FETICHISM.
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school the patient was not very diligent; he was never able to concentrate his attention on any one subject for any length of time; on the other hand, from childhood he had a great inclination for music. His temperament was always nervous.
In August, 1890, he came to me complaining of headache and abdominal pain, which in every way gave the impression of being neurasthenic. The patient also said he was destitute of energy. Only after accurately directed questions did the patient make the following statements concerning his sexual life. As far as he could remember, the beginnings of sexual excitement occurred in his seventh year. Whenever he saw a boy of his own age urinate and caught sight of his genitals, he became lustfully excited. L. states with certainty that this excitement was associated with very evident erections. Led astray by another boy, L. learned to masturbate at the age of seven or eight. “Being of a very excitable nature,” said L., “I practiced masturbation very frequently until my eighteenth year, without gaining any clear idea of the evil results or the meaning of the practice.” He was particularly fond of practicing mutual onanism with some of his school-friends, but it was by no means an indifferent matter who the other boy was; on the contrary, only a few of his companions could satisfy him in this respect. To the question as to what particularly caused him to prefer this or that boy, L. replied that a white, beautifully-formed hand in his school-fellows impelled him to practice mutual onanism with them. L. further remembered that frequently, at the beginning of the gymnastic lesson, he would exercise by himself on a bar standing apart. He did this for the purpose of exciting himself as much as possible; and he was so successful that, without using his hand and without ejaculation,—L. was still too young,—he had lustful pleasure. Another early event which L. remembers is interesting. One day his favorite companion, N., who practiced mutual onanism with him, proposed that L. should try to get hold of his (N.’s) penis, and he would do all he could to prevent it. L. acquiesced. In this way the onanism was directly combined with a struggle between both parties, in which N. was always overcome. The struggle always finally ended in N.’s being compelled to allow L. to practice onanism on him. L. assured me that this kind of masturbation had given him, as well as N., especial pleasure.[1] In this way L. continued to practice masturbation very frequently until his eighteenth year. Warned by a friend, he then began to struggle with all his might against his evil habit. He became more and more successful, and finally, after the first performance of coitus, he stopped the practice of onanism entirely. But this was only accomplished in his twenty-second year. It now seems incomprehensible to the patient—and he says he is filled with disgust at the thought of it—how he could ever have found pleasure in- ↑ A kind of rudimentary sadism in L. and masochism in N.
