criminal aspects of the matter. Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (born in 1825 near
Aurich), who for many years expounded and defended homosexual love, and
whose views are said to have had some influence in drawing Westphal's
attention to the matter, was a Hanoverian legal official (_Amtsassessor_),
himself sexually inverted. From 1864 onward, at first under the name of
"Numa Numantius" and subsequently under his own name, Ulrichs published,
in various parts of Germany, a long series of works dealing with this
question, and made various attempts to obtain a revision of the legal
position of the sexual invert in Germany.

Although not a writer whose psychological views can carry much scientific
weight, Ulrichs appears to have been a man of most brilliant ability, and
his knowledge is said to have been of almost universal extent; he was not
only well versed in his own special subjects of jurisprudence and
theology, but in many branches of natural science, as well as in
archeology; he was also regarded by many as the best Latinist of his time.
In 1880 he left Germany and settled in Naples, and afterward at Aquila in
the Abruzzi, whence he issued a Latin periodical. He died in 1895.[117]
John Addington Symonds, who went to Aquila in 1891, wrote: "Ulrichs is
_chrysostomos_ to the last degree, sweet, noble, a true gentleman and man
of genius. He must have been at one time a man of singular personal
distinction, so finely cut are his features, and so grand the lines of his
skull."[118]

For many years Ulrichs was alone in his efforts to gain scientific
recognition for congenital homosexuality. He devised (with allusion to
Uranos in Plato's _Symposium_) the word uranian or urning, ever since
frequently used for the homosexual lover, while he called the normal
heterosexual lover a dioning (from Dione). He regarded uranism, or
homosexual love, as a congenital abnormality by which a female soul had
become united with a male body--_anima muliebris in corpore virili
inclusa_--and his theoretical speculations have formed the starting point
for many similar speculations. His writings are remarkable in various
respects, although, on account of the polemical warmth with which, as one
pleading _pro domo_, he argued his cause, they had no marked influence on
scientific thought.[119]

This privilege was reserved for Westphal. After he had shown the way and
thrown open his journal for their publication, new cases appeared in rapid
succession. In Italy, also, Ritti, Tamassia, Lombroso, and others began to
study these phenomena. In 1882 Charcot and Magnan published in the
_Archives de Neurologie_ the first important study which appeared in
France concerning sexual inversion and allied sexual perversions. They
regarded sexual inversion as an episode (_syndrome_) in a more fundamental
process of hereditary degeneration, and compared it with such morbid
obsessions as dipsomania and kleptomania. From a somewhat more
medico-legal standpoint, the study of sexual inversion in France was
furthered by Brouardel, and still more by Lacassagne, whose stimulating
influence at Lyons has produced fruitful results in the work of many
pupils.[120]

Of much more importance in the history of the theory of sexual inversion
was the work of Richard von Krafft-Ebing (born at Mannheim in 1840 and
died at Graz in 1902), for many years professor of psychiatry at Vienna
University and one of the most distinguished alienists of his time. While
active in all departments of psychiatry and author of a famous textbook,
from 1877 onward he took special interest in the pathology of the sexual
impulse. His _Psychopathia Sexualis_ contained over two hundred histories,
not only of sexual inversion but of all other forms of sexual perversion.
For many years it was the only book on the subject and it long remained
the chief storehouse of facts. It passed through many editions and was
translated into many languages (there are two translations in English),
enjoying an immense and not altogether enviable vogue.

Krafft-Ebing's methods were open to some objection. His mind was not of a
severely critical order. He poured out the new and ever-enlarged editions
of his book with extraordinary rapidity, sometimes remodelling them. He
introduced new subdivisions from time to time into his classification of
sexual perversions, and, although this rather fine-spun classification has
doubtless contributed to give precision to the subject and to advance its
scientific study, it was at no time generally accepted. Krafft-Ebing's
great service lay in the clinical enthusiasm with which he approached the
study of sexual perversions. With the firm conviction that he was
conquering a great neglected field of morbid psychology which rightly
belongs to the physician, he accumulated without any false shame a vast
mass of detailed histories, and his reputation induced sexually abnormal
individuals in all directions to send him their autobiographies, in the
desire to benefit their fellow-sufferers.

It is as a clinician, rather than as a psychologist, that we must regard
Krafft-Ebing. At the outset he considered inversion to be a functional
sign of degeneration, a partial manifestation of a neuropathic and
psychopathic state which is in most cases hereditary. This perverse
sexuality appears spontaneously with the developing sexual life, without
external causes, as the individual manifestation of an abnormal
modification of the _vita sexualis_, and must then be regarded as
congenital; or it develops as a result of special injurious influences
working on a sexuality which had at first been normal, and must then be
regarded as acquired. Careful investigation of these so-called acquired
cases, however, Krafft-Ebing in the end finally believed, would indicate
that the predisposition consists in a latent homosexuality, or at least
bisexuality, which requires for its manifestation the operation of
accidental causes. In the last edition of his work Krafft-Ebing was
inclined to regard inversion as being not so much a degeneration as a
variation, a simple anomaly, and acknowledged that his opinion thus
approximated to that which had long been held by inverts themselves.[121]

At the time of his death, Krafft-Ebing, who had begun by accepting the
view, at that time prevalent among alienists, that homosexuality is a sign
of degeneration, thus fully adopted and set the seal of his authority on
the view, already expressed alike by some scientific investigators as well
as by inverts themselves, that sexual inversion is to be regarded simply
as an anomaly, whatever difference of opinion there might be as to the
value of the anomaly. The way was even opened for such a view as that of
Freud and most of the psychoanalysts today who regard a strain of
homosexuality as normal and almost constant, with a profound significance
for the psychonervous life. In 1891 Dr. Albert Moll, of Berlin, published
his work, _Die Kontraere Sexualempfindung_, which subsequently appeared in
much enlarged and revised editions. It speedily superseded all previous
books as a complete statement and judicious discussion of sexual
inversion. Moll was not content merely to present fresh clinical material.
He attacked the problem which had now become of primary importance: the
nature and causes of sexual inversion. He discussed the phenomena as a
psychologist even more than as a physician, bearing in mind the broader
aspects of the problem, keenly critical of accepted opinions, but
judiciously cautious in the statement of conclusions. He cleared away
various ancient prejudices and superstitions which even Krafft-Ebing
sometimes incautiously repeated. He accepted the generally received
doctrine that the sexually inverted usually belong to families in which
various nervous and mental disorders prevail, but he pointed out at the
same time that it is not in all cases possible to prove that we are
concerned with individuals possessing a hereditary neurotic taint. He also
rejected any minute classification of sexual inverts, only recognizing
psycho-sexual hermaphroditism and homosexuality. At the same time he cast
doubt on the existence of acquired homosexuality, in a strict sense,
except in occasional cases, and he pointed out that even when a normal
heterosexual impulse appears at puberty, and a homosexual impulse later,
it may still be the former that was acquired and the latter that was
inborn.

In America attention had been given to the phenomena at a fairly early
period. Mention may be specially made of J.G. Kiernan and G. Frank
Lydston, both of whom put forward convenient classifications of homosexual
manifestations some thirty years ago.[122] More recently (1911) an
American writer, under the pseudonym of Xavier Mayne, privately printed an
extensive work entitled _The Intersexes: A History of Similisexualism as
a Problem in Social Life_, popularly written and compiled from many
sources. This book, from a subjective and scarcely scientific standpoint,
claims that homosexual relationships are natural, necessary, and
legitimate.[123]

In England the first attempts to deal seriously, from the modern point of
view, with the problem of homosexuality came late, and were either
published privately or abroad. In 1883 John Addington Symonds privately
printed his discussion of _paiderastia_ in ancient Greece, under the title
of _A Problem in Greek Ethics_, and in 1889-1890 he further wrote, and in
1891 privately printed, _A Problem of Modern Ethics: Being an Enquiry into
the Phenomena of Sexual Inversion_. In 1886 Sir Richard Burton added to
his translation of the _Arabian Nights_ a Terminal Essay on the same
subject. In 1894 Edward Carpenter privately printed in Manchester a
pamphlet entitled _Homogenic Love_, in which he criticised various
psychiatric views of inversion at that time current, and claimed that the
laws of homosexual love are the same as those of heterosexual love,
urging, however, that the former possesses a special aptitude to be
exalted to a higher and more spiritual level of comradeship, so fulfilling
a beneficent social function. More recently (1907) Edward Carpenter
published a volume of papers on homosexuality and its problems, under the
title of _The Intermediate Sex_, and later (1914) a more special study of
the invert in early religion and in warfare, _Intermediate Types among
Primitive Folk_.

In 1896 the most comprehensive book so far written on the subject in
England was published in French by Mr. Andre Raffalovich (in Lacassagne's
_Bibliotheque de Criminologie_), _Uranisme et Unisexualite_. This book
dealt chiefly with congenital inversion, publishing no new cases, but
revealing a wide knowledge of the matter. Raffalovich put forward many
just and sagacious reflections on the nature and treatment of inversion,
and the attitude of society toward perverted sexuality. The historical
portions of the book, which are of special interest, deal largely with the
remarkable prevalence of inversion in England, neglected by previous
investigators. Raffalovich, whose attitude is, on the whole, philosophical
rather than scientific, regards congenital inversion as a large and
inevitable factor in human life, but, taking the Catholic standpoint, he
condemns all sexuality, either heterosexual or homosexual, and urges the
invert to restrain the physical manifestations of his instinct and to aim
at an ideal of chastity. On the whole, it may be said that the book is the
work of a thinker who has reached his own results in his own way, and
those results bear an imprint of originality and freedom from tradition.

In recent years no one has so largely contributed to place our knowledge
of sexual inversion on a broad and accurate basis as Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld
of Berlin, who possesses an unequalled acquaintance with the phenomena of
homosexuality in all their aspects. He has studied the matter exhaustively
in Germany and to some extent in other countries also; he has received the
histories of a thousand inverts; he is said to have met over ten thousand
homosexual persons. As editor of the _Jahrbuch fuer sexuelle
Zwischenstufen_, which he established in 1899, and author of various
important monographs--more especially on transitional psychic and physical
stages between masculinity and femininity--Hirschfeld had already
contributed greatly to the progress of investigation in this field before
the appearance in 1914 of his great work, _Die Homosexualitaet des Mannes
und des Weibes_. This is not only the largest but the most precise,
detailed, and comprehensive--even the most condensed--work which has yet
appeared on the subject. It is, indeed, an encyclopedia of homosexuality.
For such a task Hirschfeld had been prepared by many years of strenuous
activity as a physician, an investigator, a medico-legal expert before the
courts, and his position as president of the _Wissenschaftlich-humanitaeren
Komitee_ which is concerned with the defense of the interests of the
homosexual in Germany. In Hirschfeld's book the pathological conception
of inversion has entirely disappeared; homosexuality is regarded as
primarily a biological phenomenon of universal extension, and secondarily
as a social phenomenon of serious importance. There is no attempt to
invent new theories; the main value of Hirschfeld's work lies, indeed, in
the constant endeavor to keep close to definite facts. It is this quality
which renders the book an indispensable source for all who seek
enlightened and precise information on this question.

Even the existence of such a treatise as this of Hirschfeld's is enough to
show how rapidly the study of this subject has grown. A few years ago--for
instance, when Dr. Paul Moreau wrote his _Aberrations du Sens
Genesique_--sexual inversion was scarcely even a name. It was a loathsome
and nameless vice, only to be touched with a pair of tongs, rapidly and
with precautions. As it now presents itself, it is a psychological and
medico-legal problem so full of interest that we need not fear to face it,
and so full of grave social actuality that we are bound to face it.


FOOTNOTES:

[113] In England aberration of the sexual instinct, or the tendency of men
to feminine occupations and of women to masculine occupations, had been
referred to in the _Medical Times and Gazette_, February 9, 1867; Sir G.
Savage first described a case of "Sexual Perversion" in the _Journal of
Mental Science_, vol. xxx, October, 1884.

[114] Moritz, _Magazin fuer Erfahrungsseelenkunde_, Berlin, Bd. viii.

[115] A full and interesting account of Hoessli and his book is given by
Karsch in the _Jahrbuch fuer sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, Bd. v, 1903, pp.
449-556.

[116] "Eugen Duehren" (Iwan Bloch) remarks, however (_Neue Forschungen ueber
den Marquis de Sade und seine Zeit_, p. 436), that de Sade in his _Aline
et Valcour_ seems to recognize that inversion is sometimes inborn, or at
least natural, and apt to develop at a very early age, in spite of all
provocations to the normal attitude. "And if this inclination were not
natural," he makes Sarmiento say, "would the impression of it be received
in childhood?... Let us study better this indulgent Nature before daring
to fix her limits." Still earlier, in 1676 (as Schouten has pointed out,
_Sexual-Probleme_, January, 1910, p. 66), an Italian priest called
Carretto recognized that homosexual tendencies are innate.

[117] For some account of Ulrichs see _Jahrbuch fuer sexuelle
Zwischenstufen_, Bd. i, 1899, p. 36.

[118] Horatio Brown, _John Addington Symonds, a Biography_, vol. ii, p.
344.

[119] Ulrichs scarcely went so far as to assert that both homosexual and
heterosexual love are equally normal and healthy; this has, however, been
argued more recently.

[120] Special mention may be made of _L'Inversion Sexuelle_, a copious and
comprehensive, though sometimes uncritical book by Dr. J. Chevalier,
published in 1893, and the _Perversion et Perversite Sexuelles_ of Dr.
Saint-Paul, writing under the pseudonym of "Dr. Laupts," published in 1896
and republished in an enlarged form, under the title of _L'Homosexualite
et les Types Homosexuels_, in 1910.

[121] Krafft-Ebing set forth his latest views in a paper read before the
International Medical Congress, at Paris, in 1900 (_Comptes-rendus_,
"Section de Psychiatrie," pp. 421, 462; also in contributions to the
_Jahrbuch fuer sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, Bd. iii, 1901).

[122] Kiernan, _Detroit Lancet_, 1884, _Alienist and Neurologist_, April,
1891; Lydston, _Philadelphia Medical and Surgical Reporter_, September 7,
1889, and _Addresses and Essays_, 1892.

[123] A summary of the conclusion of this book, of which but few copies
were printed, will be found in Hirschfeld's _Vierteljahrsberichte_,
October, 1911, pp. 78-91.




CHAPTER III.

SEXUAL INVERSION IN MEN.

Relatively Undifferentiated State of the Sexual Impulse in Early Life--The
Freudian View--Homosexuality in Schools--The Question of Acquired
Homosexuality--Latent Inversion--Retarded Inversion--Bisexuality--The
Question of the Invert's Truthfulness--Histories.


When the sexual 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 sexual end, but even the sex 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 institution 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
homosexuality 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 sexual 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 homosexuality as it occurs in
English schools, public or private. (See also the study
"Auto-erotism" in vol. i.) The prevalence of homosexual 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 sexual 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 homosexuality, 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
homosexuality in schools is that it regards all school
homosexualists as being in one class 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_
classes of school homosexualists:--

"(a) A very small number who are probably radically inverted, and
who do not scruple to sacrifice young and innocent boys to their
passions. 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
passive part in their young days, continue practices of an active
or passive kind; but only with boys already known to be
homosexualists; they draw the line at corrupting fresh victims.
This class 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 class
(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 _fellatio_, which was attempted on a quite young
boy, who complained to his house master, and the offender was
expelled). Boys in this class have probably little or no idea of
what sexual morality means, and can hardly be accused of a
_moral_ offense at all.

"I submit that these three classes should receive quite different
treatment. Expulsion may occasionally be necessary for class (a),
but the few who belong to this class 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 classes 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 classes, I should begin by giving boys
very much fuller enlightenment on sexual 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 sexual 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 passage 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 homosexual boys in
schools can properly be described as "vicious." A. Hoche,
describing homosexuality in German schools ("Zuer Frage der
forensischen Beurteilung sexuellen 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-classes. According to one observer, the feminine, or
passive, 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
sexual relationships with the servant-girls in the house.) It is
probable that the homosexual 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
homosexual, but exhibit a more or less brutal or even sadistic
perversion of the immature sexual instinct. This may be
illustrated by the following narrative concerning a large London
city warehouse: "A youth left my class at the age of 161/2," 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 sexual
feeling is normal, on the average, during the first years of
puberty,--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 sexual emotion has not become centered in
the sexual organs. This latter fact is certainly far too often forgotten
by grown-up persons who suspect the idealized passion 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 sexual instinct may be said to be
undifferentiated in early puberty as regards sex 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 sex, such as Castle, Heape, and Marshall, each sex
contains the latent characters of the other or recessive sex. Each sex is
latent in the other, and each, as it contains the characters of both
sexes (and can transmit those of the recessive sex) is latently
hermaphrodite. A homosexual tendency may thus be regarded as simply the
psychical manifestation of special characters of the recessive sex,
susceptible of being evolved under changed circumstances, such as may
occur near puberty, and associated with changed metabolism.[128]

William James (_Principles of Psychology_, vol. ii, p. 439)
considered inversion "a kind of sexual appetite of which very
likely most men possess the germinal possibility." Conolly Norman
(Article "Sexual Perversion," Tuke's _Dictionary of Psychological
Medicine_) also stated that "the sexual passion, 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 sexual feelings when they first
begin to develop. A correspondent believes that sexual feelings
are undifferentiated in the early years about puberty, 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 (_Kontraere Sexualempfindung_, 1889, pp. 6 and 356)
does not think it proved that a stage of undifferentiated sexual
feeling always occurs, although we have to recognize that it is
of frequent occurrence. In his later work (1909, _Das Sexualleben
des Kindes_, English translation, _The Sexual Life of the Child_,
ch. iv), Moll remains of the same opinion that a homosexual
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 homosexual strain; as normal in early life. Thus, in 1905,
in his "Bruchstueck einer Hysterie-Analyse" (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 puberty normally show plain signs of the existence of a
homosexual tendency. Under favorable circumstances this tendency
is overcome, but when a happy heterosexual love is not
established it remains liable to reappear under the influence of
an appropriate stimulus. In the neurotic these homosexual germs
are more highly developed. "I have never carried through any
psychoanalysis of a man or a woman," Freud states, "without
discovering a very significant homosexual tendency." Ferenczi,
again (_Jahrbuch fuer Psychoanalytische 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 sexes," and terms
this disposition _ambisexuality_. The normality of a homosexual
element in early life may be said to be accepted by most
psychoanalysts, even of the schools that are separated from
Freud. Stekel would go farther, and regards various psychic
sexual anomalies as signs of a concealed bisexual 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 homosexuality (Stekel, _Zentralblatt fuer
Psychoanalyse_, vol. ii, April, 1912).

These schoolboy affections and passions arise, to a large extent,
spontaneously, with the evolution of the sexual emotions, though the
method of manifestation may be a matter of example or suggestion. As the
sexual 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 puberty, if not
earlier. But a certain proportion remain insensitive to the influence of
women, and these may be regarded as true sexual inverts. Some of them are
probably individuals of somewhat undeveloped sexual instincts. The members
of this group are of some interest psychologically, although from the
comparative quiescence of their sexual 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 sex.
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 substitute 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 sexual 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 sex 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 sexes. 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 sexual 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 passed 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 passion in the direction
of the opposite sex."

The classification of the varieties of homosexuality is a matter of
difficulty, and no classification is very fundamental. The early attempts
of Krafft-Ebing and others at elaborate classification 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 homosexuality has ceased to possess significance.
When we have recognized that there is a tendency for homosexuality 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
sexuality is impossible, there is little further classification to be
achieved along this line.[129] We have gone as far as is necessary by
admitting a general undefined homosexuality,--a relationship of
unspecified nature to persons of the same sex,--in addition to the more
specific sexual inversion.[130]

It may now be said to be recognized by all authorities, even by Freud who
emphasizes a special psychological mechanism by which homosexuality may
become established, that a congenital predisposition as well as an
acquired tendency is necessary to constitute true inversion, apparent
exceptions being too few to carry much weight. Krafft-Ebing, Naecke, 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
constituting a difficulty in accepting the doctrine of the congenital
nature of inversion; in such cases the inversion is merely retarded. The
conception of retarded 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 Moeurs_, in order to
supersede the unsatisfactory conception, as he considered it to be, of
acquired inversion. Thoinot regarded retarded 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 bisexual disposition and usually, also, marked by sexual hyperesthesia.
This way of looking at the matter was speedily championed by Naecke and may
now be said to be widely accepted.[132]

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

Moll believes it is very doubtful whether heterosexual satiety
alone can ever suffice to produce homosexuality. Naecke was
careful to set aside the cases, to which much significance was
once attached, in which old men with failing sexual powers, or
younger men exhausted by heterosexual debauchery, are attracted
to boys. In such cases, which include the majority of those
appearing late, Naecke regarded the inversion as merely spurious,
the _faute de mieux_ of persons no longer apt for normal sexual
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 sexual 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 sexual 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 sexual
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 sexuality arose. Five months later a complete paraplegic
impotence set in; and then both the homosexual tendency and the
aversion to women disappeared. (Fere, _L'Instinct Sexuel_, p.
184.) In such a case, under the influence of disease, excessive
stimulation seems to result in more or less complete sexual
anesthesia, just as temporarily we may be more or less blinded by
excess of light; and functional power reasserts itself under the
influence of a different and normally much weaker stimulus.

Leppmann, who has studied the homosexual manifestations of
previously normal old men toward boys ("Greisenalter und
Kriminalitaet," _Zeitschrift fuer Psychotherapie_, Bd. i, Heft 4,
1909), considers the chief factor to be a flaring up of the
sexual 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 sexual life and to the perhaps
unconsciously homosexual attractions of that age.

With the recognition that homosexuality in youth may be due to an as yet
undifferentiated sexual impulse, homosexuality in mature age to a retarded
development on a congenital basis, and homosexuality in sold age to a
return to the attitude of youth, the area of spurious or "pseudo"
homosexuality seems to me to be very much restricted. Most, perhaps all,
authorities still accept the reality of this spurious homosexuality in
heterosexual 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 homosexuality and seeking to
distinguish genuine from spurious inverts,[134] enumerates three classes
of the latter: (1) those who practise homosexuality for purposes of gain,
more especially male prostitutes and blackmailers; (2) persons who, from
motives of pity, good nature, friendship, etc., allow themselves to be the
objects of homosexual desire; (3) normal persons who, when excluded from
the society of the opposite sex, as in schools, barracks, on board ship,
or in prison, have sexual relations with persons of their own sex. Now
Hirschfeld clearly realizes that the mere sexual act is no proof of the
direction of the sexual 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 class are true inverts. He further mentions that some 75 per cent.
of the individuals included in these classes 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 sexual impulse is not yet definitely differentiated; so
that neither its homosexual nor its heterosexual tendencies can properly
be regarded as spurious.

If, indeed, we really accept the very reasonable view, that the basis of
the sexual life is bisexual, although its direction may be definitely
fixed in a heterosexual or homosexual direction at a very early period in
life, it becomes difficult to see how we can any longer speak with