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
In this case, the cause is to be sought only in an anomaly of central
conditions,—in an abnormal psycho-sexual constitution. This
constitution, as far as its anatomical and functional foundation is
concerned, is absolutely unknown. Since, in almost all such cases, the
individual subject to the perverse sexual instinct displays a
neuropathic predisposition in several directions, and the latter may be
brought into relation with hereditary degenerate conditions, this
anomaly of psycho-sexual feeling may be called, clinically, a functional
sign of degeneration. This perverse sexuality appears spontaneously,
without external cause, with the development of sexual life, as an
individual manifestation of an abnormal form of the vita sexualis, and
then has the force of a _congenital_ phenomenon; or it develops upon a
sexuality the beginning of which was normal, as a result of very
definite injurious influences, and thus appears as an _acquired_
anomaly. Upon what this enigmatical phenomenon of acquired homo-sexual
instinct depends is still inexplicable, and only a matter for
hypothesis. Careful examination of the so-called acquired cases makes it
probable that the predisposition also present here consists of a latent
homo-sexuality, or, at least, bi-sexuality, which, for its
manifestation, requires the influence of accidental exciting causes to
rouse it from its slumber.
In so-called contrary sexual instinct there are degrees of the
phenomenon which quite correspond with the degrees of predisposition of
the individuals. Thus, in the milder cases, there is simple
hermaphroditism; in more pronounced cases, only homo-sexual feeling and
instinct, but limited to the vita sexualis; in still more complete
cases, the whole psychical personality, and even the bodily sensations,
are transformed to correspond with the sexual perversion; and, in the
complete cases, the physical form is correspondingly altered.
The following division of the various phenomena of this psycho-sexual
anomaly is made, therefore, in accordance with these clinical facts:—
A. _Homo-sexual Feeling as an Acquired Manifestation._—The determining
condition here is the demonstration of perverse feeling for the same
sex; not the proof of sexual acts with the same sex. These two phenomena
must not be confounded with each other; perversity must not be taken for
perversion.
Perverse sexual acts, not dependent upon perversion, often come under
observation. This is especially true with reference to sexual acts
between persons of the same sex, particularly pederasty. Here
paræsthesia sexualis is not necessarily at work; but hyperæsthesia, with
physical or mental impossibility of natural sexual satisfaction. Thus we
find homo-sexual intercourse in impotent masturbators or debauchees, or
_faute de mieux_ in sensual men and women in imprisonment, on
ship-board, in garrisons, bagnios, boarding-schools, etc.
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