Studies in the Psychology of Sex (Vol. 1-6). Havelock Ellis
he grasped my penis, I jumped up, and he asked me to do anything that I liked with him. I refused. Once on board a coasting steamer a fellow-passenger used to expose himself, posing as a statue; we became very familiar and he wanted me to spend a night with him. I also refused his offers.
"I am very healthy and strong, fond of riding, fishing, and shooting. I lead a very active life. I am neither musician nor artist, but fond of hearing music and I admire works of art.
"In person I am 6 feet high, inclined to fat; my body is very strong; my penis is six inches long in repose and eight in erection; I can without fatigue discharge twice in the night and have connection at least twice a week. My scrotum is tense and both testicles large. I am rather slow at discharging. I have never had any desire to have connection with any other woman since marriage, but several times I have met men who attracted me. I have a friend (another doctor) who is very familiar with me and if we spend a night together we will play with each other. I have a great desire for him to circumcize me. We have never indulged in anything beyond feeling or pressing our bodies together like schoolboys.
"My favorite color is green.
"My erotic dreams, when I have any, are of my wife or of a male lover.
"Sexual inversion is more widespread than is popularly supposed and I have never had any twinge of conscience after any of my affairs. I regard the homosexual instinct as quite natural, and, except in regard to my wife, it is stronger in my case than the heterosexual instinct. I have never initiated a youth into the sexual life or had any desire to seduce a girl. Boys under 17, or persons of lower social class, have no attraction for me."
HISTORY XXXIII.—M. O., 30 years of age, born in the United States, of English father and of mother whose father was Scotch—the rest of his ancestry being English of long standing in America, with a very little admixture of Dutch blood. He is 5 feet 8 inches in height, and has brown hair and eyes. No hereditary troubles so far as known. In childhood, for some time "threatened with chorea." Is subject to tonsillitis and a stubborn though not severe form of indigestion, induced by sedentary habits. He is of quick, nervous temperament. Has an aversion from most outdoor sports, but a great esthetic attraction to nature. Highly educated.
As far back as he can remember, he lived in a house from which his parents removed when he was 4 years old. Before this removal, he remembers two distinctly sexual experiences. A cousin five years older was in the bathroom, seated, and M. O. was feeling his sexual organs; his mother called him out. On another occasion he was in a wagonhouse with a girl of his own age. They were lying on a carriage-seat attempting intercourse. The girl's older sister came in and found them. She said: "I am going to tell mamma; you know she said for you not to do that any more." With each of these clear memories comes the strong impression that it was but one among many. Five years ago M. O. met a man of his own age who had lived in that neighborhood at the same time. Comparing notes, they found that nearly all the small children in it had been given to such practices. The neighborhood was a thoroughly "respectable" middle-class one.
From it, M. O. removed to another of just about the same character, and lived there until he was 11 years old. Of this period his memories are very fresh and abundant. With a single exception, all the children between 5 and 14 years of age appear to have indulged freely in promiscuous sexual play. In little companies of from four to twelve they went where trees or long grass hid them from observation, and exhibited their persons to one another; sometimes, also, they handled one another, but not in the way of masturbation. Of this last, M. O. was wholly ignorant. Sometimes when but two or three were together, intercourse was attempted. In M. O.'s case there was eager sexual curiosity, and a more or less keen desire, but actual contact brought no great satisfaction. On two or three occasions girls practised fellatio, and he then reciprocated with cunnilinctus, but without pleasure. In all these plays he is sure that girls took the initiative as often as boys did.
During all this period, M. O. had now one girl sweetheart and now another. This was conventional among the children, and was fostered by the banter of older persons. M. O.'s sexual curiosity was certainly greater in regard to the opposite sex. At this time, however, his homosexual interests appeared. With a boy two or more years older he frequently went to some hiding-place where they looked at each other's organs and handled them. He and another boy were once in an abandoned garden, and they took off all their clothes, the better to examine each other. The other boy then offered to kiss M. O.'s fundament, and did so. It caused a surprisingly keen and distinctly sexual sensation, the first sexual shock that he can remember experiencing. He refused to reciprocate, however, when asked.
Toward the end of this period there was a new and increasing development of another sort, not recognized then as at all sexual in character. He began to feel toward certain boys in a way very different and much keener than he had done thus far toward girls, although at the time he made no comparisons. For instance there was a boy whom he considered very pretty. They visited each other often and spent long times playing together. In school they looked and looked at each other until delicious, uncontrollable giggling spells came on. Sexual matters were never discussed or thought of. These experiences were, in their way, very sentimental and ideal. M. O. is sure that with himself the main consideration was always the other boy's beauty. He began to recall with great fondness a certain much older and very handsome youth who had lived near him in the first neighborhood, and had at the time shown him, various little friendly attentions. He seldom saw him now, and hardly sought to do so, yet was immensely pleased by a casual word or look from him in the schoolyard, and much interested when other people spoke of him.
A cousin about two years younger than M. O. often visited him and slept with him. They were very fond of each other, and handled each other's organs.
When M. O. was about 11 years of age the family removed to a distant neighborhood, where there were almost no children of his own age, and where any association with those in the one just left was practically impossible. From this time until the changes of puberty were well under way his sexual life contrasted strongly, in its solitude, with the former promiscuity. He remembers liking to wrestle with two or three schoolboys and to get their heads between his legs. He thinks they were not aware of his sexual impulses. He flirted, consciously flirted, with certain school-girls, but never even suggested anything sexual to them. He read a few family medical books.
One day, lying on an old uneven couch, innocently enough at first, he induced a new and delicious sensation, altogether different from any he had ever dreamed of—something far beyond the satisfaction of mere curiosity. He repeated the thing and before long produced emissions. Masturbation soon followed. Certain days he would perform the act two or three times, but again he would avoid it for days. He began at once to fight the tendency, and felt very guilty and very ashamed for indulging it. He prayed for help and at times wept over his failures to break the habit so quickly formed. For a certain period, after two or three years, he seemed to have succeeded, but he observed that he had intense erotic dreams with copious emissions regularly every eight days. Just then certain newspaper advertisements fell under his eye, and these persuaded him that he had produced in himself a diseased condition. He never resorted to the remedies advertised, but he was discouraged in his efforts to overcome the bad habit; and since the evil effects appeared to consist only in the seminal losses, he concluded that he might as well have the greater enjoyment of masturbation.
For a short time, he remembers that he had an intense but revolting interest in the sexual organs of animals, especially horses. The males were much more interesting.
Gradually he began to develop, entirely from within, the ideal of a male comrade—a beautiful, emotional boy between whom and himself there might exist a powerful romantic passion. He lay for hours dreaming of this, and inventing thrilling situations. Suddenly, at church, he became acquainted with the very youth, Edmund, who seemed to satisfy all his longings. M. O. was then 16½ and Edmund 15. A real wooing ensued, Edmund finally yielding to the physical appeals of M. O. after several fits of misgiving. The yielding was in the end complete, however. The two spent night after night together, enjoying intercrural intercourse and sometimes mutual masturbation. Their parents may have been slightly uneasy at times, but the connection continued uninterruptedly for a year and a half or more. In the meantime M. O. occasionally had relations with other boys, but never wavered in his