Studies in the psychology of sex, volume 2 by Havelock Ellis. - HTML preview

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discovered that the other was an invert.

[107] See articles by Numa Praetorius and Fernan, maintaining that

homosexuality is at least as frequent in France (_Sexual-Probleme_, March

and December, 1909).

[108] Dr. Laupts, _L'Homosexualité_, 1910, pp. 413, 420.

[109] Näcke, _Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft_, 1908, Heft 6.

[110] It is a fact significant of the French attitude toward homosexuality

that the psychologist, Dr. Saint-Paul, when writing a book on this

subject, though in a completely normal and correct manner, thought it

desirable to adopt a pseudonym.

[111] A well-informed series of papers dealing with English

homosexuality generally, and especially with London (L.

Pavia, "Die

männliche Homosexualität in England,"

_Vierteljahrsberichte des

wissenschaftlich-humanitären Komitees_, 1909-1911) will be found

instructive even by those who are familiar with London.

And see also

Hirschfeld, _Die Homosexualität_, ch. xxvi. Much information of historical

nature concerning homosexuality in England will be found in Eugen Dühren

(Iwan Bloch), _Das Geschlechtsleben in England_.

[112] This: is doubtless the reason why so many English inverts establish

themselves outside England. Paris, Florence, Nice, Naples, Cairo, and

other places, are said to swarm with homosexual Englishmen.

CHAPTER II.

THE STUDY OF SEXUAL INVERSION.

Westphal--Hössli--Casper--Ulrichs--Krafft-Ebing--Moll--

Féré--Kiernan--

Lydston--Raffalovich--Edward Carpenter--Hirschfeld.

Westphal, an eminent professor of psychiatry at Berlin, may be said to be

the first to put the study of sexual inversion on an assured scientific

basis. In 1870 he published, in the _Archiv für Psychiatrie_, of which he

was for many years editor, the detailed history of a young woman who, from

her earliest years, differed from other girls: she liked to dress as a

boy, only cared for boys' games, and as she grew up was sexually attracted

only to women, with whom she formed a series of tender relationships, in

which the friends obtained sexual gratification by mutual caresses; while

she blushed and was shy in the presence of women, more especially the girl

with whom she chanced to be in love, she was always absolutely indifferent

in the presence of men. Westphal--a pupil, it may be noted, of Griesinger,

who had already called attention to the high character sometimes shown by

subjects of this perversion--combined keen scientific insight with a rare

degree of personal sympathy for those who came under his care, and it was

this combination of qualities which enabled him to grasp the true nature

of a case such as this, which by most medical men at that time would have

been hastily dismissed as a vulgar instance of vice or insanity. Westphal

perceived that this abnormality was congenital, not acquired, so that it

could not be termed vice; and, while he insisted on the presence of

neurotic elements, his observations showed the absence of anything that

could legitimately be termed insanity. He gave to this condition the name

of "contrary sexual feeling" (_Konträre Sexualempfindung_), by which it

was long usually known in Germany. The way was thus made clear for the

rapid progress of our knowledge of this abnormality. New cases were

published in quick succession, at first exclusively in Germany, and more

especially in Westphal's _Archiv_, but soon in other countries also,

chiefly Italy and France.[113]

While Westphal was the first to place the study of sexual inversion on a

progressive footing, many persons had previously obtained glimpses into

the subject. Thus, in 1791, two cases were published[114] of men who

showed a typical emotional attraction to their own sex, though it was not

quite clearly made out that the inversion was congenital. In 1836, again,

a Swiss writer, Heinrich Hössli, published a rather diffuse but remarkable

work, entitled _Eros_, which contained much material of a literary

character bearing on this matter. He seems to have been moved to write

this book by a trial which had excited considerable attention at that

time. A man of good position had suddenly murdered a youth, and was

executed for the crime, which, according to Hössli, was due to homosexual

love and jealousy. Hössli was not a trained scholar; he was in business at

Glarus as a skillful milliner, the most successful in the town. His own

temperament is supposed to have been bisexual. His book was prohibited by

the local authorities and at a later period the entire remaining stock was

destroyed in a fire, so that its circulation was very small. It is now,

however, regarded by some as the first serious attempt to deal with the

problem of homosexuality since Plato's _Banquet_.[115]

Some years later, in 1852, Casper, the chief medico-legal authority of his

time in Germany,--for it is in Germany that the foundations of the study

of sexual inversion have been laid,--pointed out in Casper's

_Vierteljahrsschrift_ that pederasty, in a broad sense of the word, was

sometimes a kind of "moral hermaphroditism," due to a congenital psychic

condition, and also that it by no means necessarily involved sodomy

(_immissio penis in anum_). Casper brought forward a considerable amount

of valuable evidence concerning these cardinal points, which he was the

first to note,[116] but he failed to realize the full significance of his

observations, and they had no immediate influence, though Tardieu, in

1858, admitted a congenital element in some pederasts.

The man, however, who more than anyone else brought to light the phenomena

of sexual inversion had not been concerned either with the medical or the

criminal aspects of the matter. Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (born in 1825 near

Aurich), who for many years expounded and defended homosexual love, and

whose views are said to have had some influence in drawing Westphal's

attention to the matter, was a Hanoverian legal official (_Amtsassessor_),

himself sexually inverted. From 1864 onward, at first under the name of

"Numa Numantius" and subsequently under his own name, Ulrichs published,

in various parts of Germany, a long series of works dealing with this

question, and made various attempts to obtain a revision of the legal

position of the sexual invert in Germany.

Although not a writer whose psychological views can carry much scientific

weight, Ulrichs appears to have been a man of most brilliant ability, and

his knowledge is said to have been of almost universal extent; he was not

only well versed in his own special subjects of jurisprudence and

theology, but in many branches of natural science, as well as in

archeology; he was also regarded by many as the best Latinist of his time.

In 1880 he left Germany and settled in Naples, and afterward at Aquila in

the Abruzzi, whence he issued a Latin periodical. He died in 1895.[117]

John Addington Symonds, who went to Aquila in 1891, wrote: "Ulrichs is

_chrysostomos_ to the last degree, sweet, noble, a true gentleman and man

of genius. He must have been at one time a man of singular personal

distinction, so finely cut are his features, and so grand the lines of his

skull."[118]

For many years Ulrichs was alone in his efforts to gain scientific

recognition for congenital homosexuality. He devised (with allusion to

Uranos in Plato's _Symposium_) the word uranian or urning, ever since

frequently used for the homosexual lover, while he called the normal

heterosexual lover a dioning (from Dione). He regarded uranism, or

homosexual love, as a congenital abnormality by which a female soul had

become united with a male body--_anima muliebris in corpore virili

inclusa_--and his theoretical speculations have formed the starting point

for many similar speculations. His writings are remarkable in various

respects, although, on account of the polemical warmth with which, as one

pleading _pro domo_, he argued his cause, they had no marked influence on

scientific thought.[119]

This privilege was reserved for Westphal. After he had shown the way and

thrown open his journal for their publication, new cases appeared in rapid

succession. In Italy, also, Ritti, Tamassia, Lombroso, and others began to

study these phenomena. In 1882 Charcot and Magnan published in the

_Archives de Neurologie_ the first important study which appeared in

France concerning sexual inversion and allied sexual perversions. They

regarded sexual inversion as an episode (_syndrome_) in a more fundamental

process of hereditary degeneration, and compared it with such morbid

obsessions as dipsomania and kleptomania. From a somewhat more

medico-legal standpoint, the study of sexual inversion in France was

furthered by Brouardel, and still more by Lacassagne, whose stimulating

influence at Lyons has produced fruitful results in the work of many

pupils.[120]

Of much more importance in the history of the theory of sexual inversion

was the work of Richard von Krafft-Ebing (born at Mannheim in 1840 and

died at Graz in 1902), for many years professor of psychiatry at Vienna

University and one of the most distinguished alienists of his time. While

active in all departments of psychiatry and author of a famous textbook,

from 1877 onward he took special interest in the pathology of the sexual

impulse. His _Psychopathia Sexualis_ contained over two hundred histories,

not only of sexual inversion but of all other forms of sexual perversion.

For many years it was the only book on the subject and it long remained

the chief storehouse of facts. It passed through many editions and was

translated into many languages (there are two translations in English),

enjoying an immense and not altogether enviable vogue.

Krafft-Ebing's methods were open to some objection. His mind was not of a

severely critical order. He poured out the new and ever-enlarged editions

of his book with extraordinary rapidity, sometimes remodelling them. He

introduced new subdivisions from time to time into his classification of

sexual perversions, and, although this rather fine-spun classification has

doubtless contributed to give precision to the subject and to advance its

scientific study, it was at no time generally accepted.

Krafft-Ebing's

great service lay in the clinical enthusiasm with which he approached the

study of sexual perversions. With the firm conviction that he was

conquering a great neglected field of morbid psychology which rightly

belongs to the physician, he accumulated without any false shame a vast

mass of detailed histories, and his reputation induced sexually abnormal

individuals in all directions to send him their autobiographies, in the

desire to benefit their fellow-sufferers.

It is as a clinician, rather than as a psychologist, that we must regard

Krafft-Ebing. At the outset he considered inversion to be a functional

sign of degeneration, a partial manifestation of a neuropathic and

psychopathic state which is in most cases hereditary.

This perverse

sexuality appears spontaneously with the developing sexual life, without

external causes, as the individual manifestation of an abnormal

modification of the _vita sexualis_, and must then be regarded as

congenital; or it develops as a result of special injurious influences

working on a sexuality which had at first been normal, and must then be

regarded as acquired. Careful investigation of these so-called acquired

cases, however, Krafft-Ebing in the end finally believed, would indicate

that the predisposition consists in a latent homosexuality, or at least

bisexuality, which requires for its manifestation the operation of

accidental causes. In the last edition of his work Krafft-Ebing was

inclined to regard inversion as being not so much a degeneration as a

variation, a simple anomaly, and acknowledged that his opinion thus

approximated to that which had long been held by inverts themselves.[121]

At the time of his death, Krafft-Ebing, who had begun by accepting the

view, at that time prevalent among alienists, that homosexuality is a sign

of degeneration, thus fully adopted and set the seal of his authority on

the view, already expressed alike by some scientific investigators as well

as by inverts themselves, that sexual inversion is to be regarded simply

as an anomaly, whatever difference of opinion there might be as to the

value of the anomaly. The way was even opened for such a view as that of

Freud and most of the psychoanalysts today who regard a strain of

homosexuality as normal and almost constant, with a profound significance

for the psychonervous life. In 1891 Dr. Albert Moll, of Berlin, published

his work, _Die Konträre Sexualempfindung_, which subsequently appeared in

much enlarged and revised editions. It speedily superseded all previous

books as a complete statement and judicious discussion of sexual

inversion. Moll was not content merely to present fresh clinical material.

He attacked the problem which had now become of primary importance: the

nature and causes of sexual inversion. He discussed the phenomena as a

psychologist even more than as a physician, bearing in mind the broader

aspects of the problem, keenly critical of accepted opinions, but

judiciously cautious in the statement of conclusions. He cleared away

various ancient prejudices and superstitions which even Krafft-Ebing

sometimes incautiously repeated. He accepted the generally received

doctrine that the sexually inverted usually belong to families in which

various nervous and mental disorders prevail, but he pointed out at the

same time that it is not in all cases possible to prove that we are

concerned with individuals possessing a hereditary neurotic taint. He also

rejected any minute classification of sexual inverts, only recognizing

psycho-sexual hermaphroditism and homosexuality. At the same time he cast

doubt on the existence of acquired homosexuality, in a strict sense,

except in occasional cases, and he pointed out that even when a normal

heterosexual impulse appears at puberty, and a homosexual impulse later,

it may still be the former that was acquired and the latter that was

inborn.

In America attention had been given to the phenomena at a fairly early

period. Mention may be specially made of J.G. Kiernan and G. Frank

Lydston, both of whom put forward convenient classifications of homosexual

manifestations some thirty years ago.[122] More recently (1911) an

American writer, under the pseudonym of Xavier Mayne, privately printed an

extensive work entitled _The Intersexes: A History of Similisexualism as

a Problem in Social Life_, popularly written and compiled from many

sources. This book, from a subjective and scarcely scientific standpoint,

claims that homosexual relationships are natural, necessary, and

legitimate.[123]

In England the first attempts to deal seriously, from the modern point of

view, with the problem of homosexuality came late, and were either

published privately or abroad. In 1883 John Addington Symonds privately

printed his discussion of _paiderastia_ in ancient Greece, under the title

of _A Problem in Greek Ethics_, and in 1889-1890 he further wrote, and in

1891 privately printed, _A Problem of Modern Ethics: Being an Enquiry into

the Phenomena of Sexual Inversion_. In 1886 Sir Richard Burton added to

his translation of the _Arabian Nights_ a Terminal Essay on the same

subject. In 1894 Edward Carpenter privately printed in Manchester a

pamphlet entitled _Homogenic Love_, in which he criticised various

psychiatric views of inversion at that time current, and claimed that the

laws of homosexual love are the same as those of heterosexual love,

urging, however, that the former possesses a special aptitude to be

exalted to a higher and more spiritual level of comradeship, so fulfilling

a beneficent social function. More recently (1907) Edward Carpenter

published a volume of papers on homosexuality and its problems, under the

title of _The Intermediate Sex_, and later (1914) a more special study of

the invert in early religion and in warfare, _Intermediate Types among

Primitive Folk_.

In 1896 the most comprehensive book so far written on the subject in

England was published in French by Mr. André Raffalovich (in Lacassagne's

_Bibliothèque de Criminologie_), _Uranisme et Unisexualité_. This book

dealt chiefly with congenital inversion, publishing no new cases, but

revealing a wide knowledge of the matter. Raffalovich put forward many

just and sagacious reflections on the nature and treatment of inversion,

and the attitude of society toward perverted sexuality.

The historical

portions of the book, which are of special interest, deal largely with the

remarkable prevalence of inversion in England, neglected by previous

investigators. Raffalovich, whose attitude is, on the whole, philosophical

rather than scientific, regards congenital inversion as a large and

inevitable factor in human life, but, taking the Catholic standpoint, he

condemns all sexuality, either heterosexual or homosexual, and urges the

invert to restrain the physical manifestations of his instinct and to aim

at an ideal of chastity. On the whole, it may be said that the book is the

work of a thinker who has reached his own results in his own way, and

those results bear an imprint of originality and freedom from tradition.

In recent years no one has so largely contributed to place our knowledge

of sexual inversion on a broad and accurate basis as Dr.

Magnus Hirschfeld

of Berlin, who possesses an unequalled acquaintance with the phenomena of

homosexuality in all their aspects. He has studied the matter exhaustively

in Germany and to some extent in other countries also; he has received the

histories of a thousand inverts; he is said to have met over ten thousand

homosexual persons. As editor of the _Jahrbuch für sexuelle

Zwischenstufen_, which he established in 1899, and author of various

important monographs--more especially on transitional psychic and physical

stages between masculinity and femininity--Hirschfeld had already

contributed greatly to the progress of investigation in this field before

the appearance in 1914 of his great work, _Die Homosexualität des Mannes

und des Weibes_. This is not only the largest but the most precise,

detailed, and comprehensive--even the most condensed--

work which has yet

appeared on the subject. It is, indeed, an encyclopedia of homosexuality.

For such a task Hirschfeld had been prepared by many years of strenuous

activity as a physician, an investigator, a medico-legal expert before the

courts, and his position as president of the _Wissenschaftlich-humanitären

Komitee_ which is concerned with the defense of the interests of the

homosexual in Germany. In Hirschfeld's book the pathological conception

of inversion has entirely disappeared; homosexuality is regarded as

primarily a biological phenomenon of universal extension, and secondarily

as a social phenomenon of serious importance. There is no attempt to

invent new theories; the main value of Hirschfeld's work lies, indeed, in

the constant endeavor to keep close to definite facts.

It is this quality

which renders the book an indispensable source for all who seek

enlightened and precise information on this question.

Even the existence of such a treatise as this of Hirschfeld's is enough to

show how rapidly the study of this subject has grown. A few years ago--for

instance, when Dr. Paul Moreau wrote his _Aberrations du Sens

Génésique_--sexual inversion was scarcely even a name.

It was a loathsome

and nameless vice, only to be touched with a pair of tongs, rapidly and

with precautions. As it now presents itself, it is a psychological and

medico-legal problem so full of interest that we need not fear to face it,

and so full of grave social actuality that we are bound to face it.

FOOTNOTES:

[113] In England aberration of the sexual instinct, or the tendency of men

to feminine occupations and of women to masculine occupations, had been

referred to in the _Medical Times and Gazette_, February 9, 1867; Sir G.

Savage first described a case of "Sexual Perversion" in the _Journal of

Mental Science_, vol. xxx, October, 1884.

[114] Moritz, _Magazin für Erfahrungsseelenkunde_, Berlin, Bd. viii.

[115] A full and interesting account of Hössli and his book is given by

Karsch in the _Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, Bd. v, 1903, pp.

449-556.

[116] "Eugen Dühren" (Iwan Bloch) remarks, however (_Neue Forschungen über

den Marquis de Sade und seine Zeit_, p. 436), that de Sade in his _Aline

et Valcour_ seems to recognize that inversion is sometimes inborn, or at

least natural, and apt to develop at a very early age, in spite of all

provocations to the normal attitude. "And if this inclination were not

natural," he makes Sarmiento say, "would the impression of it be received

in childhood?... Let us study better this indulgent Nature before daring

to fix her limits." Still earlier, in 1676 (as Schouten has pointed out,

_Sexual-Probleme_, January, 1910, p. 66), an Italian priest called

Carretto recognized that homosexual tendencies are innate.

[117] For some account of Ulrichs see _Jahrbuch für sexuelle

Zwischenstufen_, Bd. i, 1899, p. 36.

[118] Horatio Brown, _John Addington Symonds, a Biography_, vol. ii, p.

344.

[119] Ulrichs scarcely went so far as to assert that both homosexual and

heterosexual love are equally normal and healthy; this has, however, been

argued more recently.

[120] Special mention may be made of _L'Inversion Sexuelle_, a copious and

comprehensive, though sometimes uncritical book by Dr.

J. Chevalier,

published in 1893, and the _Perversion et Perversité Sexuelles_ of Dr.

Saint-Paul, writing under the pseudonym of "Dr. Laupts,"

published in 1896

and republished in an enlarged form, under the title of _L'Homosexualité

et les Types Homosexuels_, in 1910.

[121] Krafft-Ebing set forth his latest views in a paper read before the

International Medical Congress, at Paris, in 1900

(_Comptes-rendus_,

"Section de Psychiatrie," pp. 421, 462; also in contributions to the

_Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, Bd. iii, 1901).

[122] Kiernan, _Detroit Lancet_, 1884, _Alienist and Neurologist_, April,

1891; Lydston, _Philadelphia Medical and Surgical Reporter_, September 7,

1889, and _Addresses and Essays_, 1892.

[123] A summary of the conclusion of this book, of which but few copies

were printed, will be found in Hirschfeld's _Vierteljahrsberichte_,

October, 1911, pp. 78-91.

CHAPTER III.

SEXUAL INVERSION IN MEN.

Relatively Undifferentiated State of the Sexual Impulse in Early Life--The

Freudian View--Homosexuality in Schools--The Question of Acquired

Homosexuality--Latent Inversion--Retarded Inversion--

Bisexuality--The

Question of the Invert