Benjamin Tarnowski

“ Under the influence of example, the wish not to be behindhand, to show their boldness, the unhappy youths conquer their repugnance to the filthy act, heat their imagination with pictures of women and at the same time indulge in pederasty. ”

“ But when such an individual, who has passed the greater part of his live having continual sexual intercourse with women and has never felt any interest in aught else than the sexual function, after long continued excesses, too often repeated sexual intercourse or other causes, notices that his sexual power is beginning to diminish, although the desire still persists with all its earlier force, he then has recourse to various stimulating mediums. ”

“ At first extremely cautious, distrustful and reserved, these individuals, in direct ratio with the lowering of intelligence and strength of will, and particularly of memory and under- standing, lose the power of restraining them- selves, allowing their abnormal condition to be more distinctly recognized, and commit brutal criminal assaults on youths and children, carrying their cynicism to its culminating point. ”

“ Thus in the east pederasty is more openly shown, is less dissimulated, even openly vaunted, and often rich and depraved men are known to boast of possessing a beautiful boy, as with us men boast of having an expensive mistress. Putting that out of the question, the psychical interests of life in the East are more limited, and they are often more concentrated on the sexual sense, where- by depravity in its lowest form. is occasioned, and may then, as we have seen, lead to acquired pederasty. ”

“ The ease with which the patient admits the vicious satisfaction of his passion, the naivete of the relation itself, a certain absence of shame, indifference and neglect of the universally adopted forms of description of such matters all this must naturally appear strange to the attentive observer. ”

“ The oftener such abnormal acts are committed, the more the normal, healthy action of the sexual instinct gets blunted and modified under the influence of an acquired habit. At first a heightened effort of phantasy, with evocation of the features of a woman, was necessary to procure excitation, and to present the reality as a disagreeable but only means of relieving the exaggerated erethism. ”

“ With the most unbridled orgies, Athenian nights, pederasty, sodomy, the sticking of silver needles into the erected member or into the skin of the scrotum, when erection lasts unusually long, do such affected subjects come to the end of their sexual vigour, whilst with the further progress of the malady they fall into complete impotence, combined with motor disturbances of the lower extremities and other symptoms of a rapidly progressing tabes dorsalis. ”

“ But when the resisting powers have not been sufficiently developed by education, the sensitiveness, inasmuch as it favours rapidly rising desires, claims for them immediate satis- faction, which in the sexual sphere finds ex- pression in incontinence. Therefore a subject, who from the sexual point of view is feeble, may be intemperate. The slightest sexual desire awakens in him an irresistible and im- perious impulse to seek to satisfy it, and this produces in a feeble subject inclined to genital weakness exhaustion, diminished excitation and imperfect erection. ”

“ What tends yet further to develop the senile form of pederasty is early sexual en- joyment, excessive sexual intercourse in rich families, leading to satiety of the senses. Again the great disparity of age between an old man and a young woman serving him as slave is a powerful agent for producing degen- eracy in the descendants, and by that means to sexual perversion. ”

“ The desire to ape a certain person, at all events to equal him in depravity, or if possible to surpass him, the longing to create a sensation or to astound by some extraor- dinary action, causes many petty, vain and weak-minded characters, to accustom them- selves to abnormal varieties of sexual action, without the same being in any way called for by a personal want on their part. The proof of this is to be seen in the rapid propa- gation of various aberrations of the sexual instinct, which independently, as morbid symp- toms, are very seldom met with. ”

“ For the same reason the patient has recourse to pederasty. As he himself says the usual act of copulation does not satisfy him, he resorts to sodomy and afterwards to pederasty. He feels no remorse; he is neither conscious of the enorm- ity of his acts, nor penitent for what he has done. He usually visits the medical man on account of some venereal disease he has contracted, and without the least hesitation communicates to him his sexual debauches and aberrations. ”

“ Young, maidenish looking boys, particularly if just arriving for the first time, are subjected for their moral demoralization to a whole series of temptations and some- times to threats and even to maltreatment, in order to induce them to become passive pederasts. To lead astray and to pervert an inexperienced lad is considered to be a sort of meritorious act, to be applauded by the pupils who have left the school. ”

“ Bodily fatigue and satiety come sooner than moral satisfaction. The harmony and com- pleteness of the climax of excitation which characterize the normal sexual act are wanting. Perfect satisfaction becomes a matter of chance, and the subject, who is gradually losing his sexual power, while endeavouring to rouse the excitation, seeks to discover new means or obtains them from morbidly affected subjects who are afflicted with perverted sexual instinct. In this case imitation becomes one of the most powerful agents for propagating depravity. ”

“ When through some cause or another they are deprived of the possibility of obtaining normal satisfaction, then under the intensity of their lust they have recourse to masturbation or much more rarely they become active pederasts. They choose the most girlish looking Cynede they can, the act is strictly limited to sodomy, and at the first opportunity pederasty is replaced by connection with women. ”

“ In the further progress of the malady a deep psychical perturbation shows itself, with incoherent delirium, insane notions that death is already near at hand, and dread of per- secution alternating with mad excitement and megalomania. The patients often have gid- diness, fainting-fits and sometimes cramps. Paralysis comes next, with complete intel- lectual clulness, helplessness and apathy, and the patient lets himself die of hunger, if those about him do not take sufficient care, or there supervenes senile pneumonia, disease of the bladder, etc., till eventually he becomes bed-ridden. ”

“ The absolute exclusion of women from social life, their sequestration and the impos- sibility for them of having any sexual inter- course whatever except in marriage, and even then often only with the permission of their parents and after the payment by the would-be husband of a sufficient sum for the possession of his bride, puts the Mussulman youths in the position of pupils of a boarding-school. ”

“ It would certainly be an error, to admit, that in the East or anywhere else a phenom- enon so contrary to nature and so morbid as this abnormal mode of satisfying of the sexual instinct, which is opposed to nature and to the propagation of the species, should be recognized as normal, regular and legal. ”

“ The subject importunes a woman or a youth with his filthy proposals, but if they are repelled he does not persist in his demands with the boldness and want of sense of an impulsive psychopath, but instead he makes similar proposals to some other persons. The longer the malady lasts, the more thoughtless and light-headed does the patient become. ”

“ The weaker the development of the faculty to receive impressions, to assimilate them and transform them into new mental products, to reproduce them by the force of imagination and in general to exhibit, in its broadest sense, the creative power, the stronger is the tendency to imitation. ”

“ After he has tried everything else, has heated his imagination and thereby still more excited his sensuality, whilst the genesic power continues to diminish day by day, he will sometimes resort to passive pederasty, as to an excitant to favour erection and thereby facilitate sexual satisfaction. ”

“ A peculiar intermixt- ure is developed of impaired virility and sexual intemperance, of physical decrepitude and depravity.
The slightest excitement makes such an individual give way to his sexual lust which, in consequence of his increased sensitiveness and irritable weakness of the nervous system,
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grows rapidly, and is so overrated by himself, that the possibility of satisfying it turns out to be far Jess than he had anticipated. ”

“ Accustomed from his youth to masturbation, habituated for his own sake to dissimulate shame and conscience, feeling disgust for the unnatural sexual connections, but for money smothering his repugnance to the filthy act, as well as to the person of the buyer, on whom he lavishes his purchased smiles and caresses in reply to the most revolting acts that can possibly be committed on a man ”

“ A good-natured, charitable man, who took to heart the misfortunes of his neighbour, and used to preach the gospel of self-denial and hard work, by dint of his benevolent activity and genial character, attracts the affections of a young girl, who falls passion- ately in love with him. ”

“ He finds it difficult to settle his mind on one subject, the intelligence in general, and the memory in particular, seem to be im- paired. The patient occasionally has a ten- dency of blood to the head, with a dull feeling of oppression, sometimes with nausea and giddiness, consequent upon increasing paresis of the vasomotor nerves and he often explains all these phenomena as caused by insufficient sexual gratification, and aban- dons himself more than ever to all sorts of licentiousness, among others to sodomy and to pederasty. ”

“ The malady sometimes remains very long, for months or years, in this premonitory stage, alternately augmenting or decreasing, until it attains its full development and manifests itself in the unmistakeable disorders of the psychical and motor systems, which characterize paralysis of the insane. ”

“ With sensitive natures the desires as a rule quickly acquire great intensity, in that they determine certain actions or excite new desires, otherwise they give way to the dictates of good sense, of morality, habit and feeling of duty. ”

“ But by reason of their continually increasing moral and physical decadence this cynicism takes at times a very naive form, but again at other times the filthiest and most disgusting possible.
For instance, some weak-minded old man will entice children to his lodging and there ex- pose his genital organ to them, which has long since lost all power of erection and emission. ”

“ Increased erethism, morbid sexual desire, with continual erection and emission of semen, lowered conscience and an inclination to impulsive actions, constitute, as above said, a frequent symptom of maniacal conditions of varied intensity and form. ”

“ He sometimes addresses himself to most unlikely persons, allowing himself to make use of indecent words and gestures, becomes extremely cynical, although he knows how to restrain himself on the slightest observation being made to him. ”

“ The more the individual has wasted his energy and force, either in the unequal struggle for life, or in giving way early to unbridled passions, or in the effort of sur- mounting serious maladies, the sooner the morbid condition appears and the more rapid will be its evolution. ”

“ In such cases pederasty is not the object, but merely one of the many means of excitation, which are often combined in a particular, systematically arranged method, which for a man who has been accustomed to make sexual intercourse the business of his life, and feels himself becoming more impotent every day, is now grown an absolute necessity
Debauchery may also exist even with or- dinary, relatively feeble intensity of sexual impulse. The development of strength of
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character, the power to master one's passions and to stem them, is here of great impor- tance. ”

“ A gentleman, 52 years of age, who was occupied with mental labours, and led a strictly moral life, was arrested on the charge of having endeavoured to commit a criminal assault upon two little girls. Further obser- vation showed that distinct symptoms of progressive paralysis were to be recognized in him, which had not previously been re- marked. ”

“ In another, an old General, who led a very regular life, and possessed a superior, understanding and edu- cation, used at times to stop before the railings in front of a house, in which there resided some little girls, exhibit his parts before them during some minutes and then silently depart. An old writer, 65 years of age, who led a quiet and respectable life, was taken up by the police for an offence against public decency, by exposing his person to women passing in the street. ”

“ But with time the disgust gradually wears away, the reality little by little takes the place of phan- tasy, and produces without its aid the usual excitation. In dream as in the waking state the sexual excitation is combined by habit with the picture of the passive pederast. The image of the woman on the contrary loses its brightness, and the representation of female beauty becomes obscured. More pleasure is found with women who ape the manners of men, with closely cropped hair, breasts but
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