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
While modesty, for example, during childhood, is essentially but an
uncomprehended and incomprehensible exaction of education and imitation,
and in the innocence and _näiveté_ of the child but imperfectly
expressed; in the youth and maiden it becomes an imperative requirement
of self-respect; and, if in any way it is offended, intense vasomotor
reaction (blushing) and psychical emotion are induced.
If the original constitution is favorable and normal, and factors
injurious to the psycho-sexual development exercise no influence, then a
psycho-sexual personality is developed that is so unchangeable, and
corresponds so completely and harmoniously with the sex the individual
represents, that subsequent loss of the generative organs (as by
castration), or the climacteric or senility, cannot essentially alter
it. But this, of course, is not to declare that the castrated man or
woman, the youth and the aged man, the maiden and matron, the impotent
and the potent man, do not differ essentially from one another mentally.
An interesting and important question for what follows is, whether the
peripheral influences of the generative glands (testes and ovaries), or
central cerebral conditions, are the determining factors in
psycho-sexual development. The fact that congenital deficiency of the
generative glands, or removal of them before puberty, has a great
influence on physical and psycho-sexual development, so that the latter
is distorted and assumes a type more closely resembling the opposite sex
(eunuchs, certain viragoes, etc.), betokens their great importance in
this respect.
But that the physical processes taking place in the genital organs are
only co-operative, and not the exclusive factors in the process of
development of the psycho-sexual character, is shown by the fact that,
notwithstanding a normal anatomical and physiological state of these
organs, a sexual instinct may be developed which is the exact opposite
of that characteristic of the sex to which the individual belongs.
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