Psychopathia sexualis: With especial reference to contrary sexual instinct
2. In urnings who feel toward men like women, out of desire and lust.
1089 words | Chapter 75
In such female-men there is horror feminæ and absolute incapability
for sexual intercourse with women. Character and inclinations are
feminine.
The empirical facts that have been gathered by legal medicine and
psychiatry are all included in this classification. Before the court
of medical science, it would be necessary to prove that a man belonged
to one of the above categories in order to carry the conviction that
he was a pederast.
In the life and character of Dr. S., one searches in vain for signs
which place him in one of the categories of active pederasts which
science has established. He is neither one forced to sexual
abstinence, nor one made impotent for women by debauchery; neither is
he congenitally male-loving, nor alienated from women by masturbation,
and attracted to men through continuance of sexual desire; and,
finally, he is not sexually perverse as a result of severe mental
disease.
In fact, the general conditions necessary for the occurrence of
pederasty are wanting in him,—moral imbecility or moral depravity, on
the one hand, and inordinate sexual desire, on the other.
It is likewise impossible to classify the accomplice, G., in any of
the empirical categories of passive pederasty; for he possesses
neither the peculiarities of the male prostitute nor the clinical
marks of effemination; and he has not the anthropological and clinical
stigmata of the female-man. He is, in fact, the very opposite of all
this.
In order to make a pederastic relation between the two plausible
medico-scientifically, it would be requisite for Dr. S. to present the
antecedents and marks of the active pederasts of I, 2, and G., those
of the passive pederasts of II, 1 or 2.
The assumption lying at the basis of the verdict is, from a
psychological stand-point, legally untenable.
With the same right, every man might be considered a pederast. It
remains to consider whether the explanations given by Dr. S. and G. of
their remarkable friendship are psychologically valid.
Psychologically it is not without parallel that so sentimental and
eccentric a man as S.—without any sexual excitement whatever—should
entertain a transcendental friendship. It suffices to recall the
friendship of school-girls, the self-sacrificing friendship of
sentimental young persons in general, and the partiality which this
sensitive man sometimes showed even for domestic animals,—where no one
would think of sodomy. With S.’s mental character, extraordinary
friendship for the youth G. may be easily comprehended. The openness
of this friendship permits the conclusion that it was innocent, much
rather than that it depended upon sensual passion.
The defendants succeeded in obtaining a new trial. The new trial took
place on March 7, 1890. There was much evidence presented in favor of
the accused.
The previous moral life of S. was generally acknowledged. The Sister
of Charity who cared for G. in S.’s house, never noticed anything
suspicious in the intercourse between S. and G. S.’s former friends
testified to his morality, his deep friendship, and his habit of
kissing them on meeting or leaving them. The anal abnormalities
previously found on G. were no longer present. Experts called by the
court allowed the possibility that they had been due simply to digital
manipulations; their diagnostic value in any case was contested by the
experts called by the defense.
The court recognized that the imputed crime had not been proved, and
exonerated the defendants.
LESBIAN LOVE.[146]
Where the sexual intercourse is between adults, its legal importance is
very slight; it could come into consideration only in Austria. In
connection with urningism, this phenomenon is of anthropological and
clinical value. The relation is the same, _mutatis mutandis_, as between
men. Lesbian love does not seem to approach urningism in frequency. The
majority of female urnings do not act in obedience to an innate impulse,
but they are developed under conditions analogous to those which produce
the urning by cultivation.
These “forbidden friendships” flourish especially in penal institutions
for females.
Kraussold (_op. cit._) reports: “The female prisoners often have such
friendships, which, when possible, extend to mutual manustupration.
“But temporary manual gratification is not the only purpose of such
friendships. They are made to be enduring,—entered into
systematically, so to speak,—and intense jealousy and a passion for
love are developed which could scarcely be surpassed between persons
of opposite sex. When the friend of one prisoner is merely smiled at
by another, there are often the most violent scenes of jealousy, and
even beatings.
“When the violent prisoner has been put in irons, in accordance with
the prison-regulations, she says ‘she has had a child by her friend.’”
We are indebted to Parent-Duchatelet (“De la prostitution,” 1857, vol.
i, p. 159) for interesting communications concerning Lesbian love.
According to this experienced author, repugnance for the most
disgusting and perverse acts (coitus in axilla, inter mammæ, etc.)
which men perform on prostitutes is not infrequently responsible for
driving these unfortunate creatures to Lesbian love. From his
statements it is seen that it is essentially prostitutes of great
sensuality who, unsatisfied with intercourse with impotent or perverse
men, and impelled by their disgusting practices, come to indulge in
it.
Besides these, there are prostitutes who let themselves be known as
given to tribadism; persons who have been in prisons for years, and in
these hot-beds of Lesbian love, ex abstinentia, acquired this vice.
It is interesting to know that prostitutes hate those who practice
tribadism,—just as men abhor pederasts; but female prisoners do not
regard the vice as indecent.
Parent mentions the case of a prostitute who, while intoxicated, tried
to force another to Lesbian love. The latter became so enraged that
she denounced the indecent woman to the police. Taxil (_op. cit._ p.
166, 170) reports similar instances.
Mantegazza (“Anthropol. culturhistorische Studien,” p. 97) also finds
that sexual intercourse between women has especially the significance
of a vice which arises on the basis of unsatisfied hyperæsthesia
sexualis.
In many cases of this kind, however, aside from congenital contrary
sexual instinct, one gains the impression that, just as in men (_vide
supra_), the cultivated vice gradually leads to acquired contrary
sexual instinct, with repugnance for sexual intercourse with the
opposite sex.
At least Parent’s cases were probably of this nature. The
correspondence with the lover was quite as sentimental and exaggerated
in tone as it is between lovers of the opposite sex; unfaithfulness
and separation broke the heart of the one abandoned; jealousy was
unbridled, and led to bloody revenge. The following cases of Lesbian
love, by Mantegazza, are certainly pathological, and possibly examples
of congenital contrary sexual instinct:—
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