When the part of the female body forming the fetich is capable of removal, like the hair, the most extravagant acts may be performed. Therefore, hair-fetichists form an interesting and forensically-important category. While such admirers of female hair are probably not infrequent within physiological limits, and possibly various senses (sight, smell, and hearing, through crepitant sounds,—and certainly touch, just as with velvet- and silk-fetichists, v. infra) are thus excited with an accompaniment of lustful feeling; yet, a series of similar pathological cases has also been observed, in which the hair-fetichism had become an overpowering impulse, and driven the individuals to commit crimes.[[95]],[[96]] These form the group of hair-despoilers.
Case 78. A hair-despoiler. P., aged 40, artistic locksmith, single. His father was temporarily insane, and his mother was very nervous. He developed well, and was intelligent; but he was early affected with tics and imperative ideas. He had never masturbated. He loved platonically, and often busied himself with matrimonial plans. He had coitus infrequently with prostitutes, but never felt satisfied with such intercourse—rather, disgusted. Three years ago he was overtaken by misfortune (financial ruin), and, besides, he had a febrile disease, with delirium. These things had a very bad effect on his hereditarily-predisposed nervous system. On August 28, 1889, P. was arrested at the Trocadero, in Paris, in flagranti, as he forcibly cut off a young girl’s hair. He was arrested with the hair in his hand and a pair of shears in his pocket. He excused himself on the ground of momentary mental confusion and an unfortunate, irresistible passion; he confessed that he had ten times cut off hair, which he took great delight in keeping at home. On searching his home, sixty-five switches and tresses of hair were found, assorted in packets. P. had already been once arrested, on December 15, 1886, under similar circumstances, but was released for lack of evidence.
P. states that, for the last three years, when he is alone in his room at night, he feels ill, anxious, excited, and dizzy, and then is troubled by the impulse to touch female hair. When it happened that he could actually take a young girl’s hair in his hand, he felt intensely excited sexually, and had erection and ejaculation without touching the girl in any other way. On reaching home, he would feel ashamed of what had taken place; but the wish to possess hair, always accompanied by great sensual pleasure, became more and more powerful in him. He wondered that previously, even in the most intimate intercourse with women, he had experienced no such feeling. One evening he could not resist the impulse to cut off a girl’s hair. With the hair in his hand, at home, the sensual process was repeated. He was forced to rub his body with the hair and envelop his genitals in it. Finally, quite exhausted, he grew ashamed, and could not trust himself to go out for several days. After months of rest he was again impelled to possess himself of female hair, indifferent as to whose it might be. If he attained his end, he felt himself possessed by a supernatural power and unable to give up his booty. If he could not attain the object of his desire, he became greatly depressed, hurried home, and there reveled in his collection of hair. He combed and fondled it, and thus had intense orgasm, satisfying himself by masturbation. Hair exposed in the cases of hair-dressers made no impression on him; it required hair hanging down from a female head.
At the height of his act, he states, he is in such a state of excitement that he has only imperfect apperception and subsequent memory of what he does. When he touches the hair with the shears he has erection, and, at the instant of cutting it off, ejaculation. Since his misfortune, about three years ago, he states that he has had weakness of memory, is easily exhausted mentally, and has been troubled by sleeplessness and night-terrors. P. deeply regrets his crime.
Not only hair, but a number of hair-pins, ribbons, and other articles of the feminine toilet, were found in his possession, which he had had presented to him. He had always had an actual mania for collecting such things, as well as newspapers, pieces of wood, and other worthless trash, which he would never give up. He also had a strange and, to him, inexplicable fear of passing a certain street; if he ever tried it, it made him ill.
The opinion (medico-legal) showed him to be hereditarily predisposed, and proved the imperative, impulsive, and decidedly involuntary character of the criminal acts, which had the significance of an imperative act, induced by an imperative idea, with an accompaniment of overpowering abnormal sexual feeling. Pardon; asylum for insane. (Voisin, Socquet, Motet, Annales d’hygiène, April, 1890.)
Following this case, is a similar one which also deserves attention; for it has been well studied, and may be called almost classical; and, too, it places the fetich, as well as the original associative awakening of the idea, in a clear light:—
Case 79. A hair-despoiler. E., aged 25. Maternal aunt, epileptic; brother had convulsions. E. says he was fairly healthy as a child, and learned quite easily. At the age of fifteen he had a sensual feeling of pleasure, with erection, at the sight of one of the village beauties combing her hair. Until that time persons of the opposite sex had made no impression on him. Two months later, in Paris, the sight of young girls with their hair flowing down over their shoulders always excited him intensely. One day he could not resist an opportunity to twist a young girl’s hair in his fingers. For this he was arrested and sentenced to imprisonment for three months. After that he served five years as a soldier. During this time hair was not dangerous for him, though also not very accessible; but he dreamed sometimes of female heads with the hair braided or flowing. Occasional coitus with women, but without having their hair effective as a fetich. Once more in Paris, he again dreamed as before, and became greatly excited by female hair. He never dreamed about the whole form of a woman, only of heads with braids of hair. His sexual excitement due to this fetich had become so intense of late that he had resorted to masturbation. The idea of touching female hair, or, better, of possessing it to masturbate while handling it, grew more and more powerful. Of late, when he had female hair in his fingers, ejaculation was induced. One day he succeeded in cutting hair, about 25 centimetres long, from three little girls in the street, and keeping it in his possession, when he was arrested in a fourth attempt. Deep regret and shame. He was not sentenced. Since spending some time in the asylum, he has so far improved that female hair no longer excites him. Set at liberty, he thought of going to his native place, where the women wear their hair done up. (Magnan, Archiv. de l’anthropol. criminelle, v, Nr. 28.)
A third case is the following, which is likewise suited to illustrate the psychopathic nature of such phenomena; and the remarkable means which induced a cure are worthy of note:—
Case 80. Hair-fetichism. Mr. X., between thirty and forty years old; from the higher class of society; single. He says that he comes of a healthy family, but from childhood has been nervous, vacillating, and peculiar; that since his eighth year he has been powerfully attracted by female hair. This was particularly true in the case of young girls. When he was nine years old, a girl of thirteen seduced him. He did not understand it, and was not at all excited. A twelve-year-old sister of this girl also courted, kissed, and hugged him. He allowed this quietly, because this girl’s hair pleased him so well. When about ten years old, he began to have sensual feelings at the sight of female hair that pleased him. Gradually these feelings occurred spontaneously, and memory-pictures of girls’ hair were always immediately associated with them. At the age of eleven he was taught to masturbate by school-mates. The associative connection of sexual feelings and a fetichistic idea was already established, and always appeared when the patient indulged in evil practices with his companions. With advancing years, the fetich grew more and more powerful. Even false hair began to excite him, but he always preferred natural hair. When he could touch or kiss it, he was perfectly happy. He wrote essays and poems on the beauty of female hair; he sketched heads of hair and masturbated. After his fourteenth year he became so powerfully excited by his fetich that he had violent erections. In contrast with his early taste while a boy, he was now charmed only by luxuriant, thick black hair. He experienced intense desire to kiss such hair, particularly to suck it. To touch such hair afforded him but little satisfaction; he obtained much more pleasure in looking at it, but particularly in kissing and sucking it. If this were impossible, he would become unhappy, even to the extent of tædium vitæ. Then he would attempt to relieve himself, imagining fantastic “hair-adventures” and masturbating. Not infrequently, in the street and in crowds, he could not keep from imprinting a kiss on ladies’ heads. He would then hurry home to masturbate. Sometimes he could resist this impulse; but it was then necessary for him, filled with feelings of fear, to run away as quickly as possible, in order to escape the domination of his fetich. He was only once impelled to cut off a girl’s hair in a crowd. In the act he was seized with fear, and was not successful with his pocket-knife; and, by flight, he narrowly escaped detection.