Page:Psychopathia Sexualis (tr. Chaddock, 1892).djvu/366

348 desire only for girlish games, and preferred the society of girls. When a boy, he had a passion for crocheting and embroidering. At fourteen he was still without any sexual knowledge, and fell into the hands of a pederast. He ran away, frightened, when he learned what was to be done with him. When fifteen, a sympathetic companion was accustomed to lay his head in the patient’s lap. This gave the patient a peculiar pleasurable feeling, but he knew no explanation of it. At sixteen he had the first erections—at the sight of men.

At twenty he first learned that his sexual condition was perverse, and recognized the fact that what he had taken for friendship was love. He was much frightened at the discovery, and much pained. His sympathies were directed toward young men of the upper class that were handsomely formed and of pleasing appearance.

The society of ladies had no effect on him. He was never attracted by the charms of the opposite sex. In his fifteenth year he had a sensual dream, in which he thought a girl of elegant figure sat opposite him, on a sofa.

In the theatre it was only the art of the actresses that he admired; the actors excited his real interest.

Drinking and smoking had always been very repugnant to him. Hunting and gymnastics, and other masculine occupations, had no interest for him. He did not enter the army, because his general physical weakness precluded it.

The patient has but little sexual desire. He has never had any impulse to satisfy himself with persons of his own sex. Some years ago, when he first tried to embrace a man lovingly, he had powerful erection and became greatly excited; but he was able to control himself and to repel his lover. Thereafter he always avoided such attempts. It was only seldom that he became powerfully excited sexually, and even then he was not driven to satisfy himself. He was never given to onanism. During the establishment of puberty, the patient had frequent dreams with pollutions, but these were not induced by erotic fancies of any kind.

Some years ago, for a long time, ejaculation was always induced by the embrace of a sympathetic man, but this condition of irritable weakness disappeared. As years passed, the patient, who had always had a desire for marriage and a family, became anxious on account of the conviction that the inclination toward females, for which he had hoped, would never come. It became more and more clear to him that he was abnormal, and he began to have fears about his virility and his future happiness in life.

In order to test the matter, he sought a brothel. He found a prostitute of beautiful form; he had the best will to satisfy himself that he was virile; the woman did all she could, but in vain. There was no erection, and he withdrew, ashamed. New attempts, under the most favorable circumstances, were likewise failures, though the patient