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
Like every one of Fashion’s fools, I
have a taste for the prevailing mode; so greatly am I transformed. To
become accustomed to the thought of feeling only like a woman, and
only to remember the previous manner of thought to a certain extent in
contrast with it; and, at the same time, to express one’s self as a
man,—it requires a long time and an infinite amount of persistence.
“Nevertheless, in spite of everything, it will happen that I betray
myself by some expression of feminine feeling, either in _sexualibus_,
when I say that I feel so and so, expressing what a man without the
female feeling cannot know; or when I accidentally betray that female
attire is my talent. Before women, of course, this does not amount to
anything; for a woman is greatly flattered when a man understands
something of her matters; but this must not be displayed to my own
wife. How frightened I once was when my wife said to a friend that I
had great taste in ladies’ dress! How a haughty, stylish lady was
astonished when, as she was about to make a great error in the
education of her little daughter, I described to her in writing and
verbally all the feminine feelings! To be sure, I lied to her, saying
that my knowledge had been gleaned from letters. But her confidence in
me is as great as ever; and the child, who was on the road to
insanity, is rational and happy. She had confessed all the feminine
inclinations as sins; now she knows what, as a girl, she must bear and
control by will and religion; and she feels that she is human. Both
ladies would laugh heartily, if they knew that I had only drawn on my
own sad experience. I must also add that I now have a finer sense of
temperature and, besides, a sense of the elasticity of the skin and
tension of the intestines, etc., in patients, that was unknown to me
before; that in operations and autopsies, poisonous fluids more
readily penetrate my (uninjured) skin. Every autopsy causes me pain;
examination of a prostitute, or a woman having a discharge, a
cancerous odor, or the like, is actually repugnant to me. In all
respects I am now under the influence of antipathy and sympathy, from
the sense of color to my judgment of a person. Women usually see in
each other the periodical sexual disposition; and, therefore, a lady
wears a veil, if she is not always accustomed to wear one, and usually
she perfumes herself, even though it be only with handkerchief or
gloves; for her olfactory sense in relation to her own sex is intense.
Odors have an incredible effect on the female organism; thus, for
example, the odors of violets and roses quiet me, while others disgust
me; and with ihlang-ihlang I cannot contain myself for sexual
excitement. Contact with a woman seems homogeneous to me; coitus with
my wife seems possible to me because she is somewhat masculine, and
has a firm skin; and yet it is more an _amor lesbicus_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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