Page:Psychopathia Sexualis (tr. Chaddock, 1892).djvu/164

146 Thus a mild degree of masochism may arise from “bondage,”—become acquired; but genuine, complete, deep-rooted masochism, with its feverish longing for subjection from the time of earliest youth, is congenital.

The explanation of the origin of the infrequent perversion of fully developed masochism is most probably to be found in the assumption that it arises from the very frequent abnormality of “sexual bondage”; in that now and then this abnormality is hereditarily transferred to a psychopathic individual in such a way that it becomes transformed into a perversion. It has been previously shown how a slight displacement of the psychical element under consideration may effect this transition.

This transformation of the abnormality into the perversion, through hereditary transference, would take place very easily where the psychopathic constitution of the descendant presented the other factor of masochism,—i.e., what has been previously called its main root,—the tendency of sexually hyperæsthetic natures to assimilate all impressions coming from the beloved person with the sexual impression.

From these two elements,—from “sexual bondage” on the one hand, and from the above-mentioned disposition to sexual ecstasy, which apperceives even maltreatment with lustful emotion, on the other,—the roots of which may be traced back to the field of physiological facts, masochism arises on the basis of psychopathic predisposition; in that its sexual hyperæsthesia intensifies first all the physiological accessories of the vita sexualis and, finally, only its abnormal accompaniments, to the pathological degree of perversion.