Page:Psychopathia Sexualis (tr. Chaddock, 1892).djvu/414

396 ence to him; and it made no difference to him whether the woman was old or young, beautiful or ugly. Since this began, he had had no more inclination for natural gratification. Of late frottage scenes had appeared in his dreams. During his acts he was fully conscious of his situation and the act, and tried to perform it in such a way as to attract as little attention as possible. After his act he was always ashamed of what he had done.

The medical examination revealed no sign of mental disease or mental weakness, but symptoms of neurasthenia sexualis,—ex abstinentia libidinosi(?),—which was also proved by the circumstance that even simple touching of the fetich with the unexposed genitals sufficed to induce ejaculation. Apparently Z., weakened sexually and distrusting his virility, and yet libidinous, had come to practice frottage by having the sight of posteriora feminæ fall together accidentally with sexual excitement; and this associative combination of a perception with a feeling permitted the former to attain the significance of a fetich.

As an act which offends public morals, and which is, therefore, punishable, the violation of statues—a whole series of cases of which Moreau (op. cit.) has collected from ancient and modern times—may be enumerated here. They are, unfortunately, given too much like anecdotes to allow satisfactory judgment of them. They always give the impression of being pathological,—like the story of a young man (related by Lucianus and St. Clemens, of Alexandria) who made use of a Venus of Praxiteles for the gratification of his lust; and the case of Clisyphus, who violated the statue of a goddess in the Temple of Samos, after having placed a piece of meat on a certain part. In modern times, the Journal L'événement of March 4, 1877, relates the story of a gardener who fell in love with a statue of the Venus of Milo, and was discovered attempting coitus with it. At any rate, these cases stand in etiological relation with abnormally intense libido and defective virility or courage, or lack of opportunity for normal sexual gratification.

The same thing must be assumed in the case of the so-called voyeurs, —i.e., men who are so cynical that they seek to