“4. Neuroses are present (hysteria, neurasthenia, epileptoid states, etc.). Neurasthenia, transitional or chronic, is nearly always manifest. This is usually a constitutional state induced by inborn conditions. It is awakened and sustained through masturbation or compulsory abstinence.”[5]
These statements are relatively milder and here the ideal traits of homosexuality are also given some recognition, although—as we know well—all without exception are addicted to masturbation. Krafft-Ebing does not know that all artists are neurotics and that neurosis stands in intimate connection with creative ability. He also makes a distinction between true and false homosexuality,—bisexuality (psychic hermaphroditism) and other forms, as described by Hirschfeld.[6]
Krafft-Ebing points out a certain relationship between homosexuality and neurosis. But since he still preserves the concept of degeneration, he is forced in the end to admit that homosexuality may also appear in the normal and is not necessarily a morbidity.
Moll, to whom we owe the first great comprehensive work on homosexuality, is of an entirely different opinion. He states: “Considering the sexual instinct not as a means for the attainment of pleasure but as standing in the service of procreation we must look upon exclusive homosexuality as belonging to the realm of pathology.” (Die kontraere Sexualempfindung, Berlin, 1899, 3rd edn.) This is an untenable argument. For there is no procreative instinct as such, only a sexual instinct. Science is not concerned with the study of purposiveness, it is interested in the ascertainment of facts. Science must not and cannot be placed in the service of teleology. At any rate Moll is inclined to look upon homosexuality as a neurosis: he claims to have found in recent years a growing tendency among investigators to establish a border province between mental health and disease, “and into that realm have been relegated many cases of psychic degeneration—I may mention, for instance, certain compulsory neuroses. I believe it is proper that we should place in the same category the contrary sexual feeling.” (Loc. cit. p. 435.) He refers here to Westphal who compares homosexuality to moral insanity.[7]
Notwithstanding Moll’s opinion we must state that most modern investigators declare that they have examined many homosexuals whom they have found normal or have at least designated as normal. Havelock Ellis and Albert Moll[8] very appropriately state in their last joint work:
“Naecke has repeatedly maintained that the homosexuals are perfectly healthy and aside from their specific deviation may be normal in every respect. We have always maintained this view although, contrary to Naecke, we assume that homosexuality is very frequently found in intimate association with minor nervous states. We agree with Hirschfeld that heredity plays a rôle in no more than 25 per cent of the cases of homosexuality and that, although a neuropathic background may be present in homosexuality, the degenerative factor plays but a small role.” These authors find the hypothesis that every person’s constitution combines the male and female elements a keen concept though rather hypothetical. “But still it is undoubtedly justified, if we look upon homosexuality as an inborn anomaly or, to speak more correctly, as an anomaly resting on constitutional traits, which if morbid, are so only in Virchow’s sense, according to whom pathology is not the science of diseases but of deviations, so that the homosexual may be as healthy as the color blind. Inborn homosexuality ranks on the level of a biologic variation: it is a variation, representing perhaps an incomplete phase of sexual differentiation, but bearing no discernible relationship to any morbid condition of the individual.”
I am inclined to doubt this view. What proof have we that the homosexual is perfectly healthy when any criterion of health we may accept must be artificial? On this point we have only the statements of the involved persons to rely upon. All describe themselves as healthy. Do not advanced psychopaths do the same? They lack any feeling of illness. This seems to be characteristic of homosexuals in particular. They want their condition to be looked upon as normal. They claim to be in good health, seldom wish to change their condition, and usually do not call for medical advice unless they come into conflict with the law and find themselves in danger. The authors themselves very properly remark: “As to the men, the homosexuals prefer to hold themselves as normal and endeavor to justify that contention. Those who struggle against their instinctive craving, who look upon their conduct as peculiar or so much as entertain any doubts about it, are in the minority,—less than 20 per cent.”
Naturally the large number of homosexual physicians have always tried to convince their observers that they are normal and that they do not differ from other persons in any other way. But all unprejudiced observers have to admit the presence of numerous neurotic traits in connection with homosexuality. This I have undertaken to prove sine ira et studio having met numberless homosexuals and having become very closely acquainted with many of them. I have never yet found a homosexual who was not a neurotic. He is necessarily that, as I shall later prove. He must be neurotic, the same as the heterosexual, who struggles to overcome and repress a vast portion of homosexual longing with him. Havelock Ellis and Moll as well as Krafft-Ebing also lay stress upon the tendency to neurasthenia. But who nowadays is not neurasthenic? is a question frequently heard. Such an unprejudiced investigator as Iwan Bloch becomes convinced and recognizes an inborn homosexuality which must not be conceived as a morbidity. For a long time Bloch preconized a different view but changed his opinion convinced by Hirschfeld’s work and through his own professional contact with homosexuals. He is now a believer in the theory of inborn homosexuality having been led to this view particularly by the statements of the homosexuals. Later we shall prove how unreliable such statements must be. At any rate so keen an observer as Bloch could not fail to note the striking percentage of neurotic homosexuals. But he thought they were nervous because “homosexuality acts upon them as a psychic trauma.” Further he states: “According to my investigations and observations the relationship between health and disease among homosexuals is originally the same as among heterosexuals and in time, on account of the social and individual isolation of the homosexuals, acting like a psychic trauma, morbidity becomes accentuated; usually we encounter nervous complaints and difficulties of an acquired character, and we note the development of a typical ‘homosexual neurasthenia,’ which may readily enough lead some superficial observers to confuse post hoc with propter hoc.” Undoubtedly the dangers of homosexual activity favor the development of anxiety states. But such nervous states are found also in cases showing no predisposition towards anxiety, and anxiety states are encountered without any relation to homosexuality.
Magnus Hirschfeld places himself with all the weight of his personality and experience squarely in favor of the contention that homosexuality is a normal state. His investigations touching upon this field are numerous. We also owe to his labors that great work on the subject: Die Homosexualitaet des Mannes und des Weibes. (The Homosexuality of Man and of Woman, Verlag L. Marcus, Berlin, SW, 61.) No investigator interested in this subject can neglect this fundamental and exhaustive treatment of it. Subsuming the views of Hirschfeld we may state: There is a genuine inborn homosexuality which must not be looked upon as a morbidity. This homosexuality should be confused neither with bisexuality nor with pseudo-homosexuality. Hirschfeld, too, has changed his views in the course of time. He had conceived homosexuality as a sexual intermediary stage between man and woman and proposed the famous term: the third sex. As is well known all persons are bisexual. Hirschfeld looked for the well known physical stigmata of bisexuality among the homosexuals. He found among men enlargement of the breasts, female hips, delicate skin, etc., and among women growth of facial hair, male, energetic traits, etc. In his work entitled, Der Urnische Mensch, he maintained: “A homosexual not differing bodily, physically and mentally from the full grown man I have not found among 1500 subjects and I am therefore disposed to doubt the occurrence until I shall meet such an individual.” But in his more recent work he declares: “The androgynic type of man and the gynandric type of woman are not necessarily homosexual. There are types of persons which may be described as eunuchoid,—they give the impression of castrated persons without having undergone the operation,—they possess female bodies, high voice and beardless face. Generally there is azoospermia, frequently anorchia. There are corresponding types in the female sex,—persons with bodies showing many masculine traits. These marked womanly men and mannish women are often considered homosexual, but it is not uncommon to find them completely heterosexual inasmuch as they find complementary individuals among the types belonging to the opposite sex. The types which attract them are also androgynous.”[9]
Hirschfeld does not admit the influence of latent homosexuality in the choice of this androgenic type. A homosexual whose condition is not manifest he does not recognize. His ground for diagnosis is no longer similarity of bodily traits when compared with the opposite sex. The determining factor for Hirschfeld is only the subject’s feeling. If he is homosexually inclined (particularly if so disposed from childhood), the subject is homosexual. Hirschfeld’s own statement is as follows: “The determining factor in the diagnosis of homosexuality remains as before the contrary feeling proper; the diagnosis is strongly supported by a negative attitude towards the other sex, as well as by altero-sexual episodes, although these two features in themselves are not capable of establishing the diagnosis.” Since Bloch also admits that there are many virile homosexuals with bodily structures wholly male, it follows that the organic diagnosis of homosexuality is altogether unreliable. Hans Blüher, a reliable expert on homosexuality, also recognizes the pure homosexual, which he calls the “male hero” type, whose character and habitus is completely male, thus differing from the second type, the “woman-like invert” (invertierter Weibling). The latent homosexual he considers a third type. (Vid. Die drei Grundformen der Homosexualitaet: Eine sexuologische Studie. Jahrbuch f. sexuelle Zwischenstuffen, vol. XIII).