condition, especially Naecke, who, following out the suggestion,
terms the condition Narcissism. Among 1,500 insane persons, Naecke
has found it in four men and one woman (_Psychiatrische en
Neurologische Bladen_, No. 2, 1899), Dr. C.H. Hughes writes (in a
private letter) that he is acquainted with such cases, in which
men have been absorbed in admiration of their own manly forms,
and of their sexual organs, and women, likewise, absorbed in
admiration of their own mammae and physical proportions,
especially of limbs. "The whole subject," he adds, "is a singular
phase of psychology, and it is not all morbid psychology, either.
It is closely allied to that aesthetic sense which admires the
nude in art."

Fere (_L'Instinct Sexuel_, 2d ed., p. 271) mentions a woman who
experienced sexual excitement in kissing her own hand. Naecke knew
a woman in an asylum who, during periodical fits of excitement,
would kiss her own arms and hands, at the same time looking like
a person in love. He also knew a young man with dementia praecox?
who would kiss his own image ("Der Kuss bei Geisteskranken,"
_Allgemeine Zeitschrift fuer Psychiatrie_, Bd. LXIII, p. 127).
Moll refers to a young homosexual lawyer, who experienced great
pleasure in gazing at himself in a mirror (_Kontraere
Sexualempfindung_, 3d ed., p. 228), and mentions another inverted
man, an admirer of the nates of men, who, chancing to observe his
own nates in a mirror, when changing his shirt, was struck by
their beauty, and subsequently found pleasure in admiring them
(_Libido Sexualis_, Bd. I, Theil I, p. 60). Krafft-Ebing knew a
man who masturbated before a mirror, imagining, at the same time,
how much better a real lover would be.

The best-observed cases of Narcissism have, however, been
recorded by Rohleder, who confers upon this condition the
ponderous name of automonosexualism, and believes that it has not
been previously observed (H. Rohleder, _Der Automonosexualismus_,
being Heft 225 of _Berliner Klinik_, March, 1907). In the two
cases investigated by Rohleder, both men, there was sexual
excitement in the contemplation of the individual's own body,
actually or in a mirror, with little or no sexual attraction to
other persons. Rohleder is inclined to regard the condition as
due to a congenital defect in the "sexual centre" of the brain.


FOOTNOTES:

[176] All the above groups of phenomena are dealt with in other volumes of
these _Studies_: the manifestations of normal sexual excitement, in vols.
iii, iv, and v; homosexuality, in vol. ii, and erotic fetichism, in vol.
v.

[177] See Appendix C.

[178] Letamendi, of Madrid, has suggested "_auto-erastia_" to cover what
is probably much the same field. In the beginning of the nineteenth
century, Hufeland, in his _Makrobiotic_, invented the term "_geistige
Onanie_," to express the filling and heating of the imagination with
voluptuous images, without unchastity of body; and in 1844, Kaan, in his
_Psychopathia Sexualis_, used, but did not invent, the term "_onania
psychica_." Gustav Jaeger, in his _Entdeckung der Seele_, proposed
"monosexual idiosyncrasy," to indicate the most animal forms of
masturbation taking place without any correlative imaginative element, a
condition illustrated by cases given in Moll's _Untersuchungen ueber die
Libido Sexualis_, Bd. I, pp. 13 et seq. Dr. Laupts (a pseudonym for the
accomplished psychologist, Dr. Saint-Paul) uses the term _autophilie_, for
solitary vice. (_Perversion et Perversite Sexuelles_, 1896, p. 337.) But
all these terms only cover a portion of the field.

[179] H. Northcote, _Christianity and Sex Problems_, p. 231.

[180] Rosse observed two elephants procuring erection by entwining their
proboscides, the act being completed by one elephant opening his mouth and
allowing the other to tickle the roof of it. (I. Rosse, _Virginia Medical
Monthly_, October, 1892.)

[181] Fere, "Perversions sexuelles chez les animaux," _Revue
Philosophique_, May, 1897.

[182] Tillier, _L'Instinct Sexuel_, 1889, p. 270.

[183] Moll, _Libido Sexualis_, Bd. I, p. 76. The same author mentions
(ibid., p. 373) that parrots living in solitary confinement masturbate by
rubbing the posterior part of the body against some object until
ejaculation occurs. Edmund Selous ("Habits of the Peewit," _Zooelogist_,
April, 1902) suggests that the peewit, when rolling on the ground, and
exerting pressure on the anal region, is moved by a sexual impulse to
satisfy desire; he adds that actual orgasm appears eventually to take
place, a spasm of energy passing through the bird.

[184] Dr. J.W. Howe (_Excessive Venery, Masturbation, and Continence_,
London and New York, 1883, p. 62) writes of masturbation: "In savage lands
it is of rare occurrence. Savages live in a state of Nature. No moral
obligations exist which compel them to abstain from a natural
gratification of their passions. There is no social law which prevents
them from following the dictates of their lower nature. Hence, they have
no reason for adopting onanism as an outlet for passions. The moral
trammels of civilized society, and ignorance of physiological laws, give
origin to the vice." Every one of these six sentences is incorrect or
misleading. They are worth quoting as a statement of the popular view of
savage life.

[185] I can recall little evidence of its existence among the Australian
aborigines, though there is, in the Wiradyuri language, spoken over a
large part of New South Wales, a word (whether ancient or not, I do not
know) meaning masturbation (_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_,
July-Dec., 1904, p. 303). Dr. W. Roth (_Ethnological Studies Among the
Northwest-Central Queensland Aborigines_, p. 184), who has carefully
studied the blacks of his district, remarks that he has no evidence as to
the practice of either masturbation or sodomy among them. More recently
(1906) Roth has stated that married men in North Queensland and elsewhere
masturbate during their wives' absence. As regards the Maori of New
Zealand, Northcote adds, there is a rare word for masturbation (as also at
Rarotonga), but according to a distinguished Maori scholar there are no
allusions to the practice in Maori literature, and it was probably not
practiced in primitive times. The Maori and the Polynesians of the Cook
Islands, Northcote remarks, consider the act unmanly, applying to it a
phrase meaning "to make women of themselves." (Northcote, loc. cit., p.
232.)

[186] Greenlees, _Journal of Mental Science_, July, 1895. A gentleman long
resident among the Kaffirs of South Natal, told Northcote, however, that
he had met with no word for masturbation, and did not believe the practice
prevailed there.

[187] Hyades and Deniker, _Mission Scientifique du Cap Horn_, vol. vii, p.
295.

[188] _La Criminalite en Cochin-Chine_, 1887, p. 116; also Mondiere,
"Monographie de la Femme Annamite," _Memoires Societe d'Anthropologie_,
tome ii, p. 465.

[189] Christian, article on "Onanisme," _Dictionnaire Encyclopedique des
Sciences Medicales_; Ploss and Bartels, _Das Weib_; Moraglia, "Die Onanie
beim normalen Weibe," _Zeitschrift fuer Criminal-Anthropologie_, 1897;
Dartigues, _De la Procreation Volontaire des Sexes_, p. 32. In the
eighteenth century, the _rin-no-tama_ was known in France, sometimes as
"pommes d'amour." Thus Bachaumont, in his Journal (under date July 31,
1773), refers to "a very extraordinary instrument of amorous mystery,"
brought by a traveler from India; he describes this "boule erotique" as
the size of a pigeon's egg, covered with soft skin, and gilded. Cf. F.S.
Krauss, _Geschlechtsleben in Brauch und Sitte der Japaner_, Leipzig, 1907.

[190] It may be worth mentioning that the Salish Indians of British
Columbia have a myth of an old woman having intercourse with young women,
by means of a horn worn as a penis (_Journal of the Anthropological
Institute_, July-Dec., 1904, p. 342).

[191] In Burchard's Penitential (cap. 142-3), penalties are assigned to
the woman who makes a phallus for use on herself or other women.
(Wasserschleben, _Bussordnungen der abendlaendlichen Kirche_, p. 658.) The
_penis succedaneus_, the Latin _phallus_ or _fascinum_, is in France
called _godemiche_; in Italy, _passatempo_, and also _diletto_, whence
_dildo_, by which it is most commonly known in England. For men, the
corresponding _cunnus succedaneus_ is, in England, called _merkin_, which
meant originally (as defined in old editions of Bailey's _Dictionary_)
"counterfeit hair for women's privy parts."

[192] Duehren, _Der Marquis de Sade und Seine Zeit_, 3d ed., pp. 130, 232;
id. _Geschlechtsleben in England_, Bd. II, pp. 284 et seq.

[193] Gamier, _Onanisme_, p. 378.

[194] _Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie_, 1899, p. 669.

[195] The mythology of Hawaii, one may note, tells of goddesses who were
impregnated by bananas they had placed beneath their garments. B. Stern
mentions (_Medizin in der Tuerkei_, Bd. II, p. 24) that the women of Turkey
and Egypt use the banana, as well as the cucumber, etc., for masturbation.
In a poem in the _Arabian Nights_, also ("History of the Young Nour with
the Frank"), we read: "O bananas, of soft and smooth skins, which dilate
the eyes of young girls ... you, alone among fruits are endowed with a
pitying heart, O consolers of widows and divorced women." In France and
England they are not uncommonly used for the same purpose.

[196] See, e.g., Winckel, _Die Krankheiten der weiblichen Harnrohre und
Blase_, 1885, p. 211; and "Lehrbuch der Frauenkrankheiten," 1886, p. 210;
also, Hyrtl, _Handbuch du Topographischen Anatomie_, 7th ed., Bd. II, pp.
212-214. Gruenfeld (_Wiener medizinische Blaetter_, November 26, 1896),
collected 115 cases of foreign body in the bladder--68 in men, 47 in
women; but while those found in men were usually the result of a surgical
accident, those found in women were mostly introduced by the patients
themselves. The patient usually professes profound ignorance as to how the
object came there; or she explains that she accidentally sat down upon it,
or that she used it to produce freer urination. The earliest surgical case
of this kind I happen to have met with, was recorded by Plazzon, in Italy,
in 1621 (_De Partibus Generationi Inservientibus_, lib. ii, Ch. XIII); it
was that of a certain honorable maiden with a large clitoris, who, seeking
to lull sexual excitement with the aid of a bone needle, inserted it in
the bladder, whence it was removed by Aquapendente.

[197] A. Poulet, _Traite des Corps etrangers en Chirurgie_, 1879. English
translation, 1881, vol. ii, pp. 209, 230. Rohleder (_Die Masturbation_,
1899, pp. 24-31) also gives examples of strange objects found in the
sexual organs.

[198] E.H. Smith, "Signs of Masturbation in the Female," _Pacific Medical
Journal_, February, 1903, quoted by R.W. Taylor, _Practical Treatise on
Sexual Disorders_, 3d ed., p. 418.

[199] L. Tait, _Diseases of Women_, 1889, vol. i, p. 100.

[200] _Obstetric Journal_, vol. i, 1873, p. 558. Cf. G.J. Arnold,
_British, Medical Journal_, January 6, 1906, p. 21.

[201] Dudley, _American Journal of Obstetrics_, July, 1889, p. 758.

[202] A. Reverdin, "Epingles a Cheveux dans la Vessie," _Revue Medicale de
la Suisse Romande_, January 20, 1888. His cases are fully recorded, and
his paper is an able and interesting contribution to this by-way of sexual
psychology. The first case was a school-master's wife, aged 22, who
confessed in her husband's presence, without embarrassment or hesitation,
that the manoeuvre was habitual, learned from a school-companion, and
continued after marriage. The second was a single woman of 42, a _cure's_
servant, who attempted to elude confession, but on leaving the doctor's
house remarked to the house-maid, "Never go to bed without taking out your
hair-pins; accidents happen so easily." The third was an English girl of
17 who finally acknowledged that she had lost two hair-pins in this way.
The fourth was a child of 12, driven by the pain to confess that the
practice had become a habit with her.

[203] "One of my patients," remarks Dr. R.T. Morris, of New York,
(_Transactions of the American Association of Obstetricians_, for 1892,
Philadelphia, vol. v), "who is a devout church-member, had never allowed
herself to entertain sexual thoughts referring to men, but she masturbated
every morning, when standing before the mirror, by rubbing against a key
in the bureau-drawer. A man never excited her passions, but the sight of a
key in any bureau-drawer aroused erotic desires."

[204] Freud (_Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie_, p. 118) refers to the
sexual pleasure of swinging. Swinging another person may be a source of
voluptuous excitement, and one of the 600 forms of sexual pleasure
enumerated in De Sade's _Les 120 Journees de Sodome_ is (according to
Duehren) to propel a girl vigorously in a swing.

[205] The fact that horse exercise may produce pollutions was well
recognized by Catholic theologians, and Sanchez states that this fact need
not be made a reason for traveling on foot. Rolfincius, in 1667, pointed
out that horse-riding, in those unaccustomed to it, may lead to nocturnal
pollutions. Rohleder (_Die Masturbation_, pp. 133-134) brings together
evidence regarding the influence of horse exercise in producing sexual
excitement.

[206] A correspondent, to whom the idea was presented for the first time,
wrote: "Henceforward I shall know to what I must attribute the
bliss--almost the beatitude--I so often have experienced after traveling
for four or five hours in a train." Penta mentions the case of a young
girl who first experienced sexual desire at the age of twelve, after a
railway journey.

[207] Langdon Down, _British Medical Journal_, January 12, 1867.

[208] Pouillet, _L'Onanisme chez la Femme_, Paris, 1880; Fournier, _De
l'Onanisme_, 1885; Rohleder, _Die Masturbation_, p. 132.

[209] _West-Riding Asylum Reports_, 1876, vol. vi.

[210] _Das Nervoese Weib_, 1898, p. 193.

[211] In the Appendix to volume iii of these _Studies_, I have recorded
the experience of a lady who found sexual gratification in this manner.

[212] Dr. J.G. Kiernan, to whom I am indebted for a note on this point,
calls my attention also to the case of a homosexual and masochistic man
(_Medical Record_, vol. xix) whose feelings were intensified by
tight-lacing.

[213] Some women are also able to produce the orgasm, when in a state of
sexual excitement, by placing a cushion between the knees and pressing the
thighs firmly together.

[214] _Lecons sur les Deformations Vulvaires_, p. 64. Martineau was
informed by a dressmaker that it is very frequent in workrooms and can
usually be done without attracting attention. An ironer informed him that
while standing at her work, she crossed her legs, slightly bending the
trunk forward and supporting herself on the table by the hands; then a few
movements of contraction of the adductor muscles of the thigh would
suffice to produce the orgasm.

[215] C.W. Townsend, "Thigh-friction in Children under one Year," Annual
Meeting of the American Pediatric Society, Montreal, 1896. Five cases are
recorded by this writer, all in female infants.

[216] Soutzo, _Archives de Neurologie_, February, 1903, p. 167.

[217] Zache, _Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie_, 1899, p. 72. I have discussed
what may be regarded as the normally sexual influence of dancing, in the
third volume of these _Studies_, "The Analysis of the Sexual Impulse."

[218] The case has been recorded of a Russian who had the spontaneous
impulse to self-flagellation on the nates with a rod, for the sake of
sexual excitement, from the age of 6. (_Rivista Mensile di Psichiatria_
April, 1900, p. 102.)

[219] Kryptadia, vol. v, p. 358. As regards the use of nettles, see
Duehren, _Geschlechtsleben in England_, Bd. II, p. 392.

[220] Debreyne, _Moechialogie_, p. 177.

[221] R.W. Taylor, _A Practical Treatise on Sexual Disorders_, 3rd ed.,
Ch. XXX.

[222] Hammond, _Sexual Impotence_, pp. 70 et seq.

[223] Niceforo, _Il Gergo_, p. 98.

[224] _Functional Disorders of the Nervous System in Women_, p. 114.

[225] Schrenck-Notzing, _Suggestions-therapie_, p. 13. A. Kind (_Jahrbuch
fuer Sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, Jahrgang ix, 1908, p. 58) gives the case of
a young homosexual woman, a trick cyclist at the music halls, who often,
when excited by the sight of her colleague in tights, would experience the
orgasm while cycling before the public.

[226] Janet has, however, used day-dreaming--which he calls "_reveries
subconscients_"--to explain a remarkable case of demon-possession, which
he investigated and cured. (_Nevroses et Idees fixes_, vol. i, pp. 390 et
seq.)

[227] "Minor Studies from the Psychological Laboratory of Wellesley
College," _American Journal of Psychology_, vol. vii, No. 1. G.E.
Partridge ("Reverie," _Pedagogical Seminary_, April, 1898) well describes
the physical accompaniments of day-dreaming, especially in Normal School
girls between sixteen and twenty-two. Pick ("Clinical Studies in
Pathological Dreaming," _Journal of Mental Sciences_, July, 1901) records
three more or less morbid cases of day-dreaming, usually with an erotic
basis, all in apparently hysterical men. An important study of
day-dreaming, based on the experiences of nearly 1,500 young people (more
than two-thirds girls and women), has been published by Theodate L. Smith
("The Psychology of Day Dreams," _American Journal Psychology_, October,
1904). Continued stories were found to be rare--only one per cent. Healthy
boys, before fifteen, had day-dreams in which sports, athletics, and
adventure had a large part; girls put themselves in the place of their
favorite heroines in novels. After seventeen, and earlier in the case of
girls, day-dreams of love and marriage were found to be frequent. A
typical confession is that of a girl of nineteen: "I seldom have time to
build castles in Spain, but when I do, I am not different from most
Southern girls; i.e., my dreams are usually about a pretty fair specimen
of a six-foot three-inch biped."

[228] The case has been recorded of a married woman, in love with her
doctor, who kept a day-dream diary, at last filling three bulky volumes,
when it was discovered by her husband, and led to an action for divorce;
it was shown that the doctor knew nothing of the romance in which he
played the part of hero. Kiernan, in referring to this case (as recorded
in John Paget's _Judicial Puzzles_), mentions a similar case in Chicago.

[229] _Uranisme_, p. 125.

[230] The acute Anstie remarked, more than thirty years ago, in his work
on _Neuralgia_: "It is a comparatively frequent thing to see an unsocial,
solitary life (leading to the habit of masturbation) joined with the bad
influence of an unhealthy ambition, prompting to premature and false work
in literature and art." From the literary side, M. Leon Bazalgette has
dealt with the tendency of much modern literature to devote itself to what
he calls "mental onanism," of which the probable counterpart, he seems to
hint, is a physical process of auto-erotism. (Leon Bazalgette, "L'onanisme
considere comme principe createur en art," _L'Esprit Nouveau_, 1898.)

[231] Pausanias, _Achaia_, Chapter XVII. The ancient Babylonians believed
in a certain "maid of the night," who appeared to men in sleep and roused
without satisfying their passions. (Jastrow, _Religion of Babylonia_, p.
262.) This succubus was the Assyrian Liler, connected with the Hebrew
Lilith. There was a corresponding incubus, "the little night man," who had
nocturnal intercourse with women. (Cf. Ploss, _Das Weib_, 7th ed., pp. 521
et seq.) The succubus and the incubus (the latter being more common) were
adopted by Christendom; St. Augustine (_De Civitate Dei_, Bk. XV, Ch.
XXIII) said that the wicked assaults of sylvans and fauns, otherwise
called incubi, on women, are so generally affirmed that it would be
impudent to deny them. Incubi flourished in mediaeval belief, and can
scarcely, indeed, be said to be extinct even to-day. They have been
studied by many authors; see, e.g., Dufour, _Histoire de la Prostitution_,
vol. v, Ch. XXV, Saint-Andre, physician-in-ordinary to the French King,
pointed out in 1725 that the incubus was a dream. It may be added that the
belief in the succubus and incubus appears to be widespread. Thus, the
West African Yorubas (according to A.B. Ellis) believe that erotic dreams
are due to the god Elegbra, who, either as a male or a female, consorts
with men and women in sleep.

[232] "If any man's seed of copulation go out from him, then he shall
bathe all his flesh in water and be unclean until the even. And every
garment, and every skin, whereon is the seed of copulation, shall be
washed with water and be unclean until the even." Leviticus, XV, v. 16-17.

[233] It should be added that the term _pollutio_ also covers voluntary
effusion of semen outside copulation. (Debreyne, _Moechialogie_,
p. 8; for a full discussion of the opinions of theologians concerning
nocturnal and diurnal pollutions, see the same author's _Essai sur la
Theologie Morale_, pp. 100-149.)

[234] _Memoirs_, translated by Bendyshe, p. 182.

[235] _Sexual Impotence_, p. 137.

[236] _L'Hygiene Sexuelle_, p. 169.

[237] _Sexualleben und Nervenleiden_, p. 164.

[238] I may here refer to the curious opinion expressed by Dr. Elizabeth
Blackwell, that, while the sexual impulse in man is usually relieved by
seminal emissions during sleep, in women it is relieved by the occurrence
of menstruation. This latter statement is flagrantly at variance with the
facts; but it may perhaps be quoted in support of the view expressed above
as to the comparative rarity of sexual excitement during sleep in young
girls.

[239] Loewenfeld has recently expressed the same opinion. Rohleder believes
that pollutions are physically impossible in a _real_ virgin, but that
opinion is too extreme.

[240] It may be added that in more or less neurotic women and girls,
erotic dreams may be very frequent and depressing. Thus, J.M. Fothergill
(_West-Riding Asylum Report_, 1876, vol. vi) remarks: "These dreams are
much more frequent than is ordinarily thought, and are the cause of a
great deal of nervous depression among women. Women of a highly-nervous
diathesis suffer much more from these drains than robust women. Not only
are these involuntary orgasms more frequent among such women, but they
cause more disturbance of the general health in them than in other women."

[241] I may remark here that a Russian correspondent considers that I have
greatly underestimated the frequency of erotic manifestations during sleep
in young girls. "All the women I have interrogated on this point," he
informs me, "say that they have had such pollutions from the time of
puberty, or even earlier, accompanied by erotic dreams. I have put the
question to some twenty or thirty women. It is true that they were of
southern race (Italian, Spanish, and French), and I believe that
Southerners are, in this matter, franker than northern women, who consider
the activity of the flesh as shameful, and seek to conceal it." My
correspondent makes no reference to the chief point of sexual difference,
so far as my observation goes, which is that erotic dreams are
comparatively rare in those women "_who have yet had no sort of sexual
experience in waking life_." Whether or not this is correct, I do not
question the frequency of erotic dreams in girls who have had such
experience.

[242] C.C. Hersman, "Medico-legal Aspects of Eroto-Choreic Insanities,"
_Alienist and Neurologist_, July, 1897. I may mention that Pitres (_Lecons
cliniques sur l'Hysterie_, vol. ii, p. 34) records the almost identical
case of a hysterical girl in one of his wards, who was at first grateful
to the clinical clerk to whom her case was intrusted, but afterward
changed her behavior, accused him of coming nightly through the window,
lying beside her, caressing her, and then exerting violent coitus three or
four times in succession, until she was utterly exhausted. I may here
refer to the tendency to erotic excitement in women under the influence of
chloroform and nitrous oxide, a tendency rarely or never noted in men, and
of the frequency with which the phenomenon is attributed by the subject to
actual assault. See H. Ellis, _Man and Woman_, pp. 269-274.

[243] In Australia, some years ago, a man was charged with rape, found
guilty of "attempt," and sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment, on
the accusation of a girl of 13, who subsequently confessed that the charge
was imaginary; in this case, the jury found it impossible to believe that
so young a girl could have been lying, or hallucinated, because she
narrated the details of the alleged offence with such circumstantial
detail. Such cases are not uncommon, and in some measure, no doubt, they
may be accounted for by auto-erotic nocturnal hallucinations.

[244] Sante de Sanctis, _I sogni e il sonno nell'isterismo e nella
epilessia_, Rome, 1896, p. 101.

[245] Pitres, _Lecons cliniques sur l'Hysterie_, vol. ii, pp. 37 et seq.
The Lorraine inquisitor, Nicolas Remy, very carefully investigated the
question of the feelings of witches when having intercourse with the
Devil, questioning them minutely, and ascertained that such intercourse
was usually extremely painful, filling them with icy horror (See, e.g.,
Dufour, _Histoire de la Prostitution_, vol. v, p. 127; the same author
presents an interesting summary of the phenomena of the Witches' Sabbath).
But intercourse with the Devil was by no means always painful. Isabel
Gowdie, a Scotch witch, bore clear testimony to this point: "The youngest
and lustiest women," she stated, "will have very great pleasure in their
carnal copulation with him, yea, much more than with their own
husbands.... He is abler for us than any man can be. (Alack! that I should
compare him to a man!)" Yet her description scarcely sounds attractive; he
was a "large, black, hairy man, very cold, and I found his nature as cold
within me as spring well-water." His foot was forked and cloven; he was
sometimes like a deer, or a roe; and he would hold up his tail while the
witches kissed that region (Pitcairn, _Criminal Trials in Scotland_, vol.
iii, Appendix VII; see, also, the illustrations at the end of Dr. A.
Marie's _Folie et Mysticisme_, 1907).

[246] Gilles de la Tourette, loc. cit., p. 518. Erotic hallucinations have
also been studied by Bellamy, in a Bordeaux thesis, _Hallucinations
Erotiques_, 1900-1901.

[247] On one occasion, when still a girl, whenever an artist whom she
admired touched her hand she felt erection and moisture of the sexual
parts, but without any sensation of pleasure; a little later, when an
uncle's knee casually came in contact with her thigh, ejaculation of mucus
took place, though she disliked the uncle; again, when a nurse, on
casually seeing a man's sexual organs, an electric shock went through her,
though the sight was disgusting to her; and when she had once to assist a
man to urinate, she became in the highest degree excited, though without
pleasure, and lay down on a couch in the next room, while a conclusive
ejaculation took place. (Moll, _Libido Sexualis_, Bd. I, p. 354.)

[248] Breuer and Freud, _Studien ueber Hysterie_, 1895, p. 217.

[249] Calmeil (_De la Folie_, vol. i, p. 252) called attention to the
large part played by uterine sensations in the hallucinations of some
famous women ascetics, and added: "It is well recognized that the
narrative of such sensations nearly always occupies the first place in the
divagations of hysterical virgins."

[250] H. Leuba, "Les Tendances Religieuses chez les Mystiques Chretiens,"
_Revue Philosophique_, November, 1902, p. 465. St. Theresa herself states
that physical sensations played a considerable part in this experience.




II.

Hysteria and the Question of Its Relation to the Sexual Emotions--The
Early Greek Theories of its Nature and Causation--The Gradual Rise of
Modern Views--Charcot--The Revolt Against Charcot's Too Absolute
Conclusions--Fallacies Involved--Charcot's Attitude the Outcome of his
Personal Temperament--Breuer and Freud--Their Views Supplement and
Complete Charcot's--At the Same Time they Furnish a Justification for the
Earlier Doctrine of Hysteria--But They Must Not be Regarded as Final--The
Diffused Hysteroid Condition in Normal Persons--The Physiological Basis of
Hysteria--True Pathological Hysteria is Linked on to almost Normal States,
especially to Sex-hunger.


The nocturnal hallucinations of hysteria, as all careful students of this
condition now seem to agree, are closely allied to the hysterical attack
proper. Sollier, indeed, one of the ablest of the more recent
investigators of hysteria, has argued with much force that the subjects of
hysteria really live in a state of pathological sleep, of
vigilambulism.[251] He regards all the various accidents of hysteria as
having a common basis in disturbances of sensibility, in the widest sense
of the word "sensibility,"--as the very foundation of personality,--while
anaesthesia is "the real _sigillum hysteriae_." Whatever the form of
hysteria, we are thus only concerned with a more or less profound state of
vigilambulism: a state in which the subject seems, often even to himself,
to be more or less always asleep, whether the sleep may be regarded as
local or general. Sollier agrees with Fere that the disorder of
sensibility may be regarded as due to an exhaustion of the sensory centres
of the brain, whether as the result of constitutional cerebral weakness,
of the shock of a violent emotion, or of some toxic influence on the
cerebral cells.

We may, therefore, fitly turn from the auto-erotic phenomena of sleep
which in women generally, and especially in hysterical women, seem to
possess so much importance and significance, to the question--which has
been so divergently answered at different periods and by different
investigators--concerning the causation of hysteria, and especially
concerning its alleged connection with conscious or unconscious sexual
emotion.[252]

It was the belief of the ancient Greeks that hysteria came from the womb;
hence its name. We first find that statement in Plato's _Timaeus_: "In men
the organ of generation--becoming rebellious and masterful, like an animal
disobedient to reason, and maddened with the sting of lust--seeks to gain
absolute sway; and the same is the case with the so-called womb, or
uterus, of women; the animal within them is desirous of procreating
children, and, when remaining unfruitful long beyond its proper time, gets
discontented and angry, and, wandering in every direction through the
body, closes up the passages of the breath, and, by obstructing
respiration,[253] drives them to extremity, causing all varieties of
disease."

Plato, it is true, cannot be said to reveal anywhere a very scientific
attitude toward Nature. Yet he was here probably only giving expression to
the current medical doctrine of his day. We find precisely the same
doctrine attributed to Hippocrates, though without a clear distinction
between hysteria and epilepsy.[254] If we turn to the best Roman
physicians we find again that Aretaeus, "the Esquirol of antiquity," has
set forth the same view, adding to his description of the movements of the
womb in hysteria: "It delights, also, in fragrant smells, and advances
toward them; and it has an aversion to foetid smells, and flies from them;
and, on the whole, the womb is like an animal within an animal."[255]
Consequently, the treatment was by applying foetid smells to the nose and
rubbing fragrant ointments around the sexual parts.[256]

The Arab physicians, who carried on the traditions of Greek medicine,
appear to have said nothing new about hysteria, and possibly had little
knowledge of it. In Christian mediaeval Europe, also, nothing new was added
to the theory of hysteria; it was, indeed, less known medically than it
had ever been, and, in part it may be as a result of this ignorance, in
part as a result of general wretchedness (the hysterical phenomena of
witchcraft reaching their height, Michelet points out, in the fourteenth
century, which was a period of special misery for the poor), it flourished
more vigorously. Not alone have we the records of nervous epidemics, but
illuminated manuscripts, ivories, miniatures, bas-reliefs, frescoes, and
engravings furnish the most vivid iconographic evidence of the prevalence
of hysteria in its most violent forms during the Middle Ages. Much of this
evidence is brought to the service of science in the fascinating works of
Dr. P. Richer, one of Charcot's pupils.[257]

In the seventeenth century Ambroise Pare was still talking, like
Hippocrates, about "suffocation of the womb"; Forestus was still, like
Aretaeus, applying friction to the vulva; Fernel was still reproaching
Galen, who had denied that the movements of the womb produced hysteria.

It was in the seventeenth century (1618) that a French physician, Charles
Lepois (Carolus Piso), physician to Henry II, trusting, as he said, to
experience and reason, overthrew at one stroke the doctrine of hysteria
that had ruled almost unquestioned for two thousand years, and showed that
the malady occurred at all ages and in both sexes, that its seat was not
in the womb, but in the brain, and that it must be considered a nervous
disease.[258] So revolutionary a doctrine could not fail to meet with
violent opposition, but it was confirmed by Willis, and in 1681, we owe to
the genius of Sydenham a picture of hysteria which for lucidity,
precision, and comprehensiveness has only been excelled in our own times.

It was not possible any longer to maintain the womb theory of Hippocrates
in its crude form, but in modified forms, and especially with the object
of preserving the connection which many observers continued to find
between hysteria and the sexual emotions, it still found supporters in the
eighteenth and even the nineteenth centuries. James, in the middle of the
eighteenth century, returned to the classical view, and in his _Dictionary
of Medicine_ maintained that the womb is the seat of hysteria. Louyer
Villermay in 1816 asserted that the most frequent causes of hysteria are
deprivation of the pleasures of love, griefs connected with this passion,
and disorders of menstruation. Foville in 1833 and Landouzy in 1846
advocated somewhat similar views. The acute Laycock in 1840 quoted as
"almost a medical proverb" the saying, "_Salacitas major, major ad
hysteriam proclivitas_," fully indorsing it. More recently still Clouston
has defined hysteria as "the loss of the inhibitory influence exercised on
the reproductive and sexual instincts of women by the higher mental and
moral functions" (a position evidently requiring some modification in view
of the fact that hysteria is by no means confined to women), while the
same authority remarks that more or less concealed sexual phenomena are
the chief symptoms of "hysterical insanity."[259] Two gynaecologists of
high position in different parts of the world, Hegar in Germany and
Balls-Headley in Australia, attribute hysteria, as well as anaemia, largely
to unsatisfied sexual desire, including the non-satisfaction of the "ideal
feelings."[260] Lombroso and Ferrero, again, while admitting that the
sexual feelings might be either heightened or depressed in hysteria,
referred to the frequency of what they termed "a paradoxical sexual
instinct" in the hysterical, by which, for instance, sexual frigidity is
combined with intense sexual pre-occupations; and they also pointed out
the significant fact that the crimes of the hysterical nearly always
revolve around the sexual sphere.[261] Thus, even up to the time when the
conception of hysteria which absolutely ignored and excluded any sexual
relationship whatever had reached its height, independent views favoring
such a relationship still found expression.

Of recent years, however, such views usually aroused violent antagonism.
The main current of opinion was with Briquet (1859), who, treating the
matter with considerable ability and a wide induction of facts,
indignantly repelled the idea that there is any connection between
hysteria and the sexual facts of life, physical or psychic. As he himself
admitted, Briquet was moved to deny a sexual causation of hysteria by the
thought that such an origin would be degrading for women ("_a quelque
chose de degradant pour les femmes_").

It was, however, the genius of Charcot, and the influence of his able
pupils, which finally secured the overthrow of the sexual theory of
hysteria. Charcot emphatically anathematized the visceral origin of
hysteria; he declared that it is a psychic disorder, and to leave no
loop-hole of escape for those who maintained a sexual causation he
asserted that there are no varieties of hysteria, that the disease is one
and indivisible. Charcot recognized no primordial cause of hysteria beyond
heredity, which here plays a more important part than in any other
neuropathic condition. Such heredity is either direct or more occasionally
by transformation, any deviation of nutrition found in the ancestors
(gout, diabetes, arthritis) being a possible cause of hysteria in the
descendants. "We do not know anything about the nature of hysteria,"
Charcot wrote in 1892; "we must make it objective in order to recognize
it. The dominant idea for us in the etiology of hysteria is, in the widest
sense, its hereditary predisposition. The greater number of those
suffering from this affection are simply born _hysterisables_, and on them
the occasional causes act directly, either through autosuggestion or by
causing derangement of general nutrition, and more particularly of the
nutrition of the nervous system."[262] These views were ably and
decisively stated in Gilles de la Tourette's _Traite de l'Hysterie_,
written under the inspiration of Charcot.

While Charcot's doctrine was thus being affirmed and generally accepted,
there were at the same time workers in these fields who, though they by no
means ignored this doctrine of hysteria or even rejected it, were inclined
to think that it was too absolutely stated. Writing in the _Dictionary of
Psychological Medicine_ at the same time as Charcot, Donkin, while
deprecating any exclusive emphasis on the sexual causation, pointed out
the enormous part played by the emotions in the production of hysteria,
and the great influence of puberty in women due to the greater extent of
the sexual organs, and the consequently large area of central innervation
involved, and thus rendered liable to fall into a state of unstable
equilibrium. Enforced abstinence from the gratification of any of the
inherent and primitive desires, he pointed out, may be an adequate
exciting cause. Such a view as this indicated that to set aside the
ancient doctrine of a physical sexual cause of hysteria was by no means to
exclude a psychic sexual cause. Ten years earlier Axenfeld and Huchard had
pointed out that the reaction against the sexual origin of hysteria was
becoming excessive, and they referred to the evidence brought forward by
veterinary surgeons showing that unsatisfied sexual desire in animals may
produce nervous symptoms very similar to hysteria.[263] The present
writer, when in 1894 briefly discussing hysteria as an element in
secondary sexual characterization, ventured to reflect the view, confirmed
by his own observation, that there was a tendency to unduly minimize the
sexual factor in hysteria, and further pointed out that the old error of a
special connection between hysteria and the female sexual organs, probably
arose from the fact that in woman the organic sexual sphere is larger than
in man.[264]

When, indeed, we analyze the foundation of the once predominant opinions
of Charcot and his school regarding the sexual relationships of hysteria,
it becomes clear that many fallacies and misunderstandings were involved.
Briquet, Charcot's chief predecessor, acknowledged that his own view was
that a sexual origin of hysteria would be "degrading to women"; that is to
say, he admitted that he was influenced by a foolish and improper
prejudice, for the belief that the unconscious and involuntary morbid
reaction of the nervous system to any disturbance of a great primary
instinct can have "_quelque chose de degradant_" is itself an immoral