For eight months Z. had determined to give up his masochistic play, and had kept his determination. But he thought that if a woman only half-way pretty were to address him directly, and say, “Come, I want to ride you,” he would not be strong enough to withstand the temptation. Z. wishes to know whether his abnormality is curable; whether he is unworthy as a vicious man, or an invalid deserving pity.
The following case seems very similar:—
Case 52. A man finds satisfaction in the following manner: Occasionally he goes to a puella publica. Here he has a porcelain ring, like those used in hanging curtains, put on his penis. Two cords are attached to the ring and drawn backward between his legs and attached to the bedstead. Then he tells the woman to beat him mercilessly with a whip and cry “whoa” to him constantly, and treat and abuse him as if he were an unruly horse. The more the woman spurs him on to pull, with shouts and blows, the greater his sexual excitement becomes. Erection occurs (probably mechanically favored by compression of the dorsal vein of the penis, which, when the cords are strained, must be closed by the pressure of the hard ring). With increasing erection, the whole member is compressed by the ring, and finally ejaculation occurs, with lustful feeling.
Even in the foregoing series of cases, with other things, the act of being walked upon has played a rôle as a means of expressing the masochistic situations of humiliation and pain. The exclusive and most extensive use of this means for perverse excitation and satisfaction is shown in the following classical case of masochism, which Hammond reports (op. cit., p. 28) from an observation by Dr. Cox,[[64]] of Colorado:—
Case 53. X., a model husband, very moral, the father of several children, has times—i.e., attacks—in which he visits brothels, chooses two or three of the largest girls, and shuts himself up with them. He bares the upper portion of his body, lies down on the floor, crosses his hands on his abdomen, closes his eyes, and then has the girls walk over his naked breast, neck, and face, urging them at every step to press hard on his flesh with the heels of their shoes. Sometimes he wants a heavier girl, or some other act still more cruel than this procedure. After two or three hours he has enough. He pays the girls with wine and money, rubs his blue bruises, dresses himself, pays his bill, and goes back to his business, only to give himself the same strange pleasure again after a few weeks.
Occasionally it happens that he has one of the girls stand on his breast; and the others then turn her around until his skin is torn and bleeding from the turning of the heels of her shoes. Frequently one of the girls has to stand on him in such a way that one shoe is over the eyes, with its heel pressing on one eye, while the other rests across his neck. In this position he endures the pressure of a person weighing about one hundred and fifty pounds for four or five minutes. The author speaks of dozens of similar cases that are known to him. Hammond presumes, with reason, that this man had become impotent for intercourse with women; that, in this strange procedure, he found an equivalent for coitus; and that, when the heels drew blood, he had pleasant sexual feelings, accompanied by ejaculation.
The ten cases of masochism thus far described, and the numerous analogous cases mentioned by those who report them, form a counterpart to the previously described group “c” of sadism. Just as in sadism men excite and satisfy themselves by maltreating women, so in masochism the same effect is sought in the passive reception of similar abuse. But group “a” of the sadists,—that of lust-murder,—strange as it may seem, is not without its counterpart in masochism. In its extreme consequences, masochism must lead to the desire to be killed by a person of the opposite sex, in the same way that sadism has its acme in active lust-murder. But the instinct of self-preservation opposes such a result; so that the extreme is not actually carried out. When, however, the whole structure of masochistic ideas is purely psychical, in the imagination of such individuals, even the extreme may be reached; as the following case shows:—
Case 54. A middle-aged man, married and the father of a family, who has always led a normal vita sexualis, but who says he comes of a very nervous family, makes the following communication: In his early youth he was powerfully excited sexually at the sight of a woman slaughtering an animal with a knife. From that time, for many years, he had reveled in the lustfully-colored idea of being stabbed and cut and even killed by women with knives. Later, after the beginning of normal sexual intercourse, these ideas lost completely their perverse stimulus for him.
This case should be compared with the statements made under Case 44, according to which men find sexual pleasure in being lightly pricked with knives in the hands of women, who, at the same time, threaten them with death.
Such fancies, perhaps, give the key to an understanding of the following strange case, for which I am indebted to a communication from Dr. Körber, of Rankau:—