There is another impulse which it may be worth while to consider briefly
here, for the sake of the light it throws on the relationship between love
and pain. I allude to the impulse to strangle the object of sexual desire, and to the corresponding craving to be strangled. Cases have been recorded in which this impulse was so powerful that men have actually strangled women at the moment of coitus.[120] Such cases are rare; but, as a mere idea, the thought of strangling a woman appears to be not infrequently associated with sexual emotion. We must probably regard it as, in the main,--with whatever subsidiary elements,--an aspect of that physical seizure, domination, and forcible embrace of the female which is one of the primitive elements of courtship.[121]
The corresponding idea--the pleasurable connection of the thought of being
strangled with sexual emotion--appears to occur still more frequently, perhaps especially in women. Here we seem to have, as in the case of whipping, a combination of a physical with a psychic element. Not only is the idea attractive, but, as a matter of fact, strangulation, suffocation, or any arrest of respiration, even when carried to the extent of producing death, may actually provoke emission, as is observed after death by hanging.[122] It is noteworthy that, as Eulenburg remarks, the method of treating diseases of the spinal cord by suspension--a method much in vogue a few years ago--often produced sexual excitement.[123] In brothels, it is said, some of the clients desire to be suspended vertically by a cord furnished with pads.[124] A playful attempt to throttle her on the part of her lover is often felt by a woman as pleasurable, though it may not necessarily produce definite sexual excitement. Sometimes, however, this feeling becomes so strong that it must be regarded as an actual perversion, and I have been told of a woman who is indifferent to the ordinary sexual embrace; her chief longing is to be throttled, and she will do anything to have her neck squeezed by her lover till her eyeballs bulge.[125]
The imagined pleasure of being strangled by a lover brings us to a group
of feelings which would seem to be not unconnected with respiratory
elements. I refer to the pleasurable excitement experienced by some in
suspension, swinging, restraint, and fetters. Strangulation is the extreme
and most decided type of this group of imagined or real situations, in all
of which a respiratory disturbance seems to be an essential element.[126]
In explaining these phenomena we have to remark that respiratory
excitement has always been a conspicuous part of the whole process of
tumescence and detumescence, of the struggles of courtship and of its
climax, and that any restraint upon respiration, or, indeed, any restraint
upon muscular and emotional activity generally, tends to heighten the
state of sexual excitement associated with such activity.
I may here quote, as bearing on this and allied questions, a somewhat lengthy communication from a lady to whom I am indebted for many subtle and suggestive remarks on the whole of this group of manifestations:--
"With regard to the connection between swinging and suspension, perhaps the physical basis of it is the loss of breath. Temporary loss of breath with me produces excitement. Swinging at a height or a fall from a height would cause loss of breath; in a state of suspension the imagination would suggest the idea of falling and the attendant loss of breath. People suffering from lung disease are often erotically inclined, and anesthetics affect the breathing. Men also seem to like the idea of suspension, but from the active side. One man used to put his wife on a high swinging shelf when she displeased him, and my husband told me once he would like to suspend me to a crane we were watching at work, though I have never mentioned my own feeling on this point to him. Suspension is often mentioned in descriptions of torture. Beatrice Cenci was hung up by her hair and the recently murdered Queen of Korea was similarly treated. In Tolstoi's _My Husband and I_ the girl says she would like her husband to hold her over a precipice. That passage gave me great pleasure.[127]