Of late he has also frequently had sadistic ideas about punishing boys. In these imaginary flagellations both men and women play a part, but particularly the latter; and then his enjoyment is much more intense.
The patient finds that, with that which he recognizes and feels as masochism, there is something else which he prefers to designate “pageism.”
While his masochistic fancies and acts are entirely of a coarse, sensual nature, his “pageism” consists of the idea of being a page to a beautiful girl. He conceives her as perfectly chaste, but piquant; his relation to her, that of a slave, but perfectly chaste,—a purely platonic submission. This reveling in the idea of serving such a “beautiful creature” as a page, is colored by a pleasurable feeling; but this is in no way sexual. He experienced in it an exquisite feeling of moral satisfaction, in contrast with the sensually-colored masochism; and, therefore, he could but regard it as something of a different nature.
At first sight there was nothing remarkable in the patient’s appearance; but his pelvis is abnormally broad, the ilia are flat, and the pelvis, as a whole, tilted and decidedly feminine. Eyes, neuropathic. He also mentions that he often has itching and lustful irritation at the anus, and that there (“erogenous” area), ope digiti, he can satisfy himself.
The patient is troubled about his future. Help would be possible for him if he could but excite in himself an interest in women, but his will and imagination were too weak for that.
What the patient designates as “pageism” does not differ in any way from masochism, as may be seen when it is compared with the following cases of symbolic masochism, and others; and, further, upon the consideration that in this perversion coitus is avoided as an inadequate act; and from the fact that in such cases there is often a fantastic exaltation of the perverse ideal:—
Case 46. X, writer, aged 28, predisposed. Sexually hyperæsthetic from childhood. At the age of six he had dreams of being whipped ad nates by a woman. After them he would awake in intense lustful excitement; and thus he came to practice onanism. When eight years old he once asked the cook to whip him. From his tenth year, neurasthenia. Until his twenty-fifth year he had dreams of flagellation, or similar waking fancies, and indulged in onanism. Three years ago he had an impulse to have himself whipped by a puella. The patient was undeceived, for neither erection nor ejaculation occurred. At twenty-seven, another effort, with the thought to enforce erection and ejaculation. This was finally made possible by the following artifice: While coitus was attempted, the puella had to tell him how she had mercilessly flogged other impotent men, and threaten him with the same. Besides this, it was necessary for him to fancy that he was bound, entirely in the woman’s power, helpless, and most painfully beaten by her. Occasionally, in order to become potent, it was necessary to have himself actually bound. Thus coitus was possible. Pollutions were accompanied by lustful feeling only when he (infrequently) dreamed that he was abused, or that he looked on while a puella whipped others. He never had an intense, lustful pleasure in coitus. The only things in women that interest him are the hands. Powerful women with big fists are his preference. At the same time, his desire for flagellation is only ideal; for with his great cutaneous sensitiveness, at the most, a few strokes are sufficient. Blows from men were repugnant to him. He wishes to marry. From the impossibility of asking a decent woman to perform flagellation, and the doubt about being potent with such a woman, spring his embarrassment and desire to recover.
In the foregoing three cases, for the most part, passive flagellation serves the individual subject to this perversion of masochism as an expression of the desired situation of subjection to the woman. The same means is needed by a large number of masochists. But passive flagellation is a process which, as is known, has a tendency to induce erection reflexly by irritation of the nerves of the nates.[[61]] This effect of flagellation is used by weakened debauchees to help their diminished power; and this perversity—not perversion—is very common. It is, therefore, necessary to ascertain in what relation the passive flagellation of the masochists stands to these dissipated individuals who are not psychically perverse, but physically weakened.
It is not difficult to show that masochism is something essentially different from flagellation, and more comprehensive; that flagellation is rather a by-play,—one of the many means used for the purpose of masochistic gratification in the sense of subjection to the woman. For the masochist the principal thing is subjection to the woman; the punishment is only the expression of this relation,—the most intense effect of it he can bring upon himself. For him the act has only a symbolic value, and is a means to the end of mental satisfaction of his peculiar desires. The essential thing is the desire for ill-treatment, as a sign of this subjection. Besides flagellation, and often without it, there are many other things which serve to express this subjection; as is shown by the following series of cases. This fact establishes a presumption of the existence of an original anomaly of sexual feeling,—a paræsthesia sexualis. On the other hand, the individual that is weakened and not a subject of masochism, and who has himself flagellated, desires only a mechanical irritation of his spinal centre.
Whether, in a given case, it is simple (reflex) flagellation or masochism, is made clear by the individual’s statements, and often by the secondary circumstances. The determination depends upon the following facts:—