Page:Psychopathia Sexualis (tr. Chaddock, 1892).djvu/181

Rh the individuals to commit crimes. These form the group of hair-despoilers.

Case 78. A hair-despoiler. P., aged 40, artistic locksmith, single. His father was temporarily insane, and his mother was very nervous. He developed well, and was intelligent; but he was early affected with tics and imperative ideas. He had never masturbated. He loved platonically, and often busied himself with matrimonial plans. He had coitus infrequently with prostitutes, but never felt satisfied with such intercourse—rather, disgusted. Three years ago he was overtaken by misfortune (financial ruin), and, besides, he had a febrile disease, with delirium. These things had a very bad effect on his hereditarily-predisposed nervous system. On August 28, 1889, P. was arrested at the Trocadero, in Paris, in flagranti, as he forcibly cut off a young girl’s hair. He was arrested with the hair in his hand and a pair of shears in his pocket. He excused himself on the ground of momentary mental confusion and an unfortunate, irresistible passion; he confessed that he had ten times cut off hair, which he took great delight in keeping at home. On searching his home, sixty-five switches and tresses of hair were found, assorted in packets. P. had already been once arrested, on December 15, 1886, under similar circumstances, but was released for lack of evidence.

P. states that, for the last three years, when he is alone in his room at night, he feels ill, anxious, excited, and dizzy, and then is troubled by the impulse to touch female hair. When it happened that he could actually take a young girl’s hair in his hand, he felt intensely excited sexually, and had erection and ejaculation without touching the girl in any