Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2: Sexual InversionEllis, Havelock
Science
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2: Sexual Inversion
Ellis, Havelock
Sex; Sex (Psychology)
He has suffered extremely throughout life, owing to his sense of
the difference between himself and normal human beings. No
pleasure he has enjoyed, he declares, can equal a thousandth
part of the pain caused by the internal consciousness of
pariahdom. The utmost he can plead in his own defense, he admits,
is irresponsibility, for he acknowledges that his impulse may be
morbid. But he feels absolutely certain that in early life his
health was ruined and his moral repose destroyed owing to the
perpetual conflict with his own inborn nature, and that relief
and strength came with indulgence. Although he always has before
him the terror of discovery, he is convinced that his sexual
dealings with men have been thoroughly wholesome to himself,
largely increasing his physical, moral, and intellectual energy,
and not injurious to others. He has no sense whatever of moral
wrong in his actions, and he regards the attitude of society
toward those in his position as utterly unjust and founded on
false principles.
The next case is, like the foregoing, that of a successful man of letters
who also passed through a long period of mental conflict before he became
reconciled to his homosexual instincts. He belongs to a family who are all
healthy and have shown marked ability in different intellectual
departments. He feels certain that one of his brothers is as absolute an
invert as himself and that another is attracted to both sexes. I am
indebted to him for the following detailed narrative, describing his
emotions and experiences in childhood, which I regard as of very great
interest, not only as a contribution to the psychology of inversion, but
to the embryology of the sexual emotions generally. We here see described,
in an unduly precocious and hyperesthetic form, ideas and feelings which,
in a slighter and more fragmentary shape, may be paralleled in the early
experiences of many normal men and women. But it must be rare to find so
many points in sexual psychology so definitely illustrated in a single
child. It may be added that the narrative is also not without interest as
a study in the evolution of a man of letters; a child whose imagination
was thus early exercised and developed was predestined for a literary
career.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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