masturbate in the presence of women. He believes that the sight of his organs excites the woman (Ib., pp. 57-68). The presence of masturbation in this case renders it untypical as a case of exhibitionism. Moll at one time went so far as to assert that when masturbation takes place we are not entitled to admit exhibitionism, (_Untersuchungen über die Libido Sexualis_, bd. i, p. 661), but now accepts exhibitionism with masturbation ("Perverse Sexualempfindung," _Krankheiten und Ehe_). The act of exhibition itself gratifies the sexual impulse, and usually it suffices to replace both tumescence and detumescence.
A fairly typical case, recorded by Krafft-Ebing, is that of a German factory worker of 37, a good, sober and intelligent workman. His parents were healthy, but one of his mother's and also one of his father's sisters were insane; some of his relatives are eccentric in religion. He has a languishing expression and a smile of self-complacency. He never had any severe illness, but has always been eccentric and imaginative, much absorbed in romances (such as Dumas's novels) and fond of identifying himself with their heroes. No signs of epilepsy. In youth moderate masturbation, later moderate coitus. He lives a retired life, but is fond of elegant dress and of ornament. Though not a drinker, he sometimes makes himself a kind of punch which has a sexually exciting effect on him. The impulse to exhibitionism has only developed in recent years. When the impulse is upon him he becomes hot, his heart beats violently, the blood rushes to his head, and he is oblivious of everything around him that is not connected with his own act. Afterwards he regards himself as a fool and makes vain resolutions never to repeat the act. In exhibition the penis is only half erect and ejaculation never occurs. (He is only capable of coitus with a woman who shows great attraction to him.) He is satisfied with self-exhibition, and believes that he thus gives pleasure to the woman, since he himself receives pleasure in contemplating a woman's sexual parts. His erotic dreams are of self-exhibition to young and voluptuous women. He had been previously punished for an offense of this kind; medico-legal opinion now recognized the incriminated man's psychopathic condition. (Krafft-Ebing, _Op. cit._, pp. 492-494.)
Trochon has reported the case of a married man of 33, a worker in a factory, who for several years had exhibited himself at intervals to shop-girls, etc., in a state of erection, but without speaking or making other advances. He was a hard-working, honest, sober man of quiet habits, a good father to his family and happy at home. He showed not the slightest sign of insanity. But he was taciturn, melancholic and nervous; a sister was an idiot. He was arrested, but on the report of the experts that he committed these acts from a morbid impulse he could not control he was released. (Trochon, _Archives de l'Anthropologie Criminelle_, 1888, p. 256.)
In a case of Freyer's (_Zeitschrift für Medizinalbeamte_, third year, No. 8) the occasional connection of exhibitionism with epilepsy is well illustrated by a barber's assistant, aged 35, whose father suffered from chronic alcoholism and was also said to have committed the same kind of offense as his son. The mother and a sister suffered nervously. From ages of 7 to 18 the subject had epileptic convulsions. From 16 to 21 he indulged in normal sexual intercourse. At about that time he had often to pass a playground and at times would urinate there; it happened that the children watched him with curiosity. He noticed that when thus watched sexual excitement was caused, inducing erection and even ejaculation. He gradually found pleasure in this kind of sexual gratification; finally he became indifferent to coitus. His erotic dreams, though still usually about normal coitus, were now sometimes concerned with exhibition before little girls. When overcome by the impulse he could see and hear nothing around him, though he did not lose consciousness. After the act was over he was troubled by his deed. In all other respects he was entirely reasonable. He was imprisoned many times for exhibiting himself to young schoolgirls, sometimes vaunting the beauty of his organs and inviting inspection. On one occasion he underwent mental examination, but was considered to be mentally sound. He was finally held to be a hereditarily tainted individual with neuropathic constitution. The head was abnormally broad, penis small, patellar reflex absent, and there were many signs of neurasthenia. (Krafft-Ebing, _Op. cit._, pp. 490-492.)
The prevalence of epilepsy among exhibitionists is shown by the observations of Pelanda in Verona. He has recorded six cases of this perversion, all of which eventually reached the asylum and were either epileptics or with epileptic relations. One had a brother who was also an exhibitionist. In some cases the penis was abnormally large, in others abnormally small. Several had very weak sexual impulse; one, at the age of 62, had never effected coitus, and was proud of the fact that he was still a virgin, considering, he would say, the epoch of demoralization in which we live. (Pelanda, "Pornopatici," _Archivio di Psichiatria_, fasc. ii-iv, 1889.)
In a very typical case of exhibitionism which Garnier has recorded, a certain X., a gentleman engaged in business in Paris, had a predilection for exhibiting himself in churches, more especially in Saint-Roch. He was arrested several times for exposing his sexual organs here before ladies in prayer. In this way he finally ruined his commercial position in Paris and was obliged to establish himself in a small provincial town. Here again he soon exposed himself in a church and was again sent to prison, but on his liberation immediately performed the same act in the same church in what was described as a most imperturbable manner. Compelled to leave the town, he returned to Paris, and in a few weeks' time was again arrested for repeating his old offense in Saint Roch. When examined by Garnier, the information he supplied was vague and incomplete, and he was very embarrassed in the attempt to explain himself. He was unable to say why he chose a church, but he felt that it was to a church that he must go. He had, however, no thought of profanation and no wish to give offense. "Quite the contrary!" he declared. He had the sad and tired air of a man who is dominated by a force stronger than his will. "I know," he added, "what repulsion my conduct must inspire. Why am I made thus? Who will cure me?" (P. Garnier, "Perversions Sexuelles," _Comptes Rendus_, International Congress of Medicine at Paris in 1900, _Section de Psychiatrie_, pp. 433-435.)
In some cases, it would appear, the impulse to exhibitionism may be overcome or may pass away. This result is the more likely to come about in those cases in which exhibitionism has been largely conditioned by chronic alcoholism or other influences tending to destroy the inhibiting and restraining action of the higher centers, which may be overcome by hygiene and treatment. In this connection I may bring forward a case which has been communicated to me by a medical correspondent in London. It is that of an actor, of high standing in his profession and extremely intelligent, 49 years of age, married and father of a large family. He is sexually vigorous and of erotic temperament. His general health has always been good, but he is a high-strung, neurotic man, with quick mental reactions. His habits had for a long time been decidedly alcoholic, but two years ago, a small quantity of albumen being found in the urine, he was persuaded to leave off alcohol, and has since been a teetotaller. Though ordinarily very reticent about sexual matters, he began four or five years ago to commit acts of exhibitionism, exposing himself to servants in the house and occasionally to women in the country. This continued after the alcohol had been abandoned and lasted for several years, though the attention of the police was never attracted to the matter, and so far as possible he was quietly supervised by his friends. Nine months after, the acts of exhibitionism ceased, apparently in a spontaneous manner, and there has so far been no relapse.
Exhibitionism is an act which, on the face of it, seems nonsensical and meaningless, and as such, as an inexplicable act of madness, it has frequently been treated both by writers on insanity and on sexual perversion. "These acts are so lacking in common sense and intelligent reflection that no other reason than insanity can be offered for the patient," Ball concluded.[55] Moll, also, who defines exhibitionism somewhat too narrowly as a condition in which "the charm of the exhibition lies for the subject in the display itself," not sufficiently taking into consideration the imagined effect on the spectator, concludes that "the psychological basis of exhibitionism is at present by no means cleared up."[56] We may probably best approach exhibitionism by regarding it as fundamentally a symbolic act based on a perversion of courtship. The exhibitionist displays the organ of sex to a feminine witness, and in the shock of modest sexual shame by which she reacts to that spectacle, he finds a gratifying similitude of the normal emotions of coitus.[57] He feels that he has effected a psychic defloration.
Exhibitionism is thus analogous, and, indeed, related, to the impulse felt by many persons to perform indecorous acts or tell indecent stories before young and innocent persons of the opposite sex. This is a kind of psychic exhibitionism, the gratification it causes lying exactly, as in physical exhibitionism, in the emotional confusion which it is felt to arouse. The two kinds of exhibitionism may be combined in the same person: Thus, in a case reported by Hoche (p. 97), the exhibitionist an intellectual and highly educated man, with a doctor's degree, also found pleasure in sending indecent poems and pictures to women, whom, however, he made no attempt to seduce; he was content with the thought of the emotions he aroused or believed that he aroused.
It is possible that within this group should come the agent in the following incident which was lately observed by a lady, a friend of my own. An elderly man in an overcoat was seen standing outside a large and well-known draper's shop in the outskirts of London; when able to attract the attention of any of the shop-girls or of any girl in the street he would fling back his coat and reveal that he was wearing over his own clothes a woman's chemise (or possibly bodice) and a woman's drawers; there was no exposure. The only intelligible explanation of this action would seem to be that pleasure was experienced in the mild shock of interested surprise and injured modesty which this vision was imagined to cause to a young girl. It would thus be a comparatively innocent form of psychic defloration.
It is of interest to point out that the sexual symbolism of active flagellation is very closely analogous to this symbolism of exhibitionism. The flagellant approaches a woman with the rod (itself a symbol of the penis and in some countries bearing names which are also applied to that organ) and inflicts on an intimate part of her body the signs of blushing and the spasmodic movements which are associated with sexual excitement, while at the same time she feels, or the flagellant imagines that she feels, the corresponding emotions of delicious shame.[58] This is an even closer mimicry of the sexual act than the exhibitionist attains, for the latter fails to secure the consent of the woman nor does he enjoy any intimate contact with her naked body. The difference is connected with the fact that the active flagellant is usually a more virile and normal person than the exhibitionist. In the majority of cases the exhibitionist's sexual impulse is very feeble, and as a rule he is either to some degree a degenerate, or else a person who is suffering from an early stage of general paralysis, dementia, or some other highly enfeebling cause of mental disorganization, such as chronic alcoholism. Sexual feebleness is further indicated by the fact that the individuals selected as witnesses are frequently mere children.
It seems probable that a form of erotic symbolism somewhat similar to exhibitionism is to be found in the rare cases in which sexual gratification is derived from throwing ink, acid or other defiling liquids on women's dresses. Thoinot has recorded a case of this kind (_Attentats aux Moeurs_, 1898, pp. 484, _et seq._). An instructive case has been presented by Moll. In this case a young man of somewhat neuropathic heredity had as a youth of 16 or 17, when romping with his young sister's playfellows, experienced sexual sensations on chancing to see their white underlinen. From that time white underlinen and white dresses became to him a fetich and he was only attracted to women so attired. One day, at the age of 25, when crossing the street in wet weather with a young lady in a white dress, a passing vehicle splashed the dress with mud. This incident caused him strong sexual excitement, and from that time he had the impulse to throw ink, perchloride of iron, etc., on to ladies' white dresses, and sometimes to cut and tear them, sexual excitement and ejaculation taking place every time he effected this. (Moll, "Gutachten über einem Sexual Perversen [Besudelungstrieb]," _Zeitschrift für Medizinalbeamte_, Heft XIII, 1900). Such a case is of considerable psychological interest. Thoinot considers that in these cases the fleck is a fetich. That is an incorrect account of the matter. In this case the white garments constituted the primary fetich, but that fetich becomes more acutely realized, and at the same time both parties are thrown into an emotional state which to the fetichist becomes a mimicry of coitus, by the act of defilement. We may perhaps connect with this phenomenon the attraction which muddy shoes often exert over the shoe-fetichist, and the curious way in which, as we have seen (p. 18), Restif de la Bretonne associates his love of neatness in women with his attraction to the feet, the part, he remarks, least easy to keep clean.
Garnier applied the term _sadi-fetichism_ to active flagellation and many similar manifestations such as we are here concerned with, on the grounds that they are hybrids which combine the morbid adoration for a definite object with the impulse to exercise a more or less degree of violence. From the standpoint of the conception of erotic symbolism I have adopted there is no need for this term. There is here no hybrid combination of two unlike mental states. We are simply concerned with states of erotic symbolism, more or less complete, more or less complex.
The conception of exhibitionism as a process of erotic symbolism, involves a conscious or unconscious attitude of attention in the exhibitionist's mind to the psychic reaction of the woman toward whom his display is directed. He seeks to cause an emotion which, probably in most cases, he desires should be pleasurable. But from one cause or another his finer sensibilities are always inhibited or in abeyance, and he is unable to estimate accurately either the impression he is likely to produce or the general results of his action, or else he is moved by a strong impulsive obsession which overpowers his judgment. In many cases he has good reason for believing that his act will be pleasurable, and frequently he finds complacent witnesses among the low-class servant girls, etc.
It may be pointed out here that we are quite justified in speaking of a penis-fetichism and also of a vulva-fetichism. This might be questioned. We are obviously justified in recognizing a fetichism which attaches itself to the pubic hair, or, as in a case with which I am acquainted, to the clitoris, but it may seem that we cannot regard the central sexual organs as symbols of sex, symbols, as it were, of themselves. Properly regarded, however, it is the sexual act rather than the sexual organ which is craved in normal sexual desire; the organ is regarded merely as the means and not as the end. Regarded as a means the organ is indeed an object of desire, but it only becomes a fetich when it arrests and fixes the attention. An attention thus pleasurably fixed, a vulva-fetichism or a penis-fetichism, is within the normal range of sexual emotion (this point has been mentioned in the previous volume when discussing the part played by the primary sexual organs in sexual selection), and in coarse-grained natures of either sex it is a normal allurement in its generalized shape, apart from any attraction to the person to whom the organs belong. In some morbid cases, however, this penis-fetichism may become a fully developed sexual perversion. A typical case of this kind has been recorded by Howard in the United States. Mrs. W., aged 39, was married at 20 to a strong, healthy man, but derived no pleasure from coitus, though she received great pleasure from masturbation practiced immediately after coitus, and nine years after marriage she ceased actual coitus, compelling her husband to adopt mutual masturbation. She would introduce men into the house at all times of the day or night, and after persuading them to expose their persons would retire to her room to masturbate. The same man never aroused desire more than once. This desire became so violent and persistent that she would seek out men in all sorts of public places and, having induced them to expose themselves, rapidly retreat to the nearest convenient spot for self-gratification. She once abstracted a pair of trousers she had seen a man wear and after fondling them experienced the orgasm. Her husband finally left her, after vainly attempting to have her confined in an asylum. She was often arrested for her actions, but through the intervention of friends set free again. She was a highly intelligent woman, and apart from this perversion entirely normal. (W.L. Howard, "Sexual Perversion," _Alienist and Neurologist_, January, 1896.) It is on the existence of a more or less developed penis-fetichism of this kind that the exhibitionist, mostly by an ignorant instinct, relies for the effects he desires to produce.
The exhibitionist is not usually content to produce a mere titillated amusement; he seeks to produce a more powerful effect which must be emotional whether or not it is pleasurable. A professional man in Strassburg (in a case reported by Hoche[59]) would walk about in the evening in a long cloak, and when he met ladies would suddenly throw his cloak back under a street lamp, or igniting a red-fire match, and thus exhibit his organs. There was an evident effort--on the part of a weak, vain, and effeminate man--to produce a maximum of emotional effect. The attempt to heighten the emotional shock is also seen in the fact that the exhibitionist frequently chooses a church as the scene of his exploits, not during service, for he always avoids a concourse of people, but perhaps toward evening when there are only a few kneeling women scattered through the edifice. The church is chosen, often instinctively rather than deliberately, from no impulse to commit a sacrilegious outrage--which, as a rule, the exhibitionist does not feel his act to be--but because it really presents the conditions most favorable to the act and the effects desired. The exhibitionist's attitude of mind is well illustrated by one of Garnier's patients who declared that he never wished to be seen by more than two women at once, "just what is necessary," he added, "for an exchange of impressions." After each exhibition he would ask himself anxiously: "Did they see me? What are they thinking? What do they say to each other about me? Oh! how I should like to know!" Another patient of Garnier's, who haunted churches for this purpose, made this very significant statement: "Why do I like going to churches? I can scarcely say. _But I know that it is only there that my act has its full importance_. The woman is in a devout frame of mind, and she must see that such an act in such a place is not a joke in bad taste or a disgusting obscenity; _that if I go there it is not to amuse myself; it is more serious than that!_ I watch the effect produced on the faces of the ladies to whom I show my organs. I wish to see them express a profound joy. I wish, in fact, that they may be forced to say to themselves: _How impressive Nature is when thus seen!_" Here we trace the presence of a feeling which recalls the phenomena of the ancient and world-wide phallic worship, still liable to reappear sporadically. Women sometimes took part in these rites, and the osculation of the male sexual organ or its emblematic representation by women is easily traceable in the phallic rites of India and many other lands, not excluding Europe even in comparatively recent times. (Dulaure in his _Divinités Génératices_ brings together much bearing on these points; cf.: Ploss and Bartels, _Das Weib_, vol. i, Chapter XVII, and Bloch, _Beiträge zur Psychopathia Sexualis_, Teil I, pp. 115-117. Colin Scott has some interesting remarks on phallic worship and the part it has played in aiding human evolution, "Sex and Art," _American Journal of Psychology_, vol. vii, No. 2, pp. 191-197. Irving Rosse describes some modern phallic rites in which both men and women took part, similar to those practiced in vaudouism, "Sexual Hypochondriasis," _Virginia Medical Monthly_, October, 1892.)
Putting aside any question of phallic worship, a certain pride and more or less private feeling of ostentation in the new expansion and development of the organs of virility seems to be almost normal at adolescence. "We have much reason to assume," Stanley Hall remarks, "that in a state of nature there is a certain instinctive pride and ostentation that accompanies the new local development. I think it will be found that exhibitionists are usually those who have excessive growth here, and that much that modern society stigmatizes as obscene is at bottom more or less spontaneous and perhaps in some cases not abnormal. Dr. Seerley tells me he has never examined a young man largely developed who had the usual strong instinctive tendency of modesty to cover himself with his hands, but he finds this instinct general with those whose development is less than the average." (G. Stanley Hall, _Adolescence_, vol. ii, p. 97.) This instinct of ostentation, however, so far as it is normal, is held in check by other considerations, and is not, in the strict sense, exhibitionism. I have observed a full-grown telegraph boy walking across Hampstead Heath with his sexual organs exposed, but immediately he realized that he was seen he concealed them. The solemnity of exhibitionism at this age finds expression in the climax of the sonnet, "Oraison du Soir," written at 16 by Rimbaud, whose verse generally is a splendid and insolent manifestation of rank adolescence:-- "Doux comme le Seigneur du cèdre et des hysopes, Je pisse vers les cieux bruns très haut et très loin, Avec l'assentiment des grands héliotropes."
In women, also, there would appear to be traceable a somewhat similar ostentation, though in them it is complicated and largely inhibited by modesty, and at the same time diffused over the body owing to the absence of external sexual organs. "Primitive woman," remarks Madame Renooz, "proud of her womanhood, for a long time defended her nakedness which ancient art has always represented. And in the actual life of the young girl to-day there is a moment when by a secret atavism she feels the pride of her sex, the intuition of her moral superiority, and cannot understand why she must hide its cause. At this moment, wavering between the laws of Nature and social conventions, she scarcely knows if nakedness should or should not affright her. A sort of confused atavistic memory recalls to her a period before clothing was known, and reveals to her as a paradisaical ideal the customs of that human epoch." (Céline Renooz, _Psychologie Comparée de l'Homme et de la Femme_, p. 85.) It may be added that among primitive peoples, and even among some remote European populations to-day, the exhibition of feminine nudity has sometimes been regarded as a spectacle with religious or magic operation. (Ploss, _Das Weib_, seventh edition, vol. ii, pp. 663-680; Havelock Ellis, _Man and Woman_, fourth edition, p. 304.) It is stated by Gopcevic that in the long struggle between the Albanians and the Montenegrians the women of the former people would stand in the front rank and expose themselves by raising their skirts, believing that they would thus insure victory. As, however, they were shot down, and as, moreover, victory usually fell to the Montenegrians, this custom became discredited. (Quoted by Bloch, _Op. cit._, Teil II, p. 307.)
With regard to the association, suggested by Stanley Hall, between exhibitionism and an unusual degree of development of the sexual organs, it must be remarked that both extremes--a very large and a very small penis--are specially common in exhibitionists. The prevalence of the small organ is due to an association of exhibitionism with sexual feebleness. The prevalence of the large organ may be due to the cause suggested by Hall. Among Mahommedans the sexual organs are sometimes habitually exposed by religious penitents, and I note that Bernhard Stern, in his book on the medical and sexual aspects of life in Turkey, referring to a penitent of this sort whom he saw on the Stamboul bridge at Constantinople, remarks that the organ was very largely developed. It may well be in such a case that the penitent's religious attitude is reinforced by some lingering relic of a more fleshly ostentation.
It is by a pseudo-atavism that this phallicism is evoked in the exhibitionist. There is no true emergence of an ancestrally inherited instinct, but by the paralysis or inhibition of the finer and higher feelings current in civilization, the exhibitionist is placed on the same mental level as the man of a more primitive age, and he thus presents the basis on which the impulses belonging to a higher culture may naturally take root and develop.