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

SEXUAL DEVIATIONKleptolagniaThe ancient term (it dates from the eighteenth century)"Kleptomania/ 1 originally put forward as a "monomania,"has never been generally accepted in medicineand has usually been denied altogether in law. When usedit was generally meant to indicate simply a more or lessirresistible impulse to theft, an obsession for which thereis no conscious motive and which the subject (usuallya woman) struggles against; it was regarded as most nearlyallied with manic-depressive insanity. The tendency nowis to allow it to drop out of use. When a "morbid impulse"isbrought forward in court as a defense for theft it is tooeasy for the magistrate to retort: "That is what I am hereto cure." But there is a fairly definite condition, not avague obsession but due to precise and traceable causes,which cannot so be dismissed, and comes before us hereas within the sphere of sex psychology. This is the so-called"erotic kleptomania" for which the best name is probably"kleptolagnia." That name (to indicate the association oftheft with sexual feeling, in analogy with "algolagnia") ,was devised by the psychiatrist Kiernan of Chicago about1917. I adopted it at once and have ever since regarded itas the most suitable name for this condition. (Similarly"pyrolagnia" may be used for the rare condition of "eroticpyromania.") The condition itself seems to have been firstrecorded by Lacassagne of Lyons in 1896.Kleptolagnia may be said to arise on the wide basis oalgolagnia, that is to say the association of pain, here inthe form of anxiety, with sexual emotion. It had beenvaguely touched on by various observers, who had notclearly understood it before French psychiatrists (such asDepouy in 1905) described definite cases. They showedthat the mental process involved was really the process of