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
The marriage of this man was not happy. Notwithstanding the fact that
it was but very infrequently that he performed the inadequate and
injurious sexual act with his wife, and that he sought and found a
substitute in male lovers, he remained neurasthenic. His disease, at
times, presents marked exacerbations, even manifesting itself in
despairing depression about his matrimonial, sexual, and mental
condition, which even extends to violent tædium vitæ.
His wife became hysteropathic and anæmic, and the patient attributed
this to sexual abstinence. Try as he would to force himself, of late
years he has not been able to perform coitus, erection failing
completely; while, in intercourse with male lovers, he is very potent.
The son of these unfortunate parents, who is now over nine years old,
develops well. The patient adds that formerly, in coitus with his
wife, he was potent only when he thought of a beloved man. (From the
author’s “Lehrb. der Psychiatrie.”)
Case 114. _Autobiography._ “The writer of this is a congenital urning.
If I have not consorted with other urnings, nevertheless, I am fully
informed of my condition; for it has been my lot to see almost all
literature on the subject. A short time ago, your work, ‘Psychopathia
Sexualis,’ was sent to me. I saw in it that you were working and
studying without prejudice in the interest of science and humanity.
“If I cannot tell you much that is new, yet I will speak of a few
things which I trust you will receive as one more stone to be used by
you in your work; which, I am confident, will, in your hands, aid in
saving us.
“When you presume that there is often an hereditary tainted condition,
perhaps you are right. My father was subject to spinal disease before
my birth; later, he became mentally unsound, and took his own life.
“Another point, which I am inclined to doubt, is the one mentioned by
you in another place,—_i.e._, that onanism practiced from youth may
lead to perverse instinct.
“I (merchant, owner of a small business, unmarried) am in the
beginning of my thirtieth year. I am apparently healthy, and show
scarcely a deviation from the normal masculine type. The first sexual
impulses were immediately and exclusively directed to the male sex,
and I experienced them from my tenth year. I have masturbated since my
twelfth year. Since, in spite of all attempts, coitus with women was
always absolutely impossible for me; and since I have never had desire
for women—on the contrary, rather aversion; and since my attempts have
never resulted in the slightest erection, I have been compelled to
satisfy myself by onanism.
“If now I am to confess the manner of my sexual satisfaction, I may
say that in my earlier years my fellow-pupils and companions excited
me sexually. Now my impulse consists in a desire for boys of about
ten, but mostly for youths of from fifteen to twenty years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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