Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume Ii Part 27

[248]

Schrenck-Notzing, Die Suggestionstherapie bei krankhaften Erscheinungen des Geschlechtsinnes, 1892. (Eng. trans. Therapeutic Suggestion, 1895.)

[249]

Raffalovich, Uranisme et Unis.e.xualite, 1896, p. 16. He remarks that the congenital invert who has never had relations with women, and whose abnormality, to use Krafft-Ebing's distinction, is a perversion and not a perversity, is much less dangerous and apt to seduce others than the more versatile and corrupt person who has known all methods of gratification.

[250]

See, e.g., Moll, Die Kontrare s.e.xualempfindung, ch. xi; Forel, Die s.e.xuelle Frage, ch. xiv; Nacke, "Die Behandlung der h.o.m.os.e.xualitat," s.e.xual-Probleme, Aug., 1910; Hirschfeld, Die h.o.m.os.e.xualitat, ch. xxii.

[251]

Moll, Zeitschrift fur Psychotherapie, 1911, Heft 1; id., Handbuch der s.e.xualwissenschaften, 1912, p. 662 et seq.

[252]

This is also the opinion of Numa Praetorius, Jahrbuch fur s.e.xuelle Zwischenstufen, Jan., 1913, p. 222.

[253]

See, especially, Sadger, Zeitschrift fur s.e.xualwissenschaft, Heft 12, 1908; also Jahrbuch fur s.e.xuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. ix, 1908; Sadger's methods are criticised by Hirschfeld, Die h.o.m.os.e.xualitat, ch. xxii, and defended by Sadger, Internationale Zeitschrift fur Aerztliche Psychoa.n.a.lyse, July, 1914, p. 392. For a discussion of the psychoa.n.a.lytic treatment of h.o.m.os.e.xuality by a leading American Freudian, see Brill, Journal American Medical a.s.sociation, Aug. 2, 1913.

[254]

Internationale Zeitschrift fur Aerztliche Psychoa.n.a.lyse, March, 1914.

[255]

This is now generally recognized. See, e.g., Roubinovitch and Borel, "Un Cas d'Uranisme," L'Encephale, Aug., 1913. These authors conclude that it is today impossible to look upon inversion as the equivalent or the symptom of a psychopathic state, though we have to recognize that it frequently coexists with morbid emotional states. Nacke, also, in his extensive experience, found that h.o.m.os.e.xuality is rare in asylums and slight in character; he dealt with this question on various occasions; see, e.g., Jahrbuch fur s.e.xuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. viii, 1906.

[256]

Krafft-Ebing considered that the temporary or lasting a.s.sociation of h.o.m.os.e.xuality with neurasthenia having its root in congenital conditions is "almost invariable," and some authorities (like Meynert) have regarded inversion as an accidental growth on the foundation of neurasthenia.

[257]

Fere expressed himself concerning the general treatment of h.o.m.os.e.xuality in the same sense, and even more emphatically (Fere, L'Instinct s.e.xuel, 1899, pp. 272, 286). He considers that all forms of congenital inversion resist treatment, and that, since a change in the invert's instincts must be regarded rather as a perversion of the invert than a cure of the inversion, one may be permitted to doubt not only the utility of the treatment, but even the legitimacy of attempting it. The treatment of s.e.xual inversion, he declared, is as much outside the province of medicine as the restoration of color-vision in the color-blind. The ideal which the physician and the teacher must place before the invert is that of chast.i.ty; he must seek to harness his wagon to a star.

[258]

I have been told by a distinguished physician, who was consulted in the case, of a congenital invert highly placed in the English government service, who married in the hope of escaping his perversion, and was not even able to consummate the marriage. It is needless to insist on the misery which is created in such cases. It is not, of course, denied that such marriages may not sometimes become eventually happy. Thus Kiernan ("Psychical Treatment of Congenital s.e.xual Inversion," Review of Insanity and Nervous Diseases, June, 1894) reports the case of a thoroughly inverted girl who married the brother of the friend to whom she was previously attached merely in order to secure his sister's companions.h.i.+p. She was able to endure and even enjoy intercourse by imagining that her husband, who resembled his sister, was another sister. Liking and esteem for the husband gradually increased and after the sister died a child was born who much resembled her; "the wife's esteem pa.s.sed through love of the sister to intense natural love of the daughter, as resembling the sister; through this to normal love of the husband as the father and brother." The final result may have been satisfactory, but this train of circ.u.mstances could not have been calculated beforehand. Moll is also opposed, on the whole (e.g., Deutsche medicinische Presse, No. 6, 1902), to marriage and procreation by inverts.

[259]

Hirschfeld, Die h.o.m.os.e.xualitat, ch. xxi. It might seem on theoretical grounds that the marriage of a h.o.m.os.e.xual man with a h.o.m.os.e.xual woman might turn out well. Hirschfeld, however, states that he knows of 14 such marriages, and the theoretical expectation has not been justified; 3 of the cases speedily terminated in divorce, 4 of the couples lived separately, and all but 2 of the remaining couples regretted the step they had taken. I may add that in such a case even the expectation of happiness scarcely seems reasonable, since neither of the parties can feel a true mating impulse toward the other.

[260]

Hirschfeld also notes (Die h.o.m.os.e.xualitat, p. 95) that women often instinctively feel that there is something wrong in the love of their inverted husbands who may perhaps succeed in copulating, but betray their deepest feelings by a repugnance to touch the s.e.xual parts with the hand. The h.o.m.os.e.xual woman, also, as Hirschfeld elsewhere points out with cases in ill.u.s.tration (p. 84), may suffer seriously through being subjected to normal s.e.xual relations.h.i.+ps.

[261]

Fere reports the case of an invert of great intellectual ability who had never had any s.e.xual relations.h.i.+ps, and was not averse from a chaste life; he was urged by his doctor to acquire the power of normal intercourse and to marry, on the ground that his perversion was merely a perversion of the imagination. He did so, and, though he married a perfectly strong and healthy woman, and was himself healthy, except in so far as his perversion was concerned, the offspring turned out disastrously. The eldest child was an epileptic, almost an imbecile, and with strongly marked h.o.m.os.e.xual impulses; the second and third children were absolute idiots; the youngest died of convulsions in infancy (Fere, L'Instinct s.e.xuel, p. 269 et seq.) No doubt this is not an average case, but the numerous examples of the offspring of similar marriages brought forward by Hirschfeld (op. cit., p. 391) scarcely present a much better result.

[262]

It is scarcely necessary to add that the same principle is adaptable to the case of h.o.m.os.e.xual women. "In all such cases," writes an American woman physician, "I would recommend that the moral sense be trained and fostered, and the persons allowed to keep their individuality, being taught to remember always that they are different from others, rather sacrificing their own feelings or happiness when necessary. It is good discipline for them, and will serve in the long run to bring them more favor and affection than any other course. This quality or idiosyncrasy is not essentially evil, but, if rightly used, may prove a blessing to others and a power for good in the life of the individual; nor does it reflect any discredit upon its possessor."

[263]

The existence of an affinity between h.o.m.os.e.xuality and the religious temperament has been referred to in ch. i as recognized in many parts of the world. See, for a more extended discussion, Horneffer, Der Priester, and Bloch, Die Prost.i.tution, vol. i, pp. 101-110. The psychoa.n.a.lysts have also touched on this point; thus Pfister, Die Frommingkeit des Grafen von Zinzendorf (1910), argues that the founder of the pietistic sect of the Herrenhuter was of sublimated h.o.m.os.e.xual (or bis.e.xual) temperament.

[264]

Forel, Die s.e.xuelle Frage, p. 528. Such ideas are, of course, often put forward by inverts themselves.

[265]

Roman law previously seems to have been confined in this matter to the protection of boys. The Scantinian and other Roman laws against paiderasty seem to have been usually a dead letter. See, for various notes and references, W. G. Holmes, The Age of Justinian and Theodora, vol. i, p. 121.

[266]

Epistle to the Romans, chapter i, verses 26-7.

[267]

In practice this penalty of death appears to have been sometimes commuted to ablation of the s.e.xual organs.

[268]

For a full sketch of the legal enactments against h.o.m.os.e.xual intercourse in ancient and modern times, see Numa Praetorius, "Die straflichen Bestimmungen gegen den gleichgeschlechtlichen Verkehr," Jahrbuch fur s.e.xuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. i, pp. 97-158. This writer points out that Justinian, and still more clearly, Pius V, in the sixteenth century, distinguished between occasional h.o.m.os.e.xuality and deep-rooted inversion, habitual offenders alone, not those who had only been guilty once or twice, being punished.

[269]

The influence of the supposed connection of sodomy with unbelief, idolatry, and heresy in arousing the horror of it among earlier religions has been emphasized by Westermarck, The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, vol. i, p. 486 et seq.

[270]

"Any male person who in public or private commits, or is a party to the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and, being convicted thereof, shall be liable at the discretion of the court to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labor."

[271]

This point is brought forward by Dr. Leon de Rode in his report on "L'Inversion Genitale et la Legislation," prepared for the Third (Brussels) Congress of Criminal Anthropology in 1892. The same point is insisted on by some of my correspondents.

[272]

It is a remarkable and perhaps significant fact that, while h.o.m.os.e.xuality is today in absolute disrepute in France, it was not so under the less tolerant law of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Duc de Gesvres, as described by Besenval (Memoires, i, p. 178), was a well-marked invert of feminine type, impotent, and publicly affecting all the manners of women; yet he was treated with consideration. In 1687 Madame, the mother of the Regent, writes implying that "all the young men and many of the old" practised pederasty: il n'y a que les gens du commun qui aiment les femmes. The marked tendency to inversion in the French royal family at this time is well known.

[273]

A man with h.o.m.os.e.xual habits, I have been told, declared he would be sorry to see the English law changed, as then he would find no pleasure in his practices.

[274]

Blackmailing appears to be the most serious risk which the invert runs. Hirschfeld states in an interesting study of blackmailing (Jahrbuch fur s.e.xuelle Zwischenstufen, April, 1913) that his experience shows that among 10,000 h.o.m.os.e.xual persons hardly one falls a victim to the law, but over 3000 are victimized by blackmailers.

[275]

Krafft-Ebing would place this age not under 16, the age at which in England girls may legally consent to normal s.e.xual intercourse (Psychopathia s.e.xualis, 1893, p. 419). It certainly should not be lower.

APPENDICES.

APPENDIX A.

h.o.m.os.e.xUALITY AMONG TRAMPS.

BY "JOSIAH FLYNT."

I have made a rather minute study of the tramp cla.s.s in the United States, England, and Germany, but I know it best in the States. I have lived with the tramps there for eight consecutive months, besides pa.s.sing numerous shorter periods in their company, and my acquaintance with them is nearly of ten years' standing. My purpose in going among them has been to learn about their life in particular and outcast life in general. This can only be done by becoming part and parcel of its manifestations.

There are two kinds of tramps in the United States: out-of-works and "hoboes." The out-of-works are not genuine vagabonds; they really want work and have no sympathy with the hoboes. The latter are the real tramps. They make a business of begging-a very good business too-and keep at it, as a rule, to the end of their days. Whisky and Wanderl.u.s.t, or the love of wandering, are probably the main causes of their existence; but many of them are discouraged criminals, men who have tried their hand at crime and find that they lack criminal wit. They become tramps because they find that life "on the road" comes the nearest to the life they hoped to lead. They have enough talent to do very well as beggars, better, generally speaking, then the men who have reached the road simply as drunkards; they know more about the tricks of the trade and are cleverer in thinking out schemes and stories. All genuine tramps in America are, however, pretty much the same, as far as manners and philosophy are concerned, and all are equally welcome at the "hang-out."[276] The cla.s.s of society from which they are drawn is generally the very lowest of all, but there are some hoboes who have come from the very highest, and these latter are frequently as vicious and depraved as their less well-born brethren.

Concerning s.e.xual inversion among tramps, there is a great deal to be said, and I cannot attempt to tell all I have heard about it, but merely to give a general account of the matter. Every hobo in the United States knows what "unnatural intercourse" means, talking about it freely, and, according to my finding, every tenth man practises it, and defends his conduct. Boys are the victims of this pa.s.sion. The tramps gain possession of these boys in various ways. A common method is to stop for awhile in some town, and gain acquaintance with the slum children. They tell these children all sorts of stories about life "on the road," how they can ride on the railways for nothing, shoot Indians, and be "perfeshunnels" (professionals), and they choose some boy who specially pleases them. By smiles and flattering caresses they let him know that the stories are meant for him alone, and before long, if the boy is a suitable subject, he smiles back just as slyly. In time he learns to think that he is the favorite of the tramp, who will take him on his travels, and he begins to plan secret meetings with the man. The tramp, of course, continues to excite his imagination with stories and caresses, and some fine night there is one boy less in the town. On the road the lad is called a "prushun," and his protector a "jocker." The majority of prushuns are between 10 and 15 years of age, but I have known some under 10 and a few over 15. Each is compelled by hobo law to let his jocker do with him as he will, and many, I fear, learn to enjoy his treatment of them. They are also expected to beg in every town they come to, any laziness on their part receiving very severe punishment.

How the act of unnatural intercourse takes place is not entirely clear; the hoboes are not agreed. From what I have personally observed I should say that it is usually what they call "leg-work" (intercrural), but sometimes immissio p.e.n.i.s in anum, the boy, in either case, lying on his stomach. I have heard terrible stories of the physical results to the boy of a.n.a.l intercourse.