Page:Psychopathia Sexualis (tr. Chaddock, 1892).djvu/115

Rh ejaculation. Long before this he had begun to satisfy himself with masturbation, and always during the act reveled in imaginary scenes of whipping. After growing up he twice visited brothels to have himself flogged by prostitutes. For this purpose he chose the prettiest girl he could find; but he was disappointed, and did not even have an erection, to say nothing of ejaculation. He recognized that the flagellation was subsidiary, and that the idea of subjection to the woman’s will was the important thing. He realized this on the second trial. When he had the “thought of subjection,” he was perfectly successful. In time, by straining his imagination with masochistic ideas, he performed coitus without flagellation; but he found little satisfaction in it; so that he performed sexual intercourse in a masochistic way. He found pleasure in masochistic scenes, in the sense of his original desire for flagellation, only when he was flagellated ad podicem, or, at least, only when he called up such a situation in imagination. At times of great excitability it was even sufficient if a pretty girl told stories of such scenes. He would thus have an orgasm, and usually ejaculation.

A very effectual fetichistic idea was early associated with this. He noticed that he was attracted and satisfied only by women wearing high heels and short jackets (“Hungarian fashion”). He does not know how he arrived at this fetichistic idea. Boys’ legs with high heels also pleased him, but this charm was purely æsthetic, without any sensual coloring; and he said he had never noticed anything homosexual in himself. The patient referred his fetichism to his partiality for calves (legs). He is charmed by ladies’ calves only when elegant shoes are on the feet. Nude legs—feminine nudity in general—do not in the least affect him sexually. A subordinate fetichistic idea for the patient is the masculine ear. It is a lustful pleasure for him to pet the ears of handsome men, i.e., men having beautiful ears. With men this pleasure is slight, but with women it gives him great enjoyment.

He also has a weakness for cats. He thinks them simply beautiful; and their movements are very attractive to him. The sight of a cat can raise him from a feeling of the deepest depression. Cats seem to him sacred; he sees something divine in them! He does not know the reason for this idiosyncrasy.

Of late he has also frequently had sadistic ideas about punishing boys. In these imaginary flagellations both men and women play a part, but particularly the latter; and then his enjoyment is much more intense.

The patient finds that, with that which he recognizes and feels as masochism, there is something else which he prefers to designate “pageism.”

While his masochistic fancies and acts are entirely of a coarse, sensual nature, his “pageism” consists of the idea of being a page to a beautiful girl. He conceives her as perfectly chaste, but piquant; his relation to her, that of a slave, but perfectly chaste,—a purely platonic