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Sexual feebleness is further indicated by the fact that the individuals selected as witnesses are frequently mere children. It seems probable that a form of erotic symbolism somewhat similar to exhibitionism is to be found in the rare cases in which sexual gratification is derived from throwing ink, acid or other defiling liquids on women's dresses. An instructive case has been presented by Moll.
No subject of exhibitionism should be sent to prison without expert medical examination. B. Ball. La Folie Erotique, p. 86. Moll, Untersuchungen über die Libido Sexualis, bd. i, p. 661. "Exhibitionism in its most typical form is," Garnier truly says, "a systematic act, manifesting itself as the strange equivalent of a sexual connection, or its substitution."
It is a dogma to state that the internal secretions of sex do not begin to function until after puberty. Some children manifest exhibitionism with a certain independence of environment. Before adolescence a good many girls act like tom-boys, and are distinguishable externally from boys only by their clothes.
Rousseau, whose emotional life was profoundly affected by the castigations which as a child he received from Mlle Lambercier, has in his Confessions told us how, when a youth, he would sometimes expose himself in this way in the presence of young women. Such masochistic exhibitionism seems, however, to be rare.
This continued after the alcohol had been abandoned and lasted for several years, though the attention of the police was never attracted to the matter, and so far as possible he was quietly supervised by his friends. Nine months after, the acts of exhibitionism ceased, apparently in a spontaneous manner, and there has so far been no relapse.
It must be added that a sexual form of exhibitionism of the nates must still be recognized. It occurs in masochism and expresses the desire for passive flagellation.
Epilepsy frequently occurs on a basis of hereditary degeneration, and the exhibitionism may be, and not infrequently is, a stigma of the degeneracy and not an indication of the occurrence of a minor epileptic fit.
Even, however, when we exclude those epileptic pseudo-exhibitionists who, from the legal point of view, are clearly irresponsible, it must still be remembered that in every case of exhibitionism there is a high degree of either mental abnormality on a neuropathic basis, or else of actual disease. This is true to a greater extent in exhibitionism than in almost any other form of sexual perversion.
Moll, also, who defines exhibitionism somewhat too narrowly as a condition in which "the charm of the exhibition lies for the subject in the display itself," not sufficiently taking into consideration the imagined effect on the spectator, concludes that "the psychological basis of exhibitionism is at present by no means cleared up."
Epileptic cases, with loss of consciousness during the act, can only be regarded as presenting a pseudo-exhibitionism. They should be excluded altogether. It is undoubtedly true that many cases of real or apparent exhibitionism occur in epileptics. We must not, however, too hastily conclude that because these acts occur in epileptics they are necessarily unconscious acts.
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