Page:Psychopathia Sexualis (tr. Chaddock, 1892).djvu/60

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PSYCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS.

doors are opened again, he is found lying on the bed exhausted. Besides this object of his passion, the patient had intercourse episodically with other servants. It is certain that he enticed them, asked them for kisses, exhibited himself, allowed manipulation ad genitalia, and practiced mutual masturbation. By these practices absolute demoralization was brought about. The family was powerless; for any opposition caused violent outbreaks of anger and even threats against his relatives. The patient was completely without appreciation of his perverse sexual acts; and therefore the only course left to the afflicted family was to remove all authority from his hands and place him in an asylum. No erotic inclination toward the opposite sex was observed, though the patient occupied a sleeping-apartment with his wife. With reference to the perverse sexuality and the defective moral sense of this unfortunate man, it is worthy of note that he questioned the servants of his daughter-in-law as to whether she had a lover.

B. Anæsthesia Sexualis (Absence of Sexual Feeling).

1. As a Congenital Anomaly.

Only those cases can be regarded as unquestionable examples of absence of sexual instinct dependent on cerebral causes, in which, in spite of generative organs normally developed and the performance of their functions (secretion of semen, menstruation), the corresponding emotions of sexual life are absolutely wanting. These functionally sexless individuals are seldom seen, and are, indeed, always persons having degenerative defects, and in whom other functional cerebral disturbances, states of psychical degeneration, and even anatomical signs of degeneration, are observed. Legrand du Saulle describes a classical case that falls under this head (Annales médico-psychol., May, 1876).

Case 3. D., aged 33, had a mother who suffered with insanity of persecution. The mother’s father also suffered with persecutory insanity, and committed suicide. Her mother was insane, and this woman’s mother became insane in the puerperal state. Three of her mother’s children died in babyhood, and those that lived longer had an abnormal character. As early as his thirteenth year, D. was troubled with the thought of becoming insane. At fourteen he attempted suicide. Later, vagabondage, and, as a soldier, repeated insubordination and crazy pranks. His intelligence was very limited; no sign of degeneration, genitals normal. At seventeen or eighteen he had emissions of semen, had never masturbated or had sexual feeling, and never had sought intercourse with women. Case 4. P., aged 36, common laborer, was received at my clinic in