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 ("Zür 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 16½," 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 (_Konträre 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 "Bruchstück 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 für 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 für

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, Näcke, 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 Näcke 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. Näcke 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, Näcke 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. Féré 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'hôte_, 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. (Féré, _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

Kriminalität," _Zeitschrift für 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

certainty of a definitely spurious class of homosexual persons. Everyone

of Hirschfeld's three classes may well contain a majority of genuinely

homosexual or bisexual persons. The prostitutes and even the blackmailers

are certainly genuine inverts in very many cases. Those persons, again,

who allow themselves to be the recipients of homosexual attentions may

well possess traces of homosexual feeling, and are undoubtedly in very

many cases lacking in vigorous heterosexual impulse. Finally, the persons

who turn to their own sex when forcibly excluded from the society of the

opposite sex, can by no means be assumed, without question, to be normal

heterosexual persons. It is only a small proportion of heterosexual

persons who experience these impulses under such conditions. There are

always others who under the same conditions remain emotionally attracted

to the opposite sex and sexually indifferent to their own sex. There is

evidently a difference, and that difference may most reasonably be

supposed to be in the existence of a trace of homosexual feeling which is

called into activity under the abnormal conditions, and subsides when the

stronger heterosexual impulse can again be gratified.

The real distinction would seem, therefore, to be between a homosexual

impulse so strong that it subsists even in the presence of the

heterosexual object, and a homosexual impulse so weak that it is eclipsed

by the presence of the heterosexual object. We could not, however,

properly speak of the latter as any more "spurious" or "pseudo" than the

former. A heterosexual person who experiences a homosexual impulse in the

absence of any homosexual disposition is not today easy to accept. We can

certainly accept the possibility of a mechanical or other non-sexual

stimulus leading to a sexual act contrary to the individual's disposition.

But usually it is somewhat difficult to prove, and when proved it has

little psychological significance or importance. We may expect, therefore,

to find "pseudo-homosexuality," or spurious homosexuality, playing a

dwindling part in classification.

The simplest of all possible classifications, and that which I adopted in

the earlier editions of the present _Study_, merely seeks to distinguish

between those who, not being exclusively attracted to the opposite sex,

are exclusively attracted to the same sex, and those who are attracted to

both sexes. The first are the homosexual, whether or not the attraction

springs from genuine inversion. The second are the bisexual, or, as they

were formerly more often termed, following Krafft-Ebing, psycho-sexual

hermaphrodites.[135] There would thus seem to be a broad and simple

grouping of all sexually functioning persons into three comprehensive

divisions: the heterosexual, the bisexual, and the homosexual.

Even this elementary classification seems however of no great practical

use. The bisexual group is found to introduce uncertainty and doubt. Not

only a large proportion of persons who may fairly be considered normally

heterosexual have at some time in their lives experienced a feeling which

may be termed sexual toward individuals of their own sex, but a very large

proportion of persons who are definitely and markedly homosexual are found

to have experienced sexual attraction toward, and have had relationships

with, persons of the opposite sex. The social pressure, urging all persons

into the normal sexual channel, suffices to develop such slight germs of

heterosexuality as homosexual persons may possess, and so to render them

bisexual. In the majority of adult bisexual persons it would seem that the

homosexual tendency is stronger and more organic than the heterosexual

tendency. Bisexuality would thus in a large number of cases be comparable

to ambidexterity, which Biervliet has found to occur most usually in

people who are organically left-handed.[136] While therefore the division

into heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual is a useful superficial

division, it is scarcely a scientific classification.

In the face of these various considerations, and in view of the fact that,

while I feel justified in regarding the histories of my cases as reliable

so far as they go, I have not been always able to explore them

extensively, it has seemed best to me to attempt no classification at all.

The order in which the following histories appear is not, therefore, to be

regarded as possessing any significance.

It may be proper, at this point, to say a few words as to the

reliability of the statements furnished by homosexual persons.

This has sometimes been called in question. Many years ago we

used to be told that inverts are such lying and deceitful

degenerates that it was impossible to place reliance on anything

they said. It was also usual to say that when they wrote

autobiographical accounts of themselves they merely sought to

mold them in the fashion of those published by Krafft-Ebing. More

recently the psychoanalysts have made a more radical attack on

all histories not obtained by their own methods as being quite

unreliable, even when put forth in good faith, in part because

the subject withholds much that he either regards as too trivial

or too unpleasant to bring forward, and in part because he cannot

draw on that unconscious field within himself wherein, it is

held, the most significant facts in his own sexual history are

concealed. Thus Sadger ("Ueber den Wert der Autobiographien

Sexuell Perverser," _Fortschritte der Medizin_, nos. 26-28, 1913)

vigorously puts forward this view and asserts that the

autobiographies of inverts are worthless, although his assertions

are somewhat discounted by the fact that they accompany an

autobiography, written in the usual manner, to which he

attributes much value.

The objection to homosexual autobiographic statements dates from

a period when the homosexual were very little known, and it was

supposed that their moral character generally was fairly

represented by a small section among them which attracted more

attention than the rest by reason of discreditable conduct. But,

in reality, as we now know, there are all sorts of people, with

all varieties of moral character, to be found among inverts, just

as among normal people. Sadger (_Archiv für

Kriminal-Anthropologie_, 1913, p. 199) complains of the "great

insincerity of inverts in not acknowledging their inversion;"

but, as Sadger himself admits, we cannot be surprised at this so

long as inversion is counted a crime. The most normal persons,

under similar conditions, would be similarly insincere. If the

homosexual differ in any respect, under this aspect, from the

heterosexual, it is by exhibiting a more frequent tendency to be

slightly neuropathic, nervously sensitive, and femininely

emotional. These tendencies, while on the one hand they are

liable to induce a very easily detectable vanity, may also lead

to an unusual self-subordination to veracity. On the whole, it

may be said, in my own experience, that the best histories

written by the homosexual compare favorably for frankness,

intelligence, and power of self-analysis with those written by

the heterosexual.

The ancient allegation that inverts have written their own

histories on the model, or under the suggestion, of those

published in Krafft-Ebing's _Psychopathia Sexualis_ can scarcely

have much force now that the published histories are so extremely

varied and numerous that they cannot possibly produce any uniform

impression on the most sensitively receptive mind. As a matter of

fact, there is no doubt that inverts have frequently been

stimulated to set down the narrative of their own experiences

through reading those written by others. But the stimulation has,

as often as not, lain in the fact that their own experiences have

seemed different, not that they have seemed identical. The

histories that they read only serve as models in the sense that

they indicate the points on which information is desired. I have

often been able to verify this influence, which would in any case

seem to be fairly obvious.

Psycho-analysis is, in theory, an ideal method of exploring many

psychic conditions, such as hysteria and obsessions, which are

obscure and largely concealed beneath the psychic surface. In

most homosexual cases the main facts are, with the patient's

good-will and the investigator's tact, not difficult to

ascertain. Any difficulties which psychoanalysis may help to

elucidate mainly concern the early history of the case in

childhood, and, regarding these, psychoanalysis may sometimes

raise questions which it cannot definitely settle.

Psycho-analysis reveals an immense mass of small details, any of

which may or may not possess significance, and in determining

which are significant the individuality of the psychoanalyst

cannot fail to come into play. He will necessarily tend to

arrange them according to a system. If, for instance, he regards

infantile incestuous emotions or early Narcissism as an essential

feature of the mechanism of homosexuality, a conscientious

investigator will not rest until he has discovered traces of

them, as he very probably will. (See, e.g., Sadger, "Fragment der

Psychoanalyse eines Homosexuellen," _Jahrbuch für sexuelle

Zwischenstufen_, Bd. ix, 1908; and cf. Hirschfeld, _Die

Homosexualität_, p. 164). But the exact weight and significance

of these traces may still be doubtful, and, even if considerable

in one case, may be inconsiderable in another. Freud, who sets

forth one type of homosexual mechanism, admits that there may be

others. Moreover, it must be added that the psychoanalytic method

by no means excludes unconscious deception by the subject, as

Freud found, and so was compelled to admit the patient's tendency

to "fantasy," as Adler has to "fictions," as a fundamental

psychic tendency of the "unconscious."

The force of these considerations is now beginning to be

generally recognized. Thus Moll (art. "Homosexualität," in 4th

ed. of Eulenburg's _Realencyclopädie der gesamten Heilkunde_,

1909, p. 611) rightly says that while the invert may occasionally

embroider his story, "the expert can usually distinguish between

the truth and the poetry, though it is unnecessary to add that

complete confidence on the patient's part is necessary," Näcke,

again (_Sexual-Probleme_, September, 1911, p. 619), after quoting

with approval the remark of one of the chief German authorities,

Dr. Numa Praetorius, that "a great number of inverts' histories

are at the least as trustworthy as the attempts of

psychoanalysts, especially when they come from persons skillful

in self-analysis," adds that "even Freudian analysis gives no

absolute guarantee for truth. A healthy skepticism is

justifiable--but not an unhealthy skepticism!" Hirschfeld, also

(_Die Homosexualität_, p. 164), whose knowledge of such histories

is unrivalled, remarks that while we may now and then meet with a

case of _pseudo-logia fantastica_ in connection with psychic

debility on the basis of a psychopathic constitution, "taken all

in all any generalized assertion of the falsehood of inverts is

an empty fiction, and is merely a sign that the physicians who

make it have not been able to win the trust of the men and women

who consult them." My own experience has fully convinced me of

the truth of this, statement. I am assured that many of the

inverts I have met not only possess a rare power of intellectual

self-analysis (stimulated by the constant and inevitable contrast

between their own feelings and those of the world around them),

but an unsparing sincerity in that self-analysis not so very

often attained by normal people.

The histories which follow have been obtained in various ways,

and are of varying degrees of value. Some are of persons whom I

have known very well for very long periods, and concerning whom I

can speak very positively. A few are from complete strangers

whose good faith, however, I judge from internal evidence that I

am able to accept. Two or three were written by persons

who--though educated, in one case a journalist--had never heard

of inversion, and imagined that their own homosexual feelings

were absolutely unique in the world. A fair number were written

by persons whom I do not myself know, but who are well known to

others in whose judgment I feel confidence. Perhaps the largest

number are concerned with individuals who wrote to me

spontaneously in the first place, and whom I have at intervals

seen or heard from since, in some cases during a very long

period, so that I have slowly been able to fill in their

histories, although the narratives, as finally completed, may

have the air of being written down at a single sitting. I have

not admitted any narrative which I do not feel that I am

entitled to regard as a substantially accurate statement of the

facts, although allowance must occasionally be made for the

emotional coloring of these facts, the invert sometimes

cherishing too high an opinion, and sometimes too low an opinion,

of his own personality.

HISTORY I.--Both parents healthy; father of unusually fine

_physique_. He is himself a manual worker and also of

exceptionally fine _physique_. He is, however, of nervous

temperament. He is mentally bright, though not highly educated, a

keen sportsman, and in general a good example of an all-around

healthy Englishman.

While very affectionate, his sexual desires are not strongly

developed on the physical side, and seem never to have been so.

He sometimes masturbated about the age of puberty, but never

afterward. He does not appear to have well-marked erotic dreams.

There used to be some attraction toward women, though it was

never strong. At the age of 26 he was seduced by a woman and had

connection with her once. Afterward he had reason to think she

had played him false in various ways. This induced the strongest

antipathy, not only to this woman, but to all marriageable women.

A year after this episode homosexual feeling first became clear

and defined. He is now 33, and feels the same antipathy to women;

he hates even to speak of marriage.

There has only been one really strong attraction, toward a man of

about the same age, but of different social class, and somewhat a

contrast to him, both physically and mentally. So far as the

physical act is concerned this relationship is not definitely

sexual, but it is of the most intimate possible kind, and the

absence of the physical act is probably largely due to

circumstances. At the same time there is no conscious desire for

the act for its own sake, and the existing harmony and

satisfaction are described as very complete. There is no

repulsion to the physical side, and he regards the whole

relationship as quite natural.

HISTORY II.--B.O., English, aged 35, missionary abroad. A brother

is more definitely inverted. B.O. has never had any definitely

homosexual relationships, although he has always been devoted to

boys; nor has he had any relationships with women. "As regards

women," he says, "I feel I have not the patience to try and

understand them; they are petulant and changeable," etc. He

objects to being called "abnormal," and thinks that people like

himself are "_extremely_ common."

"I have never wanted to kiss boys," he writes, "nor to handle

them in any way except to put my arm around them at their studies

and at other similar times. Of course, with really little boys,

it is different, but boys and girls under 14 seem to me much

alike, and I can love either equally well. As to any sort of

sexual connection between myself and one of my own sex, I cannot

think of it otherwise than with disgust. I can imagine great

pleasure in having connection with a woman, but their natures do

not attract me. Indeed, my liking for my own sex seems to consist

almost entirely in a preference for the masculine character, and

the feeling that as an object to _look at_ the male body is

really more beautiful than the female. When any strong

temptations to sexual passion come over me in my waking moments,

it is of women I think. On the other hand, I have to confess that

after being with some lad I love for an hour or two, I have

sometimes felt my sexual organs roused. But only once in my life

have I experienced a strong desire to sleep in the same bed with

a particular lad, and even then no idea of doing anything entered

my mind. Needless to say, I did not sleep with him.

"I never feel tempted by any girls here, although I see so many

with their bodies freely exposed, and plenty of them have really

pretty faces. Neither do I feel tempted to do anything improper

with any of the boys, although I frequently sit talking with one

who has very little on. But I find the constant sight of

well-shaped bare limbs has a curious effect on the mind and comes

before one's imagination as a picture at unlooked-for times. But

the most curious thing of all is this: There are several lads

here of whom I am very fond. Now when they are near me I think of

them with only the purest and most tender feelings, but sometimes

at night when I am half asleep, or when I am taking my midday

siesta, my imagination pictures one of these lads approaching a

girl, or actually lying with her, and the strange thing is that I

do not feel any desire myself to approach the girl, but I feel I

wish I were in _her_ place and the lad was coming to _me_. In my

calm, waking moments it disgusts and rather horrifies me to find

myself apparently so unsexed--yet such is the fact, and the

experience, with only slight changes, repeats itself over and

over again. It is not that I, as a man, wish even in imagination

to act improperly with a boy, but I feel I would like to be in

the girl's place, and the strange thing is that in all these

dreams and imaginings I can always apparently enter into the

feelings of the woman better than into those of the man.

Sometimes I fancy for a moment that perhaps reincarnation is true

and I was a woman in my last life. Sometimes I fancy that when I

was in the womb I was formed as a girl and the sexual organs

changed just at the last moment. It is a curious problem. Don't

think I worry about it. Only at long intervals do I think of

it.... The thing has its bright side. Boys and men seem to have

tender feelings toward me, such as one expects them to have for

members of the opposite sex, and I get into all the closer

contact with them in consequence."

HISTORY III.--F.R., English, aged 50, Belongs on both sides to

healthy, normal families, of more than average ability. Father

was 35 at birth, and mother 27. He is the second of four

children. There was a considerable interval between the births of

the children, which were spread over twenty-one years. All are

normal, except F.R., two of them married and with families.

Owing to the difference of age between the children, F.R. (who

was three years younger than his elder brother, and more than

four years older than his sister, the third child) had no male

companionship and was constantly alone with his mother. "Being

naturally imitative," he remarks, "I think I acquired her tastes

and interests and habits of thought. However that may be, I feel

sure that my interests and amusements were more girlish than

boyish. By way of illustration, I may mention that I have often

been told by a friend of my mother's that, on one occasion, I was

wanting a new hat, and none being found of a size to fit me, I

congratulated myself that I should therefore be obliged to have a

_bonnet!_ As regards my feminine tastes and instincts, I have

always been conscious of taking interest in questions of family

relationships, etiquette, dress (women's as much as, or more

than, men's) and other things of that kind, which, as a rule,

were treated with indifference or contempt. In the house I take

more notice than my sister does of the servants' deficiencies and

neglects, and am much more orderly in my arrangements than she

is."

There is nothing markedly feminine in the general appearance.

Pubertal development took place at an early age, long before

fourteen, with nocturnal emissions, but without erotic dreams.

The testicles are well developed, the penis perhaps rather below

the average in size, and the prepuce long and narrow. Erection

occurs with much facility, especially at night. When young he

knew nothing of masturbation, but he began the habit about ten

years ago, and has practised it occasionally ever since.

Although he likes the society of women to a certain extent, he

soon grows tired of it, and has never had any desire to marry.

His sexual dreams never have any relation to women. "I am

generally doing or saying something," he remarks, "to some man

whom I know when awake, something which I admit I might wish to

do or say if it were not quite out of the question on grounds of

propriety and self-respect."

He has, however, never had any intimate relationships with men,

and much that he has heard of such relationships fills him with

horror.

"What I feel about myself is," he writes, "that I have to a

certain extent, or in some respects, a feminine mind in a male

body; or, I might put it that I am a combination of an immoral

(in tendency, rather than in act) woman and a religious man.

From time to time I have felt strong affection for young men, but

I cannot flatter myself that my affection has been reciprocated.

At the present time there is a young fellow (23 years old) who

acts as my clerk and sits in my room. He is extremely

good-looking, and of a type which is generally considered

'aristocratic,' but so far as I (or he) know, he is quite of the

lower middle class. He has little to recommend him but a fine

face and figure, and there is nothing approaching to mental or

social equality between us. But I constantly feel the strongest

desire to treat him as a man might a young girl he warmly loved.

Various obvious considerations keep me from more than

quasi-paternal caresses, and I feel sure he would resent very

strongly anything more. This constant repression is trying beyond

measure to the nerves, and I often feel quite ill from that

cause. Having had no experiences of my own, I am always anxious

to learn anything I can of the sexual relations of other men, and

their organs, but I have no curiosity whatever concerning the

other sex. My chief pleasure and source of gratification is found

in the opportunities afforded by Turkish and other baths;

wherever, in fact, there is the nude male to be found. But I

seldom find in these places anyone who seems to have the same

tendency as myself, and certainly I have not met with more than

two cases among the attendants, who responded to my hinted desire

to see everything. Under a shampooer, particularly an unfamiliar

one, I occasionally experience an orgasm, but less often now than

when I was younger."

F.R. is very short-sighted. His favorite color is blue. He is

able to whistle. His tastes are chiefly of a literary character,

and he has never had any liking for sports. "I have been

generally considered ineffective in the use of my hands," he

writes, "and I am certainly not skillful. All I have ever been

able to do in that way is to net and do the simpler forms of

needlework; but it seems more natural to me to do, or try to do,

everything of that sort, and to play on the piano, rather than to

shoot or play games. I may add that I am fonder of babies than

many women, and am generally considered to be surprisingly

capable of holding them! Certainly I enjoy doing so. As a youth,

I used to act in charades; but I was too shy to do so unless I

was dressed as a woman and veiled; and when I took a woman's part

I _felt_ less like _acting_ than I have done in _propria

persona_. A remark made by an uncle once rather annoyed me: that

it seemed more like nature than art. But he was quite right."

HISTORY IV.--Of Lowland Scotch parentage. Both sides of house

healthy and without cerebral or nervous disease. Homosexual

desires began at puberty. He practised onanism to a limited

extent at school and up to the age of about 22. His erotic dreams

are exclusively about males. While very friendly and intimate

with women of all ages, he is instantly repelled by any display

of sexual affection on their side. This has happened in varying

degree in three or four cases. With regard to marriage, he

remarks: "As there seems no immediate danger of the race dying

out, I leave marriage to those who like it." His male ideal has

varied to some extent. It has for some years tended toward a

healthy, well-developed, athletic or out-of-door working type,

intelligent and sympathetic, but not specially intellectual.

At school his sexual relations were of the simplest type. Since

then there have been none. "This," he says, "is not due either to

absence of desire or presence of 'morals.' To put it shortly,

'there were never the time and the place and the loved one

together.' In another view, physical desire and the general

affection have not always coexisted toward the same person; and

the former without the latter is comparatively transient; while

the latter stops the gratification of the former, if it is felt

that that gratification could in any way make the object of

affection unhappy, mentally or emotionally."

He is healthy and fairly well developed; of sensitive, emotional

nature, but self-controlled; mentally he is receptive and

aggressive by turns, sometimes uncritical, sometimes analytical.

His temper is equable, and he is strongly affectionate. Very fond

of music and other arts, but not highly imaginative.

Of sexual inversion in the abstract he says he has no views, but

he thus sums up his moral attitude: "I presume that, if it is

there, it is there for use or abuse, as men please. I condemn

gratification of bodily desire at the expense of others, in

whatever form it may take. I condemn it no more in its inverted

form than in the ordinary. I believe that affection between

persons of the same sex, even when it includes the sexual passion

and its indulgences, may lead to results as splendid as human

nature can ever attain to. In short, I place it on an absolute

equality with love as ordinarily understood."

HISTORY V.--S.W., aged 64, English, musical journalist. The

communication which follows (somewhat abbreviated) was written

before S.W. had heard or read anything about sexual inversion,

and when he still believed that his own case was absolutely

unique.

"I am the son of a clergyman, and lived for the first thirteen

years of my life in the country town where I was born. Then my

father became the vicar of a country village, where I lived until

I went out into the world at the age of 18. As during the whole

of this time my father had a few pupils, I was educated with

them, and never went to school. I was born, I fancy, with sexual

passions about as strong as can well be imagined, and at the same

time was very precocious in my entry into the stage of puberty.

Semen began to form a little before my twelfth birthday; hair

soon followed, and in a year I was in that respect the equal of

an average boy of 15 or 16. I conversed freely with my companions

on the relations of the sexes, but, unlike them, had no personal

feeling toward girls. In time I became conscious that I was

different, as I then believed, and believe now, from all other

men. My sexual organs were quite perfect. But in the frame of a

man I had the sexual mind of a female. I distinctly disclaim the

faintest inclination to perform unnatural acts; the idea of

committing sodomy would be _most disgusting_.

"To come to my actual condition of mind: While totally

indifferent to the person of woman (I always enjoyed their

friendship and companionship, and many of my best friends have

been ladies), I had a burning desire to have carnal intercourse

with a male, and had the capacity for falling in love, as it is

called, to the utmost extent. In imagination, I possessed the

female organ, and felt toward man exactly as an amorous female

would. At the time when I became fully conscious of my condition,

I attached little importance to it; I had not a notion of its

terrible import, nor of the future misery it would entail. All

that I had to learn by bitter experience.

"I did once think of forcing myself to have connection with a

prostitute in order to see whether the actual sensual enjoyment

might bring a change, and so have the power to marry. But when it

came to thinking over ways and means, my repugnance to the act

became so strong that it was quite out of the question. In the

case of any male to whom I became attached, I wanted to feel

ourselves together, skin to skin, and to be privileged to take

such liberties as an amorous female would take if that were all

permitted. I sought no purely sensual gratification of any kind;

my love was far too genuine for that.

"During the rather more than half a century which has elapsed

since my twelfth birthday, I have been genuinely in love about

thirteen times. I despair attempting to give an idea of the depth

and reality of my feelings. I have alluded to my precocity. I was

in love when 12 years old, the object being a man of 24, a

well-known analytical chemist. He came to my father's house very

frequently; and my heart beat almost at the mention of his name.

"The next serious time I was about 15. It was a farmer's son,

about two years older. I don't think that I was ever alone with

him, and really only knew him as a member of his family, yet for

a time he was my chief interest in life.

"When 21 I had a 'chum,' a youth of 17, who entertained for me,

at any rate, a brotherly affection. We were under the same roof,

and early one summer morning he got out of bed and came direct to

my room to talk about some matter or other. In order to talk more

comfortably he got into bed with me and we lay there just as two

school-girls might have done. This proximity was more than I

could stand, and my heart began to beat so that it was impossible

that he should not notice it. As, of course, he could not have

the slightest notion of the reason, he said in all innocence,

'Why, how your heart beats. I can hear it quite plainly.'

"So far my details are purely innocent. Up to 18, familiarities

passed at intervals between me and the son of the village doctor,

a youth about two years older than myself, and precociously

immoral. I did not really care for him much, but he was my chief

companion. Then I became a school-assistant, and for about six

years managed to control myself, only, alas, to fall again.

Another resolution I kept for eight years, one long fight with my

nature. Again I sinned in three instances, extending over three

or four years. I now come to a very painful and eventful episode

in my unhappy life which I would gladly pass over were it

possible. It was a case, in middle life, of sin, discovery, and

great folly in addition.

"Before going into details, so far as may be necessary, I cannot

help asking you to consider calmly and dispassionately my exact

condition compared with that of my fellow-creatures as a whole.

In my struggles to resist in the past, I have at times felt as if

wrestling in the folds of a python. I again sinned, then, with a

youth and his friend. Oddly enough, discovery followed through a

man who was actuated by a feeling of revenge for a strictly right

act on my part. The lads refused to state more than the truth,

and this did not satisfy the man, and a _third_ lad was

introduced, who was prepared to say anything. This was not all;

some twelve or fifteen more boys made similar accusations! The

general belief, in consequence, was that I had committed

'nameless' crimes in all directions, _ad lib_. If you were to ask

me for an explanation of the action of all these boys beyond the

_third_, who, of course, had some special inducements, I can

offer none. They may have thought that the original trio were

regarded rather in the light of _heroes_; why should _they_ not

be heroes, too?

"I might well feel crushed under such a load of accusations, but

that does not excuse the incredible folly of my conduct. I denied

alike the modicum of truth and the mass of lying, and went off to

America. However, as time passed on and my mind got into a proper

state, I felt that the truth must be told some time or other. I

accordingly wrote from America to the proper quarter a full

confession of my sin with regard to the two youths who had told

merely the truth, at the same time pointing out the falsehood of

all the rest of the accusations.

"I remained in America six years, and actually made money, so

that I could return to England with a small capital. I was also

under a promise to my three sisters (all older than myself) that

I would return in their lifetime. My programme was to purchase a

small, light business in London, and quietly earn my living; at

the same time making my presence known to no one. I _did_ buy

such a business, got swindled in the most clever way, and lost

every farthing I possessed in the world! I had to make my plight

known to old friends who all either gave or lent me money. Still

my position was a very precarious one. I tried an insurance

agency, one of the last resources of the educated destitute, but

soon found out that I was unfitted for work in which _impudence_

is a prime factor. Then an extraordinary stroke of good fortune

took place; almost simultaneously I began to get a few music

pupils, and literary work in connection with a good musical

journal.

"Making my presence known to old friends involved the same

information to those who were _not_ friends. My identity as a

journalist became known, and as time passed by it seemed to me as

if half the world had heard of my alleged iniquities. People who

have never set eyes on me seem to regard me in the light of a

monster of iniquity who ought not to be suffered to exist. All

these outsiders believe that I have committed 'nameless' offenses

times innumerable and lift up their hands in speechless horror at

the audacity of a man who, so situated, dares to appear openly in

public, under his own name, and look people in the face. They

have not even the brains to see that this very fearlessness

proves the fictitious character of their beliefs. Next, they

believe that if only they could get my dismissal from my

journalistic post I should be brought to starvation point. This

up to a year ago was true. Then an old relative died and left me

some property which I sold to invest in an annuity, and thus have

just enough to live on quietly, apart from what I may earn. Under

such strange conditions it might be asked whether life was not

unendurable. Frankly speaking, I cannot say that I find it so. I

have in London a few bachelor friends who go with me to theaters,

etc. In the suburbs I have about half a dozen family friends.

Here I meet with pleasant society and a hearty welcome. I am

passionately fond of music, have an excellent piano, and can hear

the best concerts in Europe. I go to all good plays. I am a good

chess player. Lastly, I am an omnivorous reader. You will allow

that my resources for passing the time are not limited.

"Of course, I am sorry that I sinned, and wish that I had not

done so. But I disclaim any feeling of shame."

S.W. was the youngest of four children and the only boy. His

father was 40 at his birth, his mother 33. The father was an

intellectual man of weak character, the mother a woman of violent

and eccentric temper, with, he believes, strong sexual passions.

S.W. knows of nothing in the family to account for his own

abnormal condition.

He is short (five feet five inches), but well built, with strong

chest and a powerful voice. His arms are weak and flabby

(feminine, he thinks), but the legs muscular. As a boy of 14 he

could walk forty miles with ease, and he played football till

near the age of 45. He is considered manly in character and

tastes, but is easily moved to tears under strong excitement.

There is no information as to the type of man to whom he is

attracted. I may observe, however, that the analytical chemist

who first evoked S.W.'s admiration was well known to me some

thirty years later, as he was my own teacher in chemistry. At

that time he was an elderly man of attractive appearance and

character, sympathetic and winning in manner to an almost

feminine extent.

S.W. has never felt the slightest sexual attraction toward the

opposite sex. The first indications of inverted feeling were at

the age of 6 or 7. Watching his father's pupils, boys of 13 or

14, from the windows, he speculated on what their organs of

generation were like. "In connection with a girl," he writes, "I

should no more have thought of such a thing than in the case of a

block of marble." About this time, indeed, he at times slept with

a sister of 10, who induced him to go through the form of sexual

connection, saying that it felt "so funny;" but he merely did

this to please her, and without the slightest interest or feeling

on his own part. This attitude became more marked with increased

knowledge, until he fell ardently in love at the age of 12.

Throughout life he has practised masturbation to a certain

extent, and is prepared to defend the practice in his own case.

His erotic dreams have been of only the vaguest and most shadowy

character. He is able to whistle. He takes a warm interest in

politics and in philanthropic work. But his chief love is for

music and he has published many musical compositions. On the

whole, and notwithstanding the persecution he has endured, he

does not regard his life as unhappy. At the same time he is

keenly conscious of the atmosphere of "Pariahdom" which surrounds

inverts, and in his own case this has never been alleviated by

any sense of companionship in misery. The facility with which

some inverts are said to recognize others of their own kind is

quite incomprehensible to him; he has never to his knowledge met

one.

HISTORY VI.--E.S., physician, aged 50.

"I have some reason," he writes, "for believing that some of my

relatives (on the paternal side) were not normal in their sexual

life. But I am sure that no such suspicion was entertained by

their friends or associates; they were very reticent people. A

great proportion of my near relatives have remained unmarried or

deferred marriage until late in life. None of them have been good

business men; all seem to have been more deeply concerned in

other things than in making--or in keeping--money. They have

mostly taken little or no share in public life, and not cared

much for society. Yet they have been folk of more than average

ability, with intellectual and æsthetic interests. We are prone

to enthusiasms, but lack perseverance. We are discursive and

superficial, perhaps, but none would call us stupid. We are

perhaps abnormally self-centered and self-conscious--never cruel

or vicious. Our powers of self-control are considerable; we are

conventional people only because we are lazy and intensely

dislike any open self-assertion. Yet we are nervous rather than

phlegmatic. All that is on the father's side. My maternal

ancestors have been concerned with farming and the sea and have

also had a similar lack of business capacity, but with less

mental adaptiveness and alertness, with more steadiness of

purpose, however, always doers rather than dreamers. Among them I

remember one cousin who was probably abnormal, although he died

when I was too young to notice much. Again, they were all rather

reserved people, but more genial with strangers, more socially

inclined, and with less self-control.

"I was an only child and a spoilt one. I was always quick at

school, fond of learning, and finding my lessons no trouble.

Serious study I disliked. But for school purposes I did not find

it necessary, and had no difficulty in carrying all before me. I

was never fond of games, although very fond of being out of doors

and of walking. Few of my relatives have been at all keen on

sport. I made no close friendships at school and was never very

popular with my schoolfellows, who, however, tolerated my odd

ways better than might have been expected. I was easily brought

to appreciate good literature, but I never had much power of

expression or of strenuous thought. I was extremely susceptible

and impressible, moved by beauty of any kind, but never at all

ambitious or in any way creative. I was easily stimulated to

work, and then loved to work; but, unless the stimulus were

maintained the natural indolence of my disposition asserted

itself, and I wasted my powers in dreams and trifles. My memory

was very quick and retentive, in the main, but curiously

capricious. I always lacked initiative and decision. At college

my successes were continued. I gained medals and prizes, passed

my examinations easily, and graduated 'with first-class honors.'

In my professional lifework I have been successful rather beyond

the average. I love it with all my heart.

"I cannot speak with any confidence about the first stirrings of

my sexual instincts, but I think I can assert that they have at

no time led me to any desire for the opposite sex. It is true

that my earliest recollection of the kind is concerned with

intimacies with a girl play-fellow, but as we had at the time

reached only the mature age of 7 (at the most) I fancy that our

mutual exhibitions--for there was nothing more--simply satisfied

our natural curiosity. Certainly these memories are, in my mind,

in no way set apart from the recollections of other kinds of

play. Next to that I remember the usual schoolboy talk about

things hidden and forbidden, but up till I was 12 or so this was

simply dirty talk, concerned more with renal and intestinal

functions than with any sexual feelings or understanding. One boy

was known to us all (and of my not inconsiderable circle of early

friends, all grew up to be normal people, who married and had

children in due course) for the unusual size of his parts and for

the freedom with which he invited and satisfied the curiosity of

his friends. He must have been precocious, for he could not have

been more than 12, and I remember to have heard that he had a

thick growth of pubic hair. Even then, although I know that my

curiosity--to put it at that only--was active, I never allowed

myself to have any dealings with him; and I think I should have

discouraged them had they been suggested to me. That is the odd

thing about my life: the things I longed intensely to do I would

not let myself do, not from any religious or moral scruple, but

from some inexplicable fastidiousness or scrupulosity which is

yet as active as ever, although I am sure that it would not be

able to hold its own could these favorable conditions be

repeated, but would be overcome by the imperious and fully grown

desires which, by long repression, or by unsatisfactory

diversion, have grown to be so strong. Indeed, given the

opportunity, and the assurance that no first seduction or

corruption of anyone was in question, they would prove quite

irrepressible.

"Certainly, long before puberty--which was early with me--I

remember being greatly attracted to certain boys, and wishing to

have an opportunity of sleeping with them. Had I been able to do

so, I am sure I should have been impelled to get into as close

contact with their naked body as possible, and I do not think I

should then have craved for anything more. I knew some

boys--perhaps a little older--who even then had relations, which

were certainly not innocent, with a girl who was a year or two

older than any of us. She once kissed me, to my intense shame.

But I felt that these relations would have been unspeakably

disgusting and I took no particular interest in hearing about

them. I remember being fondled and caressed by a very

good-looking boy of 16 when I was three or four years younger and

had sustained some hurt at play; and I am still able to recall

the thrill of delight that I experienced at his touch. Nothing

took place that all the world might not have seen, but I remember

being taken between his knees as he sat, and his arms being put

around my neck, and the warm, soft pressure of his thighs had an

unspeakable effect on me.

"About this time, too, an older boy, perhaps about 18, used to

get hold of smaller boys when on country walks, to throw them

down and then look at and toy with their genitals. He was

himself a handsome boy, and I was greatly excited when told about

this by boys who had experienced it, and wished greatly to have

it done to me. It never was; and if it had been attempted I know

I should have resisted with all my strength, although my desires

would have set me aflame. This boy died before he was 20, with a

psoas abscess, and I remember crying myself to sleep the night I

learned of his death. Another boy, about three years older than

myself, who had very silky hair, I used to be attracted by and I

was always trying to stroke his hair, but he always objected.

"I must have been about 12 when I first was taught to masturbate

by a cousin who was slightly older. At first I thought it silly,

but I used to watch him at it, and practised it myself from time

to time until I became old enough to experience the proper

sensation. Then I have reason to think I gave myself up to it

rather freely, but it was generally done in solitude, although it

was long before I realized that there was anything wrong about it

or that it might prove hurtful. Looking back now, I feel

perfectly certain that my instincts were wholly homosexual from

the very first. This cousin, who possessed notable intellectual

and artistic gifts, married, but I feel sure his liking for his

own sex was not normal.

"With another cousin, almost years my junior, I was always on

terms of the most affectionate intimacy. My holidays at his

parents' house were my greatest delight. We were always together

by night or day; we slept in the same bed, literally in each

other's arms. To me it afforded the keenest sexual pleasure to

press close to his naked body. We used mutually to handle and

caress our parts, but without any attempt at mutual masturbation,

although at that period I regularly practised it on myself. I

asked him once about it, but he had not been taught it by others;

and to my great pride and satisfaction I can say that I never

either did it to him or asked him to do it to me. This I mention

as an instance of my restraint in act, although my thoughts and

desires knew no such curb. I remember also an elder brother of

his, perhaps three or four years my senior, once showing me (then

about 12, I suppose) his semierect penis. He would not allow me

to touch it, but showed me how to draw back the foreskin so as to

uncover the glans. His penis was large, and the incident was not

forgotten. We had no other relation and I know that both he and

my own friend grew up to be quite normal men.

"I think I must have been about 17 when I got frightened about

the occurrence of nocturnal emissions, which I believed were the

evil result of masturbation, and for two or three years I

continued in considerable mental distress until, when in my

second or third year at college, I summoned up courage enough to

consult our good old family doctor, who reassured me, but made, I

now think, too light of my confidences, so that I relapsed the

more readily, although much later on, into old habits.

"From our windows at home we looked over a bit of common or down

to the beach, and I used to keep watch on warm summer afternoons;

over boys who might be bathing, to observe them through our

telescope. All this I kept strictly secret and I was never

surprised. I might just as well, and without arousing the

slightest suspicion of my motive, have walked down to the beach

and seen them and chatted with them; but this I could not have

brought myself to do. It gave me considerable sexual satisfaction

when I was able to see them bathing without pants. I also used to

watch them at play on the common, and felt rewarded when I saw,

as I not infrequently did, sexual familiarities taking place.

These violently excited me and sometimes brought on orgasm,

always erection with pleasure. Indeed, it was an experience of

this kind that made me return to masturbation after I had given

it up for a while. I remember one day seeing two lads of about 16

lying on the grass in the sunshine; all at once the bigger lad

put out his hand and tried to open his companion's trousers. He

resisted with all his might, and a long struggle ensued, ending

in the smaller lad having his penis exposed and manipulated by

the other. Even at this day the recollection of this excites me.

Both lads grew up to be normal men.

"Twice only have I been approached by grown-up people. When I was

about 13 I used to meet often, when going to school by train, an

old gentleman who courted me, as it were, used often to talk to

me and asked me to come to see his well-known scientific

collections, but I always had a vague distrust of him and never

went. One day in the summer during a spare hour I met him in an

empty room in the museum, where there were usually very few

visitors at that time of day, and where large show-cases gave

concealment. He came up to me and told me he had been away in the

country, and that, when making his way home through hedges and

thorny bushes, some of the thorns got stuck amongst his clothes

and were still giving him uneasiness. 'I would be very grateful,'

he said, 'if you would put your hand down and try if you can feel

any thorns sticking in my underflannels and pull them out.' He

then unbuttoned his braces on one side, undid his trousers and

made me thrust my hand over his groin and lower abdomen. I

avoided touching his genitals, but he pushed my hand down in that

direction until, burning with shame, I made my escape and ran

off, not stopping until I was safe in school. I scarcely

understood it, but never spoke of it, and avoided him ever

afterward. I learned later on that he was a well-off bachelor

who took a great interest in working lads and young men and did

much to help them on in life and keep them, so it was said, from

falling into bad company. He died at a great age and left most of

his fortune to an institution for lads, as well as large legacies

to youths in whom he had been interested.

"The other time was on top of a tramcar when a grown-up man who

was near pressed as close to me as he could, began to talk,

praised my dark eyes, then put his hand on my thigh under my

loose cloak and felt up toward my parts. At the same time he took

hold of my hand, caressed it and put it over his parts (it was in

the dusk). This excited me and, if we had not been at our

destination, I think I would gladly have permitted further

familiarities. He tried to ask me where I lived, but there was no

time to answer, and the female relative who was with me (on

another seat) would no doubt have prevented this from having any

further sequel.

"On more than one occasion I have experienced the sexual orgasm

as the result of mental anxiety. The first time this occurred was

when I was hurrying to avoid being late for school. Another time

was when I was about 24, and was extremely anxious to fill an

appointment for which I was late. So copious was the emission

that I had to go home and change.

"As a medical student, the first reference bearing definitely on

the subject of sexual inversion was made in the class of Medical

Jurisprudence, where certain sexual crimes were alluded to--very

summarily and inadequately--but nothing was said of the existence

of sexual inversion as the 'normal' condition of certain unhappy

people, nor was any distinction drawn between the various

non-normal acts, which were all classed together as

manifestations of the criminal depravity of ordinary or insane

people. To a student beginning to be acutely conscious that his

sexual nature differed profoundly from that of his fellows,

nothing could be more perplexing and disturbing, and it shut me

up more completely in my reserve than ever. I felt that this

teaching must be based on some radical error or prejudice or

misapprehension, for I knew from my own very clear remembrance of

my own development that my peculiarity was not acquired, but

inborn; my great misfortune undoubtedly, but not my fault.

"It was still more unfortunate that in the course of the lectures

on Clinical Medicine there was not the slightest allusion to the

subject. All sorts of rare diseases--some of which I have not yet

met with in the course of twenty-one years of a busy

practice--were fully discussed, but we were left entirely

ignorant of a subject so vitally important to me personally, and,

as it seems to me, to the profession to which I aspired. There

might have been an incidental reference to masturbation--although

I do not remember it--but its real significance received no

attention; and what we students knew of it was the result of our

reading or of our personal experiences.

"In the class of Mental Disease there was, naturally, more

detailed and systematic reference to facts in the sexual life and

to sexual inversion as a rare pathological condition. But still

there was not a comforting word to reassure me, growing ever more

hopelessly ashamed of what it seemed was a criminal or a gravely

morbid nature.

"Among all my fellow-students I knew of no one constituted like

myself; but my natural reserve--increased, of course, by my

consciousness of what I saw would be thought to be a criminal

tendency--did not urge me to exchange of confidences or to the

formation of; close friendships.

"After graduation I became a resident medical officer in the

hospital and private assistant to one of the professors--a

physician and teacher of worldwide reputation. With him I

associated on the most cordial and affectionate terms; and often

in the course of conversation I tried to bring him to discuss the

subject, but without success. It was obviously unpleasant and

uninteresting to him. Enough was said, however, to enable me to

realize that he held the current ideas on the subject; and I

would not for worlds have allowed him, to guess that I myself

came under the despised and tainted category.

"I have seldom heard sexual inversion discussed among my

professional friends. They speak of it with disgust or amusement.

I have never met a professional man who would consider it

dispassionately and scientifically. For them it was a subject

entirely belonging to psychological medicine.

"I have had no admitted case of it among my patients; but I have

often instinctively felt that some who consulted me about other

matters would have taken me into their confidence about that, but

for their fear of being cruelly misunderstood.

"As to my moral attitude I fear to speak. Grossness disgusts me;

but I am not sure that I should be able to resist temptation

placed in my way. But I am absolutely sure that I should never,

under any circumstances, tempt others to any disgraceful act. If

I ever committed any sexual act with one of my own sex whom I

loved, I could not look at it or approach it in any other than a

sacramental way. This sounds blasphemous and shocking, but I

cannot otherwise express my meaning.

"As regards the marriage of inverts, my own feeling is that for a

congenital invert--no matter how fully the situation be explained

beforehand--it is a step fraught with too great possibilities of

tragedy and of the deepest unhappiness, to be advised at all. My

view is that for the invert, far more than for the ordinary

person, there is no escape from the supreme necessity of

self-control in any relationship he may form. If that be attained

then the ideal is a relationship with another man of similar

temperament--not a platonic one, necessarily--by means of which

the highest happiness of both may be reached. But this can occur

_very_ seldom.

"To poetry and the fine arts I am very susceptible, and I have

given a great deal of time to this study. I am devoted heart and

soul to music, which is more and more to me every year I live.

Trivial or light music I cannot endure, but of Beethoven, Bach,

Händel, Schumann, Schubert, Brahms, Tschaikowsky, and Wagner I

should never hear enough. Here, too, my sympathies, are very

catholic, and I delight in McDowell, Debussy, Richard Strauss,

and Hugo Wolf."

HISTORY VII.--"My parentage is very sound and healthy. Both my

parents (who belong to the professional middle class) have good

general health; nor can I trace any marked abnormal or diseased

tendency, of mind or body, in any records of the family.

"Though of a strongly nervous temperament myself, and sensitive,

my health is good. I am not aware of any tendency to physical

disease. In early manhood, however, owing, I believe, to the

great emotional tension under which I lived, my nervous system

was a good deal shattered and exhausted. Mentally and morally my

nature is pretty well balanced, and I have never had any serious

perturbations in these departments.

"At the age of 8 or 9, and long before distinct sexual feelings

declared themselves, I felt a friendly attraction toward my own

sex, and this developed after the age of puberty into a

passionate sense of love, which, however, never found any

expression for itself till I was fully 20 years of age. I was a

day-boarder at school and heard little of school-talk on sex

subjects, was very reserved and modest besides; no elder person

or parent ever spoke to me on such matters; and the passion for

my own sex developed gradually, utterly uninfluenced from the

outside. I never even, during all this period, and till a good

deal later, learned the practice of masturbation. My own sexual

nature was a mystery to me. I found myself cut off from the

understanding of others, felt myself an outcast, and, with a

highly loving and clinging temperament, was intensely miserable.

I thought about my male friends--sometimes boys of my own age,

sometimes elder boys, and once even a master--during the day and

dreamed about them at night, but was too convinced that I was a

hopeless monstrosity ever to make any effectual advances. Later

on it was much the same, but gradually, though slowly, I came to

find that there were others like myself. I made a few special

friends, and at last it came to me occasionally to sleep with

them and to satisfy my imperious need by mutual embraces and

emissions. Before this happened, however, I was once or twice on

the brink of despair and madness with repressed passion and

torment.

"Meanwhile, from the first, my feeling, physically, toward the

female sex was one of indifference, and later on, with the more

special development of sex desires, one of positive repulsion.

Though having several female friends, whose society I like and to

whom I am sincerely attached, the thought of marriage or

cohabitation with any such has always been odious to me.

"As a boy I was attracted in general by boys rather older than

myself; after leaving school I still fell in love, in a romantic

vein, with comrades of my own standing. Now,--at the age of

37,--my ideal of love is a powerful, strongly built man, of my

own age or rather younger--preferably of the working class.

Though having solid sense and character, he need not be specially

intellectual. If endowed in the latter way, he must not be too

glib or refined. Anything effeminate in a man, or anything of the

cheap intellectual style, repels me very decisively.

"I have never had to do with actual pederasty, so called. My

chief desire in love is bodily nearness or contact, as to sleep

naked with a naked friend; the specially sexual, though urgent

enough, seems a secondary matter. Pederasty, either active or

passive, might seem in place to me with one I loved very

devotedly and who also loved me to that degree; but I think not

otherwise. I am an artist by temperament and choice, fond of all

beautiful things, especially the male human form; of active,

slight, muscular build; and sympathetic, but somewhat indecisive

character, though possessing self-control.

"I cannot regard my sexual feelings as unnatural or abnormal,

since they have disclosed themselves so perfectly naturally and

spontaneously within me. All that I have read in books or heard

spoken about the ordinary sexual love, its intensity and passion,

lifelong devotion, love at first sight, etc., seems to me to be

easily matched by my own experiences in the homosexual form; and,

with regard to the morality of this complex subject, my feeling

is that it is the same as should prevail in love between man and

woman, namely: that no bodily satisfaction should be sought at

the cost of another person's distress or degradation. I am sure

that this kind of love is, notwithstanding the physical

difficulties that attend it, as deeply stirring and ennobling as

the other kind, if not more so; and I think that for a perfect

relationship the actual sex gratifications (whatever they may be)

probably hold a less important place in this love than in the

other."

HISTORY VIII.--M.N., aged 30. "My grandfather might be said to be

of abnormal temperament, for, though of very humble origin, he

organized and carried out an extremely arduous mission work and

became an accomplished linguist, translating the Bible into an

Eastern tongue and compiling the first dictionary of that

language. He died, practically of overwork, at the age of 45. He

was twice married, my father being his third son by the second

wife. I believe that two, if not more, of the family (numbering

seven in all) were inverted, and the only one of them to marry

was my father. My grandmother was the last representative of an

old and very 'wild' Irish family. She died at an advanced age, of

paralysis. My father was 36 and my mother 21 at the time of their

marriage. I was born three years after and was their only child.

The marriage proved a most unhappy one, they being utterly

unsuited to each other in every way.

"My father's health during the first years of his marriage was

very delicate, and I have reason to believe that it had been

undermined in certain ways by his life abroad. I understand I was

born with slight gonorrheal affection, and as a child my health

was very indifferent. This latter may have been brought about by

the peculiarly unhappy and unnatural life I led. I had no

companions of my own age, and did not even attend any school

until after my mother's death. My father superintended my

education up to that time, and I had free access to a large and

very varied library, and a great deal of solitary leisure to

enjoy it in. There were a number of medical and scientific books

in it, which were my principal favorites, and I remember deciding

at a very early age to be a doctor. When about 5 years old I

recollect having a sexual dream connected with a railway porter.

It afforded me great pleasure to recall this dream, and about

that time I discovered a method of self-gratification (there is

not much 'teaching' required in these matters!).

"I cannot say that the dream I have mentioned constituted

absolutely the first intimation of inverted feeling, but rather

that it crystallized vague ideas which I might have already had

on the subject. I can recollect that when about between 3 and 4

years of age a young fellow of about 20 came to our house several

times as a visitor. He was fond of children, I suppose, and I

generally sat on his knee and was kissed by him. This was a

source of great pleasure to me, but I cannot remember if it was

accompanied by erection. I can only recall that his attention and

caresses made a greater impression upon me than those of women.

When about that age too I was often aroused when sleeping with my

mother, and told not to lie on my face. I remember that erection

was always present on these occasions. The dream was the first of

many of its kind, and in my case they have never been accompanied

by emission. They have always been of an 'inverted' character,

though I have occasionally had dreams about women. These latter,

however, have usually partaken somewhat of the nature of a

nightmare!

"Up to the age of 14 I felt much perplexed and depressed by my

views on sexual desire, and was convinced that they were peculiar

to myself. This, combined with the solitary condition of my

life, and about four years' continued ill-treatment prior to my

mother's death (she had given way to drink for that period), had

a very injurious effect on my health, mental and bodily. Looking

back from my present point of view, I can understand and forgive

many things which appeared monstrous and unjust to me as a child.

My mother's life must have been a very unhappy one, and she was

bitterly disappointed in many ways, very likely in me as well. My

unfortunate, misunderstood temperament led me to be shy and

secretive, and I was often ailing, and my training was not

calculated to improve matters. At last, however, change and

freedom came, and I was sent to a boarding-school. Here, of

course, I soon met with attachments and gratifications with other

boys. I arrived at puberty, and my health improved under happier

surroundings. I was not long in discovering that my companions

viewed the pleasures that meant so much to me from an entirely

different standpoint. Their gratifications were usually

accompanied by conversation about, and a general direction of

thought toward, females. When I had turned 15, owing to monetary

difficulties I was obliged to leave school, and was soon not only

thrown on my own resources, but accountable to no one but myself

for my conduct. Of course, my next discovery was that my case, so

far from being peculiar, was a most common one, and I was quickly

initiated into all the mysteries of inversion, with its

freemasonry and 'argot.' Altogether my experience of inverts has

been a pretty wide and varied one, and I have always endeavored

to classify and compare cases which have come under my notice

with a view to arriving at some sort of conclusion or

explanation.

"I suppose it is due to female versatility or impressibility that

it is possible for me to experience mentally the emotions

attributable to either sex, according to the age and temperament

of my companion; for instance, with one older than myself,

possessing well-marked male characteristics, I am able to feel

all that surrender and dependence which is so essentially

feminine. On the other hand, if with a youth of feminine type and

behavior I can realize, with an equal amount of pleasure, the

tender, yet dominant, attitude of the male.

"I experience no particular 'horror' of women sexually. I should

imagine that my feeling toward them resembles very much what

normal people feel with regard to others of their own sex." M.N.

remarks that he cannot whistle, and that his favorite color is

green.

In this case the subject easily found a moral _modus vivendi_ with his

inverted instinct, and he takes its gratification for granted. In the

following case, which, I believe, is typical of a large group, the subject

has never yielded to his inverted impulses, and, except so far as

masturbation is concerned, has preserved strict chastity.

HISTORY IX.--R.S., aged 31, American of French descent. "Upon the

question of heredity I may say that I belong to a reasonably

healthy, prolific, and long-lived family. On my father's side,

however, there is a tendency toward pulmonary troubles. He

himself died of pneumonia, and two of his brothers and a nephew

of consumption. Neither of my parents were morbid or eccentric.

Excepting for a certain shyness with strangers, my father was a

very masculine man. My mother is somewhat nervous, but is not

imaginative, nor at all demonstrative in her affections. I think

that my own imaginative and artistic temperament must come from

my father's side. Perhaps my French ancestry has something to do

with it. With the exception of my maternal grandfather, all my

progenitors have been of French descent. My mother's father was

English.

"I possess a mercurial temperament and a strong sense of the

ludicrous. Though my _physique_ is slight, my health has always

been excellent. Of late years especially I have been greatly

given to introspection and self-scrutiny, but have never had any

hallucinations, mental delusions, nor hysterics, and am not at

all superstitious. Spiritualistic manifestations, hypnotic

dabblings, and the other psychical fads of the day have little or

no attraction for me. In fact, I have always been skeptical of

them, and they rather bore me.

"At school I was an indolent, dreamy boy, shirking study, but

otherwise fairly docile to my teachers. From earliest childhood I

have indulged in omnivorous taste for reading, my particular

likings being for travels, esthetics, metaphysical and

theological subjects, and more recently for poetry and certain

forms of mysticism. I never cared much for history or for

scientific subjects. From the beginning, too, I showed a strong

artistic bent, and possessed an overpowering love for all things

beautiful. As a child I was passionately fond of flowers, loved

to be in the woods and alone, and wanted to become an artist. My

parents opposed the latter wish and I gave way before their

opposition.

"In me the homosexual nature is singularly complete, and is

undoubtedly congenital. The most intense delight of my childhood

(even when a tiny boy in a nurse's charge) was to watch acrobats

and riders at the circus. This was not so much for the skillful

feats as on account of the beauty of their persons. Even then I

cared chiefly for the more lithe and graceful fellows. People

told me that circus actors were wicked, and would steal little

boys, and so I came to look upon my favorites as half-devil and

half-angel. When I was older and could go about alone, I would

often hang around the tents of travelling shows in hope of

catching a glimpse of the actors. I longed to see them naked,

without their tights, and used to lie awake at night thinking of

them and longing to be loved and embraced by them. A certain

bareback rider, a sort of jockey, used especially to please me on

account of his handsome legs, which were clothed in fleshlings up

to his waist, leaving his beautiful loins uncovered by a

breech-clout. There was nothing consciously sensual about these

reveries, because at the time I had no sensual feelings or

knowledge. Curiously enough, the women-actors repelled me then

(as they do to this day) quite as strongly as I was attracted by

the men.

"I used, also, to take great pleasure in watching men and boys in

swimming, but my opportunities for seeing them thus were

extremely rare. I never dared let my comrades know how I felt

about these matters, but the sight of a well-formed, naked youth

or man would fill me (and does now) with mingled feelings of

bashfulness, anguish, and delight. I used to tell myself endless

stories of a visionary castle inhabited by beautiful boys, one of

whom was especially my dear chum.

"It was always the _prince_, in fairy tales, who held my interest

or affection. I was constantly falling in love with handsome boys

whom I never knew; nor did I ever try to mix in their company,

for I was abashed before them, and had no liking nor aptitude for

boyish games. Sometimes I played with girls because they were

more quiet and gentler, but I cared for them little or not at

all.

"As is usually the case, my parents neglected to impart to me any

sexual knowledge, and such as I possessed was gathered furtively

from tainted sources, bad boys' talk at school and elsewhere. My

elders let me know, in a vague way, that talk of the kind was

wicked, and natural timidity and a wish to be 'good' kept me from

learning much about sexual matters. As I never went to

boarding-school, I was spared, perhaps, many of the degrading

initiations administered by knowing boys at such institutions.

"In spite of what has been said above, I do not believe that I

was sexually very precocious, and even now I feel that more

pleasure would ensue from merely contemplating than from personal

contact with the object of my amorous attentions.

"As I grew older there came, of course, an undefined physical

longing, but it was the _beauty_ of those I admired which mainly

appealed to me. At the time of puberty I spontaneously acquired

the habit of masturbation. Once while bathing I found that a

pleasant feeling came with touching the sexual organs. It was not

long before I was confirmed in the habit. At first I practised it

but seldom, but afterward much more frequently (say, once a

week), though at times months have elapsed without any

indulgences on my part. I have only had erotic dreams three or

four times in my life. The masturbation habit I regard as

morally reprehensible and have made many resolutions to break it,

but without avail. It affords me only the most momentary

satisfaction, and is always followed by remorseful scruples.

"I have never in my life had any sexual feeling for a woman, nor

any sexual connection with any woman whatsoever. The very thought

of such a thing is excessively repugnant and disgusting to me.

This is true, apart from any moral considerations, and I do not

think I could bring myself to it. I am not attracted by young

women in any way. Even their physical beauty has little or no

charm for me, and I often wonder how men can be so affected by

it. On the other hand, I am not a woman-hater, and have several

strong friends of the opposite sex. They are, however, women

older than myself, and our friendship is based solely on certain

intellectual or esthetic tastes we have in common.

"I have had practically no physical relations with men; at any

rate, none specifically sexual. Once, when about 19 or 21, I

started to embrace a beautifully formed youth with whom I was

sleeping, but timidity and scruples got the better of my

feelings, and, as my bedfellow was not amorously inclined toward

me, nothing came of it. A few years after this I became strongly

attached to a friend whom I had already known for several years.

Circumstances threw us very much together during one summer. It

was now that I felt for the first time the full shock of love. He

returned my affection, but both of us were shy of showing our

feelings or speaking of them. Often when walking together after

night-fall we would put our arms about each other. Sometimes,

too, when sleeping together we would lie in close contact, and my

friend once suggested that I put my legs against his. He

frequently begged me to spend the night with him; but I began to

fear my feelings, and slept with him but seldom. We neither of us

had any definite ideas about homosexual relations, and, apart

from what I have related above, we had no further contact with

each other. A few months after our amorous feelings had developed

my friend died. His death caused me great distress, and my

naturally religious temperament began to manifest itself quite

strongly. At this time, too, I first read some writings of Mr.

Addington Symonds, and certain allusions in his work, coupled

with my recent experience, soon stirred me to a full

consciousness of my inverted nature.

"About eight months after my friend's death I happened to meet in

a strange town a youth of about my own age who exerted upon me a

strong and instant attraction. He possessed a refined, handsome

face, was gracefully built, and, though he was rather

undemonstrative, we soon became fast friends.

"We were together only for a few days, when I was obliged to

leave for my home, and the parting caused me great unhappiness

and depression. A few months after we spent a vacation together.

One day during our trip we went swimming, and undressed in the

same bathhouse. When I saw my friend naked for the first time he

seemed to me so beautiful that I longed to throw my arms about

him and cover him with kisses. I kept my feelings hidden,

however, hardly daring to look at him for fear of being unable to

restrain my desires. Several times afterward, in his room, I saw

him stripped, with the same effect upon my emotions. Until I had

seen him naked my feelings for him were not of a physical

character, but afterward I longed for actual contact, but only by

embraces and kisses. Though he was fond of me, he had absolutely

no amorous longings for me, and being a simple, pure-minded

fellow, would have loathed me for mine and my inverted nature. I

was careful never to let him discover it, and I was made very

unhappy when he confided that he was in love with a young girl

whom he wished to marry. This episode took place several years

ago, and though we are still friends my emotional feelings for

him have cooled considerably.

"I have always been very shy of showing any affectionate

tendencies. Most of my acquaintances (and close friends even)

think me curiously cold, and often wonder why I have never fallen

in love or married. For obvious reasons I have never been able to

tell them.

"Three or four years ago a little book by Coventry Patmore fell

into my hands, and from its perusal resulted a strange blending

of my religious and erotic notions. The desire to love and be

loved is hard to drown, and, when I realized that homosexually it

was neither lawful nor possible for me to love in this world, I

began to project my longings into the next. By birth I am a Roman

Catholic, and in spite of a somewhat skeptical temper, manage to

remain one by conviction.

"From the doctrines of the Trinity, Incarnation, and Eucharist, I

have drawn conclusions which would fill the minds of the average

pietist with holy horror; nevertheless I believe that (granting

the premises) these conclusions are both logically and

theologically defensible. The Divinity of my fancied paradise

resembles in no way the vapid conceptions of Fra Angelico, or the

Quartier St. Sulpice. His physical aspect, at least, would be

better represented by some Praxitilean demigod or Flandrin's

naked, brooding boy.

"While these imaginings have caused me considerable moral

disquietude, they do not seem wholly reprehensible, because I

feel that the chief happiness I would derive by their realization

would be mainly from the contemplation of the loved one, rather

than from closer joys.

"I possess only a slight knowledge of the history and particulars

of erotic mysticism, but it is likely that my notions are neither

new nor peculiar, and many utterances of the few mystical writers

with whose works I am acquainted seem substantially in accord

with my own longings and conclusions. In endeavoring to find for

them some sanction of valid authority, I have always sought

corroboration from members of my own sex; hence am less likely to

have fashioned my views after those of hypersensitive or

hysterical women.

"You will rightly infer that it is difficult for me to say

exactly how I regard (morally) the homosexual tendency. Of this

much, however, I am certain, that, even, if it were possible, I

would not exchange my inverted nature for a normal one. I suspect

that the sexual emotions and even inverted ones have a more

subtle significance than is generally attributed to them; but

modern moralists either fight shy of transcendental

interpretations or see none, and I am ignorant and unable to

solve the mystery these feelings seem to imply.

"Patmore speaks boldly enough, in his way, and Lacordaire has

hinted at things, but in a very guarded manner. I have neither

the ability nor opportunity to study what the mystics of the

Middle Ages have to say along these lines, and, besides, the

medieval way of looking at things is not congenial to me. The

chief characteristic of my tendency is an overpowering admiration

for male beauty, and in this I am more akin to the Greeks.

"I have absolutely no words to tell you how powerfully such

beauty affects me. Moral and intellectual worth is, I know, of

greater value, but physical beauty I _see_ more clearly, and it

appears to me the most _vivid_ (if not the most perfect)

manifestation of the divine. A little incident may, perhaps,

reveal to you my feelings more completely. Not long ago I

happened to see an unusually well-formed young fellow enter a

house of assignation with a common woman of the streets. The

sight filled me with the keenest anguish, and the thought that

his beauty would soon be at the disposal of a prostitute made me

feel as if I were a powerless and unhappy witness to a sacrilege.

It may be that my rage for male loveliness is only another

outbreaking of the old Platonic mania, for as time goes on I find

that I long less for the actual youth before me, and more and

more for some ideal, perfect being whose bodily splendor and

loving heart are the realities whose reflections only we see in

this cave of shadows. Since the birth and development within me

of what, for lack of a better name, I term my homosexualized

Patmorean ideal, life has become, in the main, a weary business.

I am not despondent, however, because many things still hold for

me a certain interest. When that interest dies down, as it is

wont from time to time, I endeavor to be patient. God grant that,

after the end _here_, I may be drawn from the shadow, and

seemingly vain imaginings into the possession of their

never-ending reality _hereafter_."

HISTORY X.--A.H., aged 62. Belongs to a family which cannot be

regarded as healthy, but there is no insanity among near

relations. Father a very virile man of high character and good

intelligence, but not sound physical health. Mother was

high-strung and nervous, but possessed of indomitable courage and

very affectionate; she lived very happily with her husband. She

became a chronic invalid and died of consumption. A.H. was a

seven months' child, the third in the family, who were born very

rapidly, so that there is only three years difference in the ages

of the first and third children. A.H. believes that one of his

brothers, who has never married and prefers men to women, is also

inverted, though not to the same degree as himself, and he also

suspects that a relation of his mother's may have been an invert.

Sister, who resembles the father in character, is married, but is

spoken of as a woman's woman rather than a man's woman. The

family generally are considered proud and reserved, but of

superior mental endowment.

In early life A.H. was delicate and his studies were often

interrupted by illness. Though living under happy conditions he

was shy and nervous, often depressed. In later life his health

has been up to the average, and he has usually been able to

conceal his mental doubts and diffidence.

As a child he played with dolls and made girls his companions

until an age when he grew conscious that his conduct was unusual

and became ashamed, while his father seemed troubled about him.

He regards himself as having been a very childish child.

His conscious sexual life began between the ages of 8 and 10. He

was playing in the garden when he saw a manservant who had long

been with the family, standing at the door of a shed with his

penis exposed and erect. The boy had never seen anything of the

kind before, but felt great delight in the exhibition and moved

shyly toward the man, who retreated into the shed. The boy

followed and was allowed to caress and play with the penis until

ejaculation took place, the man replying, in reply to the child's

innocent inquiries, that it "felt good." This experience was

frequently repeated with the same man, and the boy confided in a

boy friend, with whom he tried to ascertain by personal

experience what the "good feeling" was like, but they were too

young to derive any pleasure from the attempt beyond the joy of

what was instinctively felt to be "eating forbidden fruit."

From this period his sexual tendencies began to become fixed and

self-conscious. He has never at any period of life had a moment's

conscious sexual attraction toward a person of the opposite sex.

His warmest friendships have, indeed, been with women and much,

perhaps most, of the happiness he has enjoyed has been furnished

by those friendships. But passion has only been aroused by

persons of his own sex, generally by men much younger than

himself. He feels shy and uncomfortable in the presence of men

of his own age. But even at his present age, a touch of a man or

boy may cause the liveliest gratification.

Shortly after the incident in boyhood, already narrated, A.H.

induced a little boy companion to go to a quiet spot, where, at

A.H.'s suggestion, each placed the other's penis in his mouth by

turns. A.H. had never heard of such a proceeding. It was a

natural instinct. He began to masturbate at an early age. But he

soon found a companion to share his passion. An older man,

especially, married and with a family, became his accomplice on

every possible opportunity, and they would manipulate each other.

At the age of 21, _fellatio_ began to be practised with this man.

It became a lifelong practice, and the preferred method of sexual

gratification. He likes best to have it performed on himself, but

he has never asked anyone to do for him what he would not himself

do for the other if desired. There has never been _pedicatio_.

The penis, it may be added, is of good size, and the testicles

rather large.