Page:Psychopathia Sexualis (tr. Chaddock, 1892).djvu/400

 From what experience teaches, it may be said that, among the sexual acts that occur, rape, mutilation, pederasty, amor lesbicus, and bestiality may have a psycho-pathological basis.

In case of lust-murder,—in as far as it goes beyond murder itself,—and likewise in case of mutilation of corpses, psychopathic conditions are probable.

Exhibition and mutual masturbation make pathological states seem very probable. Masturbation of another and passive onanism may occur in connection with senile dementia and contrary sexual feeling, but also with mere sensuality.

Cunnilingus and fellare (penem in os mulieris arrigere) have not thus far been shown to depend upon psycho-pathological conditions.

These horrible sexual acts seem to be committed only by sensual men who have become satiated or impotent from excessive indulgence in a normal way. Pædicatio mulierum does not seem to be psychopathic, but rather a practice of married men of low morality, who wish to prevent pregnancy; and of satiated cynics in non-marital sexual indulgence.

The practical importance of the subject makes it necessary that the sexual acts threatened with punishment as sexual crimes be considered by jurists from the stand-point of the medico-legal expert. Thus there is an advantage gained, in that the psycho-pathological acts, according to circumstances, are placed in the right light by comparison with analogous acts that fall within the domain of physiological psychology.

In man's present condition of civilization, modesty is a characteristic and motive so firmly fixed by centuries of education that presumption of a psycho-pathological element necessarily arises when public decency is coarsely offended.

The presumption is justifiable that an individual who in this way has offended public decency and his own self-respect was incapable of moral feeling (idiots); or that it has been lost