to the utter exclusion of all sensual cravings; and the notion
that the physical act of coitus was something degrading and
destructive of real love rather than its consummation was, of all
prejudices I have ever formed, the most difficult to escape--a
circumstance due, I suppose, to the fact that all I had ever been
taught on the subject tended to the complete divorce of what was
called "love" from what was stigmatized as a "base sensual
desire." Judging from my own experience and observation I should
say that "ideal love" is a mere surface feeling, bound to
disappear as soon as it has gained its object by arousing a
reciprocal interest on the part of the one to whom it is
directed. So little did I "materialize" the objects of my "love"
that I have never cared for kissing or the warm embraces in which
lovers usually indulge. I have never kissed but one girl, and her
with far too little enthusiasm to satisfy her. My last sweetheart
was a very passionate girl, the warmth of whose embraces was
somewhat torrid and, to me, both puzzling and annoying. The
intensity of feeling which demanded such strenuous expression was
beyond my knowledge of human nature. A somewhat peculiar
circumstance in connection with these experiences is the fact
that I often found myself trying to analyze my emotions with a
purely psychological interest while playing the part of the
intoxicated lover in his mistress's arms.
There is but little left to say on the subject of my sexual
development. During the last two or three years my knowledge of
the facts of the sexual life has been very greatly increased,
and I have become acquainted with phases of human nature which
were wholly unknown to me before. The part played by things
sexual in my life is still, I suppose, abnormally large; it is
undoubtedly the largest single interest, though my outer life is
determined almost wholly by other considerations.
Of course I know nothing of the effect which long-continued
masturbation may have had on my ability to perform normal coitus.
I do not think I am subject to any kind of sexual perversion, for
all my indulgence has been _faute de mieux_ and, at least since I
began masturbation, all my desires and erotic daydreams have had
to do only with normal coitus. The mystery which surrounds the
sexual act seems at times to be regaining its former influence
and power of fascination. I have no doubt, however, but that I
should be greatly disillusioned should I ever perform coitus; and
I greatly regret that I have not been able to test this
conviction and so round out and complete this
"history."
It may be worth while to say a word about my religious
experiences, as, in many cases, they are closely bound up with
the sexual impulse. I was never "converted," but on a dozen or
more occasions approached the crisis more or less closely. The
dominant emotion in these experiences was always fear, sometimes
with anger and despair intermixed in varying proportions. A
complete analysis of these experiences is, of course, impossible,
but the various pleasurable feelings of which converts spoke in
the revivals which I attended were a closed book to me. Following
my revival-meeting experiences came a few days spent in a sort of
moral exaltation during which I eschewed all my habits of which
conventional morality disapproved, save masturbation, and felt no
small satisfaction with my moral conditions. I became a
first-rate Pharisee. Toward the women who had figured in my day
dreams I suddenly conceived the chastest affection, resolutely
smothering every sensual thought and fancy when thinking of them,
and putting in place of these elements ideal love, self-sacrifice, knightly devotion--Sunday-school Garden-of-Eden
pictures with a mediæval, romantic coloring. These day-dreams
were always sexual, involving situations of extreme complexity
and monumental silliness. Masturbation was always continued and
usually with increased frequency. The end of these periods was
always abrupt and much like awaking from a dream in which the
dreamer has been behaving in a manner to arouse his own disgust.
They were followed by feelings of sheepishness and self-contempt
mingled with anger and a dislike of all things having to do with
religion. My inability to pass the conversion crisis and a
growing contempt for empty enthusiasm finally led me to a saner
attitude toward religion, from which I passed easily into
religious scepticism; and later the study of philosophy and
science, and particularly of psychology, banished the last
lingering remnant of faith in a supernatural agency and led me
to the passion for facts and indifference to values which have
caused me to be often called "dead to all morality."
HISTORY II.--C.A., aged 25, unmarried; tutor, preparing to take
Holy Orders:--
My paternal ancestry (which is largely Huguenot) is noteworthy
for its patriotism and its large families. My father, who died
when I was a year old, is remembered for the singular uprightness
and purity of his life from his earliest childhood.
The
photograph which I have shows him as possessed of a rare classic
beauty of features. He was an ideal husband and father. At the
time of his death he was a Master of Arts and a school principal.
My mother is an extraordinarily neurotic woman, yet famed among
her friends for her great domesticity, attachment to her
husbands, and an almost abnormal love of babies. She has nobly
borne the ill-treatment of her second husband, who for several
years has been in a state of melancholia. My mother has been
"highly-wrought" all her life, and has suffered intensely from
fears of all kinds. As a young girl she was somnambulistic, and
once fell down a stairhead during sleep. In spite of her bodily
sufferings with indigestion, eye-strain, and depression she
retains her youthfulness. She has slight powers of reasoning. She
has had times of unconsciousness and rigidity, I have never heard
any mention of epilepsy. She has a horror of showing prudishness
in regard to the healthful manifestations of sex life, and is
always praising examples of what she terms "a natural woman."
I have heard that during my first year my mother detected my
nurse in the act of putting a morphine powder on my tongue for
the purpose of keeping me quiet. I was subject to convulsions at
this period, and narrowly escaped a permanent hernia. My family
tell me that from the beginning I was a well-developed and boyish
boy, full of mischief, impulsive, good to look upon, unusually
affectionate, beloved by all.
In my third year I took pleasure in crawling under the bed with
my boy-cousin who was nine months my senior, and after we had
taken down our drawers, in kissing each other's nates. I do not
remember which of us first thought of this pastime.
At the age of 4 I gave myself a treat by gazing upward through a
cellar window at the nates of a woman who was defecating from
several feet above into a cesspool that lay beneath.
It was
during this summer also that I frightened myself by pulling back
my prepuce far enough to disclose the purple glans, which I had
never seen before. But this act gave me no desire to masturbate.
When 5 years old, and living in a great city, I drew indecent
pictures in company with a little girl and her younger brother.
These pictures represented men in the act of urinating. The
penes were drawn large, and the streams of urine plainly
indicated. One afternoon I induced the boy to go to the
bath-room, lie on his back, and allow me to perform _fellatio_ on
him. I did not ask him to return the favor. I remember the
curious tar-like smell of his clothing and the region about his
genitals. It is possible that I gained my knowledge of _fellatio_
from an unknown boy of 10, who had induced me, during the
preceding summer to enter a sandy lot with him, watch him
urinate, and then, kneeling before him, commit _fellatio_. A year
later, as I was walking home in the rain to our summer cottage,
with an open umbrella over my shoulder, a boy of 15, who was
leaning against our fence, exhibited a large, erect penis, and
when I had passed him urinated upon me and my umbrella. I never
saw the boy again. I felt peculiarly insulted by his act. Back of
the house there lived a 12-year-old boy who invited me to watch
him defecate in the outdoor privy, and during the act told me a
number of indecent stories and words which I cannot remember.
About this time I fell in love with a little Jewish boy next
door. Often I cried myself to sleep over the thought that perhaps
he was lying on a sofa alone and crying with a stomach-ache. I
longed to embrace him; and yet I saw little of him, and made
little of him when I was with him.
Living in a Western city a few months later, some girls of 12 and
14 led me to their barn, where they dressed themselves in boys'
clothing and made believe that they were cowboys.
One of them
told me to "shut my eyes, open my mouth, and get a surprise."
When I opened my eyes once more a piece of hen-dung lay in my
mouth. I have a vague remembrance of one of the girls asking me
to enter a water-closet with her. She uttered some indelicate
phrase, but I performed no act with her. In the house where I
lived I once entered the bedroom of a half-grown girl while she
was dressing. She knelt to kiss me innocently enough, and I, by a
sudden impulse, ran my hand between her bare neck and her corset
as far as I could reach. Apparently she took no notice of my
movement. Although I did not masturbate, yet during this winter I
experienced a tickling sensation about my genitals when I placed
my hand beneath them as I lay on my stomach in bed.
One evening I
pulled up my night-dress and, holding my penis in my hand, I
danced to and fro on the carpet. I imagined that I was one of a
line of naked men and women who were advancing toward another
similar line that faced them. I imagined myself as pleasurably
coming in contact with my female partner who possessed male
genitals.
The following summer I lived in the woods. My next-door playmate
was a little girl of my own age--6 years. She sat down before me
in the barn and exposed her genitals. This was the first time I
had seen female organs, or had thought for a moment that they
differed from my own. In great perplexity I asked the little
girl: "Has it been cut off?" She and I defecated in peach baskets
that we found in the upper part of the barn.
When I was 7 years old and back in the Eastern city I lived in
the house of a physician. Alone with his 3-year-old daughter one
day, I showed her my erect organ, and felt a delicious
gratification when she stroked it with the words:
"Nice! Nice!" I
confessed my fault to my guardian that night after I had said my
prayers. I had complained to my mother a year before of the
inconvenience I found in my penis being "so long sometimes." She
said that she would "see about having the end taken off." But I
was never circumcised. Her words gave me the doubly unpleasant
impression that my _glans_ was to be cut off.
There came occasionally to the kitchen of Dr. W.'s house a
foul-mouthed Irish laundress who used coarse language to me
concerning urination. I loathed the woman, and yet one night I
dreamed that I was embracing her naked form and rolling over and
over with her on the bed; and in spite of my sight of female
genitals a few months before, I thought of her as having organs
of my own kind and size. At my first school I watched a
red-haired boy of 12 expose the penis of a 7-year-old boy as he
lay on his back in the bath-room. I do not remember that the
sight gave me sexual pleasure.
I spent the summer before I was 8 in a double house.
The adopted
daughter of our neighbor (a neurotic, retired physician) was a
girl of 13 who had been taken from a poor laboring family. She
got me to show her my parts, touched them, and asked whether I
urinated from my scrotum. She also induced me to play with her
genitals as we sat on a sofa in the twilight, and to spank her
naked nates with the back of a hair-brush as she lay on a bed;
but from none of these performances did I derive physical
satisfaction. The girl E. and I took delight in
"talking dirty
secrets," as she expressed it. Her young cousin H.
(nephew of her
adopted mother) never heard me use the word "thing"
without
suggestively smiling. E. recalled the pleasant hours that she had
spent with her cousin when they were in their night-gowns. She
did not particularize these sexual relations. Under the
board-walk the boy H. and I once defecated in bottles. Some
little girls who lived opposite us pulled up their dresses one
night and "dared" each other to dance out beyond the end of the
house, in full view of the road. We boys merely looked on.
I now fell passionately in love with a remarkably handsome little
boy of my own age. I longed to kiss and hug him, but I did not
dare to do so, for he was haughty and intolerant of my
attentions. I even allowed him to stand with one foot on me and
remark in a loud tone: "I am Conqueror!" I endured no end of
petty insults and much ill-treatment from this boy.
I reached the
height of my passion on the night that he appeared at our
cottage in a tight-fitting suit of pepper-and-salt.
I gloried in
his perfect legs and besought my guardian that she would buy me a
similar suit of clothes.
For the summer after I was 8 years old I lived in a cottage in a
country town. The servant maid M. was a young girl of 16 who
listened eagerly to my accounts of the "secrets" and actions in
which the girl E. and I had taken delight a year before. I think
that M. arranged a meeting between a little black-haired girl and
me in order that we might take a walk and play sexually with each
other. Just as we were starting on our walk one of my relatives
said that I must not leave the yard.
The little girl and I had see-sawed together and I had been
interested in her legs as she rose in the air. (When I was 13
years old and see-sawing at a picnic with a stout girl, the
motion of the board and the sight of her straddled form filled me
with longing to embrace her sexually.) One afternoon M. took me
to the house of an acquaintance of hers. M's brother was in the
room and made a number of unremembered remarks which struck me as
being rather "free," and M. told me later that she and the girl
once dressed as ballet dancers and danced before M.'s brother. I
felt that he was lascivious. I was always remarkably intuitive.
I fell in love with a handsome, stout, black-haired boy who lived
on a farm; but he was not a "farmer's son" in the common sense of
the word. I visited him for two or three days, and we slept with
each other, to my boundless joy. For his freckled girl cousin I
did not care the turn of my wrist, although she was a nice enough
little thing. One night when we three lay on a bed in the dark,
and neither of us boys had eyes or words for her, she silently
left us. He and I never committed the slightest sexual fault. I
left him with tears at the summer-end, and I often kissed his
photograph during the following winter.
In the flat-house where I began to live when I was 8
years old, I
once practiced mutual tickling of a very slight character with a
boy of my own age. We sat on chairs placed opposite to each other
and we inserted our fingers through the openings in our trousers.
Just as we were beginning to enjoy the titillation we were
interrupted by the approach of one of my family who, however, was
not quick enough to discover us. Down cellar I often saw the
genitals of the janitor's little girls--they were fond of lifting
their skirts and they did not wear drawers--but I had no desire
to attempt conjunction. I once caught an older friend of mine (he
was 13) in the act of leaving one of the girls. The pair had been
in a coal-compartment. The boy was buttoning his trousers and I
guessed what he had been doing. When I began to sleep alone in my
tenth year I had no desire to masturbate, and was loath to do so
by reason of ample warnings given me by my guardian and by the
family physician. One afternoon a stunted friend of mine sat down
in the back yard and astonished me by tying a piece of string to
his penis. At a large private school which I now attended I made
the acquaintance of the principal's son, and wondered why he had
such a fancy for dressing his 5-year-old sister in boy's clothes.
He closed the door on me while he was thus engaged.
At my house
we went to the bath-room together, and he showed me his
circumcised and much-ridged penis. Neither of us made any mention
of masturbating.
At this period I fell slightly in love with a 5-year-old boy with
intensely black eyes. I would kiss him whenever we were alone,
but I had no wish to seduce him. I was always interested in
watching the urination of younger children. When I was 5 years
old I went on my knees to a strange little boy in order to
whisper in his ear an inquiry as to whether he wanted to urinate.
I experienced a pleasurable thrill when I was 10
years old in
leading a small girl cousin to the outdoor privy, in helping her
on and off the open seat, in buttoning and unbuttoning her
drawers, and in gazing at her vulva.
The summer before I was 10 I lived a wild life in the mountains.
My companions were a negro girl, the two daughters of a
clergyman, the two sons of a questionable woman hotel-keeper, and
the daughter of the Irish scavenger. All of these children were
extraordinarily sensual. Their leading pastime, from morning
until night, was varying forms of indecency, with the supreme
caress--which they termed "raising dickie"--as the most frequent
enjoyment. The 5-year-old daughter of the scavenger explained to
us how she had seen her father approaching her stout mother with
an erect penis, the pair standing up before the lamplight during
the act. This curly-headed, rosy-cheeked child handled her
genitals so much that they were inflamed. I once saw her sitting
in the road and rubbing dust against her vulva. I saw little of
the elder daughter of the minister (she was 12 years old). She
persuaded me to expose myself before her in the cellar of a
partially-built house. In return for my favor she allowed me to
look at her genitals. She did not ask for _conjunctio_. The two
younger daughters were my intimates. With the middle one I was
forever performing a weak conjunction that consisted in the
laying of my member against her vulva.
Notwithstanding all the
entreaties of my little friend, I could not be persuaded to
protrude my penis against her vagina; and not on one occasion can
I remember obtaining an erection or extreme pleasure. Up in the
garret she straddled slanting beams with her genitals exposed,
and I followed her example. The negro girl and my little friend
both urinated on a tent floor at my request. I did not fancy the
odor of a girl's genitals, nor the appearance of the vulva when
the labia were held apart.
The following summer, when I was almost 11, I took a long walk
one day with my old friend, the girl E. We entered a patch of
woods and ate our lunch, but no sense of sexual drawing toward
the girl came over me and she did not offer to entice me. I
slept with her boy-cousin one night, and her neuropathic aunt, a
retired lady physician, bothered us by repeatedly creeping into
our room. I felt intuitively that she was watching to see whether
we would commit mutual masturbation--which we had no thought of
doing. Three years before I had opened the door of her bedroom
suddenly and saw E.'s naked form. The physician had been
examining her, E. told me later. My guardian also annoyed me by
repeated warnings not to play with myself.
Just before I turned 11 I was sent to a small and so-called
"home" boarding-school. Eight of us lived in the smaller
dormitory. The matron roomed downstairs. There was no resident
master--a serious error. We small boys were told to strip one
evening. We were then tied neck-to-neck and made to dance a
"slave-dance," which was marked by no sexuality. A boy of 15, R.,
one afternoon gave me the astonishing information that my father
had taken a part in my procreation. Up to this moment I had known
only of the maternal offices, information of which had been
beautifully supplied to me by my guardian when I was 7 years old.
At that time I talked freely about the coming of a baby brother
in a distant city; I watched the construction of baby clothes; I
named the newcomer, and I was momentarily disappointed when he
proved to be a girl. This same R., a strong boy with a large
penis, got into the custom of lying in bed with me just before
lights were put out. He would read to himself and occasionally
pause to pump his penis and make with his lips the sound of a
laboring locomotive. I felt impelled to handle his organ, for I
was fascinated by its size, and stiffness, and warmth. Rarely he
would titillate my then small and unerect penis. R.
never
ejaculated when he was with me; hence not until my third year was
I acquainted with the appearance of a flow of semen.
Sometimes R.
would stop during his dressing to manipulate his penis, but was
such a picture of rosy health that I doubt whether he brought
himself often to ejaculation. R. told me that he had been to a
brothel where his genitals were examined to determine whether
they were large enough and not diseased. He also related how he
"played cow" with a girl of his own age, she consenting to
perform _fellatio_ upon him. A dark-skinned, unwashed, pimpled
but fairly vigorous boy of 16, with an irritable domineering
manner, told me the delights of coitus with a girl in a
bath-house, and I overheard his conversation with another "old"
boy concerning the purchase of a girl in a big city for the sum
of five dollars. No details were given.
I will now pass to my third year, when I was 13
years old. A
large, well-set-up boy of 16, A., became my idol.
His toleration
of my presence in his room filled me with endless love. When I
lied about a matter in which he was concerned, his denunciation
of me brought me to a state of shuddering and weeping
unspeakable. When our relations were established again A.
allowed me to creep into his bed after the lights were out, and
there I passionately embraced him, but without performing any
definite act. When I turned over on my side with my back to him
he drew my prepuce back and forth until I experienced orgasm, but
n