This medial book served as a foundational text for medical sexology by defining and classifying various forms of non-procreative sexuality. It served as a “medical bible for perversion” up until the 1960’s, and most of the ideas are still ingrained in medical science and society today.
Paraphrased: It is hard to find masochism in women because they already like to be beaten by their husbands as a sign of love.
Can you understand why women get pissed at man’s medical science…?
Excerpt from Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis
Masochism in Woman.
In woman voluntary subjection to the opposite sex is a physiological phenomenon. Owing to her passive role in procreation and long-existent social conditions, ideas of subjection are, in woman, normally connected with the idea of sexual relations. They form, so to speak, the harmonics which determine the tone-quality of feminine feeling.
Any one conversant with the history of civilisation knows in what a state of absolute subjection woman was always kept until a relatively high degree of civilisation was reached; and an attentive observer of life may still easily recognise how the custom of unnumibered generations, in connection with the passive role with which woman has been endowed by Nature, has given her an instinctive inclination to voluntary subordination to man; he will notice that exaggeration of customary gallantry is very distasteful to women, and that a deviation from it in the direction of masterful behaviour, though loudly reprehended, is often accepted with secret satisfaction. Under the veneer of polite society the instinct of feminine servitude is everywhere discernible.
Thus it is easy to regard masochism in general as a pathological growth of specific feminine mental elements,—as an abnormal intensification of certain features
of the psycho-sexual character of woman,—and to seek its primary origin in that sex (v. infra, p. 199). It may, however, be held to be established that, in woman, an inclination to subordination to man (which may be regarded as an acquired, purposeful arrangement, a phenomenon of adaptation to social requirements) is to a certain extent anormal manifestation.
The reason that, under such circumstances, the “poetry” of the symbolic act of subjection is not reached, lies partly in the fact that man has not the vanity of that weakling who would improve the opportunity by the display of his power (as the ladies of the middle ages did towards the love-serving knights), but prefers to realise solid advantages. The barbarian has his wife plough for him, and the civilised lover speculates about her dowry; she willingly endures both.
Cases of pathological increase of this instinct of subjection, in the sense of feminine masochism, are probably frequent enough, but custom represses their manifestation. Many young women like nothing better than to kneel before their husbands or lovers. Among the lower classes of Slavs it is said that the wives feel hurt if they are not beaten by their husbands. A Hungarian official informs me that the peasant women of the Somogyer Comitate do not think they are loved by their husbands until they have received the first box on the ear as a sign of love.
It would probably be difficult for the physician to find cases of feminine masochism. Intrinsic and extraneous restraints—modesty and custom—naturally constitute in woman insurmountable obstacles to the expression of perverse sexual instinct. Thus it happens that, up to the present time, but two cases of masochism in woman have been scientifically established.
- The laws of the early middle ages gave the husband the right to kill the wife; those of the later middle ages, the right to beat her. The latter right was used freely, even by those of high standing {cf. Schultzef “Das hofische Leben zur Zeit des Minnesangs,” Bd. i., p. 163 et seq.). Yet, by the side of this, the paradoxical chivalry of the middle ages stands unexplained (t. infra, p. 198).
- Cf, Lady Milford’s words in Schillers” Kabale und Liebe” •* We women can only choose between ruling and serving; but the lighest pleasure power affords is but a miserable substitute, if the grater joy of being the slaves of a man we love is denied us!*(Act IL, Scene L).
Krafft-Ebing, Richard von. Psychopathia Sexualis. Translated by F. J. Rebman. Physicians and Surgeons Book Company, 1922. The F.A. Davis Company Publishers, 1894. pp. 195-197