Thus a mild degree of masochism may arise from “bondage,”—become acquired; but genuine, complete, deep-rooted masochism, with its feverish longing for subjection from the time of earliest youth, is congenital.
The explanation of the origin of the infrequent perversion of fully developed masochism is most probably to be found in the assumption that it arises from the very frequent abnormality of “sexual bondage”; in that now and then this abnormality is hereditarily transferred to a psychopathic individual in such a way that it becomes transformed into a perversion. It has been previously shown how a slight displacement of the psychical element under consideration may effect this transition.
This transformation of the abnormality into the perversion, through hereditary transference, would take place very easily where the psychopathic constitution of the descendant presented the other factor of masochism,—i.e., what has been previously called its main root,—the tendency of sexually hyperæsthetic natures to assimilate all impressions coming from the beloved person with the sexual impression.
From these two elements,—from “sexual bondage” on the one hand, and from the above-mentioned disposition to sexual ecstasy, which apperceives even maltreatment with lustful emotion, on the other,—the roots of which may be traced back to the field of physiological facts, masochism arises on the basis of psychopathic predisposition; in that its sexual hyperæsthesia intensifies first all the physiological accessories of the vita sexualis and, finally, only its abnormal accompaniments, to the pathological degree of perversion.[1]
- ↑ If it be considered that, as shown above, “sexual bondage” is a phenomenon observed much more frequently and in a more pronounced degree in the female sex than in the male, the thought arises that masochism (if not always, at least as a rule) is an inheritance of the “bondage” of feminine experience. Thus it comes into a relation—though distant—with contrary sexual instinct, as a transference to the male of a perversion really belonging to the female. This conception of masochism as a rudimentary contrary sexual instinct, as a partial effemination, here affecting only the secondary sexual character of the vita sexualis (a theory still more unconditionally expressed in the sixth edition of this work) finds its support in the statements of the subjects of Case 44 and Case 50, who present other features of effemination, and give as their ideal a relatively old woman who seeks and wins them; and, further, in the fact that the (potent) masochist prefers the rôle of succubus, as shown by statements referring to this.
It must, however, be emphasized that “bondage” also plays no unimportant rôle in
