Sexual perversity

“ The same thing must be assumed in the case of the so-called voyeurs, [4] —i.e., men who are so cynical that they seek to get sight of coitus, in order to assist their virility; or who seek to have orgasm and ejaculation at the sight of an excited woman. Concerning this moral aberration, which, for various reasons, cannot be further described here, it will suffice to refer to Coffignon's book, "La Corruption à Paris." The revelations, in the domain of sexual perversity, and also perversion, which this book makes, are horrible.
2. Rape and Lust-Murder. ”

“ No case has been demonstrated in which perversity has been transformed into perversion,—into a reversal of the sexual instinct. [74]
With tainted individuals, the matter is quite different. The latent perverse sexuality is developed under the influence of neurasthenia induced by masturbation, abstinence, or otherwise.
Gradually, in contact with persons of the same sex, sexual excitation by them is induced. Related ideas are colored with lustful feelings, and awaken corresponding desires. ”

“ This man stated that at the age of puberty, without any knowledge of perversity of sexual feeling, he was thrown intimately in contact with males of more advanced years, who took various means to excite his sexual passions, the result being that perverted sexual practices were developed, which were continued for a number of years. He thereafter noticed an aversion to women. ”

“ At other times he felt no pederastic desires and liked the society of women, notwithstanding which he would, not without a certain amount of wit, defend the form of sexual perversion which occupies our attention. ”

“ As far as we can ascertain, the majority of sexual perversions, of which we shall speak in Chapter VIII, are a sad pathological acquisition of the human race. We observe, however, especially in the higher mammals, acts of pederasty between males when the female is wanting. ”

“ Such competent studies as have been made do conclude that so complex and numerous are the causes of sexual vice that it is impossible to assert with any assurance that 'obscenity' represents a ponderable causal factor in sexually deviant behavior. ”

“ It appears to be because the sexual perversions are subject to a peculiar ban that extends even into theory, and stands in the way of their scientific appreciation. It seems as if no one could forget that they are not only revolting, but even unnatural, dangerous ”

“ In such instances we must, indeed, bear in mind the possibility of sexual perversion, especially in view of the fact that sexually perverse adults are often able to trace back into childhood the memory of sexual dreams characteristic of their peculiar type of perversion. Occasionally the feelings of anxiety of which we have spoken above may, even in dreams, lead to the occurrence of involuntary ejaculations. ”

“ The desire to take the male member into the mouth and suck it, which is considered as one of the most disgusting of sexual perversions, is nevertheless a frequent occurrence among the women of our time—and as shown in old sculptures was the same in earlier times—and in the state of being in love seems to lose entirely its disgusting character. ”

“ In this way prostitution becomes the high-school for all the refinements of sexual perversion. It not only offers special objects required by individuals tainted by heredity with various perversions, but it artificially develops perverse habits in the normal man. The manipulations of sadism or masochism are even utilized to revive a sexual appetite weakened by abuse. Individuals who have become impotent often try to excite themselves by observing the coitus of others. ”

“ Individuals of feeble, cynical, egoistic or abnormal natures, whose number is legion in the corrupt centers of modern civilization, yield to their perversion and often come before the tribunals, or else become objects of public contempt. As it is this class which generally become known, it is assumed by too hasty generalization that sexual perverts are necessarily cynical, vicious or weak-minded individuals ”

“ This fact depends on convention, and sometimes on the absence or perversion of sexual feelings. Brought up to prudery, sometimes to an absurd extent as in England, these women lose their natural feeling and often suffer from the excitation, indignation, and perpetual fright, which result from it. The exaggerations of prudery, moreover, easily lead to opposite excesses, or else degenerate into hypocrisy. The prude is ashamed of the most natural things, and undergoes continual torment. ”

“ In fact, a lunatic asylum reveals to us, in the form of repulsive caricatures, all gradations and variations of a more or less degenerate feminine sexual life, coquetry, wearing all kinds of ornaments, jealous anger, erotic excitement, etc.
The sexual excitation of the insane often makes them soil themselves with urine and excrements, and heap insults on persons whom their diseased imagination suspects of sexual assaults or immodest acts toward themselves or others. They have a tendency to believe themselves betrothed or married to kings, emperors, Jesus Christ or God. ”

“ Rather, we recognize more and more clearly that the essential nature of perversion does not consist in overstepping the sexual aim, nor in a substitution for the genitals, not even in the variety of objects, but simply in the exclusiveness with which these deviations are carried out and by means of which the sexual act that serves reproduction is pushed aside. When the perverse activities serve to prepare or heighten the normal sexual act, they are really no longer perversions. To be sure, the chasm between normal and perverse sexuality is practically bridged by such facts. ”

“ Now, we learn from experience, that when a perversion is traced back to its origination in a chastisement endured during childhood, this chastisement was as a rule the customary whipping of the buttocks. Far less frequently, and indeed hardly over, are we told that any other form of punishment has initiated a sexual perversion. ”

“ So, also, must the bold, swaggering, assertive, compelling bearing of youth be interpreted. The shy or modish, dandified, lackadaisical cane-carrying youth is naturally disliked as a sexual perversion. ”

“ Among the inhabitants of high mountainous regions, the Alps, the Cordillera, the Himalayas, we find, widely prevailing, besides cretinism and idiocy, a high degree of sexual perversion or else the sexual instinct totally extin- guished. ”

“ After half-a-century of rare opportunities to learn human nature, I have ascertained that I was tried worse than any one else I have heard of—that is, by torture of sexual desire that must not be gratified, and practically was not from seven to eighteen, inclusive. ”

“ All kinds of perverse dreams may, in children, accompany the emission, even when the corresponding ideas have no erotic association in the waking state. Things of which the child has learned from fairy tales, stories of robbers, of imprisoned or enchanted princesses, princes, fettered slaves—all may play a part in the psychosexual processes of the dream-life. Anyone unaware of the fact that in the great majority of children this tendency disappears spontaneously in the course of the further development of the sexual life might too readily infer the existence of some morbid perversion. ”

“ For wounds or death he may despise, Who helps his side to win the day. And as the factions join in strife, They shout amid the battle's din; Fighting as if for very life, Each one will do his best to win. Each hopes the victory to gain; Each would the bravest warrior prove. Hurrah! they cry, and each is fain To win bright glances from his love."
As I have previously explained, the existence of sexual perversions may sometimes be traced back into early childhood, although, in individual cases, the experiences of childhood may throw little light on the subsequent sexual life. ”

“ In the case also of these latter perversions, some maintain that in those instances in which the perversion began in childhood, some early association was the originating cause; whilst others, from the very fact that the perversion appeared very early in life and was apparently primary, infer that it must be of a congenital character. For instance, a man experiences sexual excitement whenever he sees a cook or other woman kill a fowl ”

“ Pain as a Means of Sexual Enjoyment.—There is a form of sexual perversion in which the pervert takes delight in being subjected to degrading, humiliating, and cruel acts on the part of his or her associate. ”

“ PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION In the present work I sketch in broad outline those facts and observations which inspired me with the idea of making enquiry into the causes of sexual perversion, and this not merely under the influence of depravity and licentious excess ”

“ There is no occurrence in the whole vast and diversified range of sexual evil, from the first lewd thought in the mind of the budding child, the very suspicion of which makes the parent tremble, down to the last ghastly and bloody spasm of lust which rends its hapless victim in some rusurban woodland, that is not fed mainly from this mystery and mother of abominations to whose care civilization has remitted the entire subject. ”

“ It were a curious inquiry how it comes that sexual perversions are so 'scientific' a study, while the brutalities of the thieves' kitchen or the wiles of other pests of society lie in comparative neglect. ”

“ Nurses sometimes stroke or tickle a child's genitals in order to put an end to a screaming fit. But in some cases--and these are more numerous than is commonly supposed--nursemaids do this under the impulse of their own lustful feelings. Such actions are not necessarily the outcome of a perverse sexual impulse, although they may be due to such an impulse in the form of paedophilia, as I shall have to explain in detail when I come to describe that perversion. Frequently the offenders are not in the least aware of the danger of what they are doing, and do it merely in sport. ”

“ The vision of imagination has penetrated all draperies, and carried with it the lascivious sense which the unobstructed eye would not. Sensuality has been promoted rather than suppressed. The exhibition of the naked human body is the beginning of sexual morality. ”

“ On this side the Geschichte der Lustseuche is of the highest importance, supplying as it does innumerable instances of those very phaenomena of morbid sexual perversions that constitute the subject matter of this rapidly progressive branch of Science, one likely in the near future to prove of infinite benefit to afflicted humanity. ”

“ The chief danger associated with the appearance of sexual perversions lies in the fact that the child thus affected, whether boy or girl, endeavours again and ever again to revive these pleasurably-toned sensations; and above all in the fact that as soon as the genital organs are sufficiently mature, the boy or girl obtains sexual gratification by masturbating simultaneously with the imaginative contemplation of perverse ideas. Such perverse psychical onanism, accompanied or unaccompanied by physical masturbatory acts, is eminently adapted to favour the development of the perversion. ”

“ The following is another example of a further degree of development of sexual perversion in the same direction :
A young man, 24 years of age, entices a little girl, 12 years old, into a wood, where he first violates and then murders her, drinks her blood, cuts out her sexual parts and her heart, which last he devours. ”

“ Far commoner than the acts of such stabbers are the cases in which the striking of children is to the sadist a source of sex-stimulation. Erotic literature is full of the description of such perversions. ”

“ The delicate brain, which is being molded, with the other organs of the body, receives its cast largely from those mental and nervous sensations and actions of the mother which are the most intense. One of the most certain effects of sexual indulgence at this time is to develop abnormally the sexual instinct in the child. Here is the key to the origin of much of the sexual precocity and depravity which curse humanity. Sensuality is born in the souls of a large share of the rising generation. What wonder that prostitution flourishes in spite of Christianity and civil law? ”

“ Can the reader conjure up any worse fate for a youth than to make the startling discovery that he, though extremely conscientious and offenceless, is a type of sexual cripple that has always been regarded by the sexually full-fledged—because of their ignorance and Phariseeism—as the lowest of the low, a monster of wickedness, and an outcast from society? ”

“ Where we have reason to believe, in the case of a particular child, that a perverse mode of sexual sensibility is developing, we shall occasionally find it preferable rather to attempt to hinder the growth of the perversion, than to try to check the general manifestations of the sexual impulse. ”

“ Listen to the heart-rending stories of girls in the houses of prostitution. Each has her story of circumstantial events to relate. Circumstances of varied gravity have caused the multitudes of “fallen women” to occupy their degraded sphere of shame and debauch. Many of these have never been predisposed to a sexual livelihood by an erotic disposition, and they only stay by compulsion and fear of reproach that must follow if they return to society. ”

“ In urnings morally perverse and potent, quoad erectionem, the sexual desire is satisfied by pederasty,—an act, however, which is repugnant to perverted individuals that are not defective morally, much in the same way as it is to normal men. ”

“ The little child is above all shameless, and during its early years it evinces definite pleasure in displaying its body and especially its sexual organs. A counterpart to this desire which is to be considered as perverse, the curiosity to see other persons' genitals, probably appears first in the later years of childhood when the hindrance of the feeling of shame has already reached a certain development. Under the influence of seduction the looking perversion may attain great importance for the sexual life of the child. ”