dea of
being Chained and Fettered.

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]

"I think if I could be left my present feelings," a lady writes,
"and be changed into a male imbecile,--that is, given a man's
strength, but deprived, to a large extent, of reasoning power,--I
might very likely act in the apparently cruel way they do. And
this partly because many of their actions appeal to me on the
pass