pseudo-exhibitionism

Updated: May 27, 2025

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.

Havelock Ellis - Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 : Erotic Symbolism; The Mechanism of Detumescence; The Psychic State in Pregnancy

When the act of pseudo-exhibitionism is truly epileptic, it will usually have no psychic sexual content, and it will certainly be liable to occur under all sorts of circumstances, when the patient is alone or in a miscellaneous concourse of people.

Havelock Ellis - Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 : Erotic Symbolism; The Mechanism of Detumescence; The Psychic State in Pregnancy