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 20. Tirsch, hospital beneficiary of Prag, aged 55, always silent,
peculiar, coarse, very irritable, grumbling, revengeful, was sentenced
to twenty years’ imprisonment, on account of violating a girl ten
years old. He had attracted attention on account of outbursts of anger
from insignificant causes, and also on account of tædium vitæ. In
1864, on account of the refusal of an offer of marriage which he made
to a widow, he developed a hatred toward women, and on July 8th he
went about with the intention of killing one of this hated sex.
Vetulam occurentem in silvam allexit, coitum poposcit, renitentem
prostravit, jugulum feminæ compressit “furore captus.” Cadaver virga
betulæ desecta verberare voluit neque tamen id perfecit, quia
conscientia sua hæc fieri vetuit, cultello mammae et genitalia desecta
domi cocta proximis diebus cum globis comedit. On September 12th, when
he was arrested, the remains of this meal were found. He gave as the
motive of this act “inner impulse.” He himself wished to be executed
because he had always been persecuted. In confinement there were great
emotional irritability and occasional outbursts of fury, preceded by
refusal of food, which made isolation, lasting several days,
necessary. It was authoritatively established that the most of his
earlier excesses were coincident with outbreaks of excitement and fury
(Maschka, _Prager Vierteljahrsschrift_, 1866, i, p. 79).
The Whitechapel murderer, who still eludes the vigilance of the police,
probably belongs in this category of psycho-sexual monsters.[51] The
constant absence of uterus, ovaries, and labia, in the victims (ten) of
this modern Bluebeard, allows the presumption that he seeks and finds
still further satisfaction in anthropophagy.
In other cases of lust-murder, for physical and mental reasons (_vide
supra_), violation is omitted, and the sadistic crime alone becomes the
equivalent of coitus. The prototype of such cases is the following one
of Verzeni. The life of his victim hung on the rapid or retarded
occurrence of ejaculation. Since this remarkable case presents all the
peculiarities which modern science knows concerning the relation of lust
to lust-murder with anthropophagy, and especially since it was carefully
studied, it receives detailed description here:—
Case 21. Vincenz Verzeni, born in 1849; since January 11, 1872, in
prison; is accused (1) of an attempt to strangle his nurse Marianne,
four years ago, while she lay sick in bed; (2) of a similar attempt on
a married woman, Arsuffi, aged 27; (3) of an attempt to strangle a
married woman, Gala, by grasping her throat while kneeling on her
body; (4) on suspicion of the following murders:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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