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
“Since the majority of ‘aunts,’ like myself, in no way regret their
abnormality, but would be sorry if the condition were to be changed;
and, moreover, since the congenital condition, according to my own and
all other experience, cannot be influenced; therefore, all our hope
rests upon the possibility of a change of the laws with reference to
it, so that only rape or the commission of public offense, when this
can be proved at the same time, shall be punishable.”
Case 116. _Contrary Sexual Instinct in a Woman._—S. J., aged 38,
governess, came to me for advice about a nervous trouble. Her father
was temporarily insane, and died of a brain disease. The patient is an
only child, and even when quite young she suffered with feelings of
anxiety and painful ideas. She thought, for example, that she would
awake in her coffin after it had been closed; that at confession she
might forget something, and make a sinful confession. She suffered
much with headache. She was always very much excited and apprehensive,
but yet she had to see horrible things, like corpses, etc.
Even in her earliest childhood, the patient was excited sexually, and
began to masturbate without any teaching. The menses began at
fourteen, and were always accompanied by colicky pains, violent sexual
excitement, migraine, and depression. After her eighteenth year she
learned to repress her impulse to masturbate.
The patient has never felt any inclination toward persons of the
opposite sex. If she thought of marriage, it was only because she
sought in matrimony a means of being supported. On the other hand, she
felt powerfully attracted by girls. At first she regarded this
inclination as friendship; but in the depth of her attachment to
female friends, and in the longing she constantly felt for them, she
recognized that the feeling was something more than friendship.
The patient cannot understand how a girl can love a man, but she can
easily see how a man might love a girl. She always has a lively
interest in beautiful women and girls, and is powerfully excited at
sight of them. Her longing had always been to kiss and embrace such
dear creatures. She had never dreamed of a man, but only of girls. Her
delight had been to revel in the sight of them. Separation from such
female friends had always made her desperate.
The patient, whose appearance is perfectly feminine and very
respectable, states that she has never felt herself in any particular
_rôle_ with her friends, not even in dreams. Female pelvis; large
mammæ; no sign of beard.
Case 117. Mrs. R., Russian, aged 35, of high social position, was
brought to me, in 1886, by her husband for advice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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