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Before Freud: Psychopathia Sexualis by Richard von Krafft-Ebing
Nearly twenty years before Freud wrote Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (a book his detractors probably never read) in 1905, an ethnic German who was probably also Christian named Richard von Krafft-Ebing assembled nearly two hundred to two-hundred-and-fifty (depends on the edition) cases of sexual deviations in a book titled Psychopathia Sexualis.
These cases can range from the weird and the absurd...
Case 232. X., peasant, aged forty; Greek-Catholic.
Father and mother were hard drinkers. Since his fifth
year patient had epileptic convulsions —i.e., he would fall
down unconscious, lie still two or three minutes, and
then get up and run aimlessly about with staring eyes.
Sexuality was first manifested at seventeen. The patient
had inclinations neither for women nor for men, but for
animals (fowls, horses, etc.). He had intercourse with
hens and ducks, and later with horses and cows. Never
[masturbated once in his life].
The patient painted pictures of saints; was of very
limited intelligence. For years, religious paranoia, with
states of ecstasy. He had an "inexplicable" lave for the
Virgin, for whom he would sacrifice his life. Taken to
hospital, he proved to be free from infirmity and signs of
anatomical degeneration.
He always had an aversion for women. In a single
attempt at coitus with a woman he was impotent, but
with animals he was always potent. He was bashful before
women ; coitus with women he regarded almost as a sin
(Kowalewsky, "Jahrb. f. Psychiatric," vii., Heft 3).
...to the simultaneously pathetic and funny...
Case 229. 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, and the man causing it had been "wanted"
for a long time. To the question of the judge, as to the
reason for such an act, the accused said that his genitals
were so small that coitus with women was impossible.
Medical examination showed that actually the genitals
were extremely small. The man was mentally quite sound.
There were no statements concerning any abnormali-
ties at the time of puberty, etc. (Gyurkovechky, "Mannl.
Impotenz," 1889, p. 82).
...to the downright criminal...
[Cesare] Lombroso ("Archiv. di Psichiatria, viii., p. 519) reports the case of a peasant, aged forty-two, who practiced incest with his daughters, aged, respectively,
twenty-two, nineteen, and eleven; he even forced the youngest to prostitute herself, and then visited her in a brothel. The medico-legal examination showed predisposition, intellectual and moral imbecility, and alcoholism.
[...]
[Auguste Ambroise] Tardieu saw one of the most [abominable and] disgusting examples [of women molesting children]. [Maids] in collaboration with their [boyfriends] masturbated children entrusted into their care, performed cunnilingus to a seven-year-old girl, introduced carrots/parsnips and potatoes inside her vagina before putting similar things inside the anus of a two-year-old baby boy.
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Originally Posted by Dorian
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