Psychopathia sexualis: With especial reference to contrary sexual instinct: A medico-legal studyKrafft-Ebing, R. von (Richard)
Science
Psychopathia sexualis: With especial reference to contrary sexual instinct: A medico-legal study
Krafft-Ebing, R. von (Richard)
Paraphilias
her feet from him, yet he was often irritated because the concealment
caused him to have pollutions. The patient gives assurances of being
moral in other respects, which are confirmed by his relatives.
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account