Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2: Sexual Inversion — John Shaqi
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)
sought different outlets from those of ordinary men and women; they became
the initiators of new activities. Thus it is that from among them would in
some degree issue not only inventors and craftsmen and teachers, but
sorcerers and diviners, medicine-men and wizards, prophets and priests.
Such persons would be especially impelled to thought, because they would
realize that they were different from other people; treated with reverence
by some and with contempt by others, they would be compelled to face the
problems of their own nature and, indirectly, the problems of the world
generally. Moreover, Carpenter points out, persons in whom the masculine
and feminine temperaments were combined would in many cases be persons of
intuition and complex mind beyond their fellows, and so able to exercise
divination and prophecy in a very real and natural sense.[53]
This aptitude of the invert for primitive religion, for sorcery and
divination, would have its reaction on popular feeling, more especially
when magic and the primitive forms of religion began to fall into
disrepute. The invert would be regarded as the sorcerer of a false and
evil religion and be submerged in the same ignominy. This point has been
emphasized by Westermarck in the instructive chapter on homosexuality in
his great work on Moral Ideas.[54] He points out the significance of the
fact, at the first glance apparently inexplicable, that homosexuality in
the general opinion of medieval Christianity was constantly associated,
even confounded, with heresy, as we see significantly illustrated by the
fact that in France and England the popular designation for homosexuality
is derived from the Bulgarian heretics. It was, Westermarck believes,
chiefly as a heresy and out of religious zeal that homosexuality was so
violently reprobated and so ferociously punished.
In modern Europe we find the strongest evidence of the presence of what
may fairly be called true sexual inversion when we investigate the men of
the Renaissance. The intellectual independence of those days and the
influence of antiquity seem to have liberated and fully developed the
impulses of those abnormal individuals who would otherwise have found no
clear expression, and passed unnoticed.[55]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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