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
It is impossible to learn anything of his ancestry. From his childhood
he was mentally abnormal, violent, never lively, very irritable,
irascible, selfish, and weak-minded. He hated women, loved solitude,
and read much. He sometimes laughed to himself and did silly things.
Of late years his hatred of women had increased, especially of those
that were pregnant, they being responsible for the misery of the
world. He also hated children, and cursed his father. He entertained
communistic ideas, and berated the rich and the ministry, and God, who
had allowed him to come into the world so poor. He declared that it
would be better to castrate all children than to allow others to come
into the world that could only be fated to endure poverty and misery.
He had always had the intention, from his fifteenth year, to castrate
himself, in order to have no part in increasing unhappiness and adding
to the number of men. He hated the female sex because it was a means
of procreation. Only twice in his life had he allowed women to
practice manustupration on him, and, with the exception of this, he
had never had anything to do with them. Occasionally he had sexual
desire, but never for a natural satisfaction of it. When nature did
not help him, he occasionally helped himself by means of masturbation.
He is a powerful, muscular man. The formation of the genitals presents
no abnormality. On the scrotum and penis are numerous scars, which
resulted from his attempts at self-emasculation, but which, he
asserts, were not carried out on account of pain. Genu valgum of right
limb. No evidence of onanism could be discovered. He is moody,
defiant, irritable. Social feelings are absolutely foreign to him.
With the exception of imperfect sleep and frequent headaches, there
are no functional disturbances.
From cases of this kind, depending on cerebral causes, there must be
distinguished others where the absence of function arises from an
absence or malformation of the generative organs, as in certain
hermaphrodites, idiots, and cretins. A case belonging here is found in
Maschka’s hand-book.
Case 10. Complainant pleads for divorce on account of impotence of her
husband, who has never had intercourse with her. She is thirty-one
years old, and a virgin. The husband is somewhat weak mentally,
physically strong; the genitals well developed. He declares that he
has never had a complete erection or a flow of semen, and says that he
is totally indifferent about intercourse with women.
Ultzmann’s[38] observations show that anæsthesia sexualis is not caused
by aspermia simply. He shows that even in congenital aspermia the vita
sexualis and sexual power may be entirely satisfying; an additional
proof that defective libido _ab origine_ is to be sought for in cerebral
conditions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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