Studies in the Psychology of Sex (Vol. 1-6). Havelock Ellis
which to those persons who possess it frequently appears natural and normal. It was clear, therefore, that the matter was in special need of elucidation and discussion.
There can be no doubt that a peculiar amount of ignorance exists regarding the subject of sexual inversion. I know medical men of many years' general experience who have never, to their knowledge, come across a single case. We may remember, indeed, that some fifteen years ago the total number of cases recorded in scientific literature scarcely equaled those of British race which I have obtained, and that before my first cases were published not a single British case, unconnected with the asylum or the prison, had ever been recorded. Probably not a very large number of people are even aware that the turning in of the sexual instinct toward persons of the same sex can ever be regarded as inborn, so far as any sexual instinct is inborn. And very few, indeed, would not be surprised if it were possible to publish a list of the names of sexually inverted men and women who at the present time are honorably known in church, state, society, art, or letters. It could not be positively affirmed of all such persons that they were born inverted, but in most the inverted tendency seems to be instinctive, and appears at a somewhat early age. In any case, however, it must be realized that in this volume we are not dealing with subjects belonging to the lunatic asylum, or the prison. We are concerned with individuals who live in freedom, some of them suffering intensely from their abnormal organization, but otherwise ordinary members of society. In a few cases we are concerned with individuals whose moral or artistic ideals have widely influenced their fellows, who know nothing of the peculiar organization which has largely molded those ideals.
I am indebted to several friends for notes, observations, and correspondence on this subject, more especially to one, referred to as "Z.," and to another as "Q.," who have obtained a considerable number of reliable histories for me, and have also supplied many valuable notes; to "Josiah Flynt" (whose articles on tramps in Atlantic Monthly and Harper's Magazine have attracted wide attention) for an appendix on homosexuality among tramps; to Drs. Kiernan, Lydston, and Talbot for assistance at various points noted in the text; and to Dr. K., an American woman physician, who kindly assisted me in obtaining cases, and has also supplied an appendix. Other obligations are mentioned in the text.
All those portions of the book which are of medical or medico-legal interest, including most of the cases, have appeared during the last three years in the Alienist and Neurologist, the Journal of Mental Science, the Centralblatt für Nervenheilkunde, the Medico-legal Journal, and the Archivo delle Psicopatie Sessuale. The cases, as they appear in the present volume, have been slightly condensed, but nothing of genuine psychological interest has been omitted. Owing to some delay in the publication of the English edition of the work, a German translation by my friend, Dr. Hans Kurella, editor of the Centralblatt für Nervenheilkunde, has already appeared (1896) in the Bibliothek für Sozialwissenschaft. The German edition contains some matter which has finally been rejected from the English edition as of minor importance; on the other hand, much has been added to the English edition, and the whole carefully revised.
I have only to add that if it may seem that I have unduly ignored the cases and arguments brought forward by other writers, it is by no means because I wish to depreciate the valuable work done by my predecessors in this field. It is solely because I have not desired to popularize the results previously reached, but simply to bring forward my own results. If I had not been able to present new facts in what is perhaps a new light, I should not feel justified in approaching the subject of sexual inversion at all.
HAVELOCK ELLIS.
SEXUAL INVERSION.
CHAPTER I.—INTRODUCTION.
Homosexuality Among Animals—Among the Lower Human Races—The Albanians—The Greeks—The Eskimos—The Tribes of the Northwest United States—Homosexuality Among Soldiers in Europe—Indifference Frequently Manifested by European Lower Classes—Sexual Inversion at Rome—Homosexuality in Prisons—Among Men of Exceptional Intellect and Moral Leaders—Muret—Michelangelo—Winkelmann—Homosexuality in English History—Walt Whitman—Verlaine—Burton's Climatic Theory of Homosexuality—The Racial Factor—The Prevalence of Homosexuality Today.
Sexual inversion, as here understood, means sexual instinct turned by inborn constitutional abnormality toward persons of the same sex. It is thus a narrower term than homosexuality, which includes all sexual attractions between persons of the same sex, even when seemingly due to the accidental absence of the natural objects of sexual attraction, a phenomenon of wide occurrence among all human races and among most of the higher animals. It is only during recent years that sexual inversion has been recognized; previously it was not distinguished from homosexuality in general, and homosexuality was regarded as a national custom, as an individual vice, or as an unimportant episode in grave forms of insanity.[1] We have further to distinguish sexual inversion and all other forms of homosexuality from another kind of inversion which usually remains, so far as the sexual impulse itself is concerned, heterosexual, that is to say, normal. Inversion of this kind leads a person to feel like a person of the opposite sex, and to adopt, so far as possible, the tastes, habits, and dress of the opposite sex, while the direction of the sexual impulse remains normal. This condition I term sexo-esthetic inversion, or Eonism.
The nomenclature of the highly important form of sexual perversion with which we are here concerned is extremely varied, and most investigators have been much puzzled in coming to a conclusion as to the best, most exact, and at the same time most colorless names to apply to it.
The first in the field in modern times was Ulrichs who, as early as 1862, used the appellation "Uranian" (Uranier), based on the well-known myth in Plato's Banquet. Later he Germanized this term into "Urning" for the male, and "Urningin" for the female, and referred to the condition itself as "Urningtum." He also invented a number of other related terms on the same basis; some of these terms have had a considerable vogue, but they are too fanciful and high-strung to secure general acceptance. If used in other languages than German they certainly should not be used in their Germanized shape, and it is scarcely legitimate to use the term "Urning" in English. "Uranian" is more correct.
In Germany the first term accepted by recognized scientific authorities was "contrary sexual feeling" (Konträre Sexualempfindung). It was devised by Westphal in 1869, and used by Krafft-Ebing and Moll. Though thus accepted by the earliest authorities in this field, and to be regarded as a fairly harmless and vaguely descriptive term, it is somewhat awkward, and is now little used in Germany; it was never currently used outside Germany. It has been largely superseded by the term "homosexuality." This also was devised (by a little-known Hungarian doctor, Benkert, who used the pseudonym Kertbeny) in the same year (1869), but at first attracted no attention. It has, philologically, the awkward disadvantage of being a bastard term compounded of Greek and Latin elements, but its significance—sexual attraction to the same sex—is fairly clear and definite, while it is free from any question-begging association of either favorable or unfavorable character. (Edward Carpenter has proposed to remedy its bastardly linguistic character by transforming it into "homogenic;" this, however, might mean not only "toward the same sex," but "of the same kind," and in German already possesses actually that meaning.) The term "homosexual" has the further advantage that on account of its classical origin it is easily translatable into many languages. It is now the most widespread general term for the phenomena we are dealing with, and it has been used by Hirschfeld, now the chief authority in this field, as the title of his encyclopedic work, Die Homosexualität.
"Sexual Inversion" (in French "inversion sexuelle," and in Italian "inversione sessuale") is the term which has from the first been chiefly used in France and Italy, ever since Charcot and Magnan, in 1882, published their cases of this anomaly in the