Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2: Sexual InversionEllis, Havelock
Science
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2: Sexual Inversion
Ellis, Havelock
Sex; Sex (Psychology)
Olmstead was tried privately in July. No new points were brought
out. He was sentenced to the Criminal Insane Asylum. Shortly
afterward, while still in the prison at Chicago, he wrote to Dr.
Talbot: "As you have been interested in my case from a scientific
point of view, there is a little something more I might tell you
about myself, but which I have withheld, because I was ashamed to
admit certain facts and features of my deplorable weakness. Among
the few sexual perverts I have known I have noticed that all are
in the habit of often closing the mouth with the lower lip
protruding beyond the upper. [Usually due to arrested development
of upper jaw.] I noticed the peculiarity in Mr. Clifford before
we became intimate, and I have often caught myself at the trick.
Before that operation my testicles would swell and become sore
and hurt me, and have seemed to do so since, just as a man will
sometimes complain that his amputated leg hurts him. Then, too,
my breasts would swell, and about the nipples would become hard
and sore and red. Since the operation there has never been a day
that I have been free from sharp, shooting pains down the abdomen
to the scrotum, being worse at the base of the penis. Now that my
fate is decided, I will say that really my passion for Mr.
Clifford is on the wane, but I don't know whether the improvement
is permanent or not. I have absolutely no passion for other men,
and have begun to hope now that I can yet outlive my desire for
Clifford, or at least control it. I have not yet told of this
improvement in my condition, because I wished people to still
think I was insane, so that I would be sure to escape being sent
to the penitentiary. I know I was insane at the time I tried to
kill both Clifford and myself, and feel that I don't deserve such
a dreadful punishment as being sent to a State prison. However, I
think it was that operation and my subsequent illness that caused
my insanity rather than passion for Clifford. I should very much
like to know if you really consider sexual perversion an
insanity."
When discharged from the Criminal Insane Asylum, Olmstead
returned to Chicago and demanded his testicles from the City
Postmaster, whom he accused of being in a systematized conspiracy
against him. He asserted that the postmaster was one of the chief
agents in a plot against him, dating from before the castration.
He was then sent to the Cook Insane Hospital. It seems probable
that a condition of paranoia is now firmly established.
The following cases are all bisexual, attraction being felt toward both
sexes, usually in predominant degree toward the male:--
HISTORY XXVII.--H.C., American, aged 28, of independent means,
unmarried, the elder of two children. His history may best be
given in his own words:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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