Page:Psychopathia Sexualis (tr. Chaddock, 1892).djvu/408

390 are in a neurotic (epileptic or neurasthenic) state of imperfect consciousness, apparently the clinical and forensic side of this phenomenon is still unexhausted; in addition to these, there is another class, the representatives of which, owing to deep hereditary taint (hereditary degenerative neurosis?), are impelled to periodical and very impulsive exhibition.

With reference to these conditions of psychopathia sexualis periodica (comp. "Periodical Insanity"), in which the accidentally-awakened impulse to exhibition is but a partial manifestation of a clinical whole, like dipsomania periodica, Magnan, from whom I borrow the following instructive cases, justly lays the greatest stress upon the impulsive, periodical feature of these abnormal impulses; and no less upon the fact that they are often accompanied by terrible anxiety, which, after the realization of the impulse, gives place to a feeling of relief.

These facts, and, no less, the clinical picture of degeneracy that, for the most part, is referable to injurious conditions that are hereditary, or that exercise an injurious effect on the development of brain in early years (rachitis, etc.), are, medico-legally, of decisive importance [with reference to the question of responsibility].

Case 176. G., aged 29, waiter in a café. In 1888, while standing under a church-door, he exhibited himself to several girls working opposite. He confessed the act, and also that, many times, in the same place and at the same time of day, he had been guilty of the same crime, having been punished for it, the year before, with imprisonment for one month.

G. has very nervous parents. His father is mentally unstable and very irascible. His mother is at times insane, and suffers with severe nervous disease.

G. has always had nervous twitching of the face, and constant alternation of causeless depression, with tedium vitæ, and periods of elation. At the ages of ten and fifteen, for slight cause, he wished to commit suicide. When excited, he has similar twitching of the extremities. He presents constant general analgesia. In prison he was at first beside himself with shame about the disgrace he had brought on his family, and said he was the worst of men, deserving the severest punishment.

Until his nineteenth year G. had satisfied himself with solitary and mutual masturbation, and, on one occasion, he had practiced onanism with a girl. From that time, working in a café, the female customers had excited him so intensely that ejaculation was often induced.