That there are preeminent physicians who earnestly look upon masturbation as the cause of homosexuality seems hardly believable. It would be as proper to consider masturbation the cause of sexuality. We have shown elsewhere that onanism may be the result of ungratified homosexual trends. At times it may stand as a substitute for some homosexual act. It then replaces for a time the adequate temporary form of sexual gratification. I state “temporary form,” because the sexual object itself does not remain permanently the same and the sexual directive goals,—to use the excellent expression of Hans Blüher[1] are often abandoned. The false notion that onanism is responsible for homosexuality has been preconized by Krafft-Ebing, whose great authority in matters of sexual psychopathology persists to this day. His services are significant, indeed, and we must observe that he has at last accepted the view of Hirschfeld that homosexuality is inborn,—that there is an acquired and a hereditary homosexuality.[2] But in the last (14th) edition of Krafft-Ebing’s work, which has appeared in 1912, his editor, Alfred Fuchs, preserves the statement about onanism at the head of the chapter and he even underscores the contentions of his great teacher on this particular subject.[3]
My work proves that we must abandon the merely descriptive method of sexual research. The subject’s first account is only a statement of the manifest content of his consciousness concerning his paraphilia. We must look into the latent content, into the unconscious and quasi-conscious forces involved. The descriptive form of sexual research must be replaced by the psychological, in keeping with the spirit of our times. In no other field does analysis so convincingly and completely prove its claims.
What was the status of the subject before the advent of analysis? Krafft-Ebing originally looked upon homosexuality as the result of a hereditary transmission, a hypothesis not corroborated by the observations of subsequent investigators. Certain circumstances favor an outcropping in manifest form of the latent homosexuality common to all persons,—a fact which complicates this problem. Environment also comes into play. An environment such as is furnished by some nervous or psychopathic parents naturally plays a role. This subject we shall take up later. The alleged hereditary transmission is supposed to show itself in the homosexual through the early awakening of the sexual instinct and by the appearance of masturbation during early childhood. But we know that the homosexuals share this peculiarity with all others, especially with neurotic persons. A strong flaring up of instinct is not the consequence but the cause of the neurosis. But according to Krafft-Ebing masturbation during childhood is the cause of homo-or pseudo-homosexuality breaking forth at a later period. “Nothing is more likely,” he states, “than masturbation, so to disturb and occasionally thwart all noble emotions at the source as they arise spontaneously out of the sexual feeling.[4] The habit robs the nascent feeling of charm and beauty leaving behind only the husk of grossly animal craving for sexual gratification. An individual, so thwarted, attains the age of maturity lacking the esthetic, ideal, pure and undefiled longing which leads to the other sex. At the same time the heat of sensuous passion cools off while the inclination towards the other sex is significantly weakened. This deficiency embraces the morals, the ethics, the character, the phantasy and the disposition of the youthful masturbator as well as his emotional and instinctive life and holds true of both sexes, occasionally reducing to zero the yearning after the opposite sex, so that in the end masturbation is preferred to every other form of gratification.”
Imagine the injurious effect of such statements upon the masturbating youth; particularly when he reads that the best way to combat homosexuality is to fight against masturbation (p. 336, loc. cit.).
The great investigator has confused here cause and effect. The masturbators avoid the path leading to woman not because they masturbate. They indulge in the habit because the path towards womanhood is closed to them. For many persons masturbation is the only available method of sexual gratification. Persons with a strongly accentuated homosexual tendency often find no other path open at all, particularly when the intercourse with woman becomes impossible for them on account of some definite traumatic incidents, such as we shall discuss fully later.
Masturbation is never the cause of homosexuality. Homosexuals do not contract the habit early, as Krafft-Ebing claims,—it is an early, a very early habit of all persons—and that without any exception. The homosexuals do not forget their childhood onanism because there are other, more painful memories for them to repress and drive out of memory. Again we shall speak fully of that later. More important for the present is the question: how does homosexuality arise? Is the condition hereditary or acquired? Is it something fatally predetermined or is it only the result of certain definite constellations of the family circle? May it be ascribed to a hereditary taint? Krafft-Ebing was at first of the latter opinion and propounded the thesis that “we may doubt whether a person of the same sex ever has a sensuous attraction for a normally predisposed individual,” but later he changed this opinion fundamentally and expressed the conviction that there is an inborn homosexuality though the condition is found only among the hereditarily predisposed.
He propounded the following theses:
“1. The sexual life of such persons manifests itself as a rule very precociously and consequently, is of abnormal strength. Not rarely the peculiar attraction for members of the same sex which in itself marks the abnormal direction of the sexual instinct is associated with other perverse manifestations.
“2. The spiritual love of these persons is frequently an exalted dreaming just as their sexual instinct as a whole penetrates their consciousness with a peculiar and even compulsive strength.
“3. In addition to the functional signs of degeneration manifested in the contrary sexual instinct often there are found also other functional and frequently also anatomic stigmata of degeneration.