The fundamental form of so-called sadism may be discovered in an erotic type which I will call the seeker of love.  A lover of this type is characterised by an unappeasable longing for pure, spiritual love; he passes from woman to woman in the hope of realising this desire, but owing to his own material disposition he is unable to do so.  Time after time he succumbs to sexual promptings.  Thus groping, frequently quite unconsciously—­for a fictitious being, he hates every woman whose fate it is to rouse his desire, for each one cheats him out of that which he seeks.  A genuine illusionist, he knows nothing of the woman of flesh and blood, and continues seeking his ideal, only to be again and again disappointed.  He blames every woman he conquers for what is really his own insufficiency; he despises her or revenges himself on her, punishes and ill-treats her; we recognise the true Don Juan and his morbid caricature, the sadist.  But even the most brutal representative of this type may still be psychologically described as “a man who seeks spiritual love in woman after woman and, finding only sexuality, revenges himself on her.”  Quite a number of men harbour sadistic feelings for only one woman, and that the one to whom they owe their great disillusionment.  Doubtless many men have almost lost the psychical roots of their perversions and are completely involved in physical acts.  There is nothing remarkable in this fact; it occurs in every sphere of human life.  The vague instinct of revenge on woman animates also, though perhaps unconsciously, the pathological sadist.

There is one thing which the seeker of love and the woman-worshipper have in common:  both seek a higher ideal far beyond the woman of every-day life; but while the worshipper safeguards the purity of his feeling by putting the greatest possible distance between him and the object of his worship (and is therefore never disappointed), the seeker of love, blinded by the illusion that he has at last found the object of his quest, draws every woman towards him and again and again discovers that he is nothing but a sensualist.  Every fresh conquest destroys his dream afresh, and he revenges himself, if he is a Don Juan, by despising and disgracing the unfortunate victim, and if he is a sadist, by maltreating her.  And yet he never entirely loses his illusion; he craves for complete satisfaction, and as he is incapable of self-knowledge, he never abandons the hope of meeting the woman he seeks.  He differs very little from the type represented by Sordello, who loved one woman spiritually, but regarded all the others from the standpoint of sex.  It is the tragedy of Don Juan to revolt from the low erotic sphere which is his portion, and where he rules supreme, and for ever to aspire to a realm from which he is shut out.  He is convinced that with the help of a woman he may redeem himself—­and sinks deeper and deeper into the slough of his own sensuality.  He becomes malevolent, cruel and callous; the pleasure whose slave he is repels him: