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
In connection with such pure cases of anæsthesia there should be
considered other cases in which the mental side of the vita sexualis is
a blank leaf in the life of the individual, but where elementary sexual
sensations manifest themselves at least in masturbation (comp. the
transitional Case 6). According to Magnan’s ingenious classification,
which, however, is not strictly correct and somewhat too dogmatic, in
such cases the sexual life is so limited as to be designated spinal.
Possibly in some such cases there exists virtually a mental side of the
vita sexualis, but it is very weak, and undermined by masturbation
before it attains development. These represent the transitional cases
from the congenital to the acquired (psychical) anæsthesia sexualis.
This danger threatens many masturbators of vicious constitution. It is
psychologically interesting that when the sexual element is early
vitiated, then an ethical defect is manifested.
The two following cases, previously published by me in the _Archiv für
Psychiatrie_, vii, are given here as illustrations worthy of
consideration:—
Case 8. F. J., aged 19, student; mother was nervous, sister epileptic.
At the age of four, acute brain affection, lasting two weeks. As a
child he was not affectionate, and was cold toward his parents; as a
student he was peculiar, retiring, preoccupied with self, and given to
much reading. Well endowed mentally. Masturbation from fifteenth year.
Eccentric after puberty, with continual alternation between religious
enthusiasm and materialism,—now studying theology, now natural
sciences. At the university his fellow-students took him for a fool.
He read Jean Paul almost exclusively, and wasted his time. Absolute
absence of sexual feeling toward the opposite sex. Once he indulged in
intercourse, experienced no sexual feeling in the act, found coitus
absurd, and did not repeat it. Without any emotional cause whatever,
he often had a thought of suicide. He made it the subject of a
philosophical dissertation, in which he contended that it was, like
masturbation, a justifiable act. After repeated experiments, which he
made on himself with various poisons, he attempted suicide with
fifty-seven grains of opium; but he was saved, and sent to an asylum.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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