Bisexuality

“ The processes of repression and of sublimation set in to deal with these cravings much earlier than in other persons. For one reason or another the heterosexual components are repressed and the homosexual are evolved. The heterosexual cravings are hemmed in and rendered useless by disgust, hatred or fear.
Homosexuality arises out of bisexuality as a result of certain particular attitudes which become determined very early in life. But not always. Such traits may appear also relatively late in life. ”

“ Pronounced bisexuality in woman is indicated by a strong masculine cast in the constitutional make-up, which is often observed in women who have achieved outstanding success in various fields of activity. Often they never marry. ”

“ One who conceives bisexuality as a chemical process—and there are some data apparently supporting such a view—may speak of the conquest of man’s heterosexuality over homosexuality. Hirschfeld would say of a man: as he now produces less andrin the gynecin achieves upper hands. ”

“ True hermaphroditism in man being established, the question arises whether lesser grades do not occur.... Remote evidence of bisexuality in the human subject may, perhaps, be afforded by the psychical phenomenon of sexual perversion and inversion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Freud claims that there is in every one an original bisexual tendency, which is also established anatomically.
Normal development leads from bisexuality to the primacy of the heterosexual instinct.
Thus inversion corresponds to a disturbance of development. ”

“ Most of the bisexual prefer their own sex. It is curiously rare to find a person, whether man or woman, who by choice exercises relationships with both sexes and prefers the opposite sex. This would seem to indicate that the bisexual may really be inverts.
In any case bisexuality merges imperceptibly into simple inversion. In at least 16 of 52 cases of simple inversion in men there has been connection with women, in some instances only once or twice, in others during several years, but it was always with an effort, or from a sense of duty and anxiety to be normal ”

“ But the extreme German estimates are too high for the United States. It is my conclusion from intimate intercourse with the natives in many countries that the frequency of bisexuality per thousand is proportional to the density of population. Nature puts a break on over-population by increasing the proportion of sterile bisexuals. When a population is regularly underfed, the number of bisexuals born appears to increase. ”

“ We see that her pronounced bisexuality leads her to fall in love with a man, to be his sweetheart, in her fancy, but she hesitates to turn her fancy into a reality, the “fear of sinning” preventing her from carrying out the step. Then she looks upon the heterosexual inclinations as passing whims and turns to her homosexual fancies. She is running away from the male. She fears the man she loves because a strong love implies submission to the male. She gravitates away from him, not because the male 18is unable to yield her gratification but because she fears him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is the task of analysis to uncover the mental conflict which finds expression in this onesidedness and to enable the patient to see the cruelty trend which he has derived from the childhood of the race and has carried through his own childhood into his adult life. When the homosexual becomes aware of his bisexuality and sees the causes of his monosexual leaning we have accomplished the requisite educational task. Beyond that point the patient must help himself. If he is truly earnest about his desire to get well he will accomplish it without being pushed to it. ”

“ Another appears to have sexual dreams of a nightmare character in which women appear. In another case there were always at first dreams of women, but this subject had sometimes had connection with prostitutes, and is not absolutely indifferent to women, while another, whose dreams remain heterosexual, had in early life some attraction to girls. In the cases of distinct bisexuality there is no unanimity; 2 dream of their own sex, 2 dream of both sexes, 1 usually dreams of the opposite sex, and 1 man, while dreaming of both, dislikes those dreams in which women figure. ”

“ The thoughts about a man and about his sister are interrupted and he falls asleep once more. Three times he dreams of various situations before the anxiety in him is transformed into wish. First he fled from the horse and from his sister, then he fled from his mother and the physician and finally there came his release. He was strong enough to withstand his homosexuality, strong to overcome the heterosexual longings. Now the instinct throws forward its highest and strongest card to overcome the last inhibitions: bisexuality. The girl with the phallus, his sister, appears ... ”

“ The social pressure, urging all persons into the normal sexual channel, suffices to develop such slight germs of heterosexuality as homosexual persons may possess, and so to render them bisexual. In the majority of adult bisexual persons it would seem that the homosexual tendency is stronger and more organic than the heterosexual tendency. ”

“ How may the homosexual be cured? If he is made heterosexual he represses his homosexuality and becomes neurotic for that reason; the endeavor to turn him bisexual meets the course of social development. The proper therapic course would be to remove the inhibitions which stand between him and woman, to make him de facto again bisexual and heterosexual for all practical purposes. That is certainly possible and it may be attained through analysis provided the subjects have the patience and perseverance to carry it out. Where the will is lacking no therapist can accomplish anything. ”

“ Similarly, various forms of fetichism may be a cover for homosexuality.
It is plainly obvious that the study of sexual masks promises to further immensely our knowledge about matters of sex. At the same time it is clear that the opposition of many circles to the new studies [Pg 69] must remain a tremendous one. Possibly a great deal of the opposition to the new psychology has its roots in this very peculiarity of human nature. Their basic bisexual predisposition is precisely what men are least disposed to recognise. ”

“ Whether because of disgust, confusion, or ignorance about homosexuality, lesbian and gay sexuality dominates the discourse of not only same-sex adoption, but all lesbian and gay issues. The classification of lesbians and gays as ‘exclusively sexual beings’ stands in stark contrast to the perception of heterosexual parents as ‘people who, along with many other activities in their lives, occasionally engage in sex.’ Through this narrative, lesbians and gays are reduced to one-dimensional creatures, defined by their sex and sexuality. ”

“ All the drawing and painting in the world will not prevent his having emotion when he looks at the face of a pretty girl.
In our segregation schools boys and girls see nothing of each other. The unsublimated sex instinct finds expression in homosexuality, that is the emotion that should go to the opposite sex is fixed on a person of the same sex. I admit that we are all more or less homosexual; otherwise there could be no friendship between man and man, or woman and woman. In our boarding schools the sex instinct often takes the road of auto-eroticism. ”

“ It is also doubtful whether such an acquaintanceship would greatly help me, for I have a very peculiar conception of homosexuality. As you will see, I have little more in common with what are called pæderasts than sexual indifference to the female sex, and I often ask myself: 'Does any other man in the whole world feel like you? Are you alone in the earth with your morbid desires? Are you a pariah of pariahs, or is there, perhaps, another soul with similar longings living near you? ”

“ But that does not compel me to deny any place at all to the male sex; it does not prove to me that the leaning of a mother toward her son as a son, of a wife towards her husband as a husband, are illusions belonging to the terrestrial conditions, and doomed to pass away along with those conditions. Rather it seems to me that just as the common religious instinct of the world is a guarantee for a future life, so the equally general attraction of women toward their male kith and kin is a guarantee for the permanence of the bi-sexual relation in that future life. ”

“ Every monosexuality is other than normal or natural. Nature has created us bisexual beings and requires us to act as bisexual beings. The purely heterosexual is always a neurotic in a certain sense, that is, the repression of the homosexual components already creates a predisposition to neurosis, or is in itself a neurotic trait shared by every normal person. The psychology of paranoia, for whose investigation we are indebted to the genius of Freud, shows us the extreme result of this process of repression on one side, just as homosexuality shows us the other side of the same process. ”

“ The whole love instinct of man rebels against growing old and fosters the utilization to the utmost of the opportunities during the few remaining years. The milder the sexual life in the past, the greater and more stormy becomes the need of making up for lost opportunities “while there is time.”
But the significance of homosexuality during this critical period is a matter which most investigators [Pg 89] have overlooked. It may be that the involution of the sexual glands brings the opposite sex into stronger relief at this period. ”

“ The instinct of the homosexual originally is not exclusively directed towards the same sex. Originally the homosexual is also bisexual. But he represses his heterosexuality just as the heterosexual must repress his homosexuality. Blüher who is unwilling to recognise a pathogenesis of homosexuality for the ‘male hero’ type, contends that one could claim with equal relevance that there is a pathogenesis of heterosexuality. ”

“ It requires a very strong impetus to go against this compact social force which, on every side, constrains the individual into the paths of heterosexual love. That impetus, in a well-bred individual who leads the normal life of his fellow-men and who feels the ordinary degree of respect for the social feeling surrounding him, can only be supplied by a fundamental—usually, it is probable, inborn—perversion of the sexual instinct, rendering the individual organically abnormal. It is with this fundamental abnormality, usually called sexual inversion, that we shall here be concerned. ”

“ Analysis invariably reveals that there is no such thing as monosexuality and that the transvestites, like the homosexuals, have their repressions. The homosexual represses his heterosexuality, the transvestite his homosexuality. In his phantasy the man is a woman (the woman fancies herself the reverse) and thus he combines the two components of his libido. ”

“ When we have recognized that there is a tendency for homosexuality to arise in persons of usually normal tendency who are placed under conditions (as on board ship or in prison) where the exercise of normal sexuality is impossible, there is little further classification to be achieved along this line. [129] We have gone as far as is necessary by admitting a general undefined homosexuality,—a relationship of unspecified nature to persons of the same sex,—in addition to the more specific sexual inversion. ”

“ Finally I turn to my own conception of homosexuality, formulated, on the basis of psychoanalytic data and as an outgrowth of the teachings of Freud.
All persons originally are bisexual in their predisposition. There is no exception to this rule. Normal persons show a distinct bisexual period up to the age of puberty. The heterosexual then represses his homosexuality. ”

“ As to “sexual orientation”, I adopt the following definition put forward by Cameron:
“... sexual orientation is defined by reference to erotic attraction: in the case of heterosexuals, to members of the opposite sex; in the case of gays and lesbians, to members of the same sex. Potentially a homosexual or gay or lesbian person can therefore be anyone who is erotically attracted to members of his or her own sex.” ”

“ The problem of the bisexual girl-boy or androgyne has been presented for the learned professions in my Autobiography of an Androgyne and The Riddle of the Underworld. But to accomplish my three aims, it is necessary that the general reader have instilled into his mind that sexual intermediates are not to blame for their cross-sex idiosyncrasies. Such knowledge could not besmirch the soul of the general reader, but only benefit him morally. ”

“ We must reconsider many old conclusions, especially many theories of the sexual instincts, in all races and civilizations. Lifelong ideas, rooted prejudices suddenly are sapped under its chemistry. Impulses in intersexual humanity, in the "between-man" or the "between-woman" working out their own emotional natures helplessly and independently even while mocked or denounced therefor, are not to be judged by pulpit or statute-book, but by medical psychology. ”