May Disgust Produce the Homosexual Attitude? Cases by Krafft-Ebing, Fleischmann, Liemcke—Observation (personal) and Case by Bloch.—Late Trauma as Cause of Homosexuality—Personal Observation of a case of Late Homosexuality—Two Cases of Bloch—Further Discussion of the Problem—A Case of Pfister’s with the Analysis of several Dreams.
Wären nicht die Details unseres geschlechtlichen Lebens so unendlich mannigfaltig und läge es nicht bei den meisten Menschen fast in allen wichtigen Erscheinungen und Fragen unterhalb des Bewusstseins, und wäre es nicht eine Wesenheit der Liebe, immer wieder die Schleier des Mysteriums über unsere sexuellen Empfindungen zu werfen, so dass allen stark empfindenden unverdorbenen Menschen, namentlich in der wichtigen Periode der Geschlechtsreife, Zynismen und Offenheiten über das geschlechtliche Leben sogar als unwahr erscheinen (Frauen und keusche Jünglinge sind schon beleidigt, wenn man über die Liebe auch nur wissenschaftlich anders als schwärmerisch, allgemein oder poetisch metaphorisch redet) und hätten wir nicht endlich mit der grossen Heuchelei und Verlogenheit der Gesellschaft in erotischen Dingen zu rechnen, so dass sogar die Anomalen und Perversen von ihr angesteckt werden, die es gar nicht mehr nötig haben, zu lügen und unwissend zu bleiben; kurz könnten wir unsere Erotik in seelischer und körperlicher Hinsicht bis zu den letzten Zusammenhängen analysieren, dann würden wir vielleicht mit Schauder erfahren, einen wie kleinen Bruchteil unseres Lebens wir unserem eigentlichen Geschlecht angehören.
Leo Berg.
VI
If the details of our sexual life were not so endlessly manifold; if they did not belong for the most part and in their most important aspects to the realm beyond ordinary consciousness; if it were not a peculiarity of love continually to throw the cover of mystery over our sexual feelings, so that all normal persons of strong feeling, particularly during the period of their sexual ripeness look upon frankness in sexual matters as untruth (women and shy young men feel insulted if one speaks about love even scientifically, in other than romantic or poetic and false, metaphorically veiled, language); and if we did not have to consider the tremendous hypocrisy, and falsehood of society in all matters pertaining to sex, so that even the abnormal and the perverse, who no longer need to lie and assume ignorance, are inspired to assume a similar ‘chaste’ attitude; in short, if we could analyze our eroticism in its physical as well as in its psychic aspects down to the last details, we should then probably discover with horror to what a small extent we truly belong to our own sex.
Leo Berg.
The form of homosexuality which develops late in life is perhaps best suited to serve as an introduction to our inquiry into the psychogenesis of homosexuality and may help us understand the origin of the more complicated cases.
There are, in fact, a number of cases, in which homosexuality appears to have developed in consequence of a feeling of dislike for the other sex. Many authors consider the development of homosexuality among prostitutes as due to this cause. Bloch, for instance, writes:
“The naturally heterosexual prostitutes are driven to homosexuality for one of two reasons: First through the contact with and the influence of their truly Lesbian comrades, which strengthens the inner feeling of solidarity common among all prostitutes; Second, through their dislike of intercourse with men which grows with their experience and with the passage of time, the more so because they see man only in his brutal and raw aspect. The continual compulsion under which they find themselves of satisfying the animal sensuousness of oversophisticated men often by means of disgusting procedures, rouses in them eventually an unconquerable dislike of the male sex, and therefore they devote to their own sex the nobler feelings of which they may be capable. The homosexual relationship appears to them as something ‘higher, something nobler and more innocent,’ something pertaining to a purer realm than sexual contact with men, a fact which Eulenburg (Sexuelle Neuropathie, p. 143-144) has rightly observed.” (Bloch, l.c., p. 603.)
Krafft-Ebing (Neue Studien, l.c.) also holds this view and thinks that, “many prostitutes endowed with great sensuousness, repelled by contact with perverse or impotent men who misuse them in connection with detestable sexual deeds, turn to pleasing members of their own sex.”