Wild melancholy. On the historical plausibility of a black bile theory of blood madness, or hæmatomania.

Nineteenth-century art historian John Addington Symonds coined the term hæmatomania (blood madness) for the extremely bloodthirsty behaviour of a number of disturbed rulers like Ibrahim II of Ifriqiya (850-902) and Ezzelino da Romano (1194-1259). According to Symonds, this mental pathology was linked to melancholy and caused by an excess of black bile. I explore the historical credibility of this theory of 'wild melancholy', a type of melancholia that crucially deviates from the lethargic main type. I conclude that in its pure form Symonds' black bile theory of hæmatomania was never a broadly supported perspective, but can be traced back to the nosology of the ninth-century physician Ishaq ibn Imran, who practised at the Aghlabid court, to which the sadistic Ibrahim II belonged.

[Karl Abraham's revolution. From sensual sucking to oral-aggressive destruction wishes]. / Karl Abrahams Revolution: Vom Wonnesaugen zum oral-aggressiven Vernichtungswunsch.

The author argues that Abraham's paper on "The first pregenital stage of the libido" (1916-17) expounds a new conception of orality, i. e. the idea of a purposeful oral aggression directed against an object. This conception is shown to be contrary to Freud's view of orality as elaborated in his Three Essays as well as in other writings of late 1914 and early 1915. It ignores fundamental dimensions of Freud's thinking, namely the difference between autoerotism/narcissism and object love on the one hand and between libido and aggression on the other, thus representing a basic theoretical change that also had consequences for analytical practice.

The spanner trials and the changing law on sadomasochism in the UK.

In the United Kingdom in 1989 a group of gay men who had been engaging in consensual SM activities were put on trial and found guilty of assault. The dominants/tops were charged with assault, and the men who participated in the activities as "bottoms" or submissives were convicted of aiding and abetting assaults upon themselves. This article discusses these Spanner trials--as they came to be called--and the issues of consent and privacy on which they were argued. UK and potentially European law are being subjected to pressure for redefinition as a result of the Spanner case, as SM practitioners are beginning to experience the implications and fallout from the prosecutions. While there have been proposals to reform the laws about what has been deemed self-destructive and socially dangerous behavior, little has changed to date. The story of the prosecutions and appeals, and the pressures for a new legislative approach to decriminalize consensual SM, will be situated in the context of public interest claims to control the private actions of individuals in the interest of public health. Differences in interpretation that occur when gay men are involved as compared to heterosexual couples will also be discussed.

Animal experimentation in sciences: sadistic nonsense or indispensable necessity?

The history of biomedical research clearly shows that, with exception of a very few, scientific findings could be realised only with the help of animal experiments. Unfortunately, in the past the life of animals was treated negligently and, at times, in fact criminally. Only the researchers' willingness to apply ethical principles toward laboratory animals could create a climate in which research is opening up to constructive, active animal protection and is ready to co-operate through the implementations of such programmes as the 3R-principle into daily practice. Using a number of examples, the article at hand tries to show that the dimensions concerning animal protection is very old indeed and that only a change of consciousness by the public and in research has created a situation in which a gentler treatment of life and life conditions of laboratory animals could be realised. A further development of "constructive" animal protection within the industrialised nations is only possible with this back ground. Without such a development, biomedical research is bound for deficits in one way or another. It will be loosing it's medical and economical opportunities and with it, it's meaning for man.

[Was the German forensic psychiatrist Hans Szewczyk the first modern profiler?]. / War der deutsche forensische Psychiater Hans Szewczyk der erste moderne Profiler?

The term "profiler" is usually associated with the FBI. For more than two decades a multitude of publications has appeared on this subject in the Anglo-American language area describing the work of psychiatrists and psychologists as profilers in spectacular crimes. This article deals with the forensic psychiatrist Prof. Dr. Dr. Hans Szewczyk, who probably worked out the first perpetrator profile on a scientific basis in 1969-71 already when three boys were murdered in Eberswalde (state of Brandenburg); his profile made an essential contribution to the solution of the case.

Phallic narcissism, anal sadism, and oral discord: the case of Yukio Mishima, Part I.

Thus far I have explored Mishima's traumatic childhood and the experiences leading him toward misogyny, phallic narcissism, and the drive to murder his own weakness and sexual vulnerability. Mishima suffered the extraordinary trauma of being separated from his parents and sequestered to the sickroom of a psychotic grandmother for the first twelve years of his life. Intense rage over abandonment and impingement engendered a disgust for femininity and the need to escape feminine messiness through homosexual pursuits. Mishima's entrenched feelings of shame and weakness gave rise to phallic narcissistic tendencies, as he idealized powerful men and eventually strove to become a powerful and beautiful male. In pursuing this erotic masculine image Mishima continued to fantasize about murdering his weak and shameful self-image, and commingled this sadistic impulse with fantasies of sexual merger with murdered love objects. Finally Mishima was the murderer erotically eradicating his sexual vulnerability as both subject and object. His suicide was a repetition of this erotic sadistic fantasy. In a further article I will continue the discussion by examining Mishima's fantasies of murdering beautiful and abandoning love objects. I will also address the complex nature of his ritual suicide as fantasy of rebirth, sexual merger, the murder of toxic introjects, and escape from death, decay, and regression to helpless infancy.

Delaware's first serial killer.

The violent murder of Shirley Ellis on November 29, 1987, marked the beginning of the strange and terrible tale of Steven Bryan Pennell's reign as the state of Delaware's first convicted serial killer. Three more bodies followed the first victim, and all had been brutally beaten and sadistically tortured. The body of a fifth woman has never been found. State and county police collaborated with the FBI to identify and hunt down their suspect, forming a task force of over 100 officers and spending about one million dollars. Through their knowledge and experience with other serial killers, the FBI was able to make an amazingly accurate psychological profile of Delaware's serial killer. After months of around-the-clock surveillance, Steven Pennell was arrested on November 29, 1988, one year to the day after the first victim was found. Pennell was found guilty in the deaths of the first two victims on November 29, 1989, and plead no contest to the murder of two others on October 30, 1991. Still maintaining his innocence, he asked for the death penalty so that he could spare his family further agony. Steven Pennell was executed by lethal injection on March 15, 1992.