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
I have already mentioned the interesting relations existing between the
facts of delusional transformation of sex and the so-called insanity of
the Scythians.
Marandon (“Annales médico-psychologiques,” 1877, p. 161), like others,
has erroneously presumed that with the ancient Scythians there was an
actual delusion, and that the condition was not merely that of
eviration. According to the law of empirical actuality, the delusion, so
infrequent to-day, must also have been very infrequent in ancient times.
Since it can only be conceived as arising on the basis of a paranoia,
there can be no thought of its endemic occurrence; it can only be
regarded as a superstitious manifestation of eviration (the result of
anger of the goddess), as is also evident from the statements of
Hippocrates.
The facts of the so-called Scythian insanity, as well as the facts
lately learned about the Pueblo Indians, are also noteworthy
anthropologically, in that atrophy of the testes and genitals in
general, and approximation to the female type, physically and mentally,
were observed. This is the more remarkable, since, in men who have lost
their procreative organs, such a reversal of instinct is quite as
unusual as in women, mutatis mutandis, after the natural or artificial
climacteric.
B. _Homo-Sexual Feeling as an Abnormal Congenital
Manifestation._[105]—The essential feature of this strange manifestation
of the sexual life is the want of sexual sensibility for the opposite
sex, even to the extent of horror, while sexual inclination and impulse
toward the same sex are present. At the same time, the genitals are
normally developed, the sexual glands perform their functions properly,
and the sexual type is completely differentiated.
Feeling, thought, will, and the whole character, in cases of the
complete development of the anomaly, correspond with the peculiar sexual
instinct, but not with the sex which the individual represents
anatomically and physiologically. This abnormal mode of feeling may not
infrequently be recognized in the manner, dress, and calling of the
individuals, who may go so far as to yield to an impulse to don the
distinctive clothing corresponding with the sexual _rôle_ in which they
feel themselves to be.
Anthropologically and clinically, this abnormal manifestation presents
various degrees of development:—
1. Traces of hetero-sexual, with predominating homo-sexual, instinct
(psycho-sexual hermaphroditism).
2. There exists inclination only toward the same sex (homo-sexuality).
3. The entire mental existence is altered to correspond with the
abnormal sexual instinct (effemination and viraginity).
4. The form of the body approaches that which corresponds to the
abnormal sexual instinct. However, actual transitions to hermaphrodites
never occur, but, on the contrary, completely differentiated genitals;
so that, just as in all pathological perversions of the sexual life, the
cause must be sought in the brain (androgyny and gynandry).
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