We meet with another group of erotic symbolisms

Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 by Havelock Ellis is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. Erotic Symbolism - III

Erotic Symbolism - III

Scatalogic Symbolism—Urolagnia—Coprolagnia—The Ascetic Attitude Towards the Flesh—Normal basis of Scatalogic Symbolism—Scatalogic Conceptions Among Primitive Peoples—Urine as a Primitive Holy Water—Sacredness of Animal Excreta—Scatalogy in Folk-lore—The Obscene as Derived from the Mythological—The Immature Sexual Impulse Tends to Manifest Itself in Scatalogic Forms—The basis of Physiological Connection Between the Urinary and Genital Spheres—Urinary Fetichism Sometimes Normal in Animals—The Urolagnia of Masochists—The Scatalogy of Saints—Urolagnia More Often a Symbolism of Act Than a Symbolism of Object—Only Occasionally an Olfactory Fetichism—Comparative Rarity of Coprolagnia—Influence of Nates Fetichism as a Transition to Coprolagnia—Ideal Coprolagnia—Olfactory Coprolagnia—Urolagnia and Coprolagnia as Symbols of Coitus.

We meet with another group of erotic symbolisms—alike symbolisms of object and of act—in connection with the two functions adjoining the anatomical sexual focus: the urinary and alvine excretory functions. These are sometimes termed the scatalogical group, with the two subdivisions of urolagnia and Coprolagnia. Inter fæces et urinam nascimur is an ancient text which has served the ascetic preachers of old for many discourses on the littleness of man and the meanness of that reproductive power which plays so large a part in man's life. "The stupid bungle of Nature," a correspondent writes, "whereby the generative organs serve as a means of relieving the bladder, is doubtless responsible for much of the disgust which those organs excite in some minds."

At the same time, it is necessary to point out, such reflex influence may act not in one direction only, but also in the reverse direction. From the standpoint of ascetic contemplation eager to belittle humanity, the excretory centers may cast dishonor upon the genital center which they adjoin. From the more ecstatic standpoint of the impassioned lover, eager to magnify the charm of the woman he worships, it is not impossible for the excretory centers to take on some charm from the irradiating center of sex which they enclose.

Even normally such a process is traceable. The normal lover may not idealize the excretory functions of his mistress, but the fact that he finds no repulsion in the most intimate contacts and feels no disgust at the proximity of the excretory orifices or the existence of their functions, indicates that the idealization of love has exerted at all events a neutralizing influence; indeed, the presence of an acute sensibility to the disturbing influence of this proximity of the excretory orifices and their functions must be considered abnormal; Swift's "Strephon and Chloe"—with the conviction underlying it that it is an easy matter for the excretory functions to drown the possibilities of love—could only have proceeded from a morbidly sensitive brain.

A more than mere neutralizing influence, a positively idealizing influence of the sexual focus on the excretory processes adjoining it, may take place in the lover's mind without the normal variations of sexual attraction being over-passed, and even without the creation of an excretory fetichism.

Reflections of this attitude may be found in the poets. In the Song of Songs the lover says of his mistress, "Thy navel is like a round goblet, wherein no mingled wine is wanting;" in his lyric "To Dianeme," Herrick says with clear reference to the mons veneris:—

"Show me that hill where smiling love doth sit,

Having a living fountain under it;"

and in the very numerous poems in various languages which have more or less obscurely dealt with the rose as the emblem of the feminine pudenda there are occasional references to the stream which guards or presides over the rose. It may, indeed, be recalled that even in the name nymphæ anatomists commonly apply to the labia minora there is generally believed to be a poetic allusion to the Nymphs who presided over streams, since the labia minora exert an influence on the direction of the urinary stream.

In Wilhelm Meister (Part I, Chapter XV), Goethe, on the basis of his own personal experiences, describes his hero's emotions in the humble surroundings of Marianne's little room as compared with the stateliness and order of his own home. "It seemed to him when he had here to remove her stays in order to reach the harpsichord, there to lay her skirt on the bed before he could seat himself, when she herself with unembarrassed frankness would make no attempt to conceal from him many natural acts which people are accustomed to hide from others out of decency—it seemed to him, I say, that he became bound to her by invisible bands." We are told of Wordsworth (Findlay's Recollections of De Quincey, p. 36) that he read Wilhelm Meister till "he came to the scene where the hero, in his mistress's bedroom, becomes sentimental over her dirty towels, etc., which struck him with such disgust that he flung the book out of his hand, would never look at it again, and declared that surely no English lady would ever read such a work." I have, however, heard a woman of high intellectual distinction refer to the peculiar truth and beauty of this very passage.

In one of his latest novels, Les Rencontres de M. de Bréot, Henri de Régnier, one of the most notable of recent French novelists, narrates an episode bearing on the matter before us. A personage of the story is sitting for a moment in a dark grotto during a night fête in a nobleman's park, when two ladies enter and laughingly proceed to raise their garments and accomplish a natural necessity. The man in the background, suddenly overcome by a sexual impulse, starts forward; one lady runs away, the other, whom he detains, offers little resistance to his advances. To M. de Bréot, whom he shortly after encounters, he exclaims, abashed at his own actions: "Why did I not flee? But could I imagine that the spectacle of so disgusting a function would have any other effect than to give me a humble opinion of human nature?" M. de Bréot, however, in proceeding to reproach his interlocutor for his inconsiderate temerity, observes: "What you tell me, sir, does not entirely surprise me. Nature has placed very various instincts within us, and the impulse that led you to what you have just now done is not so peculiar as you think. One may be a very estimable man and yet love women even in what is lowliest in their bodies." In harmony with this passage from Régnier's novel are the remarks of a correspondent who writes to me of the function of urination that it "appeals sexually to most normal individuals. My own observations and inquiries prove this. Women themselves instinctively feel it. The secrecy surrounding the matter lends, too, I think, a sexual interest."

The fact that scatalogic processes may in some degree exert an attraction even in normal love has been especially emphasized by Bloch (Beiträge zur Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis, Teil II, pp. 222, et seq.): "The man whose intellect and æsthetic sense has been 'clouded by the sexual impulse' sees these things in an entirely different light from him who has not been overcome by the intoxication of love. For him they are idealized (sit venia verbo) since they are a part of the beloved person, and in consequence associated with love." Bloch quotes the Memoiren einer Sängerin (a book which is said to be, though this seems doubtful, genuinely autobiographical) in the same sense: "A man who falls in love with a girl is not dragged out of his poetic sphere by the thought that his beloved must relieve certain natural necessities every day. It seems, indeed, to him to be just the opposite. If one loves a person one finds nothing obscene or disgusting in the object that pleases me." The opposite attitude is probably in extreme cases due to the influence of a neurotic or morbidly sensitive temperament. Swift possessed such a temperament. The possession of a similar temperament is doubtless responsible for the little prose poem, "L'Extase," in which Huysmans in his first book, Le Drageloir á Epices, has written an attenuated version of "Strephon and Chloe" to express the disillusionment of love; the lover lies in a wood clasping the hand of the beloved with rapturous emotion; "suddenly she rose, disengaged her hand, disappeared in the bushes, and I heard as it were the rustling of rain on the leaves." His dream has fled.

In estimating the significance of the lover's attitude in this matter, it is important to realize the position which scatologic conceptions took in primitive belief. At certain stages of early culture, when all the emanations of the body are liable to possess mysterious magic properties and become apt for sacred uses, the excretions, and especially the urine, are found to form part of religious ritual and ceremonial function. Even among savages the excreta are frequently regarded as disgusting, but under the influence of these conceptions such disgust is inhibited, and those emanations of the body which are usually least honored become religious symbols.

Urine has been regarded as the original holy water, and many customs which still survive in Italy and various parts of Europe, involving the use of a fluid which must often be yellow and sometimes salt, possibly indicate the earlier use of urine. (The Greek water of aspersion, according to Theocritus, was mixed with salt, as is sometimes the modern Italian holy water. J. J. Blunt, Vestiges of Ancient Manners and Customs, p. 173.) Among the Hottentots, as Kolbein and others have recorded, the medicine man urinated alternately on bride and bridegroom, and a successful young warrior was sprinkled in the same way. Mungo Park mentions that in Africa on one occasion a bride sent a bowl of her urine which was thrown over him as a special mark of honor to a distinguished guest. Pennant remarked that the Highlanders sprinkled their cattle with urine, as a kind of holy water, on the first Monday in every quarter. (Bourke, Scatalogic Rites, pp. 228, 239; Brand, Popular Antiquities, "Bride-Ales.")

Even the excreta of animals have sometimes been counted sacred. This is notably so in the case of the cow, of all animals the most venerated by primitive peoples, and especially in India. Jules Bois (Visions de l'Inde, p. 86) describes the spectacle presented in the temple of the cows at Benares: "I put my head into the opening of the holy stables. It was the largest of temples, a splendor of precious stones and marble, where the venerated heifers passed backwards and forwards. A whole people adored them. They take no notice, plunged in their divine and obscure unconsciousness. And they fulfil with serenity their animal functions; they chew the offerings, drink water from copper vessels, and when they are filled they relieve themselves. Then a stercoraceous and religious insanity overcomes these starry-faced women and venerable men; they fall on their knees, prostrate themselves, eat the droppings, greedily drink the liquid, which for them is miraculous and sacred." (Cf. Bourke, Scatalogic Rites, Chapter XVII.)

Among the Chevsurs of the Caucasus, perhaps an Iranian people, a woman after her confinement, for which she lives apart, purifies herself by washing in the urine of a cow and then returns home. This mode of purification is recommended in the Avesta, and is said to be used by the few remaining followers of this creed.

We have not only to take into account the frequency with which among primitive peoples the excretions possess a religious significance. It is further to be noted that in the folk-lore of modern Europe we everywhere find plentiful evidence of the earlier prevalence of legends and practices of a scatalogical character. It is significant that in the majority of cases it is easy to see a sexual reference in these stories and customs. The legends have lost their earlier and often mythical significance, and frequently take on a suggestion of obscenity, while the scatalogical practices have become the magical devices of lovelorn maidens or forsaken wives practiced in secrecy. It has happened to scatalogical rites to be regarded as we may gather from the Clouds of Aristophanes, that the sacred leathern phallus borne by the women in the Bacchanalia was becoming in his time, an object to arouse the amusement of little boys.

Among many primitive peoples throughout the world, and among the lower social classes of civilized peoples, urine possesses magic properties, more especially, it would seem, the urine of women and that of people who stand, or wish to stand, in sexual relationship to each other. In a legend of the Indians of the northwest coast of America, recorded by Boas, a woman gives her lover some of her urine and says: "You can wake the dead if you drop some of my urine in their ears and nose." (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1894, Heft IV, p. 293.) Among the same Indians there is a legend of a woman with a beautiful white skin who found on bathing every morning in the river that the fish were attracted to her skin and could not be driven off even by magical solutions. At last she said to herself: "I will make water on them and then they will leave me alone." She did so, and henceforth the fish left her. But shortly after fire came from Heaven and killed her. (Ib., 1891, Heft V, p. 640.) Among both Christians and Mohammedans a wife can attach an unfaithful husband by privately putting some of her urine in his drink. (B. Stern, Medizin in der Türkei, vol. ii, p. 11.) This practice is world-wide; thus among the aborigines of Brazil, according to Martius, the urine and other excretions and secretions are potent for aphrodisiacal objects. (Bourke's Scatalogic Rites of All Nations contains many references to the folk-lore practices in this matter; a study of popular beliefs in the magic power of urine, published in Bombay by Professor Eugen Wilhelm in 1889, I have not seen.)

The legends which narrate scatalogic exploits are numerous in the literature of all countries. Among primitive peoples they often have a purely theological character, for in the popular mythologies of all countries (even, as we learn from Aristophanes, among the Greeks) natural phenomena such as the rain, are apt to be regarded as divine excretions, but in course of time the legends take on a more erotic or a more obscene character. In the Irish Book of Leinster (written down somewhere about the twelfth century, but containing material of very much older date) we are told how a number of princesses in Emain Macha, the seat of the Ulster Kings, resolved to find out which of them could by urinating on it melt a snow pillar which the men had made, the woman who succeeded to be regarded as the best among them. None of them succeeded, and they sent for Derbforgaill, who was in love with Cuchullain, and she was able to melt the pillar; whereupon the other women, jealous of the superiority she had thus shown, tore out her eyes. (Zimmer, "Keltische Beiträge," Zeitschrift für Deutsche Alterthum, vol. xxxii, Heft II, pp. 216-219.) Rhys considers that Derbforgaill was really a goddess of dawn and dusk, "the drop glistening in the sun's rays," as indicated by her name, which means a drop or tear. (J. Rhys, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by Celtic Heathendom, p. 466.) It is interesting to compare the legend of Derbforgaill with a somewhat more modern Picardy folk-lore conte which is clearly analogous but no longer seems to show any mythologic element, "La Princesse qui pisse par dessus les Meules." This princess had a habit of urinating over hay-cocks; the king, her father, in order to break her of the habit, offered her in marriage to anyone who could make a hay-cock so high that she could not urinate over it. The young men came, but the princess would merely laugh and at once achieve the task. At last there came a young man who argued with himself that she would not be able to perform this feat after she had lost her virginity. He therefore seduced her first and she then failed ignobly, merely wetting her stockings. Accordingly, she became his bride. (Κρυπτάδια, vol. i. p. 333.) Such legends, which have lost any mythologic elements they may originally have possessed and have become merely contes, are not uncommon in the folk-lore of many countries. But in their earlier more religious forms and in their later more obscene forms, they alike bear witness to the large place which scatalogic conceptions play in the primitive mind.

It is a notable fact in evidence of the close and seemingly normal association with the sexual impulse of the scatalogic processes, that an interest in them, arising naturally and spontaneously, is one of the most frequent channels by which the sexual impulse first manifests itself in young boys and girls.

Stanley Hall, who has made special inquiries into the matter, remarks that in childhood the products of excretion by bladder and bowels are often objects of interest hardly less intense for a time than eating and drinking. ("Early Sense of Self," American Journal of Psychology, April, 1898, p. 361.) "Micturitional obscenities," the same writer observes again, "which our returns show to be so common before adolescence, culminate at 10 or 12, and seem to retreat into the background as sex phenomena appear." They are, he remarks, of two classes: "Fouling persons or things, secretly from adults, but openly with each other," and less often "ceremonial acts connected with the act or the product that almost suggest the scatalogical rites of savages, unfit for description here, but of great interest and importance." (G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence, vol. i, p. 116.) The nature of such scatalogical phenomena in childhood—which are often clearly the instinctive manifestations of an erotic symbolism—and their wide prevalence among both boys and girls, are very well illustrated in a narrative which I include in Appendix B, History II.

In boys as they approach the age of puberty, this attraction to the scatalogic, when it exists, tends to die out, giving place to more normal sexual conceptions, or at all events it takes a subordinate and less serious place in the mind. In girls, on the other hand, it often tends to persist. Edmond de Goncourt, a minute observer of the feminine mind, refers in Chérie to "those innocent and triumphant gaieties which scatalogic stories have the privilege of arousing in women who have remained still children, even the most distinguished women." The extent to which innocent young women, who would frequently be uninterested or repelled in presence of the sexually obscene are sometimes attracted by the scatalogically obscene, becomes intelligible, however, if we realize that a symbolism comes here into play. In women the more specifically sexual knowledge and experience of life frequently develop much later than in men or even remains in abeyance, and the specifically sexual phenomena cannot therefore easily lend themselves to wit, or humor, or imagination. But the scatalogic sphere, by the very fact that in women it is a specially intimate and secret region which is yet always liable to be unexpectedly protruded into consciousness, furnishes an inexhaustible field for situations which have the same character as those furnished by the sexually obscene. It thus happens that the sexually obscene which in men tends to overshadow the scatalogically obscene, in women—partly from inexperience and partly, it is probable, from their almost physiological modesty—plays a part subordinate to the scatalogical. In a somewhat analogous way scatalogical wit and humor play a considerable part in the work of various eminent authors who were clergymen or priests.

In addition to the anatomical and psychological associations which contribute to furnish a basis on which erotic symbolisms may spring up, there are also physiological connections between the genital and urinary spheres which directly favor such symbolisms. In discussing the analysis of the sexual impulse in a previous volume of these Studies, I have pointed out the remarkable relationship—sometimes of transference, sometimes of compensation—which exists between genital tension and vesical tension, both in men and women. In the histories of normal sexual development brought together at the end of that and subsequent volumes the relationship may frequently be traced, as also in the case of C. P. in the present study (p. 37). Vesical power is also commonly believed to be in relation with sexual potency, and the inability to project the urinary stream in a normal manner is one of the accepted signs of sexual impotency. Féré, again, has recorded the history of a man with periodic crises of sexual desire, and subsequently sexual obsession without desire, which were always accompanied by the impulse to urinate and by increased urination. In the case, recorded by Pitres and Régis, of a young girl who, having once at the sight of a young man she liked in a theater been overcome by sexual feeling accompanied by a strong desire to urinate, was afterward tormented by a groundless fear of experiencing an irresistible desire to urinate at inconvenient times, we have an example of what may be called a physiological scatalogic symbolism of sex, an emotion which was primarily erotic becoming transferred to the bladder and then remaining persistent. From such a physiological symbolism it is but a step to the psychological symbolisms of scatalogic fetichism.

It is worthy of note, as an indication that such phenomena are scarcely abnormal, that a urinary symbolism, and even a strictly sexual fetichism, are normal among many animals.

The most familiar example of this kind is furnished by the dog, who is sexually excited in this manner by traces of the bitch and himself takes every opportunity of making his own path recognizable. "This custom," Espinas remarks (Des Sociétés Animales, p. 228), "has no other aim than to spread along the road recognizable traces of their presence for the benefit of individuals of the other sex, the odor of these traces doubtless causing excitement."

It is noteworthy, also, that in animals as well as in man, sexual excitement may manifest itself in the bladder. Thus Daumas states (Chevaux de Sahara, p. 49) that if the mare urinates when she hears the stallion neigh it is a sign that she is ready for connection.

It is in masochism, or passive algolagnia, that we may most frequently find scatalogic symbolism in its fully developed form. The man whose predominant impulse is to subjugate himself to his mistress and to receive at her hands the utmost humiliation, frequently finds the climax of his gratification in being urinated on by her, whether in actual fact or only in imagination.

In many such cases, however, it is evident that we have a mixed phenomenon; the symbolism is double. The act becomes desirable because it is the outward and visible sign of an inwardly experienced abject slavery to an adored person. But it is also desirable because of intimately sexual associations in the act itself, as a symbolical detumescence, a simulacrum of the sexual act, and one which proceeds from the sexual focus itself.

Krafft-Ebing records various cases of masochism in which the emission of urine on to the body or into the mouth formed the climax of sexual gratification, as, for instance (Psychopathia Sexualis, English translation, p. 183) in the case of a Russian official who as a boy had fancies of being bound between the thighs of a woman, compelled to sleep beneath her nates and to drink her urine, and in later life experienced the greatest excitement when practicing the last part of this early imagination.

In another case, recorded by Krafft-Ebing and by him termed "ideal masochism" (Op. cit., pp. 127-130), the subject from childhood indulged in voluptuous day-dreams in which he was the slave of a beautiful mistress who would compel him to obey all her caprices, stand over him with one foot on his breast, sit on his face and body, make him wait on her in her bath, or when she urinated, and sometimes insist on doing this on his face; though a highly intellectual man, he was always too timid to attempt to carry any of his ideas into execution; he had been troubled by nocturnal enuresis up to the age of 20.

Neri, again (Archivio delle Psicopatie Sessuali, vol. i, fasc. 7 and 8, 1896), records the case of an Italian masochist who experienced the greatest pleasure when both urination and defecation were practiced in this manner by the woman he was attached to.

In a previous volume of these Studies ("Sexual Inversion," History XXVI) I have recorded the masochistic day-dreams of a boy whose impulses were at the same time inverted; in his reveries "the central fact," he states, "became the discharge of urine from my lover over my body and limbs, or, if I were very fond of him, I let it be in my face." In actual life the act of urination casually witnessed in childhood became the symbol, even the reality, of the central secret of sex: "I stood rooted and flushing with downcast eyes till the act was over, and was conscious for a considerable time of stammering speech and bewildered faculties.... I was overwhelmed with emotion and could barely drag my feet from the spot or my eyes from the damp herbage where he had deposited the waters of secrecy. Even to-day I cannot dissociate myself from the shuddering charm that moment had for me."

It is not only the urine and the fæces which may thus acquire a symbolic fascination and attractiveness under the influence of masochistic deviations of sexual idealization. In some cases extreme rapture has been experienced in licking sweating feet. There is, indeed, no excretion or product of the body which has not been a source of ecstasy: the sweat from every part of the body, the saliva and menstrual fluid, even the wax from the ears.

Krafft-Ebing very truly points out (Psychopathia Sexualis, English translation, p. 178) that this sexual scatalogic symbolism is precisely paralleled by a religious scatalogic symbolism. In the excesses of devout enthusiasm the ascetic performs exactly the same acts as are performed in these excesses of erotic enthusiasm. To mix excreta with the food, to lick up excrement, to suck festering sores—all these and the like are acts which holy and venerated women have performed.

Not only the saint, but also the prophet and medicine-man have been frequently eaters of human excrement; it is only necessary to refer to the instance of the prophet Ezekiel, who declared that he was commanded to bake his bread with human dung, and to the practices of medicine-men at Torres Straits, in whose training the eating of human excrement takes a recognized part. (Deities, notably Baal-Phegor, were sometimes supposed to eat excrement, so that it was natural that their messengers and representatives among men should do so. As regards Baal-Phegor, see Dulaure, Des Divinités Génératrices, Chapter IV, and J. G. Bourke, Scatalogic Rites of All Nations, p. 241. See also Ezekiel, Chapter IV, v. 12, and Reports Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, vol. v, p. 321.)

It must be added, however, that while the masochist is overcome by sexual rapture, so that he sees nothing disgusting in his act, the medicine-man and the ascetic are not so invariably overcome by religious rapture, and several ascetic writers have referred to the horror and disgust they experienced, at all events at first, in accomplishing such acts, while the medicine-men when novices sometimes find the ordeal too severe and have to abandon their career. Brénier de Montmorand, while remarking, not without some exaggeration, that "the Christian ascetics are almost all eaters of excrement" ("Ascétisme et Mysticisme," Revue Philosophique, March, 1904, p. 245), quotes the testimonies of Marguerite-Marie and Madame Guyon as to the extreme repugnance which they had to overcome. They were impelled by a merely intellectual symbolism of self-mortification rather than by the profoundly felt emotional symbolism which moves the masochist.

Coprophagic acts, whether under the influences of religious exaltation or of sexual rapture, inevitably excite our disgust. We regard them as almost insane, fortified in that belief by the undoubted fact that coprophagia is not uncommon among the insane. It may, therefore, be proper to point out that it is not so very long since the ingestion of human excrement was carried out by our own forefathers in the most sane and deliberate manner. It was administered by medical practitioners for a great number of ailments, apparently with entirely satisfactory results. Less than two centuries ago, Schurig, who so admirably gathered together and arranged the medical lore of his own and the immediately preceding ages, wrote a very long and detailed chapter, "De Stercoris Humani Usu Medico" (Chylologia, 1725, cap. XIII; in the Paris Journal de Médecine for February 19, 1905, there appeared an article, which I have not seen, entitled "Médicaments oubliées: l'urine et la fiente humaine.") The classes of cases in which the drug was found beneficial would seem to have been extremely various. It must not be supposed that it was usually ingested in the crude form. A common method was to take the fæces of boys, dry them, mix them with the best honey, and administer an electuary. (At an earlier period such drugs appear to have met with some opposition from the Church, which seems to have seen in them only an application of magic; thus I note that in Burchard's remarkable Penitential of the fourteenth century, as reproduced by Wasserschleben, 40 days' penance is prescribed for the use of human urine or excrement as a medicine. Wasserschleben Die Bussordnungen der Abendländlichen Kirche, p. 651.)

The urolagnia of masochism is not a simple phenomenon; it embodies a double symbolism: on the one hand a symbolism of self-abnegation, such as the ascetic feels, on the other hand a symbolism of transferred sexual emotion. Krafft-Ebing was disposed to regard all cases in which a scatalogical sexual attraction existed as due to "latent masochism." Such a point of view is quite untenable. Certainly the connection is common, but in the majority of cases of slightly marked scatalogical fetichism no masochism is evident. And when we bear in mind the various considerations, already brought forward, which show how widespread and clearly realized is the natural and normal basis furnished for such symbolism, it becomes quite unnecessary to invoke any aid from masochism. There is ample evidence to show that, either as a habitual or more usually an occasional act, the impulse to bestow a symbolic value on the act of urination in a beloved person, is not extremely uncommon; it has been noted of men of high intellectual distinction; it occurs in women as well as men; when existing in only a slight degree, it must be regarded as within the normal limits of variation of sexual emotion.

The occasional cases in which the urine is drunk may possibly suggest that the motive lies in the properties of the fluid acting on the system. Support for this supposition might be found in the fact that urine actually does possess, apart altogether from its magic virtues embodied in folk-lore, the properties of a general stimulant. In composition (as Masterman first pointed out) "beef-tea differs little from healthy urine," containing exactly the same constituents, except that in beef-tea there is less urea and uric acid. Fresh urine—more especially that of children and young women—is taken as a medicine in nearly all parts of the world for various disorders, such as epistaxis, malaria and hysteria, with benefit, this benefit being almost certainly due to its qualities as a general stimulant and restorative. William Salmon's Dispensatory, 1678 (quoted in British Medical Journal, April 21, 1900, p. 974), shows that in the seventeenth century urine still occupied an important place as a medicine, and it frequently entered largely into the composition of Aqua Divina.

Its use has been known even in England in the nineteenth century. (Masterman, Lancet, October 2, 1880; R. Neale, "Urine as a Medicine," Practitioner, November, 1881; Bourke brings together a great deal of evidence as to the therapeutic uses of urine in his Scatalogic Rites, especially pp. 331-335; Lusini has shown that normal urine invariably increases the frequency of the heart beats, Archivio di Farmacologia, fascs. 19-21, 1893.)

But it is an error to suppose that these facts account for the urolagnic drinking of urine. As in the gratification of a normal sexual impulse, the intense excitement of gratifying a scatalogic sexual impulse itself produces a degree of emotional stimulation far greater than the ingestion of a small amount of animal extractives would be adequate to effect. In such cases, as much as in normal sexuality, the stimulation is clearly psychic.

When, as is most commonly the case, it is the process of urination and not the urine itself which is attractive, we are clearly concerned with a symbolism of act and not with the fetichistic attraction of an excretion. When the excretion, apart from the act, provides the attraction, we seem usually to be in the presence of an olfactory fetichism. These fetichisms connected with the excreta appear to be experienced chiefly by individuals who are somewhat weak-minded, which is not necessarily the case in regard to those persons for whom the act, rather than its product apart from the beloved person, is the attractive symbol.

The sexually symbolic nature of the act of urination for many people is indicated by the existence, according to Bloch, who enumerates various kinds of indecent photographs, of a group which he terms "the notorious pisseuses." It is further indicated by several of the reproductions in Fuch's Erotsiche Element in der Karikatur, such as Delorme's "La Necessitê n'a point de Loi." (It should be added that such a scene by no means necessarily possesses any erotic symbolism, as we may see in Rembrandt's etching commonly called "Le Femme qui Pisse," in which the reflected lights on the partly shadowed stream furnish an artistic motive which is obviously free from any trace of obscenity.) In the case which Krafft-Ebing quotes from Maschka of a young man who would induce young girls to dance naked in his room, to leap, and to urinate in his presence, whereupon seminal ejaculation would take place, we have a typical example of urolagnic symbolism in a form adequate to produce complete gratification. A case in which the urolagnic form of scatalogic symbolism reached its fullest development as a sexual perversion has been described in Russia by Sukhanoff (summarized in Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle, November, 1900, and Annales Medico-psychologiques, February, 1901), that of a young man of 27, of neuropathic temperament, who when he once chanced to witness a woman urinating experienced voluptuous sensations. From that moment he sought close contact with women urinating, the maximum of gratification being reached when he could place himself in such a position that a woman, in all innocence, would urinate into his mouth. All his amorous adventures were concerned with the search for opportunities for procuring this difficult gratification. Closets in which he was able to hide, winter weather and dull days he found most favorable to success. (A somewhat similar case is recorded in the Archives de Neurologie, 1902, p. 462.)

In the case of a robust man of neuropathic heredity recorded by Pelanda some light is shed on the psychic attitude in these manifestations; there was masturbation up to the age of 16, when he abandoned the practice, and up to the age of 30 found complete satisfaction in drinking the still hot urine of women. When a lady or girl in the house went to her room to satisfy a need of this kind, she had hardly left it but he hastened in, overcome by extreme excitement, culminating in spontaneous ejaculation. The younger the woman the greater the transport he experienced. It is noteworthy that in this, as possibly in all similar cases, there was no sensory perversion and no morbid attraction of taste or smell; he stated that the action of his senses was suspended by his excitement, and that he was quite unable to perceive the odor or taste of the fluid. (Pelanda, "Pornopatice," Archivio di Psichiatria, facs. iii-iv, 1889, p. 356.) It is in the emotional symbolism that the fascination lies and not in any sensory perversion.

Magnan records the spontaneous development of this sexual symbolism in a girl of 11, of good intellectual development but alcoholic heredity, who seduced a boy younger than herself to mutual masturbation, and on one occasion, lying on the ground and raising her clothes, asked him to urinate on her. (International Congress of Criminal Anthropology, 1889.) This case (except for the early age of the subject) illustrates sporadically occurring urolagnic symbolism in a woman, to whom such symbolism is fairly obvious on account of the close resemblance between the emission of urine and the ejaculation of semen in the man, and the fact that the same conduit serves for both fluids. (A urolagnic day-dream of this kind is recorded in the history of a lady contained in the third volume of these Studies, Appendix B, History VIII.) The natural and inevitable character of this symbolism is shown by the fact that among primitive peoples urine is sometimes supposed to possess the fertilizing virtues of semen. J. G. Frazer in his edition of Pausanias (vol. iv, p. 139) brings together various stories of women impregnated by urine. Hartland also (Legend of Perseus, vol. i, pp. 76, 92) records legends of women who were impregnated by accidentally or intentionally drinking urine.

The symbolic sexual significance of urolagnia has hitherto usually been confused with the fetichistic and mainly olfactory perversion by which the excretion itself becomes a source of sexual excitement. Long since Tardieu referred, under the name of "renifleurs," to persons who were said to haunt the neighborhood of quiet passages, more especially in the neighborhood of theatres, and who when they perceived a woman emerge after urination, would hasten to excite themselves by the odor of the excretion. Possibly a fetichism of this kind existed in a case recorded by Belletrud and Mercier (Annales d'Hygiène Publique, June, 1904, p. 48). A weak-minded, timid youth, who was very sexual but not attractive to women, would watch for women who were about to urinate and immediately they had passed on would go and lick the spot they had moistened, at the same time masturbating. Such a fetichistic perversion is strictly analogous to the fetichism by which women's handkerchiefs, aprons or underlinen become capable of affording sexual gratification. A very complete case of such urolagnic fetichism—complete because separated from association with the person accomplishing the act of urination—has been recorded by Moraglia in a woman. It is the case of a beautiful and attractive young woman of 18, with thick black hair, and expressive vivacious eyes, but sallow complexion. Married a year previously, but childless, she experienced a certain amount of pleasure in coitus, but she preferred masturbation, and frankly acknowledged that she was highly excited by the odor of fermented urine. So strong was this fetichism that when, for instance, she passed a street urinal she was often obliged to go aside and masturbate; once she went for this purpose into the urinal itself and was almost discovered in the act, and on another occasion into a church. Her perversion caused her much worry because of the fear of detection. She preferred, when she could, to obtain a bottle of urine—which must be stale and a man's (this, she said, she could detect by the smell)—and to shut herself up in her own room, holding the bottle in one hand and repeatedly masturbating with the other. (Moraglia, "Psicopatie Sessuali," Archivio di Psichiatria, vol. xiii, fasc. 6, p. 267, 1892.) This case is of especial interest because of the great rarity of fully developed fetichism in women. In a slight and germinal degree I believe that cases of fetichism are not uncommon in women, but they are certainly rare in a well-marked form, and Krafft-Ebing declared, even in the late editions of his Psychopathia Sexualis, that he knew of no cases in women.

So far we have been concerned with the urolagnic rather than the coprolagnic variety of scatalogical symbolism. Although the two are sometimes associated there is no necessary connection, and most usually there is no tendency for the one to involve the other. Urolagnia is certainly much the more frequently found; the act of urination is far more apt to suggest erotically symbolical ideas than the idea of defecation. It is not difficult to understand why this should be so. The act of urination lends itself more easily to sexual symbolism; it is more intimately associated with the genital function; its repetition is necessary at more frequent intervals so that it is more in evidence; moreover, its product, unlike that of the act of defecation, is not offensive to the senses. Still coprolagnia occurs and not so very infrequently. Burton remarked that even the normal lover is affected by this feeling: "immo nec ipsum amicæ stercus foctet."

Of Caligula who, however, was scarcely sane, it was said "et quidem stercus uxoris degustavit." In Parisian brothels (according to Taxil and others) provision is made for those who are sexually excited by the spectacle of the act of defecation (without reference to contact or odor) by means of a "tabouret de verre," from under the glass floor of which the spectacle of the defecating women may be closely observed. It may be added that the erotic nature of such a spectacle is referred to in the Marquis de Sade's novels.

There is one motive for the existence of coprolagnia which must not be passed over, because it has doubtless frequently served as a mode of transition to what, taken by itself, may well seem the least æsthetically attractive of erotic symbols. I refer to the tendency of the nates to become a sexual fetich. The nates have in all ages and in all parts of the world been frequently regarded as one of the most æsthetically beautiful parts of the feminine body. It is probable that on the basis of this entirely normal attraction more than one form of erotic symbolism is at all events in part supported. Dühren and others have considered that the æsthetic charm of the nates is one of the motives which prompt the desire to inflict flagellation on women. In the same way—certainly in some and probably in many cases—the sexual charm of the nates progressively extends to the anal region, to the act of defecation, and finally to the feces.

In a case of Krafft-Ebing's (Op. cit., p. 183) the subject, when a child of 6, accidentally placed his hand in contact with the nates of the little girl who sat next to him in school, and experienced so great a pleasure in this contact that he frequently repeated it; when he was 10 a nursery governess, to gratify her own desires, placed his finger in her vagina; in adult life he developed urolagnic tendencies.

In a case of Moll's the development of a youthful admiration for the nates in a coprolagnic direction may be clearly traced. In this case a young man, a merchant, in a good position, sought to come in contact with women defecating; and with this object would seek to conceal himself in closets; the excretal odor was pleasurable to him, but was not essential to gratification, and the sight of the nates was also exciting and at the same time not essential to gratification; the act of defecation appears, however, to have been regarded as essential. He never sought to witness prostitutes in this situation; he was only attracted to young, pretty and innocent women. The coprolagnia here, however, had its source in a childish impression of admiration for the nates. When 5 or 6 years old he crawled under the clothes of a servant girl, his face coming in contact with her nates, an impression that remained associated in his mind with pleasure. Three or four years later he used to experience much pleasure when a young girl cousin sat on his face; thus was strengthened an association which developed naturally into coprolagnia. (Moll, Untersuchungen über die Libido Sexualis, bd. i, p. 837.)

It is scarcely necessary to remark that an admiration for the nates, even when reaching a fetichistic degree, by no means necessarily involves, even after many years, any attraction to the excreta. A correspondent for whom the nates have constituted a fetich for many years writes: "I find my craving for women with profuse pelvic or posterior development is growing and I wish to copulate from behind; but I would feel a sickening feeling if any part of my person came in contact with the female anus. It is more pleasing to me to see the nates than the mons, yet I loathe everything associated with the anal region."

Moll has recorded in detail a case of what may be described as "ideal coprolagnia"—that is to say, where the symbolism, though fully developed in imagination, was not carried into real life—which is of great interest because it shows how, in a very intelligent subject, the deviated symbolism may become highly developed and irradiate all the views of life in the same way as the normal impulse. (The subject's desires were also inverted, but from the present point of view the psychological interest of the case is not thereby impaired.) Moll's case was one of symbolism of act, the excreta offering no attraction apart from the process of defecation. In a case which has been communicated to me there was, on the other hand, an olfactory fetichistic attraction to the excreta even in the absence of the person.

In Moll's case, the patient, X., 23 years of age, belongs to a family which he himself describes as nervous. His mother, who is anæmic, has long suffered from almost periodical attacks of excitement, weakness, syncope and palpitation. A brother of the mother died in a lunatic asylum, and several other brothers complain much of their nerves. The mother's sisters are very good-natured, but liable to break out in furious passions; this they inherit from their father. There appears to be no nervous disease on the patient's father's side. X.'s sisters are also healthy.

X. himself is of powerful undersized build and enjoys good health, injured by no excesses. He considers himself nervous. He worked hard at school and was always the first in his class; he adds, however, that this is due less to his own abilities than the laziness of his school-fellows. He is, as he remarks, very religious and prays frequently, but seldom goes to church.

In regard to his psychic characters he says that he has no specially prominent talent, but is much interested in languages, mathematics, physics and philosophy, in fact, in abstract subjects generally. "While I take a lively interest in every kind of intellectual work," he says, "it is only recently that I have been attracted to real life and its requirements. I have never had much skill in physical exercises. For external things until recently I have only had contempt. I have a delicately constituted nature, loving solitude, and only associating with a few select persons. I have a decided taste for fiction, poetry and music; my temperament is idealistic and religious, with strict conceptions of duty and morality, and aspirations towards the good and beautiful. I detest all that is common and coarse, and yet I can think and act in the way you will learn from the following pages."

Regarding his sexual life, X. made the following communication: "During the last two years I have become convinced of the perversion of my sexual instinct. I had often previously thought that in me the impulse was not quite normal, but it is only lately that I have become convinced of my complete perversion. I have never read or heard of any case in which the sexual feelings were of the same kind. Although I can feel a lively inclination towards superior representatives of the female sex, and have twice felt something like love, the sight or the recollection even of a beautiful woman have never caused sexual excitement." In the two exceptional instances mentioned it appears that X. had an inclination to kiss the women in question, but that the thought of coitus had no attraction. "In my voluptuous dreams, connected with the emission of semen, women in seductive situations have never appeared. I have never had any desire to visit a puella publica. The love-stories of my fellow-students seemed very silly, dances and balls were a horror to me, and only on very rare occasions could I be persuaded to go into society. It will be easy to guess the diagnosis in my case: I suffer from the sexual attraction of my own sex, I am a lover of boys.

"You cannot imagine what a world of thoughts, wishes, feelings and impulses the words 'knabe,' 'παις,' 'garcon,' 'boy,' 'ragazzo' have for me; one of these words, even in an unmeaning clause of a translation-book, calls before me the whole sum of associations which in course of time have become bound up with this idea, and it is only with an effort that I can scare away the wild band. This group of thoughts shows a wonderful mixture of warm sensuality and ideal love, it unites my lowest and highest impulses, the strength and the weakness of my nature, my curse and my blessing. My inclination is especially towards boys of the age of 12 to 15; though they may be rather younger or older. That I should prefer beautiful and intelligent boys is comprehensible. I do not want a prostitute, but a friend or a son, whose soul I love, whom I can help to become a more perfect man, such as I myself would willingly be.

"When I myself belonged to that happy age (i.e., below 15) I had no dearer wish than to possess a friend of similar tastes. I have sought, hoped, waited, grieved, and been at last disillusioned, overcome by desire and despair, and have not found that friend. Even later the hope often reappeared, but always in vain, and I cannot boast of that sure recognition which one reads of in the autobiographies of Urnings. I do not know personally a single fellow-sufferer. It is also doubtful whether such an acquaintanceship would greatly help me, for I have a very peculiar conception of homosexuality. As you will see, I have little more in common with what are called pæderasts than sexual indifference to the female sex, and I often ask myself: 'Does any other man in the whole world feel like you? Are you alone in the earth with your morbid desires? Are you a pariah of pariahs, or is there, perhaps, another soul with similar longings living near you? How often in summer have I gone to the lakes and streams outside cities to seek boys bathing; but I always came back unsatisfied, whether I found any or not. And in winter I have been irresistibly impelled to return to the same spots, as if it were sanctified by the boys, but my darlings had vanished and cold winds blew over the icy floods, so that I would return feeling as though I had buried all my happiness.

"It must be borne in mind, therefore, that what I have to say regarding my sexual impulses only refers to fancies and never to their practical realization. My sensual impulses are not connected with the sexual organs; all my voluptuous ideas are not in the least connected with these parts. For this reason I have never practiced onanism and immissio membri in anum is as repulsive to me as to a normal man. Even every imitation of coitus is, for me, without attraction. In a boy's body two things specially excite me: his belly and his nates, the first as containing the digestive tract, the second as holding the opening of the bowels. Of the vegetable processes of life in the boy none interest me nearly so much as the progress of his digestion and the process of defecation. It is incredible to what an extent this part of physiology has occupied me from youth. If as a boy I wanted to read something of a piquantly exciting character I sought in my father's encyclopædia for articles like: Obstruction, Constipation, Hæmorrhoids, Fæces, etc. No function of the body seemed to be so significant as this, and I regarded its disturbances as the most important in the whole mechanism of life. The description of other disorders I could read in cold blood, but intussusception of the bowels makes me ill even to-day. I am always extremely pleased to hear that the digestion of the people around me is in good condition. A man who did not sufficiently watch over his digestion aroused distrust in me, and I imagined that wicked men must be horribly indifferent regarding this weighty matter. Even more than in ordinary persons was I interested in the digestion of more mysterious beings, like magicians in legends, or men of other nations. I would willingly have made an anthropological study of my favorite subject, only to my annoyance books nearly always pass over the matter in silence. In history and fiction I regretted the absence of information concerning the state of my heroes' digestion when they languished in prison or in some unaccustomed or unhealthy spot. For this reason I held no book more precious than one which describes how a young man after being shipwrecked lived for a long time in a narrow snow-hut, and it was conscientiously stated that he became aware of digestive disturbances. No immorality angers me more than the foolish practice of ladies who in society neglect the satisfaction of their natural needs from misplaced motives of modesty. On a railway journey I suffer horribly from the thought that one of my fellow-travelers may be prevented from fulfilling some imperative natural necessity.

"I naturally devote the greatest attention to my own digestion. With painful conscientiousness I go to stool every day at the same hour; if the operation does not come off to my satisfaction I feel not so much physical as mental discomfort. To this quite useful hygienic interest became associated at puberty a sensual interest. Since my fourteenth year I have had no greater enjoyment than to defecate undressed (I do not do so now) after having first carefully examined the distension of my abdomen. In summer I would go into the woods, undress myself in a secluded spot and indulge in the voluptuous pleasures of defecation. I would sometimes combine with this a bath in a stream. I would exhaust my imagination in the effort to invent specially enjoyable variations, longed for a desert island where I could go about naked, fill my body with much nourishing food, hold in the excrement as long as possible and then discharge it in some subtly-thought-out spot. These practices and ideas often caused erections and later on emissions, but the genitals played no part in my conceptions; their movements were uncomfortable and gave no pleasure.

"I soon longed to be associated in these orgies with some boy of the same age, but I wanted not only a companion in my passion, but also a real friend. Since there could be no question of masturbation or pæderasty, our love would have been limited to kisses, embraces, and—as a compensation for coitus—defecation together. That would have been perfect bliss to me. I will spare you the unæsthetic contents of my voluptuous dreams. But I remained without a companion, and, therefore, without real enjoyment. [He has, however, on various occasions experienced erections, and even emissions, on seeing, by chance, men or boys defecate.] Hinc illæ lacrimæ; the excitement over my own defecation only took place faute de mieux.

"I knew very well that my thoughts and practices were impure and contemptible. Ah! how often, when the intoxication was over, have I thrown myself remorsefully on my knees, praying to God for pardon! For some weeks I repressed my longing; but at last it was too strong for me, I tried to justify myself and fell into my vice anew. That I was guilty of licentiousness and loved boys sexually first became clear to me later on, when I knew the significance of erection as a sign of sexual excitement.

"No one can imagine with what demoniacal joy I am possessed at the thought of a beautiful naked boy whose abdomen is filled as the result of long abstinence from stool. The thought powerfully excites me, a flood of passion goes through my blood and my limbs tremble. I would never grow tired of feeling that belly and looking at it. My passion would express itself in tempestuous caresses, and the boy would have to assume various positions in order to show off the beauty of his form, i.e., to bring the parts in question into better view. To observe defecation would still further increase this peculiar enjoyment. If the boy's bowels were not sufficiently filled I would feed him with all sorts of food which produces much excrement, such as potatoes, coarse bread, etc. If possible I would seek to delay defecation for two or three days, so that it might be as copious as possible. When at last it occurred it would be an unspeakable joy for me to watch the fæces—which would have to be fairly firm—emerging from the anus."

X. would like to be a teacher and thinks he could exert a beneficial influence on boys. In spite of the pain he has suffered he does not think he would like to be cured of his perverse inclinations, for they have given him joy as well as pain, and the pain has chiefly been owing to the fact that he could not gratify his inclinations. X. smokes and drinks in moderation, and has no feminine habits. (The foregoing is a condensed summary of the case which is fully reported by Moll, Konträre Sexualempfindung, third edition, pp. 295-305.)

The case of coprolagnia communicated to me is that of a married man, normal in all other respects, intellectually brilliant and filling successfully a very responsible position. When a child the women of his household were always indifferent as to his presence in their bedrooms, and would satisfy all natural calls without reserve before him. He would dream of this with erections. His sexual interests became slowly centered in the act of defecation, and this fetich throughout life never appealed to him so powerfully as when associated with the particular type of household furniture which was used for this purpose in his own house. The act of defecation in the opposite sex or anything pertaining to or suggesting the same caused uncontrollable sexual excitement; the nates also exerted a great attraction. The alvine excreta exerted this influence even in the absence of the woman; it was, however, necessary that she should be a sexually desirable person. The perversion in this case was not complete; that is to say, that the excitement produced by the act of defecation or the excretion itself was not actually preferred to coitus; the sexual idea was normal coitus in the normal manner, but preceded by the visual and olfactory enjoyment of the exciting fetich. When coitus was not possible the enjoyment of the fetich was accompanied by masturbation (as in the analogous case of urolagnia in a woman summarized on p. 62.) On one occasion he was discovered by a friend in a bedroom belonging to a woman, engaged in the act of masturbation over a vessel containing the desired fetich. In an agony of shame he begged the mercy of silence concerning this episode, at the same time revealing his life-history. He has constantly been haunted by the dread of detection, as well as by remorse and the consciousness of degradation, also by the fear that his unconquerable obsession may lead him to the asylum.

The scatalogic groups of sexual perversions, urolagnia and coprolagnia, as may be sufficiently seen in this brief summary, are not merely olfactory fetiches. They are, in a larger proportion of cases, dynamic symbols, a preoccupation with physiological acts which, by associations of contiguity and still more of resemblance, have gained the virtue of stimulating in slight cases, and replacing in more extreme cases, the normal preoccupation with the central physiological act itself. We have seen that there are various considerations which amply suffice to furnish a basis for such associations. And when we reflect that in the popular mind, and to some extent in actual fact, the sexual act itself is, like urination and defecation, an excretory act, we can understand that the true excretory acts may easily become symbols of the pseudo-excretory act. It is, indeed, in the muscular release of accumulated pressures and tensions, involved by the act of liberating the stored-up excretion, that we have the closest simulacrum of the tumescence and detumescence of the sexual process.

In this way the erotic symbolism of urolagnia and coprolagnia is completely analogous with that dynamic symbolism of the clinging and swinging garments which Herrick has so accurately described, with the complex symbolism of flagellation and its play of the rod against the blushing and trembling nates, with the symbols of sexual strain and stress which are embodied in the foot and the act of treading.

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