The sexual question : $b A scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological studyForel, Auguste
Science
The sexual question : $b A scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study
Forel, Auguste
Sex
Krafft-Ebing describes, as masked masochism, certain cases of
fetichism in which the nature of the fetich which causes sexual
excitation and the manner in which it is used prove a desire for
maltreatment and humiliation by a woman. This is especially the case
with shoe and foot fetichism. Among those who are affected with this
pathological specialty, voluptuous sensations are produced when they
are trodden on by a woman's shoes or feet. They even dream of women's
shoes and feet. Some of them put nails in their shoes, the pain of
which gives them voluptuous sensations. Lastly, the shoes alone,
especially when they touch the penis, are sufficient to excite their
sexual desire. Other masked masochists are excited by the secretions
or even excrements of women.
I have been consulted by a typical masochist, who, being very
religious, was convinced that his perverted sexual appetite was a sin.
He therefore married, thinking that God and repentance would change
him. But when married he naturally found himself absolutely impotent
and incapable of coitus.
If masochism is common in men, it is produced in women rather as an
exaggeration in the domain of her normal sexual sensations, for it is
to a great extent in harmony with her passive sexual role. Woman does
not like the weak man who submits to her. She prefers a master on whom
she can lean. In fact, normal women do not like their husbands to ask
advice from them too often, nor to be wanting in decision and
self-confidence. On the contrary they like them to be firm and even
somewhat imperious, provided they are not unkind. It is notorious that
many women like to be beaten by their husbands, and are not content
unless this is done. This appears to be especially common in Russia.
Accentuated forms of pathological masochism are, however, rare in
women.
Masochism presents a certain analogy with the religious ecstasy of
fakirs and flagellants who flog themselves. These individuals appear
to become exalted in a kind of ecstatic convulsion with the idea of
pleasing God or gaining Heaven by their martyrdom. We may add that,
like sadism, masochism occurs in sexual inverts, but always having the
same sex for its object. I know an old gentleman whose only pleasure
consisted in receiving a shower of blows: as a boy, like Rousseau he
tried by all kinds of ruses to obtain corporal punishment: when he
grew up this became impossible and he devised tricks to urge
schoolboys to fight each other, pretending to be angry and exciting
their spirit of contradiction: the boys then pretended to fight him,
and this sufficed for the rest of his life to excite erections and
seminal ejaculations. This gentleman was a lawyer and told me his
history, hoping that suggestion might cure him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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