In this case, the most remarkable thing was the desire of the perverse individual to humiliate the woman before witnesses (comp. the fancies of sadists, Case 29); further, that the desire to humiliate the woman came entirely into the foreground, and acts of a purely symbolic nature were undertaken. Of course, with these, in this imperfectly-observed case, acts of cruelty were probable.
(f) Sadism with Other Objects—Whipping of Boys.—Besides the sadistic acts with females described, others occur with other living, sensitive objects,—children and animals. There may be a full consciousness that the impulse is really directed toward women, and that only faute de mieux the next attainable objects (pupils) are abused. But the condition of the perpetrator may be such that the impulse to cruel acts enters consciousness accompanied only by lustful excitement, while its real object (which alone can explain the lustful coloring of such acts) remains in the dark.
The first alternative suffices as an explanation of the cases which Dr. Albert describes (Friedreich’s Blätter f. ger. Med., p. 77, 1859),—cases in which lustful teachers whipped their pupils on the naked nates without cause. We must think of the second alternative, the sadistic impulse with unconsciousness of its object, when boys are immediately excited sexually at the sight of punishment of their companions, and are thus determined in their later vita sexualis, as in the following cases:—
Case 37. K., aged 37, merchant, applied to me in the fall of 1889 for advice concerning an anomaly of his vita sexualis, which made him fear invalidism and impossibility of future happiness in marriage.
Patient came of a nervous family. As a child he was delicate, weak, and nervous. Healthy except for measles; he later became strong.
At the age of eight, while at school, he saw how the teacher punished the boys taking their heads between his thighs and spanking them with a ferule. This sight caused the patient lustful excitement. “Without any idea of the danger and enormity of onanism,” he satisfied himself with it, and from that time often masturbated, during which he always called up the memory-picture of a boy being punished.
Thus it continued until his twentieth year. Then he learned the significance of onanism, was terribly frightened, and tried to overcome his impulse to masturbate; but he fell into the practice of psychical onanism, which he regarded as innocuous and morally defensible, and for which he made use of the memory-pictures of boys being whipped, previously mentioned.
Patient now became neurasthenic, suffered with pollutions, and tried to cure himself by visiting brothels; but he could not induce erection. Then he sought to obtain normal sexual feelings by means of social intercourse with ladies; but he recognized that he was entirely insensible to the charms of the fair sex.
The patient is an intelligent man, normally developed, and of æsthetic taste. There is no inclination to persons of his own sex. My advice consisted of means to combat the neurasthenia and pollutions; interdiction of psychical and manual onanism; avoidance of all sexual excitants; and, possibly, hypnotic treatment to ultimately induce a return of the vita sexualis to its normal condition.
Case 38. Abortive sadism. N., student, came under observation in December, 1890. He had practiced masturbation from early youth. According to his statements, he became sexually excited when he saw his father whip the children, and, later, when he saw the teacher whip his companions. When a spectator of such scenes, he always experienced lustful feelings. He could not say exactly when this first occurred, but it may have been at about the age of six. He could not tell exactly when he began to masturbate, but he stated with certainty that his sexual instinct was first awakened by the punishment of others, and thus he unconsciously came to practice onanism. The patient remembered clearly that from the age of four to the age of eight he was frequently spanked, and that this caused him pain, never lustful pleasure.