IV.

The Impulse to Strangle the Object of Sexual Desire—­The Wish to be Strangled—­Respiratory Disturbance the Essential Element in this Group of Phenomena—­The Part Played by Respiratory Excitement in the Process of Courtship—­Swinging and Suspension—­The Attraction Exerted by the Idea of being Chained and Fettered.

There is another impulse which it may be worth while to consider briefly here, for the sake of the light it throws on the relationship between love and pain.  I allude to the impulse to strangle the object of sexual desire, and to the corresponding craving to be strangled.  Cases have been recorded in which this impulse was so powerful that men have actually strangled women at the moment of coitus.[120] Such cases are rare; but, as a mere idea, the thought of strangling a woman appears to be not infrequently associated with sexual emotion.  We must probably regard it as, in the main,—­with whatever subsidiary elements,—­an aspect of that physical seizure, domination, and forcible embrace of the female which is one of the primitive elements of courtship.[121]

The corresponding idea—­the pleasurable connection of the thought of being strangled with sexual emotion—­appears to occur still more frequently, perhaps especially in women.  Here we seem to have, as in the case of whipping, a combination of a physical with a psychic element.  Not only is the idea attractive, but, as a matter of fact, strangulation, suffocation, or any arrest of respiration, even when carried to the extent of producing death, may actually provoke emission, as is observed after death by hanging.[122] It is noteworthy that, as Eulenburg remarks, the method of treating diseases of the spinal cord by suspension—­a method much in vogue a few years ago—­often produced sexual excitement.[123] In brothels, it is said, some of the clients desire to be suspended vertically by a cord furnished with pads.[124] A playful attempt to throttle her on the part of her lover is often felt by a woman as pleasurable, though it may not necessarily produce definite sexual excitement.  Sometimes, however, this feeling becomes so strong that it must be regarded as an actual perversion, and I have been told of a woman who is indifferent to the ordinary sexual embrace; her chief longing is to be throttled, and she will do anything to have her neck squeezed by her lover till her eyeballs bulge.[125]

“I think if I could be left my present feelings,” a lady writes, “and be changed into a male imbecile,—­that is, given a man’s strength, but deprived, to a large extent, of reasoning power,—­I might very likely act in the apparently cruel way they do.  And this partly because many of their actions appeal to me on the passive side.  The idea of being strangled by a person I love does.  The great sensitiveness of one’s throat and neck come in here as well as the loss of breath.  Once when I was about to be separated from a man