Krafft-Ebing

“ Even in his changed form, even when he can no longer recall the masculine sexual feeling, he would not wish to be forced to feel like a woman. He still knows very well that, before, he did not constantly feel sexually; that he was merely a human being uninfluenced by sex. Now, suddenly, he has to regard his former individuality as a mask, and constantly feel like a woman, only having a change when, every four weeks, he has his periodical sickness, and in the intervals his insatiable female desire. If he could but awake without immediately being forced to feel like a woman! ”

“ It appears from Krafft-Ebing's recorded cases that the first of these sub-species yields nearly the largest
number of individuals. He presents eleven detailed autobiographies of male Urnings, in whom the vita sexualis alone is abnormal, and who are differentiated to common observation from normal men by nothing but the nature of their amorous proclivities. The class includes powerfully developed masculine beings, who are unsexed in no particular except that they possess an inordinate appetite for males, and will not look at females. ”

“ While previously, in his sensual dreams, he had had ideas of both men and women, of late years he had dreamed only of approaches to men; he could not remember that he had dreamed, in late years, of sensual relations with a woman. At the theatre, as well as in the circus and ballet, the feminine figure had always interested him. In museums masculine and feminine statues had affected him equally.
Patient is a great smoker, a beer-drinker, loves male society, and is a gymnast and skater. Anything dandified was repugnant to him, and he had never felt any desire to please men ”

“ That 8S. also had the power to excite passion in other women is shown by the fact that when she (before her marriage with E.) had grown tired of a Miss D., after having spent thousands of guldens on her, she was threatened with shooting by D. if she should become untrue.
It was in the summer of 1887, while at a watering-place, that S. made the acquaintance of a distinguished official’s family. Immediately she fell in love with the daughter, Marie, and her love was returned. ”

“ He said that the love of urnings was a passionate, inner fire. According to his statement, in Naples the effeminelli lived in a quarter together, just as in Paris the grisettes live with their lovers. They sacrifice themselves for their lovers, and care for the household, just as the grisettes do. On the other hand, an urning repels an urning, “just as one prostitute does another—that is the curse.” ”

“ There is no moral defect. The intelligence is a little below the average. Careful education and aristocratic manners are apparent. The exquisite neuropathic eye betrays the nervous constitution. The patient is not a complete and hopeless urning. He has hetero-sexual feelings, but his sensual inclinations toward the opposite sex are manifested weakly and infrequently. When nineteen, he was first taken to a brothel by friends. He experienced no horror feminæ, had efficient erections, and some pleasure in coitus, but not the instinctive delight he experienced while embracing men. ”

“ Only women’s feet—no other part of them—interested him. The thought of sexual intercourse with women excited his disgust. He had never attempted coitus. After his twelfth year he had no interest in the feet of male individuals. The style of covering of the female foot is indifferent to him; it is only necessary that the person seem to be sympathetic. The thought of enjoying the feet of prostitutes was disgusting to him. For years he had been in love with his sister’s feet. If he could but obtain her shoes, the sight of them powerfully excited his sensuality. ”

“ The female sex he does not exactly abhor; he could even bring himself to marry a woman who could have an attraction for him, by means of similarity in artistic tastes, if he could but be freed from conjugal duties, which were unpleasant to him, and the performance of which made him tired and weak. He denied having had sexual intercourse with men, but his blushing and embarrassment, and, still more, an occurrence in N., where the patient, some time before, provoked a scandal by attempting to have sexual intercourse with youths, gave him the lie. ”

“ All cross-questioning with reference to a perversion of sexual feeling toward men Dr. S. answered repeatedly in the negative, to repeated examination, and that without contradiction or any thought of the answers. Even when, in order to trap him, he is told that the proof of a perverse sexual instinct would be of avail in the trial, he sticks to his statements. One gains the important impression that S. has not the slightest knowledge of the facts of male-love. Thus it is learned that his lascivious dreams have never been about men; that he is interested only in female nudity ”

“ K. had never had any inclination whatever for women; but handsome men, on the other hand, had a peculiar charm for him. Patient had masturbated frequently until he came to me. He had never practiced mutual onanism or pederasty. He did not think that he would have found satisfaction in this, because, in spite of his preference for men, an article of white linen was his chief charm, though the beauty of its owner played a rôle. The handkerchiefs of handsome men particularly excite him sexually. His greatest delight is to masturbate in men’s handkerchiefs. ”

“ Men of his own position, wearing never so fine boots, were absolutely indifferent to him.
With reference to his sexual inclinations, the patient is still uncertain whether he feels more inclination toward the opposite sex or toward his own sex. He is inclined to think that originally he had more inclination for women, but that this sympathy was, in any case, very weak. He states with certainty that the sight of a naked man made no impression on him, and that the sight of male genitals was even repugnant to him. ”

“ Simply a shoe, worn by no one, excites him when he sees it, but not nearly as intensely as when it is worn by a woman. New shoes that have not been worn excite him much less than those that have been used; but they must be free from wear and look as new as possible. Shoes of this kind excite him the most. As has been said, ladies’ boots excite him when they are not on the feet. Under such circumstances, in fancy, L. creates a lady for them; he presses them to his lips and on his penis. He would “die with delight” if a proud, respectable lady were to tread upon him with her shoes. ”

“ The vita sexualis of these urnings, mutatis mutandis, is entirely like that in normal hetero-sexual love; but, since it is the exact opposite of the natural feeling, it becomes a caricature, and this the more, since these individuals, at the same time, as a rule, are subject to hyperæsthesia sexualis, and, therefore, their love for their own sex is emotional and passionate.
The urning loves and deifies the male object of his affections, just as a man idealizes the woman he loves. He is capable of the greatest sacrifice for him, and experiences the pangs of unfortunate, often unrequited, love ”

“ In the latter case, the impulse to union is quite as powerful as in the former, and they strengthen each other in the same way. G. further relates that his dreams, when they were erotic, never had women, but only men, for their subjects. Male-love was the only kind that could satisfy him. He considered it disgusting for one human being to be prodding about in the abdomen of another with his penis, since he had heard that in this disgusting fashion coitus was usually carried out. He had never had the curiosity to inform himself concerning the female genitals ”

“ He thinks that nothing remains for him and those like him but to raise what is unnatural in themselves to the supernatural. He looks upon the love of urnings as the higher, the ideal, as godlike, an abstract love. When shown that such a love is far from the purpose of Nature and the preservation of the race, he expresses the pessimistic thought that the world should die out, and the earth turn round its axis without men, who were on it only for trouble. As reason and explanation of his unnatural sexual feeling, G. refers to Plato, “who certainly was no beast.” ”

“ Born with a predominant inclination towards persons of their own sex, they possess rudimentary feelings of a semi-sexual nature for the opposite. These people not unfrequently marry; and Krafft-Ebing supposes that many cases of frigidity in matrimony, unhappy unions, and so forth, are attributable to the peculiar diathesis of the male—or it may be, of the female—in these marriages. They are distinguished from his previous class of "acquired" inversion by the fact that the latter start with instincts for the other sex, which are gradually obliterated ”

“ He never had pleasure in coitus, and only in the moment of ejaculation felt satisfaction. In order to get an erection with a woman, it was always necessary, in the act, for him to think of a beloved man. He would always have preferred to have the woman allow immissio penis in os, which, however, was always denied him. Faute de mieux, he had practiced coitus, and, indeed, twice became a father. The last child, a girl of eight, had already begun to practice masturbation and mutual onanism, which troubled him very much as a father. ”

“ Since the early death of his wife, he had gratified his great sexual desire in temporary love-affairs, having always had an aversion for prostitutes and brothels. The impulse to frottage had suddenly seized him, two years before, while he happened to be in church. Though he was conscious that it was wrong, he could not help yielding to it immediately. Since then he had been excitable to the posteriora of females, and had been actually impelled to seek opportunity for frottage. The only thing on women that excited him was the tournure ”

“ For a time it was possible, by means of cold sitz-baths, monobromate of camphor, and bromides, to diminish his sexual excitability and onanistic impulse. However, when the patient felt himself free again, he would immediately fall into his old passions and spare no pains or money in order to satisfy his sexual desire in the abnormal manner described.
Case 30 (communicated by Dr. A. Moll, Berlin) . L. T., aged 21; merchant in a Rhenish city. He belongs to a family in which there are several nervous and psychopathic members. A sister suffers with hysteria and melancholia. ”

“ I think that it was in 1877 when Krafft-Ebing first drew attention to the psycho-pathology of certain forms of homosexuality; since that time forty years have passed, and still the laws fail to differentiate between the vicious pederasts and the unfortunate passive pæderasts. The distinction between those in whom homosexual practices are a vice and in whom they are a misfortune, is, it seems to me, generally very easily made. The vicious homosexualist acts the part of a male. The unfortunate, insane or congenital homosexualist acts the part of a female. The one is active, the other passive. ”

“ At fifteen he began masturbation, without having been taught it.
Until his seventeenth year he says he never had feeling for men, or, in fact, any sexual inclination; but at this time desire for men arose. He fell in love with a comrade. His friend returned his love. They embraced and kissed and indulged in mutual onanism. Occasionally patient practiced coitus inter femora viri. He abhorred pederasty. Lascivious dreams were concerned only with men. In the circus and theatre males alone interested him. The inclination was for those of about twenty years. ”

“ A handsome face is a pleasant supplement, inflaming my sensual desire, but in no respect an essential. The requisite remains: vir inferiore corporis parte robusta et bene formosa, turgidis femoribus durisque natibus, while the upper portion of the body may be slim. Corpulence disgusts me. A sensual mouth with pretty teeth affects me more intensely; and if the person has also a membrum pulchrum magnum et æqualiter formatum, all my demands—the most far-reaching—are fulfilled. ”

“ Skeleton entirely masculine; abundant beard, but no hair on trunk. He characterizes himself as a man of sanguine temperament, whom no one can depress; though irascible and quick-tempered, he is quick to regret outbursts. Z. says he has never masturbated. From his youth there have been nightly pollutions, in which girls play a part; but the sexual act, never. For example, he dreams that a pleasing woman lies heavily on him, or that, as he lies sleeping on the grass, she playfully walks up his back. Z. had always been averse to coitus with a woman. ”

“ Ultimately, Krafft-Ebing attacks the problem of what he calls "the innate morbid phenomenon" of sexual inversion. [29] While giving a general description of the subjects of this class, he remarks that the males display a pronounced sexual antipathy for women, and a strongly accentuated sympathy for men. Their reproductive organs are perfectly differentiated on the masculine type; but they desire men instinctively, and are inclined to express their bias by assuming characters of femininity. Women infected by a like inversion, exhibit corresponding anomalies. ”

“ The badly-tainted patient is originally psycho-sexually abnormal, in that, in character and in the sexual act, he feels as a female. This abnormal feeling remained purely a psychical anomaly until three years ago, when, owing to severe neurasthenia, it received overmastering support in imperative bodily sensations of a transmutatio sexus, which now dominate consciousness. Then, to the patient’s horror, he felt bodily like a woman; and, under the impulse of his imperative feminine sensations, he experienced a complete transformation of his former masculine feeling, thought, and will ”