“In view of the experience that contrary sexuality is a congenital anomaly, that it represents a disturbance in the evolution of the sexual life, and of the physical and mental development, in normal relationship to the kind of reproductive glands which the individual possesses, it has become impossible to maintain in this connexion the idea of ‘disease.’ Rather, in such a case we must speak of a malformation, and treat the anomaly as parallel with physical malformation—for example, anatomical deviations from the structural type. At the same time, the assumption of a simultaneous psychopathia is not prejudiced, for persons who exhibit such an anatomical differentiation from type (stigmata degenerationis) may remain physically healthy throughout life, and even be above the average in this respect. Of course, a difference from the generality so important as contrary sexual sensation must have a much greater importance to the psyche than the majority of other anatomical or functional variations. In this way it is to be explained that a disturbance in the development in the normal sexual life may often be antagonistic to the development of a harmonious psychical personality.
“Not infrequently in the case of those with contrary sexuality do we find neuropathic and psychopathic predispositions, as, for example, predisposition to constitutional neurasthenia and hysteria, to the milder forms of periodic psychosis, to the inhibition of the development of psychical energy (intelligence, moral sense), and in some of these cases the ethical deficiency (especially when hypersexuality is associated with the contrary sexuality) may lead to the most severe aberrations of the sexual impulse. And yet we can always prove that, relatively speaking, the heterosexual are apt to be much more depraved than the homosexual.
“Moreover, other manifestations of degeneration in the sexual spheres, in the form of sadism, masochism, and fetichism, are relatively much commoner among the former.
“That contrary sexual sensation cannot thus be necessarily regarded as psychical degeneration, or even as a manifestation of disease, is shown by various considerations, one of the principal of which is that these variations of the sexual life may actually be associated with mental superiority.... The proof of this is the existence of men of all nations whose contrary sexuality is an established fact, and who, none the less, are the pride of their nation as authors, poets, artists, leaders of armies, and statesmen.
“A further proof of the fact that contrary sexual sensation is not necessarily disease, nor necessarily a vicious self-surrender to the immoral, is to be found in the fact that all the noble activities of the heart which can be associated with heterosexual love can equally be associated with homosexual love... in the form of noble-mindedness, self-sacrifice, philanthropy, artistic sense, poietic activity, etc., but also the passions and defects of love (jealousy, suicide, murder, unhappy love, with its deleterious influence on soul and body, etc.).”
According to my own investigations and observations, the relationship between health and disease is among homosexuals originally identical with that among heterosexuals, and only in the course of life, in consequence of the social and individual isolation of the homosexual, which acts on them as a psychical trauma, is this relationship somewhat altered in favour of the predominance of disease. Here, however, we have, as a rule, to do chiefly with acquired nervous troubles and disorders, with the development of a peculiar type of “homosexual neurasthenia,” and in these cases by superficial observers there may easily be a confusion between post hoc and propter hoc.
Magnus Hirschfeld, who unquestionably possesses, relatively and absolutely, the greatest experience in the domain of homosexuality, maintains[505] that, according to his material of investigation—and this is of gigantic extent—at least 75 % of homosexuals are born of healthy parents and of happy marriages, often prolific marriages, and that nervous or mental anomalies, alcoholism, blood-relationship, and syphilis are no more frequent among the ancestors of homosexuals than among the ancestors of those endowed with normal sexuality. Only among from 20 to 25 % of homosexuals was he able, in conjunction with E. Burchard, to find hereditary taint. Only in 16 % could they find well-developed “stigmata of degeneration”; and, indeed, those with stigmata were throughout hereditarily tainted. This view is supported also by the facts (to which I already alluded in my “Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis”) that homosexuality is universally diffused in space and time; that it is independent of civilization, occurs among savage races who are not exposed to the conditions giving rise to degeneration in the same degree as civilized races; and that it is prevalent in the country, where the degenerative influence of life in large towns is not operative.
The most important characteristic of genuine homosexuality, its spontaneous appearance very early in life, which can only be referred to natural inheritance, appears to me to be a fact proved altogether beyond dispute. Men of the highest and most respected professions—above all, judges, practising physicians, men of science, theologians, and scholars—have described themselves to me as having been through and through homosexual from early childhood, so that I am thoroughly convinced that primary homosexuality makes its appearance at any rate very early in life.
The reports of physicians are of especially great importance. Hirschfeld (op. cit., p. 12) quotes the utterance of a leading alienist, himself homosexual: “I can and must declare that I have never known a case of homosexuality which I could regard as other than congenital,” and the accuracy of this statement has been confirmed to me personally by several homosexual physicians. The idea “congenital” harmonizes very well with the demonstrable casual objective cause of the first homosexual tendencies, which we are able to learn in almost every case of homosexuality. These can, as is well known, also occur transiently in heterosexual individuals—a matter which is discussed in the chapter “Pseudo-Homosexuality.” In the case of genuine homosexuality, however, these homosexual activities play from the very beginning a predominant rôle, and remain permanent, because they result from a natural inheritance, from a deeply rooted impulse. This is shown in the following interesting autobiography of a man of letters thirty years of age:
“From my earliest childhood there was something girlish in my whole nature, both outwardly and (more especially) inwardly. I was very quiet, obedient, diligent, sensitive to praise and blame, rather bright. I associated chiefly with adults, and was generally beloved. Sexual activity began in me unusually early. When I was about six years of age a tutor sat down on my bed, in which I was lying in a fever. He caressed me, and with his hand membrum meum tetigit. The voluptuous sensation which resulted was so intense that it has never disappeared from my memory. At school, where I always distinguished myself by my application and success, I sometimes enjoyed mutual ‘feeling’ with several other boys. From which side I inherited the unusual intensity of the sexual impulse I do not know, but I remember that when I was about twelve years old I already suffered a good deal from sexual desire, and that it came to me as a solution of a great difficulty when a comrade instructed me in the practice of masturbation. It is remarkable that for some time afterwards there was no evacuation of semen. When this first appeared I was very much alarmed and disquieted, but I soon became accustomed to it, and this the more readily because I had no doubt whatever that all men regularly indulged in the same pleasure. This ‘paradisaical’ state did not, however, last for long; and after a time, when I recognized the unnatural and dangerous nature of my conduct, I conducted a severe and unsuccessful contest against my desires. In my life generally I had a good deal to bear, and I can say that I have hardly preserved a single really pleasant memory of my past; and yet I could look back to this past with a certain pride and satisfaction if it had not been that the sexual side of my life has left such gloomy shadows in my soul.