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, 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.
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 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 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 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 transvestites 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 rôle 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 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 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 assumption of the
feminine rôle, 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.
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 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."
