These schoolboy affections and passions arise, to a large extent, spontaneously, with the evolution of the sexual emotions, though the method of manifestation may be a matter of example or suggestion. As the sexual emotions become stronger, and as the lad leaves school or college to mix with men and women in the world, the instinct usually turns into the normal channel, in which channel the instincts of the majority of boys have been directed from the earliest appearance of puberty, if not earlier. But a certain proportion remain insensitive to the influence of women, and these may be regarded as true sexual inverts. Some of them are probably individuals of somewhat undeveloped sexual instincts. The members of this group are of some interest psychologically, although from the comparative quiescence of their sexual emotions they have received little attention. The following communication which I have received from a well-accredited source is noteworthy from this point of view:—
"The following facts may possibly be of interest to you, though my statement of them is necessarily general and vague. I happen to know intimately three cases of men whose affections have chiefly been directed exclusively to persons of their own sex. The first, having practised masturbation as a boy, and then for some ten years ceased to practise it (to such an extent that he even inhibited his erotic dreams), has since recurred to it deliberately (at about fortnightly intervals) as a substitute for copulation, for which he has never felt the least desire. But occasionally, when sleeping with a male friend, he has emissions in the act of embracing. The second is constantly and to an abnormal extent (I should say) troubled with erotic dreams and emissions, and takes drugs, by doctor's advice, to reduce this activity. He has recently developed a sexual interest in women, but for ethical and other reasons does not copulate with them. Of the third I can say little, as he has not talked to me on the subject; but I know that he has never had intercourse with women, and has always had a natural and instinctive repulsion to the idea. In all these, I imagine, the physical impulse of sex is less imperative than in the average man. The emotional impulse, on the other hand, is very strong. It has given birth to friendships of which I find no adequate description anywhere but in the dialogues of Plato; and, beyond a certain feeling of strangeness at the gradual discovery of a temperament apparently different to that of most men, it has provoked no kind of self-reproach or shame. On the contrary, the feeling has been rather one of elation in the consciousness of a capacity of affection which appears to be finer and more spiritual than that which commonly subsists between persons of different sexes. These men are all of intellectual capacity above the average; and one is actively engaged in the world, where he is both respected for his capacity and admired for his character. I mention this particularly, because it appears to be the habit, in books upon this subject, to regard the relation in question as pathological, and to select cases where those who are concerned in it are tormented with shame and remorse. In the cases to which I am referring nothing of the kind subsists.
"In all these cases a physical sexual attraction is recognized as the basis of the relation, but as a matter of feeling, and partly also of theory, the ascetic ideal is adopted.
"These are the only cases with which I am personally and intimately acquainted. But no one can have passed through a public-school and college life without constantly observing indications of the phenomenon in question. It is clear to me that in a large number of instances there is no fixed line between what is called distinctively 'friendship' and love; and it is probably the influence of custom and public opinion that in most cases finally specializes the physical passion in the direction of the opposite sex."
The classification of the varieties of homosexuality is a matter of difficulty, and no classification is very fundamental. The early attempts of Krafft-Ebing and others at elaborate classification are no longer acceptable. Even the most elementary groupings become doubtful when we have definitely to fit our cases into them. The old distinction between congenital and acquired homosexuality has ceased to possess significance. When we have recognized that there is a tendency for homosexuality to arise in persons of usually normal tendency who are placed under conditions (as on board ship or in prison) where the exercise of normal sexuality is impossible, there is little further classification to be achieved along this line.[129] We have gone as far as is necessary by admitting a general undefined homosexuality—a relationship of unspecified nature to persons of the same sex—in addition to the more specific sexual inversion.[130]
It may now be said to be recognized by all authorities, even by Freud who emphasizes a special psychological mechanism by which homosexuality may become established, that a congenital predisposition as well as an acquired tendency is necessary to constitute true inversion, apparent exceptions being too few to carry much weight. Krafft-Ebing, Näcke, Iwan Bloch, who at one time believed in the possibility of acquired inversion, all finally abandoned that view, and even Schrenck-Notzing, a vigorous champion of the doctrine of acquired inversion twenty years ago, admits the necessity of a favoring predisposition, an admission which renders the distinction between innate and acquired an unimportant, if not a merely verbal, distinction.[131] Supposing, indeed, that we are prepared to admit that true inversion may be purely acquired the decision in any particular case must be extremely difficult, and I have found very few cases which, even with imperfect knowledge, could fairly so be termed.
Even the cases (to which Schopenhauer long since referred) in which inversion is only established late in life, are no longer regarded as constituting a difficulty in accepting the doctrine of the congenital nature of inversion; in such cases the inversion is merely retarded. The conception of retarded inversion—that is to say a latent congenital inversion becoming manifest at a late period in life—was first brought forward by Thoinot in 1898 in his Attentats aux Mœurs, in order to supersede the unsatisfactory conception, as he considered it to be, of acquired inversion. Thoinot regarded retarded inversion as relatively rare and of no great importance but more accessible to therapeutic measures. Three years later, Krafft-Ebing, toward the close of his life, adopted the same conception; the cases to which he applied it were all, he considered, of bisexual disposition and usually, also, marked by sexual hyperesthesia. This way of looking at the matter was speedily championed by Näcke and may now be said to be widely accepted.[132]
Moll, earlier than Thoinot, had pointed out that it is difficult to believe that homosexuality in late life can ever be produced without at least some inborn weakness of the heterosexual impulse, and that we must not deny the possibility of heredity even when homosexuality appears at the age of 50 or 60.[133]
Moll believes it is very doubtful whether heterosexual satiety alone can ever suffice to produce homosexuality. Näcke was careful to set aside the cases, to which much significance was once attached, in which old men with failing sexual powers, or younger men exhausted by heterosexual debauchery, are attracted to boys. In such cases, which include the majority of those appearing late, Näcke regarded the inversion as merely spurious, the faute de mieux of persons no longer apt for normal sexual activity.
Such cases no doubt need more careful psychological study than they usually receive. Féré once investigated a case of this kind in which a healthy young man (though with slightly neurotic heredity on one side) practised sexual intercourse excessively between the ages of 20 and 23—often impelled more by amour propre (or what Adler would term the "masculine protest" of the organically inferior) than sexual desire—and then suddenly became impotent, at the same time losing all desire, but without any other loss of health. Six months later potency slowly returned, though never to the same extent, and he married. At the age of 35 symptoms of locomotor ataxia began to appear, and some years later he again became impotent, but without losing sexual desire. Suddenly one day, on sitting in close contact with a young man at a table d'hôte, he experienced a violent erection; he afterward found that the same thing occurred with other young men, and, though he had no psychic desire for men, he was constrained to seek such