the mention of whipping was made in a way to arrest my attention.  I well remember the strange, mysterious fascination it had, even apart from any actual physical excitement.  I have been told by many men and a few women that it was the same with them.  Even now the feeling exists sometimes, especially when reading about whipping.”

The following confession, which I find recorded by a German manufacturer’s wife, corresponds with those I have obtained in England:  “When about 5 years old I was playing with a little girl friend in the park.  Our governesses sat on a bench talking.  For some reason—­perhaps because we had wandered away too far and failed to hear a call to return—­my friend aroused the anger of the governess in charge of her.  That young lady, therefore, took her aside, raised her dress, and vigorously smacked her with the flat hand.  I looked on fascinated, and possessed by an inexplicable feeling to which I naively gave myself up.  The impression was so deep that the scene and the persons concerned are still clearly present to my mind, and I can even recall the little details of my companion’s underclothing.”  When sexual associations are permanently brought into play through such an early incident it is possible that a special predisposition exists. (Gesellschaft und Geschlecht, Bd. ii, ht. 4, p. 120.)

It would certainly seem that we must look upon this association as coming well within the normal range of emotional life in childhood, although after puberty, when the sexual feelings become clearly defined, the attraction of whipping normally tends to be left behind as a piece of childishness, only surviving in the background of consciousness, if at all, to furnish a vaguely sexual emotional tone to the subject of whipping, but not affecting conduct, sometimes only emerging in erotic dreams.

This, however, is not invariably the case in persons who are organically abnormal.  In such cases, and especially, it would seem, in highly sensitive and emotional children, the impress left by the fact or the image of whipping may be so strong that it affects not only definitely, but permanently, the whole subsequent course of development of the sexual impulse.  Regis has recorded a case which well illustrates the circumstances and hereditary conditions under which the idea of whipping may take such firm root in the sexual emotional nature of a child as to persist into adult life; at the same time the case shows how a sexual perversion may, in an intelligent person, take on an intellectual character, and it also indicates a rational method of treatment.