III. Sexual Psychopathology

35. Under the name sexual psychopathology many defects are numbered which appear to affect sexual appetite itself. Accordingly:

In origin, these defects are not infrequently innate, that is, received from parents; but sometimes they are also due either to one's own sins or even to an accidental and inculpable event.

Moreover, they vary in manifold form and character. Let us enumerate the principal ones in a certain order:

36. In the first class we comprise defects which disclose a perverted subjective force of appetite. They are:

Paradoxism, when the appetite begins to rage at an unusual age; either it is too precocious - infantile paradoxism, before puberty and especially before the organs are developed - or it is too late - senile paradoxism.

Anesthesia or hypesthesia, when the appetite is shown to be either wholly absent or excessively weak. This defect occurs more frequently among women.

Hyperesthesia, which signifies excessive force of appetite. The insatiable fury of the man is called satyriasis, and that of the woman nymphomania.

The abuse of masturbation is often connected with excessive appetite; yet this abuse also often corrupts morals without a perverted appetite.

We can also refer to hyperesthesia the defect of those who are aroused by a very slight cause, or who, often because of depraved habits, think and speak about shameful things on almost every occasion and at every time. Forel also condemns this eroticism, La question sexuelle, pp. 127-128.

37. In the second class are comprised defects by which a man is so inclined that he is affected toward an object contrary to nature. This class of paresthesia or perversion is properly called inversion.

They either take delight only in their own body - these are rare - and are called narcissists.

Or they are lovers of their own sex: they are called homosexuals ¹, or tribades, according as men or women are in question. The men are also said to be devoted to Greek love; the women, to be affected by Lesbian or Sapphic love.

¹ There are some, for example Dr. Gemelli, who apply the name homosexuality to the more benign forms of this perversion, and call pederasty the affection which reaches all the way to sodomy.

The common name of sodomy, or also of uranism, falls upon this vice.

Those, moreover, who strive to fulfill their lust with boys are properly called pederasts; while the adolescent males themselves who permit the turpitude upon themselves are strictly called molles ("soft ones"; mignons, "favorites").

Or they are affected toward animals and have a bestial appetite.

38. In a third class, which is also one of paresthesia, we comprise unusual manners which either suffice for fulfilling lust or are extraordinary means of exciting the normal or irregular appetite.

To these forms of vice we ascribe:

Symbolism, which uses, as it were, symbols for fulfilling lust. That is, rather than the person, it seeks a sign or indication, sometimes wonderfully selected.

Thus fetishism, which finds libidinous pleasure in cutting and preserving a woman's hair, in contemplating the legs of infants or another's impurity, or in possessing certain things, for example shoes, and rests in it, desiring nothing further.

So also exhibitionism, which impels one to exhibit obscene things to the other sex.

To a similar class we ascribe sadism, which joins a certain cruelty with pleasure;

and masochism, which, as if contrary to sadism, seeks humiliations and pains of one's own ². It is sometimes called passive algolagnia or painful lubricity ³.

² Sadism is named from the famous Marquis de Sade, who indulged in it and described his own turpitudes; Krafft-Ebing invented the name masochism because the writer Sacher-Masoch had described this vice.

³ Gemelli, Non moechaberis, p. 236.

Here also belongs fetishism of another kind, in which the one who suffers from it needs certain things to be seen or handled in order that his sexual appetite may be aroused. Akin to him is the one who is aroused by smell alone.

One suffers from an almost contrary defect who is calmed by a touch by which others would be aroused ⁴.

⁴ On these matters, compare Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia sexualis; and Moll, pp. 192, 197, 198, 605-607.

39. - Note well. 1. Confusion must be avoided here. For often either masturbation is practiced, or a person of the same sex or even an animal is sought, because an opportunity for the other sex is not available. No corruption of appetite is then contained or manifested in these defects.

2. There are not wanting vicious persons who join homosexual appetites with ordinary ones. Hence fornication does not free one from pederasty.