Psychology of sex - Total No. of Records in System :: 2032

PSYCHOLOGY OF SEXwas thought necessary to fix the periods of penance whichshould be undergone respectively by bishops, priests, anddeacons who might be guilty o bestiality.The extreme severity which was frequently exercisedtoward those guilty of this offense, was doubtless in largemeasure due to the fact that bestiality was regarded as akind of sodomy, an offense which was viewed with amystical horror, apart altogether from any actual social orpersonal injury it caused. The Jews seem to have feltthis horror; it was ordered that the sinner and his victimshould both be putto death. In the middle ages, especiallyin France, the same rule often prevailed. Men andsows, men and cows, men and donkeys were burnt together.At Toulouse a woman was burnt for having intercoursewith a dog. Even in the seventeenth century alearned French lawyer justified such sentences. It seemsprobable that even today, in the social and legal attitudetowards bestiality, sufficient regard is not paid to the factthat this offense is usually committed either by personswho are morbidly abnormal or who are of so low a degreeof intelligence that theyborder on feeblemindedness.Moreover, it has to be remembered that, except in theoccasional cases which involve cruelty to animals, or areunited with sadism, bestiality isnot a directly anti-socialact at all; so long as there is no cruelty, it is, Forel remarks,"one of the most harmless of the pathological aberrationsof the sexual impulse."BIBLIOGRAPHYKRAFFT-EBING, Psychopathia Sexualis.W. HOWARD, "Sexual Perversion/' Alienist and Neurologist,Jan., 1896.FOREL, The Sexual Question.THOINOT and WEYSSE, Medico-Legal Moral Offenses.