Psychopathia sexualis: With especial reference to contrary sexual instinct
1. OFFENSE AGAINST MORALITY IN THE FORM OF EXHIBITION.
540 words | Chapter 57
(Austrian Statutes, § 516; Abridgment, § 195. German Statutes, § 183.)
In man’s present condition of civilization, modesty is a characteristic
and motive so firmly fixed by centuries of education that presumption of
a psycho-pathological element necessarily arises when public decency is
coarsely offended.
The presumption is justifiable that an individual who in this way has
offended public decency and his own self-respect was incapable of moral
feeling (idiots); or that it has been lost (states of acquired mental
weakness); or that he has acted while in a clouded state of
consciousness (transitory insanity, states of partial consciousness).
A very distinctive act which belongs here is that of _exhibition_
(exposure). The cases thus far recorded are exclusively those of men who
ostentatiously expose their genitals to persons of the opposite sex, in
some instances following them, without, however, becoming aggressive.
The silly manner of this sexual activity, or really sexual
demonstration, points to intellectual and moral weakness; or, at least,
to temporary inhibition of the intellectual and moral functions, with
excitation of libido dependent upon a decided disturbance of
consciousness (abnormal unconsciousness, mental confusion); and, at the
same time, the virility of these individuals is called in question. Thus
there are various categories of exhibitionists.
The first category includes states of mental weakness in which, owing to
the causative cerebral (or spinal) disease, consciousness is clouded,
and the ethical and intellectual functions are interfered with; and in
which there can be no opposition made to a sexual desire that has either
always been intense, or that has been intensified by the
disease-process. At the same time, impotence exists, and no longer
permits expression of the sexual instinct in violent acts (rape), but
only in acts that are silly.
The majority of reported cases[128] fall in this category. They are
those of individuals afflicted with senile dementia, paretic dementia,
or mental defects due to alcoholism, epilepsy, etc.
Case 167. Z., high official, aged 60; widower; father of a family. He
had excited offense in that, during fourteen days, he had repeatedly
exposed his genitals at his window, to a girl of eight years who lived
opposite him. After a few months, under like circumstances, this man
repeated his indecent act. At his examination he acknowledged the
depravity of his action, and could give no excuse for it. Death, a
year later, due to cerebral disease. (Lasègue, _op. cit._)
Case 168. Z., aged 78; seaman. He had repeatedly exhibited his
genitals on children’s play-grounds, and in the neighborhood of girls’
schools. This was the only way in which he was active sexually. He was
married, and the father of ten children. Twelve years before, he had
suffered a severe head-injury, since which he had had a deep scar,
which indented the bone. Pressure on this scar caused pain; at the
same time his face would flush, his expression become fixed, and he
would grow somnolent, with convulsive movements in the right upper
extremity (apparently epileptoid state in connection with cortical
disease). Besides, there was senile dementia and advanced senium. It
is not reported whether the exhibition coincided with epileptoid
attacks or not. Senile dementia proved; pardoned. (Dr. Schuchardt,
_op. cit._)
Pelanda (_op. cit._) has reported a number of cases of this kind:—
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