[120] An attenuated and symbolic form of this impulse is seen in the
desire to strangle birds with the object of stimulating or even satisfying
sexual desire. Prostitutes are sometimes acquainted with men who bring a
live pigeon with them to be strangled just before intercourse. Lanphear,
of St. Louis (_Alienist and Neurologist_, May, 1907, p. 204) knew a woman,
having learned masturbation in a convent school, who was only excited and
not satisfied by coitus with her husband, and had to rise from bed, catch
and caress a chicken, and finally wring its neck, whereupon orgasm
occurred.
[121] Even young girls, however, may experience pleasure in the playful
attempt to strangle. Thus a lady speaking of herself at the time of
puberty, when she was in the habit of masturbating, writes
(_Sexual-Probleme_, Aug., 1909, p. 636): "I acquired a desire to seize
people, especially girls, by the throat, and I enjoyed their way of
screaming out."
[122] Godard observed that when animals are bled, or felled, as well as
strangled, there is often abundant emission, rich in spermatozoa, but
without erection, though accompanied by the same movements of the tail as
during copulation. Robin (art. "Fécondation," _Dictionnaire Encyclopédique
des Sciences Médicales_), who quotes this observation, has the following
remarks on this subject: "Ejaculation occurring at the moment when the
circulation, maintained artificially, stops is a fact of significance.
It shows how congestive conditions--or inversely anemic
conditions--constitute organic states sufficient to set in movement the
activity of the nerve-centers, as is the case for muscular
contractility.... Everything leads us to believe that at the moment when
the motor nervous action takes place the corresponding sensitive centers
also come into play." It must be added that Minovici, in his elaborate
study of death by hanging ("Etude sur la Pendaison," _Archives
d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, 1905, especially p. 791 et seq.), concludes
that the turgescence of penis and flow of spermatic fluid (sometimes only
prostatic secretion) usually observed in these cases is purely passive and
generally, though not always, of post-mortem occurrence. There is,
therefore, no sexual pleasure in death by hanging, and persons who have
been rescued at the last moment have experienced no voluptuous sensations.
This was so even in the case, referred to by Minovici, of a man who hanged
himself solely with the object of producing sexual pleasure.
[123] Eulenburg, _Sexuale Neuropathie_, p. 114.
[124] Bernaldo de Quirós and Llanos Aguilaniedo (_La Mala Vida en Madrid_,
p. 294) knew the case of a man who found pleasure in lying back on an
inclined couch while a prostitute behind him pulled at a slipknot until he
was nearly suffocated; it was the only way in which he could attain sexual
gratification.
[125] Arrest of respiration, it may be noted, may accompany strong sexual
excitement, as it may some other emotional states; one recalls passages in
the _Arabian Nights_ in which we are told of ladies who at the sight of a
very beautiful youth "felt their reason leave them, yearned to embrace the
marvelous youth, and _ceased breathing_." Inhibited respiration is indeed,
as Stevens shows ("Study of Attention," _American Journal of Psychology_,
Oct., 1905), a characteristic of all active attention.
[126] The exact part played by the respiration and even the circulation in
constituting emotional states is still not clear, although various
experiments have been made; see, e.g., Angell and Thompson, "A Study of
the Relations between Certain Organic Processes and Consciousness,"
_Psychological Review_, January, 1899. A summary statement of the
relations of the respiration and circulation to emotional states will be
found in Külpe's _Outlines of Psychology_, part i, section 2, § 37.
[127] The words alluded to by my correspondent are as follows: "I needed a
struggle; what I needed was that feeling should guide life, and not that
life should guide feeling. I wanted to go with him to the edge of an abyss
and say: 'Here a step and I will throw myself over; and here a motion and
I have gone to destruction'; and for him, turning pale, to seize me in his
strong arms, hold me back over it till my heart grew cold within me, and
then carry me away wherever he pleased." The whole of the passage in which
these lines occur is of considerable psychological interest. In one
English translation the story is entitled _Family Happiness_.