In this thread I'll post my remarks on the Psychopathia Sexualis, a historical psychiatric work written by Richard Von Krafft-Ebing, dealing with deviant sexuality.https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.200360
If you have any relevant /lit/ remarks in relation to Freud, psychology/psychiatry/criminology in general, or other related topics, by all means. If you don't care for discussion (or walls of text) on homosexuality, fetishism, sex crimes etc in a historically notable book, feel free to ignore or hide the thread. Be assured that a human is writing.Krafft-Ebing (hereafter referred to as KE) was a German psychiatrist active throughout the end of the 19th century. His family's background in law enabled him to connect up his chosen field (psychology/psychiatry) with the legal system, a clear precursor for how the psych sector interfaces with violent criminals and the criminally insane, the legal system etc, today. Although KE was a highly respected figure in his lifetime, simply writing and compiling Psychopathia Sexualis, his major work, earned him a certain notoreity, given its spicy subject matter. Because the subject matter is frequently lurid (murder, odd cases of fetishism, simple homosexuality, cases of pedophilia, etc), KE elected to write the nastiest bits in Latin, in an (ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to bar access to uneducated men who would read them purely for entertainment (people such as myself). According to one introducer's account, sales of Latin dictionaries jumped noticably upon publication. Although I myself will frequently point out the lurid and the amusing throughout this thread, the work does also have a certain legitimate (on-topic) literary merit as a historical work with connections to other literature, which I will also indicate at certain points. KE was a contemporary of Freud and Havelock Ellis (the latter, once one reads his biography, was a perfect asshole in almost every way, and not merely over the eugenics stuff, which at least has some reasonable points in its favor (blacks)), and throughout the proceedings, KE cites a variety of interesting classical sources, philosophers etc to try to explain why the freaks behave as they do, or at least to provide anecdotal precursors.Throughout Psychopathia Sexualis (hereafter referred to as PS), KE's method is simply to compile case studies and comment upon them. Although he refers to physiology and literary references as appropriate, he also suggests psychological explanations. KE himself was aware that his method was imperfect and not exactly rigorous, and says so in the first edition's preface (thus pre-empting the same criticism). He is simply making an early attempt to build up data on deviant sexual behavior, for the purpose of managing violent criminals appropriately, or else, if possible, of ridding the afflicted of their various fetishes, homosexuality, and so on. The various introducers generally agree that although the work has historical significance, it has dated more badly than Freud's work.
In his later years, and up until his death, KE busied himself with constantly revising and republishing PS (up to twelve editions!!), always appending new case studies and building out new sections for further enhancement. The incomplete, in-progress nature of the work is clear in its final state, as its final subsections are very scant, and certain earlier headings also appear not to be fully developed. One of the final subsections, which he was unable to develop further, would have treated the abuse of patients, students, or in general, those entrusted to the institutional care of some responsible person.In its final state, the work consists of six chapters. There are three brief introductory chapters, and two later chapters which focus on especially nasty cases, and his suggestions/recommendations for how The System ought to deal with the criminally insane. The central Chapter 4, the General Pathology, is by far the longest, covering over half the book. Although some extreme violent crime is covered very early on (the worst being lust-murder, e.g. Jack the Ripper), most of the chapter is devoted to conventional fetishism and homosexuality, and these studies really form the core of the work (along with a few trans cases).Certain themes are pervasive throughout the work:-Masturbation is very very bad, and kills the soul. Although quaint in a way (honestly, he overplays it just a bit, but he does have a larger point), this understanding of things retains some relevance as we understand the problems of porn addiction, people looking at their screens, and current forms of (a)social decay. What you need to be doing is going outside and interacting with others in person in normal, healthy ways. Masturbation (solitary, indoors) is just one of many things that can get in the way of this. One passage on the evils of masturbation is at the same time quaint, and also goes neatly with the modern themes I've indicated (I'll quote it later).-Intersection of psychology, psychiatry, violent crime, sexuality, and the legal system (KE places himself at the nexus of all this, offering aid, which toward the end approaches an invention of rent-seeking for himself and similar professionals)-Instances of violent sex crime or other extremely odd/disturbing behaviors are associated with epilepsy. KE had a special professional interest in the royal disease, and when one reads the later chapter "Special Pathology", he seems to see or to suggest that epilepsy may be associated with several of these cases, in ways that sometimes seem incongruous when one reads them, and are therefore dubious.
-Hypnosis may have some (limited) value as a theraputic technique. Toward the middle, KE reports cases in which acquired homosexuality and certain types of fetishism can be beaten back and suppressed. Intelligently, he (correctly) distinguishes between acquired (socialized) homosexuality and true, congenital (innate) homosexuality, an accurate view which puts the lie to the overly-simple and now-dated "it's not a choice" PC stuff of recent decades. It depends on the person. He suggests that in principle, some of the real gays might possibly be helped via hypnotic conversion therapy, but deep down he seems to understand that they're the ones hard-wired that way, and that there's really no helping them.-Stimulation of the butt and thereabouts leads to arousal. Monastic flagellation, spanking of children etc are originally understood as expiation or punishment, but these are really bad things because they can lead to sexual arousal. KE makes this connection (the church eventually got wise that the monks were just stimulating themselves, and therefore told them to cut it out), and therefore himself discourages spanking. There are amusing anecdotes of nuns and novices whose favorite thing in the whole wide world was to be strapped down by Mother Superior or whoever and humiliated/flogged in front of everybody else (oh no, how horrible).The author's preface of the first edition is a very brief, flowery sketch of the importance of human sexuality. Schiller and Schopenhauer (via the World as Will and Representation) are name-dropped to indicate the importance of (sexual) love, and also to suggest that poets are much better at understanding love than philosophers. Although of course philosophers have taken on the subject of love, what is amusing here is the tradition that several Western philosophers (including Schopenhauer himself) either lived as bachelors or else had trouble in the sex department.The first chapter lays out the central importance of sexuality to the human condition. An amusing bit of conventional, anthropological racism: the Africans, Polynesians etc just do it out in the open (so KE says), whereas the people of the ice (Northern Europeans) have developed modesty. This seems to ignore practices such as muslim hijab, but he deals with the muslims a moment later in an equally amusing way. Whereas christianity fosters a higher order of social stability and is capable of imagining heaven as an abstract ideal, islam can't do this. muslims are inferior because they can't really conceive of anything higher than this (carnal) world, as proven in their vision of the afterlife: the 72 virgins business (which is what KE is really saying, although he doesn't quote that precise figure).
KE is also carefully using the virtues of christianity right at the very top of his work to legitimize it within his own culture. He understands that his work is likely to be attacked, banned etc, and so he needs to make it perfectly clear that he's a serious man honestly trying to grapple with an unpleasant problem, deviant sexuality and the crimes associated with it.Sexuality awakens an aesthetic capability and awareness apart from the urge to rut. A simple desire to articulate the beautiful, felt by most. "Even the dolt tries his hand at poetry when in love." (recall the above remark that poetry, NOT some philosophical treatise, is associated with love). A moment later, he falsely praises the "wisdom" of the catholics in requiring celibacy among their priesthood, which he supposes "emancipates" them from sensuality, but he of all people knows (or should know) that this doesn't really take place. Had he lived into the late 20th century, he would have had occasion to include the various priest abuse cases among his studies.Via monogamy (special attachment to one person), he introduces the concept of fetishism: special attachment to one specific thing/phenomenon. Religion and sexuality are again equated through fetishism (worshipping an idol/masturbating to a specific thing, object of worship). A bit later he notes that certain body parts (hair, eye, foot) are common objects of fetishism. The first chapter's best insight is to draw valid comparisons between religious fervors, sacred fetish worship, and sexuality itself. In the hagiographies, Various kook saints, coming down from this or that religious fervor, would complain of a "dryness of the soul". religious ecstacies have a sexual character, and vice verse. Toward the end, KE notes that certain men in sexy professions (tenors, actors, successful musicians etc) naturally attract female interest, as do certain criminals (hybristophilia). All of this is of course common knowledge today.The second (very brief) chapter sketches the physiology of sexual arousal, essentially as an up-down process along the spine between the brain and the genital area (and the butt and other structures are close to the genital area, whence other sexual stimuli). Various structures are named (pons, cerebral cortex, corpora cavernosa, those upper structures on the penile shaft which get engorged with blood and which look like scary alien eyes when seen in cross-section, etc). Without explaining the auto-erotic hanging thing, he clearly states that men who have been hanged have been observed to become aroused, and he attributes this to what's happening with the spinal cord itself (and its various nerves), which must communicate signals downstream to the junk.
The third (again, very brief) chapter distinguishes primary and secondary sexual characteristics. Like Adam Smith and other modern Western thinkers on development in general, KE conceives that hyper-distinction of various "departments", very clear differentiation betwen the two sexes etc (or between things in general, different organs of a body, division of specialized labor in a society, etc) is a sign of the highest possible development, as opposed to lower, less-differentiated things like (asexual)worms, micro-organisms, etc. When you have various specialized departments in whatever domain, the result is a higher and more interesting structure. Amusingly, "bi-sexuality" is for KE the lowest and most primordial state, held by "the lowest classes of animal life". He is not referring here to sexual orientation, but rather to the (as yet indeterminate) sex of a given organism, newly-formed zygote, etc. Here, he begins to use the terms "inverted, inversion" to refer to homosexuals, or those whose sexual attraction is the inverse of what it ought properly to be.While wondering over what defines a woman, KE actually problematizes the matter, throwing a bone to the tranny crowd. He opines that certain cases of "transverse Hermaphroditism" prove that the presence of, say, an ovary, cannot be used as a determinative criterion to fix who is a woman. Likewise, women with defective or messed up ovaries manage to grow up to look like women, pretty much. All in all, it's very brief comments on what may give rise to hermaphrodites, presence or absence of this-or-that. Bearded ladies are discovered post-mortem to have had no ovaries, (male) eunuchs may develop boobs in some cases (gynocomastia), etc.Now begins the General Pathology, the work's central chapter. Toward the beginning, the eponymous terms Sadism and Masochism are introduced and used in their modern senses. The proximity and use of the actual terms "nymphonmania/satyriasis" cause one to wonder whether the Coen brothers had read all or part of PS prior to The Big Lebowski, when the character Maude Lebowski employs both terms in the same breath. Fetishism-as-such is described as a focused thing/concept in the absence of which, orgasm is either difficult or impossible. Homosexuality is also referred to as "antipathic sexual instinct". Sadism, Masochism, fetishism and homosexuality (which are, very broadly, the stuff of BDSM subculture) are all interestingly given the umbrella term: Parasthesia (paraphilia?). General perversion of the sexual instinct. One early case is an interesting instance of "antinatalism", a topic (whether pro or con) so dear to /lit/: a man attacks his own genitals several times, and later made a (foiled) attempt to cut off the scrotum of a random boy. By his own account, the point was "that the world should not multiply". "He was mentally abnormal... selfish, and weak minded. He hated women, loved solitude, and read much."
As KE begins to rattle off case studies with regularity, he begins quite early on with some of the nastier cases of sadism, so-called lust-murder. But he settles down into simpler and more garden variety stuff toward the middle. His official report on Jack the Ripper is a brief paragraph based upon his available sources. After this, for a few pages, is an especially heinous guy, one Joseph Vacher, the "French Ripper", who is arguably EVEN WORSE, which is quite something. Vacher's M.O. was to kill teenage shepherds and farm girls out in the countryside and then badly mangle their bodies, entrails, etc. He was one of the all-time pieces of work in the historical record. He was such an unmanagable piece of shit that he howled and attacked during his initial apprehension and ad-hoc jailing, and at the execution, they had to drag him up to the scaffold, as he refused to walk under his own power. Rarely has a human being been more richly deserving of the guillotine, even taking into account that he was fucked in the head.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_VacherAround this point, KE attempts an explanation of Sadism. The physical stimulation which is normal in love-play (scratching, biting, smacks on the butt etc) is taken to a sort of logical, extreme conclusion, which is violent crime or murder. An interesting historical example of unaccountable nobility is also reported around this point: one Marschalls Gilles de Rays, executed in 1440, tortured and killed hundreds of children in his castle (prefiguring Sade's 120 Days). He gets the idea of this lubricity via Suetonius describing the orgies of Tiberius, Caracalla, etc. Later, it is noted that female sadism is quite rare (which is why straight male masochists and submissives are in such a ridiculous position), and some classical, literary examples are given: Messalina, wife of Claudius whose plot against him was foiled (good Claudius), and Catherine de' Medici, author I guess of the St. Bartholemew's Day Massacre. Not mentioned: the Hungarian Countess Bathory (a personality who sprang to my mind, at least). From Sadism, he turns to Masochism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_de_RaisWhile describing Masochism itself, KE makes the unsurprising claim that Sacher-Masoch himself had the tendencies indicated in his work, but apparently this accusation was somewhat controversial at the time, and so KE claims to have private/professional knowledge on same. A moment later, KE stupidly suggests that Sacher-Masoch might have been a better author if he had been free of his problems, kinks, etc, which is obviously incorrect. Leaving sex stuff aside, an undamaged writer is a boring writer. "The number of cases of undoubted masochism thus far observed is very large." (read: subs outnumber doms ten-to-one).
Various accounts make it clear that there's a sex market for women to dominate men. Naturally the ashamed men turn to prostitutes, and pay premiums for them to simply do this-or-that. Prostitutes who are in the know may keep a range of implements for these purposes, but the main thing is that it's the MEN who are imaginative. It's men's sexual imagination which overloads in both the dom and sub directions, so that when it goes in the latter direction, the male subs are "topping from the bottom" with specific instructions on exactly what they want done to them, while the prostitutes presumably aren't into the bizarre acts, or are simply accomodating instructions for pay. Here we have some early images of the concept of a dominatrix, and also of the sheer creativity of the male mind in various perverse directions. Woman, mediocrity, is brought along.Notice also that KE frequently uses "X" and "Z" as pseudo-names to identify his cases, particularly in the just-plain embarassing situations for male masochists, fetishists, and gays. He is doing this (using the least-commonly-used letters of the alphabet) to protect their private lives and professional careers, so as not to "out" them. Throughout the discussion of masochism and fetishism, KE demeans his own text in a way. In later editions, he self-reports newer personal cases where an unfortunate who was fixated on this-or-that fetish got ahold of his book, and by learning a bit about psychology and related abnormalities through (earlier editions of) his book, claimed to successfully repress and get over the problem. A representative paraphrase goes like this: "A correspondent communicated to me that he had [distracting fetish], and when he read the Psychopathia Sexualis, he gained understanding of his malady. He managed to suppress the fetish by repeatedly saying to himself that [distracting fetish] is objectively silly in various ways. Over time, the attraction of the fetish waned, and the correspondent's sex life recovered to a happy and normal state." If some of these guys managed to repress their fetishes and resume a normal and happy sex life, good for them. But KE's manner of reportage reduces his text to the genre of an auto-advertising self-help book. It's just tacky, in poor taste. But then, given that I am writing this thread, who am I to criticize poor taste?One especially funny case has a guy hiring a prostitute simply to mistreat him for a bit. As soon as he enters her room, she is to grab him by the ear, lead him around the room and treat him like a little boy: why are you here, YOU SHOULD BE AT SCHOOL, GO TO SCHOOL, etc. A sort of mommy kink it seems. The mental image that immediately sprang to mind for me was that of Monty Python's Argument Clinic, where the first room entered was simply "abuse".
Interestingly, KE attributes masochism to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, via the latter's "Confessions", and this book and connection are cited later on. As one reads the case studies, it becomes clear that multiple cases had in fact read Sacher-Masoch's work, and taken some inspiration from it. For KE's patients, "Venus in Furs" was not some distant historical curiosity, but a recently published thing that gave them some way to understand their own impulses. One female sub's case has her suggesting that she got her whipping idea by reading Rousseau's Confessions.He begins to treat fetishism-as-such, absent Sado-Masochism. Feet, shoes, boots, hair, all the usual things are covered, and some unusual ones. A laugh-out-loud moment, in the (paraphrase) translation. "Fetishists are not monsters due to excessive desire, like sadists or masochists..... Rather, they are monsters due to the abnormal specificity of their attractions." What makes this funny is that the first clause (setup) gives the reader initial hope that he may not condemn the fetishists as "monsters" (my initial expectation), but then he does exactly that, subverting expectation (punchline). No, these other people are sickos as well. At some point(s) throughout the book, KE suggests that in some cases, certain childhood events may explain the acquisition of particular fetishes.It's worth noting that around the middle, KE indicates that various patients made trips to "hydropathic" institutes, the "water-cure" idea of the 19th century which is of a piece with taking fresh air up in the mountains. Of course, these activities can feel good, but do they really cure a disease or a fetish. There follow one or two very slight suggestions (then scarcely developed) of what we now understand as amputee fetishism, and then it's guys attacking and/or stealing from women with fetishistic motivation: snip off some of her hair, grab her handkerchief, her panties, etc. Other clothing theft is described, and sometimes the guys will wear them or press them to their bodies. Not out of any impulse toward transvestism as-such, but simply to fully possess the stolen items, get the smell, etc, the conquest.A case observes displays of women's clothing both on the street and in shop windows. He is annoyed that these shop window displays are not changed frequently enough. This observation compares very interestingly with internet pornography, and the modern computer paradigm of using various "windows" to look at whatever porn you like. The man is bored and wants to overstimulate himself with every sort of visual enjoyment, which we can easily do now, but which he could not. He instinctively knew exactly how he wanted to go about over-stimulating himself (various, constantly changing visual cues), and now we have perfected that technology. Importantly (and credibly), certain of these cases are not gay guys, trannies, etc. They just really really like women's clothing due to its association with women.
Following the discussions of Sado-Masochism and fetishism, PS turns toward a lengthy discussion of conventional homosexuality, forming roughly one quarter of the work's final state, and thus one of its really central and more historically important (if less lurid) features. In early setup, there's an interesting (if dubious) historical suggestion that excessive horseback riding by various groups (ancient Greeks, Indians, etc) may contribute to a certain impotence, and in this case, a certain effeminacy within the population. Via a modern search, what I turned up in connection with this is the idea that professional male bicycle riders may have some concern about sexual function from sitting on the bicycle seat for so long. The idea would seem to be that the balls are pushed up too close to the trunk (or down onto the horse/bike seat), when they should be a bit cooler, hanging at some remove. Then follows one of the longest cases in the whole book. Instructive, but tedious. It appears to be a true transgender case, a fellow who constantly imagines himself as a woman, to the point of psychically imagining a vulva, a "period" etc, where of course none exist. He feels himself constantly "from top to toe" as a woman. KE returns to conventional homosexuality as-such, quoting a classical thing via Plato's banquet (Symposium) in which various gods are cited to explain straight (Aphroditic) love versus gay (Uranian) love.KE also starts his discussion with a rather moving condemnation of masturbation, which is so well-written that it warrants reproduction (pic related).KE then makes a few amusing errors, one after the other. He thinks that "nature never makes a mistake", and therefore specifically, that there is no such thing as a woman's brain in man's body. Of course, this remark contradicts his entire book, which is all about deviation, and how things go wrong or at least "don't work" within nature, the observable world, etc (although to be fair, the larger sense of nature as everything that exists versus "what works" in a given situation, and other senses of what is "natural" are open to discussion. One could easily reframe in some physicalist way to reject the above suggestion and reinforce KE's original point.) Next, KE indicates a report in which both coitus and defecation are found to be pleasurable, and finally in an attempt to understand this, KE imagines that the "mucous membrane" is "in some abnormal manner, erogenous". KE is a serious investigator, but he has no idea about prostate stimulation. Some obscure vocab: a "tribade" is a lesbian who practices scissoring. A "paedicator" is a sodomite.
Around this point, KE employs the term "homologous" more than once, to describe analogous structures in male and female anatomy that aren't identical to each other. This overall context calls to mind the use of the word "homologous" in a passage due to Judith Butler, which has gained notoreity as an an exceptionally poorly-written piece of po-mo trash (the passage is found in the link, and one can use its text to search for other pieces on same if one likes):https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Butler#NotesHe draws an interesting divide between true (extremely rare) hermaphrodites, intersex people etc, and the gays, with respect to the CENTRAL AND PERIPHERAL NERVOUS SYSTEMS, and here is an opportunity for us to learn of this physiological distinction: with the gays, he suggests it's the central system (the brain etc) at play, while with the hermaphrodites it's the peripheral system (lower nerve connections, junk etc) at play. At least, that's how I am phrasing it at a quick pass.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_nervous_systemhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_nervous_systemAmusingly, while trying to think through the above distinctions, the translation speaks of "This defect of natural laws", contradicting the sentiment from a few pages ago to the effect that nature never errs. But again if we're being serious, the concept of nature can be taken in a few different ways. What follows are a series of pretty conventional cases of gay and bi guys who are tormented by their preferences but just can't help themselves. One of the latter cases which runs for several pages is a sort of socialite who claims to have established a pretty good network of (gay) friends, acquaintances, fuck buddies etc, throughout Europe. One imagines Patient Zero, of AIDS.Another classical anecdote, to think about homosexuality. KE repeats an anecdote that an ancient Greek pervert broke into the temple at Delphi to defile a statue of CUPID (a male), read: NOT the statue of Aphrodite, which as far as I know is where the story-idea originally comes from. I suspect that KE's version is a downstream mangling (purple monkey dishwasher). This transferrence of the amusing idea would seem to be a perversion of the historical record.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphrodite_of_Knidos
The final section of the General Pathology consists of KE's closing remarks on homosexuality. Diagnosis, treatment, etc. He is particularly sympathetic to upper-middle-class types (near his own status) who truly wish to be rid of their condition, but of course, they just can't help themselves. He has less sympathy for those who like to prattle on and give salacious details about their personal lives for the ostensible "edification of science", and with this remark KE takes a little personal revenge on some foregoing cases. He saw them for what they really are, above all else: boring. Still, he nevertheless and fastidiously reproduces their confessions all the same, good confessor-parasite that he is. It would seem that at least a few of his cases are aware of this and use it to their own narcissistic advantage. "Hey, you're the guy with the weird sex book, tell everyone about my weird sex life."The word "anamnesis" is used. In philosophy, this word refers to "innate" knowledge that is merely re-discovered. Recall Plato's Meno. In KE's context, the word has a distinct and ordinary clinical sense: talking to the patient to gather information and context about what's really going on. In both cases, the commonality is the notion of re-acquiring available knowledge with a bit of work.KE rejects (incorrectly) the concept of "gaydar". One of his patients bragged about having excellent gaydar (this patient seems to have been personally very annoying for KE, and was probably the one he had in mind above), and KE goes nuh-uh, you guys only recognize each other by external tics. Personally, I don't buy it. Later, KE notes that boys fooling around with each other before puberty is something that can be overcome. It's once two young men go with each other AFTER puberty (when the heterosexual instinct ought to have fully kicked in) that a decisive step in the wrong direction has been taken, which will color the remainder of the sexual life. KE recommends that spanking not be used in school settings, for the same puritan/anti-stimulant reasons described earlier, and not out of any "corporal punishment is just plain bad" sentiment.As for treatment, KE recommends his usual: refrain from masturbation, and try to get the patient into situations that encourage healthy heterosexual interaction, courtship, etc. Absent this, let's maybe try some hypnosis, but even KE acknowledges that this only seemed to work in one case that he knew of. Later, KE realizes that the gays (by and large) aren't monsters, but he does want to cure them if possible, and this is the wall that he beats his head against. It just doesn't work that way. I think he is correct that homosexuality may variously be either congenital or acquired, but for the hard cases, they really are "born this way". Hence the modern rejection of conversion therapy. As part of this closing section, KE includes hypnotic "STOP BEING GAY" cases that he purports sorta-worked (they didn't).
Chapter 5, the Special Pathology, is fairly short. Here, he focuses on idiots, the mentally retarded, and how in the severest cases, their lack of social awareness coupled with normal adult sexual physiology may impel them toward horrific acts (bestiality, child abuse). Still, they tend to have just enough awareness that what they're doing is wrong, or is likely to meet with immediate punishment, which is why they (usually) instinctively try to hide whatever it is that they are doing. One case, as given on the page, is just so stupid and horrible that it wraps around to being funny, it just reads like a comedy sketch. A woman has an 18-month old with her. A random man comes up and grabs the kid from her "hey I'm just going to take him for a walk for a few minutes", then RETURNS it(!) badly damaged, with a torn anus. Evaluated as an idiot, sent to an asylum. Retard strength.One of the characteristic things in PS is a section where he attributes a series of sexual psychoses to, of all things, epilepsy (which was a special interest for KE). It sounds like a fanciful late 19th-century connection. A psychosis, more or less, means to lose (conscious) touch with reality (or: to lose control), and an epileptic fit involves (motor) loss of control (the cases are not described as literally seizing while doing their sex crimes, rather, their backgrounds frequently include epilepsy). But really, this particular connection sounds like dated bullshit, the thing that the 19th century mind (both assailant and examining doctor) would think of to explain their actions.Upon reading a little "paranoia" section, with one case of a man who has impregnated his daughter, having received word that he "should beget the Eternal Son with [his] daughter", we sense a glaring absence in the work. These types of cases might be better characterized with the now-commonly used term: SCHIZOPHRENIA.An extremely weird and novel chain of reasoning concludes the final case. A middle-aged man sucks a boy's penis. When he's found out and taken away, he sucks a few more dicks of fellow inmates on the way, and is isolated. Why is he doing this? According to the account, he has an extremely disorganized reasoning process which proceeds roughly as follows. He's dissatisfied at his work. He observes one or more of his superiors sucking a thumb, or part of the hand. Co-workers pointed toward a dog licking itself (presumably in mockery, or disgust). All of this came together in his brain in the following confused way: if he can be CAUGHT in the act of licking someone else's genitals, then his bosses would become disgusted with him and fire him, which would set him free from the job that he dislikes. That's a very long way to go. KE himself observes that this reasoning process is especially tortured and weird, even by crazy standards (he should have just started stealing or something simpler like that), and suggests that there were other (archaic) reasons like neurasthenia, etc.
In the final chapter, KE recommends interface between shrinks and the legal system, and focuses attention on the legality (or lack thereof) of various acts. He demonstrates awareness that many crimes are not reported, and at the same time he is naturally pre-occupied with his own research subject, and then cites local crime statistics to support his rent-seeking argument that heinous sex crimes are on the rise, or at least, that their reporting has gone way up in recent decades in the German-speaking world, and around the center of the continent. He (re)-introduces the now-familiar concept of CRIMINAL INSANITY. When someone has done something completely horrible and irrational, there arises a legitimate question (which unfortunately, in a way, offers an additional avenue of defense) of whether the person really was in their right mind at the time, or not. Hence etc. The criminally insane must of course be removed from society at all events, but into distinct facilities (the real-life Ian Brady, the fictional Hannibal Lecter). Not Gen Pop. KE again explicitly announces the (rent-seeking) unique need for the legal system and courts to consult shrinks and people like him in these exceptional sorts of cases. It's worth noting here that shameless sexual display or other disagreeable behaviors are frequently described throughout the book as "cynical". The precise sense-meaning in-translation is something to think about.The prudish KE is constrained by his own reason to admit that, much as he wants to pathologize simple oral sex (cunnilingus and fellatio), he cannot honestly do so upon serious inquiry (because it's obviously consenting adults who aren't bothering anyone else, and even he can see that, and this is exactly the type of sexual behavior where the "consenting adults" model does have its own legitimacy over the 19th century mindset, despite its own limitations in more absurd situations which indicate mental illness and/or inability to give consent, i.e. a pervert "consenting" to be killed, for example). KE contents himself by describing oral sex acts as "horrible sexual acts" arising from low morality. One wonders whether KE himself was ever involved in an episode of oral sex, and whether he felt badly about it. It's easy for me to sneer at KE's moralizing within the text, but he IS doing it for a reason: he maintains it in large part because he wants the work to be taken seriously, so we must keep that in mind while reading as well.
Psychoanalysis is just a Jewish plot to stigmatise normal parts of human sexuality (by their reckoning Goethe is a “deviant” on several fronts). The Jews simply can’t help themselves. Everything must be rigidly legalistic. They must introduce their neurosis, their crippling self-hatred, into every aspect of life. There is no point telling someone that they have a “fetish” - it will only make them regard themselves as something other, something different. The pagan sexuality of Greece, Japan, Arabia is much to be admired by contrast. Everyone had their preferences. Bad conduct brought shame, not “bad” desire.
There follow a few cases of male exhibitionism, and then there's a sudden pivot back to the really nasty horrible stuff, lust-murder and the like. Interestingly, around this point the translated language reads: "lust-murders dependent upon psychopathic conditions are never committed with accomplices". The Moors Murders of Brady and Hindley would seem to disprove this assertion, at least in one extreme example. The especially horrible case of Jesse Pomeroy (#218), which made such an impression on me on my first reading, is now given. One of the worst in the whole book, IMO (genital dismemberment of other kids by a kid, on top of murder). A reporter is given as "Mass.", giving the locality as Massachusetts, but the translation seems to want to suppress the boy's name altogether, calling him "K.", which has nothing to do with his real name. This courtesy of faux-anonymity, extended to so many men throughout the book, is not given to a later teenage lesbian jealousy murder case (Alice Mitchell, below). KE's instinct is to protect the privacy of adult male pervert patients, many of whom had respectable social positions and by definition moved in his own circles (the world was much smaller back then), and for this reason he would designate/anonymize individuals as "X" or "Z", the least common letters. He transfers this deference of anonymity onto this little (male) shit, but does not extend it to the far more sympathetic lesbian jealousy murder case of Alice Mitchell. No, let's name her so everyone knows exactly who she is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_PomeroyAlong the lines I've suggested above, the (il)legality of this-or-that sex act is again considered. A very interesting Latin phrase "volenti non fit injuria" is used, meaning: to the willing, no injury is done. KE notes that this concept isn't a thing under his then-"modern" law, and something like this has carried through today. If someone wants to be smacked around and mistreated, the law does not admit of this possibility. He cites an Austrian statute which makes it perfectly clear, in simple language: "crimes may be committed on persons who demand their commission on themselves." And again, there is a logic here. If some crazy person wants someone else to kill him (in one of the more extreme and clearer examples), it is in the interest of society/the state to nevertheless discourage such "consensual" arrangements. "I consent!" "I consent!" "I don't!" (the state/god/society, whatever). This concept is then translated down to less heinous acts, but ones still held disgusting by the predominant society.
A few fairly harmless crimes attributed to fetishism are given (ladies' panties, but especially ladies' hankies are the articles of choice for the 19th century fetishist, the smell of them along with the rest of it). Then, some musing on responsibility. What sorts of persons commit sex crimes? "Alcohol and prolonged sexual abstinence are the provocative causes of such affects in many degenerates"(!) The difference between then and now is that nowadays, high quality niche pornography enables men to at least obtain some private satisfaction (if at the expense of social neutralization). These guys back then had to make do with their own ideas, shop windows showing articles of clothing, etc. There is one earlier passage in which a pervert wishes that the shop WINDOW displays would be changed more frequently, which prefigures the no-effort, instant gratification of opening multiple tabs or (computer) windows of pornography. These earlier perverts had to seek, apply themselves, expend effort, take risks. Think. Not so today.
We now come to a small series of bestiality cases that are just plain funny."In a provincial town a man was caught in intercourse with a hen. He was thirty years old, and of high social position. The chickens had been dying one after another..."You don't say. The exam showed that he had a very small penis (but apparently still large enough to kill the hens). To add to the humor: "The man was mentally quite sound." You don't say. Next, a teenager fucks a goose in a neighbor's garden, and then the neighbor confronts him. The teenager's reply: "Well? Is there anything wrong with the goose?", then he just walks away. That's a chad move right there. The next case is a rabbit-fucking teenager. Again, dead abused rabbits start piling up.Contrasting with the above silliness, KE now gives a serious (and more sympathetic) treatment of male homosexuals, "these step-children of Nature", prefiguring the current "official" Western understanding of them, and this is one of the reasons why PS has a definite historical value. He cites a letter from an anonymous correspondent, a man of high position in London, who details at length the horror of being outed, the possibility of being blackmailed (with being outed), job loss, and so on. Naturally, the cases of Oscar Wilde and Alan Turing come to mind around British law specifically (criminalization, or lack thereof). Also, it was decriminizalized in the UK in 1967, right around the time that Graham Chapman was doing his thing with Monty Python (and David Sherlock):https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Offences_Act_1967 Oddly, the translation's "pederasty" is not used in the current context to refer to man/boy relations, but rather to the simple physical act of inserting a penis into an anus, with today's older word for same being "sodomy". Even this, in itself, is "cynical", per KE. This usage leads to the seemingly absurd construction that pederasty (sodomy) may occur when an adult man inserts his penis into an adult woman's anus.A jilted teen lesbian jealousy murder case (Alice Mitchell) is now given, and in this case, unlike others, the young woman's real first name and last initial are given (Alice M.), allowing her to be pinpointed more easily:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_MitchellThe final sub-sections are extremely brief (that is, incomplete), and cover lesbianism, necrophilia, incest, and abuse by staff within care facilities. The last one, barely a brief heading paragraph, is the one I find most interesting, because it's where the final state of the work cuts off, and suggests a worthwhile research area. Think of elder abuse in homes by uncaring (black) staff, abusive prison guards and so forth. The power differential. KE had enough experience with such institutions (he operated at their intersections) to understand that this form of institutionalized abuse was and would be a problem in itself, and had he lived longer, he would inevitably have compiled a case or two in this area.
Here ends my summary of the Psychopathia Sexualis. Of course, you may not have appreciated some of my remarks, but the scattershot and fragmentary nature of the text lend themselves to the lurid amusement reading, along the lines of a tabloid. In this sense, KE's manner of presentation somewhat undermined his sincerity and seriousness. It also occurs to me that by its very nature, PS might also be thought of as an early example of true crime literature, a genre with which I am unfamiliar.Although I did derive amusement from reading PS (thereby thwarting KE's best efforts), I did also sense on a more serious register that the work is dated. I now have a taste to possibly read some Freud, something I haven't done.
>>25281187>Although of course philosophers have taken on the subject of love, what is amusing here is the tradition that several Western philosophers (including Schopenhauer himself) either lived as bachelors or else had trouble in the sex department.Why is this?
Good thread, anon; appreciated reading that.I was going to ask about oral sex, but see you mentioned it above. I looked through the PS before, but apart from some cases where combined with other perversions, I don't remember him treating it extensively.
>>25281295>several Western philosophers (including Schopenhauer himself) either lived as bachelors or else had trouble in the [family] department* xanthippe wanted socrates to bring home more money and walk away from his death sentence* plato never married* Jesus and paul never married* peter spent all his time preaching but the Lord healed his mother in law which nice* marcus aurelius got cucked* thomas aquinas never married* trump lamented that he never was able to have the happy marriage has dad had* musk started taking on wokeness when one of his 28 kids by sluts became a troon* jeff bezos paid a whore over 10 billion dollars to pretend to be his wife for a few years* hitler may have been father of the germans but him and eva only had blondie, which is a popular family arrangement todayso basically bitches aint shit but hoes and tricks who can lick on them nuts and suck the dick but always get the fuck out after theyre done when men have #1 song after #1 songanyway steven anderson is married with a big family and preaches against divorce and contraception. in 100 years, anderson will be more famous as a historical figure, as his sermons narrate the world of today but with a sense of safety. the one where he says he adviced a guy not to marry a bitch that had accused her previous husband of grape, and his star wars religion sermon, and the one where he says when he was a kid he didnt think the Bible needed to talk about sodomy so much but now wishes the Holy Ghost had included more on sodomy
