The Sexual Question Part 25

s.e.xUAL PERVERSIONS DUE TO HABIT

Without being congenital and without depending on a special predisposition, all the perversions of the s.e.xual appet.i.te that we have just described may be acquired, by means of the artificial and continued excitation of a s.e.xual appet.i.te which seeks satisfaction in change and unusual situations: Moreover, perverse satisfaction of the s.e.xual appet.i.te is often resorted to--onanism, pederasty or oral coitus--either to avoid conception, or with the idea of escaping venereal disease, or in the case of onanism, to avoid publicity, trouble or expense. As we have seen above alcohol favors the development of s.e.xual perversions.

It is evident that a commerce in women systematically tolerated by the state, as is the proxenetism of regulated prost.i.tution, employs all means imaginable to attract and excite its clients. In this way prost.i.tution becomes the high-school for all the refinements of s.e.xual perversion. It not only offers special objects required by individuals tainted by heredity with various perversions, but it artificially develops perverse habits in the normal man. The manipulations of sadism or masochism are even utilized to revive a s.e.xual appet.i.te weakened by abuse. Individuals who have become impotent often try to excite themselves by observing the coitus of others. In fact a leaven of corruption and ignominy ferments on the dunghill of venal and artificial excitation of the s.e.xual appet.i.te.

The apostles of Mammon and Bacchus, the former by interest, the latter by the aid of a narcosis which paralyzes the higher sentiments and reflection, work in concert to maintain this foul swamp. The same individuals very commonly combine the two apostles.h.i.+ps and become themselves the victims of their false G.o.ds, after sacrificing hundreds of their fellows.

To make matters more clear I will recapitulate as follows:

(1). _We often meet with pederasty without a trace of inversion of the s.e.xual appet.i.te. It is also practiced on women by the psychopathic male. But the normal man hardly ever prefers it to normal coitus._

(2). _Compensatory masturbation is very common and ceases with the opportunity for normal coitus._

(3). _Sodomy is also often compensatory._

(4). _It is the same with a.s.saults on children, which seldom depend on a hereditary disposition._

(5). _Lesbian love, a form of degeneracy, artificial excitation of the c.l.i.toris by the tongue or otherwise, may have quite a different origin than from s.e.xual inversion or other perversions._

All these things take place chiefly in brothels or with prost.i.tutes, in barracks, boarding-schools, convents, and other isolated places where men and women live alone and separated from the other s.e.x.

Sadism, masochism, fetichism and exhibitionism are much more rarely the result of habits, because their object and the images with which they are a.s.sociated do not offer compensation for the normal excitation of the s.e.xual appet.i.te, or only do so insufficiently.

I am here obliged to contradict Krafft-Ebing, who regards exhibitionism as the effect of the impotence of certain individuals depraved by excesses, or as the unconscious act of certain epileptics.

No doubt the two conditions which he mentions may present themselves, but the exhibitionists I have observed have all been psychopaths whose perversion was primordial and hereditary, with the exception of some females in whom perversion originated in suggestion or alcoholism, which had at any rate aroused the disposition.

Lesbian love merits special mention. Owing to the c.l.i.toris being more or less concealed, women are often not satisfied by coitus, especially when the e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of the male takes place too quickly. Consequently a number of normal women prefer to procure an o.r.g.a.s.m by means of lesbian love (_c.u.n.n.i.l.i.n.g.u.s_.) There are clubs of female perverts, many of whom are not h.o.m.os.e.xual by heredity.

Although they differ from hereditary perversions, acquired perversions are connected with the former by a series of latent hereditary dispositions, more or less marked, and often difficult to distinguish in particular cases, especially when suggestion is blended with them.

Among the entirely hereditary and congenital s.e.xual perversions, many occur in individuals who are well conducted and often possessed of delicate and altruistic sentiments. This point is not sufficiently recognized. Such persons are nearly always more or less neurotic in other respects. They are disheartened by their perversion and are so much ashamed of it that they often prefer to carry their secret to the grave rather than confide it to their doctor.

Others sometimes confess to a doctor, and the life of a martyr, who is always contemplating suicide, is revealed to him. Individuals of feeble, cynical, egoistic or abnormal natures, whose number is legion in the corrupt centers of modern civilization, yield to their perversion and often come before the tribunals, or else become objects of public contempt. As it is this cla.s.s which generally become known, it is a.s.sumed by too hasty generalization that s.e.xual perverts are necessarily cynical, vicious or weak-minded individuals; but this induction is false. It is unfortunately impossible to estimate the number of s.e.xual perversions dissimulated by a large number of pessimists of both s.e.xes, generally celibate and usually males.

I do not pretend that, when s.e.xual perversion is neither hereditary nor favored by a latent hereditary predisposition, nor developed or fixed by alcoholism, it is usually possible to cure it by suggestion.

This often acts even in cases where alcohol has aroused a hereditary taint. The incorrigible recidivists among the s.e.xual perverts are, I am convinced, either hereditary or strongly predisposed, or degenerated by alcoholism. The original will power of the pervert is also of great importance. Weak-willed perverts always tend to relapse.

The social sanitation of s.e.xual intercourse would certainly reduce to a minimum the compensatory perversions of normal persons who abstain from alcohol. The prohibition of alcoholic drink would definitely eliminate not only the perversions directly due to alcohol, but gradually also those due to alcoholic blastophthoria in the descendants. Other hereditary perversions, not of alcoholic origin, can only be definitely eliminated by healthy selection.

Perversions acquired by suggestion or auto-suggestion should be combated by suppression of the depraved examples which cause them, as well as by treatment by suggestion. It is needless to say that s.e.xual perverts should always abstain from alcoholic drinks.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] English translation by F.J. Rebman: Rebman Co., New York.

[5] For further information on this subject see _Marshall's_ "Syphilology and Venereal Disease," (London, Balliere, Tindall & Co.); also _Marshall's_ translation of _Fournier's_ "Treatment and Prophylaxis of Syphilis," (New York: Rebman Co.)

[6] _Krafft-Ebing_ describes b.e.s.t.i.a.lity (connection with animals) and pederasty under the general term of sodomy, but points out that the original meaning of sodomy used in Genesis (Chapter XIX) signified pederasty, _i.e._, a.n.a.l coitus between men.

CHAPTER IX

SUGGESTION IN s.e.xUAL LIFE--AMOROUS INTOXICATION

=Suggestion. Cerebral Activity. Consciousness. Subconsciousness and Amnesia. Auto-suggestion.=--The explanation of the phenomena of hypnotism and suggestion by Liebeault and Bernheim has been a veritable scientific revelation for human psychology. Unfortunately it has remained to a great extent unknown to the public and the majority of medical men and jurists. Even at the present day, this subject is regarded either in the light of magic and occult phenomena, or as being connected with imposture and charlatanism. This results from the incapacity of most men to think in a psychological and philosophical manner, to observe for themselves and to take into account the connection which exists between the mind and cerebral activity.

I must point out the common error of many physicians, who do not understand the psychological nature of hypnotism, and who place it, like Dubois, in antinomy with psychotherapy. Hypnotism and suggestion in the waking state are one and the same thing; but what the physicians I have mentioned understand by suggestion in the waking state--psychotherapy, action by will power, etc.--is only a chaos of misapplied terms and psychological phenomena, only half understood by them. Sleep by suggestion is only one of the phenomena of suggestion.

I must refer the reader to Bernheim's book on "_La Suggestion et ses Applications a la Therapeutique_," and to my book on hypnotism ("_Der Hypnotismus und die Suggestive Psychotherapie._" Stuttgart, 1902), for I cannot enter into the details here. I will, however, attempt to make clear the action of suggestion in order to explain its connection with the s.e.xual sensations and sentiments.

Suggestion consists in the action of ideas or representations on the activity of the brain in general, and on some of its activities in particular. The terms _idea-force_ and _ideoplasty_ have been employed; but all ideas are at the same time forces and are more or less ideoplastic according to the nature and intensity of the cerebral activity which corresponds to them. Every representation which appears in our consciousness is at the same time a cerebral activity. I will explain by the aid of an example the relation which exists between the play of our _conscious_ ideas and what is incorrectly called our _unconscious_ cerebral activity.

For reasons which are too long to explain here, I call _subconscious_ all which is usually called unconscious, because I maintain that there is probably nothing unconscious in our nervous activity, and that what appears to be so is in reality accompanied by an introspection, subordinated like its corresponding activity to the great and clear introspection of the higher brain, which accompanies the concentrated and mobile activity of what we call our attention in the waking state.

No doubt, we do not as a rule perceive our subconscious activities, for want of sufficient intensity in their a.s.sociation with the series of aperceptions (states subsequent to attentional activity). But we possess a number of observations, due especially to hypnotism, which allow us to infer by a.n.a.logy the existence of subordinated introspections corresponding to the cerebral activities which appear to us unconscious.

For example, I think of my wife. This idea immediately calls to mind that of a journey that I intend to take with her, and in its turn the idea of the journey recalls that of the trunk I shall use to pack my effects. Almost as rapidly as lightning, the three ideas: (1) my wife; (2) the journey; (3) the trunk, apparently succeed each other in my consciousness. But, according to the old scholasticism, the idea of the journey is awakened by that of my wife, and that of my trunk by that of the journey, which would, therefore, be its "cause." But a little observation soon shows that the succession of our conscious ideas is not so easily explained, for at every moment representations appear which have no logical relation to those which precede them, and cannot be caused by them, nor by immediate sensory perceptions coming from without.

At a time when the activity of the brain was not understood, the existence of an essential mind and a free will were a.s.sumed, independent of the law of the conservation of energy and of the law of causality, independent therefore of the brain, the activity of which they commanded more or less at their pleasure. This conception is based on ignorance of the facts.

Let us return to our example: why does the idea of my wife call to mind that of the journey? It might quite as well suggest others. In reality, a number of ideas, or subconscious cerebral activities, act at the same time as that of my wife to give rise to the idea of the journey. This journey had already been decided on before thinking of it at the moment in question, and the resolution that I had taken to make it had left in my brain latent impressions (engrams) which slumbered there; such as those of the date of departure, the duration of the journey, its termination, precautions to be taken for the house during our absence, things to take with us, expenses, etc., etc.

During the infinitely short time when the idea of journey appears in my consciousness, between that of my wife and that of my trunk, I have no consciousness of all these things. They are, however, closely a.s.sociated with the idea of journey, and in connection with it by the thousand threads of a subconscious and latent cerebral force which takes place in my cerebral nerve-elements (neurones); and it is their hidden action which awakens the idea of journey and directs my attention to it, at the same time weakening by their divers interferences the intensity of other a.s.sociated engrams; in particular that of the sentiment of traveling, and thereby preventing a series of ideo-motor sensations relating to departure from becoming predominant.

What suddenly appears in my consciousness is the verbal representation symbolized by the word _journey_; a general representation of synthetic nature, and consequently nebulous. It is the words of language only which allow me to synthetize a general idea in a short and definite form. Thus, the cerebral flash _journey_ which follows the idea of my wife is not caused by the latter idea alone; it has been mainly drawn from its obscurity and brought before the mobile conscious attention, by the action of the thousand subconscious threads, some of which we have just mentioned, and which have at the same time determined its quality.

Without my being aware of it, these dynamic threads, or latent engrams, have to a great extent determined the kind of idea which will follow that of _journey_, and which will seem to me to be caused by this last alone, namely the idea of _trunk_. The idea of journey might equally well have awakened other images, such as those of the acquaintances whom I should meet, or of the town I intended to visit.

Why that of the trunk? This is simply because the care of the effects to be taken, the place they should occupy, etc., revolved unconsciously but strongly in my brain, and for the moment predominated over other subconscious a.s.sociations.

This simple example shows us that in reality the three successive ideas, _wife_, _journey_, _trunk_, are more under the influence of sentiments, representations and former volitions in a latent and subconscious state, than dependent on each other. But these latter activities are themselves the product of other antecedent activities of my brain, extraordinarily diverse and complex. I will attempt to make things a little more complete and comprehensible by the aid of a comparison.

A man finds himself in the middle of a compact and moving crowd. He cries out to attract the attention of the crowd. His voice is heard by those immediately around him, but is lost on the moving ma.s.s. Against his will he is carried away by the crowd in the direction of the strongest movement. But if the crowd is immobile and tranquil the same man may make himself heard, and may even force his way through the crowd and impel it in his turn by the impression that his words have made on it.

Something a.n.a.logous to this occurs in the action of an idea according as it is produced in a brain which is awake, active and strongly a.s.sociated, or on the contrary in a brain which rests and sleeps. The brain which is active and strongly a.s.sociated resembles the agitated crowd which carries away everything by its activity. In this case a single idea, like a single man, cries out in vain, _i.e._, is produced strongly; it will not impel, but will be carried away or stifled, unless it already possesses, by the former remembrances (engrams) which it may revive, a particular power over the brain. It is the same with the agitated crowd; if the man who cries out is already known and has influence and power, he may arrest it and even bring it toward the center of his agitation. The brain which is at rest or sleeping, _i.e._, feebly a.s.sociated and not active, resembles the immobile crowd. Even when it is new and has not yet become fixed in the memory, an idea may produce a deep impression, and awaken activities in its own direction. I repeat, if this idea has already acted more or less powerfully on the cerebral activity that it has often carried with it, it has accustomed this to follow it (_i.e._, fortified the engrams and facilitated their ecphoria), and then the powerful a.s.sociated engrams which it has left in the organ of thought, will often be capable of carrying everything with them, even to the center of the agitation.

In this way I succeeded in suddenly calming by hypnotism a woman who was mad with despair over the tragic death of half her family in a fire, by the simple fact that I had often hypnotized her previously.

Immediately after the hypnosis she went away quietly to the place of the disaster and was the only one to keep her presence of mind and put things in order.

I refer the reader to what has been said concerning the mneme (Chapter I). Semon's theory throws light on these questions.

The first thing necessary for suggestion or hypnotism is to put the brain of the subject in a state of relative repose, so as to prepare a soil ready to receive suggestions. These are then made so as to always increase the cerebral repose, in order to weaken the action of the threads of subconscious a.s.sociation of which we have spoken above.

Lastly, the suggestion (or idea which symbolizes the effect it is desired to obtain) is accentuated as much as possible, and in a form which at once excludes all contradiction. For this purpose everything should be utilized--sentiments and a.s.sociations which are easily introduced, agreeable or repulsive sensations, volitions, etc. Nothing paralyzes a suggestive effect so much as emotions, violent sentiments in general, inclinations, or repulsions which act in the opposite direction, whether they arise from fear, despair, hatred, sadness, joy, love or any kind of affective conditions. The same brain, accessible to all kinds of suggestions, will repress some of them as soon as it feels a deep sympathy for their contrary. We may suggest in vain to an amorous woman, the hatred or disgust of her lover, for the sentiment of love is stronger than the effect of a strange suggestion, and every suggestion which opposes the strongest aspirations of sentiment provokes mistrust and repulsion, which in their turn destroy all suggestive power.

As we have indicated in our comparison, every suggestion which has succeeded leaves a strong trace, or engram, in the brain. It has opened a way by breaking down a barrier or a chasm, and its effect, which appeared hitherto difficult or impossible to realize, will henceforth be much more easy to obtain. This is why considerable cerebral repose is often necessary at first to open a way for a suggestion, while later on its effect can often be obtained even during the agitation of cerebral activity strongly a.s.sociated with or even led by violent momentary sentiments.

The chief characteristic of suggestive action, is that it traverses the paths of subconscious activity, so that its effect occurs unexpectedly in our consciousness.