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

SEXUAL DEVIATIONact of pseudo-exhibitionism is truly epileptic,it has nopsychic sexual content, and it will certainly be liable tooccur under all sorts of circumstances, when the patientisalone or in a miscellaneous concourse of people. It correspondsexactly to the cases in which epileptics sometimescarry out the act of urination, during a psychic attack,in an apparently purposive but really unconscious manner.Such an act is automatic, unconscious, and involuntary;the spectators are not even perceived; it cannot be an actof exhibitionism, for the act of exhibition implies deliberateand conscious intention. Whenever, on the otherhand, the place and the time are evidently chosen deliberatelya quiet spot, the presence of only one or two youngwomen or children it is difficult to admit that we are inthe presence of a fit of epileptic unconsciousness, evenwhen the subjectis known to be epileptic.Excluding these epileptic pseudo-exhibitionists, who,from the legal point of view, are clearly irresponsible, itmust still be remembered that in exhibitionism there isusually either a high degree of mental abnormality on aneuropathic basis, or else actual disease. This is true toa greater extent in exhibitionism than in almost any otherform of sexual perversion. No subject of exhibitionismshould be sent to prison without expert medical examination.Hirschfeld believes that the exhibitionist is nevermentally normal. In some cases the impulse to exhibitionismmay be overcome or may pass away. This result ismore likely to come about in those cases in which exhibitionismhas been largely conditioned bychronic alcoholismor other influences tending to destroy the inhibitingand restraining action of the higher centers, which may beand treatment. When it occurs inovercome by hygieneyouth it tends to be spontaneously outgrown, as in theyouthful Rousseau who records that as a boy he once or