Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume Ii Part 7

When the s.e.xual instinct first appears in early youth, it is much less specialized than normally it becomes later. Not only is it, at the outset, less definitely directed to a specific s.e.xual end, but even the s.e.x of its object is sometimes uncertain.[124] This has always been so well recognized that those in authority over young men have sometimes forced women upon them to avoid the risk of possible unnatural offenses.[125]

The inst.i.tution which presents these phenomena to us in the most marked and the most important manner is, naturally, the school, in England especially the Public School. In France, where the same phenomena are noted, Tarde called attention to these relationships, "most usually Platonic in the primitive meaning of the word, which indicate a simple indecision of frontier between friendship and love, still undifferentiated in the dawn of the awakening heart," and he regretted that no one had studied them. In England we are very familiar with vague allusions to the vices of public schools. From time to time we read letters in the newspapers denouncing public schools as "hot-beds of vice" and one anonymous writer remarks that "some of our public schools almost provoke the punishment of the cities of the Plain."[126] But these allegations are rarely or never submitted to accurate investigation. The physicians and masters of public schools who are in a position to study the matter usually possess no psychological training, and appear to view h.o.m.os.e.xuality with too much disgust to care to pay any careful attention to it. What knowledge they possess they keep to themselves, for it is considered to be in the interests of public schools that these things should be hushed up. When anything very scandalous occurs one or two lads are expelled, to their own grave and, perhaps, lifelong injury, and without benefit to those who remain, whose awakening s.e.xual life rarely receives intelligent sympathy.

In several of the Histories which follow in this chapter, as well as in Histories contained in other volumes of these Studies, details will be found concerning h.o.m.os.e.xuality as it occurs in English schools, public or private. (See also the study "Auto-erotism" in vol. i.) The prevalence of h.o.m.os.e.xual and erotic phenomena in schools varies greatly at different schools and at different times in the same school, while in small private schools such phenomena may be entirely unknown. As an English schoolboy I never myself saw or heard anything of such practices, and in Germany, Professor Gurlitt (Die Neue Generation, January, 1909), among others, testifies to similar absence of experience during his whole school life, although there was much talk and joking among the boys over s.e.xual things. I have added some observations by a correspondent whose experiences of English public school life are still recent:-

"In the years I was a member of a public school, I saw and heard a good deal of h.o.m.os.e.xuality, though till my last two years I did not understand its meaning. As a prefect, I discussed with other prefects the methods of checking it, and of punishing it when detected. My own observations, supported by those of others, led me to think that the fault of the usual method of dealing with h.o.m.os.e.xuality in schools is that it regards all school h.o.m.os.e.xualists as being in one cla.s.s together, and has only one way of dealing with them-the birch for a first offense, expulsion for a second. Now, I think we may distinguish three cla.s.ses of school h.o.m.os.e.xualists:-

"(a) A very small number who are probably radically inverted, and who do not scruple to sacrifice young and innocent boys to their pa.s.sions. These, and these only, are a real moral danger to others, and I believe them to be rare.

"(b) Boys of various ages who, having been initiated into the pa.s.sive part in their young days, continue practices of an active or pa.s.sive kind; but only with boys already known to be h.o.m.os.e.xualists; they draw the line at corrupting fresh victims. This cla.s.s realize more or less what they are about, but cannot be called a danger to the morals of pure boys.

"(c) Young boys who, whether in the development of their own physical nature, or by the instruction of older boys of the cla.s.s (a), find out the pleasures of masturbation or intercrural connection. (I never heard of a case of pedicatio at my school, and only once of f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o, which was attempted on a quite young boy, who complained to his house master, and the offender was expelled). Boys in this cla.s.s have probably little or no idea of what s.e.xual morality means, and can hardly be accused of a moral offense at all.

"I submit that these three cla.s.ses should receive quite different treatment. Expulsion may occasionally be necessary for cla.s.s (a), but the few who belong to this cla.s.s are usually too cunning to get caught. It used to be notorious at school that it was almost always the wrong people who got dropped on. I do not think a boy in the other two cla.s.ses should ever be expelled, and even when expulsion is unavoidable, it should, if possible, be deferred till the end of the term, so as to make it indistinguishable from an ordinary departure. After all, there is no reason to ruin a boy's prospects because he is a little beast at sixteen; there are very few hopeless incorrigibles at that age.

"As regards the other two cla.s.ses, I should begin by giving boys very much fuller enlightenment on s.e.xual subjects than is usually done, before they go to a public school at all. Either a boy is pitchforked into the place in utter innocence and ignorance, and yields to temptations to do things which he vaguely, if at all, realizes are wrong, and that only because a puzzling sort of instinct tells him so; or else he is given just enough information to whet his curiosity, usually in the shape of warnings against certain apparently harmless bodily acts, which he not unnaturally tries out of curiosity, and finds them very pleasant. It may be undesirable that a boy should have full knowledge, at the time he goes to school, but it is more undesirable that he should go with a burning curiosity, or a total ignorance on the subject. I am convinced that much might be done in the way of prevention if boys were told more, and allowed to be open. Much of the pleasure of s.e.xual talk among boys I believe to be due to the spurious interest aroused by the fact that it is forbidden fruit, and involves risk if caught. It seems to me that frankness is far more moral than suggestion. I would not 'expurgate' school editions of great authors; the frank obscenity of parts of Shakespeare is far less immoral than the prurient prudishness which declines to print it, but numbers the lines in such a way that the boy can go home and look up the omitted pa.s.sage in a complete edition, with a distinct sense of guilt, which is where the harm comes in."

It is probable that only a small proportion of h.o.m.os.e.xual boys in schools can properly be described as "vicious." A. Hoche, describing h.o.m.os.e.xuality in German schools ("Zur Frage der forensischen Beurteilung s.e.xuellen Vergehen," Neurologisches Centralblatt, 1896, No. 2), and putting together communications received from various medical men regarding their own youthful experiences at school, finds relationships of the kind very common, usually between boys of different ages and school-cla.s.ses. According to one observer, the feminine, or pa.s.sive, part was always played by a boy of girlish form and complexion, and the relationships were somewhat like those of normal lovers, with kissing, poems, love-letters, scenes of jealousy, sometimes visits to each other in bed, but without masturbation, pederasty, or other grossly physical manifestations. From his own youthful experience Hoche records precisely similar observations, and remarks that the lovers were by no means recruited from the vicious elements in the school. (The elder scholars, of 21 or 22 years of age, formed regular s.e.xual relationships with the servant-girls in the house.) It is probable that the h.o.m.os.e.xual relationships in English schools are, as a rule, not more vicious than those described by Hoche, but that the concealment in which they are wrapped leads to exaggeration. In the course of a discussion on this matter over thirty years ago, "Olim Etoniensis" wrote (Journal of Education, 1882, p. 85) that, on making a list of the vicious boys he had known at Eton, he found that "these very boys had become cabinet ministers, statesmen, officers, clergymen, country-gentlemen, etc., and that they are nearly all of them fathers of thriving families, respected and prosperous." But, as Marro has remarked, the question is not thus settled. Public distinction by no means necessarily implies any fine degree of private morality.

Sometimes the manifestations thus appearing in schools or wherever youths are congregated together are not truly h.o.m.os.e.xual, but exhibit a more or less brutal or even s.a.d.i.s.tic perversion of the immature s.e.xual instinct. This may be ill.u.s.trated by the following narrative concerning a large London city warehouse: "A youth left my cla.s.s at the age of 16," writes a correspondent, "to take up an apprenticeship in a large wholesale firm in G-- Street. Fortunately he went on probation of three weeks before articling. He came to me at the end of the first week asking me to intercede with his mother (he had no father) not to let him return. He told me that almost nightly, and especially when new fellows came, the youths in his dormitory (eleven in number) would waylay him, hold him down, and rub his parts to the tune of some comic song or dance-music. The boy who could choose the fastest time had the privilege of performing the operation, and most had to be the victim in turn unless new boys entered, when they would sometimes be subjected to this for a week. This boy, having been brought up strictly, was shocked, dazed, and alarmed; but they stopped him from calling out, and he dared not report it. Most boys entered direct on their apprenticeship without probation, and had no chance to get out. I procured the boy's release from the place and gave the manager to understand what went on." In such a case as this it has usually happened that a strong boy of brutal and perverse instincts and some force of character initiates proceedings which the others either fall into with complacency or are too weak to resist.

Max Dessoir[127] came to the conclusion that "an undifferentiated s.e.xual feeling is normal, on the average, during the first years of p.u.b.erty,-i.e., from 13 to 15 in boys and from 12 to 14 in girls,-while in later years it must be regarded as pathological." He added very truly that in this early period the s.e.xual emotion has not become centered in the s.e.xual organs. This latter fact is certainly far too often forgotten by grown-up persons who suspect the idealized pa.s.sion of boys and girls of a physical side which children have often no suspicion of, and would view with repulsion and horror. How far the s.e.xual instinct may be said to be undifferentiated in early p.u.b.erty as regards s.e.x is a little doubtful. It is comparatively undifferentiated, but except in rare cases it is not absolutely undifferentiated.

We have to admit, however, that, in the opinion of the latest physiologists of s.e.x, such as Castle, Heape, and Marshall, each s.e.x contains the latent characters of the other or recessive s.e.x. Each s.e.x is latent in the other, and each, as it contains the characters of both s.e.xes (and can transmit those of the recessive s.e.x) is latently hermaphrodite. A h.o.m.os.e.xual tendency may thus be regarded as simply the psychical manifestation of special characters of the recessive s.e.x, susceptible of being evolved under changed circ.u.mstances, such as may occur near p.u.b.erty, and a.s.sociated with changed metabolism.[128]

William James (Principles of Psychology, vol. ii, p. 439) considered inversion "a kind of s.e.xual appet.i.te of which very likely most men possess the germinal possibility." Conolly Norman (Article "s.e.xual Perversion," Tuke's Dictionary of Psychological Medicine) also stated that "the s.e.xual pa.s.sion, at its first appearance, is always indefinite, and is very easily turned in a wrong direction," and he apparently accounted for inversion by this fact, and by the precocity of neurotics. Obici and Marchesini (Le 'Amicizie' di collegio, p. 126) refer to the indeterminate character of the s.e.xual feelings when they first begin to develop. A correspondent believes that s.e.xual feelings are undifferentiated in the early years about p.u.b.erty, but at the same time considers that school life is to some extent responsible; "the holidays," he adds, "are sufficiently long to counteract it, however, provided the boy has sisters and they have friends; the change from school fare and work to home naturally results in a greater surplus of nerve-force, and I think most boys 'fool about' with servants or their sisters' friends." Moll (Kontrare s.e.xualempfindung, 1889, pp. 6 and 356) does not think it proved that a stage of undifferentiated s.e.xual feeling always occurs, although we have to recognize that it is of frequent occurrence. In his later work (1909, Das s.e.xualleben des Kindes, English translation, The s.e.xual Life of the Child, ch. iv), Moll remains of the same opinion that a h.o.m.os.e.xual tendency is very frequent in normal children, whose later development is quite normal; it begins between the ages of 7 and 10 (or even at 5) and may last to 20.

In recent years Freud has accepted and developed the conception of the h.o.m.os.e.xual strain; as normal in early life. Thus, in 1905, in his "Bruchstuck einer Hysterie-a.n.a.lyse" (reprinted in the second series of Sammlung Kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, 1909), Freud regards it as a well-known fact that boys and girls at p.u.b.erty normally show plain signs of the existence of a h.o.m.os.e.xual tendency. Under favorable circ.u.mstances this tendency is overcome, but when a happy heteros.e.xual love is not established it remains liable to reappear under the influence of an appropriate stimulus. In the neurotic these h.o.m.os.e.xual germs are more highly developed. "I have never carried through any psychoa.n.a.lysis of a man or a woman," Freud states, "without discovering a very significant h.o.m.os.e.xual tendency." Ferenczi, again (Jahrbuch fur Psychoa.n.a.lytische Forschungen, Bd. iii, 1911, p. 119), without reference to any physical basis of the impulse, accepts "the psychic capacity of the child to direct his originally objectless eroticism to one or both s.e.xes," and terms this disposition ambis.e.xuality. The normality of a h.o.m.os.e.xual element in early life may be said to be accepted by most psychoa.n.a.lysts, even of the schools that are separated from Freud. Stekel would go farther, and regards various psychic s.e.xual anomalies as signs of a concealed bis.e.xual tendency; psychic impotence, the admiration of men for masculine women and of women for feminine men, various forms of fetichism,-they are all masks of h.o.m.os.e.xuality (Stekel, Zentralblatt fur Psychoa.n.a.lyse, vol. ii, April, 1912).

These schoolboy affections and pa.s.sions arise, to a large extent, spontaneously, with the evolution of the s.e.xual emotions, though the method of manifestation may be a matter of example or suggestion. As the s.e.xual emotions become stronger, and as the lad leaves school or college to mix with men and women in the world, the instinct usually turns into the normal channel, in which channel the instincts of the majority of boys have been directed from the earliest appearance of p.u.b.erty, if not earlier. But a certain proportion remain insensitive to the influence of women, and these may be regarded as true s.e.xual inverts. Some of them are probably individuals of somewhat undeveloped s.e.xual instincts. The members of this group are of some interest psychologically, although from the comparative quiescence of their s.e.xual emotions they have received little attention. The following communication which I have received from a well-accredited source is noteworthy from this point of view:-

"The following facts may possibly be of interest to you, though my statement of them is necessarily general and vague. I happen to know intimately three cases of men whose affections have chiefly been directed exclusively to persons of their own s.e.x. The first, having practised masturbation as a boy, and then for some ten years ceased to practise it (to such an extent that he even inhibited his erotic dreams), has since recurred to it deliberately (at about fortnightly intervals) as a subst.i.tute for copulation, for which he has never felt the least desire. But occasionally, when sleeping with a male friend, he has emissions in the act of embracing. The second is constantly and to an abnormal extent (I should say) troubled with erotic dreams and emissions, and takes drugs, by doctor's advice, to reduce this activity. He has recently developed a s.e.xual interest in women, but for ethical and other reasons does not copulate with them. Of the third I can say little, as he has not talked to me on the subject; but I know that he has never had intercourse with women, and has always had a natural and instinctive repulsion to the idea. In all these, I imagine, the physical impulse of s.e.x is less imperative than in the average man. The emotional impulse, on the other hand, is very strong. It has given birth to friendships of which I find no adequate description anywhere but in the dialogues of Plato; and, beyond a certain feeling of strangeness at the gradual discovery of a temperament apparently different to that of most men, it has provoked no kind of self-reproach or shame. On the contrary, the feeling has been rather one of elation in the consciousness of a capacity of affection which appears to be finer and more spiritual than that which commonly subsists between persons of different s.e.xes. These men are all of intellectual capacity above the average; and one is actively engaged in the world, where he is both respected for his capacity and admired for his character. I mention this particularly, because it appears to be the habit, in books upon this subject, to regard the relation in question as pathological, and to select cases where those who are concerned in it are tormented with shame and remorse. In the cases to which I am referring nothing of the kind subsists.

"In all these cases a physical s.e.xual attraction is recognized as the basis of the relation, but as a matter of feeling, and partly also of theory, the ascetic ideal is adopted.

"These are the only cases with which I am personally and intimately acquainted. But no one can have pa.s.sed through a public-school and college life without constantly observing indications of the phenomenon in question. It is clear to me that in a large number of instances there is no fixed line between what is called distinctively 'friendship' and love; and it is probably the influence of custom and public opinion that in most cases finally specializes the physical pa.s.sion in the direction of the opposite s.e.x."

The cla.s.sification of the varieties of h.o.m.os.e.xuality is a matter of difficulty, and no cla.s.sification is very fundamental. The early attempts of Krafft-Ebing and others at elaborate cla.s.sification are no longer acceptable. Even the most elementary groupings become doubtful when we have definitely to fit our cases into them. The old distinction between congenital and acquired h.o.m.os.e.xuality has ceased to possess significance. When we have recognized that there is a tendency for h.o.m.os.e.xuality to arise in persons of usually normal tendency who are placed under conditions (as on board ship or in prison) where the exercise of normal s.e.xuality is impossible, there is little further cla.s.sification to be achieved along this line.[129] We have gone as far as is necessary by admitting a general undefined h.o.m.os.e.xuality,-a relationship of unspecified nature to persons of the same s.e.x,-in addition to the more specific s.e.xual inversion.[130]

It may now be said to be recognized by all authorities, even by Freud who emphasizes a special psychological mechanism by which h.o.m.os.e.xuality may become established, that a congenital predisposition as well as an acquired tendency is necessary to const.i.tute true inversion, apparent exceptions being too few to carry much weight. Krafft-Ebing, Nacke, Iwan Bloch, who at one time believed in the possibility of acquired inversion, all finally abandoned that view, and even Schrenck-Notzing, a vigorous champion of the doctrine of acquired inversion twenty years ago, admits the necessity of a favoring predisposition, an admission which renders the distinction between innate and acquired an unimportant, if not a merely verbal, distinction.[131] Supposing, indeed, that we are prepared to admit that true inversion may be purely acquired the decision in any particular case must be extremely difficult, and I have found very few cases which, even with imperfect knowledge, could fairly so be termed.

Even the cases (to which Schopenhauer long since referred) in which inversion is only established late in life, are no longer regarded as const.i.tuting a difficulty in accepting the doctrine of the congenital nature of inversion; in such cases the inversion is merely r.e.t.a.r.ded. The conception of r.e.t.a.r.ded inversion,-that is to say a latent congenital inversion becoming manifest at a late period in life,-was first brought forward by Thoinot in 1898 in his Attentats aux Murs, in order to supersede the unsatisfactory conception, as he considered it to be, of acquired inversion. Thoinot regarded r.e.t.a.r.ded inversion as relatively rare and of no great importance but more accessible to therapeutic measures. Three years later, Krafft-Ebing, toward the close of his life, adopted the same conception; the cases to which he applied it were all, he considered, of bis.e.xual disposition and usually, also, marked by s.e.xual hyperesthesia. This way of looking at the matter was speedily championed by Nacke and may now be said to be widely accepted.[132]

Moll, earlier than Thoinot, had pointed out that it is difficult to believe that h.o.m.os.e.xuality in late life can ever be produced without at least some inborn weakness of the heteros.e.xual impulse, and that we must not deny the possibility of heredity even when h.o.m.os.e.xuality appears at the age of 50 or 60.[133]

Moll believes it is very doubtful whether heteros.e.xual satiety alone can ever suffice to produce h.o.m.os.e.xuality. Nacke was careful to set aside the cases, to which much significance was once attached, in which old men with failing s.e.xual powers, or younger men exhausted by heteros.e.xual debauchery, are attracted to boys. In such cases, which include the majority of those appearing late, Nacke regarded the inversion as merely spurious, the faute de mieux of persons no longer apt for normal s.e.xual activity.

Such cases no doubt need more careful psychological study than they usually receive. Fere once investigated a case of this kind in which a healthy young man (though with slightly neurotic heredity on one side) practised s.e.xual intercourse excessively between the ages of 20 and 23-often impelled more by amour propre (or what Adler would term the "masculine protest" of the organically inferior) than s.e.xual desire-and then suddenly became impotent, at the same time losing all desire, but without any other loss of health. Six months later potency slowly returned, though never to the same extent, and he married. At the age of 35 symptoms of locomotor ataxia began to appear, and some years later he again became impotent, but without losing s.e.xual desire. Suddenly one day, on sitting in close contact with a young man at a table d'hote, he experienced a violent erection; he afterward found that the same thing occurred with other young men, and, though he had no psychic desire for men, he was constrained to seek such contact, and a repugnance for women and their s.e.xuality arose. Five months later a complete paraplegic impotence set in; and then both the h.o.m.os.e.xual tendency and the aversion to women disappeared. (Fere, L'Instinct s.e.xuel, p. 184.) In such a case, under the influence of disease, excessive stimulation seems to result in more or less complete s.e.xual anesthesia, just as temporarily we may be more or less blinded by excess of light; and functional power rea.s.serts itself under the influence of a different and normally much weaker stimulus.

Leppmann, who has studied the h.o.m.os.e.xual manifestations of previously normal old men toward boys ("Greisenalter und Kriminalitat," Zeitschrift fur Psychotherapie, Bd. i, Heft 4, 1909), considers the chief factor to be a flaring up of the s.e.xual impulse in a perverted direction in an early stage of morbid cerebral disturbance, not amounting to insanity and not involving complete irresponsibility. In such cases, Leppmann believes, the subject may, through his lack of power, be brought back to the beginning of his s.e.xual life and to the perhaps unconsciously h.o.m.os.e.xual attractions of that age.

With the recognition that h.o.m.os.e.xuality in youth may be due to an as yet undifferentiated s.e.xual impulse, h.o.m.os.e.xuality in mature age to a r.e.t.a.r.ded development on a congenital basis, and h.o.m.os.e.xuality in sold age to a return to the att.i.tude of youth, the area of spurious or "pseudo" h.o.m.os.e.xuality seems to me to be very much restricted. Most, perhaps all, authorities still accept the reality of this spurious h.o.m.os.e.xuality in heteros.e.xual persons. But they enter into no details concerning it, and they bring forward no minutely observed cases in which it occurred. Hirschfeld, in discussing the diagnosis of h.o.m.os.e.xuality and seeking to distinguish genuine from spurious inverts,[134] enumerates three cla.s.ses of the latter: (1) those who practise h.o.m.os.e.xuality for purposes of gain, more especially male prost.i.tutes and blackmailers; (2) persons who, from motives of pity, good nature, friendship, etc., allow themselves to be the objects of h.o.m.os.e.xual desire; (3) normal persons who, when excluded from the society of the opposite s.e.x, as in schools, barracks, on board ship, or in prison, have s.e.xual relations with persons of their own s.e.x. Now Hirschfeld clearly realizes that the mere s.e.xual act is no proof of the direction of the s.e.xual impulse; it may be rendered possible by mechanical irritation (as by the stimulation of a full bladder) and in women without any stimulation at all; such cases can have little psychological significance. Moreover, he seems to admit that some subdivisions of his first cla.s.s are true inverts. He further mentions that some 75 per cent. of the individuals included in these cla.s.ses are between 15 and 25 years of age, that is to say, that they have scarcely emerged from the period when we have reason to believe that, in a large number of individuals at all events, the s.e.xual impulse is not yet definitely differentiated; so that neither its h.o.m.os.e.xual nor its heteros.e.xual tendencies can properly be regarded as spurious.

If, indeed, we really accept the very reasonable view, that the basis of the s.e.xual life is bis.e.xual, although its direction may be definitely fixed in a heteros.e.xual or h.o.m.os.e.xual direction at a very early period in life, it becomes difficult to see how we can any longer speak with certainty of a definitely spurious cla.s.s of h.o.m.os.e.xual persons. Everyone of Hirschfeld's three cla.s.ses may well contain a majority of genuinely h.o.m.os.e.xual or bis.e.xual persons. The prost.i.tutes and even the blackmailers are certainly genuine inverts in very many cases. Those persons, again, who allow themselves to be the recipients of h.o.m.os.e.xual attentions may well possess traces of h.o.m.os.e.xual feeling, and are undoubtedly in very many cases lacking in vigorous heteros.e.xual impulse. Finally, the persons who turn to their own s.e.x when forcibly excluded from the society of the opposite s.e.x, can by no means be a.s.sumed, without question, to be normal heteros.e.xual persons. It is only a small proportion of heteros.e.xual persons who experience these impulses under such conditions. There are always others who under the same conditions remain emotionally attracted to the opposite s.e.x and s.e.xually indifferent to their own s.e.x. There is evidently a difference, and that difference may most reasonably be supposed to be in the existence of a trace of h.o.m.os.e.xual feeling which is called into activity under the abnormal conditions, and subsides when the stronger heteros.e.xual impulse can again be gratified.

The real distinction would seem, therefore, to be between a h.o.m.os.e.xual impulse so strong that it subsists even in the presence of the heteros.e.xual object, and a h.o.m.os.e.xual impulse so weak that it is eclipsed by the presence of the heteros.e.xual object. We could not, however, properly speak of the latter as any more "spurious" or "pseudo" than the former. A heteros.e.xual person who experiences a h.o.m.os.e.xual impulse in the absence of any h.o.m.os.e.xual disposition is not today easy to accept. We can certainly accept the possibility of a mechanical or other non-s.e.xual stimulus leading to a s.e.xual act contrary to the individual's disposition. But usually it is somewhat difficult to prove, and when proved it has little psychological significance or importance. We may expect, therefore, to find "pseudo-h.o.m.os.e.xuality," or spurious h.o.m.os.e.xuality, playing a dwindling part in cla.s.sification.

The simplest of all possible cla.s.sifications, and that which I adopted in the earlier editions of the present Study, merely seeks to distinguish between those who, not being exclusively attracted to the opposite s.e.x, are exclusively attracted to the same s.e.x, and those who are attracted to both s.e.xes. The first are the h.o.m.os.e.xual, whether or not the attraction springs from genuine inversion. The second are the bis.e.xual, or, as they were formerly more often termed, following Krafft-Ebing, psycho-s.e.xual hermaphrodites.[135] There would thus seem to be a broad and simple grouping of all s.e.xually functioning persons into three comprehensive divisions: the heteros.e.xual, the bis.e.xual, and the h.o.m.os.e.xual.

Even this elementary cla.s.sification seems however of no great practical use. The bis.e.xual group is found to introduce uncertainty and doubt. Not only a large proportion of persons who may fairly be considered normally heteros.e.xual have at some time in their lives experienced a feeling which may be termed s.e.xual toward individuals of their own s.e.x, but a very large proportion of persons who are definitely and markedly h.o.m.os.e.xual are found to have experienced s.e.xual attraction toward, and have had relationships with, persons of the opposite s.e.x. The social pressure, urging all persons into the normal s.e.xual channel, suffices to develop such slight germs of heteros.e.xuality as h.o.m.os.e.xual persons may possess, and so to render them bis.e.xual. In the majority of adult bis.e.xual persons it would seem that the h.o.m.os.e.xual tendency is stronger and more organic than the heteros.e.xual tendency. Bis.e.xuality would thus in a large number of cases be comparable to ambidexterity, which Biervliet has found to occur most usually in people who are organically left-handed.[136] While therefore the division into heteros.e.xual, bis.e.xual, and h.o.m.os.e.xual is a useful superficial division, it is scarcely a scientific cla.s.sification.

In the face of these various considerations, and in view of the fact that, while I feel justified in regarding the histories of my cases as reliable so far as they go, I have not been always able to explore them extensively, it has seemed best to me to attempt no cla.s.sification at all.

The order in which the following histories appear is not, therefore, to be regarded as possessing any significance.

It may be proper, at this point, to say a few words as to the reliability of the statements furnished by h.o.m.os.e.xual persons. This has sometimes been called in question. Many years ago we used to be told that inverts are such lying and deceitful degenerates that it was impossible to place reliance on anything they said. It was also usual to say that when they wrote autobiographical accounts of themselves they merely sought to mold them in the fashion of those published by Krafft-Ebing. More recently the psychoa.n.a.lysts have made a more radical attack on all histories not obtained by their own methods as being quite unreliable, even when put forth in good faith, in part because the subject withholds much that he either regards as too trivial or too unpleasant to bring forward, and in part because he cannot draw on that unconscious field within himself wherein, it is held, the most significant facts in his own s.e.xual history are concealed. Thus Sadger ("Ueber den Wert der Autobiographien s.e.xuell Perverser," Fortschritte der Medizin, nos. 26-28, 1913) vigorously puts forward this view and a.s.serts that the autobiographies of inverts are worthless, although his a.s.sertions are somewhat discounted by the fact that they accompany an autobiography, written in the usual manner, to which he attributes much value.

The objection to h.o.m.os.e.xual autobiographic statements dates from a period when the h.o.m.os.e.xual were very little known, and it was supposed that their moral character generally was fairly represented by a small section among them which attracted more attention than the rest by reason of discreditable conduct. But, in reality, as we now know, there are all sorts of people, with all varieties of moral character, to be found among inverts, just as among normal people. Sadger (Archiv fur Kriminal-Anthropologie, 1913, p. 199) complains of the "great insincerity of inverts in not acknowledging their inversion;" but, as Sadger himself admits, we cannot be surprised at this so long as inversion is counted a crime. The most normal persons, under similar conditions, would be similarly insincere. If the h.o.m.os.e.xual differ in any respect, under this aspect, from the heteros.e.xual, it is by exhibiting a more frequent tendency to be slightly neuropathic, nervously sensitive, and femininely emotional. These tendencies, while on the one hand they are liable to induce a very easily detectable vanity, may also lead to an unusual self-subordination to veracity. On the whole, it may be said, in my own experience, that the best histories written by the h.o.m.os.e.xual compare favorably for frankness, intelligence, and power of self-a.n.a.lysis with those written by the heteros.e.xual.

The ancient allegation that inverts have written their own histories on the model, or under the suggestion, of those published in Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia s.e.xualis can scarcely have much force now that the published histories are so extremely varied and numerous that they cannot possibly produce any uniform impression on the most sensitively receptive mind. As a matter of fact, there is no doubt that inverts have frequently been stimulated to set down the narrative of their own experiences through reading those written by others. But the stimulation has, as often as not, lain in the fact that their own experiences have seemed different, not that they have seemed identical. The histories that they read only serve as models in the sense that they indicate the points on which information is desired. I have often been able to verify this influence, which would in any case seem to be fairly obvious.

Psycho-a.n.a.lysis is, in theory, an ideal method of exploring many psychic conditions, such as hysteria and obsessions, which are obscure and largely concealed beneath the psychic surface. In most h.o.m.os.e.xual cases the main facts are, with the patient's good-will and the investigator's tact, not difficult to ascertain. Any difficulties which psychoa.n.a.lysis may help to elucidate mainly concern the early history of the case in childhood, and, regarding these, psychoa.n.a.lysis may sometimes raise questions which it cannot definitely settle. Psycho-a.n.a.lysis reveals an immense ma.s.s of small details, any of which may or may not possess significance, and in determining which are significant the individuality of the psychoa.n.a.lyst cannot fail to come into play. He will necessarily tend to arrange them according to a system. If, for instance, he regards infantile incestuous emotions or early Narcissism as an essential feature of the mechanism of h.o.m.os.e.xuality, a conscientious investigator will not rest until he has discovered traces of them, as he very probably will. (See, e.g., Sadger, "Fragment der Psychoa.n.a.lyse eines h.o.m.os.e.xuellen," Jahrbuch fur s.e.xuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. ix, 1908; and cf. Hirschfeld, Die h.o.m.os.e.xualitat, p. 164). But the exact weight and significance of these traces may still be doubtful, and, even if considerable in one case, may be inconsiderable in another. Freud, who sets forth one type of h.o.m.os.e.xual mechanism, admits that there may be others. Moreover, it must be added that the psychoa.n.a.lytic method by no means excludes unconscious deception by the subject, as Freud found, and so was compelled to admit the patient's tendency to "fantasy," as Adler has to "fictions," as a fundamental psychic tendency of the "unconscious."

The force of these considerations is now beginning to be generally recognized. Thus Moll (art. "h.o.m.os.e.xualitat," in 4th ed. of Eulenburg's Realencyclopadie der gesamten Heilkunde, 1909, p. 611) rightly says that while the invert may occasionally embroider his story, "the expert can usually distinguish between the truth and the poetry, though it is unnecessary to add that complete confidence on the patient's part is necessary," Nacke, again (s.e.xual-Probleme, September, 1911, p. 619), after quoting with approval the remark of one of the chief German authorities, Dr. Numa Praetorius, that "a great number of inverts' histories are at the least as trustworthy as the attempts of psychoa.n.a.lysts, especially when they come from persons skillful in self-a.n.a.lysis," adds that "even Freudian a.n.a.lysis gives no absolute guarantee for truth. A healthy skepticism is justifiable-but not an unhealthy skepticism!" Hirschfeld, also (Die h.o.m.os.e.xualitat, p. 164), whose knowledge of such histories is unrivalled, remarks that while we may now and then meet with a case of pseudo-logia fantastica in connection with psychic debility on the basis of a psychopathic const.i.tution, "taken all in all any generalized a.s.sertion of the falsehood of inverts is an empty fiction, and is merely a sign that the physicians who make it have not been able to win the trust of the men and women who consult them." My own experience has fully convinced me of the truth of this, statement. I am a.s.sured that many of the inverts I have met not only possess a rare power of intellectual self-a.n.a.lysis (stimulated by the constant and inevitable contrast between their own feelings and those of the world around them), but an unsparing sincerity in that self-a.n.a.lysis not so very often attained by normal people.

The histories which follow have been obtained in various ways, and are of varying degrees of value. Some are of persons whom I have known very well for very long periods, and concerning whom I can speak very positively. A few are from complete strangers whose good faith, however, I judge from internal evidence that I am able to accept. Two or three were written by persons who-though educated, in one case a journalist-had never heard of inversion, and imagined that their own h.o.m.os.e.xual feelings were absolutely unique in the world. A fair number were written by persons whom I do not myself know, but who are well known to others in whose judgment I feel confidence. Perhaps the largest number are concerned with individuals who wrote to me spontaneously in the first place, and whom I have at intervals seen or heard from since, in some cases during a very long period, so that I have slowly been able to fill in their histories, although the narratives, as finally completed, may have the air of being written down at a single sitting. I have not admitted any narrative which I do not feel that I am ent.i.tled to regard as a substantially accurate statement of the facts, although allowance must occasionally be made for the emotional coloring of these facts, the invert sometimes cherishing too high an opinion, and sometimes too low an opinion, of his own personality.

HISTORY I.-Both parents healthy; father of unusually fine physique. He is himself a manual worker and also of exceptionally fine physique. He is, however, of nervous temperament. He is mentally bright, though not highly educated, a keen sportsman, and in general a good example of an all-around healthy Englishman.

While very affectionate, his s.e.xual desires are not strongly developed on the physical side, and seem never to have been so. He sometimes m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed about the age of p.u.b.erty, but never afterward. He does not appear to have well-marked erotic dreams. There used to be some attraction toward women, though it was never strong. At the age of 26 he was seduced by a woman and had connection with her once. Afterward he had reason to think she had played him false in various ways. This induced the strongest antipathy, not only to this woman, but to all marriageable women. A year after this episode h.o.m.os.e.xual feeling first became clear and defined. He is now 33, and feels the same antipathy to women; he hates even to speak of marriage.

There has only been one really strong attraction, toward a man of about the same age, but of different social cla.s.s, and somewhat a contrast to him, both physically and mentally. So far as the physical act is concerned this relationship is not definitely s.e.xual, but it is of the most intimate possible kind, and the absence of the physical act is probably largely due to circ.u.mstances. At the same time there is no conscious desire for the act for its own sake, and the existing harmony and satisfaction are described as very complete. There is no repulsion to the physical side, and he regards the whole relationship as quite natural.

HISTORY II.-B. O., English, aged 35, missionary abroad. A brother is more definitely inverted. B. O. has never had any definitely h.o.m.os.e.xual relationships, although he has always been devoted to boys; nor has he had any relationships with women. "As regards women," he says, "I feel I have not the patience to try and understand them; they are petulant and changeable," etc. He objects to being called "abnormal," and thinks that people like himself are "extremely common."

"I have never wanted to kiss boys," he writes, "nor to handle them in any way except to put my arm around them at their studies and at other similar times. Of course, with really little boys, it is different, but boys and girls under 14 seem to me much alike, and I can love either equally well. As to any sort of s.e.xual connection between myself and one of my own s.e.x, I cannot think of it otherwise than with disgust. I can imagine great pleasure in having connection with a woman, but their natures do not attract me. Indeed, my liking for my own s.e.x seems to consist almost entirely in a preference for the masculine character, and the feeling that as an object to look at the male body is really more beautiful than the female. When any strong temptations to s.e.xual pa.s.sion come over me in my waking moments, it is of women I think. On the other hand, I have to confess that after being with some lad I love for an hour or two, I have sometimes felt my s.e.xual organs roused. But only once in my life have I experienced a strong desire to sleep in the same bed with a particular lad, and even then no idea of doing anything entered my mind. Needless to say, I did not sleep with him.

"I never feel tempted by any girls here, although I see so many with their bodies freely exposed, and plenty of them have really pretty faces. Neither do I feel tempted to do anything improper with any of the boys, although I frequently sit talking with one who has very little on. But I find the constant sight of well-shaped bare limbs has a curious effect on the mind and comes before one's imagination as a picture at unlooked-for times. But the most curious thing of all is this: There are several lads here of whom I am very fond. Now when they are near me I think of them with only the purest and most tender feelings, but sometimes at night when I am half asleep, or when I am taking my midday siesta, my imagination pictures one of these lads approaching a girl, or actually lying with her, and the strange thing is that I do not feel any desire myself to approach the girl, but I feel I wish I were in her place and the lad was coming to me. In my calm, waking moments it disgusts and rather horrifies me to find myself apparently so uns.e.xed-yet such is the fact, and the experience, with only slight changes, repeats itself over and over again. It is not that I, as a man, wish even in imagination to act improperly with a boy, but I feel I would like to be in the girl's place, and the strange thing is that in all these dreams and imaginings I can always apparently enter into the feelings of the woman better than into those of the man. Sometimes I fancy for a moment that perhaps reincarnation is true and I was a woman in my last life. Sometimes I fancy that when I was in the womb I was formed as a girl and the s.e.xual organs changed just at the last moment. It is a curious problem. Don't think I worry about it. Only at long intervals do I think of it.... The thing has its bright side. Boys and men seem to have tender feelings toward me, such as one expects them to have for members of the opposite s.e.x, and I get into all the closer contact with them in consequence."

HISTORY III.-F. R., English, aged 50, Belongs on both sides to healthy, normal families, of more than average ability. Father was 35 at birth, and mother 27. He is the second of four children. There was a considerable interval between the births of the children, which were spread over twenty-one years. All are normal, except F. R., two of them married and with families.

Owing to the difference of age between the children, F. R. (who was three years younger than his elder brother, and more than four years older than his sister, the third child) had no male companionship and was constantly alone with his mother. "Being naturally imitative," he remarks, "I think I acquired her tastes and interests and habits of thought. However that may be, I feel sure that my interests and amus.e.m.e.nts were more girlish than boyish. By way of ill.u.s.tration, I may mention that I have often been told by a friend of my mother's that, on one occasion, I was wanting a new hat, and none being found of a size to fit me, I congratulated myself that I should therefore be obliged to have a bonnet! As regards my feminine tastes and instincts, I have always been conscious of taking interest in questions of family relationships, etiquette, dress (women's as much as, or more than, men's) and other things of that kind, which, as a rule, were treated with indifference or contempt. In the house I take more notice than my sister does of the servants' deficiencies and neglects, and am much more orderly in my arrangements than she is."

There is nothing markedly feminine in the general appearance. p.u.b.ertal development took place at an early age, long before fourteen, with nocturnal emissions, but without erotic dreams. The t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es are well developed, the p.e.n.i.s perhaps rather below the average in size, and the prepuce long and narrow. Erection occurs with much facility, especially at night. When young he knew nothing of masturbation, but he began the habit about ten years ago, and has practised it occasionally ever since.