When perversion is recognized, the subject should not be treated as a criminal, nor even as a vicious individual, but as a patient afflicted with a nervous affection who is thereby dangerous to himself and others. He should be treated and prevented from becoming a center of infection for his surroundings. Inverts should be specially supervised and taken care of till adult age. When they come of age, in my opinion, it would be an innocent idea to allow them to marry persons of their own sex, as they so much desire to do. Normal adults can very well protect themselves against their attentions, when they are warned by sufficient instruction in sexual questions.
The child, on the other hand, has the right to be protected against all contamination by perversion, as against all sexual assault of whatever nature, and it is the duty of society to organize its protection. But this cannot be done unless society is itself instructed on the question, and in a position to give a rational education to youth such as we have sketched above.
If dangerous congenital perversions are discovered, such as sadism and pederosis, energetic measures of protection should be taken; in grave cases, the operations we have spoken of, or permanent internment.
Apart from suggestion, there is no better remedy against masturbation than a system of education such as that in force in the Landerziehungsheime, especially continuous physical labor combined with useful and attractive intellectual occupation. When such a system of education is put in force at an early age, the sexual appetite develops more slowly and more moderately, and has the most favorable influence on the whole sexual life of man.
In speaking of masturbation in Chapter VIII we have seen that it may be the expression of very different conditions, and we should act accordingly.
Eroticism in Childhood.—By giving children betimes the requisite instruction on the sexual question, they are tranquilized. Many boys and girls give themselves up to despair because of the erroneous and terrifying ideas they have of sexual affairs. On the one hand, they hear pornographic remarks which disgust them, while their parents envelop the subject in mystery; on the other hand, their sexual appetites evoke desire and call for satisfaction. When a young man in this state of mind has an emission, either spontaneously or as the result of artificial excitation, he is seized with anxiety and shame, often also with phantoms of disease and moral depravity. He then requires almost heroic resolution to unburden his mind to a doctor or to his father. With nervous subjects, inclined to be melancholic or hypochondriacal, such a state of mind sometimes leads to suicide.
Another advantage in the instruction of children in sexual matters is that the questions of heredity, alcohol and venereal disease can be explained to them at the same time. In giving these explanations it is important not to awaken eroticism in the child by dwelling more than necessary on sexual topics. Instruction in this subject should not be given too frequently; on the contrary, the attention of youth should, as far as possible, be drawn away from sexual questions to other subjects, till the age of maturity.
With the same object, erotic and pornographic literature should be condemned. Unfortunately, many novels and dramas which meet with the approbation of society, thanks to their fashionable or even decent form of presentation, are often full of half-veiled eroticism, which is much more exciting to the sexual appetite than the brutal and realistic descriptions of Zola or Brieux, or even the erotic art of de Maupassant.
A doctor once told me that in his country the country children, who observed copulation among animals, often made similar attempts themselves, while bathing or otherwise. Yet these country-people are no more corrupt or degenerate than the townspeople. Here again, proper instruction and warnings would be the best remedy, especially in the case of girls.
What is to be said, on the contrary, of certain Austrian judges who punish by imprisonment urchins of fourteen, who have copulated with girls of the same age or made them pregnant? Have they punished the real culprit? Do they imagine that they have done anything that will improve these children?