Through such cases of infliction of pain, during the most intense emotion of lust, we approach the cases in which a real injury, wound, or death, is inflicted on the victim.[45] In these cases, the impulse to cruelty, which may accompany the emotion of lust, becomes unbounded in a psychopathic individual; and, at the same time, owing to defect of moral feeling, all normal inhibitory ideas are absent or weakened. Such monstrous, sadistic acts have, however, in men, in whom they are much more frequent than in women, another source in physiological conditions. In the intercourse of the sexes, the active or aggressive _rôle_ belongs to man; woman remains passive, defensive.[46] It affords a man great pleasure to win a woman, to conquer her; and in the _ars amandi_, the modesty of a woman who keeps herself on the defensive until the moment of surrender, is an element of great psychological significance and importance. Under normal conditions a man meets obstacles which it is his part to overcome, and for which nature has given him an aggressive character. This aggressive character, however, under pathological conditions, may likewise be excessively developed, and express itself in an impulse to subdue absolutely the object of desire, even to destroy or kill it.[47][48] If both these constituent elements occur together,—the abnormally intensified impulse to a violent reaction toward the object of the stimulus, and the abnormally intensified desire to conquer the woman,—then the most violent outbreaks of sadism occur. Sadism is thus nothing else than an excessive and monstrous pathological intensification of phenomena,—possible, too, in normal conditions in rudimental forms,—which accompany the psychical vita sexualis, particularly in males. It is, of course, not at all necessary, and not even the rule, that the sadistic individual should be conscious of his instinct. What he feels is, as a rule, only the impulse to cruel and violent treatment of the opposite sex, and the coloring of the idea of such acts with lustful feelings. Thus arises a powerful impulse to commit the imagined deeds. When the actual motive of this instinct is not comprehended by the individual, the sadistic acts have the character of impulsive deeds. When the association of lust and cruelty is present, not only does the lustful emotion awaken the impulse to cruelty, but _vice versâ_; cruel ideas and acts cause sexual excitement, and in this way are used by perverse individuals.[49]