Psychopathia Sexualis

In 1886, Dr. Richard Freiherr Von Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902) (Freiherr is a title akin to Baron), a German physician and neurologist, published (among other 25 books on Medicine) the one that would become a classic on sexual “perversions”, which shaped, and even today influences, the psychology’s position on alternative sexualities. The book, “Psychopathia Sexualis, A Medico-Forensic Study”, was mainly on homosexuality, which was his main interest, but in it there were cases of fetishism, bestiality, and other, among them the ones we are interested in, sadism and masochism. By the way, all those terms are known from that work, even when "sadism" was used before his time in France and Germany. Unfortunately, all of them were for him perversions, and that marked us from there on. (Actually, the term sadism appeared in a 1890 booklet by Krafft-Ebbing, being included in “Psychopatia” in its 5th or 6th edition).

For Krafft-Ebing, sadism consisted of

"The experience of sexual, pleasurable sensations (including orgasm) produced by acts of cruelty, bodily punishment afflicted on one's person or when witnessed in others, be they animals or human beings. It may also consist of an innate desire to humiliate, hurt, wound or even destroy others in order, thereby, to create sexual pleasure in ones self"

and masochism:

“Is the opposite of sadism”... “a particular perversion of the psychical vita sexualis in which the individual affected, in sexual feeling and thought, is controlled by the idea of being completely and unconditionally subject to the will of a person of the opposite sex; of being treated by this person as a master, humiliated and abused.”

Krafft-Ebing considered that the man had a “natural” aggressiveness used for conquering the “natural” women’s passivity. So, it was natural for men being somewhat sadistic and women somewhat masochistic. Medical sexology had to draw the line between “natural” and “sick” (and, as we will see, he considered “sick” for women enjoying masochistic fantasies).

 

But he got right that sadism and masochism were about submission, not pain, and that it was innate. (The later was afterwards "corrected" by  his followers, which decided that if somebody had no recall of being spanked, or of seeing somebody spanked was because he had likely "repressed" those memories).

We will publish here two of his cases of masochistic women with which we surely can relate.

By the way, neither woman was spanked as a child (one went over the knee for fun, the other says explicitly that she was never whipped), which so many people think is the reason for enjoying a spanking. Neither thought their fantasies were sexual. They didn’t even relate them mainly with men, and they weren’t lesbians (what would have been noticed very fast by Krafft-Ebing). “She did not understand these manifestations were of a sexual nature”, he writes about one of them. Perhaps because they weren’t?
 

Case 84.

"Miss X., twenty-one years of age... She considered herself to be physically sound, but periodically insane, viz., when she was haunted by the fancies which she thus described:

Since her earliest youth she fancied herself being whipped. She simply reveled in these ideas, and had the most intense desire to be severely punished with a rattan cane.

This desire, she claimed, originated from the fact that at the age of five a friend of her father took her for fun across his knees, pretending to whip her. Since then she had longed for the opportunity of being caned, but to her regret, her wish was never realized. At these periods she imagined herself as absolutely helpless and fettered. The mere mention of the words "rattan cane" and "to whip" caused her intense excitement. Only for the last two years had she associated these ideas with the male sex. Previously she had only thought of a severe schoolmistress or simply a hand.

Now she wished to be the slave of a man whom she loved; she would kiss his feet if he would only whip her.

She did not understand these manifestations were of a sexual nature.

A few quotations from her letters are characteristic as bearing upon the masochistic character of this case:

"In former years I seriously contemplated going into a lunatic asylum whenever these ideas worried me. I fell upon this idea while reading how the director of an insane asylum pulled a lady by the hair from her bed and beat her with a cane and a riding-whip. I longed to be treated in a similar manner at such an institute, and have therefore unconsciously associated my ideas with the male sex. I liked, however, best to think of brutal, uneducated female warders beating me mercilessly”.

"Lying (in fancy) before him, he puts one foot on my neck while I kiss the other. I revel in the idea of being whipped by him; but this changes often, and I fancy quite different scenes in which he beats me. At times I take the blows as so many tokens of love -- he is at first extremely kind and tender, and then, in excess of his love, he beats me. I fancy that to beat me for love's sake gives him the highest pleasure. Often I have dreamed that I am his slave -- but; mind you, not his female slave! For instance, I have imagined that he was Robinson and I the savage that served him. I often look at pictures in which Robinson puts his foot on the neck of the savage. I now find an explanation of these strange fancies: I look upon women in general as low, far below man; but I am otherwise extremely proud and quite indomitable, whence it arises that I think as a man (who is by nature proud and superior). This renders my humiliation before the man I love the more intense. I have also fancied myself to be his female slave; but this does not suffice, for after all every woman can be the slave of her husband."

Case 84 never mentions that she would have enjoyed pain, but she needs to be dominated (“helpless and fettered”, “he puts one foot on my neck while I kiss the other”, “my humiliation before the man I love”). She fantasizes with scenes, as most of us do. And she is not a submissive; she thinks of herself as “extremely proud and quite indomitable”. “I think as a man”, she says. It seems to be a characteristic of many masochists being real life dominants, and we believe that part of the thrill of playing the submissive is, for somebody that is mostly in control, losing it for a while. That could explain why so many men, that are required to be dominants in our society, like playing with dominatrixes. (And, by the way, Case 84 was not exactly a feminist...)

The second case is less interesting, but rounds up our reasoning:

 
Case 85

"Miss v. X., aged thirty-five... The patient says:
"At the age of six or eight I conceived of a desire to be whipped. Since I had never been whipped, and had never been present when others were thus punished, I cannot understand how I came to have this strange desire. I can only think that it is congenital. With these ideas of being whipped I had a feeling of actual delight, and pictured in my fancy how fine it would be to be whipped by one of my female friends. I never had any thought of being whipped by a man. I reveled in the idea, and never attempted any actual realization of my fancies, which disappeared after my tenth year. Only when I read Rousseau's 'Confessions' at the age of thirty-four, did I understand what my longing for whippings meant, and that my abnormal ideas were like those of Rousseau."

She says; “I cannot understand how I came to have this strange desire. I can only think that it is congenital” and we couldn’t agree more on this...

 

Published: 06/08/05