How does it come to pass that the central organs in homosexuals do not correspond to the peripheral sexual organs, although the latter are formed embryologically long before the former, so that the central organs should properly be guided in their development by the peripheral organs? But they are not so guided. That is only explicable in this way—that the association between the central organs and the peripheral organs is interrupted by a third influence, and that this last influence has a peculiar effect upon the central organs altogether independent of the nature of the reproductive glands.
I will formulate this new theory of homosexuality in the following terms:
1. The so-called “undifferentiated stage” of the sexual impulse (Max Dessoir) may often fail to appear in cases in which the sexual impulse, either in heterosexuals or homosexuals, is definitely directed before puberty unmistakably towards the members of one particular sex. Especially in homosexuals do we often see before puberty the clear and unmistakable direction of the sexual impulse towards members of the same sex.
2. A critical theory of homosexuality must also explain the extreme cases; above all, it must also explain male homosexuality associated with complete virility.
3. The sexual organs and the reproductive glands cannot be the determining cause, because homosexuality makes its appearance in association with thoroughly typical male reproductive organs; nor can the brain be the determining cause in cases of true homosexuality, for, notwithstanding the intentional and unintentional operation of heterosexual influences on thought and imagination, homosexuality cannot be eradicated, and continues to develop.
4. Since this homosexuality often makes its appearance as an inclination (not as the sexual impulse) long before puberty, and before the proper activity of the reproductive glands is developed, it appears a reasonable suggestion that in homosexuality some physiological manifestation associated with “sexuality,” but not directly associated with the reproductive glands, undergoes a change which results in an alteration of the direction of the sexual impulse.
6. The most obvious influences to think of in this connexion are chemical influences, changes in the chemistry of sexual tension, which latter is certainly to a large extent independent of the reproductive glands, since it may persist in eunuchs. But the nature of this sexual chemistry is still entirely obscure.
Such a way of conceiving the process is thoroughly reasonable and tenable on scientific grounds, as was shown by E. H. Starling and L. Krehl[565] in their communication to the Scientific Congress at Stuttgart in the year 1905, regarding disturbances of chemical correlation in the organism, especially disturbances of the chemical influences proceeding from the reproductive organs. All minuter details regarding these “sexual hormone” (to use Starling’s own phrase) are still unknown, but the experiments to which we alluded in an earlier chapter have proved their existence. In my view, the anatomical contradiction, the natural monstrosity, of a feminine—or, at any rate, an unmanly—psyche in a typical masculine body, or that of a feminine or unmanly sexual psyche associated with normally developed and normally functioning male genital organs, can only be explained in this manner by taking into account this intercurrent third factor. This can be deduced very readily from some early embryonic disturbances of sexual chemistry. This would also explain why it is that homosexuality so often occurs in perfectly healthy families, as an isolated phenomenon which has nothing to do either with inheritance or with degeneration. When von Römer, on the contrary, describes homosexuality as a process of “regeneration,” we must maintain that for this view there are no sufficient grounds. Here begins the riddle of homosexuality; for me, at any rate, it is one. My own theory only attempts to explain the proper physiological connexions of homosexuality better, and, above all, more scientifically than earlier theories. With regard to the ultimate cause of the relatively frequent occurrence of homosexuality as an original phenomenon, this theory has, however, nothing to say.
I do not suggest that I am able for a moment to find the ultimate reason of the being and nature of homosexuality. There remains here a riddle to be solved. But from the standpoint of civilization and reproduction homosexuality is a senseless and aimless dysteleological phenomenon, like many another “natural product”—as, for example, the human cæcum. In an earlier chapter I drew attention to the fact that civilization has entailed an increasingly sharp sexual differentiation—that is, the antithesis between “man” and “woman” has become continually clearer. The distinction between the sexes is a product rather of civilization than of primitive nature. All sexual indifference, all sexual links, are primitive characters. Eduard von Mayer rightly believes that in the earliest days of the human race homosexuality was much more widely diffused than it is at present, that, in fact, it came into being side by side with heterosexual love. Civilization by means of inheritance, adaptation, and differentiation, has continually more and more limited the extent of the homosexual impulse. Unquestionably the homosexual human being, as human being, has the same right to exist as the heterosexual. To doubt it would be preposterous. Also, as a sexual being, in so far as only the individual aspect of love comes under consideration, the homosexual has an equal right. But for the species, and also for the advancement of civilization, homosexuality has no importance, or very little. It is obvious that, as a kind of enduring “monosexuality,” it contradicts the purposes of the species. Equally obvious is it that the whole of civilization is the product of the physical and mental differentiation of the sexes, that civilization has, in fact, to a certain extent, a heterosexual character. The greatest spiritual values we owe to heterosexuals, not to homosexuals. Moreover, reproduction first renders possible the preservation and permanence of new spiritual values. In the last resort the latter are not possible without the former. However obvious it may appear, we must still repeat that spiritual values exist only in respect of the future, that they only attain their true significance in the connexion and the succession of the generations, and that they are, therefore, eternally dependent upon heterosexual love as the intermediary by which this continuity is produced. The monosexual and homosexual instincts permanently limited to their own ego or their own sex are, therefore, in their innermost nature dysteleological and anti-evolutionistic. In speaking thus we leave entirely out of consideration the possibility that temporarily and for the purposes of individual development they may possess a relative justification.[566]
Moreover, the majority of homosexuals have a deeply rooted sentiment of the lack of purpose and the aimlessness of their mode of sexual perception, and this often gives them a very tragical and pitiable expression. Especially in the case of noble, spiritually important homosexuals, true carriers of civilization, is this sense of the incongruity between homosexuality and life most plainly felt. Even the talented Numa Prætorius (Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, vol. vi., p. 543) recognizes that—