The formation of man’s character traits begins during the first years of life. He tests his powers upon the surroundings and his environment furnish him the picture of life. In the eyes of children who are not self-reliant the father must be a giant because he overawes them with his genial appearance and his image generates in their soul a feeling of inferiority which marks them for life. Every child has an ambition: to excel his father. This wish may express itself first in the desire to attain father’s size, to be as strong and big as he. But later the wish shows itself in that quiet but determined competitive struggle which has always existed between father and son, or mother and daughter. The strong son takes after the powerful father. But suppose the father is weak and the mother is the one who dominates the house? What sort of picture of life becomes imprinted upon the child’s mind under the circumstances? Can it help believing that women dominate the world, can he escape taking the attitude either of wishing to be a woman and rule, or of fleeing from woman when she clashes with his “will to power” as man? In the conflict that follows, sexuality becomes mixed up with erotism, the soul of the child is bewildered, a definite outcome is delayed and meanwhile the child’s soul is filled with anxiety and doubt. * * * * * _Alfred Adler_, who has followed this line of inquiry with great keenness, has conceived it an important factor in the dynamics of the neuroses and he has described this picture as “_the male protest_.” All reactions and protective constructions or fictions of the neurotic, according to him, lead back to the desire to be “_a complete man_.” Homosexuality displays this protest under a peculiarly cryptic form. The homosexual cries out: _I want to be a woman!_ He may even go so far as to dress himself like a woman and become a transvestite. _Adler_ here gives a far fetched explanation, saying: _this is a male protest under the use of female means_! He holds that the homosexual attempts to heighten by this means his feeling of personality; the latter turns away from woman because he fears his inferiority, he avoids decisions. That is true of some aspects but not of the whole picture. The problem of homosexuality as a whole shows _Adler’s_ position to be untenable.