Page:Psychopathia Sexualis (tr. Chaddock, 1892).djvu/113

Rh ualis is the same. Coitus, which I have never performed, still seems to me a strange and unclean act. I learned about it from descriptions of sexual dissipations. My own sexual ideas seem natural, and do not in the least offend my sensitive taste. Their realization, as previously mentioned, for various reasons, leaves me unsatisfied. I am pleased with pretty girls and women of respectability, but for a long time I have ceased to approach them. I have never attained, not even partially, a direct, actual realization of my sexual fancy. As often as I have come into close relation with females, I have felt the woman’s will to be beneath mine, never vice versâ. I have never met a woman manifesting a desire of mastery in sexual things. Women who wish to rule in the household and exercise petticoat sovereignty are entirely different from my erotic ideals.

My whole personality presents many abnormalities besides the perversion of my vita sexualis; my neuropathic condition is expressed in many mental and physical symptoms. Besides, I think I recognize in myself an original abnormality of character in the nature of a resemblance to the feminine type; at least, I regard as of this nature my great weakness of will, and my great lack of courage in the presence of men and animals, which is in contrast with my coolness in the face of peril. My external appearance is entirely masculine.

The author of this autobiography also made me the following communication:—

“I always sought to find out whether the peculiar ideas that ruled me sexually were entertained by other men. Since the first stories about it accidentally came to my ears, I have sought everywhere to learn of it. Since it is really a process of inner consciousness, it is, of course, not easy to identify it, and it cannot always be done with certainty; but I assume the existence of masochism where I find perverse sexual acts that cannot be explained except by this dominating idea. I look upon this anomaly as wide-spread.

“I have heard numerous stories about it from prostitutes here in Berlin, and in Vienna; and I thus learned how numerous my fellow-sufferers are. I am always careful not to describe my own experiences, or ask whether they know of such; but I allow these persons to relate their experiences just as they will.

“Simple flagellation is so common that almost every prostitute is familiar with it; but cases of real masochism are very frequent. The men subject to this perversion submit themselves to the most refined cruelties. In this they always act the same farce with the instructed prostitutes,—humiliating subjection of the man, treading upon him, commands, threats, and scoldings that have been committed to memory; then flagellation, blows on various portions of the body, and all kinds of