[33] Interesting is also the case of a high school teacher whose feelings were predominantly homosexual during the stage of depression and heterosexual during the stage of exaltation induced by the addiction to morphine (Hirschfeld). There are persons who live a double, alternating existence: homosexual and heterosexual. Their conduct suggests that they are persons continually in search of a bisexual ideal. Krafft-Ebing also describes a hysterical (Jahrbuch f. Sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. III) who is attracted to men each time that her neurosis improves after a sojourn at a sanitarium, while during the height of her trouble she is homosexual. What does this mean but that the heterosexual cravings are repressed during her neurosis! For notwithstanding her extensive homosexual gratifications she has become a victim of severe hysteria while every time she improves she feels the love for man.
[34] Cf. author’s contribution, Die psychische Impotenz des Mannes. Zeitschr. f. Sexualwissenschaft, 1916.
[35] Beiträge zur Lehre von der konträren Sexualempfindung, Zeitschr. f. Psychol, u. Neurol., vol. VII, 1911.
[36] Alkohol und Homosexualität. Allg. Zeitschr. f. Psychol. und gerichtl. Medizin, vol. LXVIII.
[37] It is not true that homosexuals are exposed to no dangers of infection. I have examined a homosexual druggist who acquired in Venice a serious gonorrhea of the anus. He confessed to me that he had infected other men, because the thought of having fallen himself a victim made him angry. But on the whole infections are not so frequent an occurrence as during heterosexual intercourse, which is what would be expected, considering that copulatio analis is relatively rare.
[38] I must also emphasize that the first homosexual activity often takes place in the twenties, if we omit from consideration the mutual gratifications between boys and between girls which—with but very few exceptions—are found to occur during the childhood of all persons. Between small children (4-8 years of age) homosexual activity is very common, then in many cases a period of latency seems to set in. During the period from the 10th to the 15th year nearly every boy passes through homosexual love (either purely platonic or grossly sexual). After the onset of puberty there are numerous variations: persons who later become homosexual continue heterosexual activity, try all sorts of experiments and then withdraw into homosexuality in consequence of some unpleasant heterosexual experience (infection, claim of parenthood, etc.) or on account of impotence.
[39] As is well known Bloch has endeavored to show that Schopenhauer’s antifeminism and pessimism are traceable to syphilitic infection acquired during youth.
[40] Beiträge zur Lehre der kontraeren Geschlechtsempfindung. Zeitschrift f. d. ges. Neurol. u. Pathologie, 1911.
[41] Zur Entstehung sexueller Perversitäten und ihrer Beurteilung vor Gericht. Archiv f. Psychiatrie, vol. LI, 1913.
[42] We shall see later that this attitude is due to the fact that these persons fix their whole heterosexual psychic eroticism upon the immediate members of their family. Heterosexual men in this situation often experience merely physical gratification during intercourse with prostitutes; with the other type of women they are wholly impotent.