Page:Psychopathia Sexualis (tr. Chaddock, 1892).djvu/196

178 man, who was exclusively controlled by the thought that he had made his wife unhappy.

Case 88. X., aged 24, from a badly-tainted family (mother’s brother and grandfather insane, one sister epileptic, another sister subject to migraine, parents of excitable temperament). During dentition he had had convulsions. At the age of seven he was taught to masturbate by a servant-girl. X. first experienced pleasure in these manipulations when this girl occasionally stroked his penis with her foot with her shoe on. Thus, in the predisposed boy, an association was established, as a result of which, from that time on, merely the sight of women’s shoes, and, finally, merely the idea of them, sufficed to induce sexual excitement and erection. He now masturbated while looking at women’s shoes, or while calling them up in imagination. At school the teacher’s shoes excited him intensely, and in general he was affected by shoes that were partly concealed by female garments. One day he could not keep from grasping the teacher’s shoes,—an act that caused him great sexual excitement. In spite of punishment he could not keep from performing this act repeatedly. Finally, it was recognized that there must be an abnormal motive in play, and he was sent to a male teacher. He then reveled in the memory of shoe-scenes with his former school-mistress, and thus had erections, orgasm, and, after his fourteenth year, ejaculation. At the same time, he masturbated while thinking of a woman’s shoe. One day the thought came to him to increase his pleasure by using such a shoe for masturbation. Thereafter he frequently took shoes secretly, and used them for that purpose.

Nothing else in a woman could excite him; the thought of coitus filled him with horror. Men did not interest him in any way. At the age of eighteen he opened a general store, and, among other things, handled ladies’ shoes. He was excited sexually by fitting shoes for his female patrons, or by manipulating shoes that they had worn. One day, while doing this, he had an epileptic attack, and, soon after, another, while practicing onanism in his customary way. Then he recognized, for the first time, the injury to health caused by his sexual practices. He tried to overcome his onanism, sold no more shoes, and strove to free himself from the abnormal association between women’s shoes and the sexual function. Then frequent pollutions, with erotic dreams about shoes, occurred, and the epileptic attacks continued. Though devoid of the slightest feeling for the female sex, he determined on marriage, which seemed to him to be the only remedy.

He married a pretty young lady. In spite of lively erections when he thought of his wife’s shoes, in attempts at cohabitation he was absolutely impotent; for his distaste for coitus, and for close intercourse in general, was far more powerful than the influence of the shoe-idea, which induced sexual excitement. On account of his impotence, the patient applied to Dr. Hammond, who treated his epilepsy with bromides,