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fascination in the idea of restraint, whether endured, inflicted, or merely witnessed or imagined; the feet become the chief focus of this fascination, and the basis on which a foot-fetichism or shoe-fetichism tends to arise, because restraint of the feet produces a more marked effect than restraint of the hands.
FOOTNOTES:
[120] An attenuated and symbolic form of this impulse is seen in the desire to strangle birds with the object of stimulating or even satisfying sexual desire. Prostitutes are sometimes acquainted with men who bring a live pigeon with them to be strangled just before intercourse. Lanphear, of St. Louis (_Alienist and Neurologist_, May, 1907, p. 204) knew a woman, having learned masturbation in a convent school, who was only excited and not satisfied by coitus with her husband, and had to rise from bed, catch and caress a chicken, and finally wring its neck, whereupon orgasm occurred.
[121] Even young girls, however, may experience pleasure in the playful attempt to strangle. Thus a lady speaking of herself at the time of puberty, when she was in the habit of masturbating, writes (_Sexual-Probleme_, Aug., 1909, p. 636): "I acquired a desire to seize people, especially girls, by the throat, and I enjoyed their way of screaming out."
[122] Godard observed that when animals are bled, or felled, as well as strangled, there is often abundant emission, rich in spermatozoa, but without erection, though accompanied by the same movements of the tail as during copulation. Robin (art. "Fecondation," _Dictionnaire Encyclopedique des Sciences Medicales_), who quotes this observation, has the following remarks on this subject: "Ejaculation occurring at the moment when the circulation, maintained artificially, stops is a fact of significance. It shows how congestive conditions--or inversely anemic conditions--constitute organic states sufficient to set in movement the activity of the nerve-centers, as is the case for muscular contractility.... Everything leads us to believe that at the moment when the motor nervous action takes place the corresponding sensitive centers also come into play." It must be added that Minovici, in his elaborate study of death by hanging ("Etude sur la Pendaison," _Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, 1905, especially p. 791 et seq.), concludes that the turgescence of penis and flow of spermatic fluid (sometimes only prostatic secretion) usually observed in these cases is purely passive and generally, though not always, of post-mortem occurrence. There is, therefore, no sexual pleasure in death by hanging, and persons who have been rescued at the last moment have experienced no voluptuous sensations. This was so even in the case, referred to by Minovici, of a man who hanged himself solely with the object of producing sexual pleasure.
[123] Eulenburg, _Sexuale Neuropathie_, p. 114.
[124] Bernaldo de Quiros and Llanos Aguilaniedo (_La Mala Vida en Madrid_, p. 294) knew the case of a man who found pleasure in lying back on an inclined couch while a prostitute behind him pulled at a slipknot until he was nearly suffocated; it was the only way in which he could attain sexual gratification.
[125] Arrest of respiration, it may be noted, may accompany strong sexual excitement, as it may some other emotional states; one recalls passages in the _Arabian Nights_ in which we are told of ladies who at the sight of a very beautiful youth "felt their reason leave them, yearned to embrace the marvelous youth, and _ceased breathing_." Inhibited respiration is indeed, as Stevens shows ("Study of Attention," _American Journal of Psychology_, Oct., 1905), a characteristic of all active attention.
[126] The exact part played by the respiration and even the circulation in constituting emotional states is still not clear, although various experiments have been made; see, e.g., Angell and Thompson, "A Study of Page 5 from 6: Back 1 2 3 4 [5] 6 Forward |