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attached to their mothers, even to a greater degree, indeed, than is the
rule among normal children, and often like to be in constant association
with their mothers. But this attraction is quite misunderstood if it is
regarded as a peculiarly sexual attraction. Indeed, the whole point of the
attraction is that the inverted boy vaguely feels his own feminine
disposition and so shuns the uncongenial amusements and society of his own
sex for the sympathy and community of tastes which he finds concentrated
in his mother. So far from such association being evidence of sexual
attraction it might more reasonably be regarded as evidence of its
absence; just as the association of boys among themselves, and of girls
among themselves, even in co-educational schools, is proof of the
prevalence of heterosexual rather than of homosexual feeling. Confirmation
of this point of view may be found in the fact--overlooked and sometimes
even denied by psychoanalysts--that frequently, even in early childhood
and simultaneously with this community of feeling with his mother, the
homosexual boy is already experiencing the predominant fascination of the
male. He feels it long before the age at which Narcissism is apt to occur,
or at which self-consciousness has become sufficiently developed to allow
the internal censure on unpermitted emotions to operate, or any flight
from them to take place. Moreover, while most authorities have rarely been
able to find any clear evidence of the sexual attraction of male inverts
in childhood to mother or sister,[228] an attraction of this kind to
father or brother seems less difficult to find, and if found it is
incompatible with the typical Freudian process. In my own observation,
among the Histories here recorded, there are at least two clear examples
of such an attraction in childhood. It must further be said that any
theory of the etiology of homosexuality which leaves out of account the
hereditary factor in inversion cannot be admitted. The evidence for the
frequency of homosexuality among the near relatives of the inverted is now
indisputable. I have traced it in a considerable proportion of cases, and
in many of these the evidence is unquestionable and altogether independent
of the statement of the subject himself, whose opinion may be held to be
possibly biased or unreliable.[229] This hereditary factor seems indeed to
be called for by the Freudian theory itself. On that theory we need to
know how it is that the subject passes through psychic phases, and reaches
an emotional disposition, so unlike that of normal persona. The existence
of a definite hereditary tendency in a homosexual direction removes that
difficulty. Freud himself recognizes this and clearly asserts congenital
psycho-sexual constitution, which must involve predisposition. On a
general survey, therefore, it would appear that, on the psychic side, we
may accept the reality of unconscious dynamic processes which in
particular cases may be of the Freudian or similar type. But while the
study of such mechanisms may illuminate the psychology of homosexuality,
they leave untouched the fundamental organic factors now accepted by most
authorities.[230]
The rational way of regarding the normal sexual instinct is as an inborn
organic impulse, reaching full development about the time of puberty.[231]
During the period of development suggestion and association may come in to
play a part in defining the object of the emotion; the soil is now ready,
but the variety of seeds likely to thrive in it is limited. That there is
a greater indefiniteness in the aim of the sexual impulse at this period
we may well believe. This is shown not only by occasional tentative signs
of sexual emotion directed toward the same sex in childhood, but by the
frequently ideal and unlocalized character of the normal passion even at
puberty. But the channel of sexual emotion is not thereby turned into an
abnormal path. Whenever this happens we are bound to believe--and we have
many grounds for believing--that we are dealing with an organism which
from the beginning is abnormal. The same seed of suggestion is sown in
various soils; in the many it dies out; in the few it flourishes. The
cause can only be a difference in the soil.
If, then, we must postulate a congenital abnormality in order to account
satisfactorily for at least a large proportion of sexual inverts, wherein
does that abnormality consist? Ulrichs explained the matter by saying that
in sexual inverts a male body coexists with a female soul: _anima
muliebris in corpore virile inclusa_. Even writers of scientific eminence,
like Magnan and Gley, have adopted this phrase in a modified form,
considering that in inversion a female brain is combined with a male body
or male glands. This is, however, not an explanation. It merely
crystallizes into an epigram the superficial impression of the
matter.[232]
We can probably grasp the nature of the abnormality better if we reflect
on the development of the sexes and on the latent organic bisexuality in
each sex. At an early stage of development the sexes are
indistinguishable, and throughout life the traces of this early community
of sex remain. The hen fowl retains in a rudimentary form the spurs which
are so large and formidable in her lord, and sometimes she develops a
capacity to crow, or puts on male plumage. Among mammals the male
possesses useless nipples, which occasionally even develop into breasts,
and the female possesses a clitoris, which is merely a rudimentary penis,
and may also develop. The sexually inverted person does not usually
possess any gross exaggeration of these signs of community with the
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