Another blow fatal to true love, caused by the reading of contemporary

literature, is the increase of the young girl’s natural vanity.[AN]

The constant descriptions in most modern novels of the struggle over

women and the enthusiasm felt at gaining her, says Nordau, increase her

natural tendency to regard love as the single aim and substance of the

life of human beings and intensify her natural partiality for herself

to the degree of ambitious mania and self-deification. She actually

imagines that the possession of her would be providential of more than

earthly bliss. The pampered overcivilized modern woman finds in this

pseudo-literature only lovers who are sacrificing to the divinity of

beauty and who are constantly listening to the music of the stars, and

she imagines that she also ought to be wooed by gods and spend her

life in an earthly paradise. When after the wedding the mirage, she

once thought was the eternal land of promise, has faded, she remains

permanently shocked at finding only a man where she was looking for

an angel as mate. When the longing for sensual satisfaction has been

appeased, both lovers find that they have no more to discover and grow

fickle and hunger for a change.

Another part of contemporary literature which is continually

undermining the foundation of true love is the feministic branch.

These writers are not satisfied to preach equality of the sexes. They

constantly emphasize the superiority of the female sex. From this

notion to the sermon of sex-antagonism is only one step, and this

has been quickly enough made. Mutual admiration, trust and love have

given place to the duel of the sexes. Even the father has been thrown

overboard. These modern daughters act as if they had come to this

world by the way of parthenogenesis. The sermon of the enmity of the

sexes thus destroys not only true love, but the entire conception of

the family and serves to blight the brightest and sweetest flowers,

springing in the garden of the human heart. No wonder that the girl who

has been influenced by such ideas has been made unfit for true love.

Her judgment has become confused by overestimating her own worth and

valuing the man solely for his capacity to supply the luxuries of life

and to satisfy sensual desires. She has little love even for the man

of her choice, and is not reluctant to show it on every occasion. A

bride objecting to the word “obey” in the wedding ceremony—even granted

that such a word does not and never did belong there—reveals at once

her lack of true love. A girl truly in love with the man laughs at

the word, because she feels that she would rather be his slave than

any other man’s queen. To the lover the bride’s promise to obey seems

mere folly, for he is determined that she should always remain the

autocratic queen of his heart and actions. But when love is absent,

and the wedding represents nothing more than a contract to legalize

sensuality, which is otherwise considered immoral, every objection to

the wording of the contract is justified and perfectly natural.

The female sex, says Kant, may be characterized by two inclinations,

the desire to dominate, and the desire for pleasure. These two

tendencies may be mitigated by true love. The truly loving woman will

gladly and voluntarily share material misfortune and social degradation

with her lover. She will overcome her egotism, she will labor hard to

overcome her old faults and cheerfully give up what she once looked

upon as necessaries for the love of a true man. But the modern woman

looks upon the man only as a slave to provide for her, and as a thing

affording her enjoyment. Hence she regards the miserable weakling,

whose imbecile brain has not the power of resistance, as touching and

charming, while vigorous strength of character, which is schooled in

self-control and which places as high a value on the affection afforded

as on that received, seems to her repulsive roughness. This blending

of her judgment becomes fatal to her love, so important to the female

heart.

Love, in its ideal form, must be founded on mental qualities. In man

the mental qualities are of the greatest value. The supreme survival

value for man is his intelligence. The possessors of artistic or

literary composition, of mechanical skill, of calculating ability, of

energy or general mental ability are seldom or never endowed at the

same time with physical qualities. It was brain not brawn that saved

man in his struggle for existence. The cult of the muscle as against

intelligence would destroy man. The physically fittest is not always

the best of men. Even the animals, in their natural surroundings, live

by their wits rather than by force of bone and muscle; and it was

man’s wits and will that enabled him to increase and multiply as no

other animal. Physical weapons of defense and offense have disappeared

in man because his intelligence makes them superfluous. In the human

species mind is master of matter. Man has staked his all upon mind.

The emergence and dominance of mind have enabled the human species to

ascend through struggle and internecine war to the highest scale of

animal life, although it is physically one of the feeblest among the

species of the higher animals. The increasing dominance of mind over

matter is the reason that nowadays mental qualities dominate all else

in man’s living activities. Hence ideal love must also be based upon

mental qualities. Then it will be everlasting. The soul once allied

with its mate can change no more. One of the mysteries of true love is

the absolute impossibility to duplicate the lover. The soul is thus the

essential part in true love. But when in the selection of the mates the

physical factors only, such as stature, beauty, strength and health,

play the most important rôle, when the senses form the chief part of

the compound feeling, love will not long survive possession, and

matrimonial happiness, founded upon monetary or social considerations,

will pass like a shadow. The idol is soon destroyed. When, thereupon,

the heart is disillusioned by the contact with the grim realities of

existence, when it is deadened by the habitude of a fixed affection,

coupled with incompatibility of tastes, when hardened by experience

with the meanness of the world, then men and women attempt to find

elsewhere a soul which they hope will desire to know more of their

own, and in which they trust to discover a greater and more lasting

happiness. But not being able to ask their own hearts, and guided

only by the contradictory ideals they have been imbued with in their

youth, the second choice and all the others, following the same, will

generally turn out to be also delusions in which the perfect communion

of hearts will again be absent. Men will then try to bury their

unsatisfied longing for true affection in the exaggerated occupation

with business or to drown their vehement unrequited love-yearnings in

drink and other narcotics. The fate of the woman is even more tragic.

Woman’s idea of happiness is a sort of ecstatic bliss. She is looking

for perennial joy and beauty, for a joy as only the angels know. Hence

when she learns to know the illusory nature of the heart’s greatest

desire, when she makes the discovery of the futility of this desire,

the wine of life grows sour. She becomes self-centered and selfish. The

fountain ordained to yield such perennial sweets is soon drained and

she bestows all her feminine faculties upon mere inanities. Hence the

astonishing aspect of restlessness, and agitation which we now behold

in her mania for dress, her indulgence in drink and nerve-deadening

drugs, and in her quest of other vain luxuries in which she desires to

drown the emptiness of her heart and her spiritual isolation.

CHAPTER XIV

EROS, LIBIDO, JEALOUSY

_Eros and libido._—Eros and libido are the two components of sensual

love and are also integral parts of sentimental love, by which the

latter differs from pure friendship. Libido represents the material

pleasure enjoyed by the contact; eros represents the spiritual

enjoyment experienced by the knowledge of loving and being loved.

Hence libido is of a somatic nature, eros is a psychic phenomenon. The

libidinous individual has an increased desire for sexual gratification,

the erotic looks chiefly for love. The erotic individual loves with

its mind, it is a craving for love by a particular individual, or

by a certain class of individuals, e. g., actors or actresses. The

libidinous individual is satisfied with any partner and even with other

practices, serving sensual gratification, such as contrectatio, stuprum

manu, paederastia, tribady, bestiality, etc. The erotic individual

never thinks of the sensual pleasure, the libidinous desires to wallow

in sensual enjoyment and lust.

Libido is more a masculine sex trait, eros more a feminine. For the

ordinary man the libidinous part of love is of primary importance. When

this emotion has been destroyed by some accident, he considers himself

emasculated. He will never reveal the loss of his testicles, while a

woman will openly and freely talk of ovariotomy, performed upon her,

although the loss of the ovaries generally produces the impotence of

experiencing orgasm, as in men the loss of the testicles. She seems not

to mind this loss, provided, always, that her eros has remained intact.

In this indifference for sexual libido, so often found in women, lies

the cause of woman’s superiority in sensual love. The woman rules over

the man as long as he is in love. That man is henpecked who from the

beginning, by reason of his excessive sexual needs, came under his

wife’s authority and is continually kept under her rule by the same

sensual needs. A man’s dependence upon his wife can only be explained

upon a sensual basis. As soon as the man’s power and intelligence gain

the victory over his sensual impulses, his independence is secured.

This is the reason why the woman is continually bent upon keeping

the man’s libido alive. Her constant desire is to influence him

by her charms. Her passivity, says Marro, is the passivity of the

magnet, which in spite of its apparent immobility and rest attracts

the iron, be the latter willing or not, and in a way enslaves it. An

intense energy lies behind such passivity, says Ellis, an absorbed

preoccupation in the end to be attained. But for her passivity and

cunning coyness she would become the real slave of brutal force, and

nothing short of adoration of her lord and master would satisfy him.

As it is, she keeps the man in due bounds, even in countries where her

legal status is not much higher than that of the real slave. The pride

of the woman, says Kant, to keep at a distance all the importunities

of men by the respect she inspires and the right to demand respect

for her person, even without merits, belong to her by the title

of her sex. The man has to woo for her favor even where he could

command. The indulgence with an unwilling or unreciprocating mate is

not satisfactory to the normal man. This is the reason why the mere

satisfaction of the physical appetite in meretricious venery is so

unsatisfactory to him.

Eros is a purely psychic phenomenon. It is the transcendental

attraction of the two sexes, even when lust is not thought of. In

being attracted to one another, the sexes seem to obey a higher will,

unknown to either of them. The attraction probably emanates from the

spermatozoa and ova. The little cells know what they want and take it.

But their will is unknown to the lovers themselves. Their attraction

appears to be as mysterious as the attraction of the two poles of

the magnet, which no scientist has yet been able to elucidate. This

mysterious erotic attraction is healthy and invigorating. While so

attracted, the sexual glands increase the secretion of the testines or

ovarines, and these chemical products have a tonic effect and make the

individual happy. This accounts for the happy excitement the sight of

a perfect specimen of the opposite sex, or even its conception in the

fantasy, is able to awake in the heart of the individual.

_Two desires of eros._—Eros consists of two desires, to love and to

be loved. The man is more anxious to love, the woman to be loved. She

desires to feel that she is admired or rather coveted by men. That

woman withers who, in all her life, was never once loved by some man.

Even the woman who for moral or morbid reasons renounces libido, will

still have the desire to be admired and loved. In her day-dreams the

girl pictures to herself an ideal man by whom she wishes to be loved,

the man portrays in his imagination the girl he wishes to love. When

he meets with his ideal he knows his own mind about his love. He

recognizes the goddess upon whose altar he intends to burn his choicest

incense. The girl has first to ask her oracle. She plucks the petals of

her marguerite, lisping: “He loves me, he loves me not.” The man, more

concerned about his own love, wears his heart on his sleeve and feels

eager to have the beloved see how passionately it throbs for her. The

woman, having first to discover the man’s love, will try to conceal

her own emotion in the innermost recesses of her bosom, lest the lover

discover her feelings prematurely. The woman is, therefore, a comma, in

love affairs, the man a full stop; here, you know where you are; there,

read further.

The woman is anxious to be loved by the man of her choice, the man

mainly asks for the privilege to love her. This difference is mainly

based upon the different value love possesses in the eyes of the two

sexes. With the man the imagination does not need to come into play

before he can look for joys and sorrows, hopes and fears that make

up the sum and substance of love. The woman gives far more than her

body, she gives her soul, her very self, her all. Another reason for

the woman’s desire to be loved lies in her feminine vanity. In the

relations of friends the one who desires to be loved rather than to

love, is the more egotistic. The preference of the passive part of love

to the active unquestionably springs from the root of egotism in human

nature. In the relation of the sexes, the desire to be loved arises

more or less from the wish to satisfy personal vanity. It is tacitly,

although, as a rule, among civilized men erroneously, assumed that

personal excellence is the cause of a particular individual of one sex

being loved by the other, and that one sex is the better judge of the

excellence of the other. Hence the person most deeply loved must of

necessity excel his rivals. He must at least possess greater sexual

charms which men and women are chiefly proud of. Vain men, for that

reason, will boast of the large number of their love affairs and the

many hearts broken. For the same reason a woman’s vanity is flattered

to be openly preferred and loved by a good, respectable man. In present

society only matrimony can satisfy her vanity. For free love can only

be clandestine, and clandestine love satisfies only her libido, but not

her vanity.

_Jealousy._—The desire for the satisfaction of personal vanity and the

commonly erroneous assumption of the better judgment of one sex about

the excellence of the other, are of the greatest importance in the

psychology of jealousy.

Sexual jealousy[AO] consists of three different emotions: 1) anguish

at the suspicion or knowledge of violated chastity or outraged

affection; 2) rage at a rival, and 3) revenge for the violation of a

vested right. Anguish is the primary emotion, rage and revenge are

its results. There are always three actors in every case of jealousy,

the outraged victim, the mate and the rival. Of the three emotions

anguish relates to the male, rage to the rival, and revenge concerns

both the rival and the mate. In the analysis of the different emotions

in the train of jealousy it is found that anguish, anxiety, fear

and despair, which accompany jealousy and apparently constitute its

essence, are not caused by outraged affection only, for the highest

degree of jealousy is often found where love has long ceased to exist,

and even when hatred has already entered into the relation of the

mates. Anguish over violated chastity does not explain jealousy either,

for jealousy is found among savages, who unhesitatingly lend their

wives to others, or offer them as a courtesy to other men without any

thought of their wives’ chastity. Neither does interference with one’s

enjoyment explain jealousy. For the husband is always jealous of his

wife’s lover, while the lover is rarely jealous of the husband. Yet the

husband’s opportunity of interfering with the lover’s possession is by

far greater than that of the latter with the husband’s. Thus fear of

interference cannot play any great part in the emotion of jealousy.

The revenge for the violation of vested rights cannot alone explain

the terrible emotion of jealousy, which the royal poet of the “Song of

Songs” declares to be “as cruel as the grave.” Besides, jealousy is

often found where there are no vested rights at all, only a pretended

claim.

The cause of jealousy must, therefore, be sought elsewhere. There must

be a reason for the husband’s jealousy of a lover and the absence of

this emotion in the mind of the lover towards the husband and the

presence of jealousy in the heart of the lover in relation to any other

succeeding lover. There must be a reason why the lover usually feels a

kind of exultation at deceiving the husband or any other lover who has

a previous claim upon the woman’s affection.

The cause of jealousy is mainly personal vanity. Just as the

satisfaction to be loved, where one does not love himself, lies in

satisfied vanity, so is jealousy based unconsciously upon the anguish

of wounded vanity. This explains the psychological difference between

husband and lover, or between first and second lover. The woman who

loves one man is supposed to confer a certain honor upon him, but her

indulgence with two men honors the one who has the lesser right upon

her love. He who has the greater or the first claim is made an object

of ridicule. Man in a natural state, not influenced by motives of

civilization—and there it may really be true—considers the abandoned

or deceived person the less charming and the less worthy. This

original notion has been transmitted to us from our remote ancestors

and unconsciously governs us even at the present day. The man who is

loved by a married woman or the woman who is loved by a married man are

supposed to possess certain excellencies which are lacking in their

respective married partners. The latter are, therefore, exposed to

ridicule.

Jealousy, therefore, is simply wounded vanity. The individual

possessing a greater deal of vanity will also be jealous to a greater

degree. Hence, as a rule, woman is more jealous than man, although the

latter may be more brutal when in that mood.

Vanity and exposure to ridicule explain also why the wife, betrayed by

her husband, when she confronts the culprits, generally attacks her

rival. Vanity does not allow her to admit even to herself that her

husband has preferred the other to her. Consequently her rival must

have used some seductive means to entice her poor, worthy husband and

to lead him astray. The rival is hence the one who deserves punishment.

The husband, on the other hand, if betrayed by his wife, will attack

first his wife, who has exposed him to ridicule; her lover generally

concerns him in a lesser degree.

If personal vanity is not wounded, jealousy is also absent. A great

man, acknowledged by the world as such, like Alexander or Caesar, is

not jealous if his wife betrays him with an ordinary mortal. In this

case the world sees the stupidity of the woman. She is not able to

recognize the value of her husband and exposes herself to ridicule. A

great man may, therefore, grieve over the loss of cherished affections,

but he will rarely be jealous. A comely and cultured woman will never

be jealous of her coarse and ignorant maid-servant. She has only pity

for her husband’s aberration of taste.

A woman will seldom or never be jealous of the women her husband has

consorted with before their marriage. She is not exposed to ridicule

through his former love affairs. He did not marry the others but her.

She was preferred. But for the possible impairment of his health and

vigor, the more love affairs he had the more the wife is honored.

The man has not been changed by his former love affairs. His wife

has hence no palpable reason for resentment, and she may pardon her

husband’s former love affairs without any derogation to her dignity.

Not so man.

The woman’s anatomy is changed by defloration. The sperma is partly

absorbed within her,[AP] and through her veins circulate material parts

of her lover. She may have been pregnant for some time, and pregnancy

changes the woman’s entire anatomy. She has partly nourished her system

with blood owing half its nature to her child’s father. The woman has,

therefore, a perennial impression left by her former mate.[AQ] This

is the reason why aesthetic and fastidious men refrain from marrying

a widow or a divorced woman. This is also the reason why the husband

consciously or unconsciously resents his wife’s former escapades.

This resentment is not jealousy, although it is commonly so called.

Sorrow over his wife’s former violated chastity, which conventionality

considers as the biggest crime a woman could commit, is not jealousy.

He is only grieved that her former impurity has lowered her value. A

woman really gives herself up, soul and body, to her first lover. The

virginity of her heart is no longer intact. The fragrance has departed

from the rose. The earnest man who actually gives up his soul to the

wife of his choice and to the mother of his children expects in return

a pure and virgin heart.

FOOTNOTES:

[T] The complicated actions, executed by the new-born baby at the first

nursing, are the most marvelous the author can imagine. As soon as the

mother presents her breast to her baby, its mouth closes air-tight

around the nipple, by the prompt action of the muscle orbicularis

oris (innervated by the facialis). Thereupon the tongue is retracted

like the piston of a syringe. In this way a vacuum is created in the

cavity of the mouth, and the milk is thus drawn out of the breast.

This retraction of the tongue is effected by the help of the muscles

hyoglossus and styloglossus.

The tongue is now pressed toward the palate, pushing the fluid

backward toward the pharynx. First the top of the tongue is pressed

to the palate by the M. longitudinalis linguae, then the middle

tongue, by lifting the hyoides bone by means of the M. mylohyoideus

(N. trigeminus) and finally the root of the tongue by the muscles

styloglossus and palatoglossus (N. facialis).

When the fluid has passed the two arcs, the arcus palatoglossus and the

arcus palatopharyngeus, the latter contract and close the way back to

the front, while the soft palate or uvula closes up the cavity of the

nose by the action of the M. levator veli palatini (facialis) and the

M. tensor veli palatini (trigeminus).

The fluid or the morsel is thus confined in the head of the pharynx.

The larynx is now drawn upward and forward by the Mm. geniohyoideus,

digastricus and mylohyoideus. In this way the root of the tongue

presses the epiglottis down upon the orifice of the larynx, and

prevents the food from entering into the lungs.

The food enters now the oesophagus which by a peristaltic movement

presses the same down into the stomach.

Arrived in the stomach, the epithelia of the latter begin to secrete

hydrochloric acid and pepsin by which the albumen of the food is

changed successively into syntonin, propeton, and pepton. By a

peristaltic movement of the stomach, the solution is then forwarded

into the duodenum.

At the arrival there the pancreas sends its ferments, trypsin, to

dissolve the still unchanged albuminates, and the fat-ferment to

break up the fatty substances (the diastatic ferment for changing the

carbohydrates into sugar is not found yet in the infant). At the same

time the liver sends in its secretion, the bile, which serves to effect

an emulsion of the fatty substances. The other intestinal glands also

contribute their secretions to effect all these necessary changes,

so that the chyle can now be imbibed by the intestinal villi, by a

kind of osmosis, and forwarded into the lymphatic current to serve as

nourishment for the new-born individual.

Now, all these organs, the nerves, muscles, and glands, must work

in coördination and perfect harmony to accomplish the task of the

preparation of the young animal’s food. It would take a physicist and

chemist years of hard study to be able to accomplish all the different

tasks, just described, which the new-born baby is able to effect,

without any effort, in the first hours of its new existence.

This wonderful instinct of hunger for food and its satisfaction

is really awe-inspiring. It is an inexplicable mystery as life

itself. In fact, it is, as Bergson truly says, the prolongation of

the life-principle. The author is unable to agree with the last

named philosopher, who claims that intellect is the highest in men

and instinct in the hymenoptera. It seems to the author that the

instinct of taking in food and its preparation into chyle by man is

no less wonderful than the knowledge of the digger-wasp to sting the

caterpillar just in the right place to ensure paralysis without death.

The objection that all these actions are merely reflex-actions does

not detract an iota from the marvel. Then the coördination of all

these reflexes is miraculous. It only changes the name of instinct

into reflex, just as the change of the name of the creative power from

the old name of God into that of the atheist’s “Nature,” or of Plato’s

“idea,” or Nietzsche’s “Wille zur Macht,” or Bergson’s “Élan vital,” or

Shaw’s “Life force,” etc., does not in the least change the nature of

the creative power.

[U] Hegar says that in civilized men we can not speak at all of

an instinct of propagation. For with them so many reflexions and

considerations enter into play that to speak of anything impulsive is

to ignore the state of mind of the society of our days.

[V] The old German law punished adultery or granted a divorce only when

intermissio penis in vaginam has been witnessed.

[W] M. Maupus (Archives de Zoologie expérimentelle, 1889) has shown

that without conjugation, the members of an isolated family of

infusoria eventually cease to feed and divide and pass through the

stages of degeneration and senility to extinction. (In the train

of conjugation there is always death. Non-conjugating protozoa are

immortal. Eve and Death.)

[X] Colonies arise when the individual animals do not leave each other,

after their division, to live a separate life but remain together.

After the second division there are four animals or members, after the

third division eight, then sixteen, thirty-two, etc., until an entire

colony of millions of cells has risen. The human body is composed of

some twenty-six trillions of cells (26,000,000,000,000,000,000). Brain

and spinal cord alone contain two billion cells.

[Y] It must be quite a shock to the prude, in the knowledge that the

much admired flower represents in its ensemble the sex-organs of the

plants, or those parts which in men possess for the sensualist a

peculiar aesthetic attraction. Most perfumes, so generally used by the

sensual, are extracts from flowers, i. e., the sexual parts of the

plants; some perfumes are taken even from the sexual organs of the

animal, e. g., musk. This fact may account for the exaggerated love of

the sensualists for flowers and perfumes.

[Z] Weissman believes that in each individual, produced by sexual

generation, a portion of germ-plasm, derived from both parents, is not

employed in the construction of the cells and tissues of the soma, or

personal structure of the individual, but is set aside, without change,

for the formation of the germ-cells of the succeeding generation.

According to Boveri, the ovum has all the organs and qualities

necessary for the development of the foetus, except that its

centrosome, which starts segmentation, is in a state of inactivity,

while the spermatozoön possesses the active centrosome but lacks the

protoplasma or the material by means of which this organ could begin

its activity.

[AA] Among animals, says Walker, there are species that never marry and

those that do. Those male animals whose young are easily fed, such as

the horse, the bull or the dog, never approach the female except when

under the influence of rut, never cohabit with one exclusively, rarely,

if ever, repeat the reproductive act with the same individual, and

commit the care of the offspring entirely to their temporary mates.

[AB] In some animals the rôles are changed. The part of the female in

fishes, for instance, is ended when she has let fall the roe on the

spawning-bed, while the male swims constantly over this bed and watches

over the fertilized eggs against the attack of enemies until the eggs

have developed into new fishes.

[AC] The error committed by the radicals is that they read human

history and neglect to read natural history. In the beginning of

history permanent mating was already abolished. Permanent mating was a

necessity only as long as the couples lived separated. When, however,

already before the dawn of civilization, mutual aid was added to self

aid, when for the sake of protection men began to live in herds, and

all the males had the responsibility to procure the food for the entire

herd, the individual father was released from such responsibility, and

there was no necessity any longer for permanent mating. The result was

promiscuity, as found by Caesar (Bell. Gal. v. 14), among the Britons:

“uxores habent deni duodenique inter se communes et maxime fratres cum

fratribus, parentesque cum liberis,” and by Strabo among the Celts of

Ireland: “καὶ φανερῶς μίσγεσθαι ταῖς τε ἄλλαις γυναιξὶ καὶ μητράσι καὶ

ἀδελφαῖς.” From promiscuity the sexual relations run through a certain

cycle of consanguineous marriage, punaluan family, pairing family,

polygamy back again to monogamy, as now practised in most of the

civilized countries. All these changes were made in the interest of the

progeny, although often unconsciously, just as the growing affection

of two lovers is, in reality, already the will for life of the new

individual which they could or might beget.

[AD] When a man, for instance, is attached to a woman because of her

outward harmonious appearance, i. e., beauty, it means that she pleases

his sense of sight. If he is fascinated by her beautiful voice, then

his sense of hearing has been appealed to. When he falls in love by

the touch of her soft little hand, then his tactile sense has been

excited. The meaning of all such attachments is the desire to satisfy

the senses. Hence the love is sensual. For any of the five senses may

be the starting point of sexual desire.

The generative centre is in communication with the centres of all the

other senses and may be excited by them.

Certain odors occasion pleasurable sexual feelings. The love of sensual

women for perfumes indicates a relation between the olfactory and the

sexual centres.

The sense of taste is sometimes in the service of sexuality. One of the

author’s patients had sexual sensations of a pleasurable character when

eating liver-sausages.

The sight of a beautiful specimen of the other sex, or even its picture

only, may frequently excite the sexual centre.

Emotional persons are often sexually excited by certain music. An

exaggerated fondness for music is always suspicious of being of a

sexual nature.

The tactile sense is the main sense in the service of sexuality. The

touch of any part of the male body by a soft female hand will cause

sensual excitement. The touch of the nipple in woman often causes

intense libido, a fact which plays an important part in the nursing of

the young throughout all the types of mammals. The sexual sphere may

also be excited by a stimulation of the gluteal region. The practice

of the Flagellants was suppressed by the church when it was discovered

that sensual motives played an important part in their exercises.

Rousseau in his confessions describes the pleasure he felt when spanked

by his nurse. Spanking often incites children to masturbation. The main

irritation of the genitals is induced by touch. Erection, orgasm and

ejaculation may be induced by the tactile irritation of the penis in

the man and of the clitoris in a virgin, and after defloration, by the

excitation of the anterior wall of the vagina. Certain zones of the

skin become secondarily related to sexuality, mostly at such points

where the skin turns into mucous membrane. These are the erogenous

zones.

[AE] The word love is, as a rule, employed very loosely and made to

do duty for almost any attraction, whether purely physical or wholly

sentimental. Even great philosophers and distinguished writers do

rarely differentiate between animal passion and human love or between

pure sensuality or the somatic part of sex, and mental attraction or

the psychic phenomenon.

Plato says that love between a man and a woman is mere animal passion,

far inferior in nobility and importance to love for boys, friendship

or filial, parental or brotherly love. According to Plato, Socrates

understood nothing by love except its science, Ta Erotica. Eros Uranios

incites to love youths only, the more intelligent sex, and this only at

a time when their good character and high culture are beyond doubt.

Plutarch says: The passion for women causes at the best the gain of

sensual pleasure and the enjoyment of bodily beauty. The Greeks,

therefore, applied the celestial kind of love only to friendship and

boy-love, never to the love between men and women.

Sergi finds the cause of love in the stimuli of the reproductive

organs, and in the senses of touch and temperature.

Haeckel says: The oldest source of sexual love is found in the erotic

chemotropismus, in the attraction the male and female sexual cells are

exercising upon each other. This sexual affinity is found even in the

lowest stage of plants as in the protophyts, where both cells swim

toward each other to unite.

Rosenkranz finds in nature only an empire of love, of a love that

penetrates all things and leads them to a common end. Gravitation is

love dominating nature. Organic life is a continued phenomenon of love.

Even in inorganic nature the combination of substances, one with the

other, is a trait of love. The appearance of heat and the flash of

light that accompany the chemical process are, in a manner, the heralds

of lust felt by the substances while uniting. Love of the sexes is a

love for things that is ignored and unknown and which is not yet even

in existence. The lovers must perish that love may continually rise to

new life; the individual dies that the species may live. Love is not

the aim but the means, serving life and development.

Love is the joy at another’s existence and is stronger than the delight

at one’s own existence. Love transforms the nuptials into a jubilee

even where it is the eve of death. It is hence as strong as death.

There exists not only a natural love, but also a spiritual love which

is stronger than death. Natural love is not the true love, but only

a stepping-stone. True love is no longer blind and necessary, but

conscious and free.

Teichmüller says: In sensual love, Nature makes use of the individual

only incidentally, by making the propagation of the species a personal

concern of the individual. She gains her end by a mystification. The

individuals, by virtue of the innate impulse, consider the external aim

of nature as their own personal concern, for which they voluntarily

hazard everything, even life itself. Teichmüller further claims that

in physical love only the state of irritability and the sensibility of

the nerves of the subject are important. The object is only concerned

as a soliciting casualty. The natural impulse cannot aim at lust, for

lust is not an end, but only expresses the coördinate state of the

subject during the actions. Every desire aims at a specific action

as its end. The musician does not long for lust but for music. The

pleasure connected with it ensues coördinately with the success of the

performance.

Of sentimental love, Teichmüller says, the individual loves an ideal

which it has itself created in its thoughts and fancy and with which

the actual need not harmonize at all. For that reason the “treasure”

(in German the lovers call each other “Schatz” or treasure) lies not

without but within the lover. The beloved person outside is only the

key that understands to unlock the treasure. The key is not able to

create the wealth. Whoever is poor and desolate within, for him no key

can unlock the treasure of love.

Schopenhauer sees in amorousness an individualized sexual impulse. The

growing affection of the two lovers is, in reality, already the will

for life of the new individual, which they could and might beget. The

species has a prior, nearer and greater claim upon the individual than

the frail individuality itself. The exact destiny of the individuals

of the future generation is a much higher and worthier end than the

extravagant and transient bubbles of the enamored. The beauty or the

ugliness of the mate has nothing to do with the gratification itself,

so far as it is a sensual pleasure depending upon a pressing necessity

of the individual. Yet beauty is a matter of great consideration,

because it represents the will of the species. Every lover finds

himself deceived after the accomplished great work. For the delusion

has vanished by which the individual was deceived by the species.

In defining human love, Schopenhauer says that every individual

exercises a sexual attraction proportionate to the moral and physical

perfection it possesses which we attribute to the ideal of the human

species. The attraction of two individuals will be the more energetic

the more the deficiencies of the one will be counterbalanced by the

virtues of the other, and the union of the two promises a child more

conforming to the type of the species. Thus the greater the disparity

the stronger will be the attraction.

Danville, on the other hand, finds that alliances are more generally

concluded among individuals of the same education and of a similar

intellectual development. He, therefore, claims that love is the most

differentiated modality of the instinct of reproduction. Intellectual

development, education and culture, however, have carried it so far

away from its origin as to be entirely hidden.

Rousseau says: The physical desire is the one which drives one sex to

unite with the other. The moral one is that which determines the desire

and fixes it upon a single object exclusively, or at least gives a

greater degree of energy for this preferred object. Now it is easily

seen that the moral element in love is a factitious sentiment born of

the usage of society and glorified with assiduity and care by women to

establish their dominion.

Delboeuf looks for the basis of love in the chemical action by which

the female sex cells or ova exercise an attraction, magnetic in nature,

upon the spermatozoa, and vice versa.

Spinoza defines love as “laetitia concomitante idea externae causae,” a

pleasure accompanied by the thought of its external cause.

Bain finds the cause of love in the charm of dissimilarity.

Mantegazza defines love as a desire for a particular beauty.

Hartman says: Man is moved by instinct to look for an individual of the

other sex to satisfy his physical necessity, imagining that in this

way he will enjoy a pleasure he would look for in vain elsewhere. This

pleasure, one lover dreams to find in the arms of the other, is only

a delusion. Subconsciousness uses these deceiving means to oppose the

egotistic reflection and to dispose the individual to sacrifice its own

interest to the interest of the future generation.

Spencer says that the passions which unite the sexes are the most

complex and the most powerful of all feelings. Admiration, respect,

reverence, love of approbation, emotion of self-esteem, pleasure of

possession, love of freedom, love of sympathy, they all unite in the

one powerful feeling of love. They represent a variety of pleasurable

ideas, not in themselves amatory, but have an organized relation to

the amatory feelings. The complex sentiment, termed affection, can,

therefore, exist between those of the same sex, but it is greatly

exalted in love.

Sidney declares love to be the most intense desire to enjoy beauty, and

where it is reciprocal, is the most entire and exact union of hearts.

The instinct, on the other hand, is absolutely sensual; it makes the

exterior its object and has no other end than sensual pleasure. Every

individual, therefore, loves more or less spiritually or sensually in

proportion as it approaches to the spiritual or bestial nature.

Hegel says: Love is the complete surrender of the “ego” to another

“ego” or to an ideal. Not the sacrifice of the possession or wealth of

the ego, but the “I” itself must be given away.

Finally, Janet declares love to be complete madness in its origin as

well as in its development and mechanism.

The same sentiment is expressed in a poem by Heine:

“Love’s madness! tautology, love is itself a madness.”

[AF] This common every-day kind of love, which is nothing else but a

refined sexuality, pure and simple, has been elevated to a fetich by

the modern so-called intellectuals and extolled in and out of season.

The advocates of the new love-morality show by the attributes, as love

at first sight, that what they understand by love is sensual love. Yet

upon this prosaic attachment they try to build up their new system of

sexual ethics.

Every union not based upon this kind of sensual attachment is decried

as mere prostitution in marriage. Any marriage influenced by such

motives as loneliness, poverty, welfare of the nearest relatives,

the advance in social position, advance in business or in the

professions, without the obligatory romance, which after all is only

refined animalism, is considered contemptible. Such motives are held

to be honorable enough to govern any other action in the life of the

individual, but when it comes to marriage the line is drawn. Without

the quickly wearing off glamor of a silly moon-light romance, the best

of motives for contracting marriage relations are nowadays considered

ulterior, and the sought-for party regards itself as having married

under a misapprehension.

Even eugenic power is attributed to this wonderful love. Two

intellectual and physical giants will beget weaklings, so we are

told, if their union has not preceded by love’s desire; while if two

weaklings marry upon short notice, guided only by their pent-up sex

promptings, the offspring, as a child of love, is prophesied to become

a physical and intellectual giant. As if the chromosomes, the carriers

of the determiners of the unit-characters, could be influenced by

love’s perjuries.

[AG] Those feminists who clamor for the wife’s right to her

individuality show that they have never experienced the emotion of true

love.

[AH] If Samson’s love for Delilah would have been of the sentimental

kind and not mere infatuation, his love would have been turned into

contempt and resentment, long before his betrayal, for her, who, he

must have seen, was trying to elicit the secret of his strength for

some sinister purpose. But being of a sensual nature, he was betrayed

by two women whom he thought he loved but with whom he was only deeply

infatuated.

[AI] Sorrow is an only child, but happiness was born twins; one can be

sad, it takes two to be happy.

[AJ] Thus capitalism has been evolved from primal communism, feudalism,

industrialism, capitalism; and we are gradually verging to state

socialism.

Marriage has been evolved from original permanent mating of the

prehuman state to primal promiscuity, consanguine family, punaluan

family, pairing family, patriarchal family, to strict female and loose

male monogamy, and is gradually reaching, through the modern feminine

movement, not, as some radicals seem to think, to variety, but to

strict male and female monogamy.

Through the entire range of higher animals, even among the polygamous,

the female is always monogamous, at least for the period between one

impregnation to the other. As soon as she has been impregnated by one

male, during the period of rut, she does not admit any other male

until the next period, and woman is no exception. If she has the power

she will force men to monogamy, but she will never return herself to

promiscuity.

[AK] This is often the case even among the noblest of men; among women,

even among the worst, as the demi-mondaines, the heart has to be also

somewhat engaged.

[AL] In a lesser degree, the same may be said of the man, only the care

for procuring food distracts his attention from the ultimate aim of

life.

[AM] It is really amusing to notice how the radical writers put up a

target and fire at it to their heart’s content. They take the church

or state marriage and direct their poisoned arrows against it. As

if the biologist, when speaking of animal and human marriage, could

ever mean the conventional marriage. Neither does he understand by

monogamy the condition generally known by this term. The biological

monogamic marriage of a certain couple is their exclusive cohabitation

for a certain length of time. If during this time they refrain

from cohabitating with others they are for the time being living

biologically in monogamic marriage. The cock in the barn-yard is

polygamous, the steer in the herd is promiscuous, but the cow is

monogamous. Once she has been impregnated she will not admit any other

male until the end of the period of gestation and lactation, and the

new period of rut has set in. From the beginning of one impregnation to

the beginning of the other, almost a year, she is monogamic. This is

the case with almost all females among the higher animals, and woman

does not make any exception to this rule. Even the girl who professes

free love, except she be a nymphomaniac, would not continue to live

with her lover, if she found that while living with her he had had love

affairs with others. She would divorce him forthwith, and sometimes

such a divorce would be accompanied by quite a little scandal. Most of

the erotic murders committed by men upon women and most of the cases

of women throwing acid into the faces of men, we so often read in the

Parisian papers, are perpetrated by those whose marriage relations

have never been sanctioned by church or state. This fact reveals

another error of the radicals who picture the peaceful parting of

their free-loving couples in such glowing colors. They simply leave

each other when they do not love any longer. But in practice love does

not depart from both parties simultaneously, and the party which is

still attached to the other will resent the desertion no less than if

they would have been legally married. The reason is that normal men

and women, except in early youth, perhaps, are never varietists. The

varietist who lacks the instinct of exclusiveness is a psychopathic

sensualist. No alienist could have given a better description of the

symptoms of the psychopathic sensualist than that found in E. C.

Walker’s (The moloch of the monogamic ideal) picture of the sufferings

of the varietist, not of the suffering of total abstinence—in this case

there may be some physiological basis—but of the suffering for lack of

variety. And those pathological specimens are presented to us as normal

men and women.

[AN] The pride of the female, says Otto Weininger (Sex and Character,

p. 201), is something quite peculiar to herself, something foreign even

to the most handsome man, an obsession of her own body, a pleasure

which displays itself even in the least handsome girl, by admiring

herself in the mirror, by stroking herself and playing with her own

hair, but which comes to its full measure only in the effect that her

body has on man.

[AO] Grudge, ill will, fear, hatred, or envy are often miscalled

jealousy, but are emotions entirely different from the emotion of

sexual jealousy.

Jealousy is especially confused with the emotion of envy. Professional

jealousy, artistic jealousy, etc., for instance, are nothing but envy.

Jealousy has a real or pretended claim, envy has none. Envy needs only

two persons, jealousy three.

When a man, for instance, loves a woman in silence, without her

knowledge or encouragement, i. e., without even a pretended claim

upon her, and another man enters upon the stage, the emotion of the

first man is not that of jealousy but of fear, lest the second man may

succeed where he has not yet. When a man has a successful love affair,

and another man appears as a disturber, the emotion of the second is

that of envy. If the woman transfers her affections on the disturber,

the emotion of the lover is that of jealousy, because he had a claim

upon her.

[AP] This accounts for the observation not seldom made in the cases

of widows that the children of the second husband bear a certain

resemblance with the first dead one.

[AQ] The experiments of Waldstein and Elder show that every congressio,

ending in the male ejaculation within the vagina, causes a certain

saturation of the female blood with a substance, owing its origin

within the male body, and exercises a certain change in the female

blood. These authors have shown by experiments on rabbits (Archiv für

Kriminalanthropologie und Kriminalistik, Vol. 56, p. 364) that the

male sperma within the female organism represents a foreign body in

the sense of Abderhalden. When the sperma has entered the blood of the

female organism it produces there a specific ferment. The blood of a

rabbit, twenty-four hours after copulation, possesses the quality of

dialyzation upon testicular tissue. This reaction is positive after

every copulation, no matter whether fertilization has taken place or

not. Thus a part of the male circulates within the blood of the female,

even after copulation without fertilization.

PART VI.

PATHOLOGY OF SEXUALITY

CHAPTER XV

PARADOXIA

The pathology of love treats only of sensual love or of sensuality. The

anomalies of sentimental love lie more properly within the province of

the metaphysician or sociologist. Hence only the pathologic aspect of

sensuality will be considered in the following part.

The analysis of sexuality has revealed the great complexity of the

sexual instinct. No wonder, therefore, that the intricacies of love

show many and varied anomalies. The anomalies based upon anatomical

defects may easily be omitted. The number of works written on this

subject is legion. They could fill whole libraries. But the psychical

anomalies of love have enjoyed until very recently scanty attention

at the hands of medical writers. Especially has modern gynaecology

hitherto entirely neglected the psychical part of its specialty and

has directed its attention only upon diseases that require surgical

interference or other local manipulation.

The anomalies of the sexual impulse which will be analyzed in the

following chapters are those based upon some defects in either of the

three regions of the sexual sphere, the spinal cord, where the centres

of erection and ejaculation are situated; the cerebellum, the seats of

the impulses of voluptas and of libido and of the sensations of touch,

sight, smell, and hearing, which usually provoke the impulses; and the

cerebrum, with the higher sensations, as the sentiment of beauty, of

affection, of admiration, of worship and of respect.

The anomalies based upon defects in these nervous centres properly

belong within the province of the neurologist and alienist. Yet in

a treatise on sex-attraction such anomalies should not be passed in

silence. All the peculiarities of the woman’s body and mind, her

nutrition and nerve activity are only a dependency of the ovary. The

same may be justly said of the man. Almost all of the activities of

the normal man stand in some relation to the testicular functions. The

knowledge of the abnormal psychical elements of the sexual instinct

is, therefore, of such importance to the general health and well-being

of the public and to the whole social structure, that every physician

and student of law or pedagogy ought to acquire a general knowledge

of the anomalies of sexual affections. The man and woman who do not

experience connubial satisfaction will often seek a substitute for

their unrequited love. The whole foundation of society, the family,

will begin to sag, if in our nervous age the anomalies of sexuality are

prudishly overlooked and their study neglected.

The pathology of the sexual affections is, therefore, not only a proper

study for every student of medicine but for every student of education,

law and sociology as well. Krafft-Ebing’s general classification of

the anomalies of the sexual instinct will also be followed here with

more or less minor modifications. Krafft-Ebing divides the pathology of

sexuality into four parts.

I. PARADOXIA.

It means sexual activity in individuals who should normally present no

sexual manifestations, as the occurrence of sexual excitation before

the physiological age.

II. ANAESTHESIA.

It signifies partial or total absence of sexual feeling, i. e.,

impotence of voluptas. It also comprises all other kinds of impotency,

as impotence of libido or of copulation.

III. HYPERAESTHESIA.

It signifies the abnormal intensity of the sexual desire and impulse,

1) Mixoscopy, 2) Erotomania, 3) Satyriasis, 4) Nymphomania, 5)

Masturbation, 6) Incest.

IV. PARAESTHESIA.

It covers all possible forms of perversion of sexual feeling and sexual

activity. A) Heterosexuality: Inclination to persons of the opposite

sex, but with perverse activity. 1) Masochism, 2) Sadism, 3) Fetichism,

4) Exhibitionism. B) Homosexuality: The sexual feeling is directed

toward the same sex. a) Perversity, 1) out of lust, 2) as a profession,

3) through necessity, 4) out of fear, b) Perversion, 1) psychical

hermaphrodism, 2) strict homosexuality, 3) effemination or viraginity,

4) transvestism. C) Bestiality: The sexual feelings are directed in

conjugium cum animalibus.

_Paradoxia._—Paradoxia signifies the sexual activity in individuals who

should normally present no sexual manifestations. The occurrence of

sexual excitement at an age when the individual should ordinarily be

without it belongs to this part of the pathology of sexuality.

The continuance of the same degree of sexual desire in very old men or

in women after the climacterium, as it existed before, is certainly

unusual; yet it cannot be called pathological. The occurrence of

pregnancies in wives of very old men and in women after the climacteric

period proves that the ovaries continue to secrete ova even after

menstruation has ceased, and that the testicles do not cease producing

spermatozoa even beyond the limit of three scores and ten. Now, the

sexual desire depends more upon the activity of the sexual glands

than upon the physiological changes in the nervous apparatus of the

generative organs in men or upon any changes in the uterus, which is

only a repository for the development of the foetus. Hence the absence

of erection in men or of menstruation in women does not necessarily

imply absence of sexual desire.

The appearance of sexual desire in boys before puberty and in girls

long before menstruation has set in is also, as yet, within the limits

of the normal; it becomes pathological only when the sexual desire

is manifested in infants or very small children. Complete sexual

development has been witnessed in children as early as the second year.

The precocity of development in the organs of generation is usually

accompanied by corresponding precocity in sexual desire.

The writer saw a baby who had a sanguineous discharge from her

genitals, for the first time, when she was only five days old. This

discharge appeared afterwards regularly every four weeks. At the

autopsy of another child one year old, one ovary was so enlarged that

it awakened the writer’s curiosity. At the microscopical examination

he found a ripe Graafian follicle. The writer also observed erections

in a boy eight days old, immediately after the ritual circumcision. In

the beginning he attributed these erections to the irritation of the

wound. But the erections continued even after the wound was completely

healed. The penis had the size of that of a boy four to five years of

age.

But even where the development of the genital organs conforms with

the age of the child, many cases are recorded of children of great

precocity. At this period of early childhood there can be naturally

no other sex activity except the habit of autoeroticism. The natural

curiosity of children leads them to an examination and finally to a

titillation of their private organs, often without the aid of any

vicious instruction. When the child has thus found that a certain mode

of handling these organs is attended with pleasurable sensations, he

repeats the action, and the habit is established.

Hirschsprung (Berl. Klin. Wochenschr. 1866, No. 38) observed three

cases of sexual activity in boys in the earliest childhood. The

youngest child was only sixteen months old. Membro mentulato, the boy

continued for over an hour to make rocking or wriggling movements,

until it would fall back exhausted and bathed in perspiration. Deep

sleep terminated the attacks which were repeated daily.

Rohleder (Die Masturbation, 3d Edit., p. 58) describes a case of a

boy, fifteen months old, qui faciebat motiones voluptarias fricando

virilia sua contra mammam matris. The attacks were marked by staring

eyes, burning face and oppressed breathing. At the acme of the attack

the child would break out in loud sobbing. The paroxysm would last

about ten minutes. Thereupon the child would fall asleep.

The early aberration of the sexual instinct in childhood is more

frequently met with in girls than in boys. Probably because the means

for sensual gratificaton at the disposal of the infant girl are more

numerous than that of the boy. The mere thigh-crossing of the infant

girl will serve the purpose.

Townsend reports five cases of stuprum manu in girls under one year

of age. One, an infant, eight months old, would cross her right thigh

over the left, close her eyes, clench her fists, and after a minute or

two there would be complete relaxation, with perspiration and redness

of face. This would occur once a week or oftener.

In Lombroso’s case a girl of three years of age faciebat stuprum

manu aperte et pæne jugiter until marriage, and even afterwards. She

bore twelve children, neque desistebat a stupro manu even during

pregnancy. Of her twelve children, five died in infancy, four were

hydrocephalous, and the three surviving children were confirmed

masturbators, the oldest having begun the practices at seven, the

youngest at four years of age.

One of the writer’s patients, a young woman of twenty-four years of

age, incipiebat masturbari, tres annos nata, ponendo pulvinum in

femoribus et premendo eum quoad muliebria humescebant.

In Blackmer’s case, a girl eight years of age impudenter se stuprabat

from her fourth year and, at the same time, sollicitans pueros of ten

to twelve years of age ad stuprum. She planned to kill her parents

that she might devote herself completely to such enjoyment.

Zambaco relates the histories of two sisters, one of whom at the

age of seven feminabat cum pueris, corrumpebat sororem, quattuor

annos natam, ad stuprum manu, and at the age of ten was given to the

practice of cunnilingus.

In Moll’s case, a girl of seven had an impulsive inclination to

her brother, three and a half years of age, cujus virilia amabat

contrectare et quem inducebat ad contrectandum muliebria sua.

Jacobi (A. Am. Jour. of Obstetr. 1876, p. 597) relates the history of

a case of a girl of three who, at irregular intervals, had attacks of

stuprum when sitting down. She began by keeping her thighs closely

joined or by crossing her legs. She then started to move and rub her

limbs violently. The face became purple, and there was twitching about

the eyes which looked excited, and the child perspired freely. After

the attack she used to lean back exhausted, sighing and breathing

hurriedly.

In another case Jacobi saw thigh friction, up and down movements,

quick breathing, perspiration, in a female infant of nine months.

Magnan cites a case of a seven-year-old girl who jugiter se stuprabat

with great violence. Even in the moment of being photographed, she

turned up her petticoat and gave herself up to her favorite pastime.

Rachford (Archive of Pediatry, 1907) has collected 52 cases, 48

occurring in female and 4 in male children, of pseudomasturbation, as

he calls it. But since the same symptoms of orgasm, as interrupted

panting respiration, flushed cheeks, redness of face, staring eyes,

large immobile pupils, perspiration and exhaustion are seen in the

infant during its practice, as are found in the masturbating practices

of older children, there is no reason to call these infantile

manipulations by any other name than masturbation.

Precocity of sexual activity is usually based upon a neuropathic

predisposition. Such children are, as a rule, tainted hereditarily. The

following case is very instructive on account of the severity of the

attacks and the attending circumstances:

Little L’s mother left her husband and went to live with a very rich

man. The child is the product of this concubinage. Some time after the

death of her legal husband, the mother left the father of the child,

deserted the child and married another man. The foundling has been

since taken care of by a children’s aid society. The foster-mother,

with whom the child has been living for the last six months, brought

her to the author for examination, with the following history:

Soon after Mrs. L. received the child she noticed that the same was

suffering from hysterical attacks. It sometimes whined and cried for

several days in succession. It was always very restless and fidgety,

giving the impression as if it was suffering from chorea minor. It

was frequently running to the water-closet without any apparent

necessity. Mrs. L. went to the society to find out what was the matter

with the child and was told there that the child has been a confirmed

masturbator since she was two and a half years old. Two other

families, to whom the child has been successively given for adoption,

have returned her to the society on account of this perversity. She

was also told that if she refused to keep the child, the society will

have to send it to an insane asylum as the last resort. For this

reason, Mrs. L., who in the meantime had become attached to the child,

resolved to try to break up the bad habit before she adopted it. Mrs.

L., who is a highly intelligent lady and seems to possess an unusual

power of observation, describes the attacks as follows:

The usual mode of the child’s practice is volvulam manibus permulcere.

The acme of the attack is manifested by the rigidity of the entire

body, by the panting respiration, the staring eyes, the immobile

pupils, redness of face, perspiration and general excitement. After a

short interval of exhaustion, she gives herself again to her favorite

pastime. In this way the child jugiter stuprum manu faciebat, even

in the presence of others. All punishments by Mrs. L. and in the

institution, where her little hands were even burned with hot iron,

were of no avail. When her hands were tied so that she could not

use them, fricabat muliebria sitting on a chair, by violent circular

motions of her pelvis, which simply frightened her foster-mother. When

lying in bed the child crosses her legs and rubs the thighs violently

against each other.

When the child was asked how it happened to start the performance

of such practices, it answered that it had been first taught by her

unnatural mother ut tractaret matris muliebria stupri causa. Also the

matron of a certain institution is said to have taken the child into

a dark closet et adduxit puellam ad matronæ manustuprum. The truth

of these assertions cannot be proven, but by some experimenting,

undertaken with the child, it has been proven beyond the shadow of a

doubt that some adult woman abusa est puella ad stuprum suum.

The examination of the five-year-old girl shows a bright, nervous

child, pale, with deeply set eyes, surrounded by dark rings, and

somewhat enlarged cervical and inguinal glands. The entire body is

covered with blond soft hair of unusual length. The same long hair

covers the somewhat enlarged labia majora, so that they make the

appearance of that of a girl near puberty. They are quite separated

from each other, as found in the adult. The clitoris is somewhat

elongated, but the prepuce is not adherent to the glans. Otherwise the

genitals do not show any marked anomaly.

Sometimes the masturbatic practices are provoked by irritation at

the peripheric region. The boy who has the impulse to touch and pull

everything will, if not prevented by mother or nurse, surely play with

his little organ. Sometimes there is a phimosis or an inflammation of

the prepuce, or an accumulation of smegma in the infant boy; in girls

there may be uncleanliness in the vulva, worms, eczema or pruritus.

All these anomalies cause a certain itching which incites the child

to touching and rubbing these parts. These manipulations produce an

agreeable tickling sensation and awaken the feeling of lust. This

feeling operates in the memory and excites the child to a state of

activity before sexual consciousness has had time to awaken.

The habit of masturbation is sometimes contracted in infancy, by the

laxness of stupid servants or ignorant mothers. They often try to calm

the infant by tickling the child’s genitals and thus awaken lustful

feelings which later on drives the child to renew the manipulation

without outside help. In this way masturbation is found in the best and

purest homes.

Another practice resorted to by nurse-girls and mothers is to amuse

the child by gently striking its buttocks, a region which is highly

erogenous. Every one who has read “Les Confessions,” by Rousseau, knows

how this savant, when a boy, became sexually excited when his nurse

punished him by whipping him on his buttocks. Thus nurses, and even

mothers, innocently induce the child to the habit of masturbation.

A still greater danger lurks from vicious servants and voluptuous

nurse-girls who deliberately handle the infant’s or the very young

child’s lumbus libidinis causa. They touch and strike the genitals

of boys as well as that of girls for their own pleasure. There are

few nurse-girls, says Parke, who do not delight to initiate the boy,

committed to their care, in sexual matters. He relates many histories

of patients who were induced to abnormal practices by their nurses in

early youth. Lawson-Tait, in warning parents against allowing children

to sleep with their nurses or with servants, says that in every

instance where he found a number of children affected by masturbation,

the contagion could be traced to a servant. Freund relates several

examples of severe youthful hysteria where the starting-point could

be traced to some sexual manipulations by servants, nurse-girls and

governesses.

Sexual precocity is, therefore, not seldom caused by tactile

stimulation. Still in the majority of cases precocity may be easily

traced to a hereditary taint.

CHAPTER XVI

ANAESTHESIA

Under the caption of sexual anaesthesia will be treated here not only

the deficiency of sexual emotion or the absence of the sexual feeling,

i. e., the impotence of voluptas or the lack of erotic desire, but all

other deficiencies, declines or abatements in the realm of sex, such as

absence of experiencing satisfaction, impotency of copulation and of

propagation.

_Etiology of male impotence._—In the etiology of impotence three main

causes must be taken into consideration. Impotence is almost always

met with in congenital or acquired malformation. Such anomalies lie

more in the province of surgery and need not be considered here any

further. Impotence is also found as a symptom in certain constitutional

diseases. The patients suffering from these troubles, are seeking

medical advice more for their causative anomaly than for the symptom

of impotence, which in these cases is of secondary importance. Hence

the consideration of these cases may also be omitted. The anomaly of

impotence par excellence and for which medical advice is mostly sought

is nervous impotence. This impotence from nervous collapse is the

commonest and complicates all other kinds.

The patients of this class have always been normal in their sex-life.

Suddenly, one day, they find themselves impotent. The cause of this

kind of impotence is, in the majority of cases, sexual excesses, and

four different kinds of excesses may be taken into consideration,

excesses in copulation, in masturbation, in mental erethism, or

commonly called day-dreaming, and finally excesses in tactile

eroticism, or the common sexual dalliance or caresses of young lovers.

_Copulation excesses._—During coition all the parts of the genital

apparatus are in a state of extreme congestion. If such congestions

are too often provoked they have a more or less deleterious effect

upon the organs. Especially the colliculus and the prostatic portion

of the urethra are affected by such repeated congestions. While the

other parts assume their normal state soon after ejaculation and

the cessation of erection, the colliculus remains still in a state

of turgescence for some time. Now, the prostatic urethra is very

rich in sensible nerves, and by its congestion all the generative

organs are kept in a state of erethism. The irritation of this area

is also capable of deranging the spinal genital centres. It either

increases excitability and causes ejaculatio praecox, or it decreases

excitability, and erections are no longer evoked.

Besides affecting the special nerves, the repeated orgasm, through the

mental vertigo, the muscular convulsion, the cardiac and respiratory

excitement, must lead to nervous disorders. As a matter of fact,

venereal excesses are followed by malaise, nervousness, mental

depression, lassitude, fatigue, satiety, heaviness in the head,

disposition to sleep, dulness of intellect, indisposition to exercise,

want of decision, regrets and ill humor, and the other symptoms of

general neurasthenia.

_Masturbatic excesses._—Still excesses in copulation are not so harmful

as excesses in masturbation. In the first place excesses in copulation

are self-limited. Indulgence in intercourse requires the consent of the

partner, and where a second person is needed, there is always a limit

put to the will of the first party. Furthermore, excesses in coition

require each time a complete erection, and abused nature will finally

deny erections. If the young and vigorous individual should in the

beginning be able to command quite a number of erections in one night,

after a certain time, he will be glad if he could have one complete

erection during a night, or even once a week. In this way Nature

herself regulates such excesses and takes care that “the trees should

not sweep the stars down.”

The case is different with masturbation. No limit is set here to the

excesses. Self-abuse does not require cooperation of a second person,

and what is of more importance, erection is not requisite. Thus

even Nature is here powerless. Hence when there is a propensity to

masturbatory excesses, there is nothing to prevent the individual from

abusing its favorite pastime.

Besides the harm to the greater frequency, excesses in masturbation

offers additional injury through the youth of the individual.

Copulation excesses are indulged in by individuals after puberty, i. e.,

by persons with fully developed generative organs and in full

virility. The practice of masturbation, on the other hand, is often

begun by mere children, before the genital organs have had time to

fully develop, and it is easily seen that excesses will cause greater

damage to these undeveloped organs. Hence when young individuals are

given to inordinate masturbation, they harm the organs in a higher

degree than excesses in copulation.

Furthermore, ejaculation in masturbation is forced through purely

local manipulation. There is only a local excitation of the nerves.

The help of the psyche and phantasy is missing, and the lumbar centres

are tasked to the utmost. When the masturbator tries to supply the

psychic means, he relies on the fertility and the extravagance of the

lewd images which he presents to his mind to increase the libido. Hence

masturbation is more injurious because it is generally effected through

the influence of an exalted imagination.

Very soon the masturbator discovers that visions, once sufficient to

produce the requisite excitement, have lost their power, and that

the images need to be of a more extravagant salacity. In this way,

the masturbator accustoms himself to extraordinary means of sexual

gratification, so that attempts of normal copulation are no longer

successful. When he attempts coition, he finds that reality is so

much less than his imagination has led him to believe and that it is

incapable of rousing his appetite.

Another injury done to the character of the masturbator is the

guilty conscience. Almost every masturbator seems to feel that

his acts degrade his manhood.[AR] He seems to know by intuition

that his practice is injurious to his health and is morally wrong,

because it is not in accord with the general plan of the creative

power in the universe. Still in spite of himself, he continues to

indulge in it. The will seems to have entirely lost its control. The

masturbator is thus engaged in a conflict between moral conviction

and sensual indulgence. Herein lies one of the most harmful effects

of masturbation. It is undermining the individual’s will-power and

destroying his character. Every masturbator resolves again and

again, after each exercise, to resist henceforth the inclination

and to overcome the temptation,[AS] each time with the same futile

result. A paralyzing sensation arises in him, a feeling of shame and

self-contempt overtakes him, because he has again failed to show enough

energy, has again been too weak to resist the impulse. Finally these

disturbing and paralyzing sensations give rise to the conviction of

his being lacking in will-power and to the feeling of being generally

deficient in everything else in life. In this way, excesses in

masturbation harm the generative organs not only directly but also

indirectly by first injuring the individual’s entire nervous system,

and the different kinds of impotencies are only symptoms of the general

neurasthenia.

_Mental erethism._—The other kind of sexual excesses, those of mental

erethism and frustrate eroticism, are even more harmful than excesses

in copulation and masturbation.

By mental erethism or, as it is generally called, or rather misnamed,

mental masturbation, is understood the filling of the phantasy with

lascivious pictures. The dreamers give themselves up to sensual

thoughts, allowing the mind to dwell constantly on sexual ideas, or

erotic subjects of connubial enjoyments, conjuring before the unruly

imagination extravagant and voluptuous visions and bawdry portrayals.

The mind is fixed on images of individuals of the other sex, all in

lustful positions, on pictures of the nude and of their genitals and

of couples in actione coeundi.

The voluptuous day-dreamers, not needing material manipulation, may

busy themselves with their favorite thoughts while seemingly conversing

with their friends or on the most solemn occasions, as when listening

to a sermon, etc. These erogenous thoughts, these libidinous images,

these constant broodings on sex-matters create a habit which secures

such a hold upon the individual that he cannot overcome it. The habit

becomes so rooted in some instances that it is impossible for the

patients to free their thoughts from fancies and pictures of lustful

situations, while alone. Not even with the greatest efforts are they

able to rid themselves from imagining erotic scenes of various kinds.

Their minds are constantly preoccupied with a single engrossing subject

to the exclusion of all other topics and are perpetually turned on

sexual subjects, so that they are unable to concentrate their attention

upon any other matters.

These perennial broodings on sex subjects keep the genital organs

in a permanent state of sexual excitation and erethism. While in

masturbation the material congestion of the generative organs is

removed with each ejaculation, in mental erethism relief by ejaculation

is missing. In the first stage of the vicious habit, the morbid mental

lubricity and the lascivious unlicensed thoughts may occasionally

provoke an ejaculation. But later on, when the genitals have undergone

a certain weakness, ejaculation is not brought on any longer by these

images, and the genital organs remain in a continual state of material

congestion and nervous tension. In this way not only the colliculus and

prostratic urethra, as in excesses of copulation and masturbation, but

all the genital organs are in a state of chronic inflammation, which in

time becomes the cause of impotence.

_Tactile eroticism._—Worse than mental erethism is tactile eroticism.

By tactile eroticism is understood, keeping the genital organs

constantly irritated by dalliance with individuals of the other sex,

stopping short of the act of copulation. On a walk through the city

parks, any summer evening, or on a trip on the Sunday excursion boats,

young men and women may be observed lying in each other’s arms in

a continual caress, kissing, hugging, and fondling each other for

hours, scarcely confining themselves within the limit of decency.

These couples are actually exercising the sexual act, although they

do not obtain sexual congress. These tremors and ecstasies, these

amorous ardors and intoxications, these sensual joys which stimulate

with rapture the higher centres and infuse the mind with sexual

gratification, are all a part of the chain of the sexual act. The

interruption of this chain of impulses short of copulation may satisfy

the moral conscience of the young people, but it does not make such

excesses less injurious. On the contrary, the generative organs are

deprived of the relief which ejaculation lends to these organs. The

genital tube remains surcharged with blood, and the hyperaemia subsides

but slowly. The normal outlet of the sex-activity has been cut off

by a special process of repression. If these frustrate stimulations

are frequently repeated, they perpetuate the genital congestion, and

through the retention of the secretions, a catarrh of the genital

organs ensues, just as inflammations often originate in the mammary

glands through the accumulation of the milk after weaning the child.

These perennial congestions are the cause of prostatic inflammations

not seldom met with in young men who never were infected by gonorrhoea.

The ulcerations of the cervix so often found in young girls and young

mothers of one child may often be attributed to no other cause than to

frustrate eroticism in the young girls and to onanism[AT] in the young

mothers. The cervix is damaged in the same way as the soil, burned by

the sun, in the absence of a beneficent rain, cracks and slits.

The frequently repeated engorgements of the blood vessels which do

not receive the normal physiological relief by ejaculation provoke in

both parties an exaggerated sex-sense and produce the emotions, known

as satyriasis in men and as nymphomania in women. The exaggeration is

followed later on by exhaustion of the libidinous impulses, and the

men become hypochondriacs and impotent and women neurotic and shallow.

The continual congestion in the genitals causes also a continued

feeling of heaviness and discomfort in the lower abdomen. Urination

becomes frequent in both sexes, and in women menstruation is irregular.

The patients complain of profuse pains in the back, legs, sides, and of

weakness, nervousness and sleeplessness. These troubles cause general

debility and a complete breakdown of the nervous system.

The generative centres are particularly damaged by the constant

congestion of the genitals. The frequent stimuli keep the lumbar

centres in a condition of constant irritation. The nervous system,

presiding over the function of erection, thus becomes worn out and

exhausted, and the nerves do not respond even to the strongest

stimulations, which would otherwise set them in action. In this

way, the centres get accustomed, so to say, of not responding any

longer with erection to the proper stimuli, or in other words, the

consensualism between the genital nerves and their centres is broken.

Hence, besides the harm done to the nerves by the general debility,

there is great damage done to the genital nerves and centres by the

break in the chain of the reflex mechanism. In no other sex-activity,

except in actual copulation, are the generative organs in such a

constant and intense excitement as in dalliance with individuals of the

other sex, no other erotic stimuli create such libidinous turgescence

of the organs and such a high degree of sex-tension, exciting with

rapture the higher centres, no other excitations cause such a

consumption of nerve power as this gratification of the impulse of

contrectation by tactile manoevres. The erections of penis and clitoris

are vigorous and violent. The organs are set in a state of expectancy

for the final act. If the act is not terminated within a certain

limited time, the state of expectancy cannot last for ever. The mode

of action is limited in length of time. Except in the abnormal state,

known as priapism, the duration of erection is relatively short in the

normal individual. Its beginning is synchronous with the onset of the

material congestion and nervous tension of the genital parts, and its

subsidence should normally be synchronous with ejaculation. If the

latter be prevented, erection has to cease sooner or later, even when

congestion and tension remain unabated. Hence after long and lasting

amorous caresses the erections fail.

If these manœuvres are often repeated, the excitations finally do not

effect the proper response, and erection fails from the outset. The

strong and continuous stimulations render the nerves and their centres

inert in reaction and weak in power. The centres of erection and

ejaculation become blunted, the inhibitory centres get very sensitive,

and erection cannot be provoked. When the nerve centres presiding over

the function of erection get into the habit of not responding to the

highest excitations of the tactile stimuli, they do not respond even

to the stimulations concarnationis. The cooperating nerve-apparatus

has been affected, and a perverted innervation is created. The

close interdependence of the mechanism of erection and the centres

is removed, and an abnormal reflex-excitability is produced. The

consensualism between the corpora cavernosa and the centre of erection

is interrupted.

Before the indulgence in frustrate caresses has become a habit,

i. e., in the beginning of the practice, erections are vigorous and

of considerable duration. But the duration diminishes with each

repetition. After a few months or years of these nerve-destroying

practices, according to the patient’s nervous constitution, there is no

response by erection even to the strongest stimuli. The consentaneous

action, which, otherwise, connects the excitement of the organs with

erection and completion of the act, does not take place. This lack of

consensualism on the part of the several factors which go to make up

the orgasm leads finally to complete impotence.

Continence, if long continued, has been claimed to be the cause of

impotence. But there is no valid reason for this belief. To prove the

harmfulness of continence, an analogue is brought forward between the

atrophy of a muscle in enforced idleness and the injury to the sex

organs in enforced abstinence. But the proof is somewhat feeble. The

essential organs of generation are not muscles but glands, and who has

ever heard of a tear gland atrophying for lack of crying. Furthermore,

abstinence does not condemn the generative organs to absolute rest.

Every individual, especially when abstinent, has frequently nocturnal

erections through the entire period of his sexual activity, and there

is no reason why such erections should not keep the genitals in the

required exercise and should not prevent the alleged atrophy. As far as

the exercise to prevent atrophy is concerned, nocturnal erections ought

to be of the same service as erections followed by intromissions. The

nocturnal erections seem to be even more harmless. The engorgement of

the colliculus is less pronounced in these erections. Micturition, on

awakening with an erection, is immediately possible, while there is a

pronounced inability of micturition after an erection and ejaculation

either through initu aut stupro manu.

The histories of patients are cited to prove the deleterious effects of

total abstinence. Cases are known of alleged abstinent neurasthenics,

on the point of a complete breakdown, who recovered perfect health

after marriage. But even this proof cannot stand a closer scrutiny.

Who can prove the total abstinence of these patients? The layman is

prone to regard the actual intromission only as sexual activity. If he

has abstained from this final phase, he considers himself abstinent.

But chastity is not continence by any means. Absolute continence

is abstinence not only from the gratification of the impulse of

detumescence concarnatione, but also from that of contrectation, i. e.,

from mental and tactile caresses and from all other abnormal practices.

We must distinguish between chastity and abstinence. Those who are

chaste out of fear of venereal infection or for lack of opportunity are

not always abstinent. They are just the individuals who are indulging

immoderately in mental erethism or even masturbation.

The mere assertion of the patient that he never indulged in unnatural

practices does not count. The patient’s veracity is very questionable.

All venereal troubles seem to exert an inhibitory influence upon the

truth-centres. The propensity of the masturbator to conceal the truth

is notorious. If such a patient claims that he has never masturbated,

it is likely that he is still practising it. A special psychical

element, associated with this habit, prompts the majority of patients

to gross and intemperate prevarication.

But even if such a “rara avis,” who has abstained from actual

manusturpation, should exist, still mental erethism cannot entirely be

excluded. The elicitation of a history of mental erethism is connected

with great difficulty. Masturbation with these patients means only

the indulgence in manual practices; the voluptuous day-dreams are

considered of no account, and the peculiar type of mendacity prevents

them from revealing the truth even to him, upon whom they called to

consult.

Hence the loss of sexual power in these patients may not have been

effected by continence but, on the contrary, by continual erethism. The

examination of such patients really shows, as a rule, the prostatic

urethra in a state, which is usually caused by prolonged erethism.

After marriage, with its regulated sexual activity and the removal of

the inclination to the wild erotic fancies, the neurasthenia is soon

cured, not because the patient has given up abstinence, as interpreted

by the anti-abstinence advocates, but, on the contrary, because he

has now become real abstemious from the excesses of mental erethism.

Hence the cure of neurasthenia by marriage is no proof against sexual

abstinence. The patients who seek medical advice for their neurasthenic

troubles may be those who have only abstained from coition but have

freely and immoderately indulged in the unnatural modes of sensualism,

whence their troubles originated. The real continent individuals who

avoid any kind of erotic practices remain sound and healthy and do

not require medical help. Their cases remain hence unknown to the

profession.

If total abstainers from every kind of sexual erethism should

sometimes become neurasthenic, this fact would not prove yet that the

nervous trouble was caused by total abstinence from the gross sexual

gratification. Even the man about town may become neurasthenic for

lack of the gratification of the impulse of permanent mating. The

apologists of promiscuous intercourse forget or are ignorant of the

fact that the impulse of permanent mating in normal men and women

cannot be satisfied by promiscuity. The craving for a permanent mate,

home and family unconsciously demands gratification even from him who

leads a promiscuous sexual life. If this impulse is not gratified,

as in cranky old bachelors or hysterical old maids, it may lead to

severe attacks of neurasthenia. Such cases will not be cured by the

association with venal women or by promiscuous sensuality, but they may

be cured by a permanent mate, home, and family life. Hence the cure of

the total abstainer from his nervousness by marriage is again no proof

against total abstinence. The cause of the trouble may have been the

unsatisfied impulse of permanent mating which has been now satisfied by

marriage. Promiscuous relations would not have cured the neurasthenia,

but marriage with its accompanying emotional tones.

There is, therefore, no valid proof of the harmfulness of total

abstinence in a healthy individual without a hereditary taint. If total

abstinence ever harmed anybody, the patient was either a congenial

weakling or has acquired his lack of resistance through indulgence

in early eroticism. A perfectly healthy man is never injured by

abstinence. At least there is no sufficient proof that it ever did.

But there are unmistakable proofs that total abstinence does not harm

the individual. The best proof is furnished by many chaste and healthy

women. Few women seem to suffer from total abstinence. The rejoinder

that woman’s sexual desires are very feeble, that the female sex has

no sexual needs, that it is more or less frigid, are mere masculine

assertions without objective proofs. Women writers, who ought to

know best the feelings of their own sex, claim just the opposite.

Johanna Elberskirchen (in Sexualempfindung bei Weib und Mann) has

well satirized the masculine impertinence which tries to teach woman

what her emotions are or are not. The fact that many a young woman

runs the risk, in the present state of sex-morality, of ruining her

entire future by the indulgence in extra-marital sexuality, under

conditions where pecuniary or other considerations are entirely out

of the question, would tend to show that the sexual impulse is by no

means so weak in women, as many would lead us to believe. It is simply

incomprehensible that the female sexual needs should be less urgent

than those of the male sex. Woman has by far the greater part of labor

in the sex-performance. With the ejaculation the man’s biological

part is at an end. He may leave now the scene of his activity, while

the woman’s part just begins and is continued through nine months

of pregnancy and about a year of nursing of the new being. Dr. M.

Glasgow, as a woman perfectly competent to judge, says (Review of

Reviews, 1912, p. 319): “The strong sexuality displayed by a sex whose

contribution to the germ of the race is discharged in a brief moment

of enjoyment must be greatly less than exhibited by the other party,

whose contribution is made through long months of patient endurance.”

The prominent part woman takes in the propagation of the race forces to

the logical conclusion that her erotic needs are of necessity stronger,

although, as Ellen Key puts it, they may be calmer than that of man’s.

Woman is able in a quite extraordinary way to produce the impression

that she herself is really non-sexual and that her sexuality is only a

concession to man. But the seeming reluctance of the female is intended

to increase the sexual activity in both mates. The passivity of the

female throughout nature is only apparent, it is the passivity of the

magnet. As a matter of fact, women experience during the orgasm an

ecstasy of feeling greater than in men, involving the whole system in

an ecstatic nervous erethism.

Still the normal woman can stand absolute continued continence without

any injury to her body and mind (e. g. nuns). Hence there is no reason

why the human male, if left to himself, and nothing comes to disturb

the natural course of his sexual development, should be harmed by

abstinence. Until the impulse of permanent mating enters into play, and

this comes relatively late in life, abstinence will harm neither men

nor women, if they live in an atmosphere free from the influence of

artificial stimulation.

If the animal kingdom could be taken as proof for or against total

abstinence in man, we find that pet animals, as canary birds or dogs,

who rarely have the opportunity to exercise their sexual powers, are

generally as healthy and live as long as those living in freedom.

Hence the claim that abstinence is the cause of impotence has

absolutely no ground to stand upon. If the young man kept his

thoughts pure and avoided exciting amusements which create emotional

disturbances, impotence would be an unusual occurrence. If the young

woman would avoid puttering over her genitalia, pelvic obsession with

its accompanied hysterical conditions of hyperesthetic or paresthetic

erethism would be rarely met with.

The only cause for impotence remains sexual excesses. They are very

seldom the immediate cause of the impotence. But they leave such

weakness in the genital organs and in the nervous system that it

requires only the least disturbance to provoke total impotence. Such

disturbances, as remorse over the formerly committed irregularities, or

distrust in one’s powers, or the mental attitude of the woman to whom

sexual approaches are a matter of real or assumed indifference, are

sufficient to render the weakened neurotic man total impotent.

Next to excesses, gonorrhoea, in a great many cases, leaves the

genitals in a similar weakened condition. Gonorrhoea often causes acute

inflammation of the prostatic urethra, and the mucous membrane not

seldom undergoes the changes characteristic of chronic catarrh. The

sensory nerves reflexly keep the centres for erection and ejaculation

in a condition of hyperesthesia. This condition finally leads to the

paralysis of the centres and nerves, and reflex-erection cannot be

produced.

Psychic causes of impotence are mental fatigue, overwork, preoccupation

with mathematical or financial problems, fear,[AU] anger, grief, and

disgusting sights or odors. Prolonged excitement before attempting

coition may also lead to temporary impotence.

The other causes of impotence are the symptomatic ones. Impotence

is met with in tabes dorsalis, diabetes, nephritis, obesitas,

oxalic diathesis, haemorrhoids, fissures of the anus, seat worms,

etc. Excesses in the consumption of certain drugs may also lead to

impotence. Such drugs are alcohol,[AV] morphine, cocaine, tobacco and

the bromides.

_Etiology of impotence in women._—The same causes, at work in producing

impotence in men, are also affecting impotence in women. The only

modification lies in the fact that impotence of copulation, which

is the impotence par excellence in men, is of a negligible quantity

in women. The main mode of impotence found in women is that of

experiencing libido. This impotence may be either idiopathic or also

caused by excesses as the impotence of copulation in men. Idiopathic

impotence of libido is oftener met with in women than in men. Still

even in women this insensibility is much rarer than is generally

believed. The explanation for the greater frequency of impotence of

libido in women than in men has first been given by Freud (Sig. Drei

Abhandlungen über Sexualtheorie).

The autoerotic activity of the erogenous zones in children is the same

in both sexes. It may be asserted, says Freud, that the sexuality of

the little girl has entirely a male character. The chief erogenous

zone in the female child is the clitoris which is homologous to the

male penis. The frequent spontaneous discharges of sexual excitement

in little girls manifest themselves in twitching and erections of the

clitoris. But while in the male the erogenous zone remains the same

after puberty as before, namely in the penis, puberty is distinguished

in the girl by a wave of repression of the clitoris-sexuality and

in the change of the erogenous zones. The rôle of the clitoris is

henceforth to conduct the excitation to the adjacent parts. It often

takes some time to affect this transference. During this time the young

woman remains anaesthetic to stimulations of the internal organs as

vagina or cervix. This anaesthesia may become permanent if the clitoris

zone refuses to transfer its excitability. This anaesthesia in women is

often only apparent and local. They are anaesthetic at the vagina and

cervix, but not at all unexcitable through the clitoris or even through

other erogenous zones, such as the lips or the nipples. The women are

impotent of experiencing libido in coition but potent when the clitoris

is excited by any other stimuli.

The refusal to transfer the clitoris sexuality is, as a rule, caused

by an excessive irritation of the clitoris by manusturpation during

childhood. The excesses which cause impotence of libido in women are

the same which cause impotence of copulation in men, namely excesses in

copulation, masturbation, mental erethism, and tactile eroticism. In

women the excesses in copulation are more harmful than in men. While in

men these excesses are self-limited by the impossibility of provoking

any erections, after a certain time of continuous indulgence; in women

there is no limitation to the practice. Playing the passive rôle, she

can stand congressum continuum for a considerable length of time and

tire out a number of men in succession. The vaginal pavement-epithelial

lining is very strong.

“Conteritur ferrum, silices teneantur ab usu.

“Sufficit et damni pars caret illa metu.”

sings Ovid in his “Ars Amandi.” Hence when a woman has any proclivity

for excesses in initu, there is no natural limit to her indulgence.

Through the influence of the frequent irritation in copulative

excesses, the vaginal mucous membrane undergoes considerable changes.

It becomes a veritable skin, a stiff parchment, and thus loses

sensitiveness.

The other cause for impotence of libido are excesses in masturbation.

The evil results of these practices in women are fully as great as in

men, although with women it is the orgasm alone that does the damage,

since there is no seminal discharge or loss of vital fluids. Through

the frequent application of friction to the parts, they become first

hypersensitive and later hyposensitive and non-responsive to normal

excitations. Accustomed to excite the genitals by manual stimuli, which

may be kept up for a considerable length of time, the masturbator is,

later on, impotent to reach the acme through the normal, relatively

short excitations, as they take place through the internal organic

events in the genitals in normal sex-activity.

In women, the same as in men, the greater damage through excesses in

masturbation is done by the greater frequency, because it requires no

help, from an outsider, because it is not bound by time and locality,

and may be practised by the undeveloped child, and last but not least,

because of the constant conflict and struggle of the masturbator

between the sensual impulse and the inability to desist and the feeling

of womanly unworthiness, dissatisfaction and shame.

Excesses in mental erethism and excessive dalliance with members of

the other sex have no less injurious effects in women than in men. In

the long run these excesses cause in the woman a number of nervous

troubles which take the form of hysteria or assume the character

of neurasthenia. These excessive practices of erethism or tactile

eroticism are, also in women, worse than excesses in copulation and

masturbation, because the former do not lead to the orgasm and to the

relief of the nervous tension and material congestion.

Another cause of impotence of libido in women is onanism or the

practice of withdrawal. This coitus interruptus which rarely leads

to orgasm in the woman, has the same effect upon her as excessive

mental erethism or tactile eroticism, because it does not lead to

relief from the nervous tension and the congestion. Excesses in

onanism are, therefore, very harmful in women, while they are of

lesser consequence in men. The repeated congestions of the parts in

all these practices lead first to chronic hyperaemia and stasis, and

in its further progress to chronic inflammations of the tissues, known

under the respective names of metritis, perimetritis, parametritis,

endometritis, salpingitis, and ovaritis. The inflammations constantly

irritate the nerves and their centres and in this way blunt their

normal sensibility. Besides the dulling of the nervous elements, these

conditions give rise to great pain in commixtione, and pain and fear

are the greatest enemies of libido.

Other causes of impotence of libido in women are excesses in alcohol,

bromides, cocaine, morphine and other narcotics and stimulants.

Sometimes impotence of libido is the result of a hard confinement.

During such confinements extensive lesions in the erectile tissues of

the bulbs and in the sphincter cunni muscles are apt to occur. Now,

the integrity of the vaginal bulbs, of the sphincter cunni, of the

intermediary net of vessels, and of the clitoris is necessary for the

normal experiencing of libido. If a serious lesion occurs, the blood

current is interrupted, and the blood is prevented from leaving the

bulbs and from entering the corpora cavernosa of the clitoris. The

following case will serve as an illustration:

The patient, twenty years of age, married twenty months, has a baby

ten months old. She states that since her confinement she has no

libido during coition. Before this event she always found perfect

gratification. The examination shows a first-degree laceration of the

perineum.

Absence or smallness of the clitoris and an adherent prepuce may also

often diminish the feeling of libido.

_Pathology of male impotence._—The minute penetration into the

different causes of sexual anaesthesia in the preceding pages was of

particular importance, in order to fully understand the pathology of

the different kinds of impotence.

The accomplishment of the physiological act of copulation and

impregnation requires from the man the possession, first of the desire

to associate with the other sex, or of the instinct of voluptas,[AW]

secondly the power of effecting intromission or the potency of

erection, thirdly the potency of ejaculating a healthy sperma for

impregnation, and finally it requires that libido or pleasure

accompanies the emission to assure the repetition of the act.

From these requirements it follows that the individual must command

over four potencies, the potency of voluptas, which compels the

individual to seek the society of the other sex, the potentia coeundi,

which depends upon strong normal erections, the potentia generandi,

depending upon normal secreting testicles, and upon the perviousness

of the entire seminal canal, from the testicle to the meatus of the

urethra, and finally over the potency of libido, which depends upon

the intact centripetal nerves and normal centres of generation in the

brain. If any of these potencies are missing, the individual will be

impotent. Hence four kinds of impotencies may be distinguished in both

sexes:

(1) The impotence of voluptas, or the absence of sexual desire.

(2) The impotence of immission, or absence of the power of erection in

men and the anomalies at the entrance into the vagina in women.

(3) The impotence of impregnation, or the absence of spermatozoa in men

and of ova in women.

(4) The impotence of libido, or absence of the ability to experience

pleasure at the moment of emission.

_Impotence of voluptas._—The impotence of voluptas, or male frigidity,

unassociated with the two other impotencies of copulation and

impregnation, is very rare in men.

Physiological impotence of voluptas exists in childhood and in old

age. In the latter period the desires disappear pari passu with the

power. Although the feeling of desire is of purely mental origin, the

generative organs playing only a secondary part, still when these

organs are powerless or absent, the desire is generally also absent.

Impotence of voluptas is found in eunuchs and in castrates,[AX] who

have been operated upon before puberty. Such castrates, even if the

penis has not been removed, show not only impotentia coeundi, but also

complete frigidity. Their habitus and feelings differ entirely from

those of normal men. Castrates, who have been operated upon later

in life, retain the habitus of normal men and also the impulse of

contrectation. The potency of immission is even greatly enhanced,

at least for the first few years after the operation. In normal men

erection subsides immediately after the ejaculation. In eunuchs

ejaculation does not take place. Hence the erections may last for hours

or even days. In the course of time the potentia coeundi even of these

castrates begins also to decrease and later on becomes entirely extinct.

Impotence of voluptas is also found in severe cases of neurasthenia,

where the entire nervous system is in a low state of efficiency. The

history of the following case may serve to illustrate the symptoms of

the neurasthenic impotence of voluptas.

Mr. B., 35 years of age, unmarried, had gonorrhoea several times,

never lues. Since puberty until about two years ago he was a typical

rounder and had an abundance of femininity at his disposal. He is now

suffering from general debility and shows all the symptoms of severe

neurasthenia, as headaches, pains in the back and abdomen, dyspepsia,

constipation, anorexia, insomnia, etc. In addition he has lost all

desire for sexual gratification. While in the days of unimpaired

vigor his sensual activities were of great frequency, several initus

almost every day, at present the necessity for concarnatio is entirely

lacking. When he does associate cum muliere, erection and ejaculation

are perfectly normal, but the sense of libido is greatly diminished.

Sese injungit nowadays only once every three to four months, out of

curiosity to try his potency, but not because he feels any necessity

for the same.

The case is thus one of pure male frigidity combined with a certain

diminution of libido.

Male frigidity or impotence of voluptas is also found among

psychopathics, as low idiots and cretins. These patients lack the

understanding of the opposite sex. No mental excitations will,

therefore, have any effect upon them.

Sexual perversion is another psychosis connected with impotency of

voluptas to the opposite sex.

Impotence of voluptas is also often found in dementia. Sometimes

impotence of voluptas is congenital with an individual otherwise

normal. The impotence is then analogous to colorblindness. Such cases

are exceedingly rare.

_Impotence of libido._—Similar to impotence of voluptas is the

impotence of libido. Here the desire is powerful, the erections are

vigorous, yet ejaculation takes place without the usual accompanied

libido. It is analogous to the loss or impairment of the sense of

taste. Idiopathic impotence of libido in men is very rare. It is mostly

found as a symptom of some other anomaly.

Impotence of libido exists in cases of loss of testicles, as in

castrates and eunuchs.

As a rule, impotence of libido is met with in men who have severely

over-taxed their brains and hence are less impressionable than when

in a normal state of health. The impotency is an indication of an

exhausted brain where the centres for experiencing libido reside.

Sometimes the centripetal nerves which serve for transmission of the

pleasurable sensations to the centres have their impressionability

obtunded by excesses in venere. When the nerves are deranged, the

desire is strong, the erectile power is sufficient, the mind is in

concurrence, emission occurs at the right moment, yet scarcely a

vestige of pleasurable sensation is experienced during emission. The

following case may serve as a proper illustration of the nature of this

anomaly.

Mr. X., fifty years of age, was seduced to the practice of

manusturpation when about thirteen years old. The exercises were

carried out daily. After puberty, from about sixteen to nineteen

years of age, he was given less to these practices, still once a week

he could not resist of indulging in his favorite pastime. At this

time he began to associate with meretricious women. This activity

alternated with manusturpation until he was forty years old. There

were periods of months or even years, while living in localities where

the opportunity for normal sex activity was entirely lacking, when he

took refuge to weekly practices of manusturpation. At the same time he

indulged in excesses of mental erethism. His day-dreams on his long

walks and in sleepless nights were filled with images, all taken from

the realm of sex. Sometimes he also indulged in excesses of tactile

eroticism (manibus ludere cum genitalibus mulierum). At the age of

forty he married a very attractive young woman, and although he is

greatly in love with his wife and two children, who arrived in the

course of time, and is leading a regular sex-life, still the pleasure

experienced at the ejaculation is practically nil. What induces him to

still keep up his sexual activity is to please his young wife.

Here is a case where the three potencies of voluptas, copulation

and procreation are perfectly intact, and where the patient is only

suffering from the impotency of experiencing pleasure or libido during

his sex-activity. In another case the impotency of libido is complete

every time the patient practises coition, but is less pronounced when

the act is repeated within an hour after the first exercise.

Mr. N., thirty-five years of age, a prominent lawyer, is suffering

from a severe attack of neurasthenia for the last three years, the

greater part of which he spent in sanitaria. As a boy he practised

masturbation to some extent, but quite moderately. The symptoms are

greatly pronounced in the morning, and are manifested by a general

malaise, pressure in the head, bulging of the eyes, tremor of the

hands, pressure in the rectum, in the prostatic region, and burning at

the tip of the penis after urinating. The pressure in the rectum is

relieved the day following coition, but returns in aggravated form on

the second day. At the same time a mucus-like sediment appears in the

urine which, on repeated examinations, showed to consist of oxalate of

lime.

For the last few years, ejaculation, in concarnatione, takes place

without any trace of libido. But if the act is repeated within an

hour, the patient experiences some pleasure. For this reason the

patient always exercebat concubitum bis in hora which served to

aggravate his neurosis.

In some patients the libido is only diminished. In extreme narrowness

of the prepuce the pleasure incident to sexual relation is slight.

The author had only recently performed on a man, thirty-two years

old, circumcision to cure this anomaly, although, it is said, that

in persons who have been circumcized for ritual considerations, the

libido is much slighter than in those not circumcized. In the latter,

the covering of the glans is almost a mucous membrane and is very

sensitive, while in circumcized people the covering of the glans is

almost a veritable skin and has lost its finer sensibilities.

_Impotence of procreation._—The type of impotence, most frequently met

with but rarely complained of by men, is the impotence of propagation.

Almost fifty per cent. of all cases of absolute sterility in married

couples are caused by this anomaly in men.

Congenital and acquired deformities of the genitals may often cause

impotence of procreation. All castrates, even those operated later

in life, as the Skoptzies in Russia, are, of course, impotent for

procreation, although if the penis has been left intact, they are

very vigorous sexually, for a certain time, and are very salacious.

Anorchismus, cryptorchismus, atrophy of the testicles, tumors of the

testicles, compression by hydrocele, inflammation, ossification,

tuberculosis, and cancer of the prostate may cause impotence of

procreation without impairing the power of copulation.

Some epispadias and hypospadias may cause impotence of procreation.

When the opening is very far back, the emission will take place outside

of the vagina.

Aspermia, whether idiopathic or acquired, will always cause impotence

of procreation. In the congenital form of aspermia all the genital

organs seem to functionate normally, still no ejaculation takes place.

In the acquired form of aspermia both ejaculatory ducts are

obliterated, as a rule, through suppurative prostatitis or tuberculosis

of the prostatic gland. In both diseases the glandular tissue is

frequently destroyed.

Aspermia may also be due to neurasthenia as the following case may show:

Mr. S., twenty-four years of age, has been treated about two years

previously for nocturnal pollutions. They happened every night once or

twice and weakened the patient in such a degree that he was unable to

perform any kind of work. Electric treatment, hydrotherapeutics, and

some medicinal tonics restored him to health. The pollutions happened

once in three to four weeks only. A year later the patient called

again, this time complaining of weakness in sexual power. After a few

weeks’ treatment the improvement was such that the patient was lost

sight of.

Six months later the patient returned with the complaint of suffering

from aspermia and lack of orgasm. He is erotic, and he has strong

vigorous erections, but no matter how long he remains in initu,

ejaculation does not take place. The patient falls back from sheer

exhaustion, sometimes mentulato membro, without being able to bring it

to an ejaculation and orgasm.

In this case the aspermia is due to a certain nervous weakness of a

neurasthenic nature. The patient has no strictures, and his testicles

are intact.

Aspermia is sometimes found in strictures of the urethra.

In such cases the semen flows backward into the bladder.

In comparison with azoospermia, as a cause of impotence of procreation,

all the other described anomalies are of a great rarity.

In azoospermia ejaculation and orgasm are perfectly normal, but

the semen shows, under the microscope, the absence of spermatozoa.

Azoospermia is sometimes temporarily found after excesses in initu aut

stupro manu.

[Illustration: CUT XLII.

_Azoospermia._

1, Boettcher’s crystals; 2, amyloid bodies; 3, hyaline bodies; 4,

lecithin; 5, testicular cells; 6, prostatic epithelium; 7, urethral

epithelium.]

Permanent azoospermia is, as a rule, caused by inflammations of the

testicles or of the epididymis. These bilateral inflammations of the

testicles or of the vasa epididymis are almost always the result

of gonorrhoea. The vasa deferentia are obliterated and impervious.

The ejaculated semen consists only of the secretions of the seminal

vesicles, of the prostatic glands and of the urethral glands.

The spermatozoa being absent, the sperma is much thinner than in the

normal state. The absence of the spermatozoa and their movements

is also the cause why the Boettcher’s crystals usually form much

earlier; they appear within half an hour after ejaculation and in a

considerable amount. They often cover almost the entire microscopical

field. In the normal semen the movement of the spermatozoa prevents

the early formation of the crystals; they appear after several hours’

standing and are fewer in number. The thin azoospermatic semen is more

transparent and watery and contains more epithelia and fat than normal

semen.

The patient is, as a rule, unaware of his anomaly. It is often

discovered after his wife has undergone innumerable treatments for

her supposed sterility. If the anomaly has been caused by gonorrhoea

with the accompanying inflammation of the testicles, epididymitis, or

spermatic funiculitis, the loss is almost irremediable. The revelation

to the couple of their doom to childlessness is one of the many

tragedies played in the doctor’s office.

_Impotence of copulation._—The anomaly, most complained of, which

drives the patient to seek medical help is the impotence of copulation.

It is the anomaly which strikes the hardest blow to masculine vanity.

It is a psychological fact that most men are proud of their potency

of copulation and feel greatly humiliated when the same is impeded. A

woman will not seldom discuss with her friends the double ovariotomy

performed upon her, but the man deprived of his testicles will never

mention the fact of his castration to his closest friends.

The impotence of copulation is best divided into four types:

1) Organic impotence.

2) Symptomatic, or paralytic impotence.

3) Psychic, a) transitory, b) relative, c) temporary impotence.

4) Atonic impotence.

_Organic impotence_ may be congenital or acquired. Among the congenital

forms are total absence of the penis. Smallness of the penis may also

be the cause of impotence, although this cause has been somewhat

exaggerated by most writers. The male generative organs on the Greek

statues are in comparison with the size of the other parts quite small.

Still, if the smallness goes beyond a certain degree it will cause

impotence. In the same way enlargement of the penis beyond a certain

degree will also result in impotence. Adhesions of the penis to the

neighboring parts or torsion of the penis will render intromission

impossible. Congenital absence of the testicles is always accompanied

by loss of power.

Among the acquired deformities are counted neoplasms of the penis,

elephantiasis, and the destruction of the penis through ulceration.

Syphilis and tuberculosis of the testicles are generally destructive to

virility. Removal of the testicles, even if operated later in life, is,

after a certain time, followed by atrophy of the penis and impotence.

Indurations and ossifications of the cavernous bodies lead, as a rule,

to impotence.

_Symptomatic impotence._—The organic type of impotence is relatively

very rare. The other type, symptomatic impotence, is oftener met with.

It is found in cerebral diseases, diabetes, tabes dorsalis, chronic

nephritis, extreme obesitas, chronic rheumatism, chronic alcoholism

and in the cachexies of anaemia, cholaemia and uraemia. But since the

desire fails with the failure of power, such patients rarely seek

medical aid for this anomaly. They consult the physician for their

original ailment which is of far greater importance to them than the

loss of power. They mention this anomaly only in the course of the

anamnesis.

Symptomatic impotence is, as a rule, paralytic in form. Libido is more

or less absent, and if emissions ever occur they take place without

erection or pleasure. In the paralytic form of impotence nocturnal

erections are absent, nor do erections occur at any other time. This

sign is almost pathognomonic of this type. If the vagina is very wide,

and intromission with semi-erection should be effected, ejaculation

does not come in jets but slowly. The function of the bulbo-cavernosus

muscle is impaired, hence no ejaculation with force in a jet is

possible, but a slow dribbling from the meatus takes place.

In paralytic impotence the genitals are more or less withered. The

skin of penis and scrotum is almost anaesthetic. The entire urethra is

insensible, the sound passes into the bladder with the greatest ease.

The skin of the thigh in the vicinity of the genitals is more sensitive

to electric currents than that of penis and scrotum. The following

history well illustrates a typical case of paralytic symptomatic

impotence:

Mr. H., 45 years of age, a widower with one child, contracted lues

fifteen years previously and was apparently cured after two years’

treatment. For the last two to three years he began to suffer from

shooting pains around the abdomen (Gürtelschmerz) and in his legs.

Micturition is frequently urging, and the stream is slow. The

knee-jerks are greatly exaggerated. The patient’s gait is still

normal, and he does not show any other sign of tabes dorsalis. About

the time when the pains first appeared, he also noticed a certain

weakness in erection and premature ejaculation. He began then to

associate with meretricious women who practised on him fellatricia,

or insertio fascini in os. From this time the impotence increased and

is now complete. For the last two years he never had even nocturnal

erections. The penis is in a state of atrophy, and is now of the size

of a boy’s, fourteen to fifteen years of age. The skin of the penis

is shriveled and cold. The glans is pale. The entire skin of the

penis and scrotum is quite anaesthetic to the galvanic current. An

application of about fifteen milliamperes in strength, which produced

an ulceration by burning, was scarcely felt by the patient. The

faradic reaction is normal.

_Psychic impotence._—The mode of impotence known as psychic is a very

frequent anomaly. It is the disease of the cultured classes. The

action of the nervi erigentes is incomplete in psychic impotence, and

the complete relaxation of the corpora cavernosa does not take place.

Hence a sufficient quantity of blood can not enter the erectile tissue

to exert pressure on the outgoing veins. The corpora cavernosa become

smaller and harder at the critical moment and do not admit the entrance

of the blood. The diameter of the penis becomes less than that of

the glans. The penis feels cartilaginous, and the skin is found in

transverse folds through the contraction of the corpora cavernosa.

Hence erections are feeble or entirely wanting at the critical moment.

When the patient is lying in bed alone he has, in distinction from

atonic impotence, quite vigorous erections.

Psychic impotence is transitorily found also in healthy individuals

when they are in a state of agitation. The more agitated the patient

is, the more the penis shrinks. In psychic impotence, if the wife is of

an exceedingly passionate disposition, she will make advances and may

often evoke powerful erections, whereas the wife’s indifference would

cause impotence.

In this way this form of impotence is often only relative. With one

woman the inability injungendi is complete, while the virile power

is exuberant in concarnatione with another. As a rule, the patient

who has reached the critical age of fifty to sixty, does not succeed

in his conjugal duties but is able commisceri meretricis auxilio.

The indifference of the wife who, as a rule, is about forty to fifty

years of age and has either passed or is very near the climacterium,

accounts for the husband’s impotence in her company. Such men are able

to perform the act only when the woman actively or at least cheerfully

and willingly yields herself. The sullen, supine position of the frigid

wife is not enough to hold a man’s love forever.

Temporary psychic impotence of short duration is sometimes met with in

newly married men through lack of confidence. When about to be married,

the broodings over things to come overstimulate the inhibitory centres

in the brain. As a result, at the critical moment, the penis gradually

shrinks, grows smaller and moves in a worm-like manner in the course of

its diminution.

The following case may serve as an illustration for such cases:

Mr. S., 23 years of age, had suffered from gonorrhoea a few years

previously. He has practised stuprum manu moderately at the time of

puberty. Later on he associated cum meretricibus. He always considered

himself healthy. The seminal discharge was somewhat precipitated, but

the patient attributed this phenomenon to his extraordinary strength

and was rather proud of it. When he became engaged to his present

wife he abstained henceforth from illicit relations. Two days before

the consultation the patient married and, upon approaching his young

bride, found that the erection was too weak to transgress the virginal

portals. After his first failure, every repeated attempt caused the

penis to shrink almost half the normal size of the flaccid condition.

The wife’s genitals were perfectly normal. She did not suffer from

vaginism. Therapeutic suggestion and a medicinal tonic (ut aliquid

fiat) removed the anomaly in a few days.

In this case the anaphrodisiac of fear after the first failure was the

cause of the impotence.

Psychic impotence is sometimes present for a short time after long

continued abstinence in men who for some reason have interrupted their

regular sexual relations. Young men who have never had yet any sex

relations are never affected by mere abstinence. Psychic impotence is

not seldom found in men with a certain vocation requiring great mental

strain, as literary men, bookworms, mathematicians, engineers, etc.

Extreme excitement and desire may cause temporary impotence. The number

of stimuli arriving from the brain is too vast and paralyzes the

centre of erection. A violent lover, who has for a long time repressed

his desires, plunges his entire organism, in the moment of their

realization, into a kind of ecstasy. His soul, i. e., the immaterial

part of his being, concentrates in the object of his desires all his

force and vitality. He appears entirely to forget his organs which

ordinarily serve to transmit his desires. It is hence first necessary

for him that everything be restored to the ordinary channel, that the

moral over-excitation ceases or that it returns at least to the normal

type of simple excitation, before the centre of erection will have

power to exercise its function.

Want of responsiveness from the mate has sometimes a disadvantageous

effect upon the man. Hence obstacles, on the side of the woman, will

not seldom cause psychic impotence. The history of the following case

is characteristic of this kind of disturbances:

A young medical student made the acquaintance of a young girl who had

previously given birth to a child. The girl did not want to reveal her

secret to her lover, and fearing that, as a medical student, he might

discover her secret in initu, she refused to grant him her favor. One

evening while alone with her in his room, he tried hard to accomplish

his desire by persuasion, caresses, and other means. When just at the

point to break her resistance, the erection suddenly ceased, and the

penis shrunk to half its normal size. From this moment he suffered

from complete impotence. Even nocturnal erections did not take place

any longer. The impotence resisted every kind of treatment, until,

one day, the girl wrote the patient that she was now willing to yield

to his desires. At the first meeting following the letter, puella

tentavit actively to arouse his passion, and he succeeded in having a

powerful erection actionis peragendo. From this moment he was cured

from his ailment and enjoyed his full virile power of former days.

This case shows the vast influence the psyche is wielding even upon the

unconscious state of the brain during sleep. The stimulation of the

inhibitory centre was so strong as to prevent even the occurrence of

nocturnal erections.

In illicit relations, the fear of surprise or of infection, shame or

loathing may have inhibitory effects upon the centre of erection and

cause psychic impotence.

Violent shocks to the nervous system, as great fright, pain, or

grief, etc., and all other strong emotions which often affect the

urinary system by causing temporary frequent micturition, polyuria, or

glycosuria, may also give rise to disturbances of the sexual functions

and cause psychic impotence of a transitory nature.

Over-estimation of the difficulties of defloration sometimes causes

temporary impotence in nervous newly married men. The timidity of

inexperience may in the same way have the effect of an anaphrodisiac.

Sometimes the exaggerated veneration of his young wife may cause

temporary loss of vigor in the young husband. The thought that such

an exalted personality, as his young innocent wife, should have to

submit to such an indignity (not a few have this strange opinion of the

conjugal act), works as an inhibition of the proper performance of the

act.

The most frequent cause of psychic impotence is the thought of failure.

An accidental single failure through the temporary abuse of alcohol,

tobacco, coffee, or tea or through intense desire may occur, some day,

which in the healthy man would pass unnoticed. But the nervous man

will begin to brood over this failure, and this brooding will prevent

the formation of associative paths in the brain at every subsequent

attempt of coition. In nervous men, the imagination, having once become

impressed with groundless fears, may retain them with extreme tenacity

and busy itself with constant brooding in solitude over the fancied

ills. Thus a disorder of adjustment is established, and a psychic

trauma is created, through the subconscious effects of cryptogrammic

nerve-currents. This psychic trauma is translated into fear again.

The subconscious cerebral processes lead to the formation of ideas,

later recallable in memory. These morbid ideas become the substratum

of future anxiety-attacks. A pathological state is thus induced where

the natural course of erection fails to follow the sexual excitement.

In this way a veritable disease is produced, where there is a strong

desire without full power. Every additional failure provokes more

intense broodings which are naturally again the cause of failure. Thus

a vicious circle is created which may render an occasional innocent

failure a permanent impotency.

_Atonic impotence._—The most frequent form of impotence of copulation,

in fact, the impotence “par excellence,” is the atonic impotence. This

is the impotency which is generally caused by venereal excesses, either

in copulation, masturbation, mental erethism, frustrate eroticism,

or last but not least, conjugal onanism or coitus interruptus. These

excesses cause the exhaustion of the centre of erection, irritation

of the centre of ejaculation and a debilitation and enervation of

the genital nerves. For when the lumbar centre of erection fails to

respond, there is a deficiency in activity, excitability, mobility, and

tonicity of the entire genital apparatus.

In the atonic form of impotence conditions of absolute impotency are

quite rare. Absolute impotence is mostly found in the paralytic form

which is caused by cerebrospinal and nervous diseases. In the atonic

anomaly the vast majority of cases are of partial impotence.

The impotence due to weakness is distinguished by premature ejaculation

and the subsequent immediate subsidence of erection. Sometimes a

vigorous erection ceases suddenly before emission has occurred, and the

penis becomes completely flaccid and shrivels to half its normal size

before the entrance into the vagina. When ejaculation does later occur

it takes place without erection or pleasurable sensations. Not seldom

the entrance into the vagina is effected with good erection, but when

about to begin the act, the penis suddenly wilts, the wilting either

followed by ejaculation or not. The following case illustrates the

ordinary symptoms:

Mr. L., 45 years of age, happily married, and father of several

children, was always healthy and strong and had never had gonorrhoea

or syphilis, but had freely masturbated when he was young. He always

considered himself a powerful man. He is given to athletics, horseback

riding, ball playing, swimming, rowing, etc. For the last year the

patient noticed a certain weakness in his potency. As soon as he

enters the vagina, ejaculation takes place at once and is followed

by immediate flaccidity of the penis. Sometimes, while trying

intromission, the erection ceases like a shot ante portas. When he

does not try congressus the erection lasts much longer. The patient’s

wife has been of a rather frigid nature, never asking or caring for

concarnatio. But recently she seems at times to have rather a certain

longing for the embrace. This fact makes the patient feel doubly

miserable, not to succeed, when the partner seems to desire and enjoy

the initus.

This case is one of those where objectively there is very little

to discover. In some cases of atonic impotence the patients show

neurasthenic or cerebrasthenic symptoms. The underlying cause of the

impotence, as a rule, determines the symptom-complex of the case.

If the cause of the impotence is excess in masturbation, the case

will show all the symptoms of the typical masturbator. The latter is

generally small, emaciated, hollow-chested, thin-necked and weak-kneed.

He shows deep-set eyes and pale hollow cheeks. The penis and testicles

are small. The penis is cold and shriveled. The patient has a bad

taste in his mouth, and suffers from winds in his stomach. He also

suffers from obstinate constipation and colicky pains in the bowels.

He complains of palpitation of the heart, shortness of breath and of

a burning sensation in his arms. He suffers from loss of memory and

from tinnitus aurium. The patient also shows a certain moral abasement,

incontrollable restlessness, carelessness in dress and person and

shambling in gait. The history of the following case is that of a

typical masturbator:

Mr. C. is 31 years of age and unmarried. At the time of puberty, when

he was 14 years old, he began to practise stuprum manu. Se stuprabat

manu three to four times daily. When twenty years of age he began to

associate cum meretricibus. But the natural initus did not seem to

satisfy him. Post omnem initum manu se stuprabat, in addition, as soon

as he reached his residence. Three years ago he contracted gonorrhoea,

from which he suffered a whole year. Since a year he noticed a certain

weakness in his potency. He is able to effect intromission, but before

he can begin the act, ejaculation without the least trace of libido

takes place, followed by immediate flaccidity of the penis. He has

some erections in the morning but they are not complete as in former

times.