Page:Psychopathia Sexualis (tr. Chaddock, 1892).djvu/274

256 instances, affords pleasure, and leaves behind a feeling of well-being. Should the urning be able to force himself to coitus, in which, as a rule, disgust has the effect of an inhibitory concept, and makes the act impossible, then his feeling is something like that of a man compelled to take disgusting food or drink. However, experience teaches that not infrequently urnings falling in this group marry, either out of ethical or social considerations.

Such unfortunates are relatively potent, in that in marital intercourse they incite their imagination, and, instead of thinking of their wives, they call up the image of some loved male person. But for them coitus is a great sacrifice, and no pleasure; and it makes them, for days after, nervous and miserable. If such urnings, by means of powerful excitation of their imagination, or under the influence of alcoholic drinks, or by erections induced by an overfilled bladder, etc., are enabled to overcome the inhibitory feelings and ideas, then they are still entirely impotent; while simply the touch of a man may induce powerful erection, and even ejaculation.

Dancing with a woman is unpleasant to an urning, but to dance with a man, especially one with an attractive form, seems to him the greatest of pleasures. The male urning, in so far as he possesses higher culture, is not opposed to non-sexual intercourse with women, when by mind and refinement they make conversation pleasant. It is only of woman in her sexual rôle that he has a horror. The homo-sexual woman offers the same manifestations, mutatis mutandis. In this degree of sexual degeneration, character and occupation correspond with the sex which the individual represents. The sexual perversion remains isolated, but an anomaly of the mental being of the individual which deeply affects the social existence. In accordance with this, many of these individuals, in the sexual act, feel themselves in the rôle which would naturally belong to them in hetero-sexual intercourse.

However, transitions to group 3 occur, in as much as sometimes the passive rôle which corresponds with the homo-sexual manner of feeling, is thought of or desired, or at least forms