Psychopathia Sexualis/Preface to the First Edition
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
Very few ever fully appreciate the powerful influence which sexuality exercises over feeling, thought, and conduct, both in the individual and in society. Schiller, in his poem, "Die Weltweisen," recognizes it with the words:—
Philosophie zusammenhält,
Erhält sie das Getriebe
Durch Hunger und durch Liebe."[1]
It is remarkable that the sexual life has received but a very subordinate consideration on the part of philosophers.
Schopenhauer ("The World as Will and Idea") thought it strange that love had been thus far a subject for the poet alone, and that, with the exception of superficial treatment by Plato, Rousseau, and Kant, it had been foreign to philosophers.
What Schopenhauer and, after him, the Philosopher of the Unconscious, E. v. Hartmann, philosophized concerning the sexual relations is so imperfect, and in its consequences so distasteful, that, aside from the treatment in the works of Michelet ("L'amour") and Mantegazza ("Physiology of Love"), which are to be considered more as brilliant discussions than as scientific treatises, the empirical psychology and metaphysics of the sexual side of human existence rest upon a foundation which is scientifically almost puerile.
The poets may be better psychologists than the psychologists and philosophers; but they are men of feeling rather than of understanding, and at least one-sided in their consideration of the subject. They cannot see the deep shadow behind the light and sunny warmth of that from which they draw their inspiration. The poetry of all times and nations would furnish inexhaustible material for a monograph on the psychology of love; but the great problem can be solved only with the help of Science, and especially with the aid of Medicine, which studies the psychological subject at its anatomical and physiological source, and views it from all sides.
Perhaps it will be possible for medical science to gain a stand-point of philosophical knowledge midway between the despairing views of philosophers like Schopenhauer and Hartmann[2] and the gay, näive views of the poets.
It is not the intention of the author to lay the foundation of a psychology of the sexual life, though without doubt psychopathology would furnish many important sources of knowledge to psychology.
The purpose of this treatise is a description of the pathological manifestations of the sexual life and an attempt to refer them to their underlying conditions. The task is a difficult one, and, in spite of years of experience as alienist and medical jurist, I am well aware that what I can offer must be incomplete.
The importance of the subject for the welfare of society, especially forensically, demands, however, that it should be examined scientifically. Only he who, as a medico-legal expert, has been in a position where he has been compelled to pass judgment upon his fellow-men, where life, freedom, and honor were at stake, and realized painfully the incompleteness of our knowledge concerning the pathology of the sexual life, can fully understand the significance of an attempt to gain definite views concerning it.
Even at the present time, in the domain of sexual criminality, the most erroneous opinions are expressed and the most unjust sentences pronounced, influencing laws and public opinion.
He who makes the psychopathology of sexual life the object of scientific study sees himself placed on a dark side of human life and misery, in the shadows of which the god-like creations of the poet become hideous masks, and morals and æsthetics seem out of place in the "image of God."
It is the sad province of Medicine, and especially of Psychiatry, to constantly regard the reverse side of life,—human weakness and misery.
Perhaps in this difficult calling some consolation may be gained, and extended to the moralist, if it be possible to refer to morbid conditions much that offends ethical and æsthetic feeling. Thus Medicine undertakes to save the honor of mankind before the Court of Morality, and individuals from judges and their fellow-men. The duty and right of medical science in these studies belong to it by reason of the high aim of all human inquiry after truth.
The author would take to himself the words of Tardieu ("Des attentats aux moeurs"): "Aucune misère physique ou morale, aucune plaie, quelque corrompue qu'elle soit, ne doit effrayer celui qui s'est voué a la science de l'homme et le ministère sacré du médecin, en l'obligeant à tout voir, lui permet aussi de tout dire."[3]
The following pages are addressed to earnest investigators in the domain of natural science and jurisprudence. In order that unqualified persons should not become readers, the author saw himself compelled to choose a title understood only by the learned, and also, where possible, to express himself in terminis technicis. It seemed necessary also to give certain particularly revolting portions in Latin[4] rather than in German.
It is hoped that this attempt to present to physician and jurist facts from an important sphere of life will receive kindly acceptance and fill an actual hiatus in literature; for, with the exception of certain single descriptions and cases, the literature presents only the writings of Moreau and Tarnowsky, which cover but a portion of the field.[5]
- ↑ "Meanwhile, until Philosophy shall at last unite and maintain the world, Hunger and Love impel it onward."
- ↑ Hartmann's philosophical view of love, In the "Philosophy of the Unconscious," p. 583, Berlin, 1869, is the following: "Love causes more pain than pleasure. Pleasure is Illusory. Reason would cause love to be avoided if it were not for the fatal sexual instinct; therefore, it would be best for a man to have himself castrated." The same opinion, minus the consequence, is also expressed by Schopenhauer ("Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung," 3. Aufl., Bd. ii, p. 586 u. ff.).
- ↑ "No physical or moral misery, no suffering, however corrupt it may be, should frighten him who has devoted himself to a knowledge of man and the sacred ministry of medicine; in that he is obliged to see all things, let him be permitted to say all things."
- ↑ The Latin is left untranslated.
- ↑ The works of Moll and von Schrenck-Notzing have since appeared.—Trans.