Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 24.pdf/390

 Sexual Perversion and Crime which helps me to understand the feel ings of a person always insane. Even now that I am cool and collected I know that if I were deeply in love with a man who I thought was going to kill me, especially in that way, I would make no effort to save myself beforehand, though, of course, in the final moments Nature would assert herself without my voli tion." The newspapers frequently tell us of some terrible crime; how the body of some woman has been found, usually in the water or in some hiding place, but with clear indications that she had been strangled to death and ravished. Indignation runs high, for it is generally supposed that the ravishment was ac complished after and because of the strangulation. If all the facts were known, however, they might be found to be something like this: The woman was an intense masochist; her lover an equally intense sadist. Being strangled was as pleasant to her as strangling was to him. To each of them the act was as natural and far more pleasurable than kissing. Neither intended or realized any danger. It was indulged in with mutual and increasing satisfaction until both were in a paroxysm. Then, of course, neither realized anything. With returning consciousness the man's first impression was that his mate was ex hausted and his highly wrought nervous system was given a terrible shock when he discovered that she was actually dead. He can explain nothing, but his half-crazed efforts to avoid detection make him an easy prey for the officers of the law whose only interest in the case is confined to investigating the nature of the crime rather than that of the criminal. Of course, from a purely legal stand point a knowledge of sexual perversions is valuable only when they destroy the

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responsibility for the particular acts with which the accused is charged, and there are undoubtedly many who will not be willing to admit that such con ditions are possible. However, I believe that it is generally conceded by those who have investigated sexual phenomena to any considerable extent that to a sexual pervert certain abnormal acts are absolutely normal, no matter whether they be the most slight deviations from the normal manifestations of sex or the most extreme violations of all human law. On the other hand, a pervert, no matter how extreme, may be entirely responsible for certain of his acts and at the same time entirely irresponsible for certain other acts which are the natural result of his particular perver sion. Each case must be judged by itself. It must not be supposed, however, that the existence of sexual perversions are necessarily evidences of criminality in the individuals possessing them. Some perversions work in the opposite direc tion and have been the inspiration of some of the greatest achievements of the race. You remove from the pages of history the impressions made thereon by the lives of men who have been vic tims of abnormal sexual natures, and they would be desolate, indeed. What would the history of Rome be without Julius Caesar, France without Napoleon, England without Cromwell, music with out Wagner, literature without Goethe, Mohammedism without Mohammed, or Christianity without Paul? The list is hardly begun. To explain the reasons for many of the assertions made herein, which would undoubtedly make them much more acceptable to many, is too large a task for this occasion. A whole book could be written to explain why pain is a sexual stimulus and still leave much unsaid.