With the recognition that homosexuality in youth may be due to an as yet undifferentiated sexual impulse, homosexuality in mature age to a retarded development on a congenital basis, and homosexuality in sold age to a return to the attitude of youth, the area of spurious or "pseudo" homosexuality seems to me to be very much restricted. Most, perhaps all, authorities still accept the reality of this spurious homosexuality in heterosexual persons. But they enter into no details concerning it, and they bring forward no minutely observed cases in which it occurred. Hirschfeld, in discussing the diagnosis of homosexuality and seeking to distinguish genuine from spurious inverts,[134] enumerates three classes of the latter: (1) those who practise homosexuality for purposes of gain, more especially male prostitutes and blackmailers; (2) persons who, from motives of pity, good nature, friendship, etc., allow themselves to be the objects of homosexual desire; (3) normal persons who, when excluded from the society of the opposite sex, as in schools, barracks, on board ship, or in prison, have sexual relations with persons of their own sex. Now Hirschfeld clearly realizes that the mere sexual act is no proof of the direction of the sexual impulse; it may be rendered possible by mechanical irritation (as by the stimulation of a full bladder) and in women without any stimulation at all; such cases can have little psychological significance. Moreover, he seems to admit that some subdivisions of his first class are true inverts. He further mentions that some 75 per cent. of the individuals included in these classes are between 15 and 25 years of age, that is to say, that they have scarcely emerged from the period when we have reason to believe that, in a large number of individuals at all events, the sexual impulse is not yet definitely differentiated; so that neither its homosexual nor its heterosexual tendencies can properly be regarded as spurious.
If, indeed, we really accept the very reasonable view, that the basis of the sexual life is bisexual, although its direction may be definitely fixed in a heterosexual or homosexual direction at a very early period in life, it becomes difficult to see how we can any longer speak with certainty of a definitely spurious class of homosexual persons. Everyone of Hirschfeld's three classes may well contain a majority of genuinely homosexual or bisexual persons. The prostitutes and even the blackmailers are certainly genuine inverts in very many cases. Those persons, again, who allow themselves to be the recipients of homosexual attentions may well possess traces of homosexual feeling, and are undoubtedly in very many cases lacking in vigorous heterosexual impulse. Finally, the persons who turn to their own sex when forcibly excluded from the society of the opposite sex, can by no means be assumed, without question, to be normal heterosexual persons. It is only a small proportion of heterosexual persons who experience these impulses under such conditions. There are always others who under the same conditions remain emotionally attracted to the opposite sex and sexually indifferent to their own sex. There is evidently a difference, and that difference may most reasonably be supposed to be in the existence of a trace of homosexual feeling which is called into activity under the abnormal conditions, and subsides when the stronger heterosexual impulse can again be gratified.
The real distinction would seem, therefore, to be between a homosexual impulse so strong that it subsists even in the presence of the heterosexual object, and a homosexual impulse so weak that it is eclipsed by the presence of the heterosexual object. We could not, however, properly speak of the latter as any more "spurious" or "pseudo" than the former. A heterosexual person who experiences a homosexual impulse in the absence of any homosexual disposition is not today easy to accept. We can certainly accept the possibility of a mechanical or other non-sexual stimulus leading to a sexual act contrary to the individual's disposition. But usually it is somewhat difficult to prove, and when proved it has little psychological significance or importance. We may expect, therefore, to find "pseudo-homosexuality," or spurious homosexuality, playing a dwindling part in classification.
The simplest of all possible classifications, and that which I adopted in the earlier editions of the present _Study_, merely seeks to distinguish between those who, not being exclusively attracted to the opposite sex, are exclusively attracted to the same sex, and those who are attracted to both sexes. The first are the homosexual, whether or not the attraction springs from genuine inversion. The second are the bisexual, or, as they were formerly more often termed, following Krafft-Ebing, psycho-sexual hermaphrodites.[135] There would thus seem to be a broad and simple grouping of all sexually functioning persons into three comprehensive divisions: the heterosexual, the bisexual, and the homosexual.
Even this elementary classification seems however of no great practical use. The bisexual group is found to introduce uncertainty and doubt. Not only a large proportion of persons who may fairly be considered normally heterosexual have at some time in their lives experienced a feeling which may be termed sexual toward individuals of their own sex, but a very large proportion of persons who are definitely and markedly homosexual are found to have experienced sexual attraction toward, and have had relationships with, persons of the opposite sex. The social pressure, urging all persons into the normal sexual channel, suffices to develop such slight germs of heterosexuality as homosexual persons may possess, and so to render them bisexual. In the majority of adult bisexual persons it would seem that the homosexual tendency is stronger and more organic than the heterosexual tendency. Bisexuality would thus in a large number of cases be comparable to ambidexterity, which Biervliet has found to occur most usually in people who are organically left-handed.[136] While therefore the division into heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual is a useful superficial division, it is scarcely a scientific classification.
In the face of these various considerations, and in view of the fact that, while I feel justified in regarding the histories of my cases as reliable so far as they go, I have not been always able to explore them extensively, it has seemed best to me to attempt no classification at all.
The order in which the following histories appear is not, therefore, to be regarded as possessing any significance.
It may be proper, at this point, to say a few words as to the reliability of the statements furnished by homosexual persons. This has sometimes been called in question. Many years ago we used to be told that inverts are such lying and deceitful degenerates that it was impossible to place reliance on anything they said. It was also usual to say that when they wrote autobiographical accounts of themselves they merely sought to mold them in the fashion of those published by Krafft-Ebing. More recently the psychoanalysts have made a more radical attack on all histories not obtained by their own methods as being quite unreliable, even when put forth in good faith, in part because the subject withholds much that he either regards as too trivial or too unpleasant to bring forward, and in part because he cannot draw on that unconscious field within himself wherein, it is held, the most significant facts in his own sexual history are concealed. Thus Sadger ("Ueber den Wert der Autobiographien Sexuell Perverser," _Fortschritte der Medizin_, nos. 26-28, 1913) vigorously puts forward this view and asserts that the autobiographies of inverts are worthless, although his assertions are somewhat discounted by the fact that they accompany an autobiography, written in the usual manner, to which he attributes much value.
The objection to homosexual autobiographic statements dates from a period when the homosexual were very little known, and it was supposed that their moral character generally was fairly represented by a small section among them which attracted more attention than the rest by reason of discreditable conduct. But, in reality, as we now know, there are all sorts of people, with all varieties of moral character, to be found among inverts, just as among normal people. Sadger (_Archiv für Kriminal-Anthropologie_, 1913, p. 199) complains of the "great insincerity of inverts in not acknowledging their inversion;" but, as Sadger himself admits, we cannot be surprised at this so long as inversion is counted a crime. The most normal persons, under similar conditions, would be similarly insincere. If the homosexual differ in any respect, under this aspect, from the heterosexual, it is by exhibiting a more frequent tendency to be slightly neuropathic, nervously sensitive, and femininely emotional. These tendencies, while on the one hand they are liable to induce a very easily detectable vanity, may also lead to an unusual self-subordination to veracity. On the whole, it may be said, in my own experience, that the best histories written by the homosexual compare favorably for frankness, intelligence, and power of self-analysis with those written by the heterosexual.
The ancient allegation that inverts have written their own histories on the model, or under the suggestion, of those published in Krafft-Ebing's _Psychopathia Sexualis_ can scarcely have much force now that the published histories are so extremely varied and numerous that they cannot possibly produce any uniform impression on the most sensitively receptive mind. As a matter of fact, there is no doubt that inverts have frequently been stimulated to set down the narrative of their own experiences through reading those written by others. But the stimulation has, as often as not, lain in the fact that their own experiences have seemed different, not that they have seemed identical. The histories that they read only serve as models in the sense that they indicate the points on which information is desired. I have often been able to verify this influence, which would in any case seem to be fairly obvious.
Psycho-analysis is, in theory, an ideal method of exploring many psychic conditions, such as hysteria and obsessions, which are obscure and largely concealed beneath the psychic surface. In most homosexual cases the main facts are, with the patient's good-will and the investigator's tact, not difficult to ascertain. Any difficulties which psychoanalysis may help to elucidate mainly concern the early history of the case in childhood, and, regarding these, psychoanalysis may sometimes raise questions which it cannot definitely settle. Psycho-analysis reveals an immense mass of small details, any of which may or may not possess significance, and in determining which are significant the individuality of the psychoanalyst cannot fail to come into play. He will necessarily tend to arrange them according to a system. If, for instance, he regards infantile incestuous emotions or early Narcissism as an essential feature of the mechanism of homosexuality, a conscientious investigator will not rest until he has discovered traces of them, as he very probably will. (See, e.g., Sadger, "Fragment der Psychoanalyse eines Homosexuellen," _Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, Bd. ix, 1908; and cf. Hirschfeld, _Die Homosexualität_, p. 164). But the exact weight and significance of these traces may still be doubtful, and, even if considerable in one case, may be inconsiderable in another. Freud, who sets forth one type of homosexual mechanism, admits that there may be others. Moreover, it must be added that the psychoanalytic method by no means excludes unconscious deception by the subject, as Freud found, and so was compelled to admit the patient's tendency to "fantasy," as Adler has to "fictions," as a fundamental psychic tendency of the "unconscious."
The force of these considerations is now beginning to be generally recognized. Thus Moll (art. "Homosexualität," in 4th ed. of Eulenburg's _Realencyclopädie der gesamten Heilkunde_, 1909, p. 611) rightly says that while the invert may occasionally embroider his story, "the expert can usually distinguish between the truth and the poetry, though it is unnecessary to add that complete confidence on the patient's part is necessary," Näcke, again (_Sexual-Probleme_, September, 1911, p. 619), after quoting with approval the remark of one of the chief German authorities, Dr. Numa Praetorius, that "a great number of inverts' histories are at the least as trustworthy as the attempts of psychoanalysts, especially when they come from persons skillful in self-analysis," adds that "even Freudian analysis gives no absolute guarantee for truth. A healthy skepticism is justifiable--but not an unhealthy skepticism!" Hirschfeld, also (_Die Homosexualität_, p. 164), whose knowledge of such histories is unrivalled, remarks that while we may now and then meet with a case of _pseudo-logia fantastica_ in connection with psychic debility on the basis of a psychopathic constitution, "taken all in all any generalized assertion of the falsehood of inverts is an empty fiction, and is merely a sign that the physicians who make it have not been able to win the trust of the men and women who consult them." My own experience has fully convinced me of the truth of this, statement. I am assured that many of the inverts I have met not only possess a rare power of intellectual self-analysis (stimulated by the constant and inevitable contrast between their own feelings and those of the world around them), but an unsparing sincerity in that self-analysis not so very often attained by normal people.
The histories which follow have been obtained in various ways, and are of varying degrees of value. Some are of persons whom I have known very well for very long periods, and concerning whom I can speak very positively. A few are from complete strangers whose good faith, however, I judge from internal evidence that I am able to accept. Two or three were written by persons who--though educated, in one case a journalist--had never heard of inversion, and imagined that their own homosexual feelings were absolutely unique in the world. A fair number were written by persons whom I do not myself know, but who are well known to others in whose judgment I feel confidence. Perhaps the largest number are concerned with individuals who wrote to me spontaneously in the first place, and whom I have at intervals seen or heard from since, in some cases during a very long period, so that I have slowly been able to fill in their histories, although the narratives, as finally completed, may have the air of being written down at a single sitting. I have not admitted any narrative which I do not feel that I am entitled to regard as a substantially accurate statement of the facts, although allowance must occasionally be made for the emotional coloring of these facts, the invert sometimes cherishing too high an opinion, and sometimes too low an opinion, of his own personality.
HISTORY I.--Both parents healthy; father of unusually fine _physique_. He is himself a manual worker and also of exceptionally fine _physique_. He is, however, of nervous temperament. He is mentally bright, though not highly educated, a keen sportsman, and in general a good example of an all-around healthy Englishman.
While very affectionate, his sexual desires are not strongly developed on the physical side, and seem never to have been so. He sometimes masturbated about the age of puberty, but never afterward. He does not appear to have well-marked erotic dreams. There used to be some attraction toward women, though it was never strong. At the age of 26 he was seduced by a woman and had connection with her once. Afterward he had reason to think she had played him false in various ways. This induced the strongest antipathy, not only to this woman, but to all marriageable women. A year after this episode homosexual feeling first became clear and defined. He is now 33, and feels the same antipathy to women; he hates even to speak of marriage.
There has only been one really strong attraction, toward a man of about the same age, but of different social class, and somewhat a contrast to him, both physically and mentally. So far as the physical act is concerned this relationship is not definitely sexual, but it is of the most intimate possible kind, and the absence of the physical act is probably largely due to circumstances. At the same time there is no conscious desire for the act for its own sake, and the existing harmony and satisfaction are described as very complete. There is no repulsion to the physical side, and he regards the whole relationship as quite natural.
HISTORY II.--B.O., English, aged 35, missionary abroad. A brother is more definitely inverted. B.O. has never had any definitely homosexual relationships, although he has always been devoted to boys; nor has he had any relationships with women. "As regards women," he says, "I feel I have not the patience to try and understand them; they are petulant and changeable," etc. He objects to being called "abnormal," and thinks that people like himself are "_extremely_ common."
"I have never wanted to kiss boys," he writes, "nor to handle them in any way except to put my arm around them at their studies and at other similar times. Of course, with really little boys, it is different, but boys and girls under 14 seem to me much alike, and I can love either equally well. As to any sort of sexual connection between myself and one of my own sex, I cannot think of it otherwise than with disgust. I can imagine great pleasure in having connection with a woman, but their natures do not attract me. Indeed, my liking for my own sex seems to consist almost entirely in a preference for the masculine character, and the feeling that as an object to _look at_ the male body is really more beautiful than the female. When any strong temptations to sexual passion come over me in my waking moments, it is of women I think. On the other hand, I have to confess that after being with some lad I love for an hour or two, I have sometimes felt my sexual organs roused. But only once in my life have I experienced a strong desire to sleep in the same bed with a particular lad, and even then no idea of doing anything entered my mind. Needless to say, I did not sleep with him.
"I never feel tempted by any girls here, although I see so many with their bodies freely exposed, and plenty of them have really pretty faces. Neither do I feel tempted to do anything improper with any of the boys, although I frequently sit talking with one who has very little on. But I find the constant sight of well-shaped bare limbs has a curious effect on the mind and comes before one's imagination as a picture at unlooked-for times. But the most curious thing of all is this: There are several lads here of whom I am very fond. Now when they are near me I think of them with only the purest and most tender feelings, but sometimes at night when I am half asleep, or when I am taking my midday siesta, my imagination pictures one of these lads approaching a girl, or actually lying with her, and the strange thing is that I do not feel any desire myself to approach the girl, but I feel I wish I were in _her_ place and the lad was coming to _me_. In my calm, waking moments it disgusts and rather horrifies me to find myself apparently so unsexed--yet such is the fact, and the experience, with only slight changes, repeats itself over and over again. It is not that I, as a man, wish even in imagination to act improperly with a boy, but I feel I would like to be in the girl's place, and the strange thing is that in all these dreams and imaginings I can always apparently enter into the feelings of the woman better than into those of the man. Sometimes I fancy for a moment that perhaps reincarnation is true and I was a woman in my last life. Sometimes I fancy that when I was in the womb I was formed as a girl and the sexual organs changed just at the last moment. It is a curious problem. Don't think I worry about it. Only at long intervals do I think of it...The thing has its bright side. Boys and men seem to have tender feelings toward me, such as one expects them to have for members of the opposite sex, and I get into all the closer contact with them in consequence."
HISTORY III.--F.R., English, aged 50, Belongs on both sides to healthy, normal families, of more than average ability. Father was 35 at birth, and mother 27. He is the second of four children. There was a considerable interval between the births of the children, which were spread over twenty-one years. All are normal, except F.R., two of them married and with families.
Owing to the difference of age between the children, F.R. (who was three years younger than his elder brother, and more than four years older than his sister, the third child) had no male companionship and was constantly alone with his mother. "Being naturally imitative," he remarks, "I think I acquired her tastes and interests and habits of thought. However that may be, I feel sure that my interests and amusements were more girlish than boyish. By way of illustration, I may mention that I have often been told by a friend of my mother's that, on one occasion, I was wanting a new hat, and none being found of a size to fit me, I congratulated myself that I should therefore be obliged to have a _bonnet!_ As regards my feminine tastes and instincts, I have always been conscious of taking interest in questions of family relationships, etiquette, dress (women's as much as, or more than, men's) and other things of that kind, which, as a rule, were treated with indifference or contempt. In the house I take more notice than my sister does of the servants' deficiencies and neglects, and am much more orderly in my arrangements than she is."
There is nothing markedly feminine in the general appearance. Pubertal development took place at an early age, long before fourteen, with nocturnal emissions, but without erotic dreams. The testicles are well developed, the penis perhaps rather below the average in size, and the prepuce long and narrow. Erection occurs with much facility, especially at night. When young he knew nothing of masturbation, but he began the habit about ten years ago, and has practised it occasionally ever since.
Although he likes the society of women to a certain extent, he soon grows tired of it, and has never had any desire to marry. His sexual dreams never have any relation to women. "I am generally doing or saying something," he remarks, "to some man whom I know when awake, something which I admit I might wish to do or say if it were not quite out of the question on grounds of propriety and self-respect."
He has, however, never had any intimate relationships with men, and much that he has heard of such relationships fills him with horror.
"What I feel about myself is," he writes, "that I have to a certain extent, or in some respects, a feminine mind in a male body; or, I might put it that I am a combination of an immoral (in tendency, rather than in act) woman and a religious man. From time to time I have felt strong affection for young men, but I cannot flatter myself that my affection has been reciprocated. At the present time there is a young fellow (23 years old) who acts as my clerk and sits in my room. He is extremely good-looking, and of a type which is generally considered 'aristocratic,' but so far as I (or he) know, he is quite of the lower middle class. He has little to recommend him but a fine face and figure, and there is nothing approaching to mental or social equality between us. But I constantly feel the strongest desire to treat him as a man might a young girl he warmly loved. Various obvious considerations keep me from more than quasi-paternal caresses, and I feel sure he would resent very strongly anything more. This constant repression is trying beyond measure to the nerves, and I often feel quite ill from that cause. Having had no experiences of my own, I am always anxious to learn anything I can of the sexual relations of other men, and their organs, but I have no curiosity whatever concerning the other sex. My chief pleasure and source of gratification is found in the opportunities afforded by Turkish and other baths; wherever, in fact, there is the nude male to be found. But I seldom find in these places anyone who seems to have the same tendency as myself, and certainly I have not met with more than two cases among the attendants, who responded to my hinted desire to see everything. Under a shampooer, particularly an unfamiliar one, I occasionally experience an orgasm, but less often now than when I was younger."
F.R. is very short-sighted. His favorite color is blue. He is able to whistle. His tastes are chiefly of a literary character, and he has never had any liking for sports. "I have been generally considered ineffective in the use of my hands," he writes, "and I am certainly not skillful. All I have ever been able to do in that way is to net and do the simpler forms of needlework; but it seems more natural to me to do, or try to do, everything of that sort, and to play on the piano, rather than to shoot or play games. I may add that I am fonder of babies than many women, and am generally considered to be surprisingly capable of holding them! Certainly I enjoy doing so. As a youth, I used to act in charades; but I was too shy to do so unless I was dressed as a woman and veiled; and when I took a woman's part I _felt_ less like _acting_ than I have done in _propria persona_. A remark made by an uncle once rather annoyed me: that it seemed more like nature than art. But he was quite right."
HISTORY IV.--Of Lowland Scotch parentage. Both sides of house healthy and without cerebral or nervous disease. Homosexual desires began at puberty. He practised onanism to a limited extent at school and up to the age of about 22. His erotic dreams are exclusively about males. While very friendly and intimate with women of all ages, he is instantly repelled by any display of sexual affection on their side. This has happened in varying degree in three or four cases. With regard to marriage, he remarks: "As there seems no immediate danger of the race dying out, I leave marriage to those who like it." His male ideal has varied to some extent. It has for some years tended toward a healthy, well-developed, athletic or out-of-door working type, intelligent and sympathetic, but not specially intellectual.
At school his sexual relations were of the simplest type. Since then there have been none. "This," he says, "is not due either to absence of desire or presence of 'morals.' To put it shortly, 'there were never the time and the place and the loved one together.' In another view, physical desire and the general affection have not always coexisted toward the same person; and the former without the latter is comparatively transient; while the latter stops the gratification of the former, if it is felt that that gratification could in any way make the object of affection unhappy, mentally or emotionally."
He is healthy and fairly well developed; of sensitive, emotional nature, but self-controlled; mentally he is receptive and aggressive by turns, sometimes uncritical, sometimes analytical. His temper is equable, and he is strongly affectionate. Very fond of music and other arts, but not highly imaginative.
Of sexual inversion in the abstract he says he has no views, but he thus sums up his moral attitude: "I presume that, if it is there, it is there for use or abuse, as men please. I condemn gratification of bodily desire at the expense of others, in whatever form it may take. I condemn it no more in its inverted form than in the ordinary. I believe that affection between persons of the same sex, even when it includes the sexual passion and its indulgences, may lead to results as splendid as human nature can ever attain to. In short, I place it on an absolute equality with love as ordinarily understood."
HISTORY V.--S.W., aged 64, English, musical journalist. The communication which follows (somewhat abbreviated) was written before S.W. had heard or read anything about sexual inversion, and when he still believed that his own case was absolutely unique.
"I am the son of a clergyman, and lived for the first thirteen years of my life in the country town where I was born. Then my father became the vicar of a country village, where I lived until I went out into the world at the age of 18. As during the whole of this time my father had a few pupils, I was educated with them, and never went to school. I was born, I fancy, with sexual passions about as strong as can well be imagined, and at the same time was very precocious in my entry into the stage of puberty. Semen began to form a little before my twelfth birthday; hair soon followed, and in a year I was in that respect the equal of an average boy of 15 or 16. I conversed freely with my companions on the relations of the sexes, but, unlike them, had no personal feeling toward girls. In time I became conscious that I was different, as I then believed, and believe now, from all other men. My sexual organs were quite perfect. But in the frame of a man I had the sexual mind of a female. I distinctly disclaim the faintest inclination to perform unnatural acts; the idea of committing sodomy would be _most disgusting_.