Note 86 — III. GENERAL PATHOLOGY.[28] (continued 3)

Every attempt to explain the facts of either sadism or masochism, owing to the close connection of the two phenomena demonstrated here, must also be suited to explain the other perversion. An attempt to offer an explanation of sadism, by J. G. Kiernan (Chicago) (vide “Psychological Aspects of the Sexual Appetite,” Alienist and Neurologist, St. Louis, April, 1891) meets this requirement, and for this reason may be briefly mentioned here. Kiernan, who has several authorities in Anglo-American literature for his theory, starts from the assumption of several naturalists (Dallinger, Drysdale, Rolph, Cleukowsky) which conceives the so-called conjugation, a sexual act in certain low forms of animal life, to be cannibalism, a devouring of the partner in the act. He brings into immediate connection with this the well-known facts that at the time of sexual union crabs tear limbs from their bodies and spiders bite off the heads of the males, and other sadistic acts performed by rutting animals with their consorts. From this he passes to lust-murder and other lustful acts of cruelty in man, and assumes that hunger and the sexual appetite are, in their origin, identical; that the sexual cannibalism of lower forms of animal life has an influence in higher forms and in man, and that sadism is an example of atavism.

This explanation of sadism would, of course, also explain masochism; for if the origin of sexual intercourse is to be sought in cannibalistic processes, then both the survival of one sex and the destruction of the other would fulfill the purpose of nature, and thus the instinctive desire to be the victim would be explained. But it must be stated in objection that the basis of this reasoning is insufficient. The extremely complicated process of conjugation in lower organisms, into which science has really penetrated only during the last few years, is by no means to be regarded as simply a devouring of one individual by another (comp. Weismann, Die Bedeutung der Sexuellen Fortpflanzung für die Selectionstheorie, p. 51, Jena, 1886).