A case mentioned by L. Meyer (Arch. f. Psych., Bd. i, p. 103) shows how female imbeciles may indulge in shameless prostitution and immorality.[1]
States of Acquired Mental Weakness.
The numerous anomalies of the vita sexualis in senile dementia have been described in the section on "General Pathology." In other conditions of acquired mental weakness,—those due to apoplexy; trauma capitis; to the secondary stages of psychoses; or to inflammatory processes in the cortex (lues, paretic dementia),—perversions of the sexual instinct seem to be infrequent; and here the immoral sexual acts seem to depend on abnormally increased or uninhibited sexual feeling, which, in itself, is not abnormal.
(1) Dementia Consecutive to Psychoses.
Casper (Klin. Novellen, Fall 31) reports a case that belongs here. It is that of a physician, aged 33, who attempted rape on a child. He was weakened mentally, as a result of hypochondriacal melancholia. He excused his deed in a very silly way, and had no appreciation of the moral and criminal meaning of the act, which was apparently the result of a sexual impulse that could not be controlled on account of his mental weakness.
Case 21, in Liman's Zweifelhafte Geisteszuständen, is an analogous case (dementia after melancholia; offense against morals by exhibition).
(2) Dementia After Apoplexy.
Case 149. B., aged 52. He passed through a cerebral attack, and was no longer able to carry on his business as a merchant.
One day, in the absence of his wife, he locked two girls in the house, gave them liquors to drink, and then carried out sexual acts with the children. He commanded them to say nothing, and went to his business. The medical expert established mental weakness, resulting from repeated apoplexies. B., who, up to this time, had been well-- ↑ V. Sander, Vierteljahrsschr. f. ger M., xviii, p. 31.—Casper, Klin. Novellen, Fall 27.
