the more active part. But it is rarely demonstrated in these
cases that the cruelty exercised had a definite sexual origin.
There is nothing, for instance, to indicate true sadism in the
famous English case in the eighteenth century of Mrs. Brownrigg
(Bloch, _Geschlechtsleben in England_, vol. ii, p. 425). It may
well be, however, in many of these cases that the real motive is
sexual, although latent and unconscious. The normal sexual
impulse in women is often obscured and disguised, and it would
not be surprising if the perverse instinct is so likewise.

It is noteworthy that a passion for whipping may be aroused by
contact with a person who desires to be whipped. This is
illustrated by the following case which has been communicated to
me: "K. is a Jew, about 40 years of age, apparently normal.
Nothing is known of his antecedents. He is a manufacturer with
several shops. S., an Englishwoman, aged 25, entered his service;
she is illegitimate, believed to have been reared in a brothel
kept by her mother, is prepossessing in appearance. On entering
K.'s service S. was continually negligent and careless. This so
provoked K. that on one occasion he struck her. She showed great
pleasure and confessed that her blunder had been deliberately
intended to arouse him to physical violence. At her suggestion K.
ultimately consented to thrash her. This operation took place in
K.'s office, S. stripping for the purpose, and the leather
driving band from a sewing-machine was used. S. manifested
unmistakable pleasure during the flagellation, and connection
occurred after it. These thrashings were repeated at frequent
intervals, and K. found a growing liking for the operation on his
own part. Once, at the suggestion of S., a girl of 13 employed by
K. was thrashed by both K. and S. alternately. The child
complained to her parents and K. made a money payment to them to
avoid scandal, the parents agreeing to keep silence. Other women
(Jewish tailoresses) employed by K. were subsequently thrashed by
him. He asserts that they enjoyed the experience. Mrs. K.,
discovering her husband's infatuation for S., commenced divorce
proceedings. S. consented to leave the country at K.'s request,
but returned almost immediately and was kept in hiding until the
decree was granted. The mutual infatuation of K. and S.
continues, though K. asserts that he cares less for her than
formerly. Flagellation has, however, now become a passion with
him, though he declares that the practice was unknown to him
before he met S. His great fear is that he will kill S. during
one of these operations. He is convinced that S. is not an
isolated case, and that all women enjoy flagellation. He claims
that the experiences of the numerous women whom he has now
thrashed bear out this opinion; one of them is a wealthy woman
separated from her husband, and is now infatuated with K."

Flagellation, more especially in its masochistic form, is
sometimes associated with true inversion. Moll presents the case
of a young inverted woman of 26, showing, indeed, many other
minor sexual anomalies, who is sexually excited when beaten with
a switch. A whip would not do, and the blows must only be on the
nates; she cannot imagine being beaten by a small woman. She has
often in this way been beaten by a friend, who should be naked at
the time, and must submit afterward to cunnilinctus. (Moll,
_Kontraere Sexualempfindung_ third edition, p. 568.)

In the preceding case there were no masochistic ideas; it is
likely that in such a case beating is desired largely on account
of that purely physical effect to which attention has already
been called. In the same way self-beating with a switch or whip
has sometimes been spontaneously discovered as a method of
self-excitement preliminary to masturbation. I am acquainted with
a lady of much intellectual ability, sexually normal, who made
this discovery at the age of 18, and practised it for a time.
Professor Reverdin, also, speaks of the case of a young girl
under his care who, after having exhausted all the resources of
her intelligence, finally discovered that the climax of enjoyment
was best reached by violently whipping her own buttocks and
thighs. She had invented for this purpose a whip composed of
twelve cords each of which terminated in a large chestnut-burr
provided with its spines. (A. Reverdin, _Revue Medicale de la
Suisse Romande_, January 20, 1888, p. 17.)


FOOTNOTES:

[107] The discipline or scourge was classed with fasting as a method of
mastering the flesh and of penance. See, e.g., Lea, _History of Auricular
Confession_, vol. ii, p. 122. For many centuries bishops and priests used
themselves to apply the discipline to their penitents. At first it was
applied to the back; later, especially in the case of female penitents, it
was frequently applied to the nates. Moreover, partial or complete nudity
came to be frequently demanded, the humiliation thereby caused being
pleasant in the sight of God.

[108] Dulaure, _Des Divinites Generatrices_, ch. xv; Lea, _History of
Sacerdotal Celibacy_, 3d ed., vol. ii, p. 278; Kiernan, "Asceticism as an
Auto-erotism," _Alienist and Neurologist_, Aug., 1911.

[109] This is the opinion of Loewenfeld, _Ueber die Sexuelle Konstitution_,
p. 43.

[110] Thus, Duehren (Iwan Bloch) remarks (_Der Marquis de Sade und Seine
Zeit_, 1901, p. 211): "It is well known that England is today the classic
land of sexual flagellation." See the same author's _Geschlechtsleben in
England_, vol. ii, ch. vi. In America it appears also to be common, and
Kiernan mentions that in advertisements of Chicago "massage shops" there
often appears the announcement: "Flagellation a Specialty." The reports of
police inspectors in eighteenth century France show how common
flagellation then was in Paris. It may be added that various men of
distinguished intellectual ability of recent times and earlier are
reported as addicted to passive flagellation; this was the case with
Helvetius.

[111] A full bibliography of flagellation would include many hundred
items. The more important works on this subject, in connection with the
sexual impulse, are enumerated by Eulenburg, in his _Sadismus und
Masochismus_. An elaborate history of flagellation generally is now being
written by Georg Collas, _Geschichte des Flagellantismus_, vol. i, 1912.

[112] Loewenfeld, _Ueber die Sexuelle Konstitution_, p. 43.

[113] _Archiv fuer Kriminal-Anthropologie_, 1909, p. 361. He brings forward
the evidence of a reliable and cultured man who at one time sought to
obtain the pleasures of passive sexual flagellation. But in spite of his
expectation and good will the only result was to disperse every trace of
sexual desire.

[114] E.g., Kiefer, _Zeitschrift fuer Sexualwissenschaft_, Aug., 1908.

[115] Fere, _Revue de Medecine_, August, 1900. In this paper Fere brings
together many interesting facts concerning flagellation in ancient times.

[116] Schmidt-Heuert (_Monatschrift fuer Harnkrankheiten_, 1906, ht. 7)
argues that it is not so much the actual use of the rod as playful,
threatening and mysterious suggestions playing around it which nowadays
gives it sexual fascination.

[117] Moll (_Untersuchungen ueber die Libido Sexualis_, Bd. 1, p. 18)
points out that these emotions frequently suffice to cause sexual
emissions in schoolboys.

[118] As Eulenburg truly points out, the circumstances attending the
whipping of a woman may be sexually attractive, even in the absence of any
morbid impulse. Such circumstances are "the sight of naked feminine charms
and especially--in the usual mode of flagellation--of those parts which
possess for the sexual epicure a peculiar esthetic attraction; the idea of
treating a loved, or at all events desired, person as a child, of having
her in complete subjection and being able to dispose of her despotically;
and finally the immediate results of whipping: the changes in skin-color,
the to and fro movements which simulate or anticipate the initial
phenomena of coitus." (Eulenburg, _Sexuale Neuropathie_, p. 121.)

[119] See the article on Udall in the _Dictionary of National Biography_.




IV.

The Impulse to Strangle the Object of Sexual Desire--The Wish to be
Strangled--Respiratory Disturbance the Essential Element in this Group of
Phenomena--The Part Played by Respiratory Excitement in the Process of
Courtship--Swinging and Suspension--The Attraction Exerted by the Idea of
being Chained and Fettered.


There is another impulse which it may be worth while to consider briefly
here, for the sake of the light it throws on the relationship between love
and pain. I allude to the impulse to strangle the object of sexual desire,
and to the corresponding craving to be strangled. Cases have been recorded
in which this impulse was so powerful that men have actually strangled
women at the moment of coitus.[120] Such cases are rare; but, as a mere
idea, the thought of strangling a woman appears to be not infrequently
associated with sexual emotion. We must probably regard it as, in the
main,--with whatever subsidiary elements,--an aspect of that physical
seizure, domination, and forcible embrace of the female which is one of
the primitive elements of courtship.[121]

The corresponding idea--the pleasurable connection of the thought of being
strangled with sexual emotion--appears to occur still more frequently,
perhaps especially in women. Here we seem to have, as in the case of
whipping, a combination of a physical with a psychic element. Not only is
the idea attractive, but, as a matter of fact, strangulation, suffocation,
or any arrest of respiration, even when carried to the extent of producing
death, may actually provoke emission, as is observed after death by
hanging.[122] It is noteworthy that, as Eulenburg remarks, the method of
treating diseases of the spinal cord by suspension--a method much in vogue
a few years ago--often produced sexual excitement.[123] In brothels, it is
said, some of the clients desire to be suspended vertically by a cord
furnished with pads.[124] A playful attempt to throttle her on the part of
her lover is often felt by a woman as pleasurable, though it may not
necessarily produce definite sexual excitement. Sometimes, however, this
feeling becomes so strong that it must be regarded as an actual
perversion, and I have been told of a woman who is indifferent to the
ordinary sexual embrace; her chief longing is to be throttled, and she
will do anything to have her neck squeezed by her lover till her eyeballs
bulge.[125]

"I think if I could be left my present feelings," a lady writes,
"and be changed into a male imbecile,--that is, given a man's
strength, but deprived, to a large extent, of reasoning power,--I
might very likely act in the apparently cruel way they do. And
this partly because many of their actions appeal to me on the
passive side. The idea of being _strangled_ by a person I love
does. The great sensitiveness of one's throat and neck come in
here as well as the loss of breath. Once when I was about to be
separated from a man I cared for I put his hands on my throat and
implored him to kill me. It was a moment of madness, which helps
me to understand the feelings of a person always insane. Even now
that I am cool and collected I know that if I were deeply in love
with a man who I thought was going to kill me, especially in that
way, I would make no effort to save myself beforehand, though, of
course, in the final moments nature would assert herself without
my volition. What makes the horror of such cases in insanity is
the fact of the love being left out. But I think I find no
greater difficulty in picturing the mental attitude of a sadistic
lunatic than that of a normal man who gets pleasure out of women
for whom he has no love."

The imagined pleasure of being strangled by a lover brings us to a group
of feelings which would seem to be not unconnected with respiratory
elements. I refer to the pleasurable excitement experienced by some in
suspension, swinging, restraint, and fetters. Strangulation is the extreme
and most decided type of this group of imagined or real situations, in all
of which a respiratory disturbance seems to be an essential element.[126]

In explaining these phenomena we have to remark that respiratory
excitement has always been a conspicuous part of the whole process of
tumescence and detumescence, of the struggles of courtship and of its
climax, and that any restraint upon respiration, or, indeed, any restraint
upon muscular and emotional activity generally, tends to heighten the
state of sexual excitement associated with such activity.

I have elsewhere, when studying the spontaneous solitary
manifestation of the sexual instinct (_Auto-erotism_, in vol. i
of these _Studies_), referred to the pleasurably emotional, and
sometimes sexual, effects of swinging and similar kinds of
movement. It is possible that there is a certain significance in
the frequency with which the eighteenth-century French painters,
who lived at a time when the refinements of sexual emotion were
carefully sought out, have painted women in the act of swinging.
Fragonard mentions that in 1763 a gentleman invited him into the
country, with the request to paint his mistress, especially
stipulating that she should be depicted in a swing. The same
motive was common among the leading artists of that time. It may
be said that this attitude was merely a pretext to secure a
vision of ankles, but that result could easily have been attained
without the aid of the swing.

I may here quote, as bearing on this and allied questions, a
somewhat lengthy communication from a lady to whom I am indebted
for many subtle and suggestive remarks on the whole of this group
of manifestations:--

"With regard to the connection between swinging and suspension,
perhaps the physical basis of it is the loss of breath. Temporary
loss of breath with me produces excitement. Swinging at a height
or a fall from a height would cause loss of breath; in a state of
suspension the imagination would suggest the idea of falling and
the attendant loss of breath. People suffering from lung disease
are often erotically inclined, and anesthetics affect the
breathing. Men also seem to like the idea of suspension, but from
the active side. One man used to put his wife on a high swinging
shelf when she displeased him, and my husband told me once he
would like to suspend me to a crane we were watching at work,
though I have never mentioned my own feeling on this point to
him. Suspension is often mentioned in descriptions of torture.
Beatrice Cenci was hung up by her hair and the recently murdered
Queen of Korea was similarly treated. In Tolstoi's _My Husband
and I_ the girl says she would like her husband to hold her over
a precipice. That passage gave me great pleasure.[127]

"The idea of slipping off an inclined plane gives me the same
sensation. I always feel it on seeing Michael Angelo's 'Night,'
though the slipping look displeases me artistically. I remember
that when I saw the 'Night' first I did feel excited and was
annoyed, and it seemed to me it was the slipping-off look that
gave it; but I think I am now less affected by that idea. Certain
general ideas seem to excite one, but the particular forms under
which they are presented lose their effect and have to be varied.
The sentence mentioned in Tolstoi leaves me now quite cold, but
if I came across the same idea elsewhere, expressed differently,
then it would excite me. I am very capricious in the small
things, and I think women are so more than men. The idea of
slipping down a plank formerly produced excitement with me; now
it has a less vivid effect, though the idea of loss of breath
still produces excitement. The idea of the plank does not now
affect me unless there is a certain amount of drapery. I think,
therefore, that the feeling must come in part from the
possibility of the drapery catching on some roughness of the
surface of the slope, and so producing pressure on the sexual
organs. The effect is still produced, however, even without any
clothing, if the slope is supposed to end in a deep drop, so that
the idea of falling is strongly presented. I cannot recollect any
early associations that would tend to explain these feelings,
except that jumping from a height, which I used frequently to do
as a child, has a tendency to create excitement.

"With me, I may add, it is when I cannot express myself, or am
trying to understand what I feel is beyond my grasp, that the
first stage of sexual excitement results. For instance, I never
get excited in thinking over sexual questions, because my ideas,
correct or incorrect, are fairly clear and definite. But I often
feel sexually excited over that question of the inheritance of
acquired characteristics, not because I can't decide between the
two sets of evidence, but because I don't feel confident of
having fully grasped the true significance of either. This
feeling of want of power, mental or physical, always has the same
effect. I feel it if my eyes are blindfolded or my hands tied. I
don't like to see the Washington Post dance, in which the man
stands behind the woman and holds her hands, on that account. If
he held her wrists the feeling would be stronger, as her apparent
helplessness would be increased. The nervous irritability that is
caused by being under restraint seems to manifest itself in that
way, while in the case of mental disability the excitement, which
should flow down a mental channel, being checked, seems to take a
physical course instead.

"Possibly this would help to explain masochistic sexual feelings.
A physical cause working in the present would be preferable as an
explanation to a psychological cause to be traced back through
heredity to primitive conditions. I believe such feelings are
very common in men as well as in women, only people do not care
to admit them, as a rule."

The idea of being chained and fettered appears to be not uncommonly
associated with pleasurable sexual feelings, for I have met with numerous
cases in both men and women, and it not infrequently coexists with a
tendency to inversion. It often arises at a very early age, and it is of
considerable interest because we cannot account for its frequency by any
chance association nor by any actual experiences. It would appear to be a
purely psychic fantasia founded on the elementary physical fact that
restraint of emotion, like suspension, produces a heightening of emotion.
In any case the spontaneous character of such ideas and emotions in
children of both sexes suffices to show that they must possess a very
definite organic basis.

In one of the histories (X) contained in Appendix B at the end of
the present volume a lady describes how, as a child, she reveled
in the idea of being chained and tortured, these ideas appearing
to rise spontaneously. In another case, that of A.N. (for the
most part reproduced in "Erotic Symbolism," in vol. v of these
_Studies_), whose ideals are inverted and who is also affected by
boot-fetichism, the idea of fetters is very attractive. In this
case self-excitement was produced at a very early age, without
the use of the hands, by strapping the legs together. We can,
however, scarcely explain away the idea of fetters in this case
as merely the result of an early association, for it may well be
argued that the idea led to this method of self-excitement. "The
mere idea of fetters," this subject writes, "produces the
greatest excitement, and the sight of pictures representing such
things is a temptation. The reading of books dealing with prison
life, etc., anywhere where physical restraint is treated of, is a
temptation. The temptation is aggravated when the picture
represents the person booted. I suppose all this will have been
intensified in my case by my practices as a child. But why should
a child of 6 do such things unless it were a natural instinct in
him? Nobody showed me; I have never mentioned such things to
anyone. I used to read historical romances for the pleasure of
reading of people being put in prison, in fetters, and tortured,
and always envied them. I feel now that I should like to undergo
the sensation. If I could get anyone to humor me without losing
their self-respect, I should jump at the opportunity. I have been
most powerfully excited by visiting an old Australian
convict-ship, where all the means of restraint are shown; I have
been attracted to it night after night, wanting, but not daring
to ask, to be allowed to have a practical experience."

Stcherbak, of Warsaw, has recorded a case which resembles that of
A.N., but there was no inversion and the attraction of fetters
was active rather than passive; the subject desired to fetter and
not to be fettered. It is possible that this difference is not
fundamental, though Stcherbak regards the case as one of
fetichism of sadistic origin ("Contribution a l'Etude des
Perversions Sexuelles," _Archives de Neurologie_, Oct., 1907).
The subject was a highly intelligent though neurasthenic youth,
who from the age of 5 had been deeply interested in criminals who
were fettered and sent to prison. The fate of Siberian prisoners
was a frequent source of prolonged meditations. It was the
fettering which alone interested him, and he spent much time in
trying to imagine the feelings of the fettered prisoners, and he
often imagined that he was himself a prisoner in fetters. (This
seems to indicate that the impulse was in its origin masochistic
as much as sadistic, and better described as algolagnia than as
sadism.) He delighted in stories and pictures of fettered
persons. At the age of 15 the sex of the fettered person became
important and he was interested chiefly in fettered women. A new
element also appeared; he was attracted to well-dressed women and
especially to those wearing elegant shoes, delighting to imagine
them fettered. He fastened his own feet together with chains,
attempting to walk about his room in this condition, but
experienced comparatively little pleasure in this way. At the age
of 15 he met a lady 10 years older than himself and of great
intelligence. As he began to know her more intimately she allowed
him to take liberties with her; he fastened her hands behind her
back, and this caused him a violent but delicious emotion which
he had never experienced before. Next time he fastened her feet
together as well as her hands; as he did so her shoes slightly
touched his sexual organs; this caused erection and ejaculation,
accompanied by the most acute sexual pleasure he had ever felt.
He had no wish to see her naked or to uncover himself, and as
long as this relationship lasted he had no abnormal thoughts at
other times, or in connection with other people. He never
masturbated, and his sexual dreams were of fettered men or women.
Stcherbak discusses the case at length and considers that it is
essentially an example of sadism, on the ground that the impulse
of fettering was prompted by the desire to humiliate. There is,
however, no evidence of any such desire, and, as a matter of
fact, no humiliation was effected. The primary and fundamental
element in this and similar cases is an almost abstract sexual
fascination in the idea of restraint, whether endured, inflicted,
or merely witnessed or imagined; the feet become the chief focus
of this fascination, and the basis on which a foot-fetichism or
shoe-fetichism tends to arise, because restraint of the feet
produces a more marked effect than restraint of the hands.


FOOTNOTES:

[120] An attenuated and symbolic form of this impulse is seen in the
desire to strangle birds with the object of stimulating or even satisfying
sexual desire. Prostitutes are sometimes acquainted with men who bring a
live pigeon with them to be strangled just before intercourse. Lanphear,
of St. Louis (_Alienist and Neurologist_, May, 1907, p. 204) knew a woman,
having learned masturbation in a convent school, who was only excited and
not satisfied by coitus with her husband, and had to rise from bed, catch
and caress a chicken, and finally wring its neck, whereupon orgasm
occurred.

[121] Even young girls, however, may experience pleasure in the playful
attempt to strangle. Thus a lady speaking of herself at the time of
puberty, when she was in the habit of masturbating, writes
(_Sexual-Probleme_, Aug., 1909, p. 636): "I acquired a desire to seize
people, especially girls, by the throat, and I enjoyed their way of
screaming out."

[122] Godard observed that when animals are bled, or felled, as well as
strangled, there is often abundant emission, rich in spermatozoa, but
without erection, though accompanied by the same movements of the tail as
during copulation. Robin (art. "Fecondation," _Dictionnaire Encyclopedique
des Sciences Medicales_), who quotes this observation, has the following
remarks on this subject: "Ejaculation occurring at the moment when the
circulation, maintained artificially, stops is a fact of significance.
It shows how congestive conditions--or inversely anemic
conditions--constitute organic states sufficient to set in movement the
activity of the nerve-centers, as is the case for muscular
contractility.... Everything leads us to believe that at the moment when
the motor nervous action takes place the corresponding sensitive centers
also come into play." It must be added that Minovici, in his elaborate
study of death by hanging ("Etude sur la Pendaison," _Archives
d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, 1905, especially p. 791 et seq.), concludes
that the turgescence of penis and flow of spermatic fluid (sometimes only
prostatic secretion) usually observed in these cases is purely passive and
generally, though not always, of post-mortem occurrence. There is,
therefore, no sexual pleasure in death by hanging, and persons who have
been rescued at the last moment have experienced no voluptuous sensations.
This was so even in the case, referred to by Minovici, of a man who hanged
himself solely with the object of producing sexual pleasure.

[123] Eulenburg, _Sexuale Neuropathie_, p. 114.

[124] Bernaldo de Quiros and Llanos Aguilaniedo (_La Mala Vida en Madrid_,
p. 294) knew the case of a man who found pleasure in lying back on an
inclined couch while a prostitute behind him pulled at a slipknot until he
was nearly suffocated; it was the only way in which he could attain sexual
gratification.

[125] Arrest of respiration, it may be noted, may accompany strong sexual
excitement, as it may some other emotional states; one recalls passages in
the _Arabian Nights_ in which we are told of ladies who at the sight of a
very beautiful youth "felt their reason leave them, yearned to embrace the
marvelous youth, and _ceased breathing_." Inhibited respiration is indeed,
as Stevens shows ("Study of Attention," _American Journal of Psychology_,
Oct., 1905), a characteristic of all active attention.

[126] The exact part played by the respiration and even the circulation in
constituting emotional states is still not clear, although various
experiments have been made; see, e.g., Angell and Thompson, "A Study of
the Relations between Certain Organic Processes and Consciousness,"
_Psychological Review_, January, 1899. A summary statement of the
relations of the respiration and circulation to emotional states will be
found in Kuelpe's _Outlines of Psychology_, part i, section 2, § 37.

[127] The words alluded to by my correspondent are as follows: "I needed a
struggle; what I needed was that feeling should guide life, and not that
life should guide feeling. I wanted to go with him to the edge of an abyss
and say: 'Here a step and I will throw myself over; and here a motion and
I have gone to destruction'; and for him, turning pale, to seize me in his
strong arms, hold me back over it till my heart grew cold within me, and
then carry me away wherever he pleased." The whole of the passage in which
these lines occur is of considerable psychological interest. In one
English translation the story is entitled _Family Happiness_.




V.

Pain, and Not Cruelty, the Essential Element in Sadism and Masochism--Pain
Felt as Pleasure--Does the Sadist Identify Himself with the Feelings of
his Victim?--The Sadist often a Masochist in Disguise--The Spectacle of
Pain or Struggle as a Sexual Stimulant.


In the foregoing rapid survey of the great group of manifestations in
which the sexual emotions come into intimate relationship with pain, it
has become fairly clear that the ordinary division between "sadism" and
"masochism," convenient as these terms may be, has a very slight
correspondence with facts. Sadism and masochism may be regarded as
complementary emotional states; they cannot be regarded as opposed
states.[128] Even De Sade himself, we have seen, can scarcely be regarded
as a pure sadist. A passage in one of his works expressing regret that
sadistic feeling is rare among women, as well as his definite recognition
of the fact that the suffering of pain may call forth voluptuous emotions,
shows that he was not insensitive to the charm of masochistic experience,
and it is evident that a merely blood-thirsty vampire, sane or insane,
could never have retained, as De Sade retained, the undying devotion of
two women so superior in heart and intelligence as his wife and
sister-in-law. Had De Sade possessed any wanton love of cruelty, it would
have appeared during the days of the Revolution, when it was safer for a
man to simulate blood-thirstiness, even if he did not feel it, than to
show humanity. But De Sade distinguished himself at that time not merely
by his general philanthropic activities, but by saving from the scaffold,
at great risk to himself, those who had injured him. It is clear that,
apart from the organically morbid twist by which he obtained sexual
satisfaction in his partner's pain,--a craving which was, for the most
part, only gratified in imaginary visions developed to an inhuman extent
under the influence of solitude,--De Sade was simply, to those who knew
him, "_un aimable mauvais sujet_" gifted with exceptional intellectual
powers. Unless we realize this we run the risk of confounding De Sade and
his like with men of whom Judge Jeffreys was the sinister type.

It is necessary to emphasize this point because there can be no doubt that
De Sade is really a typical instance of the group of perversions he
represents, and when we understand that it is pain only, and not cruelty,
that is the essential in this group of manifestations we begin to come
nearer to their explanation. The masochist desires to experience pain, but
he generally desires that it should be inflicted in love; the sadist
desires to inflict pain, but in some cases, if not in most, he desires
that it should be felt as love. How far De Sade consciously desired that
the pain he sought to inflict should be felt as pleasure it may not now be
possible to discover, except by indirect inference, but the confessions of
sadists show that such a desire is quite commonly essential.

I am indebted to a lady for the following communication on the
foregoing aspect of this question: "I believe that, when a person
takes pleasure in inflicting pain, he or she imagines himself or
herself in the victim's place. This would account for the
transmutability of the two sets of feelings. This might be
particularly so in the case of men. A man may not care to lower
his dignity and vanity by putting himself in subjection to a
woman, and he might fear she would feel contempt for him. By
subduing her and subjecting her to passive restraint he would
preserve, even enhance, his own power and dignity, while at the
same time obtaining a reflected pleasure from what he imagined
she was feeling.

"I think that when I get pleasure out of the idea of subduing
another it is this reflected pleasure I get. And if this is so
one could thus feel more kindly to persons guilty of cruelty,
which has hitherto always seemed the one unpardonable sin. Even
criminals, if it is true that they are themselves often very
insensitive, may, in the excitement of the moment, imagine that
they are only inflicting trifling pain, as it would be to them,
and that their victim's feelings are really pleasurable. The men
I have known most given to inflicting pain are all particularly
tender-hearted when their passions are not in question. I cannot
understand how (as in a case mentioned by Krafft-Ebing) a man
could find any pleasure in binding a girl's hands except by
imagining what he supposed were her feelings, though he would
probably be unconscious that he put himself in her place.

"As a child I exercised a good deal of authority and influence
over my youngest sister. It used to give me considerable pleasure
to be somewhat arbitrary and severe with her, but, though I never
admitted it to myself or to her, I knew instinctively that she
took pleasure in my treatment. I used to give her childish
lessons, over which I was very strict. I invented catechisms and
chapters of the Bible in which elder sisters were exhorted to
keep their juniors under discipline, and younger sisters were
commanded to give implicit submission and obedience. Some parts
of the _Imitation_ lent themselves to this sort of parody, which
never struck me as in any way irreverent. I used to give her
arbitrary orders to 'exercise her in obedience,' as I told her,
and I used to punish her if she disobeyed me. In all this I was,
_though only half consciously_, guided through my own feelings as
to what I should have liked in her place. For instance, I would
make her put down her playthings and come and repeat a lesson;
but, though she was in appearance having her will subdued to
mine, I always chose a moment when I foresaw she would soon be
tired of play. There was sufficient resistance to make restraint
pleasurable, not enough to render it irksome. In my punishments I
acted on a similar principle. I used to tie her hands behind her
(like the man in Krafft-Ebing's case), but only for a few
moments; I once shut her in a sort of cupboard-room, also for a
very short time. On two or three occasions I completely undressed
her, made her lie down on the bed, tied her hands and feet to the
bedstead, and gave her a slight whipping. I did not wish to hurt
her, only to inflict just enough pain to produce the desire to
move or resist. _My pleasure, a very keen one, came from the
imagined excitement produced by the thwarting of this desire_.
(Are not your own words--that 'emotion' is 'motion in a more or
less arrested form'--an epigrammatic summary of all this, though
in a somewhat different connection?) I did not undress her from
any connection of nakedness with sexual feeling, but simply to
enhance her feeling of helplessness and defenselessness under my
hands. If I were a man and the woman I loved were refractory I
should undress her before finding fault with her. A woman's dress
symbolizes to her the protection civilization affords to the weak
and gives her a fictitious strength. Naked, she is face to face
with primitive conditions, her weakness opposed to the man's
power. Besides, the sense of shame at being naked under the eyes
of a man who regarded her with displeasure would extend itself to
her offense and give him a distinct, though perhaps unfair,
advantage. I used the bristle side of a brush to chastise her
with, as suggesting the greatest amount of severity with the
least possible pain. In fact, my idea was to produce the maximum
of emotion with the minimum of actual discomfort.

"You must not, however, suppose that at the time I reasoned about
it at all in this way. I was very fond of her, and honestly
believed I was doing it for her good. Had I realized then, as I
do now, that my sole aim and object was physical pleasure, I
believe my pleasure would have ceased; in any case I should not
have felt justified in so treating her. Do I at all persuade you
that my pleasure was a reflection of hers? That it was, I think,
is clear from the fact that I only obtained it when she was
willing to submit. Any _real_ resistance or signs that I was
overpassing the boundary of pleasure in her and urging on pain
without excitement caused me to desist and my own pleasure to
cease.

"I disclaim all altruism in my dealings with my sister. What
occurs appears to me to be this: A situation appeals to one in
imagination and one at once desires to transfer it to the realms
of fact, being one's self one of the principal actors. If it is
the passive side which appeals to one, one would prefer to be
passive; but if that is not obtainable then one takes the active
part as next best. In either case, however, it is _the
realization of the imagined situation_ that gives the pleasure,
not the other person's pleasure as such, although his or her
supposed pleasure creates the situation. If I were a man it would
afford me great delight to hold a woman over a precipice, even if
she disliked it. The idea appeals to me so strongly that I could
not help _imagining_ her pleasure, though I might _know_ she got
none, and even though she made every demonstration of fear and
dislike of it. The situation so often imagined would have become
a fact. It seems to me I have to say a thing is and is not in the
same breath, but the confusion is only in the words.

"Let me give you another example: I have a tame pigeon which has
a great affection for me. It sits on my shoulder and squats down
with its wings out as birds do when courting, pecking me to make
me take notice of it, and flickering its wings. I like to hold it
so that it can't move its wings, because I imagine this increases
its excitement. If it struggles, or seems to dislike my holding
it, I let it go.

"In an early engagement (afterward broken off) my _fiance_ used
to take an evident pleasure in telling me how he would punish me
if I disobeyed him when we were married. Though we had but little
in common mentally, I was frequently struck with the similarity
between his ideas and what my own had been in regard to my
sister. He used his authority over me most capriciously. On one
occasion he would not let me have any supper at a dance. On
another he objected to my drinking black coffee. No day passed
without a command or prohibition on some trifling point. Whenever
he saw, though, that I really disliked the interference or made
any decided resistance, which happened very seldom, he let me
have my own way at once. I cannot but think, when I recall the
various circumstances, that he got a certain pleasure, as I had
done with my sister, by an almost unconscious transference of my
feelings to himself.

"I find, too, that, when I want a man to say or do to me what
would cause me pleasure and he does not gratify me, I feel an
intense longing to change places, to be the man and make him, as
the woman, feel what I want to feel. Combined with this is a
sense of irritation at not being gratified and a desire to punish
him for my deprivation, for his stupidity in not saying or doing
the right thing. I don't feel any anger at a man not caring for
me, but only for not divining my feelings when he does care.

"Now let me take another case: that of the man who used to
experience pleasure when surprising a woman making water. (Cf.
_Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, Nov. 15, 1900.) Here the
woman's embarrassment appears to be a factor; but it seems to me
there must be more than this, as confusion might be produced in
so many other ways, as if she were found bathing, or undressed,
though it might not be so acute. In reality, I fancy she would be
checked in what she was doing, and that the man, perhaps
unconsciously, imagined this check and a resulting excitement.
That such a check does sometimes produce excitement I know from
experience in traveling. If the bladder is not emptied before
connection the pleasure is often more intense. Long before I
understood these things at all I was struck by this quotation:
'Cette volupte que ressentent les bords de la mer, d'etre
toujours pleins sans jamais deborder?' What would be the effect
on a man of a sudden check at the supreme moment of sexual
pleasure? In reality, I suppose, pain, as the nerves would be at
their full tension and unable to respond to any further stimulus;
but, in imagination, one's nerves are _not_ at their highest
tension, and one imagines an increase or, at any rate, a
prolongation of the pleasurable sensations. Something of all
this, some vague _reflection_ of the woman's possible sensations,
seems to enter in the man's feelings in surprising the woman. In
any case his pleasure in her confusion seems to me a reflection
of her feelings, for the sense of shame and embarrassment before
a man is very exciting, and doubly so if one realizes that the
man enjoys it. Ouida speaks of the 'delicious shame' experienced
by 'Folle Farine.'

"It seems to me that whenever we are affected by another's
emotion we do practically, though unconsciously, put ourselves in
his place; but we are not always able to gauge accurately its
intensity or to allow for differences between ourselves and
another, and, in the case of pain, it is doubly difficult, as we
can never recall the pain itself, but only the mental effects
upon us of the pain. We cannot even recall the feeling of heat
when we are cold, or _vice versa_, with any degree of vividness.

"A woman tells me of a man who frequently asks her if she would
not like him to whip her. He is greatly disappointed when she
says she gets no pleasure from it, as it would give him so much
to do it. He cannot believe she experiences none, because he
would enjoy being whipped so keenly if he were a girl. In another
case the man thinks the woman _must_ enjoy suffering, _because_
he would get intense pleasure from inflicting it! Why is this,
unless he would like it if a woman, and confuses in his mind the
two personalities? All the men I know who are sadistically
inclined admit that if they were women they would like to be
harshly treated.

"Of course, I quite see there may be many complications; a man's
natural anger at resistance may come in, and also simple, not
sexual, pleasure in acts of crushing, etc. I always feel inclined
to crush anything very soft or a person with very pretty thick
hair, to rub together two shining surfaces, two bits of satin,
etc., apart from any feelings of excitement. My explanation only