The predominant homosexual element or primitive emotional character asserts itself in various typical forms that are apparent to those informed upon the subject. In this connection, Bousfield states: “Cruelty on the part of boys at school (bullying) is nearly always a sexual manifestation which, like homosexuality, should be only a passing phase, which is later repressed into the unconscious. The monks who denied themselves sexual intercourse, but found pleasure in flogging themselves or others, form an example of the way that sexual energy, when denied its normal course, finds a more primitive outlet. A schoolmaster with repressed and unconscious homosexuality will often be noted for his flogging proclivities, and so forth. Children, more especially boys, are observed to have an instinct of cruelty; for example, they pull the wings off flies. The sport of the chase or of fishing serves to gratify the instinct in adults.” Prominent in the classification of adolescent homosexual attraction are the school-friendships of girls, which are known variously as “crushes,” “flames,” and “raves.” Elaborate romances are sometimes bound up in these attachments, with their love at first-sight, courtship, love letters, jealousy, and other manifestations of erotic affection. Havelock Ellis states that while these alliances are sometimes sexual, they are often not so--but are full of “psychic erethism.” CHAPTER II. THEORIES ABOUT HOMO-SEXUALITY. Some of the greatest sexologists and psychiatrists of modern times have concerned themselves with the causative factors of homosexuality. So much new material relating to unconscious mental activities has been uncovered in recent years, that many of the older authorities, whose opinions have long carried much weight, are now considered obsolete, at least in respect to homosexual problems. Krafft-Ebing, for instance, a widely quoted authority, and still a factor through his works in influencing both the profession and laymen, originally conceived homosexuality as the result of a hereditary transmission. This contention has never been fully corroborated by the observations of later investigators. To this extent only is homosexuality an inherited trait beyond fear of any contradiction: Everybody inherits homosexual _tendencies_. As we observed in the previous chapter, every child is homosexual in disposition. Therefore, heredity _per se_ does not give us the key to the problem, except possibly in those instances where the hereditary constitution furnishes certain predisposing factors to homosexuality. And this predisposition may be overcome, wholly or in part, in a healthy, constructive environment; or it may be cultivated in the opposite kind of environment.