with joy and excitement as they sank into each other’s arms, and became inseparable. The husband saw that this friendly relation was a peculiar one, and hastened their departure. He had an opportunity to ascertain, through the correspondence of his wife with this friend, that the letters interchanged were like those of two lovers.
Mrs. R. became pregnant. During pregnancy the remains of depression and imperative ideas disappeared. In September, during about the ninth week of pregnancy, abortion took place. After that, renewed symptoms of hystero-neurasthenia. In addition to this, there were anteflexio et latero-positio dextra uteri, anæmia, and atonia ventriculi.
At the consultation the patient gave the impression of a very neuropathic, tainted person. The neuropathic expression of the eyes cannot be described. Appearance entirely feminine. With the exception of a very narrow, arched palate, there was no skeletal abnormality. With difficulty the patient could be brought to give the details of her sexual abnormality. She complained that she had married without knowing what marriage between men and women was. She loved her husband dearly for his mental qualities, but marital intercourse was a pain to her; she did it unwillingly, without ever finding any satisfaction in it. Post actum, all day long she was weary and exhausted. Since the abortion and the interdiction of sexual intercourse by the physicians, she had been better; but she thought of the future with horror. She esteemed her husband, and loved him mentally; but she would do anything for him, if he would but avoid her sexually in the future. She hoped to have sensual feeling for him in time. When he played the violin, she seemed to feel the beginning of an inclination for him that was something more than friendship; but it was only transitory, and she could get no assurance for the future in it. Her greatest happiness was in correspondence with her former lover. She felt that this was wrong, but she could not give it up; for to do so made her miserable.It is remarkable that the anomaly may be long limited to mere perversion of the sexual instinct, and that the impulse to perverse indulgence may make its appearance after some accidental cause,—e.g., seduction, or some neurosis. Such cases might easily be mistaken for acquired contrary sexual instinct (v. supra), if, with reference to the sexual feeling, they should not be demonstrated by the history to be original and congenital.
