Psychopathia sexualis: With especial reference to contrary sexual instinct: A medico-legal studyKrafft-Ebing, R. von (Richard)
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Psychopathia sexualis: With especial reference to contrary sexual instinct: A medico-legal study
Krafft-Ebing, R. von (Richard)
Paraphilias
From the time of the transformatio sexus, the patient
begins a new reckoning of time. He conceives his previous personality
in memory as that of a cousin.
He always speaks of himself in the third person, and calls himself the
Countess V., the dearest friend of the Empress Eugenie; asks for
perfumes, corsets, etc. He takes the other men of the ward for girls,
tries to raise a head of hair, and demands “Oriental Hair-Remover,” in
order that no one may doubt his gender. He takes delight in praising
onanism, for “she had been an onanist from fifteen, and had never
desired any other kind of sexual satisfaction.” Occasionally
neurasthenic symptoms, olfactory hallucinations, and persecutory
delusions are observed. All the events up to the time of December,
1872, belong to the personality of the cousin.
The patient’s delusion that he is the Countess V. can no longer be
corrected. She proves her identity by the fact that the nurse has
examined her, and finds her to be a lady. The countess will not marry,
because she hates men. Since he is not provided with female clothing
and shoes, he spends the greatest part of the day in bed, acts like an
invalid lady of position, affectedly and modestly, and asks for
bon-bons and the like. His hair is done, up in a knot as well as it
allows, and the beard is pulled out. Breasts are made out of biscuits.
In 1874 caries began in the left knee-joint, to which pulmonary
tuberculosis was soon added. Death on December 2, 1874. Skull normal.
Frontal lobes atrophic. Brain anæmic. Microscopical (Dr. Schüle): In
the superior layer of the frontal lobe, ganglion cells somewhat
shrunken; in the adventitia of the vessels, numerous fat-corpuscles;
glia unchanged; isolated pigment particles and colloid bodies. The
lower layers of the cortex normal. Genitals very large; testicles
small, lax, and show no change macroscopically on section.
The delusion of sexual transformation, displayed, in its conditions and
phases of development, in the foregoing case, is a manifestation
remarkably infrequent in the pathology of the human mind. Besides the
foregoing cases, personally observed, I have seen such a case, as an
episodical phenomenon, in a lady having contrary sexuality (Case 92 of
the sixth edition of this work), one in a girl affected with original
paranoia, and another in a lady suffering with original paranoia.
Save for a case briefly reported by Arndt, in his text-book (p. 172),
and one quite superficially described by Sérieux (“Recherches Clinique,”
p. 33), and the two cases known to Esquirol, I cannot recall any cases
of delusion of sexual transformation in literature. Arndt’s case may be
briefly given here, though, like Esquirol’s cases, it gives nothing
concerning the genesis of the delusion:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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