Others sometimes confess to a doctor, and the life of a martyr, who is always contemplating suicide, is revealed to him. Individuals of feeble, cynical, egoistic or abnormal natures, whose number is legion in the corrupt centers of modern civilization, yield to their perversion and often come before the tribunals, or else become objects of public contempt. As it is this class which generally become known, it is assumed by too hasty generalization that sexual perverts are necessarily cynical, vicious or weak-minded individuals; but this induction is false. It is unfortunately impossible to estimate the number of sexual perversions dissimulated by a large number of pessimists of both sexes, generally celibate and usually males.
I do not pretend that, when sexual perversion is neither hereditary nor favored by a latent hereditary predisposition, nor developed or fixed by alcoholism, it is usually possible to cure it by suggestion. This often acts even in cases where alcohol has aroused a hereditary taint. The incorrigible recidivists among the sexual perverts are, I am convinced, either hereditary or strongly predisposed, or degenerated by alcoholism. The original will power of the pervert is also of great importance. Weak-willed perverts always tend to relapse.
The social sanitation of sexual intercourse would certainly reduce to a minimum the compensatory perversions of normal persons who abstain from alcohol. The prohibition of alcoholic drink would definitely eliminate not only the perversions directly due to alcohol, but gradually also those due to alcoholic blastophthoria in the descendants. Other hereditary perversions, not of alcoholic origin, can only be definitely eliminated by healthy selection.
Perversions acquired by suggestion or auto-suggestion should be combated by suppression of the depraved examples which cause them, as well as by treatment by suggestion. It is needless to say that sexual perverts should always abstain from alcoholic drinks.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] English translation by F.J. Rebman: Rebman Co., New York.
[5] For further information on this subject see Marshall's "Syphilology and Venereal Disease," (London, Balliere, Tindall & Co.); also Marshall's translation of Fournier's "Treatment and Prophylaxis of Syphilis," (New York: Rebman Co.)
[6] Krafft-Ebing describes bestiality (connection with animals) and pederasty under the general term of sodomy, but points out that the original meaning of sodomy used in Genesis (Chapter XIX) signified pederasty, i.e., anal coitus between men.