him wince.  The pleasure is greatly heightened by thinking of various tortures, chiefly by cutting.  She likes to have her husband talk to her, and she to him, of all the tortures they could inflict on each other.  She has, however, never actually tried to carry out these tortures.  She would like to, but dares not, as she is sure he could not endure them.  She has no desire for her husband to try them on her, although she likes to hear him talk about it.

She is at the same time fond of normal coitus, even to excess.  She likes her husband to remain entirely passive during connection, so that he can continue in a state of strong erection for a long time.  She can thus, she says, procure for herself the orgasm a number of times in succession, even nine or ten, quite easily.  On one occasion she even had the orgasm twenty-six times within about one and a quarter hours, her husband during this time having two orgasms. (She is quite certain about the accuracy of this statement.) During this feat much talk about torture was indulged in, and it took place after a month’s separation from her husband, during which she was careful not to masturbate, so that she might have “a real good time” when he came back.  She acknowledges that on this occasion she was a “complete wreck” for a couple of days afterward, but states that usually ten or a dozen orgasms (or spasms, as she terms them) only make her “feel lively.”  She becomes frenzied with excitement during intercourse and insensible to everything but the pleasure of it.

She has never hitherto allowed anyone (except her husband after marriage) to know of her sadistic impulses, nor has she carried them out with anyone, though she would like to, if she dared.  Nor has she allowed any man but her husband to have connection with her or to take any liberties.

Outbursts of sadism may occur episodically in fairly normal persons.  Thus, Coutagne describes the case of a lad of 17—­always regarded as quite normal, and without any signs of degeneracy, even on careful examination, or any traces of hysteria or alcoholism, though there was insanity among his cousins—­who had had occasional sexual relations for a year or two, and on one occasion, being in a state of erection, struck the girl three times on the breast and abdomen with a kitchen knife bought for the purpose.  He was much ashamed of his act immediately afterward, and, all the circumstances being taken into consideration, he was acquitted by the court.[104] Here we seem to have the obscure and latent fascination of blood, which is almost normal, germinating momentarily into an active impulse which is distinctly abnormal, though it produced little beyond those incisions which Vatsyayana disapproved of, but still regarded as a part of courtship.  One step more and we are amid the most outrageous and extreme of all forms of sexual perversion:  with the heroes of De Sade’s novels, who, in exemplification of their author’s most cherished ideals, plan scenes of debauchery in which the flowing of blood is an essential element of coitus; with the Marshall Gilles de Rais and the Hungarian Countess Bathory, whose lust could only be satiated by the death of innumerable victims.