At last I overcame the last vestige of my shyness, and one day, to realize my dreams, had myself whipped, trod upon, etc., by a prostitute. The result was a _great disappointment_. What was done to me I felt to be rough, repugnant, and silly. The blows caused me nothing but pain; the situation, repugnance and shame. Nevertheless, I induced an ejaculation mechanically, with which, with the help of my imagination, I transformed the real situation into that for which I longed. This—the really desired situation—differed from the actual essentially in that I created in imagination a woman who abused me with the same pleasure that I experienced in her maltreatment of me. All my sexual fancies were erected on the assumption in the woman of a tyrannical, cruel disposition, to which I wished to be subject. The act expressing the relation was a secondary matter to me. After the first attempt at an impossible realization, it was perfectly clear to me toward what my longing was directed. To be sure, in my lustful dreams, I had often passed beyond all ideas of abuse, and conceived a commanding woman, with an imperious mien, a word of command, a kiss on the foot, etc; but now I fully realized what it was that attracted me, and that flagellation was only the strongest means of expressing the principle, and in itself secondary. In spite of this disappointment, after the first step, I did not abandon my efforts to realize my erotic ideas. I was confident that, when once accustomed to the new reality, my fancy would find food in it for more intense activity. For my purpose I sought the most suitable women, and instructed them carefully in a complicated comedy. In this I occasionally found that the way had been prepared for me by predecessors of like disposition. The value of these comedies, for the effect of my fancy on my sensuality, remained problematical. What these acts and scenes did for me, in the way of intensifying the subsidiary circumstances of the desired situation, caused a diminution of the intensity of the principal element, which my unaided fancy, without the consciousness of planned, coarse deception, could more easily bring up before me. My physical sensations, under the various punishments, were changeable. The more perfect the self-deception, the more perfectly the pain was felt as pleasure.