The tendency to dramatic aptitude—found among a large proportion of my subjects who have never been professional actors—has attracted the attention of previous investigators in this field.[221] Thus, Moll refers to the frequency of artistic, and especially dramatic, talent among inverts, and remarks that the cause is doubtful. After pointing out that the lie which they have to be perpetually living renders inverts always actors, he goes on to say:—
Apart from this, it seems to me that the capacity and the inclination to conceive situations and to represent them in a masterly manner corresponds to an abnormal predisposition of the nervous system, just as does sexual inversion; so that both phenomena are due to the same source.
I am in agreement with this statement; the congenitally inverted may, I believe, be looked upon as a class of individuals exhibiting nervous characters which, to some extent, approximate them to persons of artistic genius. The dramatic and artistic aptitudes of inverts are, therefore, partly due to the circumstances of the invert's life, which render him necessarily an actor,—and in some few cases lead him into a love of deception comparable with that of a hysterical woman,—and partly, it is probable, to a congenital nervous predisposition allied to the predisposition to dramatic aptitude.
One of my correspondents has long been interested in the frequency of inversion among actors and actresses. He knew an inverted actor who told him he adopted the profession because it would enable him to indulge his proclivity; but, on the whole, he regards this tendency as due to "hitherto unconsidered imaginative flexibilities and curiosities in the individual. The actor, ex hypothesi, is one who works himself by sympathy (intellectual and emotional) into states of psychological being that are not his own. He learns to comprehend—nay, to live himself into—relations which were originally alien to his nature. The capacity for doing this—what makes a born actor—implies a faculty for extending his artistically acquired experience into life. In the process of his trade, therefore, he becomes at all points sensitive to human emotions, and, sexuality being the most intellectually undetermined of the appetites after hunger, the actor might discover in himself a sort of sexual indifference, out of which a sexual aberration could easily arise. A man devoid of this imaginative flexibility could not be a successful actor. The man who possesses it would be exposed to divagations of the sexual instinct under esthetical or merely wanton influences. Something of the same kind is applicable to musicians and artists, in whom sexual inversion prevails beyond the average. They are conditioned by their esthetical faculty, and encouraged by the circumstances of their life to feel and express the whole gamut of emotional experience. Thus they get an environment which (unless they are sharply otherwise differentiated) leads easily to experiments in passion. All this joins on to what you call the 'variational diathesis' of men of genius. But I should seek the explanation of the phenomenon less in the original sexual constitution than in the exercise of sympathetic, assimilative emotional qualities, powerfully stimulated and acted on by the conditions of the individual's life. The artist, the singer, the actor, the painter, are more exposed to the influences out of which sexual differentiation in an abnormal direction may arise. Some persons are certainly made abnormal by nature, others, of this sympathetic artistic temperament, may become so through their sympathies plus their conditions of life." It is possible there may be some element of truth in this view, which my correspondent regarded as purely hypothetical.
In this connection I may, perhaps, mention a moral quality which is very often associated with dramatic aptitude, and also with minor degrees of nervous degeneration, and that is vanity and the love of applause. While among a considerable section of inverts it is not more marked than among the non-inverted, if not, indeed, less marked, among another section it is found in an exaggerated degree. In at least one of my cases vanity and delight in admiration, both as regards personal qualities and artistic productions, reach an almost morbid extent. And the quotations from letters written by various others of my subjects show a curious complacency in the description of their personal physical characters, markedly absent in other cases. It is suggested by Alexander Schmid, on the basis of Adler's views, that this vanity, which sometimes in the inverted artist becomes an exalted pride, as of a guardian of sacred mysteries, may be regarded as an effort to secure a compensation for the consciousness of feminine defect.[222]
The extreme type of this preoccupation with personal beauty is represented by the history of himself sent by a young Italian of good family to Zola in the hope—itself a sign of vanity—that the distinguished novelist would make it the subject of one of his works. The history is reproduced in the Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle (1894) and in L'Homosexualité et les Types Homosexuels (1910) by "Dr. Laupts" (G. Saint-Paul). I quote the following passage: "At the age of 18 I was, with few differences, what I am now (at 23). I am rather below the medium height (1.65 metres), well proportioned, slender, but not lean. My torso is superb; a sculptor could find nothing against it, and would not find it very different from that of Antinotis. My back is very arched, perhaps too much so; and my hips are very developed; my pelvis is broad, like a woman's; my knees slightly approximate; my feet are small; my hands superb; the fingers curved back and with glistening nails, rosy and polished, cut squarely like those of ancient statues. My neck is long and round, the nape charmingly adorned with downy hairs. My head is charming, and at 18 was more so. The oval of it is perfect and strikes all by its infantine form. At 23 I am to be taken for 17 at most. My complexion is white and rosy, deepening at the faintest emotion. The forehead is not beautiful; it recedes slightly and is hollow at the temples, but, fortunately, it is half-covered by long hair, of a dark blonde, which curls naturally. The head is perfect in form, because of the curly hair, but on examination there is an enormous protuberance at the occiput. My eyes are oval, of a gray blue, with dark chestnut eyelashes and thick, arched eyebrows. My eyes are very liquid, but with dark circles, and bistered; and they are subject to slight temporary inflammation. My mouth is fairly large, with thick red lips, the lower pendent; they tell me I have the Austrian mouth. My teeth are dazzling, though three are decayed and stopped; fortunately, they cannot be seen. My ears are small and with very colored lobes. My chin is very fat, and at 18 it was smooth and velvety as a woman's; at present there is a slight beard, always shaved. Two beauty spots, black and velvety, on my left cheek, contrast with my blue eyes. My nose is thin and straight, with delicate nostrils and a slight, almost insensible curve. My voice is gentle, and people always regret that I have not learned to sing." This description is noteworthy as a detailed portrait of a sexual invert of a certain type; the whole history is interesting and instructive.
Certain peculiarities in taste as regards costume have rightly or wrongly been attributed to inverts,—apart from the tendency of a certain group to adopt feminine habits,—and may here be mentioned. Tardieu many years ago referred to the taste for keeping the neck uncovered. This peculiarity may occasionally be observed among inverts, especially the more artistic among them. The cause does not appear to be precisely vanity so much as that physical consciousness which is so curiously marked in inverts, and induces the more feminine among them to cultivate feminine grace of form, and the more masculine to emphasize the masculine athletic habit.
It has also been remarked that inverts exhibit a preference for green garments. In Rome cinædi were for this reason called galbanati. Chevalier remarks that some years ago a band of pederasts at Paris wore green cravats as a badge. This decided preference for green is well marked in several of my cases of both sexes, and in some at least the preference certainly arose spontaneously. Green (as Jastrow and others have shown) is very rarely the favorite color of adults of the Anglo-Saxon race, though some inquirers have found it to be more commonly a preferred color among children, especially girls, and it is more often preferred by women than by men.[223] The favorite color among normal women, and indeed very often among normal men, though here not so often as blue, is red, and it is notable that of recent years there has been a fashion for a red tie to be adopted by inverts as their badge. This is especially marked among the "fairies" (as a fellator is there termed) in New York. "It is red," writes an American correspondent, himself inverted, "that has become almost a synonym for sexual inversion, not only in the minds of inverts themselves, but in the popular mind. To wear a red necktie on the street is to invite remarks from newsboys and others—remarks that have the practices of inverts for their theme. A friend told me once that when a group of street-boys caught sight of the red necktie he was wearing they sucked their fingers in imitation of fellatio. Male prostitutes who walk the streets of Philadelphia and New York almost invariably wear red neckties. It is the badge of all their tribe. The rooms of many of my inverted friends have red as the prevailing color in decorations. Among my classmates, at the medical school, few ever had the courage to wear a red tie; those who did never repeated the experiment."
MORAL ATTITUDE OF THE INVERT.—There is some interest in tracing the invert's own attitude toward his anomaly, and his estimate of its morality. As my cases are not patients seeking to be cured of their perversion, this attitude cannot be taken for granted. I have noted the moral attitude in 57 cases. In 8 the subjects loathe themselves, and have fought in vain against their perversion, which they often regard as a sin. Nine or ten are doubtful, and have little to say in justification of their condition, which they regard as perhaps morbid, a "moral disease." One, while thinking it right to gratify his natural instincts, admits that they may be vices. The remainder, a large majority (including all the women) are, on the other hand, emphatic in their assertion that their moral position is precisely the same as that of the normally constituted individual, on the lowest ground a matter of taste, and at least two state that a homosexual relationship should be regarded as sacramental, a holy matrimony; two or three even regard inverted love as nobler than ordinary sexual love; several add the proviso that there should be consent and understanding on both sides, and no attempt at seduction. The chief regret of 2 or 3 is the double life they are obliged to lead.
When inverts have clearly faced and realized their own nature it is not so much, it seems, their conscience that worries them, or even the fear of the police, as the attitude of the world. An American correspondent writes: "It is the fear of public opinion that hangs above them like the sword of Damocles. This fear is the heritage of all of us. It is not the fear of conscience and is not engendered by a feeling of wrongdoing. Rather, it is a silent submission to prejudices that meet us on every side. The true normal attitude of the sexual invert (and I have known hundreds) with regard to his particular passion is not essentially different from that of the normal man with regard to his."
It is noteworthy that even when the condition is regarded as morbid, and even when a life of chastity has, on this account, been deliberately chosen, it is very rare to find an invert expressing any wish to change his sexual ideals. The male invert cannot find, and has no desire to find, any sexual charm in a woman, for he finds all possible charms united in a man. And a woman invert writes: "I cannot conceive a sadder fate than to be a woman—an average woman reduced to the necessity of loving a man!"
It will be seen that my conclusions under this head are in striking contrast to those of Westphal, who believed that every invert regarded himself as morbid, and probably show a much higher proportion of self-approving inverts than any previous series.[224] This is largely due to the fact that the cases were not obtained from the consulting-room, and that they represent in some degree the intellectual aristocracy of inversion, including individuals who, often not without severe struggles, have found consolation in the example of the Greeks, or elsewhere, and have succeeded in attaining a modus vivendi with the moral world, as they have come to conceive it.
[183] The following analysis is based on somewhat fuller versions of my Histories than it was necessary to publish in the preceding chapters, as well as on various other Histories which are not here published at all. Numerous apparent discrepancies may thus be explained.
[184] This frequency of nervous symptoms is in accordance with the most reliable observation everywhere. Thus, Hirschfeld (Die Homosexualität, p. 177) states that of 500 inverts, 62 per cent. showed nervous symptoms of one kind or another: sleeplessness, sleepiness, tremors, stammering, etc.
[185] Hirschfeld finds that 54 per cent, of inverts become conscious of their anomaly under the age of 14. The anomaly may, however, be present at this early age, but not consciously until later. Hence the larger percentage recorded above.
[186] In this connection I may quote an observation by Raffalovich: "It is natural that the invert should very clearly recall the precocity of his inclinations. In the existence of every invert a moment arrives when he discovers the enigma of his homosexual tastes. He then classes all his recollections, and to justify himself in his own eyes he remembers that he has been what he is from his earliest childhood. Homosexuality has colored all his young life; he has thought over it, dreamed over it, reflected over it—very often in perfect innocence. When he was quite small he imagined that he had been carried off by brigands, by savages; at 5 or 6 he dreamed of the warmth of their chests and of their naked arms. He dreamed that he was their slave and he loved his slavery and his masters. He has had not the least thought that is crudely sexual, but he has discovered his sentimental vocation."
[187] Leppmann mentions a case (certainly extreme and abnormal) of a little girl of 8 who spent the night hidden on the roof, merely in order to be able to observe in the morning the sexual organs of an adult male cousin (Bulletin de l'Union Internationale de Droit Pénal, 1896, p. 118).
[188] I fully admit, as all investigators must, the difficulty of tracing the influence of early suggestions, especially in dealing with persons who are unaccustomed to self-analysis. Sometimes it happens, especially in regard to erotic fetichism, that, while direct questioning fails to reach any early formative suggestion, such influence is casually elicited on a subsequent occasion.
[189] I may add that I see no fundamental irreconcilability between the point of view here adopted and the facts brought forward (and wrongly interpreted) by Schrenck-Notzing. In his Beiträge zur Ætiologie der Conträrer Sexualempfindung (Vienna, 1895), this writer states: "The neuropathic disposition is congenital, as is the tendency to precocious appearance of the appetites, the lack of psychic resistance, and the tendency to imperative associations; but that heredity can extend to the object of the appetite, and influence the contents of these characters, is not shown. Psychological experiences are against it, and the possibility, which I have shown, of changing these impulses by experiment and so removing their danger to the character of the individual." It need not be asserted that "heredity extends to the object of the appetite," but simply that heredity culminates in an organism which is sexually best satisfied by that object. It is also a mistake to suppose that congenital characters cannot be, in some cases, largely modified by such patient and laborious processes as those carried on by Schrenck-Notzing. In the same pamphlet this writer refers to moral insanity and idiocy as supporting his point of view. It is curious that both these congenital manifestations had independently occurred to me as arguments against his position. The experiences of Elmira Reformatory and Bicêtre—not to mention institutions of more recent establishment—long since showed that both the morally insane and the idiotic can be greatly improved by appropriate treatment. Schrenck-Notzing seems to be unduly biased by his interest in hypnotism and suggestion.
[190] "If an invert acquires, under the influence of external conditions," Féré wrote with truth (L'Instinct Sexuel, p. 238), "it is because he was born with an aptitude for such acquisition: an aptitude lacking in those who have been subjected to the same conditions without making the same acquisitions."
[191] One of my subjects writes: "Inverts are, I think, naturally more liable to indulge in self-gratification than normal people, partly because of the perpetual suppression and disappointment of their desires, and also because of the fact that they actually possess in themselves the desired form of the male. This idea is a little difficult of explanation, but you can readily imagine to what frenzies of self-abuse a normal man would be impelled supposing that he included in his own the form of the female."
[192] I do not here enter upon the consideration of the normal prevalence and significance of masturbation and allied phenomena, as I have dealt with this subject in the study of "Auto-erotism," in volume i of these Studies.
[193] Hirschfeld also finds, among German inverts (Die Homosexualität, ch. iii), that the majority (though a smaller majority than I find in England and the United States) have not had intercourse with women; 53 per cent., he states, including a few married men, have never even attempted coitus, and over 50 per cent, are presumably impotent. The number of inverted women who have never had intercourse with men is still larger.
[194] Otto Rank, Imago, Heft 3, 1913.
[195] Erotic dreams have been discussed in "Auto-erotism," vol. i of these Studies, and the wider bearings of the subject in another work, The Study of Dreams. Many references to the extensive literature will be found in both these places.
[196] E.g., Archiv für Psychiatrie, 1899; Archiv für Kriminal-Anthropologie, 1900.
[197] Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualität, p. 71 et seq. Hirschfeld considers that the dreams of the inverted fall into two groups: one in which the dreamer imagines he is embracing a person of the same sex, and another in which he imagines that he is himself of the opposite sex. The latter class of dreams, constituting a pseudo-heterosexual group, seems to me to be rare, and they may, moreover, occur in heterosexual persons.
[198] See Thoinot and Weysse, Medico-legal Aspects of Moral Offenses, pp. 165, 291, etc.
[199] Pedicatio (or pædicatio) is the most generally accepted technical term for the sodomitical intromission of the penis into the anus. It is usually derived from the Greek pais (boy), but some authorities have derived it from pedex or podex (anus). The terms "paiderastia" and "pederast" are sometimes used to indicate the same act and agent. This use, however, is undesirable. It is best to confine the word "paiderastia" to its proper use as the name of the special institution of Greek boy love. It may be added that the Greeks themselves had many names (as many as 74) for paiderastia. See, on this subject of nomenclature, Iwan Bloch, Der Ursprung der Syphilis, vol. ii, pp. 527, 563.
[200] It is the grosser forms of perversion which are first revealed in every field. In the first edition of this Study the predominance of pedicatio was still greater; it is not practised by any of the subjects of the Histories added to the present edition, though several see no objection to it.
[201] Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. viii, 1906, p. 712.
[202] Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualität, p. 276 et seq.
[203] "Men," remarks Q., "tend to fall in love with boys or youths, boys or youths with grown men, feminine natures with virile natures and vice versâ, and different races with each other."
[204] Stubbes, in his Anatomy of Abuses, affirmed that "players and play-haunters in their secret conclaves play the Sodomites," and refers to some recent examples of men who had been desperately enamoured of player-boys thus clad in women's apparel, so far as to solicit them by words, by letters, even actually to abuse them. Later on, in 1633, Prynne, in his Histrio-Mastix (part 1, p. 208 et seq.), strongly condemned "this putting on of woman's array" by actors on the same ground, and adds that he has heard credibly reported of a scholar of Balliol College that he was violently enamoured of a boy-player. In Japan, again where, as in China, woman's parts on the stage are taken by men (not always youths), the homosexuality of these players became, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so notorious that they constituted a class requiring special regulation as Joro, or prostitutes.
[205] This was remarked by even the earliest modern writers on homosexuality, like Hössli. See Hirschfeld, "Vom Wesen der Liebe," Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. viii, 1906, p. 124 et seq.
[206] Similarly Numa Praetorius asserts (Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. viii, p. 732) that even the most virile homosexual men exhibit feminine traits, and adds that we could scarcely expect it to be otherwise when we find how constantly homosexual women show masculine traits.
[207] Näcke, "Die Diagnose der Homosexualität," Neurologisches Centralblatt, April 16, 1908.
[208] So also among American boarding-school girls. Thus Margaret Otis (Journal of Abnormal Psychology, June, 1913) has described the attraction which negro girls exert on white girls at school. The correspondence of these lovers, and sometimes their method of sex gratification, may occasionally be of an even coarsely passionate nature.
[209] See "Sexual Selection in Man," vol. iv of these Studies.
[210] Hirschfeld (Die Homosexualität, p. 283) found that 55 per cent. of inverts are attracted to qualities unlike their own, and 45 per cent. to qualities resembling their own, without regard to whether these qualities belonged to the secondary sexual sphere. It may be added that as regards the age of the persons they are attracted to, Hirschfeld (p. 281) admits two main groups, each including about 45 per cent. of the homosexual; ephebophils, attracted to youths between 14 and 21, and androphils, attracted to adults in the prime of life. This division, as may be seen from the histories included in the present volume, seems to hold good of British and American inverts.
[211] Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualität, ch. v.
[212] Krafft-Ebing tells of an inverted physician (a man of masculine development and tastes) who had had sexual relations with 600 more or less inverted men. He observed no tendency to sexual malformation among them, but very frequently an approximation to a feminine form of body, as well as insufficient hair, delicate complexion, and high voice. Well-developed breasts were not rare, and some 10 per cent, showed a taste for feminine occupations.
[213] A similar condition of gynecomasty has been observed in connection with inversion by Moll, Laurent, Wey, etc. Olano ("La Secrecion Mamaria en los Invertidos Sexuales," Archivos de Criminologia, May, 1902, p. 305) further observed a certain amount of mammary secretion in an inverted man, 20 years of age, in Lima.
[214] Hirschfeld finds. 7 per cent, inverts left-handed, and 6 per cent, partly so. Fliess attaches special importance to left-handedness in inversion, believing that in left-handed men feminine secondary sexual characters are marked, and in left-handed women masculine sexual character (Der Ablauf des Lebens, 1906). I am not prepared to deny this statement, but, more evidence is needed.
[215] This point has been discussed by Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualität, pp. 156-8.
[216] Bloch (The Sexual Life of Our Time, p. 500) attaches importance to this peculiarity, but it must be remembered that a high-pitched voice occurs frequently in undoubtedly heterosexual men in whom it seems often associated with high intellectual ability (Havelock Ellis, A Study of British Genius, p. 200).
[217] See, e.g., Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualität, p. 151.
[218] On the general signs of these conditions, see, e.g., H. Meige, "L'Infantilisme, Le Féminisme et les Hermaphrodites Antiques," L'Anthropologie. 1895; also Hastings Gilford, "Infantilism," Lancet, February 28 and March 7, 1914.
[219] Merzbach has dealt with the tendency of inverts to adopt special professions: "Homosexualität und Beruf," Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. iv, 1902.
[220] Moll's experience in Germany also reveals the prevalence of inversion among literary men, though, of all occupations, he found the highest proportion among actors. Jäger has referred to the frequency of homosexuality among barbers. I have been told that among London hairdressers homosexuality is so prevalent that there is even a special attitude which the client may adopt in the chair to make known that he is an invert. Dr. Kiernan informs me that in Chicago, also, inversion is specially prevalent among barbers, and he adds that he is acquainted with two cases among women-barbers, a relatively large proportion. It is not difficult to understand this, bearing in mind the close physical association between the barber and his client. "W. G. was a barber's assistant," writes one of my subjects, "and I took an immense fancy to him at first-sight. He used to lather me, and the touch of his fingers was a delight. Later on he shaved me and I always looked forward to going to the barber's. If he were not able to attend to me I felt an incredible sinking of heart. The whole day seemed dull and useless. I used to make a mark in my pocket-diary every time he shaved me."
[221] See, e.g., "Vom Weibmann auf der Bühne," Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. iii, 1901, p. 313. It is curious to find a medico-legal record of this connection long before inversion was recognized. In June, 1833 (see Annual Register under this date), a man died who had lived as a kept woman under the name of Eliza Edwards. He was very effeminate in appearance, with beautiful hair, in ringlets two feet long, and a cracked voice; he played female parts in the theater, "in the first line of tragedy," and "appeared as a most lady-like woman." The coroner's jury "strongly recommended to the proper authorities that some means may be adopted in the disposal of the body which will mark the ignominy of the crime."
[222] A. Schmid, "Zur Homosexualität," Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, vol. i, 1913, p. 237.
[223] See for a summary of various statistics in several countries, Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, 5th ed., 1914, p. 174; also ib., "The Psychology of Red," Popular Science Monthly, August and September, 1900.
[224] The proportion is not so large, however, as Hirschfeld (Die Homosexualität, p. 314) now finds in Germany, where inverts are better informed on the subject of this anomaly, for here 95 per cent. regard their feelings as natural.
CHAPTER VI.—THE THEORY OF SEXUAL INVERSION.
What is Sexual Inversion?—Causes of Diverging Views—The Theory of Suggestion Unworkable—Importance of the Congenital Element in Inversion—The Freudian Theory—Embryonic Hermaphroditism as a Key to Inversion—Inversion as a Variation or "Sport"—Comparison with Color-blindness, Color-hearing, and Similar Abnormalities—What is an Abnormality?—Not Necessarily a Disease—Relation of Inversion to Degeneration—Exciting Causes of Inversion—Not Operative in the Absence of Predisposition.
The analysis of these cases leads directly up to a question of the first importance: What is sexual inversion? Is it, as many would have us believe, an abominably acquired vice, to be stamped out by the prison? or is it, as a few assert, a beneficial variety of human emotion which should be tolerated or even fostered? Is it a diseased condition which qualifies its subject for the lunatic asylum? or is it a natural monstrosity, a human "sport," the manifestations of which must be regulated when they become antisocial? There is probably an element of truth in more than one of these views. Very widely divergent views of sexual inversion are largely justified by the position and attitude of the investigator. It is natural that the police-official should find that his cases are largely mere examples of disgusting vice and crime. It is natural that the asylum superintendent should find that we are chiefly dealing with a form of insanity. It is equally natural that the sexual invert himself should find that he and his inverted friends are not so very unlike ordinary persons. We have to recognize the influence of professional and personal bias and the influence of environment.
There have been two main streams of tendency in the views regarding sexual inversion: one seeking to enlarge the sphere of the acquired (represented by Binet,—who, however, recognized predisposition,—Schrenck-Notzing, and recently the Freudians), the other seeking to enlarge the sphere of the congenital (represented by Krafft-Ebing, Moll, Féré, and today by the majority of authorities). There is, as usually happens, truth in both these views. But, inasmuch as those who represent the acquired view often deny any congenital element, we are called upon to discuss the question. The view that sexual inversion is entirely explained by the influence of early association, or of "suggestion," is an attractive one and at first sight it seems to be supported by what we know of erotic fetichism, by which a woman's hair, or foot, or even clothing, becomes the focus of a man's sexual aspirations. But it must be remembered that what we see in erotic fetichism is merely the exaggeration of a normal impulse; every lover is to some extent excited by his mistress's hair, or foot, or clothing. Even here, therefore, there is really what may fairly be regarded as a congenital element; and, moreover, there is reason to believe that the erotic fetichist usually displays the further congenital element of hereditary neurosis. Therefore, the analogy with erotic fetichism does not bring much help to those who argue that inversion is purely acquired. It must also be pointed out that the argument for acquired or suggested inversion logically involves the assertion that normal sexuality is also acquired or suggested. If a man becomes attracted to his own sex simply because the fact or the image of such attraction is brought before him, then we are bound to believe that a man becomes attracted to the opposite sex only because the fact or the image of such attraction is brought before him. Such a theory is unworkable. In nearly every country of the world men associate with men, and women with women; if association and suggestion were the only influential causes, then inversion, instead of being the exception, ought to be the rule throughout the human species, if not, indeed, throughout the whole zoölogical series. We should, moreover, have to admit that the most fundamental human instinct is so constituted as to be equally well adapted for sterility as for that propagation of the race which, as a matter of fact, we find dominant throughout the whole of life. We must, therefore, put aside entirely the notion that the direction of the sexual impulse is merely a suggested phenomenon; such a notion is entirely opposed to observation and experience, and will with difficulty fit into a rational biological scheme.
The Freudians—alike of the orthodox and the heterodox schools—have sometimes contributed, unintentionally or not, to revive the now antiquated conception of homosexuality as an acquired phenomenon, and that by insisting that its mechanism is a purely psychic though unconscious process which may be readjusted to the normal order by psychoanalytic methods. Freud first put forth a comprehensive statement of his view of homosexuality in the original and pregnant little book, Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie (1905), and has elsewhere frequently touched on the subject, as have many other psychoanalysts, including Alfred Adler and Stekel, who no longer belong to the orthodox Freudian school. When inverts are psycho-analytically studied, Freud believes, it is found that in early childhood they go through a phase of intense but brief fixation on a woman, usually the mother, or perhaps sister. Then, an internal censure inhibiting this incestuous impulse, they overcome it by identifying themselves with women and taking refuge in Narcissism, the self becoming the sexual object. Finally they look for youthful males resembling themselves, whom they love as their mothers loved them. Their pursuit of men is thus determined by their flight from women. This view has been set forth not only by Freud but by Sadger, Stekel, and many others.[225] Freud himself, however, is careful to state that this process only represents one type of stunted sexual activity, and that the problem of inversion is complex and diversified.
This view may be said to assume a bisexual constitution as normal, and homosexuality arises by the suppression, owing to some accident, of the heterosexual component, and the path through an autoerotic process of Narcissism to homosexuality. On this general Freudian conception of homosexuality numerous variations have been based, and separate features specially emphasized, by individual psychoanalysts. Thus Sadger considers that, beneath the male individual loved by the invert, a female is concealed, and that this fact may be revealed by psychoanalysis which removes the upper layer of the psychic palimpsest; he believes that this disposition of the invert is favored by a frequent mixture of male and female traits in his near relatives; originally, "it is not man whom the homosexual man loves and desires but man and woman together in one form"; the heterosexual element is later suppressed, and then pure inversion is left. Further, developing Freud's view of the importance of anal eroticism (Freud, Sammlung Kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, vol. ii), Sadger thinks that it is even the rule for a passive invert to have experienced anal eroticism in childhood and been frequently subjected to enemas, which have led to the desire for the anal intromission of the penis. (Medizinische Klinik, 1909, No. 2.) Jekels pushes this doctrine further and declares that all inverts are really passive; the invert is, in his love, he states, both subject and object; he identifies himself with his mother and sees in the object of his love his own youthful person. And what, Jekels asks, is the aim of this mental arrangement? It can scarcely by other, he replies, than in the part of the mother to stimulate the anal region of the object which has now become himself, and to procure the same pleasure which in childhood he experienced when his mother satisfied his anal eroticism. Jekels regards this view as the continuation and concretization of Freud's interpretation; and the main point in homosexuality, even when apparently passive, becomes the craving for anal-erotic satisfaction (L. Jekels, "Einige Bemerkungen zur Trieblehre," Internationale Zeitschrift für Aerztliche Psychoanalyse, Sept., 1913). Most psychoanalysts are cautious in denying a constitutional or congenital basis to inversion, though they leave it in the background. Ferenczi, in an interesting attempt to classify the homosexual (Internationale Zeitschrift für Aerztliche Psychoanalyse, March, 1914), remarks: "Psychoanalytic investigation shows that under the name of homosexuality the most various psychic states are thrown together, on the one hand true constitutional anomalies (inversion, or subject homoeroticism), on the other hand psychoneurotic obsessional conditions (object homoeroticism, or obsessional homoeroticism). The individual of the first kind essentially feels himself a woman who wishes to be loved by a man, while the other represents a neurotic flight from women rather than sympathy to men." The constitutional basis is very definitely accepted by Rudolf Ortvay who points out (Internationale Zeitschrift für Aerztliche Psychoanalyse, Jan., 1914) that the biological doctrine of recessives and dominants in heredity helps to make clear the emergence or suppression of homosexuality on a bisexual disposition. "Infantile events," he adds, "which, according to Freud, decide the sexual relations of adults, can only exert their operation on the foundation of an organic predisposition, infantile impressions being determined by hereditary predisposition." Isador Coriat, on the other hand, while recognizing two forms of inversion, incomplete and complete, boldly asserts that it is never congenital and never transmitted through heredity; it is always "originated through a definite unconscious mechanism" (Coriat, "Homosexuality," New York Medical Journal, March 22, 1913). Adler's view of homosexuality, as of other allied conditions, differs from that of most psychoanalysts by insisting on the presence of an original organic defect which the subject seeks to fortify into a point of strength; he accepts two chief components of inversion: a vagueness as to sexual differences and a process of self-assurance in the form of rebellion and defiance, and even the feminism of the invert may become a method of gaining power (A. Adler, Ueber den Neurösen Charakter, 1912, p. 21).
The mechanism of the genesis of homosexuality put forward by Freud need not be dismissed offhand. Freud has often manifested the insight of genius, and he refrains from molding his conceptions in those inflexible shapes which have sometimes been adopted by the more dogmatic psychoanalysts who have followed him. Nor need we be unduly shocked by the "incestuous" air of the "Œdipus Complex,"[226] as it is commonly called, which figures as a component of the process. The word "incest," though it has been used by Freud himself, seems scarcely a proper word to apply to the vague and elementary feelings of children, especially when those feelings scarcely pass beyond a stage of non-localized and therefore really presexual feelings (in the ordinary use of the term "sexual") which may be regarded as natural and normal. The Freudian conception is misrepresented and prejudiced by the statement that it involves "incest."[227] When a child loves its mother with an entire love, that love necessarily involves the germs which in later life become separated and developed into sexual love, but it is inaccurate to term this love of the child "incestuous." It is quite easily conceivable that the psychic mechanism of the establishment of homosexuality has in some cases corresponded to the course described by Freud. It may also be admitted that, as psychoanalysts claim, the pronounced horror feminæ occasionally found in male inverts may plausibly be regarded as the reversal of an early and disappointed feminine attraction. But it is impossible to regard this mechanism as invariable or even frequent. It is quite true, and I have found ample evidence of the fact, that inverts are often very closely attached to their mothers, even to a greater degree, indeed, than is the rule among normal children, and often like to be in constant association with their mothers. But this attraction is quite misunderstood if it is regarded as a peculiarly sexual attraction. Indeed, the whole point of the attraction is that the inverted boy vaguely feels his own feminine disposition and so shuns the uncongenial amusements and society of his own sex for the sympathy and community of tastes which he finds concentrated in his mother. So far from such association being evidence of sexual attraction it might more reasonably be regarded as evidence of its absence; just as the association of boys among themselves, and of girls among themselves, even in co-educational schools, is proof of the prevalence of heterosexual rather than of homosexual feeling. Confirmation of this point of view may be found in the fact—overlooked and sometimes even denied by psychoanalysts—that frequently, even in early childhood and simultaneously with this community of feeling with his mother, the homosexual boy is already experiencing the predominant fascination of the male. He feels it long before the age at which Narcissism is apt to occur, or at which self-consciousness has become sufficiently developed to allow the internal censure on unpermitted emotions to operate, or any flight from them to take place. Moreover, while most authorities have rarely been able to find any clear evidence of the sexual attraction of male inverts in childhood to mother or sister,[228] an attraction of this kind to father or brother seems less difficult to find, and if found it is incompatible with the typical Freudian process. In my own observation, among the Histories here recorded, there are at least two clear examples of such an attraction in childhood. It must further be said that any theory of the etiology of homosexuality which leaves out of account the hereditary factor in inversion cannot be admitted. The evidence for the frequency of homosexuality among the near relatives of the inverted is now indisputable. I have traced it in a considerable proportion of cases, and in many of these the evidence is unquestionable and altogether independent of the statement of the subject himself, whose opinion may be held to be possibly biased or unreliable.[229] This hereditary factor seems indeed to be called for by the Freudian theory itself. On that theory we need to know how it is that the subject passes through psychic phases, and reaches an emotional disposition, so unlike that of normal persona. The existence of a definite hereditary tendency in a homosexual direction removes that difficulty. Freud himself recognizes this and clearly asserts congenital psycho-sexual constitution, which must involve predisposition. On a general survey, therefore, it would appear that, on the psychic side, we may accept the reality of unconscious dynamic processes which in particular cases may be of the Freudian or similar type. But while the study of such mechanisms may illuminate the psychology of homosexuality, they leave untouched the fundamental organic factors now accepted by most authorities.[230]
The rational way of regarding the normal sexual instinct is as an inborn organic impulse, reaching full development about the time of puberty.[231] During the period of development suggestion and association may come in to play a part in defining the object of the emotion; the soil is now ready, but the variety of seeds likely to thrive in it is limited. That there is a greater indefiniteness in the aim of the sexual impulse at this period we may well believe. This is shown not only by occasional tentative signs of sexual emotion directed toward the same sex in childhood, but by the frequently ideal and unlocalized character of the normal passion even at puberty. But the channel of sexual emotion is not thereby turned into an abnormal path. Whenever this happens we are bound to believe—and we have many grounds for believing—that we are dealing with an organism which from the beginning is abnormal. The same seed of suggestion is sown in various soils; in the many it dies out; in the few it flourishes. The cause can only be a difference in the soil.
If, then, we must postulate a congenital abnormality in order to account satisfactorily for at least a large proportion of sexual inverts, wherein does that abnormality consist? Ulrichs explained the matter by saying that in sexual inverts a male body coexists with a female soul: anima muliebris in corpore virile inclusa. Even writers of scientific eminence, like Magnan and Gley, have adopted this phrase in a modified form, considering that in inversion a female brain is combined with a male body or male glands. This is, however, not an explanation. It merely crystallizes into an epigram the superficial impression of the matter.[232]
We can probably grasp the nature of the abnormality better if we reflect on the development of the sexes and on the latent organic bisexuality in each sex. At an early stage of development the sexes are indistinguishable, and throughout life the traces of this early community of sex remain. The hen fowl retains in a rudimentary form the spurs which are so large and formidable in her lord, and sometimes she develops a capacity to crow, or puts on male plumage. Among mammals the male possesses useless nipples, which occasionally even develop into breasts, and the female possesses a clitoris, which is merely a rudimentary penis, and may also develop. The sexually inverted person does not usually possess any gross exaggeration of these signs of community with the opposite sex. But, as we have seen, there are a considerable number of more subtle approximations to the opposite sex in inverted persons, both on the physical and the psychic side. Putting the matter in a purely speculative shape, it may be said that at conception the organism is provided with about 50 per cent. of male germs and about 50 per cent. of female germs, and that, as development proceeds, either the male or the female germs assume the upper hand, until in the maturely developed individual only a few aborted germs of the opposite sex are left. In the homosexual, however, and in the bisexual, we may imagine that the process has not proceeded normally, on account of some peculiarity in the number or character of either the original male germs or female germs, or both, the result being that we have a person who is organically twisted into a shape that is more fitted for the exercise of the inverted than of the normal sexual impulse, or else equally fitted for both.[233]
The conception of the latent bisexuality of all males and females cannot fail to be fairly obvious to intelligent observers of the human body. It emerges at an early period in the history of philosophic thought, and from the first was occasionally used for the explanation of homosexuality. Plato's myth in the Banquet and the hermaphroditic statues of antiquity show how acute minds, working ahead of science, exercised themselves with these problems. (For a fully illustrated study of the ancient conception of hermaphroditism in sculpture see L. S. A. M. von Römer, "Ueber die Androgynische Idee des Lebens," Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. v, 1903, pp. 711-939.) Parmenides, following Alcmaeon, the philosophic physician who discovered that the brain is the central organ of intellect, remarks Gomperz (Greek Thinkers, Eng. tr., vol. i, p. 183), used the idea of variation in the proportion of male and female generative elements to account for idiosyncrasies of sexual character. After an immense interval Hössli, the inverted Swiss man-milliner, in his Eros (1838) put forth the Greek view anew. Schopenhauer, again from the philosophical side, recognized the bisexuality of the human individual (see Juliusburger, Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, 1912, p. 630), and Ulrichs, from 1862 onward, adopted a similar doctrine, on a Platonic basis, to explain the "Uranian" constitution. After this the idea began to be more precisely developed from the scientific side, though not at first with reference to homosexuality, and more especially by the great pioneers of the doctrine of Evolution. Darwin emphasized the significance of the facts on this point, as later Weismann, while Haeckel, who was one of the earliest Darwinians, has in recent years clearly recognized the bearing on the interpretation of homosexuality of the fact that the ancestors of the vertebrates were hermaphrodites, as vertebrates themselves still are in their embryonic disposition (Haeckel, in Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, April, 1913, pp. 262-3, 287). This view had, however, been set forth at an earlier date by individual physicians, notably in America by Kiernan (American Lancet, 1884, and Medical Standard, November and December, 1888), and Lydston (Philadelphia Medical and Surgical Reporter, September, 1889, and Addresses and Essays, 1892).
In 1893, in his L'Inversion Sexuelle, Chevalier, a pupil of Lacassagne—who had already applied the term "hermaphrodisme moral" to this anomaly—explained congenital homosexuality by the idea of latent bisexuality. Dr. G. de Letamendi, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine of Madrid, in a paper read before the International Medical Congress at Rome in 1894, set forth a principle of panhermaphroditism—a hermaphroditic bipolarity—which involved the existence of latent female germs in the male, latent male germs in the female, which latent germs may strive for, and sometimes obtain, the mastery. In February, 1896, the first version of the present chapter, setting forth the conception of inversion as a psychic and somatic development on the basis of a latent bisexuality, was published in the Centralblatt für Nervenheilkunde und Psychiatrie. Kurella (ib., May, 1890) adopted a somewhat similar view, even arguing that the invert is a transitional form between the complete man or woman and the hermaphrodite. In Germany a patient of Krafft-Ebing had worked out the same idea, connecting inversion with fetal bisexuality (eighth edition Psychopathia Sexualis, p. 227). Krafft-Ebing himself at first simply asserted that, whether congenital or acquired, there must be Belastung; inversion is a "degenerate phenomenon," a functional sign of degeneration (Krafft-Ebing, "Zur Erklärung der conträren Sexualempfindung," Jahrbuch für Psychiatrie, 1894). In the later editions of Psychopathia Sexualis, however (1896 and onward and notably in Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. iii, 1901), he went farther, adopting the explanation on the lines of original bisexuality (English translation of tenth edition, pp. 336-7). In much the same language as I have used he argued that there has been a struggle in the centers, homosexuality resulting when the center antagonistic to that represented by the sexual gland conquers, and psycho-sexual hermaphroditism resulting when both centers are too weak to obtain victory, in either case such disturbance not being a psychic degeneration or disease, but simply an anomaly comparable to a malformation and quite consonant with psychic health. This is the view now widely accepted by investigators of sexual inversion. (Much material bearing on the history of this conception has been brought together by Hirschfeld, in Die Homosexualität, ch. xix, and previously in "Vom Wesen der Liebe," Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. viii, 1906, pp. 111-133.)
A similar or allied view is now constantly met with in writers of scientific authority who are only incidentally concerned with the study of sexual inversion. Thus Halban ("Die Entstehung des Geschlechtscharaktere," Archiv für Gynäkologie, 1903) regards hermaphroditism, which he would extend to the psychic sphere, as a state in which a double sexual impulse determines the course of fetal and later development. Shattock and Seligmann ("True Hermaphroditism in the Domestic Fowl, with Remarks on Allopterotism," Transactions of Pathological Society of London, vol. lvii, part i, 1906), pointing out that mere atrophy of the ovary cannot account for the appearance in the hen bird of male characters which are not retrogressive but progressive, argues that such birds are really bisexual or hermaphrodite, either by the single "ovary" being really bisexual, as was the case with a fowl they examined, or that the sexual glands are paired, one being male and the other female, or else that there is misplaced male tissue in a neighboring viscus like the adrenal or kidney, the male elements asserting themselves when the female elements degenerate. "Hermaphroditism," they conclude, "far from being a phenomenon altogether abnormal amongst the higher vertebrates, should be viewed rather as a reversion to the primitive ancestral phase in which bisexualism was the normal disposition.... True hermaphroditism in man being established, the question arises whether lesser grades do not occur.... Remote evidence of bisexuality in the human subject may, perhaps, be afforded by the psychical phenomenon of sexual perversion and inversion." Similarly in a case of unilateral secondary male character in an otherwise female pheasant, C. J. Bond has more recently shown (Section of Zoölogy, Birmingham Meeting of British Medical Association, British Medical Journal, Sept. 20, 1913) that an ovi-testis was present, with degenerating ovarian tissue and developing testicular tissue, and such islands of actively growing male tissue can frequently be found, he states, in the degenerating ovaries of female birds which have put forth male plumage. Sir John Bland-Sutton, referring to the fact that the external conformation of the body affords no positive certainty as to the nature of the internal sexual glands, adds (British Medical Journal, Oct. 30, 1909): "It is a fair presumption that some examples of sexual frigidity and sex perversion may be explained by the possibility that the individuals concerned may possess sexual glands opposite in character to those indicated by the external configuration of their bodies." Looking at the matter more broadly and fundamentally in its normal aspects, Heape declares (Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, vol. xiv, part ii, 1907) that "there is no such thing as a pure male or female animal, but that all contain a dominant and recessive sex, except those hermaphrodites in which both sexes are equally represented.... There seems to me ample evidence for the conclusion that there is no such thing as a pure male or female." F. H. A. Marshall, again, in his standard manual, The Physiology of Reproduction (1910, p. 655 et seq.), is inclined to accept the same view. "If it be true," he remarks, "that all individuals are potentially bisexual and that changed circumstances, leading to a changed metabolism, may, in exceptional circumstances, even in adult life, cause the development of the recessive characters, it would seem extremely probable that the dominance of one set of sexual characters over the other may be determined in some cases at an early stage of development in response to a stimulus which may be either internal or external." So also Berry Hart ("Atypical Male and Female Sex-Ensemble," a paper read before Edinburgh Obstetrical Society, British Medical Journal, June 20, 1914, p. 1355) regards the normal male or female as embodying a maximum of the potent organs of his or her own sex with a minimum of non-potent organs of the other sex, with secondary sex traits congruent. Any increase in the minimum gives a diminished maximum and non-congruence of the secondary characters.
We thus see that the ancient medico-philosophic conception of organic bisexuality put forth by the Greeks as the key to the explanation of sexual inversion, after sinking out of sight for two thousand years, was revived early in the nineteenth century by two amateur philosophers who were themselves inverted (Hössli, Ulrichs), as well as by a genuine philosopher who was not inverted (Schopenhauer). Then the conception of latent bisexuality, independently of homosexuality, was developed from the purely scientific side (by Darwin and evolutionists generally). In the next stage this conception was adopted by the psychiatric and other scientific authorities on homosexuality (Krafft-Ebing and the majority of other students). Finally, embryologists, physiologists of sex and biologists generally, not only accept the conception of bisexuality, but admit that it probably helps to account for homosexuality. In this way the idea may be said to have passed into current thought. We cannot assert that it constitutes an adequate explanation of homosexuality, but it enables us in some degree to understand what for many is a mysterious riddle, and it furnishes a useful basis for the classification not only of homosexuality, but of the other mixed or intermediate sexual anomalies in the same group. The chief of these intermediate sexual anomalies are: (1) physical hermaphroditism in its various stages; (2) gynandromorphism, or eunuchoidism, in which men possess characters resembling those of males who have been early castrated and women possess similarly masculine characters; (3) sexo-esthetic inversion, or Eonism (Hirschfeld's transvestism or cross-dressing), in which, outside the specifically sexual emotions, men possess the tastes of women and women those of men.
Hirschfeld has discussed these intermediate sexual stages in various works, especially in Geschlechtsübergänge (1905), Die Transvestiten (1910), and ch. xi of Die Homosexualität. Hermaphroditism (the reality of which has only of late been recognized and is still disputed) and pseudohermaphroditism; in their physical variations are fully dealt with in the great work, richly illustrated, Hermaphroditismus beim Menschen, by F. L. von Neugebauer, of Warsaw. Neugebauer published an earlier and briefer study of the subject in the Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen vol. iv, 1902, pp. 1-176, with a bibliography in vol. viii (1906) of the same Jahrbuch, pp. 685-700. Hirschfeld emphasizes the fact that neither hermaphroditism nor eunuchoidism is commonly associated with homosexuality, and that a large proportion of the cases of transvestism, as defined by him, are heterosexual. True inversion seems, however, to be not infrequently found among pseudohermaphrodites; Neugebauer records numerous cases; Magnan has published a case in a girl brought up as a youth (Gazette médical de Paris, March 31, 1911) and Lapointe a case in a man brought up as a girl (Revue de psychiatrie, 1911, p. 219). Such cases may be accounted for by the training and associations involved by the early error in recognition of sex, and perhaps still more by a really organic predisposition to homosexuality, although the sexual psychic characters are not necessarily bound up with the coexistence of corresponding sexual glands. Halban (Archiv für Gynäkologie 1903) goes so far as to class the homosexual as "real pseudohermaphrodites," exactly comparable to a man with a female breast or a woman with a beard, and proposes to term homosexuality "pseudohermaphroditus masculinus psychicus." This, however, is an unnecessary and scarcely satisfactory confusion.
To place the group of homosexual phenomena among other intermediate groups on the organic bisexual basis is a convenient classification. It can scarcely be regarded as a complete explanation. It is probable that we may ultimately find a more fundamental source of these various phenomena in the stimulating and inhibiting play of the internal secretions.[234] Our knowledge of the intimate association between the hormones and sexual phenomena is already sufficient to make such an explanation intelligible; the complex interaction of the glandular internal secretions and their liability to varying disturbance in balance may well suffice to account for the complexity of the phenomena. It would harmonize with what we know of the occasional delayed manifestations of homosexuality, and would not clash with their congenital nature, for we know that a disordered state of the thymus, for instance, may be hereditary, and it is held that status lymphaticus may be either inborn or acquired.[235] Normal sexual characters seem to depend largely upon the due co-ordination of the internal secretions, and it is reasonable to suppose that sexual deviations depend upon their inco-ordination. If a man is a man, and a woman a woman, because (in Blair Bell's phrase) of the totality of their internal secretions, the intermediate stages between the man and the woman must be due to redistribution of those internal secretions.[236]