Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5
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Title: Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5
Author: Havelock Ellis
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX, VOLUME 5 ***
STUDIES IN THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX, VOLUME V
Erotic Symbolism
The Mechanism of Detumescence
The Psychic State in Pregnancy
by
HAVELOCK ELLIS
1927
PREFACE.
In this volume the terminal phenomena of the sexual process are discussed,
before an attempt is finally made, in the concluding volume, to consider
the bearings of the psychology of sex on that part of morals which may be
called "social hygiene."
Under "Erotic Symbolism" I include practically all the aberrations of the
sexual instinct, although some of these have seemed of sufficient
importance for separate discussion in previous volumes. It is highly
probable that many readers will consider that the name scarcely suffices
to cover manifestations so numerous and so varied. The term "sexual
equivalents" will seem preferable to some. While, however, it may be fully
admitted that these perversions are "sexual equivalents"--or at all events
equivalents of the normal sexual impulse--that term is merely a
descriptive label which tells us nothing of the phenomena. "Sexual
Symbolism" gives us the key to the process, the key that makes all these
perversions intelligible. In all of them--very clearly in some, as in
shoe-fetichism; more obscurely in others, as in exhibitionism--it has come
about by causes congenital, acquired, or both, that some object or class
of objects, some act or group of acts, has acquired a dynamic power over
the psycho-physical mechanism of the sexual process, deflecting it from
its normal adjustment to the whole of a beloved person of the opposite
sex. There has been a transmutation of values, and certain objects,
certain acts, have acquired an emotional value which for the normal person
they do not possess. Such objects and acts are properly, it seems to me,
termed symbols, and that term embodies the only justification that in most
cases these manifestations can legitimately claim.
"The Mechanism of Detumescence" brings us at last to the final climax for
which the earlier and more prolonged stage of tumescence, which has
occupied us so often in these _Studies_, is the elaborate preliminary.
"The art of love," a clever woman novelist has written, "is the art of
preparation." That "preparation" is, on the physiological side, the
production of tumescence, and all courtship is concerned in building up
tumescence. But the final conjugation of two individuals in an explosion
of detumescence, thus slowly brought about, though it is largely an
involuntary act, is still not without its psychological implications and
consequences; and it is therefore a matter for regret that so little is
yet known about it. The one physiological act in which two individuals are
lifted out of all ends that center in self and become the instrument of
those higher forces which fashion the species, can never be an act to be
slurred over as trivial or unworthy of study.
In the brief study of "The Psychic State in Pregnancy" we at last touch
the point at which the whole complex process of sex reaches its goal. A
woman with a child in her womb is the everlasting miracle which all the
romance of love, all the cunning devices of tumescence and detumescence,
have been invented to make manifest. The psychic state of the woman who
thus occupies the supreme position which life has to offer cannot fail to
be of exceeding interest from many points of view, and not least because
the maternal instinct is one of the elements even of love between the
sexes. But the psychology of pregnancy is full of involved problems, and
here again, as so often in the wide field we have traversed, we stand at
the threshold of a door it is not yet given us to pass.
HAVELOCK ELLIS.
Carbis Water, Lelant, Cornwall.
CONTENTS.
EROTIC SYMBOLISM.
I.
The Definition of Erotic Symbolism. Symbolism of Act and Symbolism of
Object. Erotic Fetichism. Wide Extension of the Symbols of Sex. The
Immense Variety of Possible Erotic Fetiches. The Normal Foundations of
Erotic Symbolism. Classification of the Phenomena. The Tendency to
Idealize the Defects of a Beloved Person. Stendhal's "Crystallization".
II.
Foot-fetichism and Shoe-fetichism. Wide Prevalence and Normal Basis.
Restif de la Bretonne. The Foot a Normal Focus of Sexual Attraction Among
Some Peoples. The Chinese, Greeks, Romans, Spaniards, etc. The Congenital
Predisposition in Erotic Symbolism. The Influence of Early Association and
Emotional Shock. Shoe-fetichism in Relation to Masochism. The Two
Phenomena Independent Though Allied. The Desire to be Trodden On. The
Fascination of Physical Constraint. The Symbolism of Self-inflicted Pain.
The Dynamic Element in Erotic Symbolism. The Symbolism of Garments.
III.
Scatalogic Symbolism. Urolagnia. Coprolagnia. The Ascetic Attitude Towards
the Flesh. Normal Basis of Scatalogic Symbolism. Scatalogic Conceptions
Among Primitive Peoples. Urine as a Primitive Holy Water. Sacredness of
Animal Excreta. Scatalogy in Folk-lore. The Obscene as Derived from the
Mythological. The Immature Sexual Impulse Tends to Manifest Itself in
Scatalogic Forms. The Basis of Physiological Connection Between the
Urinary and Genital Spheres. Urinary Fetichism Sometimes Normal in
Animals. The Urolagnia of Masochists. The Scatalogy of Saints. Urolagnia
More Often a Symbolism of Act Than a Symbolism of Object. Only
Occasionally an Olfactory Fetichism. Comparative Rarity of Coprolagnia.
Influence of Nates Fetichism as a Transition to Coprolagnia, Ideal
Coprolagnia. Olfactory Coprolagnia. Urolagnia and Coprolagnia as Symbols
of Coitus.
IV.
Animals as Sources of Erotic Symbolism. Mixoscopic Zoophilia. The
Stuff-fetichisms. Hair-fetichism. The Stuff-fetichisms Mainly on a Tactile
Base. Erotic Zoophilia. Zooerastia. Bestiality. The Conditions that Favor
Bestiality. Its Wide Prevalence Among Primitive Peoples and Among
Peasants. The Primitive Conception of Animals. The Goat. The Influence of
Familiarity With Animals. Congress Between Women and Animals. The Social
Reaction Against Bestiality.
V.
Exhibitionism. Illustrative Cases. A Symbolic Perversion of Courtship. The
Impulse to Defile. The Exhibitionist's Psychic Attitude. The Sexual Organs
as Fetiches. Phallus Worship. Adolescent Pride in Sexual Development.
Exhibitionism of the Nates. The Classification of the Forms of
Exhibitionism. Nature of the Relationship of Exhibitionism to Epilepsy.
VI.
The Forms of Erotic Symbolism are Simulacra of Coitus. Wide Extension of
Erotic Symbolism. Fetichism Not Covering the Whole Ground of Sexual
Selection. It is Based on the Individual Factor in Selection.
Crystallization. The Lover and the Artist. The Key to Erotic Symbolism is
to be Found in the Emotional Sphere. The Passage to Pathological Extremes.
THE MECHANISM OF DETUMESCENCE.
I.
The Psychological Significance of Detumescence. The Testis and the Ovary.
Sperm Cell and Germ Cell. Development of the Embryo. The External Sexual
Organs. Their Wide Range of Variation. Their Nervous Supply. The Penis.
Its Racial Variations. The Influence of Exercise. The Scrotum and
Testicles. The Mons Veneris. The Vulva. The Labia Majora and their
Varieties. The Public Hair and Its Characters. The Clitoris and Its
Functions. The Anus as an Erogenous Zone. The Nymphæ and their Function.
The Vagina. The Hymen. Virginity. The Biological Significance of the
Hymen.
II.
The Object of Detumescence. Erogenous Zones. The Lips. The Vascular
Characters of Detumescence. Erectile Tissue. Erection in Woman. Mucous
Emission in Women. Sexual Connection. The Human Mode of Intercourse.
Normal Variations. The Motor Characters of Detumescence. Ejaculation. The
Virile Reflex. The General Phenomena of Detumescence. The Circulatory and
Respiratory Phenomena. Blood Pressure. Cardiac Disturbance. Glandular
Activity. Distillatio. The Essentially Motor Character of Detumescence.
Involuntary Muscular Irradiation to Bladder, etc. Erotic Intoxication.
Analogy of Sexual Detumescence and Vesical Tension. The Specifically
Sexual Movements of Detumescence in Man. In Woman. The Spontaneous
Movements of the Genital Canal in Woman. Their Function in Conception.
Part Played by Active Movement of the Spermatozoa. The Artificial
Injection of Semen. The Facial Expression During Detumescence. The
Expression of Joy. The Occasional Serious Effects of Coitus.
III.
The Constituents of Semen. Function of the Prostate. The Properties of
Semen. Aphrodisiacs. Alcohol, Opium, etc. Anaphrodisiacs. The Stimulant
Influence of Semen in Coitus. The Internal Effects of Testicular
Secretions. The Influence of Ovarian Secretion.
IV.
The Aptitude for Detumescence. Is There an Erotic Temperament? The
Available Standards of Comparison. Characteristics of the Castrated.
Characteristics of Puberty. Characteristics of the State of Detumescence.
Shortness of Stature. Development of the Secondary Sexual Characters. Deep
Voice. Bright Eyes. Glandular Activity. Everted Lips. Pigmentation.
Profuse Hair. Dubious Significance of Many of These Characters.
THE PSYCHIC STATE IN PREGNANCY.
The Relationship of Maternal and Sexual Emotion. Conception and Loss of
Virginity. The Anciently Accepted Signs of This Condition. The Pervading
Effects of Pregnancy on the Organism. Pigmentation. The Blood and
Circulation. The Thyroid. Changes in the Nervous System. The Vomiting of
Pregnancy. The Longings of Pregnant Women. Mental Impressions. Evidence
for and Against Their Validity. The Question Still Open. Imperfection of
Our Knowledge. The Significance of Pregnancy.
APPENDIX.
Histories of Sexual Development.
INDEX OF AUTHORS.
INDEX OF SUBJECTS.
EROTIC SYMBOLISM.
I.
The Definition of Erotic Symbolism--Symbolism of Act and Symbolism of
Object--Erotic Fetichism--Wide extension of the symbols of Sex--The
Immense Variety of Possible Erotic Fetiches--The Normal Foundations of
Erotic Symbolism--Classification of the Phenomena--The Tendency to
Idealize the Defects of a Beloved Person--Stendhal's "Crystallization."
By "erotic symbolism" I mean that tendency whereby the lover's attention
is diverted from the central focus of sexual attraction to some object or
process which is on the periphery of that focus, or is even outside of it
altogether, though recalling it by association of contiguity or of
similarity. It thus happens that tumescence, or even in extreme cases
detumescence, may be provoked by the contemplation of acts or objects
which are away from the end of sexual conjugation.[1]
In considering the phenomena of sexual selection in a previous volume,[2]
it was found that there are four or five main factors in the constitution
of beauty in so far as beauty determines sexual selection. Erotic
symbolism is founded on the factor of individual taste in beauty; it
arises as a specialized development of that factor, but it is,
nevertheless, incorrect to merge it in sexual selection. The attractive
characteristics of a beloved woman or man, from the point of view of
sexual selection, are a complex but harmonious whole leading up to a
desire for the complete possession of the person who displays them. There
is no tendency to isolate and dissociate any single character from the
individual and to concentrate attention upon that character at the expense
of the attention bestowed upon the individual generally. As soon as such a
tendency begins to show itself, even though only in a slight or temporary
form, we may say that there is erotic symbolism.
Erotic symbolism is, however, by no means confined to the individualizing
tendency to concentrate amorous attention upon some single characteristic
of the adult woman or man who is normally the object of sexual love. The
adult human being may not be concerned at all, the attractive object or
act may not even be human, not even animal, and we may still be concerned
with a symbol which has parasitically rooted itself on the fruitful site
of sexual emotion and absorbed to itself the energy which normally goes
into the channels of healthy human love having for its final end the
procreation of the species. Thus understood in its widest sense, it may be
said that every sexual perversion, even homosexuality, is a form of erotic
symbolism, for we shall find that in every case some object or act that
for the normal human being has little or no erotic value, has assumed such
value in a supreme degree; that is to say, it has become a symbol of the
normal object of love. Certain perversions are, however, of such great
importance on account of their wide relationships, that they cannot be
adequately discussed merely as forms of erotic symbolism. This is notably
the case as regards homosexuality, auto-erotism, and algolagnia, all of
which phenomena have therefore been separately discussed in previous
studies. We are now mainly concerned with manifestations which are more
narrowly and exclusively symbolical.
A portion of the field of erotic symbolism is covered by what Binet
(followed by Lombroso, Krafft-Ebing, and others) has termed "erotic
fetichism," or the tendency whereby sexual attraction is unduly exerted by
some special part or peculiarity of the body, or by some inanimate object
which has become associated with it. Such erotic symbolism of object
cannot, however, be dissociated from the even more important erotic
symbolism of process, and the two are so closely bound together that we
cannot attain a truly scientific view of them until we regard them broadly
as related parts of a common psychic tendency. If, as Groos asserts,[3] a
symbol has two chief meanings, one in which it indicates a physical
process which stands for a psychic process, and another in which it
indicates a part which represents the whole, erotic symbolism of act
corresponds to the first of these chief meanings, and erotic symbolism of
object to the other.
Although it is not impossible to find some germs of erotic symbolism in
animals, in its more pronounced manifestations it is only found in the
human species. It could not be otherwise, for such symbolism involves not
only the play of fancy and imagination, the idealizing aptitude, but also
a certain amount of power of concentrating the attention on a point
outside the natural path of instinct and the ability to form new mental
constructions around that point. There are, indeed, as we shall see,
elementary forms of erotic symbolism which are not uncommonly associated
with feeble-mindedness, but even these are still peculiarly human, and in
its less crude manifestations erotic symbolism easily lends itself to
every degree of human refinement and intelligence.
"It depends primarily upon an increase of the psychological
process of representation," Colin Scott remarks of sexual
symbolism generally, "involving greater powers of comparison and
analysis as compared with the lower animals. The outer
impressions come to be clearly distinguished as such, but at the
same time are often treated as symbols of inner experiences, and
a meaning read into them which they would not otherwise possess.
Symbolism or fetichism is, indeed, just the capacity to see
meaning, to emphasize something for the sake of other things
which do not appear. In brain terms it indicates an activity of
the higher centers, a sort of side-tracking or long-circuiting of
the primitive energy; ... Rosetti's poem, 'The Woodspurge,'
gives a concrete example of the formation of such a symbol. Here
the otherwise insignificant presentation of the three-cupped
woodspurge, representing originally a mere side-current of the
stream of consciousness, becomes the intellectual symbol or
fetich of the whole psychosis forever after. It seems, indeed, as
if the stronger the emotion the more likely will become the
formation of an overlying symbolism, which serves to focus and
stand in the place of something greater than itself; nowhere at
least is symbolism a more characteristic feature than as an
expression of the sexual instinct. The passion of sex, with its
immense hereditary background, in early man became centered often
upon the most trivial and unimportant features.... This
symbolism, now become fetichistic, or symbolic in a bad sense, is
at least an exercise of the increasing representative power of
man, upon which so much of his advancement has depended, while it
also served to express and help to purify his most perennial
emotion." (Colin Scott, "Sex and Art," _American Journal of
Psychology_, vol. vii, No. 2, p. 189.)
In the study of "Love and Pain" in a previous volume, the analysis of the
large and complex mass of sexual phenomena which are associated with pain,
gradually resolved them to a considerable extent into a special case of
erotic symbolism; pain or restraint, whether inflicted on or by the loved
person, becomes, by a psychic process that is usually unconscious, the
symbol of the sexual mechanism, and hence arouses the same emotions as
that mechanism normally arouses. We may now attempt to deal more broadly
and comprehensively with the normal and abnormal aspects of erotic
symbolism in some of their most typical and least mixed forms.
"When our human imagination seeks to animate artificial things," Huysmans
writes in _Là-bas_, "it is compelled to reproduce the movements of animals
in the act of propagation. Look at machines, at the play of pistons in the
cylinders; they are Romeos of steel in Juliets of cast-iron." And not only
in the work of man's hands but throughout Nature we find sexual symbols
which are the less deniable since, for the most part, they make not the
slightest appeal to even the most morbid human imagination. Language is
full of metaphorical symbols of sex which constantly tend to lose their
poetic symbolism and to become commonplace. Semen is but seed, and for the
Latins especially the whole process of human sex, as well as the male and
female organs, constantly presented itself in symbols derived from
agricultural and horticultural life. The testicles were beans (_fabæ_) and
fruit or apples (_poma_ and _mala_); the penis was a tree (_arbor_), or a
stalk (_thyrsus_), or a root (_radix_), or a sickle (_falx_), or a
ploughshare (_vomer_). The semen, again, was dew (_ros_). The labia majora
or minora were wings (_alæ_); the vulva and vagina were a field (_ager_
and _campus_), or a ploughed furrow (_sulcus_), or a vineyard (_vinea_),
or a fountain (_fons_), while the pudendal hair was herbage
(_plantaria_).[4] In other languages it is not difficult to trace similar
and even identical imagery applied to sexual organs and sexual acts. Thus
it is noteworthy that Shakespeare more than once applies the term
"ploughed" to a woman who has had sexual intercourse. The Talmud calls the
labia minora the doors, the labia majora hinges, and the clitoris the key.
The Greeks appear not only to have found in the myrtle-berry, the fruit of
a plant sacred to Venus, the image of the clitoris, but also in the rose
an image of the feminine labia; in the poetic literature of many
countries, indeed, this imagery of the rose may be traced in a more or
less veiled manner.[5]
The widespread symbolism of sex arose in the theories and conceptions of
primitive peoples concerning the function of generation and its nearest
analogies in Nature; it was continued for the sake of the vigorous and
expressive terminology which it furnished both for daily life and for
literature; its final survivals were cultivated because they furnished a
delicately æsthetic method of approaching matters which a growing
refinement of sentiment made it difficult for lovers and poets to approach
in a more crude and direct manner. Its existence is of interest to us now
because it shows the objective validity of the basis on which erotic
symbolism, as we have here to understand it, develops. But from first to
last it is a distinct phenomenon, having a more or less reasoned and
intellectual basis, and it scarcely serves in any degree to feed the
sexual impulse. Erotic symbolism is not intellectual but emotional in its
origin; it starts into being, obscurely, with but a dim consciousness or
for the most part none at all, either suddenly from the shock of some
usually youthful experience, or more gradually through an instinctive
brooding on those things which are most intimately associated with a
sexually desirable person.
The kind of soil on which the germs of erotic symbolism may
develop is well seen in cases of sexual hyperæsthesia. In such
cases all the emotionally sexual analogies and resemblances,
which in erotic symbolism are fixed and organized, may be traced
in vague and passing forms, a single hyperæsthetic individual
perhaps presenting a great variety of germinal symbolisms.
Thus it has been recorded of an Italian nun (whose sister became
a prostitute) that from the age of 8 she had desire for coitus,
from the age of 10 masturbated, and later had homosexual
feelings, that the same feelings and practices continued after
she had taken the veil, though from time to time they assumed
religious equivalents. The mere contact, indeed, of a priest's
hand, the news of the presentation of an ecclesiastic she had
known to a bishopric, the sight of an ape, the contemplation of
the crucified Christ, the figure of a toy, the picture of a
demon, the act of defecation in the children entrusted to her
care (whom, on this account, and against the regulations, she
would accompany to the closets), especially the sight and the
mere recollection of flies in sexual connection--all these things
sufficed to produce in her a powerful orgasm. (_Archivio di
Psichiatria_, 1902, fasc. II-III, p. 338.)
A boy of 15 (given to masturbation), studied by Macdonald in
America, was similarly hyperæsthetic to the symbols of sexual
emotion. "I like amusing myself with my comrades," he told
Macdonald, "rolling ourselves into a ball, which gives one a
funny kind of warmth. I have a special pleasure in talking about
some things. It is the same when the governess kisses me on
saying good night or when I lean against her breast. I have that
sensation, too, when I see some of the pictures in the comic
papers, but only in those representing a woman, as when a young
man skating trips up a girl so that her clothes are raised a
little. When I read how a man saved a young girl from drowning,
so that they swam together, I had the same sensation. Looking at
the statues of women in the museum produces the same effect, or
when I see naked babies, or when a mother suckles a child. I
have often had that sensation when reading novels I ought not to
read, or when looking at a new-born calf, or seeing dogs and cows
and horses mounting on each other. When I see a girl flirting
with a boy, or leaning on his shoulder or with his arm round her
waist, I have an erection. It is the same when I see women and
little girls in bathing costume, or when boys talk of what their
fathers and mothers do together. In the Natural History Museum I
often see things which give me that sensation. One day when I
read how a man killed a young girl and carried her into a wood
and undressed her I had a feeling of enjoyment. When I read of
men who were bastards the idea of a woman having a child in that
way gives me this sensation. Some dances, and seeing young girls
astride a horse, excited me, too, and so in a circus when a woman
was shot out of a cannon and her skirts flew in the air. It has
no effect on me when I see men naked. Sometimes I enjoy seeing
women's underclothes in a shop, or when I see a lady or a girl
buying them, especially if they are drawers. When I saw a lady in
a dress which buttoned from top to bottom it had more effect on
me than seeing underclothes. Seeing dogs coupling gives me more
pleasure than looking at pretty women, but less than looking at
pretty little girls." In order of increasing intensity he placed
the phenomena that affected him thus: The coupling of flies, then
of horses, then the sight of women's undergarments, then a boy
and a girl flirting, then cows mounting on each other, the
statues of women with naked breasts, then contact with the
governess's body and breasts, finally coitus. (Arthur Macdonald,
_Le Criminel-Type_, pp. 126 et seq.)
It is worthy of remark that the instinct of nutrition, when
restrained, may exhibit something of an analogous symbolism,
though in a minor degree, to that of sex. The ways in which a
hyperæsthetic hunger may seek its symbols are illustrated in the
case of a young woman called Nadia, who during several years was
carefully studied by Janet. It is a case of obsession ("maladie
du scrupule"), simulating hysterical anorexia, in which the
patient, for fear of getting fat, reduced her nourishment to the
smallest possible amount. "Nadia is generally hungry, even very
hungry. One can tell this by her actions; from time to time she
forgets herself to such an extent as to devour greedily anything
she can put her hands on. At other times, when she cannot resist
the desire to eat, she secretly takes a biscuit. She feels
horrible remorse for the action, but, all the same, she does it
again. Her confidences are very curious. She recognizes that a
great effort is needed to avoid eating, and considers she is a
heroine to resist so long. 'Sometimes I spent whole hours in
thinking about food, I was so hungry; I swallowed my saliva, I
bit my handkerchief, I rolled on the floor, I wanted to eat so
badly. I would look in books for descriptions of meals and
feasts, and tried to deceive my hunger by imagining that I was
sharing all these good things,'" (P. Janet, "La Maladie du
Scrupule," _Revue Philosophique_, May, 1901, p. 502.) The
deviations of the instinct of nutrition are, however, confined
within narrow limits, and, in the nature of things, hunger,
unlike sexual desire, cannot easily accept a fetich.
"There is almost no feature, article of dress, attitude, act," Stanley
Hall declares, "or even animal or perhaps object in nature, that may not
have to some morbid soul specialized erogenic and erethic power."[6] Even
a mere shadow may become a fetich. Goron tells of a merchant in Paris--a
man with a reputation for ability, happily married and the father of a
family, altogether irreproachable in his private life--who was returning
home one evening after a game of billiards with a friend, when, on
chancing to raise his eyes, he saw against a lighted window the shadow of
a woman changing her chemise. He fell in love with that shadow and
returned to the spot every evening for many months to gaze at the window.
Yet--and herein lies the fetichism--he made no attempt to see the woman or
to find out who she was; the shadow sufficed; he had no need of the
realty.[7] It is even possible to have a negative fetich, the absence of
some character being alone demanded, and the case has been recorded in
Chicago of an American gentleman of average intelligence, education, and
good habits who, having as a boy cherished a pure affection for a girl
whose leg had been amputated, throughout life was relatively impotent with
normal women, but experienced passion and affection for women who had lost
a leg; he was found by his wife to be in extensive correspondence with
one-legged women all over the country, expending no little money on the
purchase of artificial legs for his various protegées.[8]
It is important to remember, however, that while erotic symbolism becomes
fantastic and abnormal in its extreme manifestations, it is in its
essence absolutely normal. It is only in the very grossest forms of sexual
desire that it is altogether absent. Stendhal described the mental side of
the process of tumescence as a crystallization, a process whereby certain
features of the beloved person present points around which the emotions
held in solution in the lover's mind may concentrate and deposit
themselves in dazzling brilliance. This process inevitably tends to take
place around all those features and objects associated with the beloved
person which have most deeply impressed the lover's mind, and the more
sensitive and imaginative and emotional he is the more certainly will such
features and objects crystallize into erotic symbols. "Devotion and love,"
wrote Mary Wollstonecraft, "may be allowed to hallow the garments as well
as the person, for the lover must want fancy who has not a sort of sacred
respect for the glove or slipper of his mistress. He would not confound
them with vulgar things of the same kind." And nearly two centuries
earlier Burton, who had gathered together so much of the ancient lore of
love, clearly asserted the entirely normal character of erotic symbolism.
"Not one of a thousand falls in love," he declares, "but there is some
peculiar part or other which pleaseth most, and inflames him above the
rest.... If he gets any remnant of hers, a busk-point, a feather of her
fan, a shoe-tie, a lace, a ring, a bracelet of hair, he wears it for a
favor on his arm, in his hat, finger, or next his heart; as Laodamia did
by Protesilaus, when he went to war, sit at home with his picture before
her: a garter or a bracelet of hers is more precious than any Saint's
Relique, he lays it up in his casket (O blessed Relique) and every day
will kiss it: if in her presence his eye is never off her, and drink he
will where she drank, if it be possible, in that very place," etc.[9]
Burton's accuracy in describing the ways of lovers in his century
is shown by a passage in Hamilton's _Mémoires de Gramont_. Miss
Price, one of the beauties of Charles II's court, and Dongan were
tenderly attached to each other; when the latter died he left
behind a casket full of all possible sorts of love-tokens
pertaining to his mistress, including, among other things, "all
kinds of hair." And as regards France, Burton's contemporary,
Howell, wrote in 1627 in his _Familiar Letters_ concerning the
repulse of the English at Rhé: "A captain told me that when they
were rifling the dead bodies of the French gentlemen after the
first invasion they found that many of them had their mistresses'
favors tied about their genitories."
Schurig (_Spermatologia_, p. 357) at the beginning of the
eighteenth century knew a Belgian lady who, when her dearly loved
husband died, secretly cut off his penis and treasured it as a
sacred relic in a silver casket. She eventually powdered it, he
adds, and found it an efficacious medicine for herself and
others. An earlier example, of a lady at the French court who
embalmed and perfumed the genital organs of her dead husband,
always preserving them in a gold casket, is mentioned by
Brantôme. Mantegazza knew a man who kept for many years on his
desk the skull of his dead mistress, making it his dearest
companion. "Some," he remarks, "have slept for months and years
with a book, a garment, a trifle. I once had a friend who would
spend long hours of joy and emotion kissing a thread of silk
which _she_ had held between her fingers, now the only relic of
love." (Mantegazza, _Fisiologia dell' Amore_, cap. X.) In the
same way I knew a lady who in old age still treasured in her
desk, as the one relic of the only man she had ever been
attracted to, a fragment of paper he had casually twisted up in a
conversation with her half a century before.
The tendency to treasure the relics of a beloved person, more especially
the garments, is the simplest and commonest foundation of erotic
symbolism. It is without doubt absolutely normal. It is inevitable that
those objects which have been in close contact with the beloved person's
body, and are intimately associated with that person in the lover's mind,
should possess a little of the same virtue, the same emotional potency. It
is a phenomenon closely analogous to that by which the relics of saints
are held to possess a singular virtue. But it becomes somewhat less normal
when the garment is regarded as essential even in the presence of the
beloved person.[10]
While an extremely large number of objects and acts may be found to
possess occasionally the value of erotic symbols, such symbols most
frequently fall into certain well-defined groups. A vast number of
isolated objects or acts may be exceptionally the focus of erotic
contemplation, but the objects and acts which frequently become thus
symbolic are comparatively few.
It seems to me that the phenomena of erotic symbolism may be most
conveniently grouped in three great classes, on the basis of the objects
or acts which arouse them.
I. PARTS OF THE BODY.--_A. Normal:_ Hand, foot, breasts, nates, hair,
secretions and excretions, etc.
_B. Abnormal:_ Lameness, squinting, pitting of smallpox, etc. Paidophilia
or the love of children, presbyophilia or the love of the aged, and
necrophilia or the attraction for corpses, may be included under this
head, as well as the excitement caused by various animals.
II. INANIMATE OBJECTS.[11]--_A. Garments:_ Gloves, shoes and stockings and
garters, caps, aprons, handkerchiefs, underlinen.
_B. Impersonal Objects:_ Here may be included all the various objects that
may accidentally acquire the power of exciting sexual feeling in
auto-erotism. Pygmalionism may also be included.
III. ACTS AND ATTITUDES.--_A. Active:_ Whipping, cruelty, exhibitionism.
_B. Passive:_ Being whipped, experiencing cruelty. Personal odors and the
sound of the voice may be included under this head. _C. Mixoscopic:_ The
vision of climbing, swinging, etc. The acts of urination and defecation.
The coitus of animals.
Although the three main groups into which the phenomena of erotic
symbolism are here divided may seem fairly distinct, they are yet very
closely allied, and indeed overlap, so that it is possible, as we shall
see, for a single complex symbol to fall into all three groups.
A very complete kind of erotic symbolism is furnished by Pygmalionism or
the love of statues.[12] It is exactly analogous to the child's love of a
doll, which is also a form of sexual (though not erotic) symbolism. In a
somewhat less abnormal form, erotic symbolism probably shows itself in its
simplest shape in the tendency to idealize unbeautiful peculiarities in a
beloved person, so that such peculiarities are ever afterward almost or
quite essential in order to arouse sexual attraction. In this way men have
become attracted to limping women. Even the most normal man may idealize a
trifling defect in a beloved woman. The attention is inevitably
concentrated on any such slight deviation from regular beauty, and the
natural result of such concentration is that a complexus of associated
thoughts and emotions becomes attached to something that in itself is
unbeautiful. A defect becomes an admired focus of attention, the embodied
symbol of the lover's emotion.
Thus a mole is not in itself beautiful, but by the tendency to
erotic symbolism it becomes so. Persian poets especially have
lavished the richest imagery on moles (_Anis El-Ochchâq_ in
_Bibliothèque des Hautes Etudes_, fasc, 25, 1875); the Arabs, as
Lane remarks (_Arabian Society in the Middle Ages_, p. 214), are
equally extravagant in their admiration of a mole.
Stendhal long since well described the process by which a defect
becomes a sexual symbol. "Even little defects in a woman's face,"
he remarked, "such as a smallpox pit, may arouse the tenderness
of a man who loves her, and throw him into deep reverie when he
sees them in another woman. It is because he has experienced a
thousand feelings in the presence of that smallpox mark, that
these feelings have been for the most part delicious, all of the
highest interest, and that, whatever they may have been, they are
renewed with incredible vivacity on the sight of this sign, even
when perceived on the face of another woman. If in such a case we
come to prefer and love _ugliness_, it is only because in such a
case ugliness is beauty. A man loved a woman who was very thin
and marked by smallpox; he lost her by death. Three years later,
in Rome, he became acquainted with two women, one very beautiful,
the other thin and marked by smallpox, on that account, if you
will, rather ugly. I saw him in love with this plain one at the
end of a week, which he had employed in effacing her plainness by
his memories." (_De l'Amour_, Chapter XVII.)
In the tendency to idealize the unbeautiful features of a beloved person
erotic symbolism shows itself in a simple and normal form. In a less
simple and more morbid form it appears in persons in whom the normal paths
of sexual gratification are for some reasons inhibited, and who are thus
led to find the symbols of natural love in unnatural perversions. It is
for this reason that so many erotic symbolisms take root in childhood and
puberty, before the sexual instincts have reached full development. It is
for the same reason also, that, at the other end of life, when the sexual
energies are failing, erotic symbols sometimes tend to be substituted for
the normal pleasures of sex. It is for this reason, again, that both men
and women whose normal energies are inhibited sometimes find the symbols
of sexual gratification in the caresses of children.
The case of a schoolmistress recorded by Penta instructively
shows how an erotic symbolism of this last kind may develop by no
means as a refinement of vice, but as the one form in which
sexual gratification becomes possible when normal gratification
has been pathologically inhibited. F.R., aged 48, schoolmistress;
she was some years ago in an asylum with religious mania, but
came out well in a few months. At the age of 12 she had first
experienced sexual excitement in a railway train from the jolting
of the carriage. Soon after she fell in love with a youth who
represented her ideal and who returned her affection. When,
however, she gave herself to him, great was her disillusion and
surprise to find that the sexual act which she had looked forward
to could not be accomplished, for at the first contact there was
great pain and spasmodic resistance of the vagina. There was a
condition of vaginismus. After repeated attempts on subsequent
occasions her lover desisted. Her desire for intercourse
increased, however, rather than diminished, and at last she was
able to tolerate coitus, but the pain was so great that she
acquired a horror of the sexual embrace and no longer sought it.
Having much will power, she restrained all erotic impulses during
many years. It was not until the period of the menopause that the
long repressed desires broke out, and at last found a symbolical
outlet that was no longer normal, but was felt to supply a
complete gratification. She sought the close physical contact of
the young children in her care. She would lie on her bed naked,
with two or three naked children, make them suck her breasts and
press them to every part of her body. Her conduct was discovered
by means of other children who peeped through the keyhole, and
she was placed under Penta for treatment. In this case the loss
of moral and mental inhibition, due probably to troubles of the
climacteric, led to indulgence, under abnormal conditions, in
those primitive contacts which are normally the beginning of
love, and these, supported by the ideal image of the early lover,
constituted a complete and adequate symbol of natural love in a
morbidly perverted individual. (P. Penta, _Archivio delle
Psicopatie Sessuali_, January, 1896.)
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The term "erotic symbolism" has already been employed by Eulenburg
(_Sexuale Neuropathie_, 1895, p. 101). It must be borne in mind that this
term, implying the specific emotion, is much narrower than the term
"sexual symbolism," which may be used to designate a great variety of
ritual and social practices which have played a part in the evolution of
civilization.
[2] _Sexual Selection in Man_, iv, "Vision."
[3] K. Groos, _Der Æsthetische Genuss_, p. 122. The psychology of the
associations of contiguity and resemblance through which erotic symbolism
operates its transference is briefly discussed by Ribot in the _Psychology
of the Emotions_, Part 1, Chapter XII; the early chapters of the same
author's _Logique des Sentiments_ may also be said to deal with the
emotional basis on which erotic symbolism arises.
[4] A number of synonyms for the female pudenda are brought together by
Schurig--cunnus, hortus, concha, navis, fovea, larva, canis, annulus,
focus, cymba, antrum, delta, myrtus, etc.--and he discusses many of them.
(_Muliebria_, Section I, cap. I.)
[5] Kleinpaul, _Sprache Ohne Worte_, pp. 24-29; cf. K. Pearson, on the
general and special words for sex, _Chances of Death_, vol. ii, pp.
112-245; a selection of the literature of the rose will be found in a
volume of translations entitled _Ros Rosarum_.
[6] G.S. Hall, _Adolescence_, vol. i, p. 470.
[7] Goron, _Les Parias de l'Amour_, p. 45.
[8] A.R. Reynolds, _Medical Standard_, vol. x, cited by Kiernan,
"Responsibility in Sexual Perversion," _American Journal of Neurology and
Psychiatry_, 1882.
[9] R. Burton, _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Part III, Section II, Mem. II,
Subs. II, and Mem. III, Subs. I.
[10] Numerous examples are given by Moll, _Konträre Sexualempfindung_,
third edition, pp. 265-268.
[11] Chevalier (_De l'Inversion_, 1885; id., _L'Inversion Sexuelle_, 1892,
p. 52), followed by E. Laurent (_L'Amour Morbide_, 1891, Chapter X),
separates this group from other fetichistic perversions, under the head of
"azoöphilie." I see no adequate ground for this step. The various forms of
fetichism are too intimately associated to permit of any group of them
being violently separated from the others.
[12] This has already been considered as a perversion founded on vision,
in discussing _Sexual Selection in Man_. IV.
II.
Foot-fetichism and Shoe-fetichism--Wide Prevalence and Normal
Basis--Restif de la Bretonne--The Foot a Normal Focus of Sexual Attraction
Among Some Peoples--The Chinese, Greeks, Romans, Spaniards, etc.--The
Congenital Predisposition in Erotic Symbolism--The Influence of Early
Association and Emotional Shock--Shoe-fetichism in Relation to
Masochism--The Two Phenomena Independent Though Allied--The Desire to be
Trodden On--The Fascination of Physical Constraint--The Symbolism of
Self-inflicted Pain--The Dynamic Element in Erotic Symbolism--The
Symbolism of Garments.
Of all forms of erotic symbolism the most frequent is that which idealizes
the foot and the shoe. The phenomena we here encounter are sometimes so
complex and raise so many interesting questions that it is necessary to
discuss them somewhat fully.
It would seem that even for the normal lover the foot is one of the most
attractive parts of the body. Stanley Hall found that among the parts
specified as most admired in the other sex by young men and women who
answered a _questionnaire_ the feet came fourth (after the eyes, hair,
stature and size).[13] Casanova, an acute student and lover of women who
was in no degree a foot fetichist, remarks that all men who share his
interest in women are attracted by their feet; they offer the same
interest, he considers, as the question of the particular edition offers
to the book-lover.[14]
In a report of the results of a _questionnaire_ concerning
children's sense of self, to which over 500 replies were
received, Stanley Hall thus summarizes the main facts ascertained
with reference to the feet: "A special period of noticing the
feet comes somewhat later than that in which the hands are
discovered to consciousness. Our records afford nearly twice as
many cases for feet as for hands. The former are more remote from
the primary psychic focus or position, and are also more often
covered, so that the sight of them is a more marked and
exceptional event. Some children become greatly excited whenever
their feet are exposed. Some infants show signs of fear at the
movement of their own knees and feet covered, and still more
often fright is the first sensation which signalizes the child's
discovery of its feet.... Many are described as playing with them
as if fascinated by strange, newly-discovered toys. They pick
them up and try to throw them away, or out of the cradle, or
bring them to the mouth, where all things tend to go.... Children
often handle their feet, pat and stroke them, offer them toys and
the bottle, as if they, too, had an independent hunger to
gratify, an _ego_ of their own.... Children often develop [later]
a special interest in the feet of others, and examine, feel them,
etc., sometimes expressing surprise that the pinch of the
mother's toe hurts her and not the child, or comparing their own
and the feet of others point by point. Curious, too, are the
intensifications of foot-consciousness throughout the early years
of childhood, whenever children have the exceptional privilege of
going barefoot, or have new shoes. The feet are often
apostrophized, punished, beaten sometimes to the point of pain
for breaking things, throwing the child down, etc. Several
children have habits, which reach great intensity, and then
vanish, of touching or tickling the feet, with gales of laughter,
and a few are described as showing an almost morbid reluctance to
wear anything upon the feet, or even to having them touched by
others.... Several almost fall in love with the great toe or the
little one, especially admiring some crease or dimple in it,
dressing it in some rag of silk or bit of ribbon, or cut-off
glove fingers, winding it with string, prolonging it by tying on
bits of wood. Stroking the feet of others, especially if they are
shapely, often becomes almost a passion with young children, and
several adults confess a survival of the same impulse which it is
an exquisite pleasure to gratify. The interest of some mothers in
babies' toes, the expressions of which are ecstatic and almost
incredible, is a factor of great importance." (G. Stanley Hall,
"Some Aspects of the Early Sense of Self," _American Journal of
Psychology_, April, 1898.) In childhood, Stanley Hall remarks
elsewhere (_Adolescence_, vol. ii, p. 104), "a form of courtship
may consist solely in touching feet under the desk." It would
seem that even animals have a certain amount of sexual
consciousness in the feet; I have noticed a male donkey, just
before coitus, bite the feet of his partner.
At the same time it is scarcely usual for the normal lover, in most
civilized countries to-day, to attach primary importance to the foot, such
as he very frequently attaches to the eyes, though the feet play a very
conspicuous part in the work of certain novelists.[15]
In a small but not inconsiderable minority of persons, however, the foot
or the boot becomes the most attractive part of a woman, and in some
morbid cases the woman herself is regarded as a comparatively unimportant
appendage to her feet or her boots. The boots under civilized conditions
much more frequently constitute the sexual symbol than do the feet
themselves; this is not surprising since in ordinary life the feet are not
often seen.
It is usually only under exceptionally favoring conditions that
foot-fetichism occurs, as in the case recorded by Marandon de
Montyel of a doctor who had been brought up in the West Indies.
His mother had been insane and he himself was subject to
obsessions, especially of being incapable of urinating; he had
had nocturnal incontinence of urine in childhood. All the women
of the people in the West Indies go about with naked feet, which
are often beautiful. His puberty evolved under this influence,
and foot-fetichism developed. He especially admired large, fat,
arched feet, with delicate skin and large, regular toes. He
masturbated with images of feet. At 15 he had relations with a
colored chambermaid, but feared to mention his fetichism, though
it was the touch of her feet that chiefly excited him. He now
gave up masturbation, and had a succession of mistresses, but was
always ashamed to confess his fancies until, at the age of 33, in
Paris, a very intelligent woman who had become his mistress
discovered his mania and skillfully enabled him to yield to it
without shock to his modesty. He was devoted to this mistress,
who had very beautiful feet (he had been horrified by the feet of
Europeans generally), until she finally left him. (_Archives de
Neurologie_, October, 1904.)
Probably the first case of shoe-fetichism ever recorded in any
detail is that of Restif de la Bretonne (1734-1806), publicist
and novelist, one of the most remarkable literary figures of the
later eighteenth century in France. Restif was a neurotic
subject, though not to an extreme degree, and his shoe-fetichism,
though distinctly pronounced, was not pathological; that is to
say, that the shoe was not itself an adequate gratification of
the sexual impulse, but simply a highly important aid to
tumescence, a prelude to the natural climax of detumescence; only
occasionally, and _faute de mieux_, in the absence of the beloved
person, was the shoe used as an adjunct to masturbation. In
Restif's stories and elsewhere the attraction of the shoe is
frequently discussed or used as a motive. His first decided
literary success, _Le Pied de Fanchette_, was suggested by a
vision of a girl with a charming foot, casually seen in the
street. While all such passages in his books are really founded
on his own personal feelings and experiences, in his elaborate
autobiography, _Monsieur Nicolas_, he has frankly set forth the
gradual evolution and cause of his idiosyncrasy. The first
remembered trace dated from the age of 4, when he was able to
recall having remarked the feet of a young girl in his native
place. Restif was a sexually precocious youth, and at the age of
9, though both delicate in health and shy in manners, his
thoughts were already absorbed in the girls around him. "While
little Monsieur Nicolas," he tells us, "passed for a Narcissus,
his thoughts, as soon as he was alone, by night or by day, had no
other object than that sex he seemed to flee from. The girls most
careful of their persons were naturally those who pleased him
most, and as the part least easy to keep clean is that which
touches the earth it was to the foot-gear that he mechanically
gave his chief attention. Agathe, Reine, and especially
Madeleine, were the most elegant of the girls at that time; their
carefully selected and kept shoes, instead of laces or buckles,
which were not yet worn at Sacy, had blue or rose ribbon,
according to the color of the skirt. I thought of these girls
with emotion; I desired--I knew not what; but I desired
something, if it were only to subdue them." The origin Restif
here assigns to his shoe-fetichism may seem paradoxical; he
admired the girls who were most clean and neat in their dress, he
tells us, and, therefore, paid most attention to that part of
their clothing which was least clean and neat. But, however
paradoxical the remark may seem, it is psychologically sound. All
fetichism is a kind of not necessarily morbid obsession, and as
the careful work of Janet and others in that field has shown, an
obsession is a fascinated attraction to some object or idea
which gives the subject a kind of emotional shock by its
contrast to his habitual moods or ideas. The ordinary morbid
obsession cannot usually be harmoniously co-ordinated with the
other experiences of the subject's daily life, and shows,
therefore, no tendency to become pleasurable. Sexual fetichisms,
on the other hand, have a reservoir of agreeable emotion to draw
on, and are thus able to acquire both stability and harmony. It
will also be seen that no element of masochism is involved in
Restif's fetichism, though the mistake has been frequently made
of supposing that these two manifestations are usually or even
necessarily allied. Restif wishes to subject the girl who
attracts him, he has no wish to be subjected by her. He was
especially dazzled by a young girl from another town, whose shoes
were of a fashionable cut, with buckles, "and who was a charming
person besides." She was delicate as a fairy, and rendered his
thoughts unfaithful to the robust beauties of his native Sacy.
"No doubt," he remarks, "because, being frail and weak myself, it
seemed to me that it would be easier to subdue her." "This taste
for the beauty of the feet," he continues, "was so powerful in me
that it unfailingly aroused desire and would have made me
overlook ugliness. It is excessive in all those who have it." He
admired the foot as well as the shoe: "The factitious taste for
the shoe is only a reflection of that for pretty feet. When I
entered a house and saw the boots arranged in a row, as is the
custom, I would tremble with pleasure; I blushed and lowered my
eyes as if in the presence of the girls themselves. With this
vivacity of feeling and a voluptuousness of ideas inconceivable
at the age of 10 I still fled, with an involuntary impulse of
modesty, from the girls I adored."
We may clearly see how this combination of sensitive and
precocious sexual ardor with extreme shyness, furnished the soil
on which the germ of shoe-fetichism was able to gain a firm root
and persist in some degree throughout a long life very largely
given up to a pursuit of women, abnormal rather by its
excessiveness than its perversity. A few years later, he tells
us, he happened to see a pretty pair of shoes in a bootmaker's
shop, and on hearing that they belonged to a girl whom at that
time he reverently adored at a distance he blushed and nearly
fainted.
In 1749 he was for a time attracted to a young woman very much
older than himself; he secretly carried away one of her slippers
and kept it for a day; a little later he again took away a shoe
of the same woman which had fascinated him when on her foot, and,
he seems to imply, he used it to masturbate with.
Perhaps the chief passion of Restif's life was his love for
Colette Parangon. He was still a boy (1752), she was the young
and virtuous wife of the printer whose apprentice Restif was and
in whose house he lived. Madame Parangon, a charming woman, as
she is described, was not happily married, and she evidently
felt a tender affection for the boy whose excessive love and
reverence for her were not always successfully concealed.
"Madonna Parangon," he tells us, "possessed a charm which I could
never resist, a pretty little foot; it is a charm which arouses
more than tenderness. Her shoes, made in Paris, had that
voluptuous elegance which seems to communicate soul and life.
Sometimes Colette wore shoes of simple white drugget or with
silver flowers; sometimes rose-colored slippers with green heels,
or green with rose heels; her supple feet, far from deforming her
shoes, increased their grace and rendered the form more
exciting." One day, on entering the house, he saw Madame Parangon
elegantly dressed and wearing rose-colored shoes with tongues,
and with green heels and a pretty rosette. They were new and she
took them off to put on green slippers with rose heels and
borders which he thought equally exciting. As soon as she had
left the room, he continues, "carried away by the most impetuous
passion and idolizing Colette, I seemed to see her and touch her
in handling what she had just worn; my lips pressed one of these
jewels, while the other, deceiving the sacred end of nature, from
excess of exaltation replaced the object of sex (I cannot express
myself more clearly). The warmth which she had communicated to
the insensible object which had touched her still remained and
gave a soul to it; a voluptuous cloud covered my eyes." He adds
that he would kiss with rage and transport whatever had come in
close contact with the woman he adored, and on one occasion
eagerly pressed his lips to her cast-off underlinen, _vela
secretiora penetralium_.
At this period Restif's foot-fetichism reached its highest point
of development. It was the aberration of a highly sensitive and
very precocious boy. While the preoccupation with feet and shoes
persisted throughout life, it never became a complete perversion
and never replaced the normal end of sexual desire. His love for
Madam Parangon, one of the deepest emotions in his whole life,
was also the climax of his shoe-fetichism. She represented his
ideal woman, an ethereal sylph with wasp-waist and a child's
feet; it was always his highest praise for a woman that she
resembled Madame Parangon, and he desired that her slipper should
be buried with him. (Restif de la Bretonne, _Monsieur Nicolas_,
vols. i-iv, vol. xiii, p. 5; id., _Mes Inscriptions_, pp. ci-cv.)
Shoe-fetichism, more especially if we include under this term all
the cases of real or pseudo-masochism in which an attraction to
the boots or slippers is the chief feature, is a not infrequent
phenomenon, and is certainly the most frequently occurring form
of fetichism. Many cases are brought together by Krafft-Ebing in
his _Psychopathia Sexualis_. Every prostitute of any experience
has known men who merely desire to gaze at her shoes, or possibly
to lick them, and who are quite willing to pay for this
privilege. In London such a person is known as a "bootman," in
Germany as a "Stiefelfrier."
The predominance of the foot as a focus of sexual attraction, while among
us to-day it is a not uncommon phenomenon, is still not sufficiently
common to be called normal; the majority of even ardent lovers do not
experience this attraction in any marked degree. But these manifestations
of foot-fetichism which with us to-day are abnormal, even when they are
not so extreme as to be morbid, may perhaps become more intelligible to us
when we realize that in earlier periods of civilization, and even to-day
in some parts of the world, the foot is generally recognized as a focus of
sexual attraction, so that some degree of foot-fetichism becomes a normal
phenomenon.
The most pronounced and the best known example of such normal
foot-fetichism at the present day is certainly to be found among the
Southern Chinese. For a Chinese husband his wife's foot is more
interesting than her face. A Chinese woman is as shy of showing her feet
to a man as a European woman her breasts; they are reserved for her
husband's eyes alone, and to look at a woman's feet in the street is
highly improper and indelicate. Chinese foot-fetichism is connected with
the custom of compressing the feet. This custom appears to rest on the
fact that Chinese women naturally possess a very small foot and is thus an
example of the universal tendency in the search for beauty to accentuate,
even by deformation, the racial characteristics. But there is more than
this. Beauty is largely a name for sexual attractiveness, and the energy
expended in the effort to make the Chinese woman's small foot still
smaller is a measure of the sexual fascination which it exerts. The
practice arose on the basis of the sexual attractiveness of the foot,
though it has doubtless served to heighten that attractiveness, just as
the small waist, which (if we may follow Stratz) is a characteristic
beauty of the European woman, becomes to the average European man still
more attractive when accentuated, even to the extent of deformity, by the
compression of the corset.
Referring to the sexual fascination exerted by the foot in China,
Matignon writes: "My attention has been drawn to this point by a
large number of pornographic engravings, of which the Chinese are
very fond. In all these lascivious scenes we see the male
voluptuously fondling the woman's foot. When a Celestial takes
into his hand a woman's foot, especially if it is very small, the
effect upon him is precisely the same as is provoked in a
European by the palpation of a young and firm bosom. All the
Celestials whom I have interrogated on this point have replied
unanimously: 'Oh, a little foot! You Europeans cannot understand
how exquisite, how sweet, how exciting it is!' The contact of the
genital organ with the little foot produces in the male an
indescribable degree of voluptuous feeling, and women skilled in
love know that to arouse the ardor of their lovers a better
method than all Chinese aphrodisiacs--including 'giusen' and
swallows' nests--is to take the penis between their feet. It is
not rare to find Chinese Christians accusing themselves at
confession of having had 'evil thoughts on looking at a woman's
foot.'" (Dr. J. Matignon, "A propos d'un Pied de Chinoise,"
_Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, 1898.)
It is said that a Chinese Empress, noted for her vice and having
a congenital club foot, about the year 1100 B.C., desired all
women to resemble her, and that the practice of compressing the
foot thus arose. But this is only tradition, since, in 300 B.C.,
Chinese books were destroyed (Morache, Art. "Chine,"
_Dictionnaire Encyclopédique des Sciences Médicales_, p. 191). It
is also said that the practice owes its origin to the wish to
keep women indoors. But women are not secluded in China, nor does
foot compression usually render a woman unable to walk. Many
intelligent Chinese are of opinion that its object is to promote
the development of the sexual parts and of the thighs, and so to
aid both intercourse and parturition. There is no ground for
believing that it has any such influence, though Morache found
that the mons veneris and labia are largely developed in Chinese
women, and not in Tartar women living in Pekin (who do not
compress the foot). If there is any correlation between the feet
and the pelvic regions, it is more probably congenital than due
to the artificial compression of the feet. The ancients seem to
have believed that a small foot indicated a small vagina. Restif
de la Bretonne, who had ample opportunities for forming an
opinion on a matter in which he took so great an interest,
believed that a small foot, round and short, indicated a large
vagina (_Monsieur Nicolas_, vol. i, reprint of 1883, p. 92).
Even, however, if we admit that there is a real correlation
between the foot and the vagina, that would by no means suffice
to render the foot a focus of sexual attraction.
It remains the most reasonable view that the foot bandage must be
regarded as strictly analogous to the waist bandage or corset
which also tends to produce deformity of the constricted region.
Stratz has ingeniously remarked (_Frauenkleidung_, third edition,
p. 101) that the success of the Chinese in dwarfing trees may
have suggested a similar attempt in regard to women's feet, and
adds that in any case both dwarfed trees and bound feet bear
witness in the Mongolian to the same love for small and elegant,
not to say deformed, things. For a Chinaman the deformed foot is
a "golden water-lily."
Many facts (together with illustrations) bearing on Chinese
deformation of the foot will be found in Ploss, _Das Weib_, vol.
i, Section IV.
The significance of the sexual emotion aroused by the female foot in China
and the origin of its compression begin to become clear when we realize
that this foot-fetichism is merely an extreme development of a tendency
which is fairly well marked among nearly all the peoples of yellow race.
Jacoby, who has brought together a number of interesting facts bearing on
the sexual significance of the foot, states that a similar tendency is to
be found among the Mongol and Turk peoples of Siberia, and in the east and
central parts of European Russia, among the Permiaks, the Wotiaks, etc.
Here the woman, at all events when young, has always her feet, as well as
head, covered, however little clothing she may otherwise wear.
"On hot nights or on baking days," Jacoby states, "you may see
these women with uncovered breasts, or even entirely naked
without embarrassment, but you will never see them with bare
feet, and no male relations, except the husband, will ever see
the feet and lower part of the legs of the women in the house.
These women have their modesty in their feet, and also their
coquetry; to unbind the feet of a woman is for a man a voluptuous
act, and the touch of the bands produces the same effect as a
corset still warm from a woman's body on a European man. A
woman's beauty, that which attracts and excites a man, lies in
her foot; in Mordvin love poems celebrating the beauty of women
there is much about her attire, especially her embroidered
chemise, but as regards the charms of her person the poet is
content to state that 'her feet are beautiful;' with that
everything is said. The young peasant woman of the central
provinces as part of her holiday raiment puts on great woolen
stockings which come up to the groin and are then folded over to
below the knee. To uncover the feet of a person of the opposite
sex is a sexual act, and has thus become the symbol of sexual
possession, so that the stocking or foot-gear became the emblem
of marriage, as later the ring. (It was so among the Jews, as we
see in the book of _Ruth_, Chapter III, v. 4, and Chapter IV, vv.
7 and 8). St. Vladimir the Great asked in marriage the daughter
of Prince Rogvold; as Vladimir's mother had been a serf, the
princess proudly replied that she 'would not uncover the feet of
a slave.' At the present time in the east of Russia when a young
girl tries to find out by divination whom she will have as a
husband the traditional formula is 'Come and take my stockings
off.' Among the populations of the north and east, it is
sometimes the bride who must do this for her husband on the
wedding night, and sometimes the bridegroom for his wife, not as
a token of love, but as a nuptial ceremony. Among the
professional classes and small nobility in Russia parents place
money in the stocking of their child at marriage as a present for
the other partner, it being supposed that the couple mutually
remove each other's foot raiment, as an act of sexual possession,
the emblem of coitus." (Paul Jacoby, _Archives d'Anthropologie
Criminelle_, December, 1903, p. 793.) The practice among
ourselves of children hanging up their stockings at night for
presents would seem to be a relic of the last-mentioned custom.
While we may witness the sexual symbolism of the foot, with or without an
associated foot-fetichism, most highly developed in Asia and Eastern
Europe, it has by no means been altogether unknown in some stages of
western civilization, and traces of it may be found here and there even
yet. Schinz refers to the connection between the feet and sexual pleasure
as existing not only among the Egyptians and the Arabs, but among the
ancient Germans and the modern Spaniards,[16] while Jacoby points out that
among the Greeks, the Romans, and especially the Etruscans, it was usual
to represent chaste and virgin goddesses with their feet covered, even
though they might be otherwise nude. Ovid, again, is never weary of
dwelling on the sexual charm of the feminine foot. He represents the
chaste matron as wearing a weighted _stola_ which always fell so as to
cover her feet; it was only the courtesan, or the nymph who is taking part
in an erotic festival, who appears with raised robes, revealing her
feet.[17] So grave a historian as Strabo, as well as Ælian, refers to the
story of the courtesan Rhodope whose sandal was carried off by an eagle
and dropped in the King of Egypt's lap as he was administering justice, so
that he could not rest until he had discovered to whom this delicately
small sandal belonged, and finally made her his queen. Kleinpaul, who
repeats this story, has collected many European sayings and customs
(including Turkish), indicating that the slipper is a very ancient symbol
of a woman's sexual parts.[18]
In Rome, Dufour remarks, "Matrons having appropriated the use of
the shoe (_soccus_) prostitutes were not allowed to use it, and
were obliged to have their feet always naked in sandals or
slippers (_crepida_ and _solea_), which they fastened over the
instep with gilt bands. Tibullus delights to describe his
mistress's little foot, compressed by the band that imprisoned
it: _Ansaque compressos colligat arcta pedes_. Nudity of the foot
in woman was a sign of prostitution, and their brilliant
whiteness acted afar as a pimp to attract looks and desires."
(Dufour, _Histoire de la Prostitution_, vol. II., ch. xviii.)
This feeling seems to have survived in a more or less vague and
unconscious form in mediæval Europe. "In the tenth century,"
according to Dufour (_Histoire de la Prostitution_, vol. VI., p.
11), "shoes _a la poulaine_, with a claw or beak, pursued for
more than four centuries by the anathemas of popes and the
invectives of preachers, were always regarded by mediæval
casuists as the most abominable emblems of immodesty. At a first
glance it is not easy to see why these shoes--terminating in a
lion's claw, an eagle's beak, the prow of a ship, or other metal
appendage--should be so scandalous. The excommunication inflicted
on this kind of foot-gear preceded the impudent invention of some
libertine, who wore _poulaines_ in the shape of the phallus, a
custom adopted also by women. This kind of _poulaine_ was
denounced as _mandite de Dicu_ (Ducange's Glossary, at the word
Poulainia) and prohibited by royal ordinances (see letter of
Charles V., 17 October, 1367, regarding the garments of the women
of Montpellier). Great lords and ladies continued, however, to
wear _poulaines_." In Louis XL's court they were still worn of a
quarter of an ell in length.
Spain, ever tenacious of ancient ideas, appears to have preserved
longer than other countries the ancient classic traditions in
regard to the foot as a focus of modesty and an object of sexual
attraction. In Spanish religious pictures it was always necessary
that the Virgin's feet should be concealed, the clergy ordaining
that her robe should be long and flowing, so that the feet might
be covered with decent folds. Pacheco, the master and
father-in-law of Velasquez, writes in 1649 in his _Arte de la
Pintura_: "What can be more foreign from the respect which we owe
to the purity of Our Lady the Virgin than to paint her sitting
down with one of her knees placed over the other, and often with
her sacred feet uncovered and naked. Let thanks be given to the
Holy Inquisition which commands that this liberty should be
corrected!" It was Pacheco's duty in Seville to see that these
commands were obeyed. At the court of Philip IV. at this time the
princesses never showed their feet, as we may see in the pictures
of Velasquez. When a local manufacturer desired to present that
monarch's second bride, Mariana of Austria, with some silk
stockings the offer was indignantly rejected by the Court
Chamberlain: "The Queen of Spain has no legs!" Philip V.'s, queen
was thrown from her horse and dragged by the feet; no one
ventured to interfere until two gentlemen bravely rescued her and
then fled, dreading punishment by the king: they were, however,
graciously pardoned. Reinach ("Pieds Pudiques," _Cultes, Mythes
et Religions_, pp. 105-110) brings together several passages from
the Countess D'Aulnoy's account of the Madrid Court in the
seventeenth century and from other sources, showing how careful
Spanish ladies were as regards their feet, and how jealous
Spanish husbands were in this matter. At this time, when Spanish
influence was considerable, the fashion of Spain seems to have
spread to other countries. One may note that in Vandyck's
pictures of English beauties the feet are not visible, though in
the more characteristically English painters of a somewhat later
age it became usual to display them conspicuously, while the
French custom in this matter is the farthest removed from the
Spanish. At the present day a well-bred Spanish woman shows as
little as possible of her feet in walking, and even in some of
the most characteristic Spanish dances there is little or no
kicking, and the feet may even be invisible throughout. It is
noteworthy that in numerous figures of Spanish women (probably
artists' models) reproduced in Ploss's _Das Weib_ the stockings
are worn, although the women are otherwise, in most cases, quite
naked. Max Dessoir mentions ("Psychologie der Vita Sexualis,"
_Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie_, 1894, p. 954) that in Spanish
pornographic photographs women always have their shoes on, and he
considers this an indication of perversity. I have seen the
statement (attributed to Gautier's _Voyage en Espagne_, where,
however, it does not occur) that Spanish prostitutes uncover
their feet in sign of assent, and Madame d'Aulnoy stated that in
her time to show her lover her feet was a Spanish woman's final
favor.
The tendency, which we thus find to be normal at some earlier periods of
civilization, to insist on the sexual symbolism of the feminine foot or
its coverings, and to regard them as a special sexual fascination, is not
without significance for the interpretation of the sporadic manifestations
of foot-fetichism among ourselves. Eccentric as foot-fetichism may appear
to us, it is simply the re-emergence, by a pseudo-atavism or arrest of
development, of a mental or emotional impulse which was probably
experienced by our forefathers, and is often traceable among young
children to-day.[19] The occasional reappearance of this bygone impulse
and the stability which it may acquire are thus conditioned by the
sensitive reaction of an abnormally nervous and usually precocious
organism to influences which, among the average and ordinary population of
Europe to-day, are either never felt, or quickly outgrown, or very
strictly subordinated in the highly complex crystallizations which the
course of love and the process of tumescence create within us.
It may be added that this is by no means true of foot-fetichism
only. In some other fetichisms a seemingly congenital
predisposition is even more marked. This is not only the case as
regards hair-fetichism and fur-fetichism (see, e.g.,
Krafft-Ebing, _Psychopathia Sexualis_, English translation of
tenth edition, pp. 233, 255, 262). In many cases of fetichisms of
all kinds not only is there no record of any commencement in a
definite episode (an absence which may be accounted for by the
supposition that the original incident has been forgotten), but
it would seem in some cases that the fetichism developed very
slowly.
In this sense, it will be seen, although it is hazardous to speak of
foot-fetichism as strictly an atavism, it may certainly be said to arise
on a congenital basis. It represents the rare development of an inborn
germ, usually latent among ourselves, which in earlier stages of
civilization frequently reached a normal and general fruition.
It is of interest to emphasize this congenital element of foot symbolism,
because more than any other forms of sexual perversion the fetichisms are
those which are most vaguely conditioned by inborn states of the organism
and most definitely aroused by seemingly accidental associations or shocks
in early life. Inversion is sometimes so fundamentally ingrained in the
individual's constitution that it arises and develops in spite of the very
strongest influence in a contrary direction. But a fetichism, while it
tends to occur in sensitive, nervous, timid, precocious individuals--that
is to say, individuals of more or less neuropathic heredity--can usually,
though not always, be traced to a definite starting point in the shock of
some sexually emotional episode in early life.
A few examples of the influences of such association may here be
given, referring miscellaneously to various forms of erotic
symbolism. Magnan has recorded the case of a hair-fetichist,
living in a district where the women wore their hair done up, who
at the age of 15 experienced pleasurable feelings with erection
at the sight of a village beauty combing her hair; from that time
flowing hair became his fetich, and he could not resist the
temptation to touch it and if possible sever it, thus becoming a
hair-despoiler, for which he was arrested but not sentenced.
(_Archives de l'Anthropologie Criminelle_, vol. v, No. 28.)
I have elsewhere recorded the history of a boy of 14, having
already had imperfect connection with a grown-up woman, who
associated much with a young married lady; he had no sexual
relations with her, but one day she urinated in his presence, and
he saw that her mons veneris was covered by very thick hair; from
that time he worshiped this woman in secret and acquired a
life-long fetichistic attraction to women whose pubic hair was
similarly abundant (_Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, vol. iii,
Appendix B, History V).
Roubaud reported the case of a general's son, sexually initiated
at the age of 14 by a blonde young lady of 21 who, in order to
avoid detection, always retained her clothing: gaiters, a corset
and a silk dress; when the boy's studies were completed and he
was sent to a garrison where he could enjoy freedom he found that
his sexual desires could only be aroused by blonde women dressed
like the lady who had first aroused his sexual desires;
consequently he gave up all thoughts of matrimony, as a woman in
nightclothes produced impotence (_Traité de l'Impuissance_, p.
439). Krafft-Ebing records the somewhat similar case of a nervous
Polish boy of old family seduced at the age of 17 by a French
governess, who during several months practiced mutual
masturbation with him; in this way his attention became
attracted by her very elegant boots, and in the end he became a
confirmed boot-fetichist (_Psychopathia Sexualis_, English
translation, p. 249).
A boy of 7, of bad heredity, was taught to masturbate by a
servant girl; on one occasion she practiced this on him with her
foot without taking off her shoe; it was the first time the
manoeuvre gave him any pleasure, and an association was thus
established which led to shoe-fetichism (Hammond, _Sexual
Impotence_, p. 44). A government official whose first coitus in
youth took place on a staircase; the sound of his partner's
creaking shoes against the stairs, produced by her efforts to
accelerate orgasm, formed an association which developed into an
auditory shoe-fetichism; in the streets he was compelled to
follow ladies whose shoes creaked, ejaculation being thus
produced, while to obtain complete satisfaction he would make a
prostitute, otherwise naked, sit in front of him in her shoes,
moving her feet so that the shoes creaked. (Moraglia, _Archivio
di Psichiatria_, vol. xiii, p. 568.)
Bechterew, in St. Petersburg, has recorded the case of a man who
when a child used to fall asleep at the knees of his nurse with
his head buried in the folds of her apron; in this position he
first experienced erection and voluptuous sensations; when a
youth he had no attraction to naked women, and in real life and
in dreams was only excited sexually under conditions recalling
his early experience; in his relations with women he preferred
them dressed, and was excited by the rustling sound of their
skirts; in this case there was no traceable neuropathic taint nor
any other personal peculiarity. (Summarized in _Journal de
Psychologie Normale et Pathologique_, January-February, 1904, p.
72.)
In a curious case recorded in detail by Moll, a philologist of
sensitive temperament but sound heredity, who had always been
fond of flowers, at the age of 21 became engaged to a young lady
who wore large roses fastened in her jacket; from this time roses
became to him a sexual fetich, to kiss them caused erection, and
his erotic dreams were accompanied by visions of roses and the
hallucination of their odor; the engagement was finally broken
off and the rose-fetichism disappeared (_Untersuchungen über
Libido Sexualis_, bd. i, p. 540).
Such associations may naturally occur in the early experiences of even the
most normal persons. The degree to which they will influence the
subsequent life and thought and feeling depends on the degree of the
individual's morbid emotional receptivity, on the extent to which he is
hereditarily susceptible of abnormal deviation. Precocity is undoubtedly a
condition which favors such deviation; a child who is precociously and
abnormally sensitive to persons of the opposite sex before puberty has
established the normal channels of sexual desire, is peculiarly liable to
become the prey of a chance symbolism. All degrees of such symbolism are
possible. While the average insensitive person may fail to perceive them
at all, for the more alert and imaginative lover they are a fascinating
part of the highly charged crystallization of passion. A more nervously
exceptional person, when once such a symbolism has become firmly
implanted, may find it an absolutely essential element in the charm of a
beloved and charming person. Finally, for the individual who is thoroughly
unsound the symbol becomes generalized; a person is no longer desired at
all, being merely regarded as an appendage of the symbol, or being
dispensed with altogether; the symbol is alone desired, and is fully
adequate to impart by itself complete sexual gratification. While it must
be considered a morbid state to demand a symbol as an almost essential
part of the charm of a desired person, it is only in the final condition,
in which the symbol becomes all-sufficing, that we have a true and
complete perversion. In the less complete forms of symbolism it is still
the woman who is desired, and the ends of procreation may be served; when
the woman is ignored and the mere symbol is an adequate and even preferred
stimulus to detumescence the pathological condition becomes complete.
Krafft-Ebing regarded shoe-fetichism as, in large measure, a more or less
latent form of masochism, the foot or the shoe being the symbol of the
subjection and humiliation which the masochist feels in the presence of
the beloved object. Moll is also inclined to accept such a connection.
"The very numerous class of boot-and-shoe-fetichists,"
Krafft-Ebing wrote, "forms the transition to the manifestations
of another independent perversion, i.e., fetichism itself; but it
stands in closer relationship to the former.... It is highly
probable, and shown by a correct classification of the observed
cases, that the majority, and perhaps all of the cases of
shoe-fetichism, rest upon a basis of more or less conscious
masochistic desire for self-humiliation.... The majority or all
may be looked upon as instances of latent masochism (the motive
remaining unconscious) in which the _female foot or shoe, as the
masochist's fetich_, has acquired an independent significance."
(_Psychopathia Sexualis_, English translation of tenth edition,
pp. 159, et seq.) "Though Krafft-Ebing may not have cleared up
the whole matter," Moll remarks, "I regard his deductions
concerning the connection of foot-and-shoe fetichism to masochism
as the most important progress that has been made in the
theoretic study of sexual perversions.... In any case, the
connection is very frequent." (_Konträre Sexualempfindung_, third
edition, p. 306.)
It is quite easy to see that this supposed identity of masochism and
foot-fetichism forms a seductive theory. It is also undoubtedly true that
a masochist may very easily be inclined to find in his mistress's foot an
aid to the ecstatic self-abnegation which he desires to attain.[20] But
only confusion is attained by any general attempt to amalgamate masochism
and foot-fetichism. In the broad sense in which erotic symbolism is here
understood, both masochism and foot-fetichism may be coördinated as
symbolisms; for the masochist his self-humiliating impulses are the symbol
of ecstatic adoration; for the foot-fetichist his mistress's foot or shoe
is the concentrated symbol of all that is most beautiful and elegant and
feminine in her personality. But if in this sense they are coördinated,
they remain entirely distinct and have not even any necessary tendency to
become merged. Masochism merely simulates foot-fetichism; for the
masochist the boot is not strictly a symbol, it is only an instrument
which enables him to carry out his impulse; the true sexual symbol for him
is not the boot, but the emotion of self-subjection. For the
foot-fetichist, on the other hand, the foot or the shoe is not a mere
instrument, but a true symbol; the focus of his worship, an idealized
object which he is content to contemplate or reverently touch. He has no
necessary impulse to any self-degrading action, nor any constant emotion
of subjection. It may be noted that in the very typical case of
foot-fetichism which is presented to us in the person of Restif de la
Bretonne (_ante_, p. 18), he repeatedly speaks of "subjecting" the woman
for whom he feels this fetichistic adoration, and mentions that even when
still a child he especially admired a delicate and fairy-like girl in this
respect because she seemed to him easier to subjugate. Throughout life
Restif's attitude toward women was active and masculine, without the
slightest trace of masochism.[21]
To suppose that a fetichistic admiration of his mistress's foot is due to
a lover's latent desire to be kicked, is as unreasonable as it would be to
suppose that a fetichistic admiration for her hand indicated a latent
desire to have his ears boxed. In determining whether we are concerned
with a case of foot-fetichism or of masochism we must take into
consideration the whole of the subject's mental and emotional attitude. An
act, however definite, will not suffice as a criterion, for the same act
in different persons may have altogether different implications. To
amalgamate the two is the result of inadequate psychological analysis and
only leads to confusion.
It is, however, often very difficult to decide whether we are dealing with
a case which is predominantly one of masochism or of foot-fetichism. The
nature of the action desired, as we have seen, will not suffice to
determine the psychological character of the perversion. Krafft-Ebing
believed that the desire to be trodden on, very frequently experienced by
masochists, is absolutely symptomatic of masochism.[22] This is scarcely
the case. The desire to be trodden on may be fundamentally an erotic
symbolism, closely approaching foot-fetichism, and such slight indications
of masochism as appear may be merely a parasitic growth on the symbolism,
a growth perhaps more suggested by the circumstances involved in the
gratification of the abnormal desire than inherent in the innate impulse
of the subject. This may be illustrated by the interesting case of a very
intelligent man with whom I am well acquainted.
C.P., aged 38. Heredity good. Parents both healthy and normal.
Several children of the marriage, all sexually normal so far as
is known. C.P. is the youngest of the family and separated from
the others by an interval of many years. He was a seven-months'
child. He has always enjoyed good health and is active and
vigorous, both mentally and physically.
From the age of 9 or 10 to 14 he masturbated occasionally for the
sake of physical relief, having discovered the act for himself.
He was, however, quite innocent and knew nothing of sexual
matters, never having been initiated either by servants or by
other boys.
"When I encounter a woman who very strongly attracts me and whom
I very greatly admire," he writes, "my desire is never that I may
have sexual connection with her in the ordinary sense, but that I
may lie down upon the floor on my back and be trampled upon by
her. This curious desire is seldom present unless the object of
my admiration is really a lady, and of fine proportions. She must
be richly dressed--preferably in an evening gown, and wear dainty
high-heeled slippers, either quite open so as to show the curve
of the instep, or with only one strap or 'bar' across. The skirts
should be raised sufficiently to afford me the pleasure of seeing
her feet and a liberal amount of ankle, but in no case above the
knee, or the effect is greatly reduced. Although I often greatly
admire a woman's intellect and even person, sexually no other
part of her has any serious attraction for me except the leg,
from the knee downwards, and the foot, and these must be
exquisitely clothed. Given this condition, my desire amounts to a
wish to gratify my sexual sense by contact with the (to me)
attractive part of the woman. Comparatively few women have a leg
or foot sufficiently beautiful to my mind to excite any serious
or compelling desire, but when this is so, or I suspect it, I am
willing to spend any time or trouble to get her to tread upon me
and am anxious to be trampled on with the greatest severity.
"The treading should be inflicted for a few minutes all over the
chest, abdomen and groin, and lastly on the penis, which is, of
course, lying along the belly in a violent state of erection, and
consequently too hard for the treading to damage it. I also enjoy
being nearly strangled by a woman's foot.
"If the lady finally stands facing my head and places her slipper
upon my penis so that the high heel falls about where the penis
leaves the scrotum, the sole covering most of the rest of it and
with the other foot upon the abdomen, into which I can _see_ as
well as feel it sink as she shifts her weight from one foot to
the other, orgasm takes place almost at once. Emission under
these conditions is to me an agony of delight, during which
practically the lady's whole weight should rest upon the penis.
"One reason for my special pleasure in this method seems to be
that first the heel and afterwards the sole of the slipper as it
treads upon the penis greatly check the passage of the semen and
consequently the pleasure is considerably prolonged. There is
also a curious mental side to the affair. I love to imagine that
the lady who is treading upon me is my mistress and I her slave,
and that she is doing it to punish me for some fault, or to give
_herself_ (not me) pleasure.
"It follows that the greater the contempt and severity with which
I am 'punished,' the greater becomes my pleasure. The idea of
'punishment' or 'slavery' is seldom aroused except when I have
great difficulty in accomplishing my desire and the treader is
more than usually handsome and heavy and the trampling
mercilessly inflicted. I have been trampled so long and so
mercilessly several times, that I have flinched each time the
slipper pressed its way into my aching body and have been black
and blue for days afterwards. I take the greatest interest in
leading ladies on to do this for me where I think I will not
offend, and have been surprisingly successful. I must have lain
beneath the feet of quite a hundred women, many of them of good
social position, who would never dream of permitting any ordinary
sexual intercourse, but who have been so interested or amused by
the idea as to do it for me--many of them over and over again. It
is perhaps needless to say that none of my own or the ladies'
clothing is ever removed, or disarranged, for the accomplishment
of orgasm in this manner. After a long and varied experience, I
may say that my favorite weight is 10 to 11 stone, and that
black, very high-heeled slippers, in combination with tan silk
stockings, seem to give me the greatest pleasure and create in me
the strongest desires.
"Boots, or outdoor shoes, do not attract me to anything like the
same degree, although I have, upon several occasions, enjoyed
myself fairly well by their use. Nude women repel me, and I find
no pleasure in seeing a woman in tights. I am not averse to
normal sexual connection and occasionally employ it. To me,
however, the pleasure is far inferior to that of being trampled
upon. I also derive keen pleasure--and usually have a strong
erection--from seeing a woman, dressed as I have described, tread
upon anything which yields under her foot--such as the seat of a
carriage, the cushions of a punt, a footstool, etc., and I enjoy
seeing her crush flowers by treading upon them. I have often
strolled along in the wake of some handsome lady at a picnic or
garden party, for the pleasure of seeing the grass upon which she
has trodden rise slowly again after her foot has pressed it. I
delight also to see a carriage sway as a woman leaves or enters
it--anything which needs the pressure of the foot.
"To pass now to the origin of this direction of my feelings.
"Even in early childhood I admired pretty feminine foot-gear, and
in the contemplation of it experienced vague sensations which I
now recognize as sexual. When a lad of 14 or so, I stayed a good
deal at the house of some intimate friends of my parents, the
daughter of the house--an only child--a beautiful and powerful
girl, about six years my senior, being my special chum. This girl
was always daintily dressed, and having most lovely feet and
ankles not unnaturally knew it. Whenever possible she dressed so
as to show off their beauty to the best advantage--rather short
skirts and usually little high-heeled slippers--and was not
averse to showing them in a most distractingly coquettish manner.
She seemed to have a passion for treading upon things which would
scrunch or yield under her foot, such as flowers, little
windfallen apples and pears, acorns, etc., or heaps of hay, straw
or cut grass. As we wandered about the gardens--for we were left
to do exactly as we liked--I got quite accustomed to seeing her
hunt out and tread upon such things, and used to chaff her about
it. At that time I was--as I am still--fond of lying at full
length on a thick hearthrug before a good fire. One evening as I
was lying in this way and we were alone, A. crossed the room to
reach a bangle from the mantelpiece. Instead of reaching over me,
she playfully stepped upon my body, saying that she would show me
how the hay and straw felt. Naturally I fell in with the joke and
laughed. After standing upon me a few moments she raised her
skirt slightly and, holding on to the mantelpiece for support,
stretched out one dainty foot in its brown silk stocking and
high-heeled slipper to the blaze to warm, while looking down and
laughing at my scarlet, excited face. She was a perfectly frank
and charming girl, and I feel pretty certain that, although she
evidently enjoyed my excitement and the feeling of my body
yielding under her feet, she did not on this first occasion
clearly understand my condition; nor can I remember that, though
the desire for sexual gratification drove me nearly mad, it
appeared to awaken in her any reciprocal feeling. I took hold of
her raised foot and, after kissing it, guided it by an absolutely
irresistible impulse on to my penis, which was as hard as wood
and seemed almost bursting. Almost at the moment that her weight
was thrown upon it, orgasm took place for the first time in my
life thoroughly and effectively. No description can give any idea
of what I felt--I only know that from that moment my distorted
sexual focus was fixed forever. Numberless times, after that
evening, I felt the weight of her dainty slippers, and nothing
will ever cause the memory of the pleasure she thus gave me to
fade. I know that A. came to enjoy treading upon me, as much as I
enjoyed having her do it. She had a liberal dress allowance and,
seeing the pleasure they gave me, she was always buying pretty
stockings and ravishing slippers with the highest and most
slender Louis heels she could find and would show them to me with
the greatest glee, urging me to lie down that she might try them
on me. She confessed that she loved to see and feel them sink
into my body as she trod upon me and enjoyed the crunch of the
muscles under her heel as she moved about. After some minutes of
this, I always guided her slipper on to my penis, and she would
tread carefully, but with her whole weight--probably about 9
stone--and watch me with flashing eyes, flushed cheeks, and
quivering lips, as she felt--as she must have done plainly--the
throbbing and swelling of my penis under her foot as emission
took place. I have not the smallest doubt that orgasm took place
simultaneously with her, though we never at any time spoke openly
of it. This went on for several years on almost every favorable
opportunity we had, and after a month or two of separation
sometimes four or five times during a single day. Several times
during A.'s absence I masturbated by getting her slipper and
pressing it with all my strength against the penis while
imagining that she was treading upon me. The pleasure was, of
course, very inferior to her attentions. There was never at any
time between us any question of normal sexual intercourse, and we
were both well content to let things drift as they were.
"A little after 20 I went abroad, and on my return about three
years later I found her married. Although we met often, the
subject was never alluded to, though we remained firm friends. I
confess I often, when I could do so without being seen, looked
longingly at her feet and would have gladly accepted the pleasure
she could have given me by an occasional resumption of our
strange practice--but it never came.
"I went abroad again, and now neither she nor her husband are
alive and leave no issue. From time to time I have had occasional
relations with prostitutes, but always in this manner, though I
much prefer to find some lady of or above my own social position
who will do the treading for me. This is, however, interestingly
difficult.
"Out of say a hundred women (which at home and abroad is what I
should estimate must have stood upon my body) I should say quite
80 or 85 were _not_ prostitutes. Certainly not more than 10 to 12
shared any _sexual_ excitement, but while they were evidently
excited they were not gratified. A. alone, so far as I know, had
complete sexual satisfaction of it. I have never asked a woman in
so many words to tread upon me for the purpose of gratifying my
sexual desires (prostitutes excepted), but have always tempted
them to do it in a jocular or teasing manner, and it is very
doubtful if more than a few (married) women really understood,
even after they had given me the extreme pleasure, that they had
done so, because any flushing and movement on my part under their
feet was not unnaturally put down to the trampling to which they
were subjecting me, and it was easy for me to guide the foot as
often as was necessary on to the penis till orgasm took place,
and even to keep it there by laying hold of the other one to kiss
it or on some other pretext during emission. Of course many
understood after once doing it (most have done it only once) what
I was at, and, although they did not ever discuss it nor did I,
they were not unwilling to give me as many treadings as I cared
to playfully suggest. I don't think they got any pleasure
sexually out of it themselves, though they could see plainly that
I did, and they did not object to give it me. I have spent as
long as twelve months with some women working gradually nearer
and nearer to my desire--often getting what I want in the end,
but more often failing. I _never_ risk it till I am certain it
would be safe to ask it, and have never had a serious rebuff. In
very many cases I should say the doing of what I want has simply
been regarded by the woman as gratifying a silly and perhaps
amusing whim, in which, beyond the novelty of treading on a man's
body, she has taken but little interest.
"As in normal seduction, the endeavor to win the woman over to do
what I want without arousing her antagonism is a great part of
the charm to me, and naturally the better her social position the
more difficult this becomes--and the more attractive. I have
found that in three instances prostitutes have performed the same
office for other men and knew all about it. It is not
uninteresting to note that these three women were all of fine,
massive build--one standing about 5 feet 10 inches and weighing
nearly 14 stone--but with comparatively uninteresting faces. The
weight, build and clothing count for a good deal in exciting me.
I find that a sudden check to a man at the supreme moment of
sexual pleasure tends to heighten and prolong the pleasure. My
physical satisfaction is due to the fact that by getting the lady
to stand with all her weight upon my penis (as it lies between
her foot and the soft bed of my own body into which it is deeply
pressed) the act of emission is enormously prolonged, with
corresponding enjoyment. For this reason also I prefer a very
high-heeled slipper. The seminal fluid has to be forced past two
separate obstacles--the pressure of the heel close at the root of
the penis and afterwards the ball of the foot which compresses
the outer half, leaving a free portion between them under the
arched sole of the slipper. I may add that the pleasure is
greatly increased by the retention of the urine, and I always try
to retain as much water as I dare. I have an unconquerable
aversion to red in slippers or stockings; it will even cause
impotence. Why, I know not. Strange as it may seem, although pain
and bruising are often inflicted by a severe treading, I have
never been in any way injured by the practice, and my pleasure in
it seems not to diminish by constant repetition. The comparative
difficulty of obtaining the pleasure from just the woman I want
has a never-ending, if inexplicable, charm for me."
It will be observed that in this case special importance is
attached to shoes with high heels, and the subject considers that
the pressure of such shoes is for mechanical reasons most
favorable for procuring ejaculation. Nearly all heterosexual
shoe-fetichists seem, however, to be equally attracted by high
heels. Restif de la Bretonne frequently referred to this point,
and he gave a number of reasons for the attractiveness of high
heels: (1) They are unlike men's boots and, therefore, have a
sexual fascination; (2) they make the leg and foot look more
charming; (3) they give a less bold and more sylph-like character
to the walk; (4) they keep the feet clean. (Restif de la
Bretonne, _Nuits de Paris_, vol. v, quoted in Preface to his _Mes
Inscriptions_, p. ciii.) It is doubtless the first reason--the
fact that high heels are a kind of secondary sexual
character--which is most generally potent in this attraction.
The foregoing history, while it very distinctly brings before us a case of
erotic symbolism, is not strictly an example of shoe-fetichism. The
symbolism is more complex. The focus of beauty in a desirable woman is
transferred and concentrated in the region below the knee; in that sense
we have foot-fetichism. But the act of coitus itself is also symbolically
transferred. Not only has the foot become the symbol of the vulva, but
trampling has become the symbol of coitus; intercourse takes place
symbolically _per pedem_. It is a result of this symbolization of the foot
and of trampling that all acts of treading take on a new and symbolical
sexual charm. The element of masochism--of pleasure in being a woman's
slave--is a parasitic growth; that is to say, it is not founded in the
subject's constitution, but chances to have found a favorable soil in the
special circumstances under which his sexual life developed. It is not
primary, but secondary, and remains an unimportant and merely occasional
element.
It may be instructive to bring forward for comparison a case in which also
we have a symbolism involving boot-fetichism, but extending beyond it. In
this case there is a basis of inversion (as is not infrequent in erotic
symbolisms), but from the present point of view the psychological
significance of the case remains the same.
A.N., aged 29, unmarried, healthy, though not robust, and without
any known hereditary taint. Has followed various avocations
without taking great interest in them, but has shown some
literary ability.
"I am an Englishman," his own narrative runs, "the third of three
children. At my birth my father was 41 and my mother 34. My
mother died of cancer when I was 15. My father is still alive, a
reserved man, who still nurses his sorrow for his wife's death. I
have no reason to believe my parents anything but normal and
useful members of society. My sister is normal and happily
married. My brother I have reason to believe to be an invert.
"A horoscope cast for me describes me in a way I think correct,
and so do my friends: 'A mild, obliging, gentle, amiable person,
with many fine traits of character; timid in nature, fond of
society, loving peace and quietude, delighting in warm and close
friendships. There is much that is firm, steadfast and
industrious, some self-love, a good deal of diplomacy, a little
that is subtle, or what is called finesse. You are reserved with
those you dislike. There is a serious and sad side to your
character; you are very thoughtful and contemplative when in
these moods. But you are not pessimistic. You have superior
abilities, for they are intuitively intellectual. There is a cold
reticence which restrains generous impulses and which inclines to
acquisitiveness; it will make you deliberate, inventive, adding
self-esteem, some vanity.'
"At an early age I was left much alone in the nursery and there
contracted the habit of masturbation long before the age of
puberty. I use the word 'masturbation' for want of a better,
though it may not quite describe my case. I have never used my
hand to the penis. As far back as I can remember I have had what
a Frenchman has described as 'le fetichisme de la chaussure,' and
in those early days, before I was 6 years old, I would put on my
father's boots, taken from a cupboard at hand, and then tying or
strapping my legs together would produce an erection, and all the
pleasurable feelings experienced, I suppose, by means of
masturbation. I always did this secretly, but couldn't tell why.
I continued this practice on and off all my boyhood and youth.
When I discovered the first emission I was much surprised. I
always did this thing without loosening my trousers. As to how
these feelings arose I am totally unable to say. I can't remember
being without such feelings, and they seem to me perfectly
normal. The sight, or even thought, of high boots, or leggings,
especially if well polished or in patent leather, would set all
my sexual passions aflame, and does yet. As a boy my great desire
was to wear these things. A soldier in boots and spurs, a groom
in tops, or even an errand-boy in patent leather leggings,
fascinated me, and to this day, despite reason and everything
else. The sight of such things produced an erection. An emission
I could always produce by tightly tying my legs together, but
only when wearing boots, and preferably leggings, which when I
had pocket money I bought for this purpose. (At the present
moment I have five pairs in the house and two pairs of high
boots, quite unjustified by ordinary use.) This habit I lapse
into yet at times. The smell of leather affects me, but I never
know how far this may be due to association with boots; the smell
suggests the image. Restraint by a leather strap is more exciting
than by cords. Erotic dreams always take the form of restraint on
the limbs when booted.
"Uniforms and liveries have a great temptation for me, but only
when of a tight-fitting nature and smart, as soldiers', grooms',
etc., but not sailors'; most powerfully when the person is in
boots or leggings and breeches.
"I was a quiet, sensitive boy, taking no part in games or sports.
Have always been indifferent to them. I made few friends, but
didn't want them. The craving for friendship came much later,
after I was 21. I was a day boy at a private school, and never
had any conversation with any boy on sexual matters, though I was
dimly aware of much 'nastiness' about the school. I knew nothing
of sodomy. But all these things were repulsive to me,
notwithstanding my secret practices. I was a 'good boy.'
"Up to the age of 21 I was perfectly satisfied with my own
society, something of a prig, fond of books and reading, etc. I
was and ever have been absolutely insensible to the influence of
the other sex. I am not a woman hater, and take intellectual
pleasure in the society of certain ladies, but they are nearly
all much older than myself. I have a strong repulsion from sexual
relations with women. I should not mind being married for the
sake of companionship and for the sake of having boys of my own.
But the sexual act would frighten me. I could not in my present
frame of mind go to bed with a woman. Yet I feel an immense envy
of my married friends in that they are able to give out, and find
satisfaction for, their affection in a way that is quite
impossible for me. I picture certain boys in the place of the
wife.
"I am now only happy in the society of men younger than myself,
age 17 to (say) 23 or 24, youths with smooth faces, or first sign
of hair on lip, well groomed, slightly effeminate in feature, of
sympathetic, perhaps weak nature. I feel I want to help them, do
something for them, devote myself entirely to their welfare.
"With such there is no fixed line between friendship and love. I
yearn for intimacy with particular friends, but never dare
express it. I find so many people object to any strong expression
of feeling that I dare not run the risk of appearing ridiculous
in the eyes of these desired intimates.
"I have no desire for _pædicatio_, but the idea itself does not
repulse me or seem unnatural, though personally it repels me a
little. But I think this to be mere prejudice on my part, which
might be broken down if the loved person showed a willingness to
act a passive part. I should never dare to make an advance,
however.
"I am restrained by moral and religious considerations from
making my real feelings known, and I feel I should sink in my own
estimation if I gave way, though my natural desire is to do so.
In the face of opportunities (not I mean of _pædicatio_, but of
expression of excessive affection, etc.), or what might be such,
I always fail to speak lest I should forfeit the esteem of the
other person. I have a feeling of surprise when any one I like
evinces a liking for me. I feel that those I love are
immeasurably my superiors, though my reason may tell me it is not
so. I would grovel at their feet, do anything to win a smile from
them, or to make them give me their company.
"Ordinary bodily contact with the boy I love gives me most
exquisite pleasure, and I never lose an opportunity of bringing
such contact about when it can be done naturally. I feel an
immense desire to embrace, kiss, squeeze, etc., the person, to
generally maul him, and say nice things--the kind of things a man
usually says to a woman. A handshake, the mere presence of the
person, makes me happy and content.
"I can say with the Albanian: 'If I find myself in the presence
of the beloved, I rest absorbed in gazing on him. Absent, I think
of nought but him. If the beloved unexpectedly appears I fall
into confusion. My heart beats faster. I have eyes and ears only
for the beloved.'
"I feel that my capacity of affection is finer and more spiritual
than that which commonly subsists between persons of different
sexes. And so, while trying to fight my instincts by religion, I
find my natural feeling to be part of my religion, and its
highest expression. In this sense I can speak from experience in
my own case, and more especially in that of my brother, that what
you have said about philanthropic activity resulting from
repressed homosexuality is very true indeed. I can say with one
of your female cases: 'Love is to me a religion. The very nature
of my affection for my friends precludes the possibility of any
element entering into it which is not absolutely pure and
sacred.' I am, however, madly jealous. I want entire possession,
and I can't bear for a moment that any one I do not care for
should know the person I love.
"I am never attracted by men older than myself. The youths who
attract me may be of any class, though preferably, I think, of a
class a little lower than myself. I am not quite sure of this,
however, as circumstances may have contributed more than
deliberate choice to bring certain youths under my notice. Those
who have exercised the most powerful influence on me have been an
Oxford undergraduate, a barber's assistant, and a plumber's
apprentice. Though naturally fond of intellectual society, I do
not ask for intellect in those I love. It goes for nothing. I
always prefer their company to that of the most educated persons.
This preference has alienated me to some extent from more refined
and educated circles that formerly I was intimate with.
"I have been led entirely out of my old habits by association
with younger friends, and now do things which before I should
never have dreamed of doing. My thoughts now are always with
certain youths, and if they speak of leaving the town, or in any
way talk of a future that I cannot share, I suffer horrid
sinkings of the heart and depression of spirits."
This case, while it concerns a person of quite different temperament, with
a more innate predisposition to specific perversions, is yet in many
respects analogous to the previous case. There is boot-fetichism; nothing
is felt to be so attractive as the foot-gear, and there is also at the
same time more than this; there is the attraction of repression and
constraint developed into a sexual symbol. In C.P.'s case that symbolism
arises from the experience of an abnormal heterosexual relationship; in
A.N.'s case it is founded on auto-erotic experiences associated with
inversion; in both alike the entire symbolism has become diffused and
generalized.
In the two cases just brought forward we have an erotic symbolism of act
founded on, and closely associated with, an erotic symbolism of object. It
may be instructive to bring forward another case in which no fetichistic
feeling toward an object can be traced, but an erotic symbolism still
clearly exists. In this case pain, even when self-inflicted, has acquired
a symbolic value as a stimulus to tumescence, without any element of
masochism. Such a case serves to indicate how the sexual attraction of
pain is really a special case of the erotic symbolism with which we are
here concerned.
A.W., aged 50, a writer and lecturer, physically and mentally
energetic and enjoying good health. He is, however, very
emotional and of nervous temperament, but self-controlled. Though
physically well developed, the sexual organs are small. He is
married to an attractive woman, to whom he is much attached, and
has two healthy children.
At 10 or 12 years of age he had a frequent desire to be whipped,
his parents never having struck him, and on one occasion he asked
a brother to go with him to the closet to get him to whip him on
the posterior; but on arrival he was too shy to make the request.
He did not recognize the cause of these desires, knowing nothing
of such things except from the misinformation of his
school-fellows' talk. As far as he can remember, he was an
entirely normal, healthy boy up to the age of about 15, when his
attention was arrested by an advertisement of a quack medicine
for the results of "youthful excesses."
Being a city boy, he was unfamiliar with the coupling even of
animals, had never had a conscious erection and did not know of
frictional excitement. Experiment, however, resulted in an
orgasm, and, though believing that it was wicked or at least weak
and degrading, he indulged in masturbation at intervals, usually
about six times a month, and has continued even up to the
present.
He had an abnormally small opening in the prepuce, making the
uncovering of the glans almost impossible. (At the age of about
37, he himself slit the prepuce by three or four cuts of a
scissors at intervals of about ten days. This was followed by a
marked decrease in desire, especially as he shortly afterwards
learned the importance of local cleanliness.) While in college at
about the age of 19 he began to have nocturnal emissions
occasionally and once or twice a week when at stool. Alarmed by
these, he consulted a physician, who warned him of the danger,
gave him bromide and prescribed cold bathing of the parts, with a
hard, cool bed. These stopped the emissions.
He never had connection with women until the age of about 25, and
then only three times until his marriage at 30 years of age,
being deterred partly by conscientious scruples, but more by
shyness and convention, and deriving very little pleasure from
these instances. Even since marriage he has derived more pleasure
from sexual excitement than from coitus, and can maintain
erection for as long as two hours.
He has always been accustomed to torture himself in various
ingenious ways, nearly always connected with sex. He would burn
his skin deeply with red hot wire in inconspicuous places. These
and similar acts were generally followed by manual excitation
nearly always brought to a climax.
He considers that he is attracted to refined and intellectual
women. But he is without very ardent desires, having several
times gone to bed with attractive women who stripped themselves
naked, but without attempting any sexual intercourse with them.
He became interested in the "Karezza" theory and has tried to
practice it with his wife, but could never entirely control the
emission.
He has hired a masseur to whip him, as children are whipped, with
a heavy dog whip, which caused pleasurable excitement. During
this time he had relations with his wife generally about once a
week without any great ecstasy. She was cold and sexually slow,
owing to conventional sex repression and to an idea that the
whole thing was "like animals" and to fear of child-bearing,
usually necessitating the use of a cover or withdrawal. It was
only eight years after their marriage that she desired and
obtained a child. During these years he would often stick pins
through his mammæ and tie them together by a string round the
pins drawn so short as to cause great pain and then indulge
himself in the sexual act. He used strong wooden clips with a
tack fixed in them, so as to pierce and pinch the mammæ, and once
he drove a pin entirely through the penis itself, then obtaining
orgasm by friction. He was never able to get an automatic
emission in this way, though he often tried, not even by walking
briskly during an erection.
In another class of cases a purely ideal symbolism may be present by means
of a fetich which acts as a powerful stimulus without itself being felt to
possess any attraction. A good illustration of this condition is furnished
by a case which has been communicated to me by a medical correspondent in
New Zealand.
"The patient went out to South Africa as a trooper with the
contingent from New Zealand, throwing up a good position in an
office to do so. He had never had any trouble as regards
connection with women before going out to South Africa. While in
active service at the front he sustained a nasty fall from his
horse, breaking his leg. He was unconscious for four days, and
was then invalided down to Cape Town. Here he rapidly got well,
and his accustomed health returning to him he started having what
he terms 'a good time.' He repeatedly went to brothels, but was
unable to have more than a temporary erection, and no ejaculation
would take place. In one of these places he was in company with a
drunken trooper, who suggested that they should perform the
sexual act with their boots and spurs (only) on. My patient, who
was also drunk, readily assented, and to his surprise was enabled
to perform the act of copulation without any difficulty at all.
He has repeatedly tried since to perform the act without any
spurs, but is quite unable to do so; with the spurs he has no
difficulty at all in obtaining all the gratification he desires.
His general health is good. His mother was an extremely nervous
woman, and so is his sister. His father died when he was quite
young. His only other relation in the colony is a married sister,
who seems to enjoy vigorous health."
The consideration of the cases here brought forward may suffice to show
that beyond those fetichisms which find their satisfaction in the
contemplation of a part of the body or a garment, there is a more subtle
symbolism. The foot is a center of force, an agent for exerting pressure,
and thus it furnishes a point of departure not alone for the merely static
sexual fetich, but for a dynamic erotic symbolization. The energy of its
movements becomes a substitute for the energy of the sexual organs
themselves in coitus, and exerts the same kind of fascination. The young
girl (page 35) "who seemed to have a passion for treading upon things
which would scrunch or yield under her foot," already possessed the germs
of an erotic symbolism which, under the influence of circumstances in
which she herself took an active part, developed into an adequate method
of sexual gratification.[23] The youth who was her partner learned, in the
same way, to find an erotic symbolism in all the pressure reactions of
attractive feminine feet, the swaying of a carriage beneath their weight,
the crushing of the flowers on which they tread, the slow rising of the
grass which they have pressed. Here we have a symbolism which is
altogether different from that fetichism which adores a definite object;
it is a dynamic symbolism finding its gratification in the spectacle of
movements which ideally recall the fundamental rhythm and pressure
reactions of the sexual process.
We may trace a very similar erotic symbolism in an absolutely normal form.
The fascination of clothes in the lover's eyes is no doubt a complex
phenomenon, but in part it rests on the aptitudes of a woman's garments to
express vaguely a dynamic symbolism which must always remain indefinite
and elusive, and on that account always possess fascination. No one has so
acutely described this symbolism as Herrick, often an admirable
psychologist in matters of sexual attractiveness. Especially instructive
in this respect are his poems, "Delight in Disorder," "Upon Julia's
Clothes," and notably "Julia's Petticoat." "A sweet disorder in the
dress," he tells us, "kindles in clothes a wantonness;" it is not on the
garment itself, but on the character of its movement that he insists; on
the "erring lace," the "winning wave" of the "tempestuous petticoat;" he
speaks of the "liquefaction" of clothes, their "brave vibration each way
free," and of Julia's petticoat he remarks with a more specific symbolism
still,
"Sometimes 'twould pant and sigh and heave,
As if to stir it scarce had leave;
But having got it, thereupon,
'Twould make a brave expansion."
In the play of the beloved woman's garment, he sees the whole process of
the central act of sex, with its repressions and expansions, and at the
sight is himself ready to "fall into a swoon."
FOOTNOTES:
[13] G. Stanley Hall, _Adolescence_, vol. ii, p. 113. It will be noted
that the hand does not appear among the parts of the body which are
normally of supreme interest. An interest in the hand is by no means
uncommon (it may be noted, for instance, in the course of History XII in
Appendix B to vol. iii of these _Studies_), but the hand does not possess
the mystery which envelops the foot, and hand-fetichism is very much less
frequent than foot-fetichism, while glove-fetichism is remarkably rare. An
interesting case of hand-fetichism, scarcely reaching morbid intensity, is
recorded by Binet, _Etudes de Psychologie Expérimentale_, pp. 13-19; and
see Krafft-Ebing, _Op. cit._, pp. 214 et seq.
[14] _Mémoires_, vol. i, Chapter VII.
[15] Among leading English novelists Hardy shows an unusual but by no
means predominant interest in the feet and shoes of his heroines; see,
e.g., the observations of the cobbler in _Under the Greenwood Tree_,
Chapter III. A chapter in Goethe's _Wahlverwandtschaften_ (Part I, Chapter
II) contains an episode involving the charm of the foot and the kissing of
the beloved's shoe.
[16] Schinz, "Philosophie des Conventions Sociales," _Revue
Philosophique_, June, 1903, p. 626. Mirabeau mentions in his _Erotika
Biblion_ that modern Greek women sometimes use their feet to provoke
orgasm in their lovers. I may add that simultaneous mutual masturbation by
means of the feet is not unknown to-day, and I have been told by an
English shoe-fetichist that he at one time was accustomed to practice this
with a married lady (Brazilian)--she with slippers on and he without--who
derived gratification equal to his own.
[17] Jacoby (loc. cit. pp. 796-7) gives a large number of references to
Ovid's works bearing on this point. "In reading him," he remarks, "one is
inclined to say that the psychology of the Romans was closely allied to
that of the Chinese."
[18] R. Kleinpaul, _Sprache ohne Worte_, p. 308. See also Moll, _Konträre
Sexualempfindung_, third edition, pp. 306-308. Bloch brings together many
interesting references bearing on the ancient sexual and religious
symbolism of the shoe, _Beiträge zur Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis_,
Teil II, p. 324.
[19] Jacoby (loc. cit. p. 797) appears to regard shoe-fetichism as a true
atavism: "The sexual adoration of feminine foot-gear," he concludes,
"perhaps the most enigmatic and certainly the most singular of
degenerative insanities, is thus merely a form of atavism, the return of
the degenerate to the very ancient and primitive psychology which we no
longer understand and are no longer capable of feeling."
[20] Moll has reported in detail (_Untersuchungen über die Libido
Sexualis_, bd. i, Teil II, pp. 320-324) a case which both he and
Krafft-Ebing regard as illustrative of the connection between
boot-fetichism and masochism. It is essentially a case of masochism,
though manifesting itself almost exclusively in the desire to perform
humiliating acts in connection with the attractive person's boots.
[21] Krafft-Ebing goes so far as to assert (_Psychopathia Sexualis_,
English translation of tenth edition, p. 174) that "when in cases of
shoe-fetichism the female shoe appears alone as the excitant of sexual
desire one is justified in presuming that masochistic motives have
remained latent.... Latent masochism may always be assumed as the
unconscious motive." In this way he hopelessly misinterprets some of his
own cases.
[22] Krafft-Ebing goes so far as to assert (_Psychopathia Sexualis_,
English translation, pp. 159 and 174). Yet some of the cases he brings
forward (e.g., Coxe's as quoted by Hammond) show no sign of masochism,
since, according to Krafft-Ebing's own definition (p. 116), the idea of
subjugation by the opposite sex is of the essence of masochism.
[23] Her actions suggest that there is often a latent sexual consciousness
in regard to the feet in women, atavistic or pseudo-atavistic, and
corresponding to the sexual attraction which the feet formerly aroused,
almost normally, in men. This is also suggested by the case, referred to
by Shufeldt, of an unmarried woman, belonging to a family exhibiting in a
high degree both erotic and neurotic traits, who had "a certain
uncontrollable fascination for shoes. She delights in new shoes, and
changes her shoes all day long at regular intervals of three hours each.
She keeps this row of shoes out in plain sight in her apartment." (R.W.
Shufeldt, "On a Case of Female Impotency," 1896, p. 10.)
III.
Scatalogic Symbolism--Urolagnia--Coprolagnia--The Ascetic Attitude Towards
the Flesh--Normal basis of Scatalogic Symbolism--Scatalogic Conceptions
Among Primitive Peoples--Urine as a Primitive Holy Water--Sacredness of
Animal Excreta--Scatalogy in Folk-lore--The Obscene as Derived from the
Mythological--The Immature Sexual Impulse Tends to Manifest Itself in
Scatalogic Forms--The basis of Physiological Connection Between the
Urinary and Genital Spheres--Urinary Fetichism Sometimes Normal in
Animals--The Urolagnia of Masochists--The Scatalogy of Saints--Urolagnia
More Often a Symbolism of Act Than a Symbolism of Object--Only
Occasionally an Olfactory Fetichism--Comparative Rarity of
Coprolagnia--Influence of Nates Fetichism as a Transition to
Coprolagnia--Ideal Coprolagnia--Olfactory Coprolagnia--Urolagnia and
Coprolagnia as Symbols of Coitus.
We meet with another group of erotic symbolisms--alike symbolisms of
object and of act--in connection with the two functions adjoining the
anatomical sexual focus: the urinary and alvine excretory functions. These
are sometimes termed the scatalogical group, with the two subdivisions of
urolagnia and Coprolagnia.[24] _Inter fæces et urinam nascimur_ is an
ancient text which has served the ascetic preachers of old for many
discourses on the littleness of man and the meanness of that reproductive
power which plays so large a part in man's life. "The stupid bungle of
Nature," a correspondent writes, "whereby the generative organs serve as a
means of relieving the bladder, is doubtless responsible for much of the
disgust which those organs excite in some minds."
At the same time, it is necessary to point out, such reflex influence may
act not in one direction only, but also in the reverse direction. From
the standpoint of ascetic contemplation eager to belittle humanity, the
excretory centers may cast dishonor upon the genital center which they
adjoin. From the more ecstatic standpoint of the impassioned lover, eager
to magnify the charm of the woman he worships, it is not impossible for
the excretory centers to take on some charm from the irradiating center of
sex which they enclose.
Even normally such a process is traceable. The normal lover may not
idealize the excretory functions of his mistress, but the fact that he
finds no repulsion in the most intimate contacts and feels no disgust at
the proximity of the excretory orifices or the existence of their
functions, indicates that the idealization of love has exerted at all
events a neutralizing influence; indeed, the presence of an acute
sensibility to the disturbing influence of this proximity of the excretory
orifices and their functions must be considered abnormal; Swift's
"Strephon and Chloe"--with the conviction underlying it that it is an easy
matter for the excretory functions to drown the possibilities of
love--could only have proceeded from a morbidly sensitive brain.[25]
A more than mere neutralizing influence, a positively idealizing influence
of the sexual focus on the excretory processes adjoining it, may take
place in the lover's mind without the normal variations of sexual
attraction being over-passed, and even without the creation of an
excretory fetichism.
Reflections of this attitude may be found in the poets. In the
_Song of Songs_ the lover says of his mistress, "Thy navel is
like a round goblet, wherein no mingled wine is wanting;" in his
lyric "To Dianeme," Herrick says with clear reference to the
mons veneris:--
"Show me that hill where smiling love doth sit,
Having a living fountain under it;"
and in the very numerous poems in various languages which have
more or less obscurely dealt with the rose as the emblem of the
feminine pudenda there are occasional references to the stream
which guards or presides over the rose. It may, indeed, be
recalled that even in the name _nymphæ_ anatomists commonly apply
to the _labia minora_ there is generally believed to be a poetic
allusion to the Nymphs who presided over streams, since the
_labia minora_ exert an influence on the direction of the urinary
stream.
In _Wilhelm Meister_ (Part I, Chapter XV), Goethe, on the basis
of his own personal experiences, describes his hero's emotions in
the humble surroundings of Marianne's little room as compared
with the stateliness and order of his own home. "It seemed to him
when he had here to remove her stays in order to reach the
harpsichord, there to lay her skirt on the bed before he could
seat himself, when she herself with unembarrassed frankness would
make no attempt to conceal from him many natural acts which
people are accustomed to hide from others out of decency--it
seemed to him, I say, that he became bound to her by invisible
bands." We are told of Wordsworth (Findlay's _Recollections of De
Quincey_, p. 36) that he read _Wilhelm Meister_ till "he came to
the scene where the hero, in his mistress's bedroom, becomes
sentimental over her dirty towels, etc., which struck him with
such disgust that he flung the book out of his hand, would never
look at it again, and declared that surely no English lady would
ever read such a work." I have, however, heard a woman of high
intellectual distinction refer to the peculiar truth and beauty
of this very passage.
In one of his latest novels, _Les Rencontres de M. de Bréot_,
Henri de Régnier, one of the most notable of recent French
novelists, narrates an episode bearing on the matter before us. A
personage of the story is sitting for a moment in a dark grotto
during a night fête in a nobleman's park, when two ladies enter
and laughingly proceed to raise their garments and accomplish a
natural necessity. The man in the background, suddenly overcome
by a sexual impulse, starts forward; one lady runs away, the
other, whom he detains, offers little resistance to his advances.
To M. de Bréot, whom he shortly after encounters, he exclaims,
abashed at his own actions: "Why did I not flee? But could I
imagine that the spectacle of so disgusting a function would have
any other effect than to give me a humble opinion of human
nature?" M. de Bréot, however, in proceeding to reproach his
interlocutor for his inconsiderate temerity, observes: "What you
tell me, sir, does not entirely surprise me. Nature has placed
very various instincts within us, and the impulse that led you to
what you have just now done is not so peculiar as you think. One
may be a very estimable man and yet love women even in what is
lowliest in their bodies." In harmony with this passage from
Régnier's novel are the remarks of a correspondent who writes to
me of the function of urination that it "appeals sexually to most
normal individuals. My own observations and inquiries prove this.
Women themselves instinctively feel it. The secrecy surrounding
the matter lends, too, I think, a sexual interest."
The fact that scatalogic processes may in some degree exert an
attraction even in normal love has been especially emphasized by
Bloch (_Beiträge zur Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis_, Teil
II, pp. 222, et seq.): "The man whose intellect and æsthetic
sense has been 'clouded by the sexual impulse' sees these things
in an entirely different light from him who has not been overcome
by the intoxication of love. For him they are idealized (sit
venia verbo) since they are a part of the beloved person, and in
consequence associated with love." Bloch quotes the _Memoiren
einer Sängerin_ (a book which is said to be, though this seems
doubtful, genuinely autobiographical) in the same sense: "A man
who falls in love with a girl is not dragged out of his poetic
sphere by the thought that his beloved must relieve certain
natural necessities every day. It seems, indeed, to him to be
just the opposite. If one loves a person one finds nothing
obscene or disgusting in the object that pleases me." The
opposite attitude is probably in extreme cases due to the
influence of a neurotic or morbidly sensitive temperament. Swift
possessed such a temperament. The possession of a similar
temperament is doubtless responsible for the little prose poem,
"L'Extase," in which Huysmans in his first book, _Le Drageloir á
Epices_, has written an attenuated version of "Strephon and
Chloe" to express the disillusionment of love; the lover lies in
a wood clasping the hand of the beloved with rapturous emotion;
"suddenly she rose, disengaged her hand, disappeared in the
bushes, and I heard as it were the rustling of rain on the
leaves." His dream has fled.
In estimating the significance of the lover's attitude in this matter, it
is important to realize the position which scatologic conceptions took in
primitive belief. At certain stages of early culture, when all the
emanations of the body are liable to possess mysterious magic properties
and become apt for sacred uses, the excretions, and especially the urine,
are found to form part of religious ritual and ceremonial function. Even
among savages the excreta are frequently regarded as disgusting, but under
the influence of these conceptions such disgust is inhibited, and those
emanations of the body which are usually least honored become religious
symbols.
Urine has been regarded as the original holy water, and many
customs which still survive in Italy and various parts of Europe,
involving the use of a fluid which must often be yellow and
sometimes salt, possibly indicate the earlier use of urine. (The
Greek water of aspersion, according to Theocritus, was mixed
with salt, as is sometimes the modern Italian holy water. J.J.
Blunt, _Vestiges of Ancient Manners and Customs_, p. 173.) Among
the Hottentots, as Kolbein and others have recorded, the medicine
man urinated alternately on bride and bridegroom, and a
successful young warrior was sprinkled in the same way. Mungo
Park mentions that in Africa on one occasion a bride sent a bowl
of her urine which was thrown over him as a special mark of honor
to a distinguished guest. Pennant remarked that the Highlanders
sprinkled their cattle with urine, as a kind of holy water, on
the first Monday in every quarter. (Bourke, _Scatalogic Rites_,
pp. 228, 239; Brand, _Popular Antiquities_, "Bride-Ales.")
Even the excreta of animals have sometimes been counted sacred.
This is notably so in the case of the cow, of all animals the
most venerated by primitive peoples, and especially in India.
Jules Bois (_Visions de l'Inde_, p. 86) describes the spectacle
presented in the temple of the cows at Benares: "I put my head
into the opening of the holy stables. It was the largest of
temples, a splendor of precious stones and marble, where the
venerated heifers passed backwards and forwards. A whole people
adored them. They take no notice, plunged in their divine and
obscure unconsciousness. And they fulfil with serenity their
animal functions; they chew the offerings, drink water from
copper vessels, and when they are filled they relieve themselves.
Then a stercoraceous and religious insanity overcomes these
starry-faced women and venerable men; they fall on their knees,
prostrate themselves, eat the droppings, greedily drink the
liquid, which for them is miraculous and sacred." (Cf. Bourke,
_Scatalogic Rites_, Chapter XVII.)
Among the Chevsurs of the Caucasus, perhaps an Iranian people, a
woman after her confinement, for which she lives apart, purifies
herself by washing in the urine of a cow and then returns home.
This mode of purification is recommended in the Avesta, and is
said to be used by the few remaining followers of this creed.
We have not only to take into account the frequency with which among
primitive peoples the excretions possess a religious significance. It is
further to be noted that in the folk-lore of modern Europe we everywhere
find plentiful evidence of the earlier prevalence of legends and practices
of a scatalogical character. It is significant that in the majority of
cases it is easy to see a sexual reference in these stories and customs.
The legends have lost their earlier and often mythical significance, and
frequently take on a suggestion of obscenity, while the scatalogical
practices have become the magical devices of lovelorn maidens or forsaken
wives practiced in secrecy. It has happened to scatalogical rites to be
regarded as we may gather from the _Clouds_ of Aristophanes, that the
sacred leathern phallus borne by the women in the Bacchanalia was becoming
in his time, an object to arouse the amusement of little boys.
Among many primitive peoples throughout the world, and among the
lower social classes of civilized peoples, urine possesses magic
properties, more especially, it would seem, the urine of women
and that of people who stand, or wish to stand, in sexual
relationship to each other. In a legend of the Indians of the
northwest coast of America, recorded by Boas, a woman gives her
lover some of her urine and says: "You can wake the dead if you
drop some of my urine in their ears and nose." (_Zeitschrift für
Ethnologie_, 1894, Heft IV, p. 293.) Among the same Indians there
is a legend of a woman with a beautiful white skin who found on
bathing every morning in the river that the fish were attracted
to her skin and could not be driven off even by magical
solutions. At last she said to herself: "I will make water on
them and then they will leave me alone." She did so, and
henceforth the fish left her. But shortly after fire came from
Heaven and killed her. (Ib., 1891, Heft V, p. 640.) Among both
Christians and Mohammedans a wife can attach an unfaithful
husband by privately putting some of her urine in his drink. (B.
Stern, _Medizin in der Türkei_, vol. ii, p. 11.) This practice is
world-wide; thus among the aborigines of Brazil, according to
Martius, the urine and other excretions and secretions are potent
for aphrodisiacal objects. (Bourke's _Scatalogic Rites of All
Nations_ contains many references to the folk-lore practices in
this matter; a study of popular beliefs in the magic power of
urine, published in Bombay by Professor Eugen Wilhelm in 1889, I
have not seen.)
The legends which narrate scatalogic exploits are numerous in the
literature of all countries. Among primitive peoples they often
have a purely theological character, for in the popular
mythologies of all countries (even, as we learn from
Aristophanes, among the Greeks) natural phenomena such as the
rain, are apt to be regarded as divine excretions, but in course
of time the legends take on a more erotic or a more obscene
character. In the Irish _Book of Leinster_ (written down
somewhere about the twelfth century, but containing material of
very much older date) we are told how a number of princesses in
Emain Macha, the seat of the Ulster Kings, resolved to find out
which of them could by urinating on it melt a snow pillar which
the men had made, the woman who succeeded to be regarded as the
best among them. None of them succeeded, and they sent for
Derbforgaill, who was in love with Cuchullain, and she was able
to melt the pillar; whereupon the other women, jealous of the
superiority she had thus shown, tore out her eyes. (Zimmer,
"Keltische Beiträge," _Zeitschrift für Deutsche Alterthum_, vol.
xxxii, Heft II, pp. 216-219.) Rhys considers that Derbforgaill
was really a goddess of dawn and dusk, "the drop glistening in
the sun's rays," as indicated by her name, which means a drop or
tear. (J. Rhys, _Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as
Illustrated by Celtic Heathendom_, p. 466.) It is interesting to
compare the legend of Derbforgaill with a somewhat more modern
Picardy folk-lore _conte_ which is clearly analogous but no
longer seems to show any mythologic element, "La Princesse qui
pisse par dessus les Meules." This princess had a habit of
urinating over hay-cocks; the king, her father, in order to break
her of the habit, offered her in marriage to anyone who could
make a hay-cock so high that she could not urinate over it. The
young men came, but the princess would merely laugh and at once
achieve the task. At last there came a young man who argued with
himself that she would not be able to perform this feat after she
had lost her virginity. He therefore seduced her first and she
then failed ignobly, merely wetting her stockings. Accordingly,
she became his bride. (Kryptadia, vol. i. p. 333.) Such legends,
which have lost any mythologic elements they may originally have
possessed and have become merely _contes_, are not uncommon in
the folk-lore of many countries. But in their earlier more
religious forms and in their later more obscene forms, they alike
bear witness to the large place which scatalogic conceptions play
in the primitive mind.
It is a notable fact in evidence of the close and seemingly normal
association with the sexual impulse of the scatalogic processes, that an
interest in them, arising naturally and spontaneously, is one of the most
frequent channels by which the sexual impulse first manifests itself in
young boys and girls.
Stanley Hall, who has made special inquiries into the matter,
remarks that in childhood the products of excretion by bladder
and bowels are often objects of interest hardly less intense for
a time than eating and drinking. ("Early Sense of Self,"
_American Journal of Psychology_, April, 1898, p. 361.)
"Micturitional obscenities," the same writer observes again,
"which our returns show to be so common before adolescence,
culminate at 10 or 12, and seem to retreat into the background as
sex phenomena appear." They are, he remarks, of two classes:
"Fouling persons or things, secretly from adults, but openly with
each other," and less often "ceremonial acts connected with the
act or the product that almost suggest the scatalogical rites of
savages, unfit for description here, but of great interest and
importance." (G. Stanley Hall, _Adolescence_, vol. i, p. 116.)
The nature of such scatalogical phenomena in childhood--which are
often clearly the instinctive manifestations of an erotic
symbolism--and their wide prevalence among both boys and girls,
are very well illustrated in a narrative which I include in
Appendix B, History II.
In boys as they approach the age of puberty, this attraction to the
scatalogic, when it exists, tends to die out, giving place to more normal
sexual conceptions, or at all events it takes a subordinate and less
serious place in the mind. In girls, on the other hand, it often tends to
persist. Edmond de Goncourt, a minute observer of the feminine mind,
refers in _Chérie_ to "those innocent and triumphant gaieties which
scatalogic stories have the privilege of arousing in women who have
remained still children, even the most distinguished women." The extent to
which innocent young women, who would frequently be uninterested or
repelled in presence of the sexually obscene are sometimes attracted by
the scatalogically obscene, becomes intelligible, however, if we realize
that a symbolism comes here into play. In women the more specifically
sexual knowledge and experience of life frequently develop much later than
in men or even remains in abeyance, and the specifically sexual phenomena
cannot therefore easily lend themselves to wit, or humor, or imagination.
But the scatalogic sphere, by the very fact that in women it is a
specially intimate and secret region which is yet always liable to be
unexpectedly protruded into consciousness, furnishes an inexhaustible
field for situations which have the same character as those furnished by
the sexually obscene. It thus happens that the sexually obscene which in
men tends to overshadow the scatalogically obscene, in women--partly from
inexperience and partly, it is probable, from their almost physiological
modesty--plays a part subordinate to the scatalogical. In a somewhat
analogous way scatalogical wit and humor play a considerable part in the
work of various eminent authors who were clergymen or priests.
In addition to the anatomical and psychological associations which
contribute to furnish a basis on which erotic symbolisms may spring up,
there are also physiological connections between the genital and urinary
spheres which directly favor such symbolisms. In discussing the analysis
of the sexual impulse in a previous volume of these _Studies_, I have
pointed out the remarkable relationship--sometimes of transference,
sometimes of compensation--which exists between genital tension and
vesical tension, both in men and women. In the histories of normal sexual
development brought together at the end of that and subsequent volumes the
relationship may frequently be traced, as also in the case of C.P. in the
present study (p. 37). Vesical power is also commonly believed to be in
relation with sexual potency, and the inability to project the urinary
stream in a normal manner is one of the accepted signs of sexual
impotency.[26] Féré, again, has recorded the history of a man with
periodic crises of sexual desire, and subsequently sexual obsession
without desire, which were always accompanied by the impulse to urinate
and by increased urination.[27] In the case, recorded by Pitres and Régis,
of a young girl who, having once at the sight of a young man she liked in
a theater been overcome by sexual feeling accompanied by a strong desire
to urinate, was afterward tormented by a groundless fear of experiencing
an irresistible desire to urinate at inconvenient times,[28] we have an
example of what may be called a physiological scatalogic symbolism of sex,
an emotion which was primarily erotic becoming transferred to the bladder
and then remaining persistent. From such a physiological symbolism it is
but a step to the psychological symbolisms of scatalogic fetichism.
It is worthy of note, as an indication that such phenomena are
scarcely abnormal, that a urinary symbolism, and even a strictly
sexual fetichism, are normal among many animals.
The most familiar example of this kind is furnished by the dog,
who is sexually excited in this manner by traces of the bitch and
himself takes every opportunity of making his own path
recognizable. "This custom," Espinas remarks (_Des Sociétés
Animales_, p. 228), "has no other aim than to spread along the
road recognizable traces of their presence for the benefit of
individuals of the other sex, the odor of these traces doubtless
causing excitement."
It is noteworthy, also, that in animals as well as in man, sexual
excitement may manifest itself in the bladder. Thus Daumas states
(_Chevaux de Sahara_, p. 49) that if the mare urinates when she
hears the stallion neigh it is a sign that she is ready for
connection.
It is in masochism, or passive algolagnia, that we may most frequently
find scatalogic symbolism in its fully developed form. The man whose
predominant impulse is to subjugate himself to his mistress and to receive
at her hands the utmost humiliation, frequently finds the climax of his
gratification in being urinated on by her, whether in actual fact or only
in imagination.
In many such cases, however, it is evident that we have a mixed
phenomenon; the symbolism is double. The act becomes desirable because it
is the outward and visible sign of an inwardly experienced abject slavery
to an adored person. But it is also desirable because of intimately sexual
associations in the act itself, as a symbolical detumescence, a simulacrum
of the sexual act, and one which proceeds from the sexual focus itself.
Krafft-Ebing records various cases of masochism in which the
emission of urine on to the body or into the mouth formed the
climax of sexual gratification, as, for instance (_Psychopathia
Sexualis_, English translation, p. 183) in the case of a Russian
official who as a boy had fancies of being bound between the
thighs of a woman, compelled to sleep beneath her nates and to
drink her urine, and in later life experienced the greatest
excitement when practicing the last part of this early
imagination.
In another case, recorded by Krafft-Ebing and by him termed
"ideal masochism" (_Op. cit._, pp. 127-130), the subject from
childhood indulged in voluptuous day-dreams in which he was the
slave of a beautiful mistress who would compel him to obey all
her caprices, stand over him with one foot on his breast, sit on
his face and body, make him wait on her in her bath, or when she
urinated, and sometimes insist on doing this on his face; though
a highly intellectual man, he was always too timid to attempt to
carry any of his ideas into execution; he had been troubled by
nocturnal enuresis up to the age of 20.
Neri, again (_Archivio delle Psicopatie Sessuali_, vol. i, fasc.
7 and 8, 1896), records the case of an Italian masochist who
experienced the greatest pleasure when both urination and
defecation were practiced in this manner by the woman he was
attached to.
In a previous volume of these _Studies_ ("Sexual Inversion,"
History XXVI) I have recorded the masochistic day-dreams of a boy
whose impulses were at the same time inverted; in his reveries
"the central fact," he states, "became the discharge of urine
from my lover over my body and limbs, or, if I were very fond of
him, I let it be in my face." In actual life the act of urination
casually witnessed in childhood became the symbol, even the
reality, of the central secret of sex: "I stood rooted and
flushing with downcast eyes till the act was over, and was
conscious for a considerable time of stammering speech and
bewildered faculties.... I was overwhelmed with emotion and could
barely drag my feet from the spot or my eyes from the damp
herbage where he had deposited the waters of secrecy. Even to-day
I cannot dissociate myself from the shuddering charm that moment
had for me."
It is not only the urine and the fæces which may thus acquire a symbolic
fascination and attractiveness under the influence of masochistic
deviations of sexual idealization. In some cases extreme rapture has been
experienced in licking sweating feet. There is, indeed, no excretion or
product of the body which has not been a source of ecstasy: the sweat from
every part of the body, the saliva and menstrual fluid, even the wax from
the ears.
Krafft-Ebing very truly points out (_Psychopathia Sexualis_,
English translation, p. 178) that this sexual scatalogic
symbolism is precisely paralleled by a religious scatalogic
symbolism. In the excesses of devout enthusiasm the ascetic
performs exactly the same acts as are performed in these excesses
of erotic enthusiasm. To mix excreta with the food, to lick up
excrement, to suck festering sores--all these and the like are
acts which holy and venerated women have performed.
Not only the saint, but also the prophet and medicine-man have
been frequently eaters of human excrement; it is only necessary
to refer to the instance of the prophet Ezekiel, who declared
that he was commanded to bake his bread with human dung, and to
the practices of medicine-men at Torres Straits, in whose
training the eating of human excrement takes a recognized part.
(Deities, notably Baal-Phegor, were sometimes supposed to eat
excrement, so that it was natural that their messengers and
representatives among men should do so. As regards Baal-Phegor,
see Dulaure, _Des Divinités Génératrices_, Chapter IV, and J.G.
Bourke, _Scatalogic Rites of All Nations_, p. 241. See also
Ezekiel, Chapter IV, v. 12, and _Reports Anthropological
Expedition to Torres Straits_, vol. v, p. 321.)
It must be added, however, that while the masochist is overcome
by sexual rapture, so that he sees nothing disgusting in his act,
the medicine-man and the ascetic are not so invariably overcome
by religious rapture, and several ascetic writers have referred
to the horror and disgust they experienced, at all events at
first, in accomplishing such acts, while the medicine-men when
novices sometimes find the ordeal too severe and have to abandon
their career. Brénier de Montmorand, while remarking, not without
some exaggeration, that "the Christian ascetics are almost all
eaters of excrement" ("Ascétisme et Mysticisme," _Revue
Philosophique_, March, 1904, p. 245), quotes the testimonies of
Marguerite-Marie and Madame Guyon as to the extreme repugnance
which they had to overcome. They were impelled by a merely
intellectual symbolism of self-mortification rather than by the
profoundly felt emotional symbolism which moves the masochist.
Coprophagic acts, whether under the influences of religious
exaltation or of sexual rapture, inevitably excite our disgust.
We regard them as almost insane, fortified in that belief by the
undoubted fact that coprophagia is not uncommon among the insane.
It may, therefore, be proper to point out that it is not so very
long since the ingestion of human excrement was carried out by
our own forefathers in the most sane and deliberate manner. It
was administered by medical practitioners for a great number of
ailments, apparently with entirely satisfactory results. Less
than two centuries ago, Schurig, who so admirably gathered
together and arranged the medical lore of his own and the
immediately preceding ages, wrote a very long and detailed
chapter, "De Stercoris Humani Usu Medico" (_Chylologia_, 1725,
cap. XIII; in the Paris _Journal de Médecine_ for February 19,
1905, there appeared an article, which I have not seen, entitled
"Médicaments oubliées: l'urine et la fiente humaine.") The
classes of cases in which the drug was found beneficial would
seem to have been extremely various. It must not be supposed that
it was usually ingested in the crude form. A common method was to
take the fæces of boys, dry them, mix them with the best honey,
and administer an electuary. (At an earlier period such drugs
appear to have met with some opposition from the Church, which
seems to have seen in them only an application of magic; thus I
note that in Burchard's remarkable Penitential of the fourteenth
century, as reproduced by Wasserschleben, 40 days' penance is
prescribed for the use of human urine or excrement as a medicine.
Wasserschleben _Die Bussordnungen der Abendländlichen Kirche_, p.
651.)
The urolagnia of masochism is not a simple phenomenon; it embodies a
double symbolism: on the one hand a symbolism of self-abnegation, such as
the ascetic feels, on the other hand a symbolism of transferred sexual
emotion. Krafft-Ebing was disposed to regard all cases in which a
scatalogical sexual attraction existed as due to "latent masochism." Such
a point of view is quite untenable. Certainly the connection is common,
but in the majority of cases of slightly marked scatalogical fetichism no
masochism is evident. And when we bear in mind the various considerations,
already brought forward, which show how widespread and clearly realized is
the natural and normal basis furnished for such symbolism, it becomes
quite unnecessary to invoke any aid from masochism. There is ample
evidence to show that, either as a habitual or more usually an occasional
act, the impulse to bestow a symbolic value on the act of urination in a
beloved person, is not extremely uncommon; it has been noted of men of
high intellectual distinction; it occurs in women as well as men; when
existing in only a slight degree, it must be regarded as within the normal
limits of variation of sexual emotion.
The occasional cases in which the urine is drunk may possibly
suggest that the motive lies in the properties of the fluid
acting on the system. Support for this supposition might be found
in the fact that urine actually does possess, apart altogether
from its magic virtues embodied in folk-lore, the properties of a
general stimulant. In composition (as Masterman first pointed
out) "beef-tea differs little from healthy urine," containing
exactly the same constituents, except that in beef-tea there is
less urea and uric acid. Fresh urine--more especially that of
children and young women--is taken as a medicine in nearly all
parts of the world for various disorders, such as epistaxis,
malaria and hysteria, with benefit, this benefit being almost
certainly due to its qualities as a general stimulant and
restorative. William Salmon's _Dispensatory_, 1678 (quoted in
_British Medical Journal_, April 21, 1900, p. 974), shows that in
the seventeenth century urine still occupied an important place
as a medicine, and it frequently entered largely into the
composition of Aqua Divina.
Its use has been known even in England in the nineteenth century.
(Masterman, _Lancet_, October 2, 1880; R. Neale, "Urine as a
Medicine," _Practitioner_, November, 1881; Bourke brings together
a great deal of evidence as to the therapeutic uses of urine in
his _Scatalogic Rites_, especially pp. 331-335; Lusini has shown
that normal urine invariably increases the frequency of the heart
beats, _Archivio di Farmacologia_, fascs. 19-21, 1893.)
But it is an error to suppose that these facts account for the
urolagnic drinking of urine. As in the gratification of a normal
sexual impulse, the intense excitement of gratifying a scatalogic
sexual impulse itself produces a degree of emotional stimulation
far greater than the ingestion of a small amount of animal
extractives would be adequate to effect. In such cases, as much
as in normal sexuality, the stimulation is clearly psychic.
When, as is most commonly the case, it is the process of urination and not
the urine itself which is attractive, we are clearly concerned with a
symbolism of act and not with the fetichistic attraction of an excretion.
When the excretion, apart from the act, provides the attraction, we seem
usually to be in the presence of an olfactory fetichism. These fetichisms
connected with the excreta appear to be experienced chiefly by individuals
who are somewhat weak-minded, which is not necessarily the case in regard
to those persons for whom the act, rather than its product apart from the
beloved person, is the attractive symbol.
The sexually symbolic nature of the act of urination for many
people is indicated by the existence, according to Bloch, who
enumerates various kinds of indecent photographs, of a group
which he terms "the notorious _pisseuses_." It is further
indicated by several of the reproductions in Fuch's _Erotsiche
Element in der Karikatur_, such as Delorme's "La Necessitê n'a
point de Loi." (It should be added that such a scene by no means
necessarily possesses any erotic symbolism, as we may see in
Rembrandt's etching commonly called "Le Femme qui Pisse," in
which the reflected lights on the partly shadowed stream furnish
an artistic motive which is obviously free from any trace of
obscenity.) In the case which Krafft-Ebing quotes from Maschka of
a young man who would induce young girls to dance naked in his
room, to leap, and to urinate in his presence, whereupon seminal
ejaculation would take place, we have a typical example of
urolagnic symbolism in a form adequate to produce complete
gratification. A case in which the urolagnic form of scatalogic
symbolism reached its fullest development as a sexual perversion
has been described in Russia by Sukhanoff (summarized in
_Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, November, 1900, and
_Annales Medico-psychologiques_, February, 1901), that of a young
man of 27, of neuropathic temperament, who when he once chanced
to witness a woman urinating experienced voluptuous sensations.
From that moment he sought close contact with women urinating,
the maximum of gratification being reached when he could place
himself in such a position that a woman, in all innocence, would
urinate into his mouth. All his amorous adventures were concerned
with the search for opportunities for procuring this difficult
gratification. Closets in which he was able to hide, winter
weather and dull days he found most favorable to success. (A
somewhat similar case is recorded in the _Archives de
Neurologie_, 1902, p. 462.)
In the case of a robust man of neuropathic heredity recorded by
Pelanda some light is shed on the psychic attitude in these
manifestations; there was masturbation up to the age of 16, when
he abandoned the practice, and up to the age of 30 found complete
satisfaction in drinking the still hot urine of women. When a
lady or girl in the house went to her room to satisfy a need of
this kind, she had hardly left it but he hastened in, overcome by
extreme excitement, culminating in spontaneous ejaculation. The
younger the woman the greater the transport he experienced. It is
noteworthy that in this, as possibly in all similar cases, there
was no sensory perversion and no morbid attraction of taste or
smell; he stated that the action of his senses was suspended by
his excitement, and that he was quite unable to perceive the odor
or taste of the fluid. (Pelanda, "Pornopatice," _Archivio di
Psichiatria_, facs. iii-iv, 1889, p. 356.) It is in the emotional
symbolism that the fascination lies and not in any sensory
perversion.
Magnan records the spontaneous development of this sexual
symbolism in a girl of 11, of good intellectual development but
alcoholic heredity, who seduced a boy younger than herself to
mutual masturbation, and on one occasion, lying on the ground and
raising her clothes, asked him to urinate on her. (_International
Congress of Criminal Anthropology_, 1889.) This case (except for
the early age of the subject) illustrates sporadically occurring
urolagnic symbolism in a woman, to whom such symbolism is fairly
obvious on account of the close resemblance between the emission
of urine and the ejaculation of semen in the man, and the fact
that the same conduit serves for both fluids. (A urolagnic
day-dream of this kind is recorded in the history of a lady
contained in the third volume of these _Studies_, Appendix B,
History VIII.) The natural and inevitable character of this
symbolism is shown by the fact that among primitive peoples urine
is sometimes supposed to possess the fertilizing virtues of
semen. J.G. Frazer in his edition of Pausanias (vol. iv, p. 139)
brings together various stories of women impregnated by urine.
Hartland also (_Legend of Perseus_, vol. i, pp. 76, 92) records
legends of women who were impregnated by accidentally or
intentionally drinking urine.
The symbolic sexual significance of urolagnia has hitherto
usually been confused with the fetichistic and mainly olfactory
perversion by which the excretion itself becomes a source of
sexual excitement. Long since Tardieu referred, under the name of
"renifleurs," to persons who were said to haunt the neighborhood
of quiet passages, more especially in the neighborhood of
theatres, and who when they perceived a woman emerge after
urination, would hasten to excite themselves by the odor of the
excretion. Possibly a fetichism of this kind existed in a case
recorded by Belletrud and Mercier (_Annales d'Hygiène Publique_,
June, 1904, p. 48). A weak-minded, timid youth, who was very
sexual but not attractive to women, would watch for women who
were about to urinate and immediately they had passed on would go
and lick the spot they had moistened, at the same time
masturbating. Such a fetichistic perversion is strictly analogous
to the fetichism by which women's handkerchiefs, aprons or
underlinen become capable of affording sexual gratification. A
very complete case of such urolagnic fetichism--complete because
separated from association with the person accomplishing the act
of urination--has been recorded by Moraglia in a woman. It is the
case of a beautiful and attractive young woman of 18, with thick
black hair, and expressive vivacious eyes, but sallow complexion.
Married a year previously, but childless, she experienced a
certain amount of pleasure in coitus, but she preferred
masturbation, and frankly acknowledged that she was highly
excited by the odor of fermented urine. So strong was this
fetichism that when, for instance, she passed a street urinal she
was often obliged to go aside and masturbate; once she went for
this purpose into the urinal itself and was almost discovered in
the act, and on another occasion into a church. Her perversion
caused her much worry because of the fear of detection. She
preferred, when she could, to obtain a bottle of urine--which
must be stale and a man's (this, she said, she could detect by
the smell)--and to shut herself up in her own room, holding the
bottle in one hand and repeatedly masturbating with the other.
(Moraglia, "Psicopatie Sessuali," _Archivio di Psichiatria_, vol.
xiii, fasc. 6, p. 267, 1892.) This case is of especial interest
because of the great rarity of fully developed fetichism in
women. In a slight and germinal degree I believe that cases of
fetichism are not uncommon in women, but they are certainly rare
in a well-marked form, and Krafft-Ebing declared, even in the
late editions of his _Psychopathia Sexualis_, that he knew of no
cases in women.
So far we have been concerned with the urolagnic rather than the
coprolagnic variety of scatalogical symbolism. Although the two are
sometimes associated there is no necessary connection, and most usually
there is no tendency for the one to involve the other. Urolagnia is
certainly much the more frequently found; the act of urination is far more
apt to suggest erotically symbolical ideas than the idea of defecation.
It is not difficult to understand why this should be so. The act of
urination lends itself more easily to sexual symbolism; it is more
intimately associated with the genital function; its repetition is
necessary at more frequent intervals so that it is more in evidence;
moreover, its product, unlike that of the act of defecation, is not
offensive to the senses. Still coprolagnia occurs and not so very
infrequently. Burton remarked that even the normal lover is affected by
this feeling: "immo nec ipsum amicæ stercus foctet."[29]
Of Caligula who, however, was scarcely sane, it was said "et quidem
stercus uxoris degustavit."[30] In Parisian brothels (according to Taxil
and others) provision is made for those who are sexually excited by the
spectacle of the act of defecation (without reference to contact or odor)
by means of a "tabouret de verre," from under the glass floor of which the
spectacle of the defecating women may be closely observed. It may be added
that the erotic nature of such a spectacle is referred to in the Marquis
de Sade's novels.
There is one motive for the existence of coprolagnia which must not be
passed over, because it has doubtless frequently served as a mode of
transition to what, taken by itself, may well seem the least æsthetically
attractive of erotic symbols. I refer to the tendency of the nates to
become a sexual fetich. The nates have in all ages and in all parts of the
world been frequently regarded as one of the most æsthetically beautiful
parts of the feminine body.[31] It is probable that on the basis of this
entirely normal attraction more than one form of erotic symbolism is at
all events in part supported. Dühren and others have considered that the
æsthetic charm of the nates is one of the motives which prompt the desire
to inflict flagellation on women. In the same way--certainly in some and
probably in many cases--the sexual charm of the nates progressively
extends to the anal region, to the act of defecation, and finally to the
feces.
In a case of Krafft-Ebing's (_Op. cit._, p. 183) the subject,
when a child of 6, accidentally placed his hand in contact with
the nates of the little girl who sat next to him in school, and
experienced so great a pleasure in this contact that he
frequently repeated it; when he was 10 a nursery governess, to
gratify her own desires, placed his finger in her vagina; in
adult life he developed urolagnic tendencies.
In a case of Moll's the development of a youthful admiration for
the nates in a coprolagnic direction may be clearly traced. In
this case a young man, a merchant, in a good position, sought to
come in contact with women defecating; and with this object would
seek to conceal himself in closets; the excretal odor was
pleasurable to him, but was not essential to gratification, and
the sight of the nates was also exciting and at the same time not
essential to gratification; the act of defecation appears,
however, to have been regarded as essential. He never sought to
witness prostitutes in this situation; he was only attracted to
young, pretty and innocent women. The coprolagnia here, however,
had its source in a childish impression of admiration for the
nates. When 5 or 6 years old he crawled under the clothes of a
servant girl, his face coming in contact with her nates, an
impression that remained associated in his mind with pleasure.
Three or four years later he used to experience much pleasure
when a young girl cousin sat on his face; thus was strengthened
an association which developed naturally into coprolagnia. (Moll,
_Untersuchungen über die Libido Sexualis_, bd. i, p. 837.)
It is scarcely necessary to remark that an admiration for the
nates, even when reaching a fetichistic degree, by no means
necessarily involves, even after many years, any attraction to
the excreta. A correspondent for whom the nates have constituted
a fetich for many years writes: "I find my craving for women with
profuse pelvic or posterior development is growing and I wish to
copulate from behind; but I would feel a sickening feeling if any
part of my person came in contact with the female anus. It is
more pleasing to me to see the nates than the mons, yet I loathe
everything associated with the anal region."
Moll has recorded in detail a case of what may be described as "ideal
coprolagnia"--that is to say, where the symbolism, though fully developed
in imagination, was not carried into real life--which is of great interest
because it shows how, in a very intelligent subject, the deviated
symbolism may become highly developed and irradiate all the views of life
in the same way as the normal impulse. (The subject's desires were also
inverted, but from the present point of view the psychological interest of
the case is not thereby impaired.) Moll's case was one of symbolism of
act, the excreta offering no attraction apart from the process of
defecation. In a case which has been communicated to me there was, on the
other hand, an olfactory fetichistic attraction to the excreta even in the
absence of the person.
In Moll's case, the patient, X., 23 years of age, belongs to a
family which he himself describes as nervous. His mother, who is
anæmic, has long suffered from almost periodical attacks of
excitement, weakness, syncope and palpitation. A brother of the
mother died in a lunatic asylum, and several other brothers
complain much of their nerves. The mother's sisters are very
good-natured, but liable to break out in furious passions; this
they inherit from their father. There appears to be no nervous
disease on the patient's father's side. X.'s sisters are also
healthy.
X. himself is of powerful undersized build and enjoys good
health, injured by no excesses. He considers himself nervous. He
worked hard at school and was always the first in his class; he
adds, however, that this is due less to his own abilities than
the laziness of his school-fellows. He is, as he remarks, very
religious and prays frequently, but seldom goes to church.
In regard to his psychic characters he says that he has no
specially prominent talent, but is much interested in languages,
mathematics, physics and philosophy, in fact, in abstract
subjects generally. "While I take a lively interest in every kind
of intellectual work," he says, "it is only recently that I have
been attracted to real life and its requirements. I have never
had much skill in physical exercises. For external things until
recently I have only had contempt. I have a delicately
constituted nature, loving solitude, and only associating with a
few select persons. I have a decided taste for fiction, poetry
and music; my temperament is idealistic and religious, with
strict conceptions of duty and morality, and aspirations towards
the good and beautiful. I detest all that is common and coarse,
and yet I can think and act in the way you will learn from the
following pages."
Regarding his sexual life, X. made the following communication:
"During the last two years I have become convinced of the
perversion of my sexual instinct. I had often previously thought
that in me the impulse was not quite normal, but it is only
lately that I have become convinced of my complete perversion. I
have never read or heard of any case in which the sexual feelings
were of the same kind. Although I can feel a lively inclination
towards superior representatives of the female sex, and have
twice felt something like love, the sight or the recollection
even of a beautiful woman have never caused sexual excitement."
In the two exceptional instances mentioned it appears that X. had
an inclination to kiss the women in question, but that the
thought of coitus had no attraction. "In my voluptuous dreams,
connected with the emission of semen, women in seductive
situations have never appeared. I have never had any desire to
visit a _puella publica_. The love-stories of my fellow-students
seemed very silly, dances and balls were a horror to me, and only
on very rare occasions could I be persuaded to go into society.
It will be easy to guess the diagnosis in my case: I suffer from
the sexual attraction of my own sex, I am a lover of boys.
"You cannot imagine what a world of thoughts, wishes, feelings
and impulses the words 'knabe,' 'pais,' 'garcon,' 'boy,'
'ragazzo' have for me; one of these words, even in an unmeaning
clause of a translation-book, calls before me the whole sum of
associations which in course of time have become bound up with
this idea, and it is only with an effort that I can scare away
the wild band. This group of thoughts shows a wonderful mixture
of warm sensuality and ideal love, it unites my lowest and
highest impulses, the strength and the weakness of my nature, my
curse and my blessing. My inclination is especially towards boys
of the age of 12 to 15; though they may be rather younger or
older. That I should prefer beautiful and intelligent boys is
comprehensible. I do not want a prostitute, but a friend or a
son, whose soul I love, whom I can help to become a more perfect
man, such as I myself would willingly be.
"When I myself belonged to that happy age (i.e., below 15) I had
no dearer wish than to possess a friend of similar tastes. I have
sought, hoped, waited, grieved, and been at last disillusioned,
overcome by desire and despair, and have not found that friend.
Even later the hope often reappeared, but always in vain, and I
cannot boast of that sure recognition which one reads of in the
autobiographies of Urnings. I do not know personally a single
fellow-sufferer. It is also doubtful whether such an
acquaintanceship would greatly help me, for I have a very
peculiar conception of homosexuality. As you will see, I have
little more in common with what are called pæderasts than sexual
indifference to the female sex, and I often ask myself: 'Does any
other man in the whole world feel like you? Are you alone in the
earth with your morbid desires? Are you a pariah of pariahs, or
is there, perhaps, another soul with similar longings living near
you? How often in summer have I gone to the lakes and streams
outside cities to seek boys bathing; but I always came back
unsatisfied, whether I found any or not. And in winter I have
been irresistibly impelled to return to the same spots, as if it
were sanctified by the boys, but my darlings had vanished and
cold winds blew over the icy floods, so that I would return
feeling as though I had buried all my happiness.
"It must be borne in mind, therefore, that what I have to say
regarding my sexual impulses only refers to fancies and never to
their practical realization. My sensual impulses are not
connected with the sexual organs; all my voluptuous ideas are not
in the least connected with these parts. For this reason I have
never practiced onanism and _immissio membri in anum_ is as
repulsive to me as to a normal man. Even every imitation of
coitus is, for me, without attraction. In a boy's body two things
specially excite me: _his belly and his nates_, the first as
containing the digestive tract, the second as holding the opening
of the bowels. Of the vegetable processes of life in the boy none
interest me nearly so much as the progress of his digestion and
the process of defecation. It is incredible to what an extent
this part of physiology has occupied me from youth. If as a boy I
wanted to read something of a piquantly exciting character I
sought in my father's encyclopædia for articles like:
Obstruction, Constipation, Hæmorrhoids, Fæces, etc. No function
of the body seemed to be so significant as this, and I regarded
its disturbances as the most important in the whole mechanism of
life. The description of other disorders I could read in cold
blood, but intussusception of the bowels makes me ill even
to-day. I am always extremely pleased to hear that the digestion
of the people around me is in good condition. A man who did not
sufficiently watch over his digestion aroused distrust in me, and
I imagined that wicked men must be horribly indifferent regarding
this weighty matter. Even more than in ordinary persons was I
interested in the digestion of more mysterious beings, like
magicians in legends, or men of other nations. I would willingly
have made an anthropological study of my favorite subject, only
to my annoyance books nearly always pass over the matter in
silence. In history and fiction I regretted the absence of
information concerning the state of my heroes' digestion when
they languished in prison or in some unaccustomed or unhealthy
spot. For this reason I held no book more precious than one which
describes how a young man after being shipwrecked lived for a
long time in a narrow snow-hut, and it was conscientiously stated
that he became aware of digestive disturbances. No immorality
angers me more than the foolish practice of ladies who in society
neglect the satisfaction of their natural needs from misplaced
motives of modesty. On a railway journey I suffer horribly from
the thought that one of my fellow-travelers may be prevented from
fulfilling some imperative natural necessity.
"I naturally devote the greatest attention to my own digestion.
With painful conscientiousness I go to stool every day at the
same hour; if the operation does not come off to my satisfaction
I feel not so much physical as mental discomfort. To this quite
useful hygienic interest became associated at puberty a sensual
interest. Since my fourteenth year I have had no greater
enjoyment than to defecate undressed (I do not do so now) after
having first carefully examined the distension of my abdomen. In
summer I would go into the woods, undress myself in a secluded
spot and indulge in the voluptuous pleasures of defecation. I
would sometimes combine with this a bath in a stream. I would
exhaust my imagination in the effort to invent specially
enjoyable variations, longed for a desert island where I could go
about naked, fill my body with much nourishing food, hold in the
excrement as long as possible and then discharge it in some
subtly-thought-out spot. These practices and ideas often caused
erections and later on emissions, but the genitals played no part
in my conceptions; their movements were uncomfortable and gave no
pleasure.
"I soon longed to be associated in these orgies with some boy of
the same age, but I wanted not only a companion in my passion,
but also a real friend. Since there could be no question of
masturbation or pæderasty, our love would have been limited to
kisses, embraces, and--as a compensation for coitus--defecation
together. That would have been perfect bliss to me. I will spare
you the unæsthetic contents of my voluptuous dreams. But I
remained without a companion, and, therefore, without real
enjoyment. [He has, however, on various occasions experienced
erections, and even emissions, on seeing, by chance, men or boys
defecate.] Hinc illæ lacrimæ; the excitement over my own
defecation only took place _faute de mieux_.
"I knew very well that my thoughts and practices were impure and
contemptible. Ah! how often, when the intoxication was over, have
I thrown myself remorsefully on my knees, praying to God for
pardon! For some weeks I repressed my longing; but at last it was
too strong for me, I tried to justify myself and fell into my
vice anew. That I was guilty of licentiousness and loved boys
sexually first became clear to me later on, when I knew the
significance of erection as a sign of sexual excitement.
"No one can imagine with what demoniacal joy I am possessed at
the thought of a beautiful naked boy whose abdomen is filled as
the result of long abstinence from stool. The thought powerfully
excites me, a flood of passion goes through my blood and my limbs
tremble. I would never grow tired of feeling that belly and
looking at it. My passion would express itself in tempestuous
caresses, and the boy would have to assume various positions in
order to show off the beauty of his form, i.e., to bring the
parts in question into better view. To observe defecation would
still further increase this peculiar enjoyment. If the boy's
bowels were not sufficiently filled I would feed him with all
sorts of food which produces much excrement, such as potatoes,
coarse bread, etc. If possible I would seek to delay defecation
for two or three days, so that it might be as copious as
possible. When at last it occurred it would be an unspeakable joy
for me to watch the fæces--which would have to be fairly
firm--emerging from the anus."
X. would like to be a teacher and thinks he could exert a
beneficial influence on boys. In spite of the pain he has
suffered he does not think he would like to be cured of his
perverse inclinations, for they have given him joy as well as
pain, and the pain has chiefly been owing to the fact that he
could not gratify his inclinations. X. smokes and drinks in
moderation, and has no feminine habits. (The foregoing is a
condensed summary of the case which is fully reported by Moll,
_Konträre Sexualempfindung_, third edition, pp. 295-305.)
The case of coprolagnia communicated to me is that of a married
man, normal in all other respects, intellectually brilliant and
filling successfully a very responsible position. When a child
the women of his household were always indifferent as to his
presence in their bedrooms, and would satisfy all natural calls
without reserve before him. He would dream of this with
erections. His sexual interests became slowly centered in the act
of defecation, and this fetich throughout life never appealed to
him so powerfully as when associated with the particular type of
household furniture which was used for this purpose in his own
house. The act of defecation in the opposite sex or anything
pertaining to or suggesting the same caused uncontrollable sexual
excitement; the nates also exerted a great attraction. The alvine
excreta exerted this influence even in the absence of the woman;
it was, however, necessary that she should be a sexually
desirable person. The perversion in this case was not complete;
that is to say, that the excitement produced by the act of
defecation or the excretion itself was not actually preferred to
coitus; the sexual idea was normal coitus in the normal manner,
but preceded by the visual and olfactory enjoyment of the
exciting fetich. When coitus was not possible the enjoyment of
the fetich was accompanied by masturbation (as in the analogous
case of urolagnia in a woman summarized on p. 62.) On one
occasion he was discovered by a friend in a bedroom belonging to
a woman, engaged in the act of masturbation over a vessel
containing the desired fetich. In an agony of shame he begged the
mercy of silence concerning this episode, at the same time
revealing his life-history. He has constantly been haunted by the
dread of detection, as well as by remorse and the consciousness
of degradation, also by the fear that his unconquerable obsession
may lead him to the asylum.
The scatalogic groups of sexual perversions, urolagnia and coprolagnia, as
may be sufficiently seen in this brief summary, are not merely olfactory
fetiches. They are, in a larger proportion of cases, dynamic symbols, a
preoccupation with physiological acts which, by associations of contiguity
and still more of resemblance, have gained the virtue of stimulating in
slight cases, and replacing in more extreme cases, the normal
preoccupation with the central physiological act itself. We have seen that
there are various considerations which amply suffice to furnish a basis
for such associations. And when we reflect that in the popular mind, and
to some extent in actual fact, the sexual act itself is, like urination
and defecation, an excretory act, we can understand that the true
excretory acts may easily become symbols of the pseudo-excretory act. It
is, indeed, in the muscular release of accumulated pressures and tensions,
involved by the act of liberating the stored-up excretion, that we have
the closest simulacrum of the tumescence and detumescence of the sexual
process.[32]
In this way the erotic symbolism of urolagnia and coprolagnia is
completely analogous with that dynamic symbolism of the clinging and
swinging garments which Herrick has so accurately described, with the
complex symbolism of flagellation and its play of the rod against the
blushing and trembling nates, with the symbols of sexual strain and stress
which are embodied in the foot and the act of treading.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] Fuchs (_Das Erotische Element In der Karikatur_, p. 26),
distinguishing sharply between the "erotic" and the "obscene," reserves
the latter term exclusively for the representation of excretory organs and
acts. He considers that this is etymologically the most exact usage.
However that may be, it seems to me that, in any case, "obscene" has
become so vague a term that it is now impracticable to give it a
restricted and precise sense.
[25] In this connection we may profitably contemplate the hand and recall
the vast gamut of functions, sacred and profane, which that organ
exercises. Many savages strictly reserve the left hand to the lowlier
purposes of life; but in civilization that is not considered necessary,
and it may be wholesome for some of us to meditate on the more humble uses
of the same hand which is raised in the supreme gesture of benediction and
which men have often counted it a privilege to kiss.
[26] See, e.g., Morselli, _Una Causa di Nullità del Matrimonio_, 1902, p.
39.
[27] Féré, _Comptes-Rendus Société de Biologie_, July 23, 1904.
[28] Transactions of the International Medical Congress, Moscow, vol. iv,
p. 19. A similar symbolism may be traced in many of the cases in which the
focus of modesty becomes in modest women centered in the excretory sphere
and sometimes exaggerated to the extent of obsession. It must not be
supposed, however, that every obsession in this sphere has a symbolical
value of an erotic kind. In the case, for instance, which has been
recorded by Raymond and Janet (_Les Obsessions_, vol. ii, p. 306) of a
woman who spent much of her time in the endeavor to urinate perfectly,
always feeling that she failed in some respect, the obsession seems to
have risen fortuitously on a somewhat neurotic basis without reference to
the sexual life.
[29] _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Part III, Section II, Mem. III, Subs. I.
[30] It may be remarked here that while the eating of excrement (apart
from its former use as a magic charm and as a therapeutic agent) is in
civilization now confined to sexual perverts and the insane, among some
animals it is normal as a measure of hygiene in relation to their young.
Thus, as, e.g., the Rev. Arthur East writes, the mistle thrush swallows
the droppings of its young. (_Knowledge_, June 1, 1899, p. 133.) In the
dog I have observed that the bitch licks her puppies shortly after birth
as they urinate, absorbing the fluid.
[31] See, e.g., the previous volume of these _Studies_, "Sexual Selection
in Man," pp. 165 et seq., and Dühren, _Geschlechtsleben in England_, bd.
ii, pp. 258, et seq.
[32] In the study of _Love and Pain_ in a previous volume (p. 130) I have
quoted the remarks of a lady who refers to the analogy between sexual
tension and vesical tension--"Cette volupté que ressentent les bords de la
mer, d'être
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