We have said that neurotic symptoms are substitutes for sexual satisfactions and I have already indicated that many difficulties will be met with in proving this statement from the analysis of symptoms. It is, indeed, only accurate if the “perverse” sexual needs, so-called, are included under the sexual satisfactions; for an interpretation of the symptoms on this basis is forced upon us with astonishing frequency. The claim made by homosexuals or inverts, that they constitute a select class of mankind, falls at once to the ground when we discover that in every single neurotic evidence of homosexual tendencies is forthcoming and that a large proportion of the symptoms are expressions of this latent inversion. Those who openly call themselves homosexuals are merely those in whom the inversion is conscious and manifest; their number is negligible compared with those in whom it is latent. We are bound, in fact, to regard the choice of an object of the same sex as a regular type of offshoot of the capacity to love, and are learning every day more and more to recognize it as especially important. The differences between manifest homosexuality and the normal attitude are certainly not thereby abrogated; they have their practical importance, which remains, but theoretically their value is very considerably diminished. In fact, we have even come to the conclusion that one particular mental disorder, paranoia, no longer to be reckoned among the transference neuroses, invariably arises from an attempt to subdue unduly powerful homosexual tendencies. Perhaps you will remember that one of our patients,[47] in her obsessive act, played the part of a man—of her own husband, that is, whom she had left; such symptoms, representing the impersonation of a man, are very commonly produced by neurotic women. If this is not actually attributable to homosexuality, it is certainly very closely connected with its origins.