self-contemplation in the Study of Auto-erotism, and in this
connection have alluded to the fable of Narcissus, whence Naecke
has since devised the term Narcissism for this group of
phenomena. It is only necessary to mention the enormous
production of photographs, representing normal and abnormal
sexual actions, specially prepared for the purpose of exciting or
of gratifying sexual appetites, and the frequency with which even
normal photographs of the nude appeal to the same lust of the
eyes.

Pygmalionism, or falling in love with statues, is a rare form of
erotomania founded on the sense of vision and closely related to
the allurement of beauty. (I here use "pygmalionism" as a general
term for the sexual love of statues; it is sometimes restricted
to cases in which a man requires of a prostitute that she shall
assume the part of a statue which gradually comes to life, and
finds sexual gratification in this performance alone; Eulenburg
quotes examples, _Sexuale Neuropathie_, p. 107.) An emotional
interest in statues is by no means uncommon among young men
during adolescence. Heine, in _Florentine Nights_, records the
experiences of a boy who conceived a sentimental love for a
statue, and, as this book appears to be largely autobiographical,
the incident may have been founded on fact. Youths have sometimes
masturbated before statues, and even before the image of the
Virgin; such cases are known to priests and mentioned in manuals
for confessors. Pygmalionism appears to have been not uncommon
among the ancient Greeks, and this has been ascribed to their
aesthetic sense; but the manifestation is due rather to the
absence than to the presence of aesthetic feeling, and we may
observe among ourselves that it is the ignorant and uncultured
who feel the indecency of statues and thus betray their sense of
the sexual appeal of such objects. We have to remember that in
Greece statues played a very prominent part in life, and also
that they were tinted, and thus more lifelike than with us.
Lucian, Athenaeus, AElian, and others refer to cases of men who
fell in love with statues. Tarnowsky (_Sexual Instinct_, English
edition, p. 85) mentions the case of a young man who was arrested
in St. Petersburg for paying moonlight visits to the statue of a
nymph on the terrace of a country house,