Homoeroticism

“ The alleged hereditary transmission is supposed to show itself in the homosexual through the early awakening of the sexual instinct and by the appearance of masturbation during early childhood. But we know that [Pg 14] the homosexuals share this peculiarity with all others, especially with neurotic persons. A strong flaring up of instinct is not the consequence but the cause of the neurosis. But according to Krafft-Ebing masturbation during childhood is the cause of homo-or pseudo-homosexuality breaking forth at a later period. ”

“ The type which I wish to describe approaches the ascetic. It is plain that the ascetic ideal would not arise if a strong homosexual tendency did not depreciate heterosexuality. For every action is the product of instinct and repression. An overpowerful instinct may overcome even the strongest inhibitions. But if a portion of the individual’s sexual energy is anchored homosexually the aggressive sexual acts are endowed only with a portion of the energy they require. If the energy is shunted off its proper track entirely we have the ascetic person ”

“ He assumes two forms of homosexuality: 1. the passive subject-homoerotic, who represents an inborn state and stands for an intermediary type in Hirschfeld’s sense and is incurable and 2. the active object-homoerotic, a type he describes as a special form of compulsion neurosis. The passive type never consults the physician for his trouble,—he is a genuine homosexual; the active type is unhappy over his condition, he shows the typical symptoms. ”

“ Homosexual passion in women finds more or less complete expression in kissing, sleeping together, and close embraces, as in what is sometimes called "lying spoons," when one woman lies on her side with her back turned to her friend and embraces her from behind, fitting her thighs into the bend of her companion's legs, so that her mons veneris is in dose contact with the other's buttocks, and slight movement then produces mild erethism. One may also lie on the other's body, or there may be mutual masturbation. ”

“ These conditions have been accepted by a few homoeopathists who have become members of the most prominent medical association in the United States.
Homoeopathy as it exists to-day can, in the opinion of its adherents, stand by itself, and its progress for a century in face of prolonged and determined opposition appears to its upholders to be evidence of its truth. There are still, indeed, in both schools of medical thought, men who stand fast by their old principles. ”

“ But like the normal heterosexual individual, even the 'male hero' type displays a permanent latent disposition to neurosis.
"The process of sublimation is more difficult in the case of the normal homosexual than in the case of the normal heterosexual. That is why this type is extremely rare and why a thorough analysis always discloses typical neurotic reactions. The neurotic reactions of expression are anxiety, fear, shame, disgust and hatred. The heterosexual is inspired with disgust at any homosexual act. ”

“ If this sublimation fails him he becomes neurotic, since no person overcomes completely his homosexual tendencies. Everyone carries within himself the predisposition to neurosis. The stronger the repression, the stronger is also the neurotic reaction which may be powerful enough in its extreme form to lead to paranoia. If the heterosexuality is repressed, homosexuality comes to the forefront. In the case of the homosexual, the repressed and incompletely conquered heterosexuality furnishes the disposition toward neurosis. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But that every cure ever performed by medicine should have been founded upon this principle, although without the knowledge of a physician; that the Homoeopathic axiom is, as Hahnemann asserts, "the sole law of nature in therapeutics," a law of which nothing more than a transient glimpse ever presented itself to the innumerable host of medical observers, is a dogma of such sweeping extent, and pregnant novelty, that it demands a corresponding breadth and depth of unquestionable facts to cover its vast pretensions. ”

“ Now if this was the Homoeopathic remedy, as Hahnemann pretends, it might be a fair question why the young man was not cured by it. But it is a much graver question why a man who has shrewdness and learning enough to go so far after his facts, should think it right to treat them with such astonishing negligence or such artful unfairness. ”

“ There were only four Journals of Homoeopathy ever published in Paris. The Baillieres informed my correspondent that the sale of Homoeopathic books was much less than formerly, and that consequently they should undertake to publish no new books upon the subject, except those of Jahr or Hahnemann. "This man," says my correspondent,—referring to one of the brothers,—"the publisher and headquarters of Homoeopathy in Paris, informs me that it is going down in England and Germany as well as in Paris." ”

“ 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. ”

“ The average homosexual applies his erotism to male friendships and his sexuality he places in the service of heterosexual love; the progress of culture consists therein that heterosexual love is also gradually sublimated, that is, turned more and more into erotism. The homosexual, for instance, turns his erotism towards women, and applies his sexuality in his relation with men. But at times he may turn his whole erotism into the homosexual channel and suppress his whole sexuality. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We meet this fearful instinct, in many individuals, both heterosexual and homosexual. The sentiment put vice-versa—blood-lust breeding sex-lust—is met often. This fact enters into many assassinations and mysterious murders. Thus acts the passion well-known in sexual parlance as 'sadism,' a word derived from the famous French eroto-maniac, the Marquis de Sade, whose instincts were particularly of the kind. The maniacal instinct to dismember and to disfigure the body of some victim, either before or after sexual use of it, is not at all rare, either in heterosexual or homosexual erotism. ”

“ A number of public trials of Homoeopathy have been made in different parts of the world. Six of these are mentioned in the Manifesto of the "Homoeopathic Examiner." Now to suppose that any trial can absolutely silence people, would be to forget the whole experience of the past. Dr. Haygarth and Dr. Alderson could not stop the sale of the five-guinea Tractors, although they proved that they could work the same miracles with pieces of wood and tobacco-pipe. It takes time for truth to operate as well as Homoeopathic globules. ”

“ Thus there exist two schools among the adherents of homoeopathy. On the one hand there are the Hahnemannians, the “Purists” or “High Potency” men, who still profess to regard the Organon as their Bible, who believe in all the teachings of Hahnemann, who adhere in their prescriptions to the single dose, the single medicine, and the highest possible potency, and regard the doctrine of the spiritual dynamization acquired by trituration and succussion as indubitable. ”

“ Only when the homosexual finds it possible to fix his erotism and sexuality upon the same goal, in a person of the opposite sex,—in other words, when he learns to 314love in adult manner,—have we the right to claim a cure. It is only then, at any rate, that the greatest healer of all ages, love, achieves its easy victory and the former patient, like all neurotics, thinks that mere chance has brought him face to face with his ideal. With that end in view the fixation on the family—through which the homosexual loses his erotic freedom, occasionally also the sexual—must be severed. ”

“ If any objection were made to evidence of this kind, I would refer to the express experiments on many of the Homoeopathic substances, which were given to healthy persons with every precaution as to diet and regimen, by M. Louis Fleury, without being followed by the slightest of the pretended consequences. And let me mention as a curious fact, that the same quantity of arsenic given to one animal in the common form of the unprepared powder, and to another after having been rubbed up into six hundred globules, offered no particular difference of activity in the two cases. ”

“ Homoeopathy has given prominence to the therapeutical side of medicine, and has done much to stimulate the study of the physiological action of drugs. It has done service in directing more special attention to various powerful drugs, such as aconite, nux vomica, belladonna, and to the advantage of giving them in simpler forms than were common before the days of Hahnemann. But in the medical profession homoeopathy nevertheless remains under the stigma of being a dissenting sect. ”

“ We have seen already that persons with sadistic fancies, necrophiliac tendencies and with all sorts of infantile misophilias may be addicted to masturbation. In all these cases, if onanism is given up, a condition develops resembling satyriasis. What [Pg 132] these persons seek is a transference of their libido upon the normal path. At the same time my observations enable me to declare that the various conditions mentioned are overshadowed by the significance of latent homosexuality. The most important as well as the most powerful driving force is homosexuality. ”

“ The itch-doctrine is treated with contempt. Infinitesimal doses are replaced by full ones whenever the fancy-practitioner chooses. Good Homoeopathic reasons can be found for employing anything that anybody wants to employ. Homoeopathy is now merely a name, an unproved theory, and a box of pellets pretending to be specifics, which, as all of us know, fail ignominiously in those cases where we would thankfully sacrifice all our prejudices and give the world to have them true to their promises. ”

“ Every compulsion neurosis appearing at this period is a complicated riddle through which the subject aims to hide before his own consciousness no less than before the world at large the true significance of the psychic impulses which reassert their supremacy at the time. Frequently back of the various symptomatic acts it is possible to discern the clear mechanism of defence against homosexuality. ”

“ Most homoeopathists believe more or less in the action of minute doses of medicine, but it must not be considered as an integral part of the system. The dose is the corollary, not the principle. Yet in the minds of many, infinitesimal doses of medicine stand for homoeopathy itself, the real law of cure being completely put into the background. The question of dose has also divided the members of the homoeopathic school into bitter factions, and is therefore a matter for careful consideration. Many employ low potencies, [3] i.e. ”

“ Is it strange that homoeopathy or any other heterodox system sprang up in the midst of such measures? It is an old saying that there is no folly which will not secure a following; and, strange to say, Rasori had a numerous and an eminent one.
As just intimated, Homoeopathy was the natural reaction against such heroic measures; in the rebound the other extreme was reached, even to practical therapeutic nihilism. Now, instead of venesection and drastic medication, came the theories expounded by Hahnemann (1753-1843) , which denied disease, admitting only symptoms. ”

“ A heterosexual person who experiences a homosexual impulse in the absence of any homosexual disposition is not today easy to accept. We can certainly accept the possibility of a mechanical or other non-sexual stimulus leading to a sexual act contrary to the individual's disposition. But usually it is somewhat difficult to prove, and when proved it has little psychological significance or importance. We may expect, therefore, to find "pseudo-homosexuality," or spurious homosexuality, playing a dwindling part in classification. ”

“ It cannot be unknown to any one at all familiar with Homoeopathic literature, that Hahnemann's idea of tracing the large majority of chronic diseases to actual itch has met with the greatest opposition from Homoeopathic physicians themselves. ”

“ All of any note agree that the law Similia similibus is the only fundamental principle in medicine. Of course if any man does not agree to this the name Homoeopathist can no longer be applied to him with propriety. ”

“ To deny that good effects may happen from the observance of diet and regimen when prescribed by Homoeopathists as well as by others, would be very unfair to them. But to suppose that men with minds so constituted as to accept such statements and embrace such doctrines as make up the so-called science of Homoeopathy are more competent than others to regulate the circumstances which influence the human body in health and disease, would be judging very harshly the average capacity of ordinary practitioners. ”