Nymphomania

“ I regret that my little essay on Henry’s second wife, Anne Boleyn, has been much misunderstood by readers of Post Mortem. The view I there took was that if the stories about her were true they could only be explained by the supposition that she was suffering from nymphomania. Nymphomania does not necessarily imply that a girl is of abandoned character; it is a pathological condition of the nervous system. To this day it sometimes comes on after childbirth, especially if accompanied by terror and anxiety. It is in these women part of the Curse of Eve. ”

“ This case illustrates also the relations of homosexuality to the family and to the problem of incest. More about that later....
Nymphomania shows the same homosexual basis as satyriasis. In the study of Sexual Frigidity in Women [18] we shall have occasion to point out types of women who are undoubtedly nymphomaniac in character, Messalinas. ”

“ Satyriasis and nymphomania.—Contrary to erotomania, the sexual impulse in satyriasis and in nymphomania is directed upon the physical side of love. In these cases the impulse of detumescence is greatly increased. The desires are directed upon the physical, pleasurable titillations of the sexual organs.
The dividing line between the normal and pathological increase of libido is not readily found. The libido sexualis normally varies in different individuals. Married life bridles, as a rule, sexual desire, while intercourse with different persons increases it. ”

“ The primary lustful feeling that accompanies priapism due to cantharides soon becomes painful. Satyriasis and nymphomania are acute abnormal psycho-sexual states.
There are also cases that, not without reason, might be called chronic satyriasis or nymphomania. To these belong the men who, for the most part as a result of abusus veneris, or more particularly of masturbation, suffer with neurasthenia sexualis, and at the same time have intense libido sexualis. The imagination, as in acute cases, is in a state of excitement, and the mind full of obscene images ”

“ Through the similarity of the symptoms of orgasmus retardatus and nymphomania great mistakes in treatment have often been committed. The wisdom of amputating the clitoris in a case of nymphomania is very questionable, but the advice to amputate it in a case of impossible or retarded orgasm and permanently damage the already weakened nerves is a mistake that borders almost to malpractice. For the amputation of the clitoris will impede the inducement of the orgasm even to a greater extent than before. ”

“ Psychopathically increased sexual impulse in woman is known as nymphomania or uteromania. In such women there is a dominant state of psychical hyperæthesia, principally in the genital sphere. The most indifferent perceptions give rise to erotic sensations and to lascivious impulses. All sensory perceptions obtain a sexual content, and induce stimulation of the cerebral cortex. ”

“ This disease, known as nymphomania, has been the occasion of the fall of many young women of the better classes who have been bred in luxury and idleness, but were never taught even the first lessons of purity or self-control. Constipation, piles, worms, pruritis of the genitals, and some other less common diseases of the urinary and genital systems, have been causes of sexual excitement which has resulted in moral degradation. ”

“ Nymphomania and what alienists call erotomania are sometimes not differentiated in practice and in books. They are, however, really different conditions. Erotomania and nymphomania may be associated in the same case, but it is more likely that erotomania will not be present in a case of nymphomania. Erotomania may exist as a special symptom or it may be one of the evidences of monomania. It is found in both men and women. Patients with this condition may have no sexual feeling whatever. The individual has some real or imaginary person to love. ”

“ A love for the opposite sex that is weak and purely mental, too, often has its basis in weakness of the genitals due to long-continued masturbation; and, under the guise of virtuous admiration of a beloved person, great lasciviousness and sexual perversion are often concealed. Episodically, especially in women, violent sexual excitement may occur as a nymphomania.
For the most part, paranoia religiosa rests upon sexuality which manifests itself in a sexual impulse that is abnormally early and intense. ”

“ This was done and his face was close to mine when I threw my arms nervously round his neck and drew his face to my feverish lips and I kissed him more wantonly, saying:
"I want love; there's no one to love me. Oh! Oh! Fuck me first and physic me afterwards. I know you must be a gallant man, and mine's a real case of nymphomania!"
Whilst one hand still held him in a most amorous embrace, the other wandered to his prick, which my impassioned appeal had brought to a sense of its duty in a moment. ”

“ Hammond treats of it under the head of acute mania, and considers cases of nymphomania as special varieties of this disease. Undoubtedly, this is the correct way of looking at the subject in many cases. In man the corresponding mental and nervous condition often leads to the commission of rape and murder. In woman the affection is most likely to show itself with certain collateral hysterical or hysteroidal conditions, as spasms, hystero-epilepsy, and catalepsy, or with screaming, crying, and other violent hysterical outbreaks. ”

“ Often the genitals are in a constant state of turgor (priapism in males) .
The man affected with this sexual passion seeks to satisfy his desire at any price, and, therefore, becomes very dangerous to women. Faute de mieux, he practices onanism or sodomy. The nymphomaniacal woman seeks men by exhibition, or to attract them by her sensual conduct; at the sight of men she is intensely excited sexually, and satisfies herself by masturbation, or by pelvic movements of coitus.
Satyriasis is infrequent. Nymphomania is more frequently observed, and not seldom in the climacteric. ”

“ Her spasms of violent temper after her marriage, her fits of jealousy, her foolish arrogance and insolence to her friends, are all mental signs which go with nymphomania, and the fact that her post-nuptial incontinence seems to have begun while she was still in the puerperal state after the birth of her only living child seems highly significant. It is not uncommon for sexual desire to become intolerable in nervous and puerperal women. ”

“ Morphinomania, a craving for morphine or its preparations. Erotomania, or amorous madness. When occurring in women this is also called Nymphomania, and in men Satyriasis. It consists in an uncontrollable desire for sexual intercourse. Pyromania, an insane impulse to set fire to everything. Homicidal mania, a propensity to murder. Suicidal mania, a propensity to self-destruction. Some consider suicide as always a manifestation of insanity.
Insanity of Pregnancy.—This may show itself after the third month of pregnancy in the form of melancholia. ”

“ Statistics show that even in the favourable circumstances of marriage, sexual gratification has in women an unfavourable influence, inasmuch as the proportion of sufferers from mental disorders is higher among married women than it is among married men. A study of the mental disorders which in women are especially associated with the process of reproduction (puerperal mania) confirms this impression. Hegar insists that he has never seen nymphomania arise in women in consequence of forcible repression of the sexual impulse ”

“ Such women are usually polyandrous by nature, although the sexual appetite in woman is normally much more monogamous than that of man. Such excesses in woman take on a more pathological character than in man, and go under the name of nymphomania. The insatiability of these females, who may be met with in all classes of society, may become fabulous. Night and day, with short interruptions for sleeping and eating, they are, in extreme cases, anxious for coitus. They become less exhausted than men, because their orgasm is not accompanied by loss of semen. ”

“ Nymphomania is also prevalent in convents, owing to the unnatural sexual lives led by the nuns, who either remain truly chaste or abandon themselves to all sorts of debauchery and perverted lubricities. In former times these rages of demented women were supposed to have been caused by possession of demons, which tormented them at the orders of magicians, and advantage was often taken by the unscrupulous to accuse their enemies of the crime of sorcery, and thus cause their execution. ”

“ In our view, male and female onanists are affected with satyriasis and nymphomania, as much as those to whom these terms 123 are generally applied. In both, the sense of venery, existing to an unusual extent, affects the mind, and incites to dangerous actions, repugnant both to modesty and reason. Onanists do not, like other persons affected with satyriasis, expose their persons, and solicit with voice and gesture those of the other sex: their deranged and delirious imaginations pursue another course. What need have they of the other sex? Their inclinations lead them to solitary indulgence. ”

“ My penis is up all the time I am with her; and when I go home my testicles are sore, and I lie awake all [69] night.” This is typical, as a cause from continuance; and if the female is as amorous as the male, she will also become nervous and irritable. The restlessness, following the protracted turgescence of the genitals, is a fruitful cause of neurasthenia. Yet all will gradually pass away after marriage, which should be advised speedily. With nymphomania, there commonly exists a neurasthenia that long remains after all signs of any organic disease have disappeared. ”

“ Medical men are especially apt to suffer from the accusations of such women, whom they may have examined in private in entire ignorance of the patient’s mental condition. Frequently, such ideas 652of sexual persecution are associated with paroxysms of violent nymphomania, and in this way also the unwary physician may find himself placed in an extremely unpleasant position. It occasionally happens in such patients that abnormalities of the sexual instinct arise, and they begin to feel desire towards individuals of their own sex. ”

“ If the increase of the impulse is only moderate, so that increased frequency of conjugal embrace is able to appease somewhat the increased desire, the anomaly generally finds expression in a desire for female respectively male society, in the reading of erotic or obscene literature, in dancing, flirting, etc. But if the increase of the sexual desire has reached the degree of true satyriasis in men or nymphomania in women, the anomaly is characterized by an irresistible exaltation and an insatiable appetite for sexual gratification. ”

“ Another epidemic of hysterical convulsions, complicated with nymphomania, occurred at Cologne in 1554, in the Convent of Nazareth. Jean Wier, who was sent to examine these patients, recognized that the nuns were possessed by the Demon of lubricity and debauchery, who ruled this convent to a frightful extent.
P. Bodin has himself furnished the proofs; it was this author who wrote the history of erotic nuns. He remarks: “Sometimes the bestial appetites of some women lead them to believe in a demon ”

“ Nymphomaniacs often have polyandrous instincts, and they then become more insatiable than men. Several cases of this kind have been published in the press, and examples of such women are not rare in history. ”

“ Nymphomaniacs may be intelligent and educated, and if so they usually resist their abnormal passions better than the ignorant. A number of nymphomaniacs have been under treatment at the Philadelphia Hospital. One case was an epileptic and also hysterical girl. She had true epileptic seizures, and at other times had attacks of a hysteroidal character. She would make indecent proposals to almost any one, and would masturbate and expose herself openly. She also had occasional maniacal attacks. She died in the insane department of the hospital. ”

“ They may fear her when the sun has gone down, and when they are left all alone they begin to dread her mockery. Yet the nymph who [Pg 175] sought for love and failed to gain what she sought must surely find some comfort on those bright days of summer and of spring when she gives the little children happiness and they give her their love.
When all the world was young, and nymphs and fauns and dryads dwelt in the forests, there was no nymph more lovely and more gay than she whose name was Echo. ”

“ The nymphs pressed round her and carried her on their arms. She lay down at full length.
“Cool my forehead, cool my cheeks, cool my heart!” she cried imploringly. “Dear nymphs, oh, cool my soul! Everything burns on me and in me; fire scorches my lips, fire scorches my brain. . . . O dear nymphs, cool me!”
The nymphs sprinkled water on her; Psyche put her arm round the neck of one of them.
“Your water-drops hiss on my forehead as on burning metal. Your flakes of foam evaporate on the fire in my breast. And on my soul, O dear nymphs, you cannot sprinkle your coolness!” ”

“ For if the nymphs should know my swain,
I fear they’d love him too;
Yet if he be not known,
The pleasure is as good as none,
For that’s a narrow joy is but our own.
I’ll tell, that if they be not glad,
They may not envy me ”

“ This trait at once confirms their identity with the γελλοῦδες, and renders it impossible to class them as a form of nymph. It is of course believed that nymphs of the sea or of rivers, when they carry off human children to their watery habitations, do incidentally drown them, but by an oversight and not of malice prepense. But savagely to prey upon human flesh—for all the nymphs’ wantonness and cruelty, that is a thing abhorrent from their nature and inconceivable in them. This horrid propensity proves the γελλοῦδες or ἀγιελοῦδες to be a separate class of female demons. ”