As part of my research into hysteria and psychosomatic conditions I was researching a condition, ulcerative colitis, which has long been associated in the literature with hysterical conversion and psychological factors.
During my professional training I read a paper in which a patient presenting with severe ulcerative colitis and mysterious rectal injuries
had been discovered to be damaging herself during dissociative / amnesiac states via rectal masturbation with dangerous objects.
I have not yet been able to find that case study, however I did find an even more disturbing case study with even more severe injuries and behaviour. I will be posting about this later
I digress
During my research I found a rather dated but still fascinating academic paper that contains an interesting case study involving a “sissy” male patient.
I am really pushed for time but am C&Ping it here in case it is of use to anyone, especially any readers interested in the mind/body issue as it relates to sexuality and gender identity
Here it is (emphasis mine)
Psychophysiological Correlations
in Ulcerative Colitis
AARON KARUSH, M.D, ROBERT B. HIATT, M.D.,
and GEORGE E. DANIELS, M.D
Case 4
The patient was a 27-year-old man, unmarried,
and a practicing lawyer. He was precise, neat,
and a man of obviously superior intelligence, who
related his story in the first interview in an
orderly, logical fashion. His manner was delib-
erate, ingratiating, and detached, with no real
emotion apparent at this time. He had suffered
from ulcerative colitis for six years, with symp-
toms of diarrhea, bloody stools, and some abdom-
inal pain. He had received medical treatment and
a brief period of psychiatric help at another
hospital. His previous psychiatric experience had
increased his anxiety. He described his "central
psychological problem" as that of "dependency."
Suffering strong feelings of "social inferiority,"
he had been unable to establish any heterosexual
relationship, and expressed fears lest he be homo-
sexual.
The mother was a strong, domineering woman
about whom the family life revolved. The father
was a withdrawn, anxious man, completely de-
pendent upon his wife. The patient had always
been attached to his mother, and was hostile
toward and contemptuous of his father. He also
felt strongly competitive with his elder brother,
but considered himself hopelessly inferior.
Throughout his life the patient had been pre-
occupied with a host of physical ailments and
accidents. In his first four years he had pneu-
monia, a mild case of poliomyelitis, and a number
of other minor illnesses. He stammered until the
age of 15. He was a fussy eater, unable to touch
any fat on meat. Until the age of 7 he slept in
his parents' room.
A sensitive child who cried easily, he was
considered a "sissy." He began to make a fetish
of his intellectual ability, feeling this to be his
only claim to importance. Intensely ambitious,
he felt unable to impress anyone, and at 12
began to withdraw from his friends when he
found that they had interests in which he could
not participate. He felt a kind of pride and
martyrdom in not asking for the things that other
boys had. When he became aware of the hetero-
sexual interests of his friends, his withdrawal
from them became complete.
At 20, after an aunt suffered a psychotic
breakdown, he began to fear mental illness in
himself, and shortly afterward had his first epi-
sode of rectal bleeding, without diarrhea. From
the age of 20 to the time of his treatment,
he had frequent homosexual impulses toward
friends, which he controlled with guilt and
anxiety. His rectal bleeding and diarrhea con-
tinued with an occasional brief remission.
When he appeared for treatment, his acute
symptoms had begun to subside, and psycho-
therapy continued for a period of one year. It
was after some four months of therapy that the
recordings were made.
From the diagnostic point of view he displayed a paranoid trend without delusional formation, a schizoid personality, and very strong passive trends. Despite his homosexual impulse, he could involve himself with women, but there too, only to enjoy the passive role. As was later revealed, this passivity covered tremendous hostility and contempt toward the female partner.
There were a fairly large number of recordings
made with this particular patient. The one de-
scribed in this report was selected only because
it revealed in rather typical fashion his associa-
tions during the hour. From the start he was
somewhat tense and anxious, expressing "con-
fusion" about the previous week's discussion,
during which he had consciously suppressed his
anger at the therapist after an interpretation of
his homosexual fantasies, an interpretation the
patient vigorously denied. Nevertheless he had
been depressed by the comment and his own
violent response.
He went on to relate his last sexual experience in which he lost his potency and became acutely anxious. The impotence was a reaction to the girl's demand for a trivial service and his own resentful compliance, which was followed by an outburst of anger at her. She had also complained of pain during coitus and of lack of satisfaction during the act. During this recitation, which was given with great calm, there was but minimal activity in the colon. He then went on to discuss his fear of the vagina as a "castrating machine" which he feared and was reluctant to fondle. He discussed all this with a great deal of intellectualization and little emotional display.
How-
ever, after brief hesitation, in which the therapist
remained silent, he related two dreams that had
occurred during the night of his described ex-
perience with the girl. In the first he was having
coitus with his younger sister, and in the second,
which he related at the beginning of an out-
burst of strong colonic activity, he was under-
going a surgical operation upon his penis for
the removal of a piece of tissue—too much was
removed and his penis fell apart completely.
During his discussion of this dream, the co-
lonic activity increased sharply. He then went
on to say that he must have been thinking really
of the therapist who was to have replaced his
damaged penis. The therapist, however, had
"compelled" him to expose himself to the dangers
of relations with women as part of the treat-
ment. The therapist remarked that the patient
feared his own inability to cope with the situa-
tion, feared he would lose control, and suffer
injury. For that reason he delegated to the thera-
pist the powers that would help him in turn
perform sexually. When pressed for associations
about the incest dream, he denied having any,
but suddenly felt a strong urge to urinate. He
then went on to recall his curiosity about his
sister's sexual experience in her marriage—day-
dreams in which he identified with her. He
had similar fantasies of the coital experiences
of his mother, with the additional thought that
it was she who was more sexually aggressive than
his father. During this period the bowel had
sporadic bursts of strong activity. Toward the
end of the interview he revealed his conscious
fear of losing his sanity as a consequence of sex-
ual transgression.
He hated women who tempted him sexually, but on the other hand, their weakness invited his sexual abuse, which satisfied both sexual desire and rage at being put in so dangerous a position. And finally, his sexualachievement permitted him to derive an illusory feeling of equality with the more envied, stronger men in his life.
Throughout this interview there was intense
vasoconstriction. When this is compared with
tracings taken of other patients with more acute
involvement, one cannot help being struck by
a striking difference in vascular behavior. In the
acute and subacute stages, any emotionally-dis-
turbing ideas, conscious or unconscious, would
tend to provoke vasodilatation, particularly in
response to fear. During a remission, however,
the predominant response was vasoconstriction.
source:
webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gQ4ZzOjKOCQJ:citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download%3Fdoi%3D10.1.1.542.8709%26rep%3Drep1%26type%3Dpdf+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=safari
This is one of countless data shares I find and I just don't have time to to either share or examine them all. I just thought that this might be validating and helpful for some readers.