In other cases of sadism which history and literature afford, we are compelled to think of a reversal of the feminine sexual character,—a partial viraginity,—in order to explain the sadistic acts. In history there are examples of famous women who, to some extent, had sadistic instincts. These Messalinas are particularly characterized by their thirst for power, lust, and cruelty. Among them are Valeria Messalina herself, and Catherine de Medici, the instigator of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, whose greatest pleasure was found in having the ladies of her court whipped before her eyes, etc. The gifted Henry von Kleist, who was undoubtedly mentally abnormal, gives a masterly portrayal of complete feminine sadism in his “Penthesilea.” In scene xxii, Kleist describes his heroine with Achilles, whom she had been pursuing in the fire of love, betrayed into her hands, as, overcome with lustful, murderous fury, she tears him in pieces and sets her dogs on him: “She strikes, tearing the armor from his body; they set their teeth in his white breast,—she and her dogs, the rivals, Oxus and Sphynx,—they on the right side, she on the left; and as I approached blood dripped from her hands and mouth.” And later, when Penthesilea becomes satiated: “Did I kiss him to death? No. Did I not kiss him? Torn in pieces? Then it was a mistake; kissing rhymes with biting, and one who loves with the whole heart might easily mistake the one for the other.”[59] 2. _The Association of Passively Endured Cruelty and Violence, with Lust—Masochism._[60]—Masochism is the opposite of sadism. While the latter is the desire to cause pain and use force, the former is the wish to suffer pain and be subjected to force. By masochism I understand a peculiar perversion of the psychical vita sexualis, in which the individual affected, in sexual feeling and thought, is controlled by the idea of being completely and unconditionally subject to the will of a person of the opposite sex; of being treated by this person as by a master,—humiliated and abused. This idea is colored by lustful feeling; the individual affected lives in fancies, in which he creates situations of this kind, and often attempts to realize them. By this perversion his sexual instinct is not infrequently made more or less insensible to the normal stimulus of the opposite sex,—incapable of a normal vita sexualis,—psychically impotent. But this psychical impotence does not in any way depend upon a _horror sexus alterius_, but upon the fact that this perverse instinct finds an adequate satisfaction differing from the normal,—in woman, to be sure, but not in coitus.