Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 Sexual Inversion

S. W. was the youngest of four children and the only boy. His father was 40 at his birth, his mother 33. The father was an intellectual man of weak character, the mother a woman of violent and eccentric temper, with, he believes, strong sexual passions. S. W. knows of nothing in the family to account for his own abnormal condition.

He is short (five feet five inches), but well built, with strong chest and a powerful voice. His arms are weak and flabby (feminine, he thinks), but the legs muscular. As a boy of 14 he could walk forty miles with ease, and he played football till near the age of 45. He is considered manly in character and tastes, but is easily moved to tears under strong excitement. There is no information as to the type of man to whom he is attracted. I may observe, however, that the analytical chemist who first evoked S. W.'s admiration was well known to me some thirty years later, as he was my own teacher in chemistry. At that time he was an elderly man of attractive appearance and character, sympathetic and winning in manner to an almost feminine extent.

S. W. has never felt the slightest sexual attraction toward the opposite sex. The first indications of inverted feeling were at the age of 6 or 7. Watching his father's pupils, boys of 13 or 14, from the windows, he speculated on what their organs of generation were like. "In connection with a girl," he writes, "I should no more have thought of such a thing than in the case of a block of marble." About this time, indeed, he at times slept with a sister of 10, who induced him to go through the form of sexual connection, saying that it felt "so funny;" but he merely did this to please her, and without the slightest interest or feeling on his own part. This attitude became more marked with increased knowledge, until he fell ardently in love at the age of 12. Throughout life he has practised masturbation to a certain extent, and is prepared to defend the practice in his own case. His erotic dreams have been of only the vaguest and most shadowy character. He is able to whistle. He takes a warm interest in politics and in philanthropic work. But his chief love is for music and he has published many musical compositions. On the whole, and notwithstanding the persecution he has endured, he does not regard his life as unhappy. At the same time he is keenly conscious of the atmosphere of "Pariahdom" which surrounds inverts, and in his own case this has never been alleviated by any sense of companionship in misery. The facility with which some inverts are said to recognize others of their own kind is quite incomprehensible to him; he has never to his knowledge met one.

"I have some reason," he writes, "for believing that some of my relatives (on the paternal side) were not normal in their sexual life. But I am sure that no such suspicion was entertained by their friends or associates; they were very reticent people. A great proportion of my near relatives have remained unmarried or deferred marriage until late in life. None of them have been good business men; all seem to have been more deeply concerned in other things than in making—or in keeping—money. They have mostly taken little or no share in public life, and not cared much for society. Yet they have been folk of more than average ability, with intellectual and æsthetic interests. We are prone to enthusiasms, but lack perseverance. We are discursive and superficial, perhaps, but none would call us stupid. We are perhaps abnormally self-centered and self-conscious—never cruel or vicious. Our powers of self-control are considerable; we are conventional people only because we are lazy and intensely dislike any open self-assertion. Yet we are nervous rather than phlegmatic. All that is on the father's side. My maternal ancestors have been concerned with farming and the sea and have also had a similar lack of business capacity, but with less mental adaptiveness and alertness, with more steadiness of purpose, however, always doers rather than dreamers. Among them I remember one cousin who was probably abnormal, although he died when I was too young to notice much.

"I was an only child and a spoilt one. I was always quick at school, fond of learning, and finding my lessons no trouble. Serious study I disliked. But for school purposes I did not find it necessary, and had no difficulty in carrying all before me. I was never fond of games, although very fond of being out of doors and of walking. Few of my relatives have been at all keen on sport. I made no close friendships at school and was never very popular with my schoolfellows, who, however, tolerated my odd ways better than might have been expected. I was easily brought to appreciate good literature, but I never had much power of expression or of strenuous thought. I was extremely susceptible and impressible, moved by beauty of any kind, but never at all ambitious or in any way creative. I was easily stimulated to work, and then loved to work; but, unless the stimulus were maintained the natural indolence of my disposition asserted itself, and I wasted my powers in dreams and trifles. My memory was very quick and retentive, in the main, but curiously capricious. I always lacked initiative and decision. At college my successes were continued. I gained medals and prizes, passed my examinations easily, and graduated 'with first-class honors.' In my professional lifework I have been successful rather beyond the average. I love it with all my heart.

"I cannot speak with any confidence about the first stirrings of my sexual instincts, but I think I can assert that they have at no time led me to any desire for the opposite sex. It is true that my earliest recollection of the kind is concerned with intimacies with a girl play-fellow, but as we had at the time reached only the mature age of 7 (at the most) I fancy that our mutual exhibitions—for there was nothing more—simply satisfied our natural curiosity. Certainly these memories are, in my mind, in no way set apart from the recollections of other kinds of play. Next to that I remember the usual schoolboy talk about things hidden and forbidden, but up till I was 12 or so this was simply dirty talk, concerned more with renal and intestinal functions than with any sexual feelings or understanding. One boy was known to us all (and of my not inconsiderable circle of early friends, all grew up to be normal people, who married and had children in due course) for the unusual size of his parts and for the freedom with which he invited and satisfied the curiosity of his friends. He must have been precocious, for he could not have been more than 12, and I remember to have heard that he had a thick growth of pubic hair. Even then, although I know that my curiosity—to put it at that only—was active, I never allowed myself to have any dealings with him; and I think I should have discouraged them had they been suggested to me.

That is the odd thing about my life: the things I longed intensely to do I would not let myself do, not from any religious or moral scruple, but from some inexplicable fastidiousness or scrupulosity which is yet as active as ever, although I am sure that it would not be able to hold its own could these favorable conditions be repeated, but would be overcome by the imperious and fully grown desires which, by long repression, or by unsatisfactory diversion, have grown to be so strong. Indeed, given the opportunity, and the assurance that no first seduction or corruption of anyone was in question, they would prove quite irrepressible.

"Certainly, long before puberty—which was early with me—I remember being greatly attracted to certain boys, and wishing to have an opportunity of sleeping with them. Had I been able to do so, I am sure I should have been impelled to get into as close contact with their naked body as possible, and I do not think I should then have craved for anything more. I knew some boys—perhaps a little older—who even then had relations, which were certainly not innocent, with a girl who was a year or two older than any of us. She once kissed me, to my intense shame. But I felt that these relations would have been unspeakably disgusting and I took no particular interest in hearing about them. I remember being fondled and caressed by a very good-looking boy of 16 when I was three or four years younger and had sustained some hurt at play; and I am still able to recall the thrill of delight that I experienced at his touch. Nothing took place that all the world might not have seen, but I remember being taken between his knees as he sat, and his arms being put around my neck, and the warm, soft pressure of his thighs had an unspeakable effect on me.

"About this time, too, an older boy, perhaps about 18, used to get hold of smaller boys when on country walks, to throw them down and then look at and toy with their genitals. He was himself a handsome boy, and I was greatly excited when told about this by boys who had experienced it, and wished greatly to have it done to me. It never was; and if it had been attempted I know I should have resisted with all my strength, although my desires would have set me aflame. This boy died before he was 20, with a psoas abscess, and I remember crying myself to sleep the night I learned of his death. Another boy, about three years older than myself, who had very silky hair, I used to be attracted by and I was always trying to stroke his hair, but he always objected.

"I must have been about 12 when I first was taught to masturbate by a cousin who was slightly older. At first I thought it silly, but I used to watch him at it, and practised it myself from time to time until I became old enough to experience the proper sensation. Then I have reason to think I gave myself up to it rather freely, but it was generally done in solitude, although it was long before I realized that there was anything wrong about it or that it might prove hurtful. Looking back now, I feel perfectly certain that my instincts were wholly homosexual from the very first. This cousin, who possessed notable intellectual and artistic gifts, married, but I feel sure his liking for his own sex was not normal.

"With another cousin, almost years my junior, I was always on terms of the most affectionate intimacy. My holidays at his parents' house were my greatest delight. We were always together by night or day; we slept in the same bed, literally in each other's arms. To me it afforded the keenest sexual pleasure to press close to his naked body. We used mutually to handle and caress our parts, but without any attempt at mutual masturbation, although at that period I regularly practised it on myself. I asked him once about it, but he had not been taught it by others; and to my great pride and satisfaction I can say that I never either did it to him or asked him to do it to me. This I mention as an instance of my restraint in act, although my thoughts and desires knew no such curb. I remember also an elder brother of his, perhaps three or four years my senior, once showing me (then about 12, I suppose) his semierect penis. He would not allow me to touch it, but showed me how to draw back the foreskin so as to uncover the glans. His penis was large, and the incident was not forgotten. We had no other relation and I know that both he and my own friend grew up to be quite normal men.

"I think I must have been about 17 when I got frightened about the occurrence of nocturnal emissions, which I believed were the evil result of masturbation, and for two or three years I continued in considerable mental distress until, when in my second or third year at college, I summoned up courage enough to consult our good old family doctor, who reassured me, but made, I now think, too light of my confidences, so that I relapsed the more readily, although much later on, into old habits.

"From our windows at home we looked over a bit of common or down to the beach, and I used to keep watch on warm summer afternoons; over boys who might be bathing, to observe them through our telescope. All this I kept strictly secret and I was never surprised. I might just as well, and without arousing the slightest suspicion of my motive, have walked down to the beach and seen them and chatted with them; but this I could not have brought myself to do. It gave me considerable sexual satisfaction when I was able to see them bathing without pants. I also used to watch them at play on the common, and felt rewarded when I saw, as I not infrequently did, sexual familiarities taking place. These violently excited me and sometimes brought on orgasm, always erection with pleasure. Indeed, it was an experience of this kind that made me return to masturbation after I had given it up for a while. I remember one day seeing two lads of about 16 lying on the grass in the sunshine; all at once the bigger lad put out his hand and tried to open his companion's trousers. He resisted with all his might, and a long struggle ensued, ending in the smaller lad having his penis exposed and manipulated by the other. Even at this day the recollection of this excites me. Both lads grew up to be normal men.

"Twice only have I been approached by grown-up people. When I was about 13 I used to meet often, when going to school by train, an old gentleman who courted me, as it were, used often to talk to me and asked me to come to see his well-known scientific collections, but I always had a vague distrust of him and never went. One day in the summer during a spare hour I met him in an empty room in the museum, where there were usually very few visitors at that time of day, and where large show-cases gave concealment. He came up to me and told me he had been away in the country, and that, when making his way home through hedges and thorny bushes, some of the thorns got stuck amongst his clothes and were still giving him uneasiness. 'I would be very grateful,' he said, 'if you would put your hand down and try if you can feel any thorns sticking in my underflannels and pull them out.' He then unbuttoned his braces on one side, undid his trousers and made me thrust my hand over his groin and lower abdomen. I avoided touching his genitals, but he pushed my hand down in that direction until, burning with shame, I made my escape and ran off, not stopping until I was safe in school. I scarcely understood it, but never spoke of it, and avoided him ever afterward. I learned later on that he was a well-off bachelor who took a great interest in working lads and young men and did much to help them on in life and keep them, so it was said, from falling into bad company.

"The other time was on top of a tramcar when a grown-up man who was near pressed as close to me as he could, began to talk, praised my dark eyes, then put his hand on my thigh under my loose cloak and felt up toward my parts. At the same time he took hold of my hand, caressed it and put it over his parts (it was in the dusk). This excited me and, if we had not been at our destination, I think I would gladly have permitted further familiarities. He tried to ask me where I lived, but there was no time to answer, and the female relative who was with me (on another seat) would no doubt have prevented this from having any further sequel.

"On more than one occasion I have experienced the sexual orgasm as the result of mental anxiety. The first time this occurred was when I was hurrying to avoid being late for school. Another time was when I was about 24, and was extremely anxious to fill an appointment for which I was late. So copious was the emission that I had to go home and change.

"As a medical student, the first reference bearing definitely on the subject of sexual inversion was made in the class of Medical Jurisprudence, where certain sexual crimes were alluded to—very summarily and inadequately—but nothing was said of the existence of sexual inversion as the 'normal' condition of certain unhappy people, nor was any distinction drawn between the various non-normal acts, which were all classed together as manifestations of the criminal depravity of ordinary or insane people. To a student beginning to be acutely conscious that his sexual nature differed profoundly from that of his fellows, nothing could be more perplexing and disturbing, and it shut me up more completely in my reserve than ever. I felt that this teaching must be based on some radical error or prejudice or misapprehension, for I knew from my own very clear remembrance of my own development that my peculiarity was not acquired, but inborn; my great misfortune undoubtedly, but not my fault.

"It was still more unfortunate that in the course of the lectures on Clinical Medicine there was not the slightest allusion to the subject. All sorts of rare diseases—some of which I have not yet met with in the course of twenty-one years of a busy practice—were fully discussed, but we were left entirely ignorant of a subject so vitally important to me personally, and, as it seems to me, to the profession to which I aspired. There might have been an incidental reference to masturbation—although I do not remember it—but its real significance received no attention; and what we students knew of it was the result of our reading or of our personal experiences.

"In the class of Mental Disease there was, naturally, more detailed and systematic reference to facts in the sexual life and to sexual inversion as a rare pathological condition. But still there was not a comforting word to reassure me, growing ever more hopelessly ashamed of what it seemed was a criminal or a gravely morbid nature.

"Among all my fellow-students I knew of no one constituted like myself; but my natural reserve—increased, of course, by my consciousness of what I saw would be thought to be a criminal tendency—did not urge me to exchange of confidences or to the formation of; close friendships.

"After graduation I became a resident medical officer in the hospital and private assistant to one of the professors—a physician and teacher of worldwide reputation. With him I associated on the most cordial and affectionate terms; and often in the course of conversation I tried to bring him to discuss the subject, but without success. It was obviously unpleasant and uninteresting to him. Enough was said, however, to enable me to realize that he held the current ideas on the subject; and I would not for worlds have allowed him, to guess that I myself came under the despised and tainted category.

"I have seldom heard sexual inversion discussed among my professional friends. They speak of it with disgust or amusement. I have never met a professional man who would consider it dispassionately and scientifically. For them it was a subject entirely belonging to psychological medicine.

"I have had no admitted case of it among my patients; but I have often instinctively felt that some who consulted me about other matters would have taken me into their confidence about that, but for their fear of being cruelly misunderstood.

"As to my moral attitude I fear to speak. Grossness disgusts me; but I am not sure that I should be able to resist temptation placed in my way. But I am absolutely sure that I should never, under any circumstances, tempt others to any disgraceful act. If I ever committed any sexual act with one of my own sex whom I loved, I could not look at it or approach it in any other than a sacramental way. This sounds blasphemous and shocking, but I cannot otherwise express my meaning.

"As regards the marriage of inverts, my own feeling is that for a congenital invert—no matter how fully the situation be explained beforehand—it is a step fraught with too great possibilities of tragedy and of the deepest unhappiness, to be advised at all. My view is that for the invert, far more than for the ordinary person, there is no escape from the supreme necessity of self-control in any relationship he may form. If that be attained then the ideal is a relationship with another man of similar temperament—not a platonic one, necessarily—by means of which the highest happiness of both may be reached. But this can occur very seldom.

"To poetry and the fine arts I am very susceptible, and I have given a great deal of time to this study. I am devoted heart and soul to music, which is more and more to me every year I live. Trivial or light music I cannot endure, but of Beethoven, Bach, Händel, Schumann, Schubert, Brahms, Tschaikowsky, and Wagner I should never hear enough. Here, too, my sympathies, are very catholic, and I delight in McDowell, Debussy, Richard Strauss, and Hugo Wolf."

HISTORY VII.—"My parentage is very sound and healthy. Both my parents (who belong to the professional middle class) have good general health; nor can I trace any marked abnormal or diseased tendency, of mind or body, in any records of the family.

"Though of a strongly nervous temperament myself, and sensitive, my health is good. I am not aware of any tendency to physical disease. In early manhood, however, owing, I believe, to the great emotional tension under which I lived, my nervous system was a good deal shattered and exhausted. Mentally and morally my nature is pretty well balanced, and I have never had any serious perturbations in these departments.

"At the age of 8 or 9, and long before distinct sexual feelings declared themselves, I felt a friendly attraction toward my own sex, and this developed after the age of puberty into a passionate sense of love, which, however, never found any expression for itself till I was fully 20 years of age. I was a day-boarder at school and heard little of school-talk on sex subjects, was very reserved and modest besides; no elder person or parent ever spoke to me on such matters; and the passion for my own sex developed gradually, utterly uninfluenced from the outside. I never even, during all this period, and till a good deal later, learned the practice of masturbation. My own sexual nature was a mystery to me. I found myself cut off from the understanding of others, felt myself an outcast, and, with a highly loving and clinging temperament, was intensely miserable. I thought about my male friends—sometimes boys of my own age, sometimes elder boys, and once even a master—during the day and dreamed about them at night, but was too convinced that I was a hopeless monstrosity ever to make any effectual advances. Later on it was much the same, but gradually, though slowly, I came to find that there were others like myself. I made a few special friends, and at last it came to me occasionally to sleep with them and to satisfy my imperious need by mutual embraces and emissions. Before this happened, however, I was once or twice on the brink of despair and madness with repressed passion and torment.

"Meanwhile, from the first, my feeling, physically, toward the female sex was one of indifference, and later on, with the more special development of sex desires, one of positive repulsion. Though having several female friends, whose society I like and to whom I am sincerely attached, the thought of marriage or cohabitation with any such has always been odious to me.

"As a boy I was attracted in general by boys rather older than myself; after leaving school I still fell in love, in a romantic vein, with comrades of my own standing. Now,—at the age of 37,—my ideal of love is a powerful, strongly built man, of my own age or rather younger—preferably of the working class. Though having solid sense and character, he need not be specially intellectual. If endowed in the latter way, he must not be too glib or refined. Anything effeminate in a man, or anything of the cheap intellectual style, repels me very decisively.

"I have never had to do with actual pederasty, so called. My chief desire in love is bodily nearness or contact, as to sleep naked with a naked friend; the specially sexual, though urgent enough, seems a secondary matter. Pederasty, either active or passive, might seem in place to me with one I loved very devotedly and who also loved me to that degree; but I think not otherwise. I am an artist by temperament and choice, fond of all beautiful things, especially the male human form; of active, slight, muscular build; and sympathetic, but somewhat indecisive character, though possessing self-control.

"I cannot regard my sexual feelings as unnatural or abnormal, since they have disclosed themselves so perfectly naturally and spontaneously within me. All that I have read in books or heard spoken about the ordinary sexual love, its intensity and passion, lifelong devotion, love at first sight, etc., seems to me to be easily matched by my own experiences in the homosexual form; and, with regard to the morality of this complex subject, my feeling is that it is the same as should prevail in love between man and woman, namely: that no bodily satisfaction should be sought at the cost of another person's distress or degradation. I am sure that this kind of love is, notwithstanding the physical difficulties that attend it, as deeply stirring and ennobling as the other kind, if not more so; and I think that for a perfect relationship the actual sex gratifications (whatever they may be) probably hold a less important place in this love than in the other."

HISTORY VIII.—M. N., aged 30. "My grandfather might be said to be of abnormal temperament, for, though of very humble origin, he organized and carried out an extremely arduous mission work and became an accomplished linguist, translating the Bible into an Eastern tongue and compiling the first dictionary of that language. He died, practically of overwork, at the age of 45. He was twice married, my father being his third son by the second wife. I believe that two, if not more, of the family (numbering seven in all) were inverted, and the only one of them to marry was my father. My grandmother was the last representative of an old and very 'wild' Irish family. She died at an advanced age, of paralysis. My father was 36 and my mother 21 at the time of their marriage. I was born three years after and was their only child. The marriage proved a most unhappy one, they being utterly unsuited to each other in every way.

"My father's health during the first years of his marriage was very delicate, and I have reason to believe that it had been undermined in certain ways by his life abroad. I understand I was born with slight gonorrheal affection, and as a child my health was very indifferent. This latter may have been brought about by the peculiarly unhappy and unnatural life I led. I had no companions of my own age, and did not even attend any school until after my mother's death. My father superintended my education up to that time, and I had free access to a large and very varied library, and a great deal of solitary leisure to enjoy it in. There were a number of medical and scientific books in it, which were my principal favorites, and I remember deciding at a very early age to be a doctor. When about 5 years old I recollect having a sexual dream connected with a railway porter. It afforded me great pleasure to recall this dream, and about that time I discovered a method of self-gratification (there is not much 'teaching' required in these matters!).

"I cannot say that the dream I have mentioned constituted absolutely the first intimation of inverted feeling, but rather that it crystallized vague ideas which I might have already had on the subject. I can recollect that when about between 3 and 4 years of age a young fellow of about 20 came to our house several times as a visitor. He was fond of children, I suppose, and I generally sat on his knee and was kissed by him. This was a source of great pleasure to me, but I cannot remember if it was accompanied by erection. I can only recall that his attention and caresses made a greater impression upon me than those of women. When about that age too I was often aroused when sleeping with my mother, and told not to lie on my face. I remember that erection was always present on these occasions. The dream was the first of many of its kind, and in my case they have never been accompanied by emission. They have always been of an 'inverted' character, though I have occasionally had dreams about women. These latter, however, have usually partaken somewhat of the nature of a nightmare!

"Up to the age of 14 I felt much perplexed and depressed by my views on sexual desire, and was convinced that they were peculiar to myself. This, combined with the solitary condition of my life, and about four years' continued ill-treatment prior to my mother's death (she had given way to drink for that period), had a very injurious effect on my health, mental and bodily. Looking back from my present point of view, I can understand and forgive many things which appeared monstrous and unjust to me as a child. My mother's life must have been a very unhappy one, and she was bitterly disappointed in many ways, very likely in me as well. My unfortunate, misunderstood temperament led me to be shy and secretive, and I was often ailing, and my training was not calculated to improve matters. At last, however, change and freedom came, and I was sent to a boarding-school. Here, of course, I soon met with attachments and gratifications with other boys. I arrived at puberty, and my health improved under happier surroundings. I was not long in discovering that my companions viewed the pleasures that meant so much to me from an entirely different standpoint. Their gratifications were usually accompanied by conversation about, and a general direction of thought toward, females. When I had turned 15, owing to monetary difficulties I was obliged to leave school, and was soon not only thrown on my own resources, but accountable to no one but myself for my conduct.