Case 68. S., New York, is accused of being a street-thief. Numerous cases of insanity in his ancestry; father, brother, and sister mentally abnormal. At seven years, violent cerebral concussion twice. At thirteen, struck with a beam. At fourteen S. had violent attacks of headache. Accompanying these attacks, or immediately after them, peculiar impulse to take the shoes of female members of the family—as a rule, those belonging to one member—and hide them in some out-of-the-way corner. Taken to task, he would lie, or declare that he had no memory of the affair. The passion for shoes was unconquerable, and made its appearance every three or four months. On one occasion he attempted to take the shoe from the foot of one of the servants, and on another he stole his sister’s shoe from her sleeping-apartment. In the spring two ladies had their shoes torn from their feet in the open street. In August S. left his home early in the morning to go to his work as a printer. A moment afterward he tore the shoe from a girl’s foot in the open street, fled to his place of work, and there was arrested as a street-thief. He declared that he did not know much of his act; that it had come upon him like a stroke of lightning, at the sight of a shoe, that he must possess himself of it, but for what purpose he did not know. He had acted while in a state of unconsciousness. The shoe, as he correctly indicated, was found in his coat. In confinement he was so much excited mentally that an outbreak of insanity was feared. Discharged, he stole his wife’s shoes while she slept. His moral character and habits of life were blameless. He was an intelligent workman; but irregularity of employment, that soon followed, made him confused and incapable of work. Pardoned. (Nichols, Am. Journal of Insanity, 1859; Beck, “Med. Jurisprudence,” vol. i, p. 732, 1860.)
Dr. Pascal (op. cit.) has some similar cases, and many others have been mentioned to me by colleagues and patients.
(c) Disgusting Acts for the Purpose of Self-Humiliation and Sexual Gratification—Larvated Masochism.—There are numerous established cases in which perverted men are thrown into sexual excitement by the secretions, or even the excretions, of women, and try to see and touch them. Probably in these cases there is almost always an unconscious masochistic impulse,—pleasure in the most extreme humiliation of self, and desire to experience it.
This connection is made perfectly clear by the confessions of those affected with this repugnant perversion. Case 88 of the sixth edition—that of an individual affected with contrary sexuality, which is later described—is here instructive. The subject of this case not only revels in the thought of being the slave of the beloved man, and refers on this point to Sacher-Masoch’s “Venus in Furs,” sed etiam sibi fingit amatum poscere ut crepidas sudore diffluentes olfaciat ejusque stercore vescatur. Deinde narrat, quia non habeat, quæ confingat et exoptet, eorum loco suas crepidas sudore infectas olfacere suoque stercore vesci, inter quæ facta pene errecto se voluptate perturbari semenque ejaculari.
The masochistic significance of a disgusting act in the following case, communicated by a professional friend, is clear:—
Case 69. H. v. G., landed proprietor; major; died in his sixtieth year; came of a family in which irresponsibility, tendency to run in debt, and defect of morals are hereditary. In his youth he was given to most reckless dissipation (he was known as the leader of “naked balls”). He was always of a cynical and brutal nature, though punctilious and exact in his military service, which, on account of a disreputable affair that was not made known, he had to leave, and he lived in private life seventeen years. Untrammeled by the necessity to earn his living, he led everywhere the life of a man-of-the-town, and was everywhere avoided on account of his lascivious nature. His ostracism by the best society, which, in spite of his independence, he noticed, caused him to prefer the ordinary society of fakirs, artisans, and loafers. It cannot be ascertained that he had sexual intercourse with men, but it is certain that in his later years he arranged symposiums with mixed company and was known as a roué. In the last few years of his life he was accustomed to hang about new buildings in the evening, and of the women working there he would ask the dirtiest to accompany him. It is certain that he had the woman undress, and then he would suck her toes, his libido being excited and satisfied by the act.
Cantarano also reports a case in La Psichiatria, v year, p. 207, in which, preceding the act, apparently from a similar cause, there was biting and sucking of a woman’s toes in as filthy a state as possible.
Several cases have come to my knowledge in which, with other masochistic acts (maltreatment, humiliation), such disgusting desires were entertained; and the confessions of the individuals left no doubt of their significance.
Such cases prepare the way to an understanding of others which are absolutely incomprehensible without the connection with the masochistic desire for humiliation.[[74]] It is probable, however, that this impulse, in its actual significance, remains unknown to the perverted individual, and only the desire for disgusting things rises into consciousness,—again larvated masochism.
Other cases of Cantarano’s (loc. cit.) belong here: mictio even defæcatio puellæ ad linguam viri ante actum; consumption of confects smelling like fæces, in order to become potent; and also the following case, likewise communicated to me by a physician:—