Let us now turn our attention to these hidden forms of sexuality, before attempting to explain the rise of the manifest and of the overt forms of homosexuality. Among the latent homosexuals who struggle with all the problems of bisexuality which to them appear unsolvable and inscrutable, and who have recourse to various compromises which bring them some temporary relief, we may find the various transitional stages leading all the way up to the overt forms of homosexuality. Latent homosexuality is a fact, not uncovered by analysis, but analysis has tremendously enlarged our understanding of the mental processes involved. The deeper we penetrate into the psychic mechanism of the neuroses and psychoses, the more vital appears to us the role of homosexuality. The difference between my method of analysis and the customary anamnesis is shown nowhere so clearly, as in connection with the disclosures of the neurotics regarding their hidden homosexuality. No other component of the sexual instinct undergoes repression to such an extent or shifts so far from the sphere of ordinary consciousness. I know persons who have frankly adopted a great many forms of paraphilia but have completely repressed the homosexual component of their condition. I have analysed, for instance, a young woman who had quite an eventful life history. She became neurotic because she could neither master nor suppress her homosexuality. Like all other neurotics she skilfully covered her homosexuality and this trait of hers remained unknown to her consciousness. It will be helpful to the beginner, therefore, to know the various disguises which serve as masks for homosexuality. As is well known, all neurotic symptoms are the results of compromise and they cover, on the one hand, as much as they disclose, on the other. The tendency to adopt compromises, which is typical of the split personality, is a subject worthy of special consideration. The most antagonistic impulses are stressed and summed up under the same symptom. This tendency to adopt compromises governs the mental life of the neurotic. It is seen in dreams as well as in political life, in artistic products no less than in neurotic symptoms. If the need to adjust opposing tendencies under some compromise is not met successfully a condition of uncertainty arises,—of vacillation and doubt. Doubt is the result and the sign of unsuccessful compromises. This superficial building up of compromises is seen most clearly in the case of homosexuality. The neurotic endeavors to focus the most divergent tendencies of his psyche upon the same goal. His ideal is a being at once male, female, and infantile (and perhaps also beast and angel at the same time).