Psychopathia sexualis: With especial reference to contrary sexual instinct
4. The form of the body approaches that which corresponds to the
539 words | Chapter 21
abnormal sexual instinct. However, actual transitions to hermaphrodites
never occur, but, on the contrary, completely differentiated genitals;
so that, just as in all pathological perversions of the sexual life, the
cause must be sought in the brain (androgyny and gynandry).
The first definite communications[106] concerning this enigmatical
phenomenon of Nature are made by Caspar (“Ueber Nothzucht und
Päderastie,” Caspar’s _Vierteljahrsschrift_, 1852, i), who, it is
true, classes it with pederasty, but makes the pertinent remark that
this anomaly is, in most cases, congenital, and, at the same time, to
be regarded as a mental hermaphroditism. There exists here an actual
disgust of sexual contact with women, while the imagination is filled
with beautiful young men, and with statues and pictures of them. It
did not escape Casper that in such cases emissio penis in anum
(pederasty) is not the rule, but that, by means of other sexual acts
(mutual onanism), sexual satisfaction is sought and obtained.
In his “Clinical Novels” (1863, p. 33) Casper gives the interesting
confession of a man showing this perversion of the sexual instinct,
and does not hesitate to assert that, aside from vicious imagination
and vice, as a result of over-indulgence in normal sexual intercourse,
there are numerous cases in which pederasty has its origin in a
remarkable, obscure impulse, which is congenital and inexplicable.
About the middle of the “sixties,” a certain assessor, Ulrichs,
himself subject to this perverse instinct, came out and declared, in
numerous articles,[107] that the sexual mental life was not connected
with the bodily sex; that there were male individuals that felt like
women toward men (“anima muliebris in corpore virili inclusa”). He
called these people “_urnings_,” and demanded nothing less than the
legal and social recognition of this sexual love of the urnings as
congenital and, therefore, as right; and the permission of marriage
among them. Ulrichs failed, however, to prove that this certainly
congenital and paradoxical sexual feeling was physiological, and not
pathological.
Griesinger (_Archiv f. Psychiatrie_, i, p. 651) threw the first ray of
light on these facts, anthropologically and clinically, by pointing
out the marked hereditary taint of the individual, in a case which
came under his own observation.
We have Westphal (_Archiv f. Psychiatrie_, ii, p. 73) to thank for the
first systematic consideration of the manifestation in question, which
he defined as “congenital reversal of the sexual feeling, with
consciousness of the abnormality of the manifestation,” and designated
with the name, since generally accepted, of _contrary sexual
instinct_. At the same time, he began a series of cases,[108] which,
up to this time, has reached ninety-three, those reported in this
monograph not being included.
Westphal leaves it undecided as to whether contrary sexual feeling is
a symptom of a neuropathic or of a psychopathic condition, or whether
it may occur as an isolated manifestation. He holds fast to the
opinion that the condition is congenital.
From the cases published up to 1877, I have designated this peculiar
sexual feeling as a functional sign of degeneration, and as a partial
manifestation of a neuro-psychopathic state, in most cases hereditary,—a
supposition which has found renewed confirmation in a consideration of
additional cases. The following peculiarities may be given as the signs
of this neuro-psychopathic taint:—
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