The Impulse to Strangle the Object of Sexual Desire--The Wish to be
Strangled--Respiratory Disturbance the Essential Element in this Group of
Phenomena--The Part Played by Respiratory Excitement in the Process of
Courtship--Swinging and Suspension--The Attraction Exerted by the Idea of
being Chained and Fettered.
There is another impulse which it may be worth while to consider briefly
here, for the sake of the light it throws on the relationship between love
and pain. I allude to the impulse to strangle the object of sexual desire,
and to the corresponding craving to be strangled. Cases have been recorded
in which this impulse was so powerful that men have actually strangled
women at the moment of coitus.[120] Such cases are rare; but, as a mere
idea, the thought of strangling a woman appears to be not infrequently
associated with sexual emotion. We must probably regard it as, in the
main,--with whatever subsidiary elements,--an aspect of that physical
seizure, domination, and forcible embrace of the female which is one of
the primitive elements of courtship.[121]
The corresponding idea--the pleasurable connection of the thought of being
strangled with sexual emotion--appears to occur still more frequently,
perhaps especially in women. Here we seem to have, as in the case of
whipping, a combination of a physical with a psychic element. Not only is
the idea attractive, but, as a matter of fact, strangulation, suffocation,
or any arrest of respiration, even when carried to the extent of producing
death, may actually provoke emission, as is observed after death by
hanging.[122] It is noteworthy that, as Eulenburg remarks, the method of
treating diseases of the spinal cord by suspension--a method much in vogue
a few years ago--often produced sexual excitement.[123] In brothels, it is
said, some of the clients desire to be suspended vertically by a cord
furnished with pads.[124] A playful attempt to throttle her on the part of
her lover is often felt by a woman as pleasurable, though it may not
necessarily produce definite sexual excitement. Sometimes, however, this
feeling becomes so strong that it must be regarded as an actual
perversion, and I have been told of a woman who is indifferent to the
ordinary sexual embrace; her chief longing is to be throttled, and she
will do anything to have her neck squeezed by her lover till her eyeballs
bulge.[125]
"I think if I could be left my present feelings," a lady writes,
"and be changed into a male imbecile,--that is, given a man's
strength, but deprived, to a large extent, of reasoning power,--I
might very likely act in the apparently cruel way they do. And
this partly because many of their actions appeal to me on the
passive side. The idea of being _strangled_ by a person I love
does. The great sensitiveness of one's throat and neck come in
here as well as the loss of breath. Once when I was about to be
separated from a man I cared for I put his hands on my throat and
implored him to kill me. It was a moment of madness, which helps
me to understand the feelings of a person always insane. Even now
that I am cool and collected I know that if I were deeply in love
with a man who I thought was going to kill me, especially in that
way, I would make no effort to save myself beforehand, though, of
course, in the final moments nature would assert herself without
my volition. What makes the horror of such cases in insanity is
the fact of the love being left out. But I think I find no
greater difficulty in picturing the mental attitude of a sadistic
lunatic than that of a normal man who gets pleasure out of women
for whom he has no love."
The imagined pleasure of being strangled by a lover brings us to a group
of feelings which would seem to be not unconnected with respiratory
elements. I refer to the pleasurable excitement experienced by some in
suspension, swinging, restraint, and fetters. Strangulation is the extreme
and most decided type of this group of imagined or real situations, in all
of which a respiratory disturbance seems to be an essential element.[126]
In explaining these phenomena we have to remark that respiratory
excitement has always been a conspicuous part of the whole process of
tumescence and detumescence, of the struggles of courtship and of its
climax, and that any restraint upon respiration, or, indeed, any restraint
upon muscular and emotional activity generally, tends to heighten the
state of sexual excitement associated with such activity.
I have elsewhere, when studying the spontaneous solitary
manifestation of the sexual instinct (_Auto-erotism_, in vol. i
of these _Studies_), referred to the pleasurably emotional, and
sometimes sexual, effects of swinging and similar kinds of
movement. It is possible that there is a certain significance in
the frequency with which the eighteenth-century French painters,
who lived at a time when the refinements of sexual emotion were
carefully sought out, have painted women in the act of swinging.
Fragonard mentions that in 1763 a gentleman invited him into the
country, with the request to paint his mistress, especially
stipulating that she should be depicted in a swing. The same
motive was common among the leading artists of that time. It may
be said that this attitude was merely a pretext to secure a
vision of ankles, but that result could easily have been attained
without the aid of the swing.
I may here quote, as bearing on this and allied questions, a
somewhat lengthy communication from a lady to whom I am indebted
for many subtle and suggestive remarks on the whole of this group
of manifestations:--
"With regard to the connection between swinging and suspension,
perhaps the physical basis of it is the loss of breath. Temporary
loss of breath with me produces excitement. Swinging at a height
or a fall from a height would cause loss of breath; in a state of
suspension the imagination would suggest the idea of falling and
the attendant loss of breath. People suffering from lung disease
are often erotically inclined, and anesthetics affect the
breathing. Men also seem to like the idea of suspension, but from
the active side. One man used to put his wife on a high swinging
shelf when she displeased him, and my husband told me once he
would like to suspend me to a crane we were watching at work,
though I have never mentioned my own feeling on this point to
him. Suspension is often mentioned in descriptions of torture.
Beatrice Cenci was hung up by her hair and the recently murdered
Queen of Korea was similarly treated. In Tolstoi's _My Husband
and I_ the girl says she would like her husband to hold her over
a precipice. That passage gave me great pleasure.[127]
"The idea of slipping off an inclined plane gives me the same
sensation. I always feel it on seeing Michael Angelo's 'Night,'
though the slipping look displeases me artistically. I remember
that when I saw the 'Night' first I did feel excited and was
annoyed, and it seemed to me it was the slipping-off look that
gave it; but I think I am now less affected by that idea. Certain
general ideas seem to excite one, but the particular forms under
which they are presented lose their effect and have to be varied.
The sentence mentioned in Tolstoi leaves me now quite cold, but
if I came across the same idea elsewhere, expressed differently,
then it would excite me. I am very capricious in the small
things, and I think women are so more than men. The idea of
slipping down a plank formerly produced excitement with me; now
it has a less vivid effect, though the idea of loss of breath
still produces excitement. The idea of the plank does not now
affect me unless there is a certain amount of drapery. I think,
therefore, that the feeling must come in part from the
possibility of the drapery catching on some roughness of the
surface of the slope, and so producing pressure on the sexual
organs. The effect is still produced, however, even without any
clothing, if the slope is supposed to end in a deep drop, so that
the idea of falling is strongly presented. I cannot recollect any
early associations that would tend to explain these feelings,
except that jumping from a height, which I used frequently to do
as a child, has a tendency to create excitement.
"With me, I may add, it is when I cannot express myself, or am
trying to understand what I feel is beyond my grasp, that the
first stage of sexual excitement results. For instance, I never
get excited in thinking over sexual questions, because my ideas,
correct or incorrect, are fairly clear and definite. But I often
feel sexually excited over that question of the inheritance of
acquired characteristics, not because I can't decide between the
two sets of evidence, but because I don't feel confident of
having fully grasped the true significance of either. This
feeling of want of power, mental or physical, always has the same
effect. I feel it if my eyes are blindfolded or my hands tied. I
don't like to see the Washington Post dance, in which the man
stands behind the woman and holds her hands, on that account. If
he held her wrists the feeling would be stronger, as her apparent
helplessness would be increased. The nervous irritability that is
caused by being under restraint seems to manifest itself in that
way, while in the case of mental disability the excitement, which
should flow down a mental channel, being checked, seems to take a
physical course instead.
"Possibly this would help to explain masochistic sexual feelings.
A physical cause working in the present would be preferable as an
explanation to a psychological cause to be traced back through
heredity to primitive conditions. I believe such feelings are
very common in men as well as in women, only people do not care
to admit them, as a rule."
The idea of being chained and fettered appears to be not uncommonly
associated with pleasurable sexual feelings, for I have met with numerous
cases in both men and women, and it not infrequently coexists with a
tendency to inversion. It often arises at a very early age, and it is of
considerable interest because we cannot account for its frequency by any
chance association nor by any actual experiences. It would appear to be a
purely psychic fantasia founded on the elementary physical fact that
restraint of emotion, like suspension, produces a heightening of emotion.
In any case the spontaneous character of such ideas and emotions in
children of both sexes suffices to show that they must possess a very
definite organic basis.
In one of the histories (X) contained in Appendix B at the end of
the present volume a lady describes how, as a child, she reveled
in the idea of being chained and tortured, these ideas appearing
to rise spontaneously. In another case, that of A.N. (for the
most part reproduced in "Erotic Symbolism," in vol. v of these
_Studies_), whose ideals are inverted and who is also affected by
boot-fetichism, the idea of fetters is very attractive. In this
case self-excitement was produced at a very early age, without
the use of the hands, by strapping the legs together. We can,
however, scarcely explain away the idea of fetters in this case
as merely the result of an early association, for it may well be
argued that the idea led to this method of self-excitement. "The
mere idea of fetters," this subject writes, "produces the
greatest excitement, and the sight of pictures representing such
things is a temptation. The reading of books dealing with prison
life, etc., anywhere where physical restraint is treated of, is a
temptation. The temptation is aggravated when the picture
represents the person booted. I suppose all this will have been
intensified in my case by my practices as a child. But why should
a child of 6 do such things unless it were a natural instinct in
him? Nobody showed me; I have never mentioned such things to
anyone. I used to read historical romances for the pleasure of
reading of people being put in prison, in fetters, and tortured,
and always envied them. I feel now that I should like to undergo
the sensation. If I could get anyone to humor me without losing
their self-respect, I should jump at the opportunity. I have been
most powerfully excited by visiting an old Australian
convict-ship, where all the means of restraint are shown; I have
been attracted to it night after night, wanting, but not daring
to ask, to be allowed to have a practical experience."
Stcherbak, of Warsaw, has recorded a case which resembles that of
A.N., but there was no inversion and the attraction of fetters
was active rather than passive; the subject desired to fetter and
not to be fettered. It is possible that this difference is not
fundamental, though Stcherbak regards the case as one of
fetichism of sadistic origin ("Contribution à l'Etude des
Perversions Sexuelles," _Archives de Neurologie_, Oct., 1907).
The subject was a highly intelligent though neurasthenic youth,
who from the age of 5 had been deeply interested in criminals who
were fettered and sent to prison. The fate of Siberian prisoners
was a frequent source of prolonged meditations. It was the
fettering which alone interested him, and he spent much time in
trying to imagine the feelings of the fettered prisoners, and he
often imagined that he was himself a prisoner in fetters. (This
seems to indicate that the impulse was in its origin masochistic
as much as sadistic, and better described as algolagnia than as
sadism.) He delighted in stories and pictures of fettered
persons. At the age of 15 the sex of the fettered person became
important and he was interested chiefly in fettered women. A new
element also appeared; he was attracted to well-dressed women and
especially to those wearing elegant shoes, delighting to imagine
them fettered. He fastened his own feet together with chains,
attempting to walk about his room in this condition, but
experienced comparatively little pleasure in this way. At the age
of 15 he met a lady 10 years older than himself and of great
intelligence. As he began to know her more intimately she allowed
him to take liberties with her; he fastened her hands behind her
back, and this caused him a violent but delicious emotion which
he had never experienced before. Next time he fastened her feet
together as well as her hands; as he did so her shoes slightly
touched his sexual organs; this caused erection and ejaculation,
accompanied by the most acute sexual pleasure he had ever felt.
He had no wish to see her naked or to uncover himself, and as
long as this relationship lasted he had no abnormal thoughts at
other times, or in connection with other people. He never
masturbated, and his sexual dreams were of fettered men or women.
Stcherbak discusses the case at length and considers that it is
essentially an example of sadism, on the ground that the impulse
of fettering was prompted by the desire to humiliate. There is,
however, no evidence of any such desire, and, as a matter of
fact, no humiliation was effected. The primary and fundamental
element in this and similar cases is an almost abstract sexual
fascination in the idea of restraint, whether endured, inflicted,
or merely witnessed or imagined; the feet become the chief focus
of this fascination, and the basis on which a foot-fetichism or
shoe-fetichism tends to arise, because restraint of the feet
produces a more marked effect than restraint of the hands.