LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

by the secret practices of the children with whom he associated. He does not see why these experiences should have given him a homosexual bent any more than a heterosexual one.

      The psychoanalysis recalled to M. O. that during the period of early flirtation he had often kissed and embraced various girls, but likewise he recalled having observed at the same time, with some surprise, that no definitely sexual desire arose, though the way was probably open to gratify it. Such interest as did exist ceased wholly or almost so as the relation with Edmund developed. There was no aversion from the company of girls and women, however; the intellectual friendships were mainly with them, while the emotional ones were with boys.

      Very recently M. O. spent several days with Edmund, who has been married for several years. With absolutely no sexual interest in each other, they nevertheless found a great bond of love still subsisting. Neither regrets anything of the past, but feels that the final outcome of their earlier relation has been good. Edmund's beauty is still pronounced, and is remarked by others.

      In spite of his precocious sexuality, M. O. had from the very first an extreme disgust for obscene stories, and for any association of sexual things with filthy words and anecdotes. Owing in part to this and in part to his temperamental skepticism, he disbelieved what associates told him regarding sexual emissions, only becoming convinced when he actually experienced them; and the facts of reproduction he denied indignantly until he read them in a medical work. Until he was well over 25 the physical aversion from any thought of reproduction was intense. He knows other, normal, young men who have felt the same way, but he believes it would be prevented or overcome by sex-education such as is now being introduced in American schools.

      Again, as to traces of feminism: Perhaps two years ago, all impulse to give the love-bite disappeared suddenly. There has been lately a marked increase of dramatic interest, arising in perfectly natural ways, and without any of the peculiarities noted before. The childish pleasure in valentines has all gone; M. O. believes that circumstances have lately been more favorable for the development of a more robust estheticism.

      For some years he has heard no definite reproach for feminism, though some persons tell his friends that he is "very peculiar." He forms many intimate, enduring, non-sexual friendships with both men and women, and he doubts if the peculiarity noted by others is due so much to his homosexuality as it is to his estheticism, skepticism, and the unconventional opinions which he expresses quite indiscreetly at times. With the improvement in general health, has come the changes that would be expected in food and other matters of daily life.

      Resuming his narrative at the point where the earlier communication left it, M. O. says that about a year after that time, the youth of 17 to whom he had considered himself virtually engaged withdrew from the agreement so far as it bore on his own future, but not from the sentimental relation as it existed. Although separated most of the time by distance, the physical relation was resumed whenever they met. Subsequently, however, the young man fell in love with a young woman and became engaged to her. His physical relation with M. O. then ceased, but the friendship otherwise continues strong.

      Shortly after the first break in this relation, M. O. became, through the force of quite unusual circumstances, very friendly and intimate with a young woman of considerable charm. He confided to her his abnormality, and was not repulsed. To others their relation probably appeared that of lovers, and a painful situation was created by the slander of a jealous woman. M. O. felt that in honor he must propose marriage to her. The young woman was non-committal, but invited M. O. to spend several months at her home. Shortly after his arrival a sad occurrence in his own family compelled him to go away, and they did not meet again for four years. They corresponded, but less and less often. His relations with boys continued.

      Before his final meeting with her he became acquainted with a woman whom he has since married. The acquaintance began in a wholly non-sentimental community of interests in certain practical affairs, and very gradually widened into an intellectual and sympathetic friendship. M. O. had no secrets from this woman. After a full and prolonged consideration of all sides of the matter they married. Since that event he has had no sexual relations except with his wife. With her they are not passionate, but they are animated by the strong desire for children. Of the parental instinct he had become aware several years before this.

      M. O. believes that no moral stigma should be attached to homosexuality until it can be proved to result from the vicious life of a free moral agent—and of this he has no expectation. He believes that much of its danger and unhappiness would be prevented by a thorough yet discreet sex-education, such as should be given to all children, whether normal or abnormal.

[124] Thus Godard described the little boys in Cairo as amusing themselves indifferently either with boys or girls in sexual play. (Egypte et Palestine, 1867, p. 105.) The same thing may be observed in England and elsewhere.

[125] Thus, of the Duc d'Orleans, in the seventeenth century, as described in Bouchard's Confessions, one of my correspondents writes: "This prince was of the same mind as Campanella, who, in the Città del Sole, laid it down that young men ought to be freely admitted to women for the avoidance of sexual aberrations. Aretino and Berni enable us to comprehend the sexual immorality of males congregated together in the courts of Roman prelates." The homosexuality of youth was also well recognized among the Romans, but they adopted the contrary course and provided means to gratify it, as the existence of the concubinus, referred to by Catullus, clearly shows.

[126] "Our Public Schools: their Methods and Morals." New Review, July, 1893.

[127] Max Dessoir, "Zür Psychologie der Vita Sexualis," Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, 1894, H. 5.

[128] F. H. A. Marshall, The Physiology of Reproduction, 1910, pp. 650–8.

[129] Iwan Bloch, in The Sexual Life of Our Time, makes this distinction as between "homosexuality" (corresponding to inversion) and "pseudo-homosexuality." According to the terminology I have accepted, the term "pseudo-homosexuality" would be unnecessary and incorrect. More recently (Die Prostitution, Bd. i, 1912, p. 103) Bloch has preferred, in place of pseudo-homosexuality, the more satisfactory term, "secondary homosexuality."

[130] See, for instance, Hirschfeld's reasonable discussion of the matter, Die Homosexualität, ch. xvii.

[131] Alfred Fuchs, who edited Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis after the latter's death, distinguishes between congenital homosexuality, manifesting itself from the first without external stimulation, and homosexuality on a basis of inborn disposition needing special external influences to arouse it (Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. iv, 1902, p. 181).

[132] Krafft-Ebing, "Ueber tardive Homosexualität," Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. iii, 1901, p. 7; Näcke, "Probleme auf den Gebiete der Homosexualität," Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, 1902, p. 805; ib., "Ueber tardive Homosexualität," Sexual-Probleme, September, 1911. Numa Praetorius (Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, January, 1913, p. 228) considers that retarded cases should not be regarded as bisexual, but as genuine inverts who had acquired a pseudoheterosexuality which at last falls away; at the most, he believes such cases merely represent a prolongation of the youthful undifferentiated period.

[133] Moll, Untersuchungen

Скачать книгу