FETICHISM.
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fear of detection. The medico-legal opinion rightly gave weight to the congenital mental enfeeblement and the pernicious influence of masturbation, and referred the abnormal impulses to a perverse sexual impulse, calling attention to the presence of an interesting and well-known physiological connection between the olfactory and sexual senses. The inability to resist the pathological impulse was recognized. X. was not punished. (Zippe, Wiener Med. Wochenschrift, 1879, Nr. 23.)
I am indebted to the kindness of Dr. Fritsch, of Vienna, for further facts concerning this handkerchief-fetichist, who was again arrested in August, 1890, in the act of taking a handkerchief from a lady’s pocket:—
On searching his house, four hundred and forty-six ladies’ handkerchiefs were found. He stated that he had burned besides two bundles of them. In the course of the examination, it was further shown that X. had been punished with imprisonment for fourteen days, in 1883, for stealing twenty-seven handkerchiefs, and again with imprisonment for three weeks, in 1886, for a similar crime. Concerning his relatives, nothing more could be learned than that his father was subject to congestions, and that a brother’s daughter was weak-minded and constitutionally neuropathic. X. had married in 1879, and embarked in an independent business, and in 1881 he made an assignment. Soon after that, his wife, who could not live with him, and with whom he did not perform his marital duty (denied by X.), demanded a divorce. Thereafter he lived as assistant baker to his brother. He complained bitterly of an impulse for ladies’ handkerchiefs, but when opportunity offered, unfortunately, he could not resist it. In the act he experienced a feeling of delight, and felt as if some one were forcing him to it. Sometimes he could restrain himself, but, when the lady was pleasing to him, he yielded to the first impulse. He would be wet with sweat, partly from fear of detection, and partly on account of the impulse to perform the act. He says he has been sensually excited, by the sight of handkerchiefs belonging to women, since puberty. He cannot recall the exact circumstances of this fetichistic association. The sensual excitement, occasioned by the sight of a lady with a handkerchief hanging out of her pocket, had constantly increased. This had repeatedly caused erection, but never ejaculation. After his twenty-first year, he says, he had inclination to normal sexual indulgence, and had coitus without difficulty without ideas of handkerchiefs. With increasing fetichism, the appropriation of handkerchiefs had afforded him much more satisfaction than coitus. The appropriation of the handkerchief of a lady attractive to him was the same to him as intercourse with her would have been. In the act he had true orgasm.
If he could not gain possession of the handkerchief he desired, he
