr. X., aged 80, of high social position, from a family having hereditary taint. He was always very sensual and a cynic, of uncontrollable temper, and, according to his own confession, as a young man, preferred masturbation to coitus. However, he never showed signs of contrary sexual instinct, and kept mistresses, raising a child by one. At the age of forty-eight he married, out of inclination, and begat six children, and never gave his wife cause for complaint. I could obtain but an incomplete history of his family. It was certain that his brother was suspected of love for men, and that a nephew became insane as a result of excessive masturbation.
The patient, always peculiar and quick-tempered, for years has been growing more extreme in character. He has become exceedingly suspicious, and slight opposition to his wishes induces attacks of anger which may become actual raving, and in which he may raise his hand against his wife. For a year there have been unmistakable signs of incipient senile dementia. The patient has become forgetful, localizes past events incorrectly, and has false ideas of time. For fourteen months it has been noticed that he manifests affection for certain male servants, especially for a gardener’s boy. Otherwise rude and overbearing to servants, he surfeits his favorite with favors and presents, and commands his family and his house officials to treat the boy with the greatest respect. The aged patient awaits the hour of rendezvous in true sexual excitement. He sends his family away, that he may be with his favorite undisturbed, and remains shut up with him for hours; and when the doors are opened again, he is found lying on the bed exhausted. Besides this object of his passion, the patient had intercourse episodically with other servants. It is certain that he enticed them, asked them for kisses, exhibited himself, allowed manipulation ad genitalia, and practiced mutual masturbation. By these practices absolute demoralization was brought about. The family was powerless; for any opposition caused violent outbreaks of anger and even threats against his relatives. The patient was completely without appreciation of his perverse sexual acts; and therefore the only course left to the afflicted family was to remove all authority from his hands and place him in an asylum. No erotic inclination toward the opposite sex was observed, though the patient occupied a sleeping-apartment with his wife. With reference to the perverse sexuality and the defective moral sense of this unfortunate man, it is worthy of note that he questioned the servants of his daughter-in-law as to whether she had a lover.
B. Anæsthesia Sexualis (Absence of Sexual Feeling).
1. As a Congenital Anomaly.
Only those cases can be regarded as unquestionable examples of absence of sexual instinct dependent on cerebral causes, in which, in spite of generative organs normally developed and the performance of their functions (secretion of semen, menstruation), the corresponding emotions of sexual life are absolutely wanting. These functionally sexless individuals are seldom seen, and are, indeed, always persons having degenerative defects, and in whom other functional cerebral disturbances, states of psychical degeneration, and even anatomical signs of degeneration, are observed. Legrand du Saulle describes a classical case that falls under this head (Annales médico-psychol., May, 1876).
Case 3. D., aged 33, had a mother who suffered with insanity of persecution. The mother’s father also suffered with persecutory insanity, and committed suicide. Her mother was insane, and this woman’s mother became insane in the puerperal state. Three of her mother’s children died in babyhood, and those that lived longer had an abnormal character. As early as his thirteenth year, D. was troubled with the thought of becoming insane. At fourteen he attempted suicide. Later, vagabondage, and, as a soldier, repeated insubordination and crazy pranks. His intelligence was very limited; no sign of degeneration, genitals normal. At seventeen or eighteen he had emissions of semen, had never masturbated or had sexual feeling, and never had sought intercourse with women.
Case 4. P., aged 36, common laborer, was received at my clinic in the beginning of November on account of spastic spinal paralysis. He declares he comes of a healthy family. A stutterer from his youth. Cranium microcephalic (cf. 53 cm.). Patient somewhat imbecile. He was never sociable, never had a sexual emotion. The sight of a woman never had anything enticing for him. He never had a desire to masturbate. Erections frequent, but only on waking in the morning with a full bladder, and without a trace of sexual feeling. Pollutions very infrequent,—about once a year, in sleep,—and usually while dreaming that he is concerned with a female. These dreams, however, as his dreams in general, are not markedly erotic. He says the act of pollution is not accompanied by any pleasurable sensation. Patient does not feel this absence of sexual sensations. He gives the assurance that his brother, aged 34, is in exactly the same sexual condition as himself, and he makes it seem probable that a sister, aged 21, is in a similar state. A younger brother, he says, is normal sexually. The examination of his genitals reveals nothing abnormal besides phimosis.
Hammond (“Sexual Impotence”), even with his wide experience, reports only the following three cases of anæsthesia sexualis:—
Case 5. Mr. W., aged 33; strong, healthy, with normal genitals. He had never experienced libido, and had vainly sought to awaken his defective sexual instinct by means of obscene stories and intercourse with prostitutes. On the occasion of such attempts he experienced only disgust, with even a feeling of nausea, and became nervously and mentally exhausted. Only once, when he forced the situation, did he have a transitory erection. W. had never masturbated, and had had pollutions about once every two months from his seventeenth year. Important interests demanded that he marry. He had no horror feminæ, and longed for a home and a wife, but felt that he was incapable of the sexual act. He died, unmarried, in the American civil war.
Case 6. X., aged 27; genitals normal; never felt libido. Mechanical or thermic stimuli easily induced erection, but instead of libido sexualis there was regularly a desire for alcoholic indulgence. Such excesses also induced erections, and he then sometimes masturbated. He had a disinclination for women and a loathing of coitus. If, with an erection, he made an attempt at coitus, it disappeared at once. Death in coma during an attack of cerebral hyperæmia.