Volume 1

Sadism and masochism : the psychology of hatred and cruelty / by Wilhelm Stekel, M.D. Authorized English version by Louise Brink.

  • Wilhelm Stekel
Date:
[1935]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Sadism and masochism : the psychology of hatred and cruelty / by Wilhelm Stekel, M.D. Authorized English version by Louise Brink. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the crystallization center of the system. In connection with the sadist trial in Vienna (it had to do with the witnessing of the beating of children) one of the accused published a sort of defense article in all the papers to show that the impulse was congenital to him. I will publish here a portion of the writing: I was five years old when at Christmas I received a crampus, which held in its hand a bundle of gilt rods. The crampus stood in one corner of the room, my bed opposite it in another. I would awaken at night with my body hot all over; I would lie awake, restless, unable to fall asleep. Suddenly I would feel a burn- ing desire to be beaten with the rods. I would climb out, go to the crampus, and drag the bundle of rods from its hand. The longing which seized me at that time, to be so severely beaten with the cool rods that it would cause pain, is the most intense experi- ence of my childhood. I had to climb back into bed with the craving unsatisfied. Later—I was eight or nine years old—I fell in love with a school- mate. He was perhaps two years older, seemed to me charming; but it was not his fine, pale face with the large dark eyes nor his slender, lithesome form which fascinated me, but his proud aloof- ness. Once, at recess, I went impulsively to him, placed myself behind him, embraced him, and kissed him on his hair. He turned furiously, shook me off, and said angrily: If you do that again, you will have a taste of my fists V This strange unchildlike speech, its words and sound, have stuck in my ears as nothing else that I ever heard in later life; for years I awoke dreaming of the fists of my first young beloved and longing for them. Now comes an important experience. I sat in the garden with the thirteen-year-old daughter of my mathematics professor, with whom I was placed as a second-form pupil. It was May and a year of May beetles. The girl, pretty and bold, was up to all sorts of mischief. Suddenly she picked up a May bug from the ground and bit its head off. I stared at her as if paralyzed; she only looked me challengingly in the eyes. Then I felt all at once the first horrible feeling of disgust give way to a shudder of de- light, and from this hour on I was in love with the girl. At about the same time I read a book. It was called Die Boja- renfiirstin [The Boyar Princess], or a story in the book had that name. I no longer know all that was related there, but one episode of the tale not only remained ineffaceably in memory, but it also