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Cases occur, however, in which passive flagellation alone constitutes the entire content of the masochistic fancies, without other ideas of humiliation, etc., and without any clear consciousness of the real nature of this expression of submission. Such cases are difficult to differentiate from those of simple reflex flagellation. A knowledge of the primary origin of the desire, before any experience of reflex stimuli (v. supra, under “first”), is the only thing that makes the differential diagnosis certain; taken with the circumstance that genuine masochists are perverse in their youth, and that the realization of their desires usually comes late, or undeceives them (v. supra, under “thirdly”); for the whole thing, for the most part, belongs to the sphere of the imagination.

The following case is of this nature:—

Case 49. Autobiography.—In January, 1891, I received the following letter from a gentleman in Hungary: “In depression and despair of a life that shuts me out from all that makes human happiness, I come to you with the last gleam of hope of rescue from a condition which, if it continue, can end only tragically.