[237] After this chapter was first published (in the Centralblatt für Nervenheilkunde, February, 1896), Féré also compared congenital inversion to color-blindness and similar anomalies (Féré, "La Descendance d'un Inverti," Revue Générale de Clinique et Thérapeutique, 1896), while Ribot referred to the analogy with color-hearing (Psychology of the Emotions, part ii, ch. vii).
[238] See, e.g., Flournoy, Des Phenomènes de Synopsie, Geneva, 1893; and for a brief discussion of the general phenomena of synesthesia, E. Parish, Hallucinations and Illusions (Contemporary Science Series), chapter vii; Bleuler, article "Secondary Sensations," in Tuke's Dictionary of Psychological Medicine; and Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, 5th ed., 1915, pp. 181-4.
[239] Magnan has in recent years reaffirmed this view ("Inversion Sexuelle et Pathologic Mentale," Revue de Psychothérapie, March, 1914): "The invert is a diseased person, a degenerate."
[240] It is this fact which has caused the Italians to be shy of using the word "degeneration;" thus, Marro, in his great work, I Caratteri del Delinquenti, made a notable attempt to analyze the phenomena lumped together as degenerate into three groups: atypical, atavistic, and morbid.
[241] Hirschfeld and Burchard among 200 inverts found pronounced stigmata of degeneration in only 16 per cent. (Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualität, ch. xx.)
[242] Alcohol has sometimes been considered an important exciting cause of homosexuality, and alcoholism is certainly not uncommon in the heredity of inverts; according to Hirschfeld (Die Homosexualität, p. 386) it is well marked in one of the parents in over 21 per cent, of cases. But it probably has no more influence as an exciting cause in the individual homosexual person than in the individual heterosexual person. From the Freudian standpoint, indeed, Abraham believes (Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft, Heft 8, 1908) that even in normal persons alcohol removes the inhibition from a latent homosexuality, and Juliusburger from the same standpoint (Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, Heft 10 and 11, 1912) thinks that the alcoholic tendency is unconsciously aroused by the homosexual impulse in order to reach its own gratification. But we may accept Näcke's conclusions (Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, vol. lxviii, 1911, p. 852), that (1) alcohol cannot produce homosexuality in persons not predisposed, that (2) it may arouse it in those who are predisposed, that (3) the action of alcohol is the same on the homosexual as the heterosexual, and that (4) alcoholism is not common among inverts.
CHAPTER VII.—CONCLUSIONS.
The Prevention of Homosexuality—The Influence of the School—Coeducation—The Treatment of Sexual Inversion—Castration—Hypnotism—Associational Therapy—Psycho-analysis—Mental and Physical Hygiene—Marriage—The Children of Inverts—The Attitude of Society—The Horror Aroused by Homosexuality—Justinian—The Code Napoléon—The State of the Law in Europe Today—Germany—England—What Should be our Attitude toward Homosexuality?
Having now completed the psychological analysis of the sexual invert, so far as I have been able to study him, it only remains to speak briefly of the attitude of society and the law. First, however, a few words as to the medical and hygienic aspects of inversion. The preliminary question of the prevention of homosexuality is in too vague a position at present to be profitably discussed. So far as the really congenital invert is concerned, prevention can have but small influence; but sound social hygiene should render difficult the acquisition of homosexual perversity, or what has been termed pseudo-homosexuality. It is the school which is naturally the chief theater of immature and temporary homosexual manifestations, partly because school life largely coincides with the period during which the sexual impulse frequently tends to be undifferentiated, and partly because in the traditions of large and old schools an artificial homosexuality is often deeply rooted.