Thus it is easy to regard masochism in general as a pathological growth of specific feminine mental elements,—as an abnormal intensification of certain features of the psycho-sexual character of woman,—and to seek its primary origin in that sex (v. infra, p. 145). It may, however, be held to be established that, in woman, an inclination to subordination to man (which may be regarded as an acquired, purposeful arrangement, a phenomenon of adaptation to social requirements) is to a certain extent a normal manifestation.
The reason that, under such circumstances, the “poetry” of the symbolic act of subjection is not reached, lies partly in the fact that man has not the vanity of that weakling who would use blows to display his power (as the love-serving knights did with the ladies of the Middle Ages), but prefers to demonstrate his real advantages. The barbarian has his wife plow for him, and the civilized lover speculates about her dowry; she willingly endures both.
Cases of pathological increase of this instinct of subjection, in the sense of feminine masochism, are probably frequent enough, but custom represses their manifestation. Many young women like nothing better than to kneel before their husbands or lovers. Among all Slavs of the lower classes it is said that the wives feel hurt if they are not beaten by their husbands. A Hungarian officer informs me that peasant women of the Somogy’er Comitates do not think they are loved by their husbands until they have received the first box on the ear as a sign of love.
It would probably be difficult for the physician to find cases of feminine masochism. Subjective and objective restraints—modesty and custom—naturally constitute, in women, insurmountable obstacles to the expression of perverse sexual instinct. Thus it happens that, up to the present time, but one case of masochism in a woman has been scientifically established; and this is accompanied by circumstances that obscure it.
Case 73. Miss v. X., Russian, aged 35; of greatly predisposed family. For some years she has been in the initial stage of paranoia persecutoria. This sprang from cerebro-spinal neurasthenia, the origin of which is found to be sexual hyper-excitation. Since her twenty-fourth year she has been given to masturbation. As a result of disappointment in an engagement and intense sexual excitement, she began to practice masturbation and psychical onanism. Inclination toward persons of her own sex never occurred. The patient says: “At the age of six or eight I conceived a desire to be whipped. Since I had never been whipped, and had never been present when others were thus punished, I cannot understand how I came to have this strange desire. I can only think that it is congenital. With these ideas of being whipped I had a feeling of actual delight, and pictured in my fancy how fine it would be to be whipped by one of my female friends. I never had any thought of being whipped by a man. I reveled in the idea, and never attempted any actual realization of my fancies. These disappeared after my tenth year. Only when I read “Rousseau’s Confessions,” at the age of thirty-four, did I understand what my longing for whippings meant, and that my abnormal ideas were like those of Rousseau. Since my tenth year I have never had any more such fancies.”
On account of its original character and the reference to Rousseau, this case may with certainty be called a case of masochism. The fact that it is a female friend that is conceived in imagination as whipping her, is explained by the circumstance that the masochistic desire was here present in the mind of a child before the psychical vita sexualis had developed and the instinct for the male had been awakened. Contrary sexual instinct is here expressly excluded.
An Attempt to Explain Masochism.
The facts of masochism are certainly among the most interesting in the domain of psychopathology. An attempt to explain them must first seek to distinguish in them the essential from the unessential. The distinguishing characteristic in masochism is certainly the unlimited subjection to the will of a person of the opposite sex (in sadism, on the contrary, the unlimited mastery of this person), with the awakening and accompaniment of lustful sexual feelings to the degree of orgasm. From all that has preceded it is clear that the particular manner in which this relation of subjection or domination is expressed (v. supra), whether in simply symbolic acts, or whether there is also a desire to suffer pain at the hands of a person of the opposite sex, is a subordinate matter.
While sadism may be looked upon as a pathological intensification of the masculine sexual character in its psychical peculiarities, masochism rather represents a pathological degeneration of the distinctive psychical peculiarities of woman. But masculine masochism is undoubtedly frequent; and it is this that most frequently comes under observation and almost exclusively makes up the series of observed cases. The reason for this has been previously stated (p. 139).
Two sources of masochism can be distinguished in the sphere of normal phenomena. The first is, that in the state of lustful excitement every impression made by the person giving rise to the sexual stimulus, independently of the nature of its action, is pleasing to the individual excited.