[4] This contention is altogether wrong. I have never seen so many and such pronounced idealists as among masturbators. Young artists, poets and musicians in particular often show, I have found, a strong tendency to masturbation, and this agrees with the pronounced bisexuality of all artists, which has been particularly pointed out by Fliess. The youths of this type are often so delicate and sensitive that they see in the sexual act only animal brutality and hide their own sexuality from the whole world. Among masturbators we find the champions of truth, the over-moralistic preachers, the ethical reformers and dreamers.
[5] Cf., on the other hand, the views of Bloch: “That the contrary sexual instinct-feeling in itself is not a sign of psychic degeneration and need not be looked upon at all as morbid, is shown among others, by the fact that the condition is often associated with spiritual superiority. As proof we find, among all nations, men of proven homosexuality, who are the pride of their respective people as writers, poets, artists, military strategists, or statesmen. Further proof that the contrary sexual feeling is no disease and does not necessarily lead to immoral tendencies may be seen in all the noble qualities of heart which it is capable of generating, precisely as the heterosexual attraction, such as courage, self-sacrifice, altruism, artistic feeling, creative energy, etc., just as it may be responsible also for any of the morbidities and failings of heterosexual love (jealousy, suicide, murder, unhappy love with its deleterious effects on mind and body, etc.)”
[6] It was clearly the duty of the new editor of Krafft-Ebing’s popular work to have recorded therein the author’s latest views. In his “Neuen Studien auf dem Gebiete der Homosexualitaet,” he states: “In contrast with the conception that contrary sexuality is an inborn anomaly, a disorder in the evolution of the sexual function of monosexuals and of the glandular development of the sex glands, the conception of ‘morbidity’ is untenable. We may rather speak in this connection of a malformation and compare the anomaly with bodily malformations,—for instance, with the anatomic deviations from the average type. But the concept of a simultaneous psychopathic state remains a legitimate assumption, because subjects presenting anatomic as well as functional deviations from type (stigmata degenerationis), may preserve good physical health for a time, and may even show points of superiority.
“At the same time so tremendous a deviation as contrary sexual feeling must have a far wider influence upon the psyche than many of the anatomic or functional stigmata of degeneration. That is the reason why any disturbance in the usual development of a normal sexual life reflects so commonly in an unfavorable sense upon the harmonious psychic development of personality. Victims of contrary sexual feeling often show neuropathic and psychopathic predispositions, such as, for instance, a tendency to constitutional neurasthenias and hysteria, milder forms of periodic psychosis, inhibitions against the unfoldment of psychic energies (intelligence, moral sense), including moral inferiority, especially associated with hyper-sexuality, eventually leading to most serious disorders of the sexual instinct. At any rate, it can be shown that, relatively speaking, heterosexuals prove greater cynics about sexual matters than the homosexuals. Also that other degenerative signs upon the field of sexuality, such as sadism, masochism, fetichism, etc., are much more commonly found among the former....”
[7] Die kontraere Sexualempfindung, Symptom eines neuropatischen (psychopathischen) Zustandes. Arch. f. Psych. u. Neurol., vol. II, p. 106, 1870.
[8] Handbuch der Sexualwissenschaften (Die Funktionsstærrungen des Sexuallebens.) Leipzig, Verlag F. C. W. Vogel, 1912, p. 652.
[9] I find a very interesting observation by Bloch, one which deserves to be widely circulated: “A final and not unimportant form of Pseudo-homosexuality is hermaphroditism (das Zwittertum). It is remarkable that science has concerned itself only in recent years with the close study of hermaphroditic conditions which have not received heretofore the attention warranted by their sociologic bearings and their frequency. It is a great merit of Neugebauer and of Magnus Hirschfeld that they have called general attention to these remarkable sexual Zwischenstufen, intermediary states, and have pointed out their great practical significance, a matter of which no one has thought before, as is shown by the significant fact that the new German civil code has done away with the legal proscriptions of the old Prussian law concerning the Zwitter (hermaphrodites), upon the contention that no person is of unknown or unascertainable sex.”
[10] Hirschfeld emphasizes the fact that homosexuality has nothing to do with organic bisexuality. He states:
“I deem it important to point out this fact: The most extreme deviation of sexual type approaching the opposite sex, such as hypertrophy of the clitoris and full facial hair growth in the female, or hypospadia penis-scrotalis and gynecomasty in the male are found linked with heterosexuality more often than with homosexuality.”
[11] English version by J. S. Van Teslaar, in preparation.