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 anaemic, 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.”