of fettered men or women.  Stcherbak discusses the case at length and considers that it is essentially an example of sadism, on the ground that the impulse of fettering was prompted by the desire to humiliate.  There is, however, no evidence of any such desire, and, as a matter of fact, no humiliation was effected.  The primary and fundamental element in this and similar cases is an almost abstract sexual fascination in the idea of restraint, whether endured, inflicted, or merely witnessed or imagined; the feet become the chief focus of this fascination, and the basis on which a foot-fetichism or shoe-fetichism tends to arise, because restraint of the feet produces a more marked effect than restraint of the hands.

FOOTNOTES: 

[120] An attenuated and symbolic form of this impulse is seen in the desire to strangle birds with the object of stimulating or even satisfying sexual desire.  Prostitutes are sometimes acquainted with men who bring a live pigeon with them to be strangled just before intercourse.  Lanphear, of St. Louis (Alienist and Neurologist, May, 1907, p. 204) knew a woman, having learned masturbation in a convent school, who was only excited and not satisfied by coitus with her husband, and had to rise from bed, catch and caress a chicken, and finally wring its neck, whereupon orgasm occurred.

[121] Even young girls, however, may experience pleasure in the playful attempt to strangle.  Thus a lady speaking of herself at the time of puberty, when she was in the habit of masturbating, writes (Sexual-Probleme, Aug., 1909, p. 636):  “I acquired a desire to seize people, especially girls, by the throat, and I enjoyed their way of screaming out.”

[122] Godard observed that when animals are bled, or felled, as well as strangled, there is often abundant emission, rich in spermatozoa, but without erection, though accompanied by the same movements of the tail as during copulation.  Robin (art.  “Fecondation,” Dictionnaire Encyclopedique des Sciences Medicales), who quotes this observation, has the following remarks on this subject:  “Ejaculation occurring at the moment when the circulation, maintained artificially, stops is a fact of significance.  It shows how congestive conditions—­or inversely anemic conditions—­constitute organic states sufficient to set in movement the activity of the nerve-centers, as is the case for muscular contractility....  Everything leads us to believe that at the moment when the motor nervous action takes place the corresponding sensitive centers also come into play.”  It must be added that Minovici, in his elaborate study of death by hanging ("Etude sur la Pendaison,” Archives d’Anthropologie Criminelle, 1905, especially p. 791 et seq.), concludes that the turgescence of penis and flow of spermatic fluid (sometimes only prostatic secretion) usually observed in these cases is purely passive and generally, though not always, of post-mortem occurrence.  There is, therefore, no sexual pleasure in death by hanging, and persons who have been rescued at the last moment have experienced no voluptuous sensations.  This was so even in the case, referred to by Minovici, of a man who hanged himself solely with the object of producing sexual pleasure.