brooding on those things which are most intimately associated with a
sexually desirable person.

The kind of soil on which the germs of erotic symbolism may
develop is well seen in cases of sexual hyperæsthesia. In such
cases all the emotionally sexual analogies and resemblances,
which in erotic symbolism are fixed and organized, may be traced
in vague and passing forms, a single hyperæsthetic individual
perhaps presenting a great variety of germinal symbolisms.

Thus it has been recorded of an Italian nun (whose sister became
a prostitute) that from the age of 8 she had desire for coitus,
from the age of 10 masturbated, and later had homosexual
feelings, that the same feelings and practices continued after
she had taken the veil, though from time to time they assumed
religious equivalents. The mere contact, indeed, of a priest's
hand, the news of the presentation of an ecclesiastic she had
known to a bishopric, the sight of an ape, the contemplation of
the crucified Christ, the figure of a toy, the picture of a
demon, the act of defecation in the children entrusted to her
care (whom, on this account, and against the regulations, she
would accompany to the closets), especially the sight and the
mere recollection of flies in sexual connection--all these things
sufficed to produce in her a powerful orgasm. (_Archivio di
Psichiatria_, 1902, fasc. II-III, p. 338.)

A boy of 15 (given to masturbation), studied by Macdonald in
America, was similarly hyperæsthetic to the symbols of sexual
emotion. "I like amusing myself with my comrades," he told
Macdonald, "rolling ourselves into a ball, which gives one a