severe to make him anxious to stop it, and yet not able to stop it. He also takes pleasure in the idea of being tied up so as to be unable to move.
He has at times indulged in self-whipping, of no great severity.
In the preceding case we see a tendency to erotic self-flagellation which in a minor degree is not uncommon. Occasionally it becomes highly developed. Max Marcuse has presented such a case in elaborate detail (_Zeitschrift für die Gesamte Neurologie_, 1912, ht. 3, fully summarized in _Sexual-Probleme_, Nov., 1912, pp. 815-820). This is the case of a Catholic priest of highly neurotic heredity, who spontaneously began to whip himself at the age of 12, this self-flagellation being continued and accompanied by masturbation after the age of 15. Other associated perversions were Narcissism and nates fetichism, as well as homosexual phantasies. He experienced a certain pleasure (with erection, not ejaculation) in punishing his boy pupils. It is not uncommon for all forms of erotic flagellation to be associated with a homosexual element. I have elsewhere brought forward a case of this kind (the case of A.F., vol. ii of these _Studies_).
Significant is Rousseau's account of the origin of his own masochistic pleasure in whipping at the age of 8: "Mademoiselle Lambercier showed toward me a mother's affection and also a mother's authority, which she sometimes carried so far as to inflict on us the usual punishment of children when we had deserved it. For a long time she was content with the threat, and that threat of a chastisement which for me was quite new seemed very terrible; but after it had been executed I found the experience less terrible than the expectation had been; and, strangely enough, this punishment increased my affection for her who had inflicted it. It needed all my affection and all my natural gentleness to prevent me from seeking a renewal of the same treatment by deserving it, for I had found in the pain and even in the shame of it an element of sensuality which left more desire than fear of receiving the experience again from the same hand. It is true that, as in all this a precocious sexual element was doubtless mixed, the same chastisement if inflicted by her brother would not have seemed so pleasant." He goes on to say that the punishment was inflicted a second time, but that that time was the last, Mademoiselle Lambercier having apparently noted the effects it produced, and, henceforth, instead of sleeping in her room, he was placed in another room and treated by her as a big boy. "Who would have believed," he adds, "that this childish punishment, received at the age of 8 from the hand of a young woman of 30, would have determined my tastes, my desires, my passions, for the rest of my life?" He remarks that this strange taste drove him almost to madness, but maintained the purity of his morals, and the joys of love existed for him chiefly in imagination. (J.J. Rousseau, _Les Confessions_, partie i, livre i.) It will be seen how all the favoring conditions of fear, shame, and precocious sexuality were here present in an extremely sensitive child destined to become the greatest emotional force of his century, and receptive to influences which would have had no permanent effect on any ordinary child. (When, as occasionally happens, the first sexual feelings are experienced under the stimulation of whipping in normal children, no permanent perversion necessarily follows; Moll mentions that he knows such cases, _Zeitschrift für Pädagogie, Psychiatrie, und Pathologie_, 1901.) It may be added that it is, perhaps, not fanciful to see a certain inevitableness in the fact that on Rousseau's highly sensitive and receptive temperament it was a masochistic germ that fell and fructified, while on Régis's subject, with his more impulsive ancestral antecedents, a sadistic germ found favorable soil.
It may be noted that in Régis's sadistic case the little girl who was the boy's playmate found scarcely less pleasure in the passive part of whipping than he found in the active. There is ample evidence to show that this is very often the case, and that the attractiveness of the idea of being whipped often even arises spontaneously in children. Lombroso (_La Donna Delinquente_, p. 404) refers to a girl of 7 who had voluptuous pleasure in being whipped, and Hammer (_Monatschrift für Harnkrankheiten_, 1906, p. 398) speaks of a young girl who similarly experienced pleasure in punishment by whipping. Krafft-Ebing records the case of a girl of between 6 and 8 years of age, never at that time having been whipped or seen anyone else whipped, who spontaneously acquired--how she did not know--the desire to be castigated in this manner. It gave her very great pleasure to imagine a woman friend doing this to her. She never desired to be whipped by a man, though there was no trace of inversion, and she never masturbated until the age of 24, when a marriage engagement was broken off. At the age of 10 this longing passed away before it was ever actually realized. (Krafft-Ebing, _Psychopathia Sexualis_, eighth edition, p. 136.)
In the case of another young woman described by Krafft-Ebing--where there was neurasthenia with other minor morbid conditions in the family, but the girl herself appears to have been sound--the desire to be whipped existed from a very early age. She traced it to the fact that when she was 5 years old a friend of her father's playfully placed her across his knees and pretended to whip her. Since then she has always longed to be caned, but to her great regret the wish has never been realized. She longs to be the slave of a man whom she loves: "Lying in fancy before him, he puts one foot on my neck while I kiss the other. I revel in the idea of being whipped by him and imagine different scenes in which he beats me. I take the blows as so many tokens of love; he is at first extremely kind and tender, but then in the excess of his love he beats me. I fancy that to beat me for love's sake gives him the highest pleasure." Sometimes she imagines that she is his slave, but not his female slave, for every woman may be her husband's slave. She is of proud and independent nature in all other matters, and to imagine herself a man who consents to be a slave gives her a more satisfying sense of humiliation. She does not understand that these manifestations are of a sexual nature. (Krafft-Ebing, _Psychopathia Sexualis_, English translation of tenth edition, p. 189.)
Sometimes a woman desires to take the active part in whipping. Thus Marandon de Montyel records the case of a girl of 19, hereditarily neuropathic (her father was alcoholic), but very intelligent and good-hearted, who had never been whipped or seen anyone whipped. At this age, however, she happened to visit a married friend who was just about to punish her boy of 9 by whipping him with a wet towel. The girl spectator was much interested, and though the boy screamed and struggled she experienced a new sensation she could not define. "At every stroke," she said, "a strange shiver went through all my body from my brain to my heels." She would like to have whipped him herself and felt sorry when it was over. She could not forget the scene and would dream of herself whipping a boy. At last the desire became irresistible and she persuaded a boy of 12, whom she was very fond of, and who was much attached to her, to let her whip him on the naked nates. She did this so ferociously that he at last fainted. She was overcome by grief and remorse. (Marandon de Montyel, _Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, Jan., 1906, p. 30.)
Although masochism in a pronounced degree may be said to be rare in women, the love of active flagellation, and sadistic impulses generally are not uncommon among them. Bloch believes they are especially common among English women. Cases occur from time to time of extreme harshness, cruelty, degrading punishment, and semi-starvation inflicted upon children. The accused are most usually women, and when a man and woman in conjunction are accused it appears generally to have been the woman who played the more active part. But it is rarely demonstrated in these cases that the cruelty exercised had a definite sexual origin. There is nothing, for instance, to indicate true sadism in the famous English case in the eighteenth century of Mrs. Brownrigg (Bloch, _Geschlechtsleben in England_, vol. ii, p. 425). It may well be, however, in many of these cases that the real motive is sexual, although latent and unconscious. The normal sexual impulse in women is often obscured and disguised, and it would not be surprising if the perverse instinct is so likewise.
It is noteworthy that a passion for whipping may be aroused by contact with a person who desires to be whipped. This is illustrated by the following case which has been communicated to me: "K. is a Jew, about 40 years of age, apparently normal. Nothing is known of his antecedents. He is a manufacturer with several shops. S., an Englishwoman, aged 25, entered his service; she is illegitimate, believed to have been reared in a brothel kept by her mother, is prepossessing in appearance. On entering K.'s service S. was continually negligent and careless. This so provoked K. that on one occasion he struck her. She showed great pleasure and confessed that her blunder had been deliberately intended to arouse him to physical violence. At her suggestion K. ultimately consented to thrash her. This operation took place in K.'s office, S. stripping for the purpose, and the leather driving band from a sewing-machine was used. S. manifested unmistakable pleasure during the flagellation, and connection occurred after it. These thrashings were repeated at frequent intervals, and K. found a growing liking for the operation on his own part. Once, at the suggestion of S., a girl of 13 employed by K. was thrashed by both K. and S. alternately. The child complained to her parents and K. made a money payment to them to avoid scandal, the parents agreeing to keep silence. Other women (Jewish tailoresses) employed by K. were subsequently thrashed by him. He asserts that they enjoyed the experience. Mrs. K., discovering her husband's infatuation for S., commenced divorce proceedings. S. consented to leave the country at K.'s request, but returned almost immediately and was kept in hiding until the decree was granted. The mutual infatuation of K. and S. continues, though K. asserts that he cares less for her than formerly. Flagellation has, however, now become a passion with him, though he declares that the practice was unknown to him before he met S. His great fear is that he will kill S. during one of these operations. He is convinced that S. is not an isolated case, and that all women enjoy flagellation. He claims that the experiences of the numerous women whom he has now thrashed bear out this opinion; one of them is a wealthy woman separated from her husband, and is now infatuated with K."
Flagellation, more especially in its masochistic form, is sometimes associated with true inversion. Moll presents the case of a young inverted woman of 26, showing, indeed, many other minor sexual anomalies, who is sexually excited when beaten with a switch. A whip would not do, and the blows must only be on the nates; she cannot imagine being beaten by a small woman. She has often in this way been beaten by a friend, who should be naked at the time, and must submit afterward to cunnilinctus. (Moll, _Konträre Sexualempfindung_ third edition, p. 568.)
In the preceding case there were no masochistic ideas; it is likely that in such a case beating is desired largely on account of that purely physical effect to which attention has already been called. In the same way self-beating with a switch or whip has sometimes been spontaneously discovered as a method of self-excitement preliminary to masturbation. I am acquainted with a lady of much intellectual ability, sexually normal, who made this discovery at the age of 18, and practised it for a time. Professor Reverdin, also, speaks of the case of a young girl under his care who, after having exhausted all the resources of her intelligence, finally discovered that the climax of enjoyment was best reached by violently whipping her own buttocks and thighs. She had invented for this purpose a whip composed of twelve cords each of which terminated in a large chestnut-burr provided with its spines. (A. Reverdin, _Revue Médicale de la Suisse Romande_, January 20, 1888, p. 17.)
FOOTNOTES: FOOTNOTES: [107] The discipline or scourge was classed with fasting as a method of mastering the flesh and of penance. See, e.g., Lea, _History of Auricular Confession_, vol. ii, p. 122. For many centuries bishops and priests used themselves to apply the discipline to their penitents. At first it was applied to the back; later, especially in the case of female penitents, it was frequently applied to the nates. Moreover, partial or complete nudity came to be frequently demanded, the humiliation thereby caused being pleasant in the sight of God.
[108] Dulaure, _Des Divinités Génératrices_, ch. xv; Lea, _History of Sacerdotal Celibacy_, 3d ed., vol. ii, p. 278; Kiernan, "Asceticism as an Auto-erotism," _Alienist and Neurologist_, Aug., 1911.
[109] This is the opinion of Löwenfeld, _Ueber die Sexuelle Konstitution_, p. 43.
[110] Thus, Dühren (Iwan Bloch) remarks (_Der Marquis de Sade und Seine Zeit_, 1901, p. 211): "It is well known that England is today the classic land of sexual flagellation." See the same author's _Geschlechtsleben in England_, vol. ii, ch. vi. In America it appears also to be common, and Kiernan mentions that in advertisements of Chicago "massage shops" there often appears the announcement: "Flagellation a Specialty." The reports of police inspectors in eighteenth century France show how common flagellation then was in Paris. It may be added that various men of distinguished intellectual ability of recent times and earlier are reported as addicted to passive flagellation; this was the case with Helvétius.
[111] A full bibliography of flagellation would include many hundred items. The more important works on this subject, in connection with the sexual impulse, are enumerated by Eulenburg, in his _Sadismus und Masochismus_. An elaborate history of flagellation generally is now being written by Georg Collas, _Geschichte des Flagellantismus_, vol. i, 1912.
[113] _Archiv für Kriminal-Anthropologie_, 1909, p. 361. He brings forward the evidence of a reliable and cultured man who at one time sought to obtain the pleasures of passive sexual flagellation. But in spite of his expectation and good will the only result was to disperse every trace of sexual desire.
[115] Féré, _Revue de Médecine_, August, 1900. In this paper Féré brings together many interesting facts concerning flagellation in ancient times.
[116] Schmidt-Heuert (_Monatschrift für Harnkrankheiten_, 1906, ht. 7) argues that it is not so much the actual use of the rod as playful, threatening and mysterious suggestions playing around it which nowadays gives it sexual fascination.
[117] Moll (_Untersuchungen über die Libido Sexualis_, Bd. 1, p. 18) points out that these emotions frequently suffice to cause sexual emissions in schoolboys.
[118] As Eulenburg truly points out, the circumstances attending the whipping of a woman may be sexually attractive, even in the absence of any morbid impulse. Such circumstances are "the sight of naked feminine charms and especially--in the usual mode of flagellation--of those parts which possess for the sexual epicure a peculiar esthetic attraction; the idea of treating a loved, or at all events desired, person as a child, of having her in complete subjection and being able to dispose of her despotically; and finally the immediate results of whipping: the changes in skin-color, the to and fro movements which simulate or anticipate the initial phenomena of coitus." (Eulenburg, _Sexuale Neuropathie_, p. 121.)
[119] See the article on Udall in the _Dictionary of National Biography_.
IV.
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,