Sexual perversions

In the broad sense of the word, the so-called sexual perversions, the so-called sexual psychopathy (this last term, however, should be considered completely wrong) belong to the impulsive forms of pathological development. We cannot here describe and list all of these forms and confine ourselves only to the establishment of some general fundamental points of view. First of all, it is impossible to refer to this group of phenomena a simple increase or decrease in sexual desire, as well as those cases of masturbation, which often have physiological significance (masturbation of young men, prisoners, etc.) or arise on the basis of excessive sexual excitability (in many neurasthenics).
Only those instances of masturbation in which there is a real perverse attraction with its focus solely on itself (narcissism, autoeroticism, ipsation) can be considered to belong to the area of ​​interest to us. Entirely sexual perversions include such forms as exhibitionism, sadism, masochism, fetishism, pedo-and bestiality, and finally homosexuality. In most cases, the mechanism of their occurrence, apparently, is to consolidate on a general basis the lack of differentiation of sexual attraction (delay in the children's developmental stage, psychosexual infantilism) of those abnormal forms of satisfaction that, for one reason or another, resulted in early, childish sexual experiences of this type. This view is not currently disputed in relation to most forms of sexual psychopathy, but is still the subject of fierce controversy over the origin of homosexuality.
Frequent combination with anomalies of physique (male forms and secondary sexual characteristics in women and vice versa) make many think that congenital anomalies of endocrine secretion, mainly from the sex glands, play a significant role in the origin of this phenomenon. The point of view of the famous German sexologist Hirschfeld (Hirschfeld) is especially popular, according to which between two extreme psychophysical forms of the sexual constitution - male and female - there are a number of transitional forms in which mutually opposite hormonal influences act, according to which we have a combination of oppositely developed complexes of different both physical and mental sexual characteristics.
Due to this, in some cases we will have the same attraction to people of both sexes (bisexuality), and in others - people who are physically characterized by signs of the same sex, mentally differ in the characteristics of the other, i.e. experiencing sexual attraction not to the opposite, but to their sex (homosexuality). Without completely denying the meaning of the moments defining the sexual constitution, we are inclined, however, to consider a more correct point of view about the acquired rather than the constitutional origin of homosexuality.
There is no doubt that, as a rule, for most people, before the onset of full puberty, sexual desire is highly unstable, especially with regard to the purpose and object of attraction. Random impressions, temptations from his comrades, and finally, direct seduction from the side of elderly homosexuals, in the unstable, psychopathic young man who has not yet found himself sexually, fix that form of satisfaction of sexual desire in which he experienced his first, most vivid sexual experiences. .
Repetition creates a habit, and communication with other homosexuals and the consciousness of condemnation, with which society relates to homosexual, leads to a one-sided sectarian orientation towards persons of the opposite sex; in parallel with this, the elements of a normal sexual feeling gradually atrophy and freeze — by no means always, however, completely: a number of authors report cases of a psychotherapeutic cure for homosexuality.
Sexual perversions especially easily occur in psychopaths with more or less significant asocial and antisocial attitudes (except for impulsive, even hysterical, schizoid, liars and rogues, antisocial, etc.), but also people with a highly developed “morality” with a “great conscience "Especially from among the asthenics, it is in this area that they non-rarely pay rich tribute to the primitive," animal "side of their nature.
In the subjects of the latter kind, their perversions are often the source of severe and intractable spiritual conflicts. The type of psychopathy, as a general way of the psyche, in this form of pathological development, may perhaps be relegated to the background, giving way to individual properties of an incomplete psyche and corresponding external impressions.