TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
The present volume completes my English version of the Homosexualität portion of the author’s Onanie und Homosexualität. The first portion has been issued a few months ago, under the title Bisexual Love, and it is very gratifying that the publication of the present volume was made possible so soon after the appearance of the first. The translation of the part dealing with Autoerotism is also completed, and will appear shortly. One of the most important works of clinical psychopathology will thus be available, for the English reading professional ranks, in unabridged form.
These three volumes, though available separately, in some respects form an instructive continuity. At any rate those interested in any of the fundamental problems discussed therein will find most helpful an acquaintance with all three volumes.
Furthermore the student or physician interested in mental problems will find the implications of the principles set forth herein of the utmost practical significance, aside from their specific bearing on the problems of Homosexuality and Autoerotism. These clinical studies stand forth, in the first place, as lessons in analysis and therapy; but incidentally they reveal certain fundamental aspects of human nature more clearly than such a revelation was possible without the aid of the psychoanalytic method of research. The knowledge thus gained for therapeutic purposes is also applicable to many other practical problems of life. One approaching the study of a work like the present, with the intention of improving one’s therapeutic efficiency and of thus increasing one’s professional usefulness, is quite likely to discover before long that his whole outlook, as a professional man, and, above all, as a social being, has undergone a wholesome transformation.
Indeed, all fundamental knowledge has this quality of spreading, fan-like, clearing up with its helpful implications more than appears obvious at the beginning. It is not surprising, therefore, that Psychoanalysis, at the present stage primarily a therapeutic method, but reaching into the inner recesses of the human soul more penetratingly than any other method of inquiry, should also prove the most helpful method of interpreting all other problems generated by the functions of the human instincts and emotions.
Van Teslaar.
September 30, 1922
Brookline, Mass.