3. The entire mental existence is altered to correspond with the abnormal sexual instinct (effemination and viraginity).
4. The form of the body approaches that which corresponds to the abnormal sexual instinct. However, actual transitions to hermaphrodites never occur, but, on the contrary, completely differentiated genitals; so that, just as in all pathological perversions of the sexual life, the cause must be sought in the brain (androgyny and gynandry).
The first definite communications[1] concerning this enigmatical phenomenon of Nature are made by Caspar (“Ueber Nothzucht und Päderastie,” Caspar’s Vierteljahrsschrift, 1852, i), who, it is true, classes it with pederasty, but makes the pertinent remark that this anomaly is, in most cases, congenital, and, at the same time, to be regarded as a mental hermaphroditism. There exists here an actual disgust of sexual contact with women, while the imagination is filled with beautiful young men, and with statues and pictures of them. It did not escape Casper that in such cases emissio penis in anum (pederasty) is not the rule, but that, by means of other sexual acts (mutual onanism), sexual satisfaction is sought and obtained.
In his “Clinical Novels” (1863, p. 33) Casper gives the interesting confession of a man showing this perversion of the sexual instinct, and does not hesitate to assert that, aside from vicious imagination and vice, as a result of over-indulgence in normal sexual intercourse, there are numerous cases in which pederasty has its origin in a remarkable, obscure impulse, which is congenital and inexplicable. About the middle of the “sixties,” a certain assessor, Ulrichs, himself subject to this perverse instinct, came out and declared, in numerous articles,[2] that the sexual- ↑ Dr. Moll, of Berlin, called my attention to the fact that in Moritz’s Magazin f. Erfahrungsseelenkunde, vol. viii, Berlin, 1791, there are references to contrary sexual instinct in man. In fact, there two biographies of men are reported who manifested an enthusiastic love for persons of their own sex. In the second case, which is particularly noteworthy, the patient himself explains his aberration by the fact that, as a child, he was caressed only by grown persons, and, as a boy of ten or twelve years, only by his school-fellows. “This, and the want of association with persons of the opposite sex, in me, caused the natural inclination toward the female sex to be entirely diverted to the male sex. I am still quite indifferent to women.”
It cannot be determined whether such a case is one of congenital (psycho-sexual hermaphroditism?) or acquired contrary sexual instinct. The oldest case of contrary sexual instinct, that has thus far been proved in Germany, is that of a woman who was married to another, and gratified herself sexually with a leathern priapus. A case of viraginity, historically and legally interesting, derived from the legal proceedings, which took place early in the eighteenth century, is reported by Dr. Müller (Alexandersbad), in Friedrich’s Blätter f. ger. Medicin, 1891, part iv.
- ↑ “Vindex, Inclusa, Vindicta, Formatrix, Ara spei, Gladius furens, kritische Pfeile,” Leipzig (Otto u. Kadler), 1864–1880.
