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.