Case 47. A patient of Tarnowsky’s had a person in his confidence rent a house during his attacks, and instruct its personnel (three prostitutes) in what was to be done with him. He would come there, and was there undressed, manustuprated, and flagellated, as ordered. He pretended to offer resistance, and begged for mercy; then, as ordered, he was allowed to eat and sleep. But in spite of protest he was kept there, and beaten if he did not submit. Thus the affair would go on for some days. When the attack was over, he was dismissed; and he returned to his wife and children, who had no suspicion of his disease. The attacks occurred once or twice a year. (Tarnowsky, op. cit.)
Case 48. X., aged 34, greatly predisposed, suffers with contrary sexual instinct. For various reasons he had no opportunity to satisfy himself with men, in spite of great sexual desire. Occasionally he dreamed that a woman whipped him, and then had a pollution.
Through this dream he came to have prostitutes beat him as a substitute for love with men. Occasionally he would obtain a prostitute, undress himself completely (while she was not to take off a thing), and have her tread upon him, whip, and beat him. Qua re summa libidine affectus pedem feminæ lambit quod solum eum libidinosum facere potest: tum ejaculationem assequitur. Then disgust at the morally-debasing situation occurred, and he retired as quickly as possible.
Cases occur, however, in which passive flagellation alone constitutes the entire content of the masochistic fancies, without other ideas of humiliation, etc., and without any clear consciousness of the real nature of this expression of submission. Such cases are difficult to differentiate from those of simple reflex flagellation. A knowledge of the primary origin of the desire, before any experience of reflex stimuli (v. supra, under “first”), is the only thing that makes the differential diagnosis certain; taken with the circumstance that genuine masochists are perverse in their youth, and that the realization of their desires usually comes late, or undeceives them (v. supra, under “thirdly”); for the whole thing, for the most part, belongs to the sphere of the imagination.
The following case is of this nature:—
Case 49. Autobiography.—In January, 1891, I received the following letter from a gentleman in Hungary: “In depression and despair of a life that shuts me out from all that makes human happiness, I come to you with the last gleam of hope of rescue from a condition which, if it continue, can end only tragically.
