Freud, in his “Three Essays on the Sexual Theory,” recognizes the justice of my view, and on p. 80 he writes:
“Physicians who have first studied perversions in well-marked examples and peculiar conditions are naturally inclined to regard them as signs of disease or as stigmata of degeneration, just as in the case of sexual inversion. Daily experience has shown that the majority of these transgressions—at any rate, the less marked of them—constitute a seldom lacking constituent of the sexual life of healthy persons. In favourable conditions the normal individual may exhibit such a perversion for a considerable length of time in the place of his normal sexual activity; or the perversion may take its place beside the normal sexual activity. Probably there is no healthy person in whom there does not exist, at some time or other, some kind of supplement to his normal sexual activity, to which we should be justified in giving the name of ‘perversity.’”[471]
A second important factor in the genesis of sexual anomalies is the ease with which the sexual impulse is affected by external influences, the associative inclusion of manifold external stimuli in sexual perception itself, the “synæsthetic stimuli,” as I myself have called them, in the amatory life of mankind. In this way gradually all the relations of art, religion, fashion, etc., to sexuality have developed, and they offer, in conjunction with the sensory impressions and the psychical and physical imaginative associations which accompany the sexual act, an incredibly rich material for the manifold realizations of the sexual need for variation.
The need for variety in sexual relationships, in conjunction with the sexual “demand for stimulation” (Hoche),[472] plays a great part, especially in the occurrence of sexual perversions in adult persons and at a more advanced age of life. The effect of external influences is most clearly noticeable in childhood, when it is experienced most deeply and in a most enduring manner, and when it can become permanently associated with sexual perception (Binet and von Schrenck-Notzing).
Alexander von Humboldt, in his “Cosmos” (vol. ii., Introduction), drew attention to the well-known experience that “sensual impressions and apparently chance occurrences are, in the case of youthful emotional individuals, often capable of determining the entire course of a human life.” Freud draws attention to the psychological fact that impressions of childhood, which have apparently been forgotten, may, notwithstanding, have left the most profound marks upon our psychical life, and may have determined our entire subsequent development. The impressions of childhood are often incorporated fate. For this reason, for example, the children of criminals become criminals themselves, not because they are “born” criminals, but because, as children, they grow up in the atmosphere of crime, and the impressions they here receive become firmly and deeply rooted in their natures. Hence the campaign against crime must in the first place take into consideration the education of the children of criminals!
From the need for variety in sexual relationships, and from the effect of external influences, we deduce the possibility and the actual frequency of the acquirement and the artificial production of sexual perversions and perversities; and these, in proportion to the intensity of the sexual impulse (very variable in strength in different individuals, according to the ease with which it is excited), will appear now earlier, now later, will be now transient and now enduring.
The third important etiological factor in the origination of sexual perversions is the frequent repetition of the same sexual aberration. There can be no doubt whatever that the normal human being can become accustomed to the most diverse sexual aberrations, so that these become perversions, which appear in healthy human beings just as they do in the diseased.
Fourthly, suggestion and imitation play an extremely important r?e in the vita sexualis alike of primitive and of civilized nations, in accordance with which certain aberrations in the sexual sphere become diffused with great rapidity, and make their appearance as customs, fashions, and psychical epidemics. Those who everywhere trace perversities from morbid rudiments underestimate the powerful influence which example and seduction exercise in the human sexual life. This is especially noticeable to-day in those sexual perversions which have become national customs. The most celebrated example is that of Hellenic pæderasty, reputedly introduced from Crete, but probably in the first place originated by a few genuinely homosexual individuals, who in their own interest transmitted artificially by suggestion their peculiar tendencies to a few heterosexual individuals, until at last the love of boys became a national custom which every heterosexual man adopted. The momentous part which modern prostitution, and more especially brothels, plays in the suggestion of perversions has already been mentioned. It is a matter to which we shall frequently have occasion to return. Schrank alludes (“Prostitution in Vienna,” vol. i., p. 285) to a prostitute who enjoyed a “European reputation” as an artist in sexual perversities of every kind, and who enjoyed the nickname of “the Ever-Virgin,” because she allowed men every possible kind of enjoyment except that of regular normal intercourse (which she avoided for fear of becoming impregnated).
Fifthly, the difference between man and woman in the essence, the kind, and the intensity, of sexual perception (sexual activity in man, sexual passivity in woman) constitutes a rich source of sexual aberrations, most of which belong to the provinces of masochism and sadism.
Sixthly, and lastly, in otherwise healthy individuals there occur at a very early age, and probably in consequence of congenital conditions, changes in the direction and the aim of sexual perception, variations from the type of differentiated heterosexual love. Genuine homosexuality is the principal phenomenon to be considered under this head. It occurs in perfectly healthy individuals quite independently of degeneration and of civilization; and it is diffused throughout the whole world.