Before attempting to give an exposition of the psychologic theory of homosexuality I must discuss the relations between homosexuality and neurosis. All investigators, we have already seen, agree that a relationship exists between them. The question is: does the homosexual become neurotic because he fears coming into conflict with the penal laws, because he feels his unfortunate predisposition is something contrary to nature (to adopt his own expression),—briefly because he is homosexual, or is he homosexual because he is neurotic?
Here we naturally encounter the need of defining the meaning of neurosis. What is neurosis and who is neurotic? I call neurotic the person who has not successfully overcome the asocial cravings which he perceives to be unethical. I call asocial cravings all instincts which society rejects as conflicting with its cultural demands. That in itself shows that the essence of neurosis must differ in different countries. In one instance we find repression of normal sexuality, because sexual activity itself is considered unmoral. (Example: the properly brought up girl in good society who must remain coy.) In another, we find a struggle with instincts which society decrees as morbid. (Example: the actress who maintains many friendships and must suppress her homosexual longings.) In the same way criminal tendencies may play a role in the development of a neurosis. The neurosis is the result of the struggle between instinct and inhibition. There are, therefore, two paths for the development of the neurosis: a strong instinctive craving which naturally endeavors to break through the inhibitions and powerful inhibitions which reduce to a minimum the voicing of sexual needs even under the impulsion of strong instincts.
The predisposition to neurosis, therefore, is intimately linked with our instincts. The progression of the human race requires the frequent suppression of certain instincts and every step in ethical and cultural progress involves giving up some portion of instinctive cravings. The laws are a protection of society against the instinctive cravings of its members. Society tolerates but a portion of the instincts to a certain extent and all others it outlaws as asocial. The evolution of the race may eventually reach a stage wherein the instincts will have been placed altogether at the service of society: the domestication of the instinctive cravings. This is the meaning of the struggle of centuries between brain and spinal cord. The results of this struggle may be determined only if we contrast a truly aboriginal man with a typical representative of culture. What remarkable progress has been attained in the conquest of instinct! Society goes a step further. It takes care that individuals possessing asocial instincts should be unable to propagate their kind. Criminals are rendered innocuous, the asocial person finds the environment unfavorable and disappears.
But—as I have already stated in my book, Die Träume der Dichter[11]—the creative urge of nature does not mollify man’s asocial requirements. The struggle between nature and culture keeps up unabated and the result is neurosis. All paraphilias are a compromise between instinct and repression.
I must revert here to my theory of neurosis which I have expressed first in my work entitled, Die Träume der Dichter.[12] The neurotic is a retrograded type. He represents a conquered stage of human evolution. He must personally undergo the struggle through which the human race as a whole has already passed. The ontogenesis of culture! Whenever nature attempts the creation of something great, powerful or sublime it turns to the great reservoir of its past. Recessive types manifest more powerful instincts. The neurotic, criminals and the specially gifted persons have that in common. Three paths are open to the man with heightened instincts: he sublimates his selfish tendencies, his criminal cravings, his asocial attitude derived from previous epochs and becomes a creator (poet, painter, sculptor, musician, prophet, inventor, etc.); he works out his instincts untrammelled and becomes a criminal; or the sublimation is but partly successful and he becomes a neurotic.
My theory of homosexuality thus links itself to the view of Lombroso. The homosexual, in the first place, is a recessive character. He shows a precocious development of an instinct which does not fit the requirements of culture; but biologically he stands nearer the aboriginal bisexual predisposition of mankind than the normal person who is typical of the current age. This conflict manifests itself in various over-compensations, so that the neurotic advances beyond his age and becomes a creator of the future. I must ask my readers to consult my works quoted above for further details on this subject. I have here merely stated in brief what may have a bearing on our present theme.
The specially gifted, the artist, the criminal and the neurotic manifest the same characteristic: over-stressing of instinctive cravings. The criminal carries out his promptings, the artist sublimates them in his works (Shakespeare conceived so many murders and that saved him from becoming a murderer ... states Hebbel) while the neurotic meets in them his unsolvable conflicts. He is the criminal without the criminal’s courage to commit asocial deeds. He is the Don Juan of phantasy, the Marquis de Sade of his own day dreams, the Jack the Ripper, without knowing it.
These considerations justify the assumption that poets, artists and neurotics must show a precocious development of the instinctive cravings, particularly of the sexual. That is in fact the case. With regard to artists this is well known,[13] the fact has been repeatedly mentioned as typical of criminals and with regard to neurotics the analysts have been able to prove it again and again.
We may now appreciate why all investigators found that the sexual instinct awakens early in all homosexuals. I want to make myself clear. We owe to psychoanalysis the recognition of the fact that the sexual instinct awakens early in all persons,—a fact I have pointed out already during my pre-Freudian period in my essay on “Coitus during Childhood.” But most persons repress their infantile memories and later recall nothing about these occurrences dating from their childhood. The homosexual remembers everything and that fact is pointed out as proof of his sexual precocity. Already as a child he knew that certain things pertain to the forbidden realm of the sexual. He repressed from memory numberless particular incidents among the vast number his memory could hold. The fact of his precocity, he does not forget. But at the same time all memories which do not happen to fit into his system of ideas are either bedimmed in consciousness or lost from memory altogether. Sexual precocity is a fact brought out in all life histories and confessions of homosexuals. And that very sexual precocity shows us that the conditions which lead to the repression of heterosexuality, are traceable far back into the past and stretch well beyond ordinary memory recall. Therefore, Krafft-Ebing finds: “The sexual life of persons of this type is usually manifest very early and is abnormally strong. Not infrequently it is associated with other perverse manifestations, in addition to the perverted direction of the sexual instinct peculiar to this type of sexual feeling.”
Further in the same work: “There are neuroses present (hysteria, neurasthenia, epileptoid states, etc.). Nearly always there is also present either temporary or permanent neurasthenia.” (P. 259.)