Homosexuality

“ 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. ”

“ I am of the opinion that under certain conditions the extreme polar tension between man and woman will always drive to homosexuality certain individuals possessing the requisite bisexual predisposition and that the number of homosexuals will increase. Since I look upon homosexuality as a neurosis, a morbid condition, if one insists on the term, I am decidedly opposed to the policy of penalizing the homosexual, and against those legal proscriptions which have been and are the cause of much misery. ”

“ Although I have been engaged for years in the collection of facts bearing on this question of homosexuality, I have recently been astonished to learn, in an ever-increasing number of cases, how adult homosexuals, men of thirty years and upwards, form homosexual relationships with schoolboys, and regard their right to do this as practically self-evident. ”

“ Many investigators regard homosexuality as an acquired manifestation. In cases in which the existence of homosexuality can be traced back into childhood, they explain this on the ground that at a time when the individual concerned was in a state of sexual excitement, some other person of the same sex must have made a marked impression upon his imagination. ”

“ While it is peculiarly easy to name men of distinguished ability who, either certainly or in all probability, have been affected by homosexual tendencies, they are not isolated manifestations. They spring out of an element of diffused homosexuality which is at least as marked in civilization as it is in savagery. It is easy to find illustrations in every country. Here it may suffice to refer to France, Germany, and England. ”

“ This then is my contention, that homosexuality is either an acquired vice, that is to say a habit, or an acquired mental aberration, that is to say, insanity, or congenital; and then it is that a human being is born with a body with sexual organs all those of the male, yet most likely with a body which shows certain earmarks of the female, and with a soul nearly all female, but certainly entirely female in regard to the sex question. Such a person is a homosexualist, because he feels like a woman and to him all male persons belong to the opposite sex. ”

“ The third or current scientific attitude does seem at first to avoid these superstitions and to rest on a reasonable basis. This attitude may be described as that of regarding [Pg 68] homosexuality as a disease, which should neither be punished nor ignored, but treated. The theory that we all pass through a homosexual period at a comparatively early stage, lends support to this conclusion. The hero-age of boys and girls, it is urged, is almost always directed towards the child’s own sex. ”

“ I gather from your letter that your son is a homosexual. I am most impressed by the fact, that you do not mention this term yourself in your information about him. May I question you why you avoid it? Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. ”

“ The congenital nature of homosexuality is displayed, not by the primary appearance of this mode of sensibility, but by the fact that when the puberal development takes place, the homosexual sentiments persist, and are not replaced by heterosexuality. ”

“ It is no doubt this human interest of the question of inversion, rather than its scientific importance, great as the latter is, which is mainly responsible for the remarkable activity with which the study of homosexuality has been carried on during recent years. ”

“ Magnus Hirschfeld, one of the greatest of contemporary authorities on the sex question in all its phases, is convinced that homosexuality is a normal state, and that genuine homosexuality is always an inborn condition. ”

“ Let us then first consider what Homosexuality is.
Homosexuality means sexual love for one of the same sex. Thus, if a male feels sexual desire for another male, or a female for another female, they are called sexually inverted or homosexual. ”

“ A different sense of future, moreover an expectation of instant gratification, is established in the sexual experience of homosexuality. Exactly this characteristic acknowledges the underlying structure of the pragmatics of high efficiency that makes homosexual experiences possible, and even economically acceptable. Acknowledged also is the scale of humankind. ”

“ This peculiarity gives us an insight into the mentality of the Don Juan type, the desolute adventurer, and the Messalina type....
The flight away from homosexuality leads the individual to overstress his heterosexuality (with the formulation of compromises and the adoption of homosexual masks) but that seldom yields the satisfaction craved by the individual. ”

“ With the recognition that homosexuality in youth may be due to an as yet undifferentiated sexual impulse, homosexuality in mature age to a retarded development on a congenital basis, and homosexuality in sold age to a return to the attitude of youth, the area of spurious or "pseudo" homosexuality seems to me to be very much restricted. ”

“ Latent homosexuality is a fact, not uncovered by analysis, but analysis has tremendously enlarged our understanding of the mental processes involved. The deeper we penetrate into the psychic mechanism of the neuroses and psychoses, the more vital appears to us the role of homosexuality. ”

“ Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.) It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime and cruelty too. ”

“ 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 literature of homosexuality is almost entirely romantic, and small though it is forced to be, in quality and ideal its average must rank as extraordinarily noble.
It is noticeable, indeed, that in a large proportion of the unpleasant cases which are tried in police-courts, the offenders are admittedly normal men who have deliberately perpetrated homosexual acts for various causes, such as a neurotic desire for novelty, or the desire to avoid disease. ”

“ I know only one kind of homosexuality, and that is always inborn. Also, I find it always linked intimately with heterosexuality. Awareness of one’s own homosexual tendency or lack of it is not a reliable guide. If the number of consciously homosexual persons be estimated at 2 per cent., we may confidently assert that there are 98 per cent. of persons who know nothing of their homosexual traits, or rather that they do not want to know anything about them. ”

“ The temporal law has never, however, proved very successful in repressing homosexuality. At this period the Renaissance movement was reaching England, and here as elsewhere it brought with it, if not an increase, at all events a rehabilitation and often an idealization of homosexuality. ”

“ Necessity.—In the majority of cases men and women resort to the homosexual mode of gratification for “faute de mieux.” For that reason homosexuality flourishes chiefly in places where great numbers of males or females are segregated. Among the peasants and shepherds in Switzerland, who live for months segregated in the mountains with no opportunity for natural sex activity, homosexuality is very common. ”

“ Homosexuality has always been condemned in Christian teaching as being morally wrong. It has equally been regarded by society for many centuries as an offence against nature and a very serious crime. (2) Exclusive homosexuality, whether the condition be congenital or acquired, can result in great distress and unhappiness for the individual and can lead to depression, despair and suicide. (3) The homosexually orientated can be importuned into a homosexual lifestyle which can become habitual. ”

“ In English the homosexuality is for the most part veiled and the narrative deals largely with school-life and boys in order that the emotional and romantic character of the relations described may appear more natural. ”

“ It is possible that with proper bringing up the development of any homosexual traits will be prevented. It should be borne in mind that long sexual repression is favorable to the development of homosexuality. ”

“ All lovers of mankind surely must fight for the abandonment of the moral opprobrium and legal persecution of homosexuals and for a greater freedom from bias in the perception of the problem of all paraphilias. But we must not fail to recognize that we are dealing here with tremendous social forces and with developmental tendencies striving, beyond all human range, for the attainment of unknown higher ideals. The development of the race is from bisexualism to monosexualism. Even the “genuine” homosexuality as we know it today everywhere is a proof in favor of this contention. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sexual parts and genital glands cannot determine homosexuality in those possessing typical normal male genitalia and testicles; neither can the brain itself be the determining factor in genuine homosexuality, because homosexuality cannot be rooted out by the strongest conscious and unconscious heterosexual influences brought to bear upon thought and phantasy,—the condition developing in spite of such influences. ”

“ It is certainly not an advantage for the homosexual who earnestly strives to get cured to continue to frequent homosexual circles and to have constantly dinned into his ears the assertion that his condition is inborn and hopeless. I have quoted some cases showing that latent homosexuality may become manifest through contact with and the example of homosexuals while the heterosexual leaning may be disturbed thereby. But I did not intend to suggest the advisability of any compulsory measures for restricting the homosexual’s freedom of action or social intercourse. ”

“ A careful examination of the mental life of our insane man’s unconscious shows that homosexuality is a powerful motive force much more frequently than is ordinarily recognized and this attempt to turn the unconscious subjective feeling of homosexuality into an objective reality, constitutes a pathway for the release of inner psychic tension, so a means for the individual to escape the feeling of guilt roused by his erroneous perception of facts and to pass the responsibility onto other shoulders. ”

“ Anxiety, disgust and scorn support the forces of homosexual love. These feelings do not exhaust the range of inhibitory factors and we shall presently turn our attention to others. But we must take up the psychogenesis of these inhibitions in a thorough and systematic manner.
May fear of the sexual partner drive a person into homosexuality? We must answer this question in the affirmative inasmuch as we are able to trace that fear in a number of cases. ”

“ Nature is deliberate in creating not uniformity but variety, and I doubt if the world would continue if there were only normal men in it. The homosexual has his place, within restrictions, as has the celibate or the sexless type. The real truth, I feel to be, is that few men are wholly masculine or women feminine, and that somewhere, in comparative degrees, homosexuality is in us all. It may become so excessive as to be a disease, or so feeble as to create that unæsthetic, bourgeoise type, [Pg 75] which is an unpleasant symptom of super-normality. ”

“ The sexual ideal of the invert includes not only traits of former female and male sexual objectives, but also features of one's own beloved self.
(d) Being brought up in surroundings exclusively feminine—the father does not count in such circumstances—fosters homosexuality in the male as well as in the female, for reasons that are not sufficiently clear as yet. Moreover, the urning is usually an only child. ”

“ Every person should acknowledge and accept his or her sexual identity (no. 2333) ; Homosexuality refers to relations between men or women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction towards persons of the same sex (no. 2357) ”

“ 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. ”