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
Case 88. X., aged 24, from a badly-tainted family (mother’s brother
and grandfather insane, one sister epileptic, another sister subject
to migraine, parents of excitable temperament). During dentition he
had had convulsions. At the age of seven he was taught to masturbate
by a servant-girl. X. first experienced pleasure in these
manipulations when this girl occasionally _stroked his penis with her
foot with her shoe on_. Thus, in the predisposed boy, an association
was established, as a result of which, from that time on, merely the
sight of women’s shoes, and, finally, merely the idea of them,
sufficed to induce sexual excitement and erection. He now masturbated
while looking at women’s shoes, or while calling them up in
imagination. At school the teacher’s shoes excited him intensely, and
in general he was affected by shoes that were partly concealed by
female garments. One day he could not keep from grasping the teacher’s
shoes,—an act that caused him great sexual excitement. In spite of
punishment he could not keep from performing this act repeatedly.
Finally, it was recognized that there must be an abnormal motive in
play, and he was sent to a male teacher. He then reveled in the memory
of shoe-scenes with his former school-mistress, and thus had
erections, orgasm, and, after his fourteenth year, ejaculation. At the
same time, he masturbated while thinking of a woman’s shoe. One day
the thought came to him to increase his pleasure by using such a shoe
for masturbation. Thereafter he frequently took shoes secretly, and
used them for that purpose.
Nothing else in a woman could excite him; the thought of coitus filled
him with horror. Men did not interest him in any way. At the age of
eighteen he opened a general store, and, among other things handled
ladies’ shoes. He was excited sexually by fitting shoes for his female
patrons, or by manipulating shoes that they had worn. One day, while
doing this, he had an epileptic attack, and, soon after, another,
while practicing onanism in his customary way. Then he recognized, for
the first time, the injury to health caused by his sexual practices.
He tried to overcome his onanism, sold no more shoes, and strove to
free himself from the abnormal association between women’s shoes and
the sexual function. Then frequent pollutions, with erotic dreams
about shoes, occurred, and the epileptic attacks continued. Though
devoid of the slightest feeling for the female sex, he determined on
marriage, which seemed to him to be the only remedy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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