Tardieu cites a case of a woman whose victim of criminal attack was no other than her own son, a boy of nine years of age. CHAPTER XVIII PARAESTHESIA Paraesthesia sexualis covers all possible forms of perversion or perversity of sexual feeling and sexual activity. Perverse sexual activity with normal feeling and inclination is present in the anomalies, masochism, sadism, fetichism, and exhibitionism. _Masochism._—One of the most peculiar phenomena in the perverse vita sexualis is met with in patients with a desire for unlimited submission to the will of a person of the opposite sex. This anomaly was named masochism by Krafft-Ebing after Sacher-Masoch, whose romances have as their particular object the description of this perversion. Schrenk-Notzing recommends the name “Algolagnie.” The distinguishing symptom of masochism is the wish of the patient to suffer pain at the hands of, and be subjected to force by the beloved person, to be this person’s complete slave. This mixture of pleasure and pain is one of the most peculiar and remarkable psycho-sexual anomalies. Pain, whether real or imaginary, becomes here a source of pleasure. Whether the subjection is expressed merely in symbolic acts or whether there is absolute desire to suffer pain at the hands of the beloved one, is a matter of subordinate importance. The characteristic of the perversion of masochism is that pain and submission, which to the normal individual causes a certain degree and anguish, are in these patients turned into a source of lust. The submission to pain or subjugation in itself is in no wise pathognomonic of masochism. It may not be pathological at all. Even entire sexual bondage is not, properly taken, pathological, if it be only the means of obtaining or retaining possession of the coveted person. It is not perversion, if fear of losing the companion and the desire to keep him or her always amiable, content, and inclined to love, are the motives for submission. The henpecked man is not a pervert. It is not abnormality, but cunning if, to satisfy selfish desires, the person in subjugation performs acts of bondage at the command of the ruling individual, but in its innermost is rebelling against this enforced slavery. Sexual bondage becomes pathological only when in itself the loss of all independent will-power and the unlimited submission awaken lustful sexual feelings, and this submission is hence desired. It then represents a pathological degeneration.