THE NATURE OF SEXUAL INVERSION.
Analysis of Histories--Race--Heredity--General Health--First Appearance of
Homosexual Impulse--Sexual Precocity and Hyperesthesia--Suggestion and
Other Exciting Causes of Inversion--Masturbation--Attitude Toward
Women--Erotic Dreams--Methods of Sexual Relationship--Pseudo-sexual
Attraction--Physical Sexual Abnormalities--Artistic and Other
Aptitudes--Moral Attitude of the Invert.
Before stating briefly my own conclusions as to the nature of sexual
inversion, I propose to analyze the facts brought out in the histories
which I have been able to study.[183]
RACE.--All my cases, 80 in number, are British and American, 20 living in
the United States and the rest being British. Ancestry, from the point of
view of race, was not made a matter of special investigation. It appears,
however, that at least 44 are English or mainly English; at least 10 are
Scotch or of Scotch extraction; 2 are Irish and 4 others largely Irish; 4
have German fathers or mothers; another is of German descent on both
sides, while 2 others are of remote German extraction; 2 are partly, and 1
entirely, French; 2 have a Portuguese strain, and at least 2 are more or
less Jewish. Except the apparently frequent presence of the German
element, there is nothing remarkable in this ancestry.
HEREDITY.--It is always difficult to deal securely with the significance
of heredity, or even to establish a definite basis of facts. I have by no
means escaped this difficulty, for in some cases I have not even had an
opportunity of cross-examining the subjects whose histories I have
obtained. Still, the facts, so far as they emerge, have some interest. I
possess some record of heredity in 62 of my cases. Of these, not less than
24, or in the proportion of nearly 39 per cent., assert that they have
reason to believe that other cases of inversion have occurred in their
families, and, while in some it is only a strong suspicion, in others
there is no doubt whatever. In one case there is reason to suspect
inversion on both sides. Usually the inverted relatives have been
brothers, sisters, cousins, or uncles. In one case a bisexual son seems to
have had a bisexual father.
This hereditary character of inversion (which was denied by
Näcke) is a fact of great significance, and, as it occurs in
cases with which I am well acquainted, I can have no doubt
concerning the existence of the tendency. The influence of
suggestion may often be entirely excluded, especially when the
persons are of different sex. Both Krafft-Ebing and Moll noted a
similar tendency. Von Römer states that in one-third of his cases
there was inversion in other members of the family. Hirschfeld
also found that there is a relatively high proportion of cases of
family inversion.
Twenty-six, so far as can be ascertained, belong to reasonably healthy
families; minute investigation would probably reduce the number of these,
and it is noteworthy that even in some of the healthy families there was
only one child born of the parents' marriage. In 28 cases there is more or
less frequency of morbidity or abnormality--eccentricity, alcoholism,
neurasthenia, insanity, or nervous disease--on one or both sides, in
addition to inversion or apart from it. In some of these cases the
inverted offspring is the outcome of the union, of a very healthy with a
thoroughly morbid stock; in some others there is a minor degree of
abnormality on both sides.
GENERAL HEALTH.--It is possible to speak with more certainty of the health
of the individual than of that of his family. Of the 80 cases, 53--or
about two-thirds--may be said to enjoy good, and sometimes even very good,
health, though occasionally there is some slight qualification to be made.
In 22 cases the health is delicate, or at best only fair; in these cases
there is sometimes a tendency to consumption, and often marked
neurasthenia and a more or less unbalanced temperament. Four cases are
morbid to a considerable degree; the remaining case has had insane
delusions which required treatment in an asylum. A considerable
proportion, included among those as having either good or fair health, may
be described as of extremely nervous temperament, and in most cases they
so describe themselves; a certain proportion of these combine great
physical and, especially, mental energy with this nervousness; all these
are doubtless of neurotic temperament.[184] Very few can be said to be
conspicuously lacking in energy. On the whole, therefore, a large
proportion of these inverted individuals are passing through life in an
unimpaired state of health, which enables them to do at least their fair
share of work in the world; in a considerable proportion of my cases that
work is of high intellectual value. Only in 5 cases, it will be seen, or
at most 6, can the general health be said to be distinctly bad.
This result may, perhaps, seem surprising. It must, however, be remembered
that my cases do not, on the whole, represent the class which alone the
physician is usually able to bring forward: i.e., the sexual inverts who
are suffering from a more or less severe degree of complete nervous
breakdown.
There is no frequent relationship between homosexuality and
insanity, and such homosexuality as is found in asylums is mostly
of a spurious character. This point was specially emphasized by
Näcke (e.g., "Homosexualität und Psychose," _Zeitschrift für
Psichiatrie_, vol. lxviii, No. 3, 1911). He quoted the opinions
of various distinguished alienists as to the rarity with which
they had met genuine inverts, and recorded his own experiences.
He had never met a genuine invert in the asylum throughout his
extensive experience, although he was quite willing to admit that
there may be unrecognized inverts in asylums, and one patient
informed him, after leaving, that he was inverted, and had
attracted the attention of the police both before and afterward,
though nothing happened in the asylum. Among 1500 patients in the
asylum during one year, active _pedicatio_ occurred in about 1
per cent. of cases, these patients being frequently idiots or
imbeciles and at the same time masturbators, solitary or mutual.
Hirschfeld informed Näcke that, among homosexual persons,
hysterical conditions (not usually on hereditary basis) are
fairly common, and neurasthenia of high degree decidedly
frequent, but though stages of depression are common he had never
seen pure melancholia and very seldom mania, but paranoiac
delusional ideas frequently, and he agreed with Bryan of
Broadmoor that religious delusions are not uncommon. General
paralysis occurs, but is comparatively rare, and the same may be
said of dementia præcox. On the whole, although Hirschfeld was
unable to give precise figures, there was no reason whatever to
suppose an abnormal prevalence of insanity. This was Näcke's own
view. It is quite true, Näcke concluded, that homosexual actions
occur in every form of psychosis, especially in congenital and
secondary dements, and at periods of excitement, but we are here
more concerned with "pseudo-homosexuality" than with true
inversion. Hirschfeld finds that 75 per cent. inverts are of
sound heredity; this seems too large a proportion; in any case
allowance must be made for differences in method and minuteness
of investigation.
I am fairly certain that thorough investigation would very considerably
enlarge the proportion of cases with morbid heredity. At the same time
this enlargement would be chiefly obtained by bringing minor abnormalities
to the front, and it would then have to be shown how far the families of
average or normal persons are free from such abnormalities. The question
is sometimes asked: What family is free from neuropathic taint? At present
it is difficult to answer this question precisely. There is good ground to
believe that a fairly large proportion of families are free from such
taint. In any case it seems probable that the families to which the
inverted belong do not usually present such profound signs of nervous
degeneration as we were formerly led to suppose. What we vaguely call
"eccentricity" is common among them; insanity is much rarer.
FIRST APPEARANCE OF HOMOSEXUAL INSTINCT.--Out of 72 cases, in 8 the
instinct veered round to the same sex in adult age or at all events after
puberty; in 3 of these there had been a love-disappointment with a woman;
no other cause than this can be assigned for the transition; but it is
noteworthy that in at least 2 of these cases the sexual instinct is
undeveloped or morbidly weak, while a third individual is of somewhat
weak _physique_, and another has long been in delicate health. In a
further case, also somewhat morbid, the development was rather more
complicated.
In 64 cases, or in a proportion of 88 per cent., the abnormal instinct
began in early life, without previous attraction to the opposite sex.[185]
In 27 of these it dates from about puberty, usually beginning at school.
In 39 cases the tendency began before puberty, between the ages of 5 and
11, usually between 7 and 9, sometimes as early as the subject can
remember. It must not be supposed that, in these numerous cases of the
early appearance of homosexuality, the manifestations were of a
specifically physical character, although erections are noted in a few
cases. For the most part sexual manifestations at this early age, whether
homosexual or heterosexual, are purely psychic.[186]
SEXUAL PRECOCITY AND HYPERESTHESIA.--It is a fact of considerable interest
and significance that in so large a number of my cases there was distinct
precocity of the sexual emotions, both on the physical and psychic sides.
There can be little doubt that, as many previous observers have found,
inversion tends strongly to be associated with sexual precocity. I think
it may further be said that sexual precocity tends to encourage the
inverted habit where it exists. Why this should be so is obvious, if we
believe--as there is some reason for believing--that at an early age the
sexual instinct is comparatively undifferentiated in its manifestations.
The precocious accentuation of the sexual impulse leads to definite
crystallization of the emotions at a premature stage. It must be added
that precocious sexual energy is likely to remain feeble, and that a
feeble sexual energy adapts itself more easily to homosexual
relationships, in which there is no definite act to be accomplished, than
to normal relationships. It is difficult to say how many of my cases
exhibit sexual weakness. In 6 or 7 it is evident, and it may be suspected
in many others, especially in those who are, and often describe themselves
as, "sensitive" or "nervous," as well as in those whose sexual development
was very late. In many cases there is marked hyperesthesia, or irritable
weakness. Hyperesthesia simulates strength, and, while there can be little
doubt that some sexual inverts (and more especially bisexuals) do possess
unusual sexual energy, in others it is but apparent; the frequent
repetition of seminal emissions, for example, may be the result of
weakness as well as of strength. It must be added that this irritability
of the sexual centers is, in a considerable proportion of inverts,
associated with marked emotional tendencies to affection and
self-sacrifice. In the extravagance of his affection and devotion, it has
been frequently observed, the male invert resembles many normal women.
SUGGESTION AND OTHER EXCITING CAUSES OF INVERSION.--In 18 of my cases it
is possible that some event, or special environment, in early life had
more or less influence in turning the sexual instinct into homosexual
channels, or in calling out a latent inversion. In 3 cases a
disappointment in normal love seems to have produced a profound nervous
and emotional shock, acting, as we seem bound to admit, on a predisposed
organism, and developing a fairly permanent tendency to inversion. In 8
cases there was seduction by an older person, but in at least 4 or 5 of
these there was already a well-marked predisposition. In at least 8 other
cases, example, usually at school, may probably be regarded as having
exerted some influence. It is noteworthy that in very few of my cases can
we trace the influence of any definite "suggestion," as asserted by
Schrenck-Notzing, who believes that, in the causation of sexual inversion
(as undoubtedly in the causation of erotic fetichism), we must give the
first place to "accidental factors of education and external influence."
He records the case of a little boy who innocently gazed in curiosity at
the penis of his father who was urinating, and had his ears boxed, whence
arose a train of thought and feeling which resulted in complete sexual
inversion. In two of the cases I have reported we have parallel incidents,
and here we see clearly that the homosexual tendency already existed. I do
not question the occurrence of such incidents, but I refuse to accept them
as supplying the causation of inversion, and in so doing I am supported by
all the evidence I am able to obtain. I am in agreement with a
correspondent who wrote:--
"Considering that all boys are exposed to the same order of
suggestions (sight of a man's naked organs, sleeping with a man,
being handled by a man), and that only a few of them become
sexually perverted, I think it reasonable to conclude that those
few were previously constituted to receive the suggestion. In
fact, suggestion seems to play exactly the same part in the
normal and abnormal awakening of sex."
I would go so far as to assert that for normal boys and girls the
developed sexual organs of the adult man or woman--from their size,
hairiness, and the mystery which envelops them--nearly always exert a
certain fascination, whether of attraction or horror.[187] But this has no
connection with homosexuality, and scarcely with sexuality at all. Thus,
in one case known to me, a boy of 6 or 7 took pleasure in caressing the
organs of another boy, twice his own age, who remained passive and
indifferent; yet this child grew up without ever manifesting any
homosexual instinct. The seed of suggestion can only develop when it falls
on a suitable soil. If it is to act on a fairly normal nature the
perverted suggestion must be very powerful or iterated, and even then its
influence will probably only be temporary, disappearing in the presence of
the normal stimulus.[188]
Not only is "suggestion" unnecessary to develop a sexual impulse already
rooted in the organism, but when exerted in an opposite direction it is
powerless to divert that impulse. We see this illustrated in several of
the cases whose histories I have presented. Thus in one case a boy was
seduced by the housemaid at the age of 14 and even derived pleasure from
the girl, yet none the less the native homosexual instinct asserted itself
a year later. In another case heterosexual suggestions were offered and
accepted in early life, yet, notwithstanding, the homosexual attraction
was slowly evolved from within.
I have, therefore, but little to say of the influence of suggestion, which
was formerly exalted to a position of the first importance in books on
sexual inversion. This is not because I underestimate the great part
played by suggestion in many fields of normal and abnormal life. It is
because I have been able to find but few decided traces of it in sexual
inversion. In many cases, doubtless, there may be some slight elements of
suggestion in developing the inversion, though they cannot be traced.[189]
Their importance seems usually questionable even when they are
discovered. Take Schrenck-Notzing's case of the little boy whose ears were
boxed for what his father considered improper curiosity. I find it
difficult to realize that a mighty suggestion can thereby be generated
unless a strong emotion exists for it to unite with; in that case the seed
falls on prepared soil. Is the wide prevalence of normal sexuality due to
the fact that so many little boys have had their ears boxed for taking
naughty liberties with women? If so, I am quite prepared to accept
Schrenck-Notzing's explanation as a complete account of the matter. I know
of one case, indeed, in which an element of what may fairly be called
suggestion can be detected. It is that of a physician who had always been
on very friendly terms with men, but had sexual relations exclusively with
women, finding fair satisfaction, until the confessions of an inverted
patient one day came to him as a revelation; thereafter he adopted
inverted practices and ceased to find any attraction in women. But even in
this case, as I understand the matter, suggestion merely served to reveal
his own nature to the man. For a physician to adopt the perverted habits
which the visit of a chance patient suggests to him can scarcely be a
phenomenon of pure suggestion. We have no reason to suppose that this
physician practised every perversion he heard of from patients; he adopted
that which fitted his own nature.[190] In another case homosexual advances
were made to a youth and accepted, but he had already been attracted to
men in childhood. Again, in another case, there were homosexual
influences in the boyhood of a subject who became bisexual, but as the
subject's father was of similar bisexual temperament we can attach no
potency to the mere suggestions. In another case we find homosexual
influence in childhood, but the child was already delicate, shy, nervous,
and feminine, clearly possessing a temperament predestined to develop in a
homosexual direction.
The irresistible potency of the inner impulse is well illustrated
in a case presented by Hirschfeld and Burchard: "My daughter
Erna," said the subject's mother, "showed boyish inclinations at
the age of 3, and they increased from year to year. She never
played with dolls, only with tin soldiers, guns, and castles. She
would climb trees and jump ditches; she made friends with the
drivers of all the carts that came to our house and they would
place her on the horse's back. The annual circus was a joy to her
for all the year. Even as a child of 4 she was so fearless on
horseback that lookers-on shouted Bravo! and all declared she was
a born horsewoman. It was her greatest wish to be a boy. She
would wear her elder brother's clothes all day, notwithstanding
her grandmother's indignation. Cycling, gymnastics, boating,
swimming, were her passion, and she showed skill in them. As she
grew older she hated prettily adorned hats and clothes. I had
much trouble with her for she would not wear pretty things. The
older she grew the more her masculine and decided ways developed.
This excited much outcry and offence. People found my daughter
unfeminine and disagreeable, but all my trouble and exhortations
availed nothing to change her." Now this young woman whom all the
influences of a normal feminine environment failed to render
feminine was not physiologically a woman at all; the case proved
to be the unique instance of an individual possessing all the
external characteristics of a woman combined with internal
testicular tissue capable of emitting true masculine semen
through the feminine urethra. No suggestions of the environment
could suffice to overcome this fundamental fact of internal
constitution. (Hirschfeld and Burchard, "Spermasekretion aus
einer weiblichen Harnröhre," _Deutsche medizinische
Wochenschrift_, No. 52, 1911.)
I may here quote three American cases (not previously published), for
which I am indebted to Prof. G. Frank Lydston, of Chicago. They seem to me
to illustrate the only kind of suggestions which play much part in the
evolution of inversion. I give them in Dr. Lydston's words:--
CASE I.--A man, 45 years of age, attracted by the allusion to my
essay on "Social Perversion" contained in the English translation
of Krafft-Ebing's _Psychopathia Sexualis_, consulted me regarding
the possible cure of his condition. This individual was a finely
educated, very intelligent man, who was an excellent linguist,
had considerable musical ability, and was in the employ of a firm
whose business was such as to demand on the part of its employés
considerable legal acumen, clerical ability, and knowledge of
real-estate transactions. This man stated that at the age of
puberty, without any knowledge of perversity of sexual feeling,
he was thrown intimately in contact with males of more advanced
years, who took various means to excite his sexual passions, the
result being that perverted sexual practices were developed,
which were continued for a number of years. He thereafter noticed
an aversion to women. At the solicitations of his family he
finally married, without any very intelligent idea as to what, if
anything, might be expected of him in the marital relation.
Absolute impotence--indeed, repugnance for association with his
wife--was the lamentable sequence. A divorce was in contemplation
when, fortunately for all parties concerned, the wife suddenly
died. Being a man of more than ordinary intelligence, this
individual, prior to seeking my aid, had sought vainly for some
remedy for his unfortunate condition. He stated that he believed
there was an element of heredity in his case, his father having
been a dipsomaniac and one brother having died insane. He
nevertheless stated it to be his opinion that, notwithstanding
the hereditary taint, he would have been perfectly normal from a
sexual standpoint had it not been for acquired impressions at or
about the period of puberty. This man presented a typically
neurotic type of _physique_, complained of being intensely
nervous, was prematurely gray, of only fair stature, and had an
uncontrollable nystagmus, which, he said, had existed for some
fifteen years. As might be expected, treatment in this case was
of no avail. I began the use of hypnotic suggestion at the hands
of an expert professional hypnotist. The patient, being called
out of the State, finally gave up treatment, and I have no means
of knowing what his present condition is.
CASE II.--A lady patient of mine who happened to be an actress,
and consequently a woman of the world, brought to me for an
opinion some correspondence which had passed between her younger
brother and a man living in another State, with whom he was on
quite intimate terms. In one of these letters various flying
trips to Chicago for the purpose of meeting the lad, who, by the
way, was only 17 years of age, were alluded to. It transpired
also, as evidenced by the letters, that on several occasions the
young lad had been taken on trips in Pullman cars by his friend,
who was a prominent railroad official. The character of the
correspondence was such as the average healthy man would address
to a woman with whom he was enamored. It seemed that the author
of the correspondence had applied to his boy affinity the name
Cinderella, and the protestations of passionate affection that
were made toward Cinderella certainly would have satisfied the
most exacting woman. The young lad subsequently made a confession
to me, and I put myself in correspondence with his male friend,
with the result that he called upon me and I obtained a full
history of the case. The method of indulgence in this case was
the usual one of oral masturbation, in which the lad was the
passive party. I was unable to obtain any definite data regarding
the family history of the elder individual in this case, but
understand that there was a taint of insanity in his family. He
himself was a robust, fine-looking man, above middle age, who was
well educated and very intelligent, as he necessarily must have
been, because of the prominent position he held with an important
railway company. I will state, as a matter of interest, that the
lad in this case, who is now 23 years of age, has recently
consulted me for _impotentia coëundi_, manifesting a frigidity
for women, and, from the young man's statements, I am convinced
that he is well on the road to confirmed sexual perversion.
An interesting point in this connection is that the young man's
sister, the actress already alluded to, has recently had an
attack of acute mania.
I have had other unpublished cases that might be of interest, but
these two are somewhat classical, and typify to a greater or less
degree the majority of other cases. I will, however, mention one
other case, occurring in a woman.
CASE III.--A married woman 40 years of age. Has been deserted by
her husband because of her perverted sexuality. Neurotic history
on both sides of the family, and several cases of insanity on
mother's side. In this case affinity for the same sex and
perverted desire for the opposite sex existed, a combination by
no means infrequent. Hypnotic suggestion tried, but without
success. Cause was evidently suggestion and example on the part
of another female pervert with whom she associated before her
marriage. Marriage was late, at age of 35. In all these cases
there was an element of what may be called suggestion, but it was
really much more than this; it was probably in each case active
seduction by an elder person of a predisposed younger person. It
will be observed that in each case there was, at the least, an
organic neurotic basis for suggestion and seduction to work on. I
cannot regard these cases as entitled to modify our attitude
toward suggestion.
MASTURBATION.--Moreau believed that masturbation was a cause of sexual
inversion, and Krafft-Ebing looked upon it as leading to all sorts of
sexual perversions; the same opinion was currently repeated by many
writers. It is not now accepted. Moll emphatically rejected the idea that
masturbation can be the cause of inversion; Näcke repeatedly denies that
masturbation, any more than seduction, can ever produce true inversion;
Hirschfeld attaches to it no etiological significance. Many years ago I
gave special attention to this point and reached a similar conclusion.
That masturbation, especially at an early age, may sometimes enfeeble the
sexual activities, and aid the manifestations of inversion, I certainly
believe. But beyond this there is little in the history of my male cases
to indicate masturbation as a cause of inversion. It is true that 44 out
of 51 admit that they have practised masturbation,--at all events,
occasionally, or at some period in their lives,--and it is possible that
this proportion is larger than that found among normal people. Even if so,
however, it is not difficult to account for, bearing in mind the fact that
the homosexual person has not the same opportunities as has the
heterosexual person to gratify his instincts, and that masturbation may
sometimes legitimately appear to him as the lesser of two evils.[191] Not
only has masturbation been practised at no period in at least 7 of the
cases (for concerning several I have no information), but in several
others it was never practised until long after the homosexual instinct had
appeared, in 1 case not till the age of 40, and then only occasionally. In
at least 8 it was only practised at puberty; in at least 8, however, it
began before the age of puberty; at least 9 left off before about the age
of 20. Unfortunately, as yet, we have little definite evidence as to the
prevalence and extent of masturbation among normal individuals.
Among the women masturbation is found in at least 5 cases out of 7. In 1
case there was no masturbation until comparatively late in life, and then
only at rare intervals and under exceptional circumstances. In another
case, some years after the homosexual attraction had been experienced, it
was practised, though not in excess, from the age of puberty for about
four years, and then abandoned; during these years the physical sexual
feelings were more imperative than they were afterward felt to be. In 2
cases masturbation was learned spontaneously soon after puberty, and in 1
of these practised in excess before the manifestations of inversion became
definite. In all cases the subjects are emphatic in asserting that this
practice neither led to, nor was caused by, the homosexual attraction,
which they regard as a much higher feeling, and it must be added that the
occasional practice of masturbation is very far from rare among fairly
normal women.[192]
While this is so, I am certainly inclined to believe that an early and
excessive indulgence in masturbation, though not an adequate cause, is a
favoring condition for the development of inversion, and that this is
especially so in women. The sexual precocity indicated by early and
excessive masturbation doubtless sometimes reveals an organism already
predisposed to homosexuality. But, apart from this, when masturbation
arises spontaneously at an early age on a purely physical basis it seems
to tend to produce a divorce between the physical and the psychic aspects
of sexual love. The sexual manifestations are all diverted into this
physical direction, and the child is ignorant that such phenomena are
normally allied to love; then, when a more spiritual attraction appears
with adolescent development, this divorce is perpetuated. Instead of the
physical and psychic feelings appearing together when the age for sexual
attraction comes, the physical feelings are prematurely twisted from their
natural end, and it becomes abnormally easy for a person of the same sex
to step in and take the place rightfully belonging to a person of the
opposite sex. This has certainly seemed to me the course of events in some
cases I have observed.
ATTITUDE TOWARD THE OPPOSITE SEX.--In 17 cases (of whom 5 are married and
others purposing to marry) there is sexual attraction to both sexes, a
condition formerly called psycho-sexual hermaphroditism, but now more
usually bisexuality. In such cases, although there is pleasure and
satisfaction in relationships with both sexes, there is usually a greater
degree of satisfaction in connection with one sex. Most of the bisexual
prefer their own sex. It is curiously rare to find a person, whether man
or woman, who by choice exercises relationships with both sexes and
prefers the opposite sex. This would seem to indicate that the bisexual
may really be inverts.
In any case bisexuality merges imperceptibly into simple inversion. In at
least 16 of 52 cases of simple inversion in men there has been connection
with women, in some instances only once or twice, in others during several
years, but it was always with an effort, or from a sense of duty and
anxiety to be normal; they never experienced any real pleasure in the act,
or sense of satisfaction after it. Four of these cases are married, but
martial relationships usually ceased after a few years. At least four
others were attracted to women when younger, but are not now; another once
felt sexually attracted to a boyish woman, but never made any attempt to
obtain any relationships with her; 3 or 4 others, again, have tried to
have connection with women, but failed. The largest proportion of my cases
have never had any sexual intimacy with the opposite sex,[193] and some of
these experience what, in the case of the male invert, is sometimes
called _horror feminæ_. But, while woman as an object of sexual desire is
in such cases disgusting to them, and it is usually difficult for a
genuine invert to have connection with a woman except by setting up images
of his own sex, for the most part inverts are capable of genuine
friendships, irrespective of sex.
It is, perhaps, not difficult to account for the horror--much stronger
than that normally felt toward a person of the same sex--with which the
invert often regards the sexual organs of persons of the opposite sex. It
cannot be said that the sexual organs of either sex under the influence of
sexual excitement are esthetically pleasing; they only become emotionally
desirable through the parallel excitement of the beholder. When the
absence of parallel excitement is accompanied in the beholder by the sense
of unfamiliarity as in childhood, or by a neurotic hypersensitiveness, the
conditions are present for the production of intense _horror feminæ_ or
_horror masculis_, as the case may be. It is possible that, as Otto Rank
argues in his interesting study, "Die Naktheit im Sage und Dichtung," this
horror of the sexual organs of the opposite sex, to some extent felt even
by normal people, is embodied in the Melusine type of legend.[194]
EROTIC DREAMS.--Our dreams follow, as a general rule, the impulses that
stir our waking psychic life. The normal man or woman in sexual vigor
dreams of loving a person of the opposite sex; the inverted man dreams of
loving a man, the inverted woman of loving a woman.[195] Dreams thus have
a certain value in diagnosis, more especially since there is less
unwillingness to confess to a perverted dream than to a perverted action.
Ulrichs first referred to the significance of the dreams of inverts. At a
later period Moll pointed out that they have some value in diagnosis when
we are not sure how far the inverted tendency is radical. Then Näcke
repeatedly emphasized the importance of dreams as constituting, he
believed, the most delicate test we possess in the diagnosis of
homosexuality;[196] this was an exaggerated view which failed to take into
account the various influences which may deflect dreams. Hirschfeld has
made the most extensive investigation on this point, and found that among
100 inverts 87 had exclusively homosexual dreams, while most of the rest
had no dreams at all.[197] Among my cases, only 4 definitely state that
there are no erotic dreams, while 31 acknowledge that the dreams are
concerned more or less with persons of the same sex. Of these, at least 16
assert or imply that their dreams are exclusively of the same sex. Two,
though apparently inverted congenitally, have had erotic dreams of women,
in one case more frequently than of men; these two exceptions have no
apparent explanation. Another appears to have sexual dreams of a nightmare
character in which women appear. In another case there were always at
first dreams of women, but this subject had sometimes had connection with
prostitutes, and is not absolutely indifferent to women, while another,
whose dreams remain heterosexual, had in early life some attraction to
girls. In the cases of distinct bisexuality there is no unanimity; 2 dream
of their own sex, 2 dream of both sexes, 1 usually dreams of the opposite
sex, and 1 man, while dreaming of both, dislikes those dreams in which
women figure. In at least 3 cases dreams of a sexual character began at
the age of 8 or earlier.
The phenomena presented by erotic dreams, alike in normal and
abnormal persons, are somewhat complex, and dreams are by no
means a sure guide to the dreamer's real sexual attitude. The
fluctuations of dream imagery may be illustrated by the
experiences of one of my subjects who thus indirectly summarises
his own experiences: "When he was quite a child, he used to be
haunted by gross and grotesque dreams of naked adult men, which
must have been erotic. At the age of puberty he dreamed in two
ways, but always about males. One species of vision was highly
idealistic; a radiant and lovely young man's face with floating
hair appeared to him on a background of dim shadows. The other
was obscene, being generally the sight of a groom's or carter's
genitals in a state of violent erection. He never dreamed
erotically or sentimentally about women; but when the dream was
frightful, the terror-making personage was invariably female. In
ordinary dreams, women of his family or acquaintance played a
trivial part. At the age of 24, having determined to conquer his
homosexual passions, he married, found no difficulty in
cohabiting with his wife, and begat several children, although he
took but little passionate delight in the sexual act. He still
continued to dream exclusively of men, for several years; and the
obscene visions became more frequent than the idealistic.
Gradually, coarse and uninteresting erotic dreams of women began
to haunt his mind in sleep. A curious particular regarding the
new type of vision was that he never dreamed of whole females,
only of their sexual parts, seen in a blur; and the seminal
emissions which attended the mental pictures left a feeling of
fatigue and disgust. In course of time, his wife and he agreed to
live separately so far as sexual relations are concerned. He then
indulged his passion for males, and wholly lost those rudimentary
female dreams which had been developed during the period of
nuptial cohabitation."
Not only is it possible for the genuine invert to be trained into
heterosexual erotic dreams, but homosexual dreams may
occasionally be experienced by persons who are, and always have
been, exclusively heterosexual. I could bring forward much
evidence on this point. (Cf. "Auto-erotism" in vol. i of these
_Studies_.) Both men and women who have always been of pronounced
heterosexual tendency, without a trace of inversion, are liable
to rare homosexual dreams, not necessarily involving orgasm or
even definite sexual excitement, and sometimes accompanied by a
feeling of repugnance. As an example I may present a dream (which
had no known origin) of an exclusively heterosexual lady aged 42;
she dreamed she was in bed with another woman, unknown to her,
and lying on her own stomach, while with her right hand stretched
out she was feeling the other's sexual parts. She could
distinctly perceive the clitoris, vagina, etc.; she felt a sort
of disgust with herself for what she was doing, but continued
until she awoke; she then found herself lying on her stomach as
in the dream and at first thought she must have been touching
herself, but realized that this could not have been the case.
(Niceforo, who believes that inversion may develop out of
masturbation, considers that dreams of masturbation by
association of ideas may take on an inverted character [_Le
Psicopatie Sessuale_, 1897, pp. 35, 69]; this, however, must be
rare, and will not account for most of the dreams in question.)
Näcke and Colin Scott, some years ago, independently referred to
cases in which normal persons were liable to homosexual dreams,
and Féré (_Revue de Médecine_, Dec., 1898) referred to a man who
had a horror of women, but appeared only to manifest
homosexuality in his dreams. Näcke (_Archiv für
Kriminal-Anthropologie_, 1907, Heft I, 2) calls dreams which
represent a reaction of opposition to the dreamer's ordinary life
"contrast dreams." Hirschfeld, who accepts Näcke's "contrast
dreams" in relation to homosexuality, considers that they
indicate a latent bisexuality. We may admit this is so, in the
same sense in which a complementary color image called up by
another color indicates the possibility of perceiving that color.
In most cases, however, it seems to me that homosexual dreams in
normal persons may be simply explained as due to the ordinary
confusion and transition of dream imagery. (See Ellis, _The World
of Dreams_, especially ch. ii.)
_Methods of Sexual Relationship_.--The exact mode in which an inverted
instinct finds satisfaction is frequently of importance from the
medico-legal standpoint;[198] from a psychological standpoint it is of
minor significance, being chiefly of interest as showing the degree to
which the individual has departed from the instinctive feelings of his
normal fellow-beings.
Taking 57 inverted men of whom I have definite knowledge, I find that 12,
restrained by moral or other considerations, have never had any physical
relationship with their own sex. In some 22 cases the sexual relationship
rarely goes beyond close physical contact and fondling, or at most mutual
masturbation and intercrural intercourse. In 10 or 11 cases _fellatio_
(oral excitation)--frequently in addition to some form of mutual
masturbation, and usually, though not always, as the active agency--is the
form preferred. In 14 cases, actual _pedicatio_[199]--usually active, not
passive--has been exercised. In these cases, however, _pedicatio_ is by no
means always the habitual or even the preferred method of gratification.
It seems to be the preferred method in about 7 cases. Several who have
never experienced it, including some who have never practised any form of
physical relationship, state that they feel no objection to _pedicatio_;
some have this feeling in regard to active, others in regard to passive,
_pedicatio_. The proportion of inverts who practise or have at some time
experienced _pedicatio_ thus revealed (nearly 25 per cent.) is large; in
Germany Hirschfeld finds it to be only 8 per cent., and Merzbach only 6. I
believe, however, that a wider induction from a larger number of English
and American cases would yield a proportion much nearer to that found in
Germany.[200]
PSEUDOSEXUAL ATTRACTION.--It is sometimes supposed that in homosexual
relationships one person is always active, physically and emotionally, the
other passive. Between men, at all events, this is very frequently not the
case, and the invert cannot tell if he feels like a man or like a woman.
Thus, one writes:--
"In bed with my friend I feel as he feels, and he feels as I
feel. The result is masturbation, and nothing more or desire for
more on my part. I get it over, too, as soon as possible, in
order to come to the best--sleeping arms round each other, or
talking so."
It remains true, however, that there may usually be traced what it is
possible to call pseudosexual attraction, by which I mean a tendency for
the invert to be attracted toward persons unlike himself, so that in his
sexual relationships there is a certain semblance of sexual opposition.
Numa Praetorius considers that in homosexuality the attraction of
opposites--the attraction for soldiers and other primitive vigorous
types--plays a greater part than among normal lovers.[201] This
pseudosexual attraction is, however, as Hirschfeld points out,[202] and as
we see by the Histories here presented, by no means invariable.
M.N. writes: "To me it appears that the female element must, of
necessity, exist in the body that desires the male, and that
nature keeps her law in the spirit, though she breaks it in the
form. The rest is all a matter of individual temperament and
environment. The female nature of the invert, hampered though it
is by its disguise of flesh, is still able to exert an
extraordinary influence, and calls insistently upon the male.
This influence seems called into action most violently in the
presence of males possessed of strong sexual magnetism of their
own. Such men are generally more or less conscious of the
influence, and the result is either a vague appreciation, which
will make the male wonder why he gets on so well with the invert,
or else the influence will be realized to be something
incongruous and unnatural, and will be resented accordingly.
Sometimes, indeed, the reciprocated feeling (circumstance and
opportunity permitting) will prove strong enough to induce sexual
relations. Reason will then generally overpower instinct, and the
feeling, aroused unaware, will probably be changed into
repulsion. Further, the influence reacts in the same way on
women, who, particularly if they are strongly sexual, experience
involuntary sensations of dislike or antagonism on association
with inverts. There is, however, one terrible reality for the
invert to face, no matter how much he may wish to avoid it and
seek to deceive himself. There exists for him an almost absolute
lack of any genuine satisfaction either in the way of the
affections or desires. His whole life is passed in vainly seeking
and desiring the male, the antithesis of his nature, and in
consorting with inverts he must perforce be content with the male
in form only, the shadow without the substance. Indeed, one
invert necessarily regards another as being of the same undesired
female sex as himself, and for this reason it will be found that,
while friendships between inverts frequently exist (and these are
characteristically feminine, unstable, and liable to betrayal),
love-attachments are less common, and when they occur must
naturally be based upon considerable self-deception. Venal
gratifications are always, of course, as possible as they are
unsatisfactory, and here perhaps some of the peculiarities of
taste accompanying inversion may admit of elucidation. In
considering the peculiar predilection shown by inverts for youths
of inferior social position, for the wearers of uniforms, and for
extreme physical development and virility not necessarily
accompanied by intellectuality, regard must be had to the
probable conduct of women placed in a position of complete
irresponsibility combined with absolute freedom of action and
every opportunity for promiscuity. It seems to me that the
importance of recognizing the underlying female element in
inversion cannot be too strongly insisted upon."
"The majority" [of inverts], writes "Z," "differ in no detail of
their outward appearance, their _physique_, or their dress from
normal men. They are athletic, masculine in habit, frank in
manner, passing through society year after year without arousing
a suspicion of their inner temperament; were it not so, society
would long ago have had its eyes opened to the amount of
perverted sexuality it harbors." These lines were written, not in
opposition to the more subtle distinctions pointed out above, but
in refutation of the vulgar error which confuses the typical
invert with the painted and petticoated creatures who appear in
police-courts from time to time, and whose portraits are
presented by Lombroso, Legludic, etc. On another occasion the
same writer remarked, while expressing general agreement with the
idea of a pseudosexual attraction: "The _liaison_ is by no means
always sought and begun by the person who is abnormally
constituted. I mean that I can cite cases of decided males who
have made up to inverts, and have found their happiness in the
reciprocated passion. One pronounced male of this sort, again,
once said to me, 'men are so much more affectionate than women.'
[Precisely the same words were used by one of my subjects.] Also,
the _liaison_ springs up now and then quite accidentally through
juxtaposition, when it is difficult to say whether either at the
outset had an inverted tendency of any marked quality. In these
cases the sexual relation seems to come on as a heightening of
comradely affection, and is found to be pleasurable--sometimes, I
think, discovered to be safe as well as satisfying. On the other
hand, so far as I know, it is extremely rare to observe a
permanent _liaison_ between two pronounced inverts."
The tendency to pseudosexual attraction in the homosexual would
thus seem to involve a preference for normal persons. How far
this is the case it seems difficult to state positively. Usually,
one may say, an invert falls in love (exactly as in the case of a
normal person) without any intellectual calculation as to the
temperamental ability to return the affection which the object of
his love may possess. Naturally, however, there cannot be any
adequate return of the affection in the absence of an actual or
latent homosexual disposition. On this point an American
correspondent (H.C.), with a wide knowledge of inversion in many
lands, writes: "One of your correspondents declares that inverts
long for sexual relations with normal men rather than with one
another. If this be true, I have never once found it exemplified
in all my wide experience of inverts; and I have submitted his
assertion to more than 50. These have replied invariably that
unless a man is himself homosexual, nearly all the pleasure of
_fellatio_ is absent. The fact is, the majority of inverts flock
together not from exigency, but from choice. The mere sexual act
is, if anything, far less the sole object between inverts than it
is between normal men and women. Why should the invert sigh for
intercourse with normal men, where mutual confidences and
sympathies and love would be out of the question? Personally, I
decline to commit _fellatio_ with a man who is given to women;
the thought of it is repugnant to me. And this is the attitude
with every invert I have questioned. The nearest approach to
confirmation of your correspondent's theory has been when an
extremely feminine invert here and there has admitted the wish
that a certain normal man _were_ inverted. Indeed, the
temperamental gamut of inversion is itself broad enough to
embrace the most widely divergent ideals. As my furthest-reaching
demands attain fruition in the gentle and pretty boy, so his own
robuster affinity resides in me. If inverts were actually women,
then indeed the normal male would be their ideal. But inverts are
not women. Inverts are males capable of passionate friendship,
and their ideal is the male who will give them passionate
friendship in return."
In at least 24, probably many more, of my male cases there is a marked
contrast, and in a still larger number a less-marked contrast, between the
subject and the individuals he is attracted to; either he is of somewhat
feminine and sensitive nature, and admires more simple and virile natures,
or he is fairly vigorous and admires boys who are often of lower social
class. Inverted women also are attracted to more clinging feminine
persons.[203] A sexual attraction for boys is, no doubt, as Moll points
out, that form of inversion which comes nearest to normal sexuality, for
the subject of it usually approaches nearer to the average man in physical
and mental disposition. The reason of this is obvious: boys resemble
women, and therefore it requires a less profound organic twist to become
sexually attracted to them. Anyone who has watched private theatricals in
boys' schools will have observed how easy it is for boys to personate
women successfully, and it is well known that until the middle of the
seventeenth century women's parts on the stage were always taken by boys,
whether or not with injury to their own or other people's morals.[204] It
is also worthy of note that in Greece, where homosexuality flourished so
extensively, and apparently with so little accompaniment of neurotic
degeneration, it was often held that only boys under 18 should be loved;
so that the love of boys merged into love of women. About 18 of my cases
are most strongly attracted to youths,--preferably of about the age of 18
to 20,--and they are, for the most part, among the more normal and healthy
of the cases. A preference for older men, or else a considerable degree of
indifference to age alone, is more common, and perhaps indicates a deeper
degree of perversion.
Putting aside the age of the object desired, it must be said that there is
a distinctly general, though not universal, tendency for sexual inverts to
approach the feminine type, either in psychic disposition or physical
constitution, or both.[205] I cannot say how far this is explained by the
irritable nervous system and delicate health which are so often associated
with inversion, though this is certainly an important factor. Although the
invert himself may stoutly affirm his masculinity, and although this
femininity may not be very obvious, its wide prevalence may be asserted
with considerable assurance, and by no means only among the small minority
of inverts who take an exclusively passive rôle, though in these it is
usually most marked. In this I am confirmed by Q., who writes: "In all, or
certainly almost all, the cases of congenital male inverts (excluding
psycho-sexual hermaphrodites) that I know there has been a remarkable
sensitiveness and delicacy of sentiment, sympathy, and an intuitive habit
of mind, such as we generally associate with the feminine sex, even though
the body might be quite masculine in its form and habit."[206] When,
however, a distinguished invert said to Moll: "We are all women; that we
do not deny," he put the matter in too extreme a form. The feminine traits
of the homosexual are not usually of a conspicuous character. "I believe
that inverts of plainly feminine nature are rare exceptions," wrote
Näcke:[207] and that statement may be accepted even by those who emphasize
the prevalence of feminine traits among inverts.
In inverted women some degree of masculinity or boyishness is equally
prevalent, and it is not usually found in the women to whom they are
attracted. Even in inversion the need for a certain sexual opposition--the
longing for something which the lover himself does not possess--still
prevails. It expresses itself sometimes in an attraction between persons
of different race and color. I am told that in American prisons for women
Lesbian relationships are specially frequent between white and black
women.[208] A similar affinity is found among the Arabs, says Kocher; and
if an Arab woman has a Lesbian friend the latter is usually European. In
Cochin China, too, according to Lorion, while the Chinese are chiefly
active pederasts, the Annamites are chiefly passive.
It must, however, be remembered that, in normal love, homogamy, the
attraction of the like, prevails over heterogamy, the attraction of the
unlike, which is chiefly confined to those features which belong to the
sphere of the secondary sexual characters;[209] the same appears to be
true in inversion, and the homosexual are probably, on the whole, more
attracted by the traits which they seem to themselves to possess than by
those which are foreign to themselves.[210]
PHYSICAL ABNORMALITIES.--The circumstances under which many of my cases
were investigated often made information under this head difficult to
obtain, or to verify. In at least 4 cases the penis is very large, while
in at least 3 it is small and undeveloped, with small and flabby testes.
It seems probable that variations in these two directions are both common,
but it is doubtful whether they possess as much significance as the
tendency to infantilism of the sexual organs in inverted women seems to
possess. Hirschfeld considers that the genital organs of inverts resemble
those of normal people. He finds, however, that phimosis is rather
common.[211]
More significant, perhaps, than specifically genital peculiarities are the
deviations found in the general conformation of the body.[212] In at
least 2 cases there are well-developed breasts, in 1 the breasts swelling
and becoming red.[213] In 1 case there are "menstrual" phenomena, physical
and psychic, recurring every four weeks. In several cases the hips are
broad and the arms rounded, while some are skillful in throwing a ball.
One was born with a double squint. At least 2 were 7 months' children. In
the previous chapter I have referred to the tendency to hypertrichosis and
occasionally oligotrichosis among inverted women; among the men it is the
latter condition which seems more common, and in several cases the bodies
are hairless, or with but scanty hair. A few are left-handed, though not
perhaps an abnormal proportion.[214] The sexual characters of the
handwriting are in some cases clearly inverted, the men writing a feminine
hand and the women a masculine hand.[215] A high feminine voice is
sometimes found.[216]
A marked characteristic of many inverts, though one not easy of precise
definition, is their youthfulness of appearance, and frequently child-like
faces, equally in both sexes. This has often been remarked,[217] and is
pronounced among many of my subjects.
The frequent inability of male inverts to whistle was first pointed out by
Ulrichs, and Hirschfeld has found it in 23 per cent. Many of my cases
confess to this inability, while some of the women inverts can whistle
admirably. Although this inability of male inverts is only found among a
minority, I am quite satisfied that it is well marked among a considerable
minority. One of my correspondents, M.N., writes to me: "With regard to
the general inability of inverts to whistle (I am not able to do so
myself), their fondness for green (my favorite color), their feminine
caligraphy, skill at female occupations, etc., these all seem to me but
indications of the one principle. To go still farther and include trivial
things, few inverts even smoke in the same manner and with the same
enjoyment as a man; they have seldom the male facility at games, cannot
throw at a mark with precision, or even spit!"
Nearly all these peculiarities indicate a minor degree of nervous
disturbance and lead to modification, as my correspondent points out, in a
feminine direction. It is scarcely necessary to add that they by no means
necessarily imply inversion. Shelley, for instance, was unable to whistle,
though he never gave an indication of inversion; but he was a person of
somewhat abnormal and feminine organization, and he illustrates the
tendency of these apparently very insignificant functional anomalies to be
correlated with other and more important psychic anomalies.
The greater part of these various anatomical peculiarities and functional
anomalies point, more or less clearly, to the prevalence among inverts of
a tendency to infantilism, combined with feminism in men and masculinism
in women.[218] This tendency is denied by Hirschfeld, but it is often
well indicated among the subjects whose histories I have been able to
present, and is indeed suggested by Hirschfeld's own elaborate results; so
that it can scarcely be passed over. I regard it as highly significant,
and it is in harmony with all that we are learning to know regarding the
important part played by the internal secretions, alike in inversion and
the general bodily modifications in an infantile, feminine, and masculine
direction.
If we are justified in believing that there is a tendency for inverted
persons to be somewhat arrested in development, approaching the child
type, we may connect this fact with the sexual precocity sometimes marked
in inverts, for precocity is commonly accompanied by rapid arrest of
development.
A correspondent, who is himself inverted, furnishes the following
notes of cases he is well acquainted with; I quote them here, as
they illustrate the anomalies commonly found:--
1. A., male, eldest child of typically neurotic family. Three
children in all: 2 male and 1 female. The other 2 are somewhat
eccentric, unsocial, and sexually frigid, 1 in a marked degree.
The curious point about this case is that A., the only one of the
family possessed of mental ability and social qualifications,
should be inverted. Parents' marriage was very ill-assorted and
inharmonious, the father being of great stature and the mother
abnormally small and of highly nervous temperament, both of
feeble health. Ancestry unfortunate, especially on mother's side.
2. B., male, invert, younger of 2 sons, no other children, has
extremely feminine disposition and appearance, of considerable
personal attraction, and has great musical talent. Penis very
small and marked breast-development.
3. C., male, invert, younger of 2 sons, no other children.
Interval of six years between first and second son. Parents'
marriage one of great affection, but degenerate ancestry on
mother's side. Cancer and scrofula in family.
4. D., male, invert, second child of 6; remainder girls. Of
humble social position. Considerable depravity evinced by all the
members of this family, with the exception of D., who alone
proved steady, honest, and industrious.
5. E., male, invert, second son of family of 3, the youngest
child being a girl, stillborn. Of extreme neurotic temperament
fostered by upbringing. Effeminate in build and disposition;
musically gifted.
6. F., male, invert, second child of family of 5. Eldest child a
girl, died in youth. After F. a boy G., a girl H., and another
girl stillborn. Parents badly matched; mother of considerable
mental and physical strength; father last representative of
moribund stock, the result of intermarriage. Children all
resembling father in appearance and mother in disposition.
Drink-tendency in both boys, to which F.'s death at the age of 30
was mainly due. G. committed suicide some years later. The girl
H. married into a family with worse ancestry than her own. Has
two children:--
7. I. and J., boy and girl, both inverted as far as I am able to
judge. The boy was born with some deformity of the feet and
ankles; is of effeminate tastes and appearance. Boy resembles
mother, and girl, who is of great physical development, resembles
father.
The same correspondent adds:--
"I have noticed little abnormal with regard to the genital
formation of inverts. There are, however, frequent abnormalities
of proportion in their figures, the hands and feet being
noticeably smaller and more shapely, the waist more marked, the
body softer and less muscular. Almost invariably there is either
cranial malformation or the head approaches the feminine in type
and shape."
ARTISTIC AND OTHER APTITUDES.--All avocations are represented among
inverts. Among the subjects here dealt with are found, at one end of the
scale, numerous manual workers, and at the other end an equal number,
sometimes of aristocratic family, who exercise no profession at all. There
are 12 physicians, 9 men of letters, at least 7 are engaged in commercial
life, 6 are artists, architects, or composers, 4 are or have been actors.
These figures cannot give any clue to the relative extent of inversion in
various occupations, but they indicate that no class of occupation
furnishes a safeguard against inversion.
There are, however, certain avocations to which inverts seem especially
called.[219] One of the chief of these is literature. The apparent
predominance of physicians is easily explicable. The frequency with which
literature is represented is probably more genuine. Here, indeed, inverts
seem to find the highest degree of success and reputation. At least half a
dozen of my subjects are successful men of letters, and I could easily
add others by going outside the group of Histories included in this study.
They especially cultivate those regions of _belles-lettres_ which lie on
the borderland between prose and verse. Though they do not usually attain
much eminence in poetry, they are often very accomplished writers of
verse. They may be attracted to history, but rarely attempt tasks of great
magnitude, involving much patient labor, though to this rule there are
exceptions. Pure science seems to have relatively little attraction for
the homosexual.[220]
An examination of my Histories reveals the interesting fact that 45 of the
subjects, or in the proportion of 56 per cent., possess artistic aptitudes
of varying degree. Galton found, from the investigation of nearly 1000
persons, that the average showing artistic tastes in England was only
about 30 per cent. It must also be said that my figures are probably below
the truth, as no special point was made of investigating the matter, and
also that in some cases the artistic ability is of high order.
It is suggested that Adler's theory of
_Minderwertigkeit_--according to which we react strenuously
against our congenital organic defects and fortify them into
virtues--may be applied to the invert's acquirement of artistic
abilities (G. Rosenstein, "Die Theorien der Organminderwertigkeit
und die Bisexualität," _Jahrbuch für Psychoanalytische
Forschungen_, vol. ii, 1910, p. 398). This theory is in some
cases of valuable application, but it seems doubtful to me
whether it is very profitable in the present connection. The
artistic aptitudes of inverts may better be regarded as part of
their organic tendencies than as a reaction against those
tendencies. In this connection I may quote the remarks of an
American correspondent, himself homosexual: "Regarding the
connection between inversion and artistic capacity, so far as I
can see, the temperament of every invert seems to strive to find
artistic expression--crudely or otherwise. Inverts, as a rule,
seek the paths of life that lie in pleasant places; their
resistance to opposing obstacles is elastic, their work is never
strenuous (if they can help it), and their accomplishments hardly
ever of practical use. This is all true of the born artist, as
well. Both inverts and artists are inordinately fond of praise;
both yearn for a life where admiration is the reward for little
energy. In a word, they seem to be 'born tired,' begotten by
parents who were tired, too."
Hirschfeld (_Die Homosexualität_, p. 66) gives a list of pictures
and sculptures which specially appeal to the homosexual.
Prominent among them are representations of St. Sebastian,
Gainsborough's Blue Boy, Vandyck's youthful men, the Hermes of
Praxiteles, Michelangelo's Slave, Rodin's and Meunier's
working-men types.
As regards music, my cases reveal the aptitude which has been
remarked by others as peculiarly common among inverts. It has
been extravagantly said that all musicians are inverts; it is
certain that various famous musicians, among the dead and the
living, have been homosexual. Ingegnieros speaks of a
"genito-musical synæsthesia," analogous to color-hearing, in this
connection. Calesia states (_Archivio di Psichiatria_, 1900, p.
209) that 60 per cent, inverts are musicians. Hirschfeld (_Die
Homosexualität_, p. 500) regards this estimate as excessive, but
he himself elsewhere states (p. 175) that 98 per cent, of male
inverts are greatly attracted to music, the women being decidedly
less attracted. Oppenheim (in a paper summarized in the
_Neurologische Centralblatt_ for June 1, 1910, and the _Alienist
and Neurologist_ for Nov., 1910) well remarks that the musical
disposition is marked by a great emotional instability, and this
instability is a disposition to nervousness. It is thus that
neurasthenia is so common among musicians. The musician has not
been rendered nervous by the music, but he owes his nervousness
(as also, it may be added, his disposition to homosexuality) to
the same disposition to which he owes his musical aptitude.
Moreover, the musician is frequently one-sided in his gifts, and
the possession of a single hypertrophied aptitude is itself
closely related to the neuropathic and psychopathic diathesis.
The tendency to dramatic aptitude--found among a large proportion of my
subjects who have never been professional actors--has attracted the
attention of previous investigators in this field.[221] Thus, Moll refers
to the frequency of artistic, and especially dramatic, talent among
inverts, and remarks that the cause is doubtful. After pointing out that
the lie which they have to be perpetually living renders inverts always
actors, he goes on to say:--
Apart from this, it seems to me that the capacity and the
inclination to conceive situations and to represent them in a
masterly manner corresponds to an abnormal predisposition of the
nervous system, just as does sexual inversion; so that both
phenomena are due to the same source.
I am in agreement with this statement; the congenitally inverted may, I
believe, be looked upon as a class of individuals exhibiting nervous
characters which, to some extent, approximate them to persons of artistic
genius. The dramatic and artistic aptitudes of inverts are, therefore,
partly due to the circumstances of the invert's life, which render him
necessarily an actor,--and in some few cases lead him into a love of
deception comparable with that of a hysterical woman,--and partly, it is
probable, to a congenital nervous predisposition allied to the
predisposition to dramatic aptitude.
One of my correspondents has long been interested in the
frequency of inversion among actors and actresses. He knew an
inverted actor who told him he adopted the profession because it
would enable him to indulge his proclivity; but, on the whole, he
regards this tendency as due to "hitherto unconsidered
imaginative flexibilities and curiosities in the individual. The
actor, _ex hypothesi_, is one who works himself by sympathy
(intellectual and emotional) into states of psychological being
that are not his own. He learns to comprehend--nay, to live
himself into--relations which were originally alien to his
nature. The capacity for doing this--what makes a born
actor--implies a faculty for extending his artistically acquired
experience into life. In the process of his trade, therefore, he
becomes at all points sensitive to human emotions, and, sexuality
being the most intellectually undetermined of the appetites after
hunger, the actor might discover in himself a sort of sexual
indifference, out of which a sexual aberration could easily
arise. A man devoid of this imaginative flexibility could not be
a successful actor. The man who possesses it would be exposed to
divagations of the sexual instinct under esthetical or merely
wanton influences. Something of the same kind is applicable to
musicians and artists, in whom sexual inversion prevails beyond
the average. They are conditioned by their esthetical faculty,
and encouraged by the circumstances of their life to feel and
express the whole gamut of emotional experience. Thus they get an
environment which (unless they are sharply otherwise
differentiated) leads easily to experiments in passion. All this
joins on to what you call the 'variational diathesis' of men of
genius. But I should seek the explanation of the phenomenon less
in the original sexual constitution than in the exercise of
sympathetic, assimilative emotional qualities, powerfully
stimulated and acted on by the conditions of the individual's
life. The artist, the singer, the actor, the painter, are more
exposed to the influences out of which sexual differentiation in
an abnormal direction may arise. Some persons are certainly made
abnormal by nature, others, of this sympathetic artistic
temperament, may become so through their sympathies plus their
conditions of life." It is possible there may be some element of
truth in this view, which my correspondent regarded as purely
hypothetical.
In this connection I may, perhaps, mention a moral quality which is very
often associated with dramatic aptitude, and also with minor degrees of
nervous degeneration, and that is vanity and the love of applause. While
among a considerable section of inverts it is not more marked than among
the non-inverted, if not, indeed, less marked, among another section it is
found in an exaggerated degree. In at least one of my cases vanity and
delight in admiration, both as regards personal qualities and artistic
productions, reach an almost morbid extent. And the quotations from
letters written by various others of my subjects show a curious
complacency in the description of their personal physical characters,
markedly absent in other cases. It is suggested by Alexander Schmid, on
the basis of Adler's views, that this vanity, which sometimes in the
inverted artist becomes an exalted pride, as of a guardian of sacred
mysteries, may be regarded as an effort to secure a compensation for the
consciousness of feminine defect.[222]
The extreme type of this preoccupation with personal beauty is
represented by the history of himself sent by a young Italian of
good family to Zola in the hope--itself a sign of vanity--that
the distinguished novelist would make it the subject of one of
his works. The history is reproduced in the _Archives
d'Anthropologie Criminelle_ (1894) and in _L'Homosexualité et les
Types Homosexuels_ (1910) by "Dr. Laupts" (G. Saint-Paul). I
quote the following passage: "At the age of 18 I was, with few
differences, what I am now (at 23). I am rather below the medium
height (1.65 metres), well proportioned, slender, but not lean.
My torso is superb; a sculptor could find nothing against it, and
would not find it very different from that of Antinotis. My back
is very arched, perhaps too much so; and my hips are very
developed; my pelvis is broad, like a woman's; my knees slightly
approximate; my feet are small; my hands superb; the fingers
curved back and with glistening nails, rosy and polished, cut
squarely like those of ancient statues. My neck is long and
round, the nape charmingly adorned with downy hairs. My head is
charming, and at 18 was more so. The oval of it is perfect and
strikes all by its infantine form. At 23 I am to be taken for 17
at most. My complexion is white and rosy, deepening at the
faintest emotion. The forehead is not beautiful; it recedes
slightly and is hollow at the temples, but, fortunately, it is
half-covered by long hair, of a dark blonde, which curls
naturally. The head is perfect in form, because of the curly
hair, but on examination there is an enormous protuberance at the
occiput. My eyes are oval, of a gray blue, with dark chestnut
eyelashes and thick, arched eyebrows. My eyes are very liquid,
but with dark circles, and bistered; and they are subject to
slight temporary inflammation. My mouth is fairly large, with
thick red lips, the lower pendent; they tell me I have the
Austrian mouth. My teeth are dazzling, though three are decayed
and stopped; fortunately, they cannot be seen. My ears are small
and with very colored lobes. My chin is very fat, and at 18 it
was smooth and velvety as a woman's; at present there is a slight
beard, always shaved. Two beauty spots, black and velvety, on my
left cheek, contrast with my blue eyes. My nose is thin and
straight, with delicate nostrils and a slight, almost insensible
curve. My voice is gentle, and people always regret that I have
not learned to sing." This description is noteworthy as a
detailed portrait of a sexual invert of a certain type; the
whole history is interesting and instructive.
Certain peculiarities in taste as regards costume have rightly or wrongly
been attributed to inverts,--apart from the tendency of a certain group to
adopt feminine habits,--and may here be mentioned. Tardieu many years ago
referred to the taste for keeping the neck uncovered. This peculiarity may
occasionally be observed among inverts, especially the more artistic among
them. The cause does not appear to be precisely vanity so much as that
physical consciousness which is so curiously marked in inverts, and
induces the more feminine among them to cultivate feminine grace of form,
and the more masculine to emphasize the masculine athletic habit.
It has also been remarked that inverts exhibit a preference for green
garments. In Rome _cinædi_ were for this reason called _galbanati_.
Chevalier remarks that some years ago a band of pederasts at Paris wore
green cravats as a badge. This decided preference for green is well marked
in several of my cases of both sexes, and in some at least the preference
certainly arose spontaneously. Green (as Jastrow and others have shown) is
very rarely the favorite color of adults of the Anglo-Saxon race, though
some inquirers have found it to be more commonly a preferred color among
children, especially girls, and it is more often preferred by women than
by men.[223] The favorite color among normal women, and indeed very often
among normal men, though here not so often as blue, is red, and it is
notable that of recent years there has been a fashion for a red tie to be
adopted by inverts as their badge. This is especially marked among the
"fairies" (as a _fellator_ is there termed) in New York. "It is red,"
writes an American correspondent, himself inverted, "that has become
almost a synonym for sexual inversion, not only in the minds of inverts
themselves, but in the popular mind. To wear a red necktie on the street
is to invite remarks from newsboys and others--remarks that have the
practices of inverts for their theme. A friend told me once that when a
group of street-boys caught sight of the red necktie he was wearing they
sucked their fingers in imitation of _fellatio_. Male prostitutes who walk
the streets of Philadelphia and New York almost invariably wear red
neckties. It is the badge of all their tribe. The rooms of many of my
inverted friends have red as the prevailing color in decorations. Among my
classmates, at the medical school, few ever had the courage to wear a red
tie; those who did never repeated the experiment."
MORAL ATTITUDE OF THE INVERT.--There is some interest in tracing the
invert's own attitude toward his anomaly, and his estimate of its
morality. As my cases are not patients seeking to be cured of their
perversion, this attitude cannot be taken for granted. I have noted the
moral attitude in 57 cases. In 8 the subjects loathe themselves, and have
fought in vain against their perversion, which they often regard as a sin.
Nine or ten are doubtful, and have little to say in justification of their
condition, which they regard as perhaps morbid, a "moral disease." One,
while thinking it right to gratify his natural instincts, admits that they
may be vices. The remainder, a large majority (including all the women)
are, on the other hand, emphatic in their assertion that their moral
position is precisely the same as that of the normally constituted
individual, on the lowest ground a matter of taste, and at least two state
that a homosexual relationship should be regarded as sacramental, a holy
matrimony; two or three even regard inverted love as nobler than ordinary
sexual love; several add the proviso that there should be consent and
understanding on both sides, and no attempt at seduction. The chief regret
of 2 or 3 is the double life they are obliged to lead.
When inverts have clearly faced and realized their own nature it is not so
much, it seems, their conscience that worries them, or even the fear of
the police, as the attitude of the world. An American correspondent
writes: "It is the fear of public opinion that hangs above them like the
sword of Damocles. This fear is the heritage of all of us. It is not the
fear of conscience and is not engendered by a feeling of wrongdoing.
Rather, it is a silent submission to prejudices that meet us on every
side. The true normal attitude of the sexual invert (and I have known
hundreds) with regard to his particular passion is not essentially
different from that of the normal man with regard to his."
It is noteworthy that even when the condition is regarded as morbid, and
even when a life of chastity has, on this account, been deliberately
chosen, it is very rare to find an invert expressing any wish to change
his sexual ideals. The male invert cannot find, and has no desire to find,
any sexual charm in a woman, for he finds all possible charms united in a
man. And a woman invert writes: "I cannot conceive a sadder fate than to
be a woman--an average woman reduced to the necessity of loving a man!"
It will be seen that my conclusions under this head are in striking
contrast to those of Westphal, who believed that every invert regarded
himself as morbid, and probably show a much higher proportion of
self-approving inverts than any previous series.[224] This is largely due
to the fact that the cases were not obtained from the consulting-room, and
that they represent in some degree the intellectual aristocracy of
inversion, including individuals who, often not without severe struggles,
have found consolation in the example of the Greeks, or elsewhere, and
have succeeded in attaining a _modus vivendi_ with the moral world, as
they have come to conceive it.
FOOTNOTES:
[183] The following analysis is based on somewhat fuller versions of my
Histories than it was necessary to publish in the preceding chapters, as
well as on various other Histories which are not here published at all.
Numerous apparent discrepancies may thus be explained.
[184] This frequency of nervous symptoms is in accordance with the most
reliable observation everywhere. Thus, Hirschfeld (_Die Homosexualität_,
p. 177) states that of 500 inverts, 62 per cent. showed nervous symptoms
of one kind or another: sleeplessness, sleepiness, tremors, stammering,
etc.
[185] Hirschfeld finds that 54 per cent, of inverts become conscious of
their anomaly under the age of 14. The anomaly may, however, be present at
this early age, but not consciously until later. Hence the larger
percentage recorded above.
[186] In this connection I may quote an observation by Raffalovich: "It is
natural that the invert should very clearly recall the precocity of his
inclinations. In the existence of every invert a moment arrives when he
discovers the enigma of his homosexual tastes. He then classes all his
recollections, and to justify himself in his own eyes he remembers that he
has been what he is from his earliest childhood. Homosexuality has colored
all his young life; he has thought over it, dreamed over it, reflected
over it--very often in perfect innocence. When he was quite small he
imagined that he had been carried off by brigands, by savages; at 5 or 6
he dreamed of the warmth of their chests and of their naked arms. He
dreamed that he was their slave and he loved his slavery and his masters.
He has had not the least thought that is crudely sexual, but he has
discovered his sentimental vocation."
[187] Leppmann mentions a case (certainly extreme and abnormal) of a
little girl of 8 who spent the night hidden on the roof, merely in order
to be able to observe in the morning the sexual organs of an adult male
cousin (_Bulletin de l'Union Internationale de Droit Pénal_, 1896, p.
118).
[188] I fully admit, as all investigators must, the difficulty of tracing
the influence of early suggestions, especially in dealing with persons who
are unaccustomed to self-analysis. Sometimes it happens, especially in
regard to erotic fetichism, that, while direct questioning fails to reach
any early formative suggestion, such influence is casually elicited on a
subsequent occasion.
[189] I may add that I see no fundamental irreconcilability between the
point of view here adopted and the facts brought forward (and wrongly
interpreted) by Schrenck-Notzing. In his _Beiträge zur Ætiologie der
Conträrer Sexualempfindung_ (Vienna, 1895), this writer states: "The
neuropathic disposition is congenital, as is the tendency to precocious
appearance of the appetites, the lack of psychic resistance, and the
tendency to imperative associations; but that heredity can extend to the
object of the appetite, and influence the contents of these characters, is
not shown. Psychological experiences are against it, and the possibility,
which I have shown, of changing these impulses by experiment and so
removing their danger to the character of the individual." It need not be
asserted that "heredity extends to the object of the appetite," but simply
that heredity culminates in an organism which is sexually best satisfied
by that object. It is also a mistake to suppose that congenital characters
cannot be, in some cases, largely modified by such patient and laborious
processes as those carried on by Schrenck-Notzing. In the same pamphlet
this writer refers to moral insanity and idiocy as supporting his point of
view. It is curious that both these congenital manifestations had
independently occurred to me as arguments against his position. The
experiences of Elmira Reformatory and Bicêtre--not to mention institutions
of more recent establishment--long since showed that both the morally
insane and the idiotic can be greatly improved by appropriate treatment.
Schrenck-Notzing seems to be unduly biased by his interest in hypnotism
and suggestion.
[190] "If an invert acquires, under the influence of external conditions,"
Féré wrote with truth (_L'Instinct Sexuel_, p. 238), "it is because he was
born with an aptitude for such acquisition: an aptitude lacking in those
who have been subjected to the same conditions without making the same
acquisitions."
[191] One of my subjects writes: "Inverts are, I think, naturally more
liable to indulge in self-gratification than normal people, partly because
of the perpetual suppression and disappointment of their desires, and also
because of the fact that they actually possess in themselves the desired
form of the male. This idea is a little difficult of explanation, but you
can readily imagine to what frenzies of self-abuse a normal man would be
impelled supposing that he included in his own the form of the female."
[192] I do not here enter upon the consideration of the normal prevalence
and significance of masturbation and allied phenomena, as I have dealt
with this subject in the study of "Auto-erotism," in volume i of these
_Studies_.
[193] Hirschfeld also finds, among German inverts (_Die Homosexualität_,
ch. iii), that the majority (though a smaller majority than I find in
England and the United States) have not had intercourse with women; 53 per
cent., he states, including a few married men, have never even attempted
coitus, and over 50 per cent, are presumably impotent. The number of
inverted women who have never had intercourse with men is still larger.
[194] Otto Rank, _Imago_, Heft 3, 1913.
[195] Erotic dreams have been discussed in "Auto-erotism," vol. i of these
_Studies_, and the wider bearings of the subject in another work, _The
Study of Dreams_. Many references to the extensive literature will be
found in both these places.
[196] E.g., _Archiv für Psychiatrie_, 1899; _Archiv für
Kriminal-Anthropologie_, 1900.
[197] Hirschfeld, _Die Homosexualität_, p. 71 et seq. Hirschfeld considers
that the dreams of the inverted fall into two groups: one in which the
dreamer imagines he is embracing a person of the same sex, and another in
which he imagines that he is himself of the opposite sex. The latter class
of dreams, constituting a pseudo-heterosexual group, seems to me to be
rare, and they may, moreover, occur in heterosexual persons.
[198] See Thoinot and Weysse, _Medico-legal Aspects of Moral Offenses_,
pp. 165, 291, etc.
[199] _Pedicatio_ (or _pædicatio_) is the most generally accepted
technical term for the sodomitical intromission of the penis into the
anus. It is usually derived from the Greek _pais_ (boy), but some
authorities have derived it from _pedex_ or _podex_ (anus). The terms
"paiderastia" and "pederast" are sometimes used to indicate the same act
and agent. This use, however, is undesirable. It is best to confine the
word "paiderastia" to its proper use as the name of the special
institution of Greek boy love. It may be added that the Greeks themselves
had many names (as many as 74) for paiderastia. See, on this subject of
nomenclature, Iwan Bloch, _Der Ursprung der Syphilis_, vol. ii, pp. 527,
563.
[200] It is the grosser forms of perversion which are first revealed in
every field. In the first edition of this Study the predominance of
_pedicatio_ was still greater; it is not practised by any of the subjects
of the Histories added to the present edition, though several see no
objection to it.
[201] _Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, vol. viii, 1906, p. 712.
[202] Hirschfeld, _Die Homosexualität_, p. 276 et seq.
[203] "Men," remarks Q., "tend to fall in love with boys or youths, boys
or youths with grown men, feminine natures with virile natures and _vice
versâ_, and different races with each other."
[204] Stubbes, in his _Anatomy of Abuses_, affirmed that "players and
play-haunters in their secret conclaves play the Sodomites," and refers to
some recent examples of men who had been desperately enamoured of
player-boys thus clad in women's apparel, so far as to solicit them by
words, by letters, even actually to abuse them. Later on, in 1633, Prynne,
in his _Histrio-Mastix_ (part 1, p. 208 et seq.), strongly condemned "this
putting on of woman's array" by actors on the same ground, and adds that
he has heard credibly reported of a scholar of Balliol College that he was
violently enamoured of a boy-player. In Japan, again where, as in China,
woman's parts on the stage are taken by men (not always youths), the
homosexuality of these players became, during the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, so notorious that they constituted a class requiring
special regulation as Joro, or prostitutes.
[205] This was remarked by even the earliest modern writers on
homosexuality, like Hössli. See Hirschfeld, "Vom Wesen der Liebe,"
_Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, vol. viii, 1906, p. 124 et seq.
[206] Similarly Numa Praetorius asserts (_Jahrbuch für sexuelle
Zwischenstufen_, vol. viii, p. 732) that even the most virile homosexual
men exhibit feminine traits, and adds that we could scarcely expect it to
be otherwise when we find how constantly homosexual women show masculine
traits.
[207] Näcke, "Die Diagnose der Homosexualität," _Neurologisches
Centralblatt_, April 16, 1908.
[208] So also among American boarding-school girls. Thus Margaret Otis
(_Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, June, 1913) has described the
attraction which negro girls exert on white girls at school. The
correspondence of these lovers, and sometimes their method of sex
gratification, may occasionally be of an even coarsely passionate nature.
[209] See "Sexual Selection in Man," vol. iv of these _Studies_.
[210] Hirschfeld (_Die Homosexualität_, p. 283) found that 55 per cent. of
inverts are attracted to qualities unlike their own, and 45 per cent. to
qualities resembling their own, without regard to whether these qualities
belonged to the secondary sexual sphere. It may be added that as regards
the age of the persons they are attracted to, Hirschfeld (p. 281) admits
two main groups, each including about 45 per cent. of the homosexual;
_ephebophils_, attracted to youths between 14 and 21, and _androphils_,
attracted to adults in the prime of life. This division, as may be seen
from the histories included in the present volume, seems to hold good of
British and American inverts.
[211] Hirschfeld, _Die Homosexualität_, ch. v.
[212] Krafft-Ebing tells of an inverted physician (a man of masculine
development and tastes) who had had sexual relations with 600 more or less
inverted men. He observed no tendency to sexual malformation among them,
but very frequently an approximation to a feminine form of body, as well
as insufficient hair, delicate complexion, and high voice. Well-developed
breasts were not rare, and some 10 per cent, showed a taste for feminine
occupations.
[213] A similar condition of gynecomasty has been observed in connection
with inversion by Moll, Laurent, Wey, etc. Olano ("La Secrecion Mamaria en
los Invertidos Sexuales," _Archivos de Criminologia_, May, 1902, p. 305)
further observed a certain amount of mammary secretion in an inverted man,
20 years of age, in Lima.
[214] Hirschfeld finds. 7 per cent, inverts left-handed, and 6 per cent,
partly so. Fliess attaches special importance to left-handedness in
inversion, believing that in left-handed men feminine secondary sexual
characters are marked, and in left-handed women masculine sexual character
(_Der Ablauf des Lebens_, 1906). I am not prepared to deny this statement,
but, more evidence is needed.
[215] This point has been discussed by Hirschfeld, _Die Homosexualität_,
pp. 156-8.
[216] Bloch (_The Sexual Life of Our Time_, p. 500) attaches importance to
this peculiarity, but it must be remembered that a high-pitched voice
occurs frequently in undoubtedly heterosexual men in whom it seems often
associated with high intellectual ability (Havelock Ellis, _A Study of
British Genius_, p. 200).
[217] See, e.g., Hirschfeld, _Die Homosexualität_, p. 151.
[218] On the general signs of these conditions, see, e.g., H. Meige,
"L'Infantilisme, Le Féminisme et les Hermaphrodites Antiques,"
_L'Anthropologie_. 1895; also Hastings Gilford, "Infantilism," _Lancet_,
February 28 and March 7, 1914.
[219] Merzbach has dealt with the tendency of inverts to adopt special
professions: "Homosexualität und Beruf," _Jahrbuch für sexuelle
Zwischenstufen_, vol. iv, 1902.
[220] Moll's experience in Germany also reveals the prevalence of
inversion among literary men, though, of all occupations, he found the
highest proportion among actors. Jäger has referred to the frequency of
homosexuality among barbers. I have been told that among London
hairdressers homosexuality is so prevalent that there is even a special
attitude which the client may adopt in the chair to make known that he is
an invert. Dr. Kiernan informs me that in Chicago, also, inversion is
specially prevalent among barbers, and he adds that he is acquainted with
two cases among women-barbers, a relatively large proportion. It is not
difficult to understand this, bearing in mind the close physical
association between the barber and his client. "W.G. was a barber's
assistant," writes one of my subjects, "and I took an immense fancy to him
at first-sight. He used to lather me, and the touch of his fingers was a
delight. Later on he shaved me and I always looked forward to going to the
barber's. If he were not able to attend to me I felt an incredible sinking
of heart. The whole day seemed dull and useless. I used to make a mark in
my pocket-diary every time he shaved me."
[221] See, e.g., "Vom Weibmann auf der Bühne," _Jahrbuch für sexuelle
Zwischenstufen_, vol. iii, 1901, p. 313. It is curious to find a
medico-legal record of this connection long before inversion was
recognized. In June, 1833 (see _Annual Register_ under this date), a man
died who had lived as a kept woman under the name of Eliza Edwards. He was
very effeminate in appearance, with beautiful hair, in ringlets two feet
long, and a cracked voice; he played female parts in the theater, "in the
first line of tragedy," and "appeared as a most lady-like woman." The
coroner's jury "strongly recommended to the proper authorities that some
means may be adopted in the disposal of the body which will mark the
ignominy of the crime."
[222] A. Schmid, "Zur Homosexualität," _Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse_,
vol. i, 1913, p. 237.
[223] See for a summary of various statistics in several countries,
Havelock Ellis, _Man and Woman_, 5th ed., 1914, p. 174; also ib., "The
Psychology of Red," _Popular Science Monthly_, August and September, 1900.
[224] The proportion is not so large, however, as Hirschfeld (_Die
Homosexualität_, p. 314) now finds in Germany, where inverts are better
informed on the subject of this anomaly, for here 95 per cent. regard
their feelings as natural.