He has always loved men younger than himself. At about the age of 27 he had begun to admire young soldiers. Since he yielded freely to his inclinations the men he has sought are invariably persons of a lower social rank than his own. He carried on one liaison continuously for twelve years; it began without passion on the friend's side, but gradually grew to nearly equal strength on both sides. He is not attracted by uniforms, but seeks some uncontaminated child of nature.
The methods of satisfaction have varied with the phases of his passion. At first they were romantic and Platonic, when a hand-touch, a rare kiss, or mere presence sufficed. In the second period sleeping side by side, inspection of the naked body of the loved man, embracements, and occasional emissions after prolonged contact. In the third period the gratification became more frankly sensual. It took every shape: mutual masturbation, intercrural coitus, fellatio, irrumatio, and occasionally active pedicatio; always according to the inclination or concession of the beloved male.
He himself always plays the active, masculine part. He never yields himself to the other, and he asserts that he never has the joy of finding himself desired with ardor equal to his own. He does not shrink from passive pedicatio; but it is never demanded of him. Coitus with males, as above described, always seems to him healthy and natural; it leaves a deep sense of well-being, and has cemented durable friendships. He has always sought to form permanent ties with the men whom he has adored so excessively.
He is of medium height, not robust, but with great nervous energy, with strong power of will and self-control, able to resist fatigue and changes of external circumstances.
In boyhood he had no liking for female occupations, or for the society of girls, preferring study and solitude. He avoided games and the noisy occupations of boys, but was only non-masculine in his indifference to sport, was never feminine in dress or habit. He never succeeded in his attempts to whistle. He is a great smoker, and has at times drunk much. He likes riding, skating, and climbing, but is a poor horseman, and is clumsy with his hands. He has no capacity for the fine arts and music, though much interested in them, and is a prolific author.
He has suffered extremely throughout life, owing to his sense of the difference between himself and normal human beings. No pleasure he has enjoyed, he declares, can equal a thousandth part of the pain caused by the internal consciousness of pariahdom. The utmost he can plead in his own defense, he admits, is irresponsibility, for he acknowledges that his impulse may be morbid. But he feels absolutely certain that in early life his health was ruined and his moral repose destroyed owing to the perpetual conflict with his own inborn nature, and that relief and strength came with indulgence. Although he always has before him the terror of discovery, he is convinced that his sexual dealings with men have been thoroughly wholesome to himself, largely increasing his physical, moral, and intellectual energy, and not injurious to others. He has no sense whatever of moral wrong in his actions, and he regards the attitude of society toward those in his position as utterly unjust and founded on false principles.
The next case is, like the foregoing, that of a successful man of letters who also passed through a long period of mental conflict before he became reconciled to his homosexual instincts. He belongs to a family who are all healthy and have shown marked ability in different intellectual departments. He feels certain that one of his brothers is as absolute an invert as himself and that another is attracted to both sexes. I am indebted to him for the following detailed narrative, describing his emotions and experiences in childhood, which I regard as of very great interest, not only as a contribution to the psychology of inversion, but to the embryology of the sexual emotions generally. We here see described, in an unduly precocious and hyperesthetic form, ideas and feelings which, in a slighter and more fragmentary shape, may be paralleled in the early experiences of many normal men and women. But it must be rare to find so many points in sexual psychology so definitely illustrated in a single child. It may be added that the narrative is also not without interest as a study in the evolution of a man of letters; a child whose imagination was thus early exercised and developed was predestined for a literary career.
HISTORY XXI.—"Almost the earliest recollection I have is of a dream, which, from my vivid recollection of its details, must have repeated itself, I think, more than once, unless my waking thoughts unconsciously added definition. From this dream dated my consciousness of the attraction to me of my own sex, which has ever since dominated my life. The dream, suggested in part, I think, by a picture in an illustrated newspaper of a mob murdering a church dignitary, took this form: I dreamed that I saw my own father murdered by a gang of ruffians, but I do not remember that I felt any grief, though I was actually an exceedingly affectionate child. The body was then stripped of its clothing and eviscerated. I had at the time no notion of anatomical details; but the particulars remain distinct to my mind's eye, of entrails uniformly brown, the color of dung, and there was no accompaniment of blood. When the abdomen had been emptied, the incident in which I became an active participant occurred. I was seized (and the fact that I was overpowered contributed to the agony of delight it afforded me) and was laid between the thighs of my murdered parent; and from there I had presently crawled my way into the evacuated, abdomen. The act, so far as I can decide of a dream at an age when emission was out of the question, caused in me extreme organic excitement. At all events, I used afterward definitely to recur to it in the waking moments before sleep for the purpose of gaining a state of erection. The dream had no outcome; it seemed to reach its goal in the excitement it caused. I was at that time between 3 and 4 years old. (I have been told that erections occurred when I was only 2 years old. It was between 3 and 4 that I used to induce, at all events, the sensation of an erection. But I was nearer 5 when, sitting on my bed and waiting to be dressed, I got an involuntary erection and called my nurse's attention to it, asking what it meant. The appearance must, therefore, have been usual to me at that date, but certainly the sensation was not.)
"At that time I was totally ignorant of the conditions, of puberty, which afterward, when I discovered them, so powerfully affected me. I could not even visualize the private organs of a man; I made no deductions from myself. The only naked bodies I had seen then—I judge from circumstances, not from any actual memory of the facts—were those of my own sisters. In the waking dreams which I began to construct, though I recurred often to the one already narrated, the goal of my desire was generally to nestle between the thighs or to have my face pressed against the hinder parts of the object of my worship. But for a time my first dream so engrossed me that I did not indulge in any promiscuity. Gradually, however, my horizon enlarged, and took in, besides the first mentioned, three others: a cousin very much my elder, an uncle, and the curate of the parish.
"At this stage I began to invent circumstances for the indulgence of my passion. One of the earliest was to imagine myself in a tank with my three lovers floating in the water above me. From this position I visited their limbs in turn; the attraction rested in the thighs and buttocks only. I fancy this limitation of the charm to the lower parts only lasted until actual experience of a more complete embrace made me as much a lover of the arms and breast; indeed, later I became more emotionally enamored of these parts than of all the rest. At the beginning of things I simply loved best what my mind could first get hold of.