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
Case 11. On the afternoon of July 7, 1874, Clemens, engineer, being on
his way, on business, from Trieste to Vienna, left the train at the
town of Bruck, and, passing through the town to the neighboring
village of St. Ruprecht, attempted a rape on an old woman, aged 70,
whom he found alone in a house. He was seized by the neighbors and
arrested by the local police. At his hearing he declared that he had
tried to find the pound, in order to satisfy his sexual desire with a
bitch. He said that he often suffered with such sexual excitement. He
did not deny his act, but excused it as the result of disease. The
heat, the motion of the cars, and anxiety about his family, to which
he wished to go, had confused him and made him ill. Shame and remorse
were not shown. His conduct was open, his mien gay; eyes red and
bright, head hot, tongue coated; pulse full, soft, beating over 100;
fingers somewhat tremulous. The statements of the accused were
precise, but hurried; his glance uncertain, and with an unmistakable
expression of lasciviousness. To the medical expert summoned to
examine him, he gave the impression of one suffering with disease,—as
if he were in the beginning of alcoholic insanity.
C. is forty-five years old, married, father of one child. He does not
know what diseases his parents or other members of his family have
had. In childhood he was weak and neuropathic. At the age of five his
head was injured by a blow with a hoe. A scar one-half cm. broad by
one cm. long, situated on the right parietal and frontal bones, dates
from that injury. The bone is here somewhat depressed. The overlying
skin is united to the bone. Pressure at this point causes pain, which
radiates along the lower branch of the trigeminus. This spot is also
frequently spontaneously painful. In his youth he had frequent attacks
of “fainting”; before puberty, pneumonia, rheumatism, and intestinal
catarrh. At the age of seven he experienced a peculiar inclination for
men,—_i.e._, for a certain superior. Whenever he saw this man he had a
peculiar feeling in his heart; kissed the ground he walked on. At ten
he fell in love with a certain deputy. Later he had an enthusiasm for
men, though it was entirely platonic. He began to masturbate at the
age of fourteen; first intercourse at seventeen. Then the earlier
manifestations of contrary sexual feeling disappeared entirely. At
that time he passed through a peculiar acute psychopathic condition,
which he described as a kind of clairvoyance. From fifteen,
hæmorrhoids, with symptoms of plethora abdominalis. When he had
profuse hæmorrhoidal hæmorrhage, which occurred usually every three or
four weeks, he was better. At other times he was constantly in a
condition of painful sexual excitement, which he satisfied partly by
means of onanism and partly by coitus. Every woman he met excited him;
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account