love's normal goal is the union of the male and the female in a way which may insure the reproduction of the species. at times, however, we behold love deviating from the path that leads to that goal: a man may love another man as passionately as he would love a woman, a woman may be consumed with desire for another woman.
certain parts of the ancient world looked with indifference upon such deviations from the normal. the poems of sappho, the dialogues of plato, to only mention the best known sources of information on the subject, prove that in classic greece homosexual unions were countenanced by public opinion. in the "banquet" young alkibiades describes, with a frankness reminiscent of eighteenth century novels, his attempts at "seducing" socrates. in the holy island of thera an inscription commemorates the "wedding" of two young men,[pg 156] erastos and klainos, which was celebrated with all sorts of ceremonies.
a distinction was even drawn in those days between homosexual love which was purely sexual and the kind of love which was both sexual and intellectual.
groups of male lovers, harmodios and aristogeiton, kratinos and aristodemos, etc., became famous and legendary owing to their unusual faithfulness and constancy. pederasty was countenanced by the very behavior of the greek gods, of zeus in particular.
the various philosophers granted women the right to indulge in homosexual love if they wished, but, nevertheless, lesbian love, as it was called after sappho of lesbos, was rather considered as a freak of nature, if not a vice. the low social condition of hellenic women accounts for that illogical difference in treatment.
women were harem slaves with little opportunity for intellectual development and their homosexualism could not drape itself in the mantle of intellectual pretence which it wore in the gymnasiums and schools frequented by men.
greek mythology offers no example of love between goddesses.
[pg 157]
sappho and the lesbian poetesses gave female passion an eminent place in greek literature but the aeolian women did not found a tradition corresponding to that of the dorian men.
we even find in lucian's works a passage indicating that some of the greeks felt at the thought of female homosexualism the repugnance which we feel at the thought of male homosexualism.
the tide turns. about the third century and until the eighteenth, the tide turned, at least in the western world, and homosexualism found itself confronted by a barrier of penalties which in certain lands included capital punishment. after the french revolution such extreme penalties were abandoned in several european countries.
at present, death is no longer the wages of the homosexual sin, but jail sentences and ostracism of the most severe sort punish the sinner when detected. legally, then, homosexualism is considered as a voluntary "perversion," to be punished, not as an abnormality, to be treated or accepted. this position is absolutely ridiculous and goes counter to every possible scientific view of homosexualism, its nature and its genesis. whether psychiatrists consider sexualism from a "purely physical" point of view or from a "purely[pg 158] psychic" point of view, they all consider it, not as a matter of free choice, but as a compulsion, an organic compulsion according to the first view, an unconscious mental compulsion according to the latter.
opprobrium and punishment constitute no solution for any compulsion, be it physical or mental.
many theories have been advanced as to the genesis of homosexualism and most of them are very unsatisfactory because every one of them generally excludes the others and because they attempt one thing which cannot be done: to found homosexualism either on a purely physical or on a purely mental basis. we can never understand homosexualism until we consider it from an organic point of view, according to which mental states are neither the cause nor the result of physical states, or vice versa, but mental and physical states are two aspects of the organism, of the personality.
the first hypothesis i intend to review is that of the berlin sexologist magnus hirschfeld which has had more influence on modern thought than any other theory of homosexualism and which unfortunately has been accepted as gospel truth by many homosexuals.
the third sex. hirschfeld reminds us in his[pg 159] book "intermediate sexual stages" that during the first eight weeks of its existence, the fetus is neither male nor female. it is only about the eighth week that a differentiation takes place and that the sex of the unborn can be determined.
a thousand physical influences may be at work in fetal life which may cause underdevelopment of the male fetus' organs, which then may resemble a female's in many particulars, or the overdevelopment of a female's clitoris which may make it slightly similar to a man's penis. thousands of variations can be observed which, in certain cases, have caused the attending physician to declare the child's sex as "doubtful."
according to the degree of development of their sexual organs, hirschfeld suggests a classification of the intermediates into hermaphrodites, androgynes, transvestites, homosexuals and metatropists.
i shall not touch upon the first two classes, hermaphrodites and androgynes, which are obvious, gross, physical malformations of a congenital character.
transvestism, homosexualism and metatropism, however, deserve careful consideration.
the transvestites are men who experience a[pg 160] craving to go about dressed as women, women who are anxious to dress themselves as men.
hirschfeld considers them as closely related to the male androgynes who crave to have breasts like women and are ashamed of facial or bodily hair, and to the female androgynes who are ashamed of their breasts and wish to have a beard and body hair.
transvestites generally explain that they do not feel free except in the garb of the opposite sex. "in men's clothes," a male transvestite said, "i have the feeling of wearing a uniform." "in feminine clothes," a female transvestite said, "i feel inhibited and hampered. it is only when wearing masculine garments that i feel energetic and efficient."
the late dr. mary walker, the french painter rosa bonheur, the french explorer madame dieulafoy, were characteristic examples of energetic women who felt compelled to abandon the garb of their sex and to dress themselves as men.
are transvestities homosexual? dr. wilhelm stekel of vienna objects to drawing a line between transvestites and homosexuals. but we must make a distinction. hirschfeld is right in stating that there are no more homosexuals among transves[pg 161]tites than among normal individuals. he means, of course, conscious homosexuals practicing their abnormal form of love. we know however, that there are thousands of men and women who, while consciously experiencing the greatest disgust at the thought of homosexual practices are unconscious homosexuals. their dreams leave no doubt as to the nature of their cravings. we may reconcile the stekel view with the hirschfeld view by saying that transvestites are in the majority of cases unconscious homosexuals. they may consciously lead a most normal life: madame dieulafoy was married and apparently very devoted to her husband whom she followed on all his voyages of exploration.
unconsciously, however, and for reasons which we shall examine later, transvestites crave a change of sex.
metatropism is masculine behavior in women, feminine behavior in men. normal man is physiologically aggressive in love, normal woman is submissive. in cases of metatropism, those characteristics are reversed.
the metatropic man prefers tall, strong, powerful women, often of a different nationality or race, at times, women with some physiological[pg 162] handicap, lameness or deformity (the french philosopher descartes was attracted to women suffering from strabism). he generally selects a woman older than himself, either very intellectual or very low ethically. in one case he is dominated by her mental superiority, in the other he feels that he is sacrificing his principles or his social standing. professional or business women appeal to him especially. he is often a shoe fetishist. clothing which denotes power, authority, impresses him.
the metatropic woman seeks feminine, beardless men, with perhaps a good head of long hair (poets, artists). madame dudevant, the french novelist, adopted the masculine name george sand and had affairs with two sickly artists, musset, the poet, and chopin, the composer.
the metatropic woman is often a professional or business woman who, in her love relation, assumes a very independent, dictatorial attitude to men. she favors young men whom she can dominate better.
in what hirschfeld calls metatropists, we recognise parent-fixation men and women, obsessed by a conscious or unconscious incest fear, a complication which has been discussed in another chapter.
krafft-ebing and albert eulenburg classify[pg 163] metatropic men with masochists (see chapter xx) and metatropic women with sadists (see chapter xix).
dr. steinach's experiments show the close relationship between homosexualism and the secretions of the interstitial cells of the genital glands.
after castrating young rats which, after the operation, remained in an infantile stage of development, steinach transplanted into their inguinal region male or female gonads.
males into which female gonads had been implanted, developed all the physical characteristics and all the mannerisms of the female, paid no attention to females at mating time and, on the contrary, attracted the rutting males and were attracted to them.
castrated females in whose body he implanted testicles, showed the hardier hair growth of males, tried to mate with females and remained indifferent to males.
prof. brandes, director of the zoological garden in darmstadt, has repeated those experiments on deer with identical results. the female in which testicles were implanted behaved like a male and grew antlers. the male's mammary glands grew[pg 164] very fast after the implantation of female gonads.
it is said that steinach has successfully transformed homosexuals into normal men but the last statement of his on the "histology of the gonads in homosexual men," (vol. 46, no. 1, archiv für entwickelungsmechanismus der organismen) contains no mention of such results.
perverse birds. if we now turn to experiments reported by william craig in the journal of animal behavior, we see an apparently different process at work. young male birds kept for a year in a cage with females and away from all males, will at mating time ignore entirely the females, and offer themselves to males in the mating position of the female.
the same process is observable in females brought up with males exclusively.
imitation in this case seems to give exactly the same results which steinach obtained thru castration and transplantation of gonads.
if we now leave the physiologists and consult the psychoanalysts, freud, ferenczi, stekel and adler will show us that homosexualism can be produced by "purely" psychic factors.
freud rejects the hypothesis of a third sex: "homosexual men who have started in our[pg 165] times an energetic action against the legal limitations of the sexual activity," freud writes, "are fond of representing themselves, thru theoretical spokesmen, as evincing a sexual variation, which may be distinguished from the very beginning, as an intermediate stage or sex, a third sex. in other words, they maintain that they are men who are forced by organic determinants originating in the germ to find in a man the pleasure which they cannot find in a woman. as much as one would wish to subscribe to their demands, out of humane considerations, one must nevertheless exercise reserve regarding their theories which were formulated without regard for the psychic genesis of homosexuality. psychoanalysis offers the means to fill the gap and to put to test the assertions of the homosexuals. it is true that psychoanalysis has fulfilled that task in only a small number of people, but all the investigations thus far undertaken have brought the same surprising results.
"in all our male homosexuals, there was a very intense erotic attachment to a feminine person, as a rule to the mother, which was manifested in the very first period of childhood and later entirely forgotten by the individual. this attachment was produced or favored by too much love from the[pg 166] mother herself, but was also furthered by the retirement or absence of the father during the childhood period. sadger emphasises the fact that the mothers of his homosexual patients were often masculine women, or women with energetic traits of character who were able to crowd out the father from the place allotted to him in the family. i have sometimes observed the same thing, but i was more impressed by those cases in which the father was absent from the beginning or disappeared early so that the boy was altogether under feminine influence."
"it almost seems that the presence of a strong father would assure for the son the proper decision in the selection of his love object from the opposite sex.
"following this primary stage, a transformation takes place whose mechanism we know but whose motive forces we have not yet grasped. the love of the mother cannot continue to develop consciously so that it merges into repression. the boy represses his love for the mother by putting himself into her place, by identifying himself with her, and by taking his own person as a model thru the similarity of which he is guided in the selection of his love object. he thus becomes homosexual; as[pg 167] a matter of fact, he returns to the stage of autoerotism, for the boys whom the growing adult now loves are only substitute persons or revivals of his own childish person, whom he loves in the same way as his mother loved him. we say that he finds his love object on the road to narcism, after the greek legend of narcissus to whom nothing was more pleasing than his own mirrored image.
"deeper psychological discussions justify the assertion that the person who becomes homosexual in this manner remains fixed in his unconscious on the memory of his mother. by repressing the love for his mother, he conserves the same in his consciousness and henceforth remains faithful to her. when as a lover he seems to pursue boys, he really thus runs away from women who could cause him to be faithless to his mother."
active and passive types. ferenczi draws a distinction between the active and the passive types of homosexuals, that is, between the man who, in love acts like a woman, in a submissive way, and the man who loves men as he would women, in an agressive way.
"a man who in his love relations with men feels himself to be a woman," he writes, "is inverted in respect to his own ego (homo-erotism thru subject[pg 168] inversion, or, more shortly, subject-homo-erotism). he feels himself to be a woman, and this not only in the love relationship but in all relations of life.
"it is quite otherwise with the true active homosexual. he feels himself a man in every respect, is as a rule very energetic and active, and there in nothing effeminate to be discovered in his bodily or mental organisation. the object of his inclination alone is exchanged, so that one might call him homo-erotic thru exchange of the love object, or more shortly, object-homo-erotic.
"a further and striking difference between the subjective and the objective homo-erotic consists in the fact that the former (the invert) feels himself attracted by more mature, powerful men, and is on friendly terms, as a colleague, one might say, with women; the second type, on the contrary, is almost exclusively interested in young, delicate boys with an effeminate appearance, but meets a woman with pronounced antipathy, and not rarely with hatred which is badly or not at all concealed. the true invert is hardly ever impelled to seek medical advice, he feels at complete ease in the passive r?le and has no other wish than that people should put up with his peculiarity and not interfere with the kind of satisfaction that suits him. he is not very[pg 169] passionate and chiefly demands from his lover the recognition of his bodily and other merits.
"the object-homo-erotic, on the other hand, is uncommonly tormented by the consciousness of his own abnormality; sexual intercourse never completely satisfies him; he is tortured by qualms of conscience and overestimates his sexual object to the uttermost.
"the subject-homo-erotic is a member of the intermediate sex, in the sense of magnus hirschfeld and his followers. the object-homo-erotic, is the victim of an obsessional neurosis."
the distinction between active and passive homosexuals is convenient but slightly arbitrary. certain homosexuals are at times passive and at times active. both types become at times the victims of obsessions and seek the help of psychotherapists. active as well as passive homosexuals may be married and heterosexually potent.
the homosexual neurosis. dr. wilhelm stekel of vienna calls homosexualism the homosexual neurosis. he summarises the genesis of homosexualism as follows:
"as a child the homosexual is very precocious sexually and can only repress his cravings by developing fear, hatred and disgust at the thought of[pg 170] heterosexual relations. the result of that repression is a flight from normal into abnormal forms of sexual gratification."
a safety device. to adler, homosexualism is a detail of the neurotic picture, a compromise and a safety device.
"every neurotic," he writes, "experiences at some time during his childhood doubts as to whether he will ever attain complete virility. giving up the hope of being a real man, is, for a child, synonymous with being a woman. this carries in its wake a whole cycle of childish valuations: aggression, activity, power, freedom, wealth, sadism are male attributes; inhibitions, cowardice, obedience, poverty are female attributes.
"the child plays for a while a dual part, being submissive to his parents and teachers but indulging in dreams which express his craving for independence, freedom and importance.
"this duality in the child's psyche, the forerunner of a split in his consciousness, can have varying results in later years. the individual will oscillate between the male and the female poles with a constant striving toward the unification of those two tendencies.
"the masculine component prevents a complete[pg 171] assumption of the feminine r?le, the feminine component is an obstacle to complete virility. hence a compromise: feminine behavior thru masculine means: a timid submissive male, masculine masochism, homosexuality. or masculine behavior thru feminine devices."
above and below. a series of comparisons has established itself in the human mind, owing to the enslavement of the female by the male, starting with the antithesis: male-female: good and bad, right and left, high, and low, above and below.
in every female neurotic, according to adler, there is a refusal to be a female, that is, to be below (socially as well as sexually).
the female who is inferior in looks or intelligence or position and cannot either compensate for that inferiority by displaying superiority in some other way (artistic or scientific accomplishment), or reconcile herself to her inferior position, wishes consciously and unconsciously to be a man. consciously she makes herself as masculine as possible. unconsciously, she dreams herself into a male personality, physically, mentally, socially and sexually. her wish to be above makes her play a man's part in love as well as in the world's life.
[pg 172]
a way out. homosexualism is, like every neurotic symptom, a way out of life's difficulties.
a male homosexual i treated associated the idea of woman with "trouble, sickness, expense, lack of freedom." "every" woman was to him a "leg puller," a "gold digger," a liar, insatiable in her demands, spying on her husband, constantly suffering from "female trouble."
this man had never been married and his only sexual experiences, which were of the most ephemeral type, had been gained in the few hours of his life which he spent with a woman much older than himself, a cabaret singer and a prostitute. yet, he was convinced that "women are too much trouble."
an unconsciously homosexual male who is married, and quite potent and who consulted me after a serious "breakdown," had a dream in which he saw himself at the top of a mountain in africa (flight from reality and his present environment). six large negroes (powerful male sexuality) carried away his wife's coffin, (flight from the sexual partner). a long line of negroes then walked past him and he felt that as long as he would be on friendly terms with them, he would not want for anything (line of least effort).
female homosexuals who had never had any[pg 173] normal heterosexual experience ranted along the same line of thought: "a husband is too much trouble." "the idea of submitting to a brute of a man," "i don't wish to be a slave to a man," etc.
all this voices what adler terms the "masculine protest."
the escape from biological duties. kempf also considers homosexualism as a compromise and a convenient escape from biological duties.
"heterosexual potency," he writes "judging from the behavior of many psychopaths and normals of both sexes, varies in its vigor and is never quite secure from the possibility of disintegration in the face of depressing influences, such as disease, a frigid, unkind, terrifying, neurotic or disgusting mate, hopeless economic burdens, fear of pregnancy, or venereal diseases, social scandals, an inaccessible or unresponsive love-object, death of the mate or a too fixed mother-attachment.
the intrigues and usurpations of power by the family of the mate, suppressing the idealised wishes of the individual, often cause the regression to the lower level of homo-sexuality, where, at least, parental sacrifices need not be made."
