The varying views as to the genesis of homosexualism, which I have attempted to summarise in the preceding chapter, can be easily reconciled. Doubts as to one's "completeness" and a craving for safety may, even at an early age, cause the gonads to remain undeveloped or to develop in the wrong direction. Craig's pigeons were as completely "perverted" by the wrong environment as Steinach's rats by surgical operations.
Hirschfeld's intermediate sex, in its concealed forms, that is, when the individual, upon gross examination, appears normal, may well be produced by the environment. Freud's Oedipus situation is not incompatible with Adler's theory of the neurotic constitution.
Gonads are not different from any other glands. Thyroid involvement may produce fear or, at least, a picture of fear (exophthalmic goitre), but fear also[Pg 175] produces many forms of thyroid involvement (goitre and exophthalmic goitre were alarmingly frequent in French towns submitted to bombardment during the world war). A study of psychic impotence in men and frigidity in women has proved that impotence was mainly a refusal to be a potent man, frigidity a refusal to be woman in intercourse. In certain cases, exaggerated cravings for impotence or frigidity may modify the gonads so completely that they present the condition Hirschfeld has called typical of the intermediate sex.
Homosexualism can be best understood when viewed as a neurotic phenomenon, not as a neurosis in itself, but as a detail of the neurotic attitude to life outlined by Adler. Homosexualism is, in its last analysis, an organic striving away from life's normal goals.
A Denial of Life. Homosexualism cannot be understood unless we associate it with a denial of life and all its duties. Nor could love be understood if we tried to dissociate it from its primary sexual goal which is the acceptance of life with its duties, symbolised by the procreation of life and the creation of new duties by the individual, duties which he considers as a source of joy.
[Pg 176]
Homosexualism Is Love, Negative Love, quite as involuntary and as obsessive as normal, heterosexual, positive love.
A homosexual teacher wrote to Plazek: "A glance at the literature and art produced by homosexuals as well as insight into actual conditions, reveals that abnormal love can conjure up the same emotional display as normal love. Longing, faithfulness, devotion, self sacrifice, blossom forth in abnormal love as well as in normal love.
"In both, complete communion may be the goal and climax of feelings which are perhaps among the deepest and finest which mankind can experience."
Their Love Letters. The absolute similarity of heterosexual and homosexual love in their written expression can be judged by perusing the sonnets which Michael Angelo wrote to young Tommaso dei Cavalieri and which could very well have been addressed to a woman.
A sober scientist like Winckelman was carried away by his homosexual love for Frederick von Berg to the point of writing the following epistle which might emanate from a lovelorn highschool boy:
"All the names I might call you are not sweet enough and do not do justice to my love. All the[Pg 177] things I might say to you sound too weak to give voice to my heart and my soul. I love you, my dearest, more than the whole world and neither time nor circumstances nor age could ever cause my love to diminish."
Deeds of Violence. Homosexual love has led to as many deeds of violence on the part of disappointed lovers as heterosexual love. The papers frequently publish without comments stories of the shooting of a woman by another woman, caused by the fact that the victim was "too attentive to another woman."
Psychiatrists who can read between the lines recognise in those murders the result of homosexual jealousy and infidelity.
In that respect the behavior of the two sexes seems slightly different.
"It is well known," remarks Havelock Ellis, "that the part taken by women generally in open criminality, and especially in crimes of violence, is small as compared with men. In the homosexual the conditions are to some extent reversed. Inverted men, in whom a more or less feminine temperament is so often found, are rarely impelled to acts of aggressive violence, though they frequently commit suicide. Inverted women, who may retain[Pg 178] their feminine emotionality combined with some degree of infantile impulsiveness and masculine energy, present a favorable soil for the seeds of passional crime, under those conditions of jealousy and allied emotions which must so often enter the invert's life."
A Homosexual Tragedy. In a recent case in Chicago a homosexual woman shot her former roommate and then seriously wounded herself. They had roomed together and last fall the victim broke off the life together because the invert "was too affectionate." The victim went to her parents' house in the South to get rid of the invert. On her return to Chicago two months later she was bothered by the invert who insisted that she room with her. On April 22d she received a letter from the invert containing a bullet and a threat. Alarmed, she had the invert arrested, but the invert was discharged on promise she would not annoy the girl. The invert had a number of swagger sticks, one of which she carried each day. There is no account of her masculinity of attire. She wrote poems to her victim and made her presents including a diamond ring and a diamond studded watch, all of which were returned. There had been several threats[Pg 179] of killing the victim, before the letter came, if she ended the friendship.
Women More Homosexual than Men. Remembering how the mother's fetishes affect us in the choice of a sexual mate we may expect to find more homosexualism in woman than in man. The facts bear up our theory. While the gross forms of homosexualism are less frequent among women, a thousand mild forms of it are observable in the behavior of even apparently very normal women.
The sentimental attachments of school girls for certain teachers, the pleasure which they derive from spending nights with some friend on whom they have a "crush," the thousand and one bodily caresses female friends shower on each other, the curiosity they manifest about each other's physical condition, their frequent bed room or bathroom conferences, are manifestations of a mild homosexualism, which, however, do not always lead to overt acts.
Boastfulness. Many homosexuals compensate for the scorn meted out to them by normal individuals with a certain proud boastfulness.
"We are supermen," one hears them say when they find a sympathetic listener, "we have reached beyond the usual, boresome, bourgeois form of gratifica[Pg 180]tion. Our intellect is nauseated by woman's silliness."
And the females say in their turn: "We are super-women, we have conquered the fear of man and we are tired of man's boorish ways."
Some of the male homosexuals who are bisexual, that is, can also be attracted by women, pride themselves over the mentality of the women they love. "Men have accustomed us to a higher intellectual level and to a more intelligent form of conversation," a homosexual said to me.
This is naturally a defence mechanism. By demanding extremely high qualification from the women, homosexuals have a ready excuse for consorting with men exclusively.
Famous Homosexuals. Homosexuals are fond of mentioning all the men famous in art and letters whose sexual life was inverted: the Greek philosophers, poets and playwrights of the classic age, Julius C?sar, Alexander the Great, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Frederick of Prussia, Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Nietzsche, etc.
The Nietzsche-Wagner Feud should be rewritten from a psychiatrist's point of view. Wagner was to young Nietzsche an a............