Degeneracy Of The Sexual Life

( Originally Published 1940 )

Facts that Should Be Widely Known by Parents, Teachers, Judges, Ethical Leaders

IT IS now a very unpleasant task, but my duty, to refer to some of the forms of perversity and erotomania that come to the surface here and there in the sexual life. The general practitioner in every big town or city meets with such cases in his practice, and comes to know them only too well. From the scientific point of view, pathological deviations from the, normal are of less importance than a knowledge of the normal itself; the endless variety of individual abnormalities has not the fundamental importance of the normal. This must always be taken as our standard for all observations; besides, all these pathological complications are much more difficult to understand.

How often we observe in cases of senile degeneracy, old people who instead of normal sexual pleasure, find a dirty delight in playing with their own excreta, when they have reverted to a second child-hood, or relapsed into complete idiocy.(1) And how cruelly these aged degenerates inflict moral and physical suffering on their unhappy partners, and even on themselves, solely in the fallacious hope-that these abnormal stimuli will awaken a temporary return of their own lost sexual forces; this may even lead to lust-murder in the violation of women and children.

And then what strange association of ideas, thought and feelings, it is when they feel sexually excited by the handling or contemplation of a lock of hair, or of an article of female clothing, for instance, and when no other objects possess the least charm for them, or have the least effect on them sexually? In former times all such cases, as soon as they led to serious acts, were looked upon as misdemeanours the Mosaic law, for instance, punishing all connection of men or women with animals with death. Krafft-Ebing and other psychiatrists, however, have studied this question more closely, and are more and more inclined to the opinion that these sexual abnormalities are generally the result of psychic derangement, and frequently of deep-seated mental trouble.

Thus our judgment of these people has become severe. And further investigation has also convinced us that in most cases we may blame false education and training, erroneous impressions received in childhood, or perhaps simply an individual natural peculiarity.(2)

Krafft-Ebing, for instance, mentions a case of erotic cruelty in a young man, who experienced sexual satisfaction for the first time in his life as he was wringing a fowl's neck. As in my own practice I remember a ease of so-called "fetichism", that of a young man who never obtained satisfaction unless he was holding a lady's slipper, which can only be explained by the fact that his first emission occurred when fondling one of his own sister's slippers. Of course, one must also be somewhat unfavourably predisposed and badly trained, if one can be so exclusively and permanently influenced by a single experience, or even if it occurs repeatedly.

And the feeling of necessity for the dirty and the obscene in word and deed may also easily arise from a false training in one's youth, if, as so often hap-pens, all things sexual are stigmatised as the height of impropriety. And it may also be that with such erroneous over-refined training, all actual contact with, or experience of, dirt and violence are avoided as much as possible, so that when these actually occur later, they possess the attraction of novelty, as though they were something quite original; but this is a rough sort of stimulation, only to be played as a cynical trump card at the end of one's life, when all normal, agreeable and tender charms have lost their power.

These errors can now be better avoided, because new light breaks in upon the etiology, i.e., the causation of such cases, and such unfortunate degenerates are more humanely treated. If for some reason or other they are brought up before the judge, they are now more likely to be sent to a suitable home than to prison.

And the further we pursue our investigations into the chain of causes, the greater is the possibility of a complete cure.

Although an erroneous education or training is frequently the cause of sexual aberration with improper behaviour, yet in other cases the causal nexus is quite different, and it is such cases to which Krafft-Ebing has devoted special attention. In Chapter 65 we referred to something similar in the more serious forms of nervous affections arising from excessive masturbation. In serious cases of sexual morbidity, the primary cause often proves to have been some affection of the central nervous system, and the psychopathy can then, therefore, only be regarded as more or less causal manifestations of the functional morbidity.

The lay public, however, believes just the contrary to be the case, always , expects a cure from an appeal to reason and throws all the blame on the sexual life itself. They are just as wrong as the freethinkers who fanatically blame religion for all religious mania. This is quite a fundamental error of principle. The patient, whose central nervous system is affected, who is suffering, for instance, from a certain feeling of nameless anxiety, projects this feeling of fear, just as we do in our dreams (see chapter 36) on all sorts of persons and objects, according to circumstances. One imagines he or she is lost for all eternity, another that he is ruined or is continually being followed, etc.

Then there are the well-known cases of megalomania, when a man thinks he is a king or a prophet, a genius or a millionaire, just as there may happen to be associations of thought or feeling in the one or the other connection. So different persons suffering from some form of dementia commit, one a theft, another a murder, a third some sexual misdemeanour.

In all such cases it is useless to reason with the patient or to try to teach him better; we have only one of two things to do, either to cure him by treatment in a suitable institution, or to render him harmless for the future.

There are also many cases in which a vicious circle can be found; where degeneracy is apparently the outcome of evil habits or bad training, and degeneracy itself, on the other hand, gives rise to bad habits and culpable behaviour.

For these reasons, it is often a difficult matter in criminal cases to decide whether the case is one of real criminality, or if it should not rather be regarded as pathological. We must, therefore, not be surprised that the criminal judge often punishes these cases very severely when they are really rather to be deplored, for a more pedagogic and ethical treatment of the case might lead to a cure or rescue, and cause far less public scandal. It is a fact that the more heavily such cases are punished, the more they are liable to be-come epidemic.

On the other hand, it has often occurred that only moral blame has been cast on many culprits who have wittingly caused the most terrible harm, such, for instance, as the propagation of venereal disease or an undesirable pregnancy, whether in or out of wedlock.

The law is, however, silent in regard to such really criminal acts; and it is noteworthy that these laws, as they stand, have been exclusively drawn up by the male sex in almost every country. Since the year 1917, however, in fifteen of the States of North America, regulations have been introduced with the object of preventing the propagation of dangerous diseases by heredity; but in every part of the world this danger can be coped with by the isolation of the afflicted person in some suitable institution or penitentiary, and by giving him the choice of imprisonment for life or of a simple sterilising operation.

Such progress has now been made in surgery, that it is an easy matter, and free from all danger, to render a man or woman non-reproductive. The seminal ducts in man and the fallopian tubes in woman are resected and the ends ligatured. When this operation is performed on adults, where the sexual functions have already been normally exercised, potency and sensation are not changed by the operation, whereas the reproductive faculty is completely destroyed. When the operation has been performed, such persons only require a little moral support from the members of their own family. They no longer present the slightest danger for the community.

These facts should be widely known among all parents and teachers, and especially amongst ethical leaders, so that they may better realise their own responsibilities. If, now that we know these things, we wilfully shut our eyes to them, and try to hide and discredit the sexual urge, as has been vainly attempted for so long, then we are guilty of connivance in all the dark, criminal pathological results of our own neglect.

If the official moralists can find no other advice to give than that of continence and abstinence, passionate adults are driven to despair and to the most reprehensible acts, which may lead to terrible retribution later on. Excess and privation may both lead to equally deplorable results.