seeking to carry them out; she attempts at all costs to have relations with her confessor, embraces him, throws herself at his knees, pursues him, and so becomes a cause of scandal.  When brought to the asylum, there is intense sexual excitement, and she masturbates a dozen times a day, even when talking to the doctor.  The sexual organs are normal, the vulva moist and red, the vagina is painful to touch; the contact of the finger causes erectile turgescence.  She has had no rest, she says, since she has learned to love her Jesus.  He desires her to have sexual relations with someone, and she cannot succeed; ’all my soul’s strength is arrested by this constant endeavor.’  Her new surroundings modify her behavior, and now it is the doctor whom she pursues with her obsessions.  ’I expected everything from the charity of the priests I have known; I have not deserved what I wanted from them.  But is not a doctor free to do everything for the good of the patients intrusted to him by Providence?  Cannot a doctor thus devote himself?  Since I have tasted the tree of life I am tormented by the desire to share it with a loving friend.’  Then she falls in love with an employee, and makes the crudest advances to him, believing that she is thus executing the will of Jesus.  ‘Necessity makes laws,’ she exclaims to him, ’the moments are pressing, I have been waiting too long.’  She still speaks of her religious vocation which might be compromised by so long a delay.  ’I do not want to get married.’  Gradually a transformation took place; the love of God was effaced and earthly love became more intense than ever.  ’Quitting the heights in which I wished to soar, I am coming so near to earth that I shall soon fix my desires there.’  In a last letter Therese recognizes with terror the insanity to which the exaltation of her imagination had led her.  ’Now I only believe in God and in suffering; I feel that it is necessary for me to get married.’”

Mariani[402] has very fully described a case of erotico-religious insanity (climacteric paranoia on an hysterical basis) in a married woman of 44.  During the early stages of her disorder she inflicted all sorts of penances upon herself (fasting, constant prayer, drinking her own urine, cleaning dirty plates with her tongue, etc.).  Finally she felt that by her penances she had obtained forgiveness of her sins, and then began a stage of joy and satisfaction during which she believed that she had entered into a state of the most intimate personal relationship with Jesus.  She finally recovered.  Mariani shows how closely this history corresponds with the histories of the saints, and that all the acts and emotions of this woman can be exactly paralleled in the lives of famous saints.[403]