escence, are
likewise due to diffusion of the motor disturbance. Even in infancy the
motor signs of sexual excitement are the most obvious indications of
orgasm; thus West, describing masturbation in a child of six or nine
months who practiced thigh-rubbing, states that when sitting in her high
chair she would grasp the handles, stiffen herself, and stare, rubbing her
thighs quickly together several times, and then come to herself with a
sigh, tired, relaxed, and sweating, these seizures, which lasted one or
two minutes, being mistaken by the relations for epileptic fits.[116]

The essentially motor character of detumescence is well shown by
the extreme forms of erotic intoxication which sometimes appear
as the result of sexual excitement. Fere, who has especially
called attention to the various manifestations of this condition,
presents an instructive case of a man of neurotic heredity and
antecedents, in whom it occasionally happened that sexual
excitement, instead of culminating in the normal orgasm, attained
its climax in a fit of uncontrollable muscular excitement. He
would then sing, dance, gesticulate, roughly treat his partner,
break the objects around him, and finally sink down exhausted and
stupefied. (Fere, _L'Instinct Sexuel_, Chapter X.) In such a case
a diffused and general detumescence has taken the place of the
normal detumescence which has its main focus in the sexual
sphere.

The same relationship is shown in a case of impotence accompanied
by cramps in the calves and elsewhere, which has been recorded by
Bruegelmann ("Zur Lehre vom Perversen Sexualismus," _Zeitschrift
fuer Hypnotismus_, 1900, Heft I). These muscular conditions ceased
for several days whenever coitus was effected.

An instructive analogy to the motor irradiations preceding the
moment of sexual detumescence may be found in the somewhat
similar motor irradiations which follow the delayed expulsion of
a highly distended bladder. These sometimes become very marked in
a child or young woman unable to control the motor system
absolutely. The legs are crossed, the foot swung, the thighs
tightly pressed together, the toes curled. The fingers are flexed
in rhythmic succession. The whole body slowly twists as though
the seat had become uncomfortable. It is difficult to concentrate
the mind; the same remark may be automatically r