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possible. When at last it occurred it would be an unspeakable joy
for me to watch the fæces--which would have to be fairly
firm--emerging from the anus."
X. would like to be a teacher and thinks he could exert a
beneficial influence on boys. In spite of the pain he has
suffered he does not think he would like to be cured of his
perverse inclinations, for they have given him joy as well as
pain, and the pain has chiefly been owing to the fact that he
could not gratify his inclinations. X. smokes and drinks in
moderation, and has no feminine habits. (The foregoing is a
condensed summary of the case which is fully reported by Moll,
_Konträre Sexualempfindung_, third edition, pp. 295-305.)
The case of coprolagnia communicated to me is that of a married
man, normal in all other respects, intellectually brilliant and
filling successfully a very responsible position.
When a child
the women of his household were always indifferent as to his
presence in their bedrooms, and would satisfy all natural calls
without reserve before him. He would dream of this with
erections. His sexual interests became slowly centered in the act
of defecation, and this fetich throughout life never appealed to
him so powerfully as when associated with the particular type of
household furniture which was used for this purpose in his own
house. The act of defecation in the opposite sex or anything
pertaining to or suggesting the same caused uncontrollable sexual
excitement; the nates also exerted a great attraction. The alvine
excreta exerted this influence even in the absence of the woman;
it was, however, necessary that she should be a sexually
desirable person. The perversion in this case was not complete;
that is to say, that the excitement produced by the act of
defecation or the excretion itself was not actually preferred to
coitus; the sexual idea was normal coitus in the normal manner,
but preceded by the visual and olfactory enjoyment of the
exciting fetich. When coitus was not possible the enjoyment of
the fetich was accompanied by masturbation (as in the analogous
case of urolagnia in a woman summarized on p. 62.) On one
occasion he was discovered by a friend in a bedroom belonging to
a woman, engaged in the act of masturbation over a vessel
containing the desired fetich. In an agony of shame he begged the
mercy of silence concerning this episode, at the same time
revealing his life-history. He has constantly been haunted by the
dread of detection, as well as by remorse and the consciousness
of degradation, also by the fear that his unconquerable obsession
may lead him to the asylum.
The scatalogic groups of sexual perversions, urolagnia and coprolagnia, as
may be sufficiently seen in this brief summary, are not merely olfactory
fetiches. They are, in a larger proportion of cases, dynamic symbols, a
preoccupation with physiological acts which, by associations of contiguity
and still more of resemblance, have gained the virtue of stimulating in
slight cases, and replacing in more extreme cases, the normal
preoccupation with the central physiological act itself.
We have seen that
there are various considerations which amply suffice to furnish a basis
for such associations. And when we reflect that in the popular mind, and
to some extent in actual fact, the sexual act itself is, like urination
and defecation, an excretory act, we can understand that the true
excretory acts may easily become symbols of the pseudo-excretory act. It
is, indeed, in the muscular release of accumulated pressures and tensions,
involved by the act of liberating the stored-up excretion, that we have
the closest simulacrum of the tumescence and detumescence of the sexual
process.[32]
In this way the erotic symbolism of urolagnia and coprolagnia is
completely analogous with that dynamic symbolism of the clinging and
swinging garments which Herrick has so accurately described, with the
complex symbolism of flagellation and its play of the rod against the
blushing and trembling nates, with the symbols of sexual strain and stress
which are embodied in the foot and the act of treading.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] Fuchs (_Das Erotische Element In der Karikatur_, p.
26),
distinguishing sharply between the "erotic" and the
"obscene," reserves
the latter term exclusively for the representation of excretory organs and
acts. He considers that this is etymologically the most exact usage.
However that may be, it seems to me that, in any case,
"obscene" has
become so vague a term that it is now impracticable to give it a
restricted and precise sense.
[25] In this connection we may profitably contemplate the hand and recall
the vast gamut of functions, sacred and profane, which that organ
exercises. Many savages strictly reserve the left hand to the lowlier
purposes of life; but in civilization that is not considered necessary,
and it may be wholesome for some of us to meditate on the more humble uses
of the same hand which is raised in the supreme gesture of benediction and
which men have often counted it a privilege to kiss.
[26] See, e.g., Morselli, _Una Causa di Nullità del Matrimonio_, 1902, p.
39.
[27] Féré, _Comptes-Rendus Société de Biologie_, July 23, 1904.
[28] Transactions of the International Medical Congress, Moscow, vol. iv,
p. 19. A similar symbolism may be traced in many of the cases in which the
focus of modesty becomes in modest women centered in the excretory sphere
and sometimes exaggerated to the extent of obsession. It must not be
supposed, however, that every obsession in this sphere has a symbolical
value of an erotic kind. In the case, for instance, which has been
recorded by Raymond and Janet (_Les Obsessions_, vol.
ii, p. 306) of a
woman who spent much of her time in the endeavor to urinate perfectly,
always feeling that she failed in some respect, the obsession seems to
have risen fortuitously on a somewhat neurotic basis without reference to
the sexual life.
[29] _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Part III, Section II, Mem.
III, Subs. I.
[30] It may be remarked here that while the eating of excrement (apart
from its former use as a magic charm and as a therapeutic agent) is in
civilization now confined to sexual perverts and the insane, among some
animals it is normal as a measure of hygiene in relation to their young.
Thus, as, e.g., the Rev. Arthur East writes, the mistle thrush swallows
the droppings of its young. (_Knowledge_, June 1, 1899, p. 133.) In the
dog I have observed that the bitch licks her puppies shortly after birth
as they urinate, absorbing the fluid.
[31] See, e.g., the previous volume of these _Studies_,
"Sexual Selection
in Man," pp. 165 et seq., and Dühren, _Geschlechtsleben in England_, bd.
ii, pp. 258, et seq.
[32] In the study of _Love and Pain_ in a previous volume (p. 130) I have
quoted the remarks of a lady who refers to the analogy between sexual
tension and vesical tension--"Cette volupté que ressentent les bords de la
mer, d'être toujours pleins sans jamais déborder"--and its erotic
significance.
IV.
Animals as Sources of Erotic Symbolism--Mixoscopic Zoophilia--The
Stuff-fetichisms--Hair-fetichism--The Stuff-fetichisms Mainly on a Tactile
Base--Erotic Zoophilia--Zooerastia--Bestiality--The Conditions that Favor
Bestiality--Its Wide Prevalence Among Primitive Peoples and Among
Peasants--The Primitive Conception of Animals--The Goat-
-The Influence of
Familiarity with Animals--Congress Between Women and Animals--The Social
Reaction Against Bestiality.
The erotic symbols with which we have so far been concerned have in every
case been portions of the body, or its physiological processes, or at
least the garments which it has endowed with life. The association on
which the symbol has arisen has in every case been in large measure,
although not entirely, an association of contiguity. It is now necessary
to touch on a group of sexual symbols in which the association of
contiguity with the human body is absent: the various methods by which
animals or animal products or the sight of animal copulation may arouse
sexual desire in human persons. Here we encounter a symbolism mainly
founded on association by resemblance; the animal sexual act recalls the
human sexual act; the animal becomes the symbol of the human being.
The group of phenomena we are here concerned with includes several
subdivisions. There is first the more or less sexual pleasure sometimes
experienced, especially by young persons, in the sight of copulating
animals. This I would propose to call Mixoscopic Zoophilia; it falls
within the range of normal variation. Then we have the cases in which the
contact of animals, stroking, etc., produces sexual excitement or
gratification; this is a sexual fetichism in the narrow sense, and is by
Krafft-Ebing termed _Zoophilia Erotica_. We have, further, the class of
cases in which a real or simulated sexual intercourse with animals is
desired. Such cases are not regarded as fetichism by Krafft-Ebing,[33]
but they come within the phenomena of erotic symbolism as here understood.
This class falls into two divisions: one in which the individual is fairly
normal, but belongs to a low grade of culture; the other in which he may
belong to a more refined social class, but is affected by a deep degree of
degeneration. In the first case we may properly apply the term bestiality;
in the second case it may perhaps be better to use the term _zooerastia_,
proposed by Krafft-Ebing.[34]
Among children, both boys and girls, it is common to find that the
copulation of animals is a mysteriously fascinating spectacle. It is
inevitable that this should be so, for the spectacle is more or less
clearly felt to be the revelation of a secret which has been concealed
from them. It is, moreover, a secret of which they feel intimate
reverberations within themselves, and even in perfectly innocent and
ignorant children the sight may produce an obscure sexual excitement.[35]
It would seem that this occurs more frequently in girls than in boys. Even
in adult age, it may be added, women are liable to experience the same
kind of emotion in the presence of such spectacles. One lady recalls, as a
girl, that on several occasions an element of physical excitement entered
into the feelings with which she watched the coquetry of cats. Another
lady mentions that at the age of about 25, and when still quite ignorant
of sexual matters, she saw from a window some boys tickling a dog and
inducing sexual excitement in the animal; she vaguely divined what they
were doing, and though feeling disgust at their conduct she at the same
time experienced in a strong degree what she now knows was sexual
excitement. The coupling of the larger animals is often an impressive and
splendid spectacle which is far, indeed, from being obscene, and has
commended itself to persons of intellectual distinction;[36] but in young
or ill-balanced minds such sights tend to become both prurient and morbid.
I have already referred to the curious case of a sexually hyperæsthetic
nun who was always powerfully excited by the sight or even the
recollection of flies in sexual connection, so that she was compelled to
masturbate; this dated from childhood. After becoming a nun she recorded
having had this experience, followed by masturbation, more than four
hundred times.[37] Animal spectacles sometimes produce a sexual effect on
children even when not specifically sexual; thus a correspondent, a
clergyman, informs me that when a young and impressionable boy, he was
much affected by seeing a veterinary surgeon insert his hand and arm into
a horse's rectum, and dreamed of this several times afterward with
emissions.
While the contemplation of animal coitus is an easily intelligible and in
early life, perhaps, an almost normal symbol of sexual emotion, there is
another subdivision of this group of animal fetichisms which forms a more
natural transition from the fetichisms which have their center in the
human body: the stuff-fetichisms, or the sexual attraction exerted by
various tissues, perhaps always of animal origin. Here we are in the
presence of a somewhat complicated phenomenon. In part we have, in a
considerable number of such cases, the sexual attraction of feminine
garments, for all such tissues are liable to enter into the dress. In
part, also, we have a sexual perversion of tactile sensibility, for in a
considerable proportion of these cases it is the touch sensations which
are potent in arousing the erotic sensations. But in part, also, it would
seem, we have here the conscious or subconscious presence of an animal
fetich, and it is notable that perhaps all these stuffs, and especially
fur, which is by far the commonest of the groups, are distinctively animal
products. We may perhaps regard the fetich of feminine hair--a much more
important and common fetich, indeed, than any of the stuff fetichisms--as
a link of transition. Hair is at once an animal and a human product, while
it may be separated from the body and possesses the qualities of a stuff.
Krafft-Ebing remarks that the senses of touch, smell, and hearing, as well
as sight, seem to enter into the attraction exerted by hair.
The natural fascination of hair, on which hair-fetichism is
founded, begins at a very early age. "The hair is a special
object of interest with infants," Stanley Hall concludes, "which
begins often in the latter part of the first year.... The hair,
no doubt, gives quite unique tactile sensations, both in its own
roots and to hands, and is plastic and yielding to the motor
sense, so that the earliest interest may be akin to that in fur,
which is a marked object in infant experience. Some children
develop an almost fetichistic propensity to pull or later to
stroke the hair or beard of every one with whom they come in
contact." (G. Stanley Hall, "The Early Sense of Self," _American
Journal of Psychology_, April, 1898, p. 359.) It should be added that the fascination of hair for the infantile
and childish mind is not necessarily one of attraction, but may
be of repulsion. It happens here, as in the case of so many
characteristics which are of sexual significance, that we are in
the presence of an object which may exert a dynamic emotional
force, a force which is capable of repelling with the same energy
that it attracts. Féré records the instructive case of a child of
3, of psychopathic heredity, who when he could not sleep was
sometimes taken by his mother into her bed. One night his hand
came in contact with a hairy portion of his mother's body, and
this, arousing the idea of an animal, caused him to leap out of
the bed in terror. He became curious as to the cause of his
terror and in time was able to observe "the animal,"
but the
train of feelings which had been set up led to a life-long
indifference to women and a tendency to homosexuality. It is
noteworthy that he was attracted to men in whom the hair and
other secondary sexual characters were well developed. (Féré,
_L'Instinct Sexuel_, second edition, pp. 262-267.) As a sexual fetich hair strictly belongs to the group of parts of
the body; but since it can be removed from the body and is
sexually effective as a fetich in the absence of the person to
whom it belongs, it is on a level with the garments which may
serve in a similar way, with shoes or handkerchiefs or gloves.
Psychologically, hair-fetichism presents no special problem, but
the wide attraction of hair--it is sexually the most generally
noted part of the feminine body after the eyes--and the peculiar
facility with which when plaited it may be removed, render
hair-fetichism a sexual perversion of specially great
medico-legal interest.
The frequency of hair-fetichism, as well as of the natural
admiration on which it rests, is indicated by a case recorded by
Laurent. "A few years ago," he states, "one constantly saw at the
Bal Bullier, in Paris, a tall girl whose face was lean and bony,
but whose black hair was of truly remarkable length.
She wore it
flowing down her shoulders and loins. Men often followed her in
the street to touch or kiss the hair. Others would accompany her
home and pay her for the mere pleasure of touching and kissing
the long black tresses. One, in consideration of a relatively
considerable sum, desired to pollute the silky hair.
She was
obliged to be always on her guard, and to take all sorts of
precautions to prevent any one cutting off this ornament, which
constituted her only beauty as well as her livelihood." (E.
Laurent, _L'Amour Morbide_, 1891, p. 164; also the same author's
_Fétichistes et Erotomanes_, p. 23.)
The hair despoiler (_Coupeur des Nattes_ or _Zopfabschneider_)
may be found in any civilized country, though the most carefully
studied cases have occurred in Paris. (Several medico-legal
histories of hair-despoilers are summarized by Krafft-Ebing, _Op.
cit._, pp. 329-334). Such persons are usually of nervous
temperament and bad heredity; the attraction to hair occasionally
develops in early life; sometimes the morbid impulse only appears
in later life after fever. The fetich may be either flowing hair
or braided hair, but is usually one or the other, and not both.
Sexual excitement and ejaculation may be produced in the act of
touching or cutting off the hair, which is subsequently, in many
cases, used for masturbation. As a rule the hair-despoiler is a
pure fetichist, no element of sadistic pleasure entering into his
feelings. In the case of a "capillary kleptomaniac"
in Chicago--a
highly intelligent and athletic married young man of good
family--the impulse to cut off girls' braids appeared after
recovery from a severe fever. He would gaze admiringly at the
long tresses and then clip them off with great rapidity; he did
this in some fifty cases before he was caught and imprisoned. He
usually threw the braids away before he reached home. (_Alienist
and Neurologist_, April, 1889, p. 325.) In this case there is no
history of sexual excitement, probably because no proper
medico-legal examination was made. (It may be added that
hair-despoilers have been specially studied by Motet, "Les
Coupeurs de Nattes," _Annales d'Hygiène_, 1890.) The stuff-fetiches are most usually fur and velvet; feathers, silk, and
leathers also sometimes exert this influence; they are all, it will be
noted, animal substances.[38] The most interesting is probably fur, the
attraction of which is not uncommon in association with passive
algolagnia. As Stanley Hall has shown, the fear of fur, as well as the
love of it, is by no means uncommon in childhood; it may appear even in
infancy and in children who have never come in contact with animals.[39]
It is noteworthy that in most cases of uncomplicated stuff-fetichism the
attraction apparently arises on a congenital basis, as it appears in
persons of nervous or sensitive temperament at an early age and without
being attached to any definite causative incident. The sexual excitation
is nearly always produced by the touch rather than by the sight. As we
found, when dealing with the sense of touch in the previous volume, the
specific sexual sensations may be regarded as a special modification of
ticklishness. The erotic symbolism in the case of these stuff-fetichisms
would seem to be a more or less congenital perversion of ticklishness in
relation to specific animal contacts.
A further degree of perversion in this direction is reached in a case of
erotic _zoophilia_, recorded by Krafft-Ebing.[40] In this case a
congenital neuropath, of good intelligence but delicate and anæmic, with
feeble sexual powers, had a great love of domestic animals, especially
dogs and cats, from an early age; when petting them he experienced sexual
emotions, although he was innocent in sexual matters. At puberty he
realized the nature of his feelings and tried to break himself of his
habits. He succeeded, but then began erotic dreams accompanied by images
of animals, and these led to masturbation associated with ideas of a
similar kind. At the same time he had no wish for any sort of sexual
intercourse with animals, and was indifferent as to the sex of the animals
which attracted him; his sexual ideals were normal. Such a case seems to
be fundamentally one of fetichism on a tactile basis, and thus forms a
transition between the stuff-fetichisms and the complete perversions of
sexual attraction toward animals.
In some cases sexually hyperæsthetic women have informed me that
sexual feeling has been produced by casual contact with pet dogs
and cats. In such cases there is usually no real perversion, but
it seems probable that we may here have an occasional foundation
for the somewhat morbid but scarcely vicious excesses of
affection which women are apt to display towards their pet dogs
or cats. In most cases of this affection there is certainly no
sexual element; in the case of childless women, it may rather be
regarded as a maternal than as an erotic symbolism.
(The excesses
of this non-erotic zoophilia have been discussed by Féré,
_L'Instinct Sexuel_, second edition, pp. 166-171.) Krafft-Ebing considers that complete perversion of sexual attraction
toward animals is radically distinct from erotic _zoophilia_. This view
cannot be accepted. Bestiality and _zooerastia_ merely present in a more
marked and profoundly perverted form a further degree of the same
phenomenon which we meet with in erotic _zoophilia_; the difference is
that they occur either in more insensitive or in more markedly degenerate
persons.
A fairly typical case of _zooerastia_ has been recorded in America by
Howard, of Baltimore. This was the case of a boy of 16, precociously
mature and fairly bright. He was, however, indifferent to the opposite
sex, though he had ample opportunity for gratifying normal passions. His
parents lived in the city, but the youth had an inordinate desire for the
country and was therefore sent to school in a village.
On the second day
after his arrival at school a farmer missed a sow which was found secreted
in an outhouse on the school grounds. This was the first of many similar
incidents in which a sow always took part. So strong was his passion that
on one occasion force had to be used to take him away from the sow he was
caressing. He did not masturbate, and even when restrained from
approaching sows he had no sexual inclination for other animals. His
nocturnal pollutions, which were frequent, were always accompanied by
images of wallowing swine. Notwithstanding careful treatment no cure was
effected; mental and physical vigor failed, and he died at the age of
23.[41]
It is, however, somewhat doubtful whether we can always or even usually
distinguish between zooerastia and bestiality. Dr. G.F.
Lydston, of