Page:Psychopathia Sexualis (tr. Chaddock, 1892).djvu/90

72 overcome these desires; but in his imagination bloody thoughts were constantly present, and induced lustful excitement. There was an inner relation existing between both thoughts and feelings. Often there were other cruel fancies. He imagined himself in the rôle of a tyrant who had the people shot in crowds with grape-shot. He was compelled to fancy a scene as it would be if enemies were to take a city and mutilate, torture, kill, and rape the young women. In times of quiet this patient, who had a mild disposition and was not morally defective, was shamed and horrified by such cruel, lustful fancies, and they always became immediately latent as soon as his sexual excitement had been satisfied by masturbation.

After a few years the patient became neurasthenic. Then simple imaginary representation of blood and scenes of blood was sufficient to induce ejaculation. In order to free himself from his vice and his cruel imagination, he began to indulge in sexual intercourse with females. Coitus was possible, but only when the patient called up the idea that the girl’s fingers were bleeding. Without the assistance of this idea no erection was possible. The cruel thought of cutting was limited to the woman’s hand. At times of greatest sexual excitement, simply the sight of the hand of an attractive woman was sufficient to induce violent erections. Frightened by the popular stories about the injurious results of onanism, he abstained and fell into a condition of severe general neurasthenia, with hypochondriacal dysthymia and tædium vitæ. Careful and watchful medical treatment cured the patient after a few months. He has remained mentally well three years; but now, as before, he is very sensual, though it is very seldom that he is troubled by his earlier bloody ideas. X. has given up masturbation entirely. He finds satisfaction in natural sexual indulgence, is virile, and it is no longer necessary for him to call up ideas of blood.

The following case, reported by Tarnowsky (op. cit., p. 61), shows that such lustful, cruel impulses may be simply episodical, and occur in certain exceptional states of mind in neurotic individuals:—

The majority of those afflicted with this form of the perversion seem insensible to the normal stimulus of woman. In the