Page:Psychopathia Sexualis (tr. Chaddock, 1892).djvu/427

Rh whether we have to do with a perversity deserving punishment, or with an abnormal perversion of the mental and sexual life, which, under certain circumstances, excludes punishment. The next legal question to settle is whether the contrary sexual feeling is congenital or acquired; and, in the latter case, whether it is abnormal perversion or moral perversity.

Congenital contrary sexual instinct occurs only in predisposed (tainted) individuals, as a partial manifestation of a defect evidenced by anatomical or functional abnormalities, or both. The case becomes clearer, and the diagnosis more certain, if the individual, in character and disposition, seems to correspond entirely with his sexual peculiarity; and if the inclination toward persons of the opposite sex is entirely wanting, and horror of sexual intercourse with them is felt; and if the individual, in the impulses to satisfy the contrary sexual instinct, shows other anomalies of the sexual sphere, such as more pronounced degeneration in the form of periodicity of the impulse and impulsive conduct, and is a neuropathic and psychopathic person.

Another question concerns the mental condition of the urning. If this be such as to remove the possibility of moral responsibility, then the pederast is not a criminal, but an irresponsible insane person. This condition in congenital urnings is apparently less frequent than another. As a rule, these cases present elementary psychical disturbances, which do not remove responsibility. But this does not settle the question of the responsibility of the urning. The sexual instinct is one of the most powerful organic needs. There is no law that looks upon its satisfaction outside of marriage as punishable in itself; if the urning feels perversely, it is not his fault, but the fault of a condition natural to him. His sexual instinct may be æsthetically very repugnant, but, from his stand-point, it is natural. And, too, in the majority of these unfortunates, the perverse sexual instinct is abnormally intense, and their consciousness recognizes it as nothing unnatural. Thus they fail to have moral and æsthetic ideas to assist them in resisting the instinct. Innumerable normally constituted men are in a position to