In an examination before a criminal court in Vienna, the following facts were brought to light: Count N., accompanied by a young girl, appeared in the public garden of an hotel, and, by his actions there, gave public offense. He demanded of his companion that she kneel down before him and implore him with folded hands. Then she was compelled to lick his boots. Finally, he demanded of her, publicly, “an unheard-of thing” (osculum ad nates, or the like), and only desisted after she had sworn to do it at home.
In this case, the most remarkable thing was the desire of the perverse individual to humiliate the woman before witnesses (comp. the fancies of sadists, Case 29); further, that the desire to humiliate the woman came entirely into the foreground, and acts of a purely symbolic nature were undertaken. Of course, with these, in this imperfectly-observed case, acts of cruelty were probable.
(f) Sadism with Other Objects—Whipping of Boys.—Besides the sadistic acts with females described, others occur with other living, sensitive objects,—children and animals. There may be a full consciousness that the impulse is really directed toward women, and that only faute de mieux the next attainable objects (pupils) are abused. But the condition of the perpetrator may be such that the impulse to cruel acts enters consciousness accompanied only by lustful excitement, while its real object (which alone can explain the lustful coloring of such acts) remains in the dark.
The first alternative suffices as an explanation of the cases which Dr. Albert describes (Friedreich’s Blätter f. ger. Med., p. 77, 1859),—cases in which lustful teachers whipped their pupils on the naked nates without cause. We must think of the second alternative, the sadistic impulse with unconsciousness of its object, when boys are immediately excited sexually at the sight of punishment of their companions, and are thus determined in their later vita sexualis, as in the following cases:—
Case 37. K., aged 37, merchant, applied to me in the fall of 1889 for advice concerning an anomaly of his vita sexualis, which made him fear invalidism and impossibility of future happiness in marriage.
Patient came of a nervous family. As a child he was delicate, weak, and nervous. Healthy except for measles; he later became strong.
