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Professional Civility Communicative Virtue at Work 1st
Edition Edition Janie M. Harden Fritz Digital Instant
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Author(s): Janie M. Harden Fritz
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This book is part of the Peter Lang Media and Communication list.
Every volume is peer reviewed and meets
the highest quality standards for content and production.
 JANIE M. HARDEN FRITZ

Professional
Civility
COMMUNICATIVE VIRTUE AT WORK
 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fritz, Janie M. Harden.
Professional civility: communicative virtue at work / Janie M.
Harden Fritz.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Professional ethics. 2. Business ethics. I. Title.
BJ1725.F75 174—dc23 2012034869
ISBN 978-1-4331-1985-9 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4331-1984-2 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-4539-0947-8 (e-book)
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche
Nationalbibliothek.
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the
“Deutsche Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data is
available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.
© 2013 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York
29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006
www.peterlang.com
All rights reserved.
Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as
microfilm, xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly
prohibited.
 About the author(s)/editor(s)
Janie M. Harden Fritz received her Ph.D. in communication arts from the
University of Wisconsin. She is an associate professor in the Department of
Communication & Rhetorical Studies at Duquesne University. She is co-
editor (with Becky L. Omdahl) of Problematic Relationships in the Workplace
Volumes 1 and 2 (Peter Lang, 2006, 2012), co-editor (with S. Alyssa Groom)
of Communication Ethics and Crisis (2012), and co-author (with Ronald C.
Arnett and Leeanne M. Bell) of Communication Ethics Literacy: Dialogue
and Difference (2009). She is a past president of the Eastern Communication
Association and the Religious Communication Association.
 About the book
The crisis of incivility plaguing today’s workplace calls for an approach to
communication that restores respect and integrity to interpersonal encounters
in organizational life. Professional civility is a communicative virtue that
protects and promotes productivity, one’s place of employment, and persons
with whom we carry out our tasks in the workplace. Drawn from the history
of professions as dignified occupations providing valuable contributions to
the human community, an understanding of civility as communicative virtue,
and MacIntyre’s treatment of practices, professional civility supports the
“practice” of professions in contemporary organizations. A communicative
ethic of professional civility requires attentiveness to the task at hand, support
of an organization’s mission, and appropriate relationships with others in the
workplace. Professional civility fosters communicative habits of the heart that
extend beyond the walls of the workplace, encouraging a return to the service
ethic that remains an enduring legacy of the professions in the United States.
 This eBook can be cited
This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the
start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the
marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the
physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by
this marker.
 Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
INTRODUCTION: A FRAMEWORK FOR PROFESSIONAL CIVILITY
A Call to Responsibility: Civility and the Professions
Professional Civility: Communicative Virtue at Work
Structure of the Book
CHAPTER 1: VIRTUE ETHICS AND THE PROFESSIONS
Introduction
A Foundation for Professional Civility as Communicative Virtue at
Work
MacIntyre’s Virtue Ethics Applied to the Professions
Conclusion
CHAPTER 2: THE TRADITION OF PROFESSION AS PRACTICE
Introduction
The True Professional Ideal
Goods of Professions
Conclusion
CHAPTER 3: THE COMMUNICATIVE VIRTUE OF CIVILITY
 Introduction
Civility in Context
Incivility as Communicative Vice
Civility as Communicative Virtue
Theoretical Coordinates of Civility as Communicative Virtue
Conclusion
CHAPTER 4: PROFESSIONAL CIVILITY AS COMMUNICATIVE VIRTUE AT WORK
Introduction
Virtues, Professions, and Civility: Professional Civility as
Communicative Virtue
Professional Civility: Conceptual Coordinates
Practices of Professional Civility: A First Look
Conclusion
CHAPTER 5: A PRAGMATIC CASE FOR THE EFFECTS OF COMMUNICATION IN THE
WORKPLACE
Introduction
Communication as Constitutive
Communication and Work Environments
The Organizational Socialization Process as Context for
Communicative Shaping
Effects of Incivility
Conclusion
CHAPTER 6: PROTECTING AND PROMOTING PRODUCTIVITY
Introduction
Work and the Human Condition
Productivity and Communicative Action
Levels of Engagement
Conclusion
CHAPTER 7: PROTECTING AND PROMOTING THE GOOD OF PLACE
 Introduction
Care for the Local Home: The Metaphor of “Guest”
Organizations as Public Narratives
Unity of Contraries: Support and Dissent
Enlarged Space
Conclusion
CHAPTER 8: PROTECTING AND PROMOTING THE GOOD OF PERSONS
Introduction
Workplace Relationships
Public and Private Life: Historical Shifts
Interpersonal Practices of Professional Civility
Conclusion
CONCLUSION: PROTECTING AND PROMOTING PROFESSIONS
Introduction
The Ongoing Story of the Professions
Toward a Renewed Professionalism: Professional Civility
Professions and Communicative Practices: Enactment and
Construction
Summary: Protecting and Promoting the Good(s) of Profession
References
Author Index
Subject Index
| IX →

Preface
This work is an elaboration and extension of the organizing principle of a
course Ronald C. Arnett and I taught together years ago. Since that time, Ron
and I have conducted independent and collaborative scholarship on
professional civility; those projects are referenced in these pages. I ended up
pursuing the idea in book-length format because of my interest in civility and
incivility in workplace relationships.
Connecting the terms “professional” and “civility” was a primary
conceptual task for this project. Sandra Borden’s application of Alasdair
MacIntyre’s virtue ethics to the profession of journalism in her award-
winning work, Journalism as Practice: MacIntyre, Virtue Ethics, and the
Press, provided insights relevant to the professions as practice more generally,
a reading consistent with Bruce Kimball’s history of the “true professional
ideal” in America. The “professional” part of professional civility now had a
connection to virtue ethics and to traditions of practice (or, put another way, to
practices that constitute traditions), and the goods internal to profession(s) as
practice could be seen through a reading of Kimball’s documentation of the
rhetoric of the professions from the early 1600s to the present.
Civility, which I reconceptualized as the communicative manifestation of
civic virtue, and profession(s), understood as tradition(s) of practice, met in
the ← IX | X → work of William Sullivan on the crisis and promise of
professionalism in America. Civility appeared to be part of the
“professionalism” that Sullivan held up as the distinguishing attitudinal and
behavioral mark of a professional, an enduring ideal despite the erosion over
the last several decades of the public recognition of professional work as a
calling with service obligations. However, the work of Andersson and
Pearson suggested that incivility—the inverse of professionalism—was a
serious problem in organizational settings, where professionals typically
practice today.
MacIntyre’s announcement of the metanarrative crisis of our era provided
insights relevant to the incivility crisis—there is no public agreement on the
“good” for human life and conduct; the self has become the primary guide for
moral decision-making. At the organizational level, emotivism plays out in
lack of shared understandings of appropriate interpersonal behavior;
“common sense” becomes meaningless without shared standards. Incivility
and other troublesome behaviors in the workplace are more likely when
publicly agreed-upon guidelines for conduct are absent.
Following this reasoning, the crisis of professionalism and incivility in the
work-place could be fruitfully connected. Professionals, once the standard
bearers of an occupational ideal of responsible self-direction and service,
were now working in bureaucratic, corporatized contexts. Bereft of a collegial
environment for work and a sense of vocational engagement, professionals no
longer modeled the communicative practices of professionalism as a
distinctive element of professional identity in everyday work interactions.
Pulling these strands together suggested a question: What if the professions
reclaimed, in association with the civic professionalism Sullivan urged, a
civility tied distinctively to the tradition of professional practice—a tradition
that now embraced contemporary organizations as a site for work?
Organizations were the new “local home” for the professions, joining the
historic goods internal to professional practice—productivity and persons—
visible in Kimball’s story. Professional civility could be, at the level of
organizational interaction, what Sullivan’s civic professionalism would be at
the level of the larger society. Professional civility as communicative virtue at
work could nourish internal organizational environments and lay the
groundwork for civic professionalism as service to communities and society
at large. Connections to Arnett and Arneson’s dialogic civility, with its
responsiveness to the historical moment, limits, and sense of hope, and to
Organ’s construct of organizational citizenship were natural next steps, and
from that point, it was a matter of identifying representative work in
conceptually related areas that could be understood through the lens of
professional civility.
There is a natural connection between this book and the collections Becky
Omdahl and I coedited for Peter Lang (Problematic Relationships in the
Workplace, ← X | XI → 2006; Problematic Relationships in the Workplace,
Volume 2, in press). As a set, the three books address an array of workplace
relationship difficulties, communicative remedies, and a philosophy of
communication/communication ethic for the work-place. Several ideas from
the Problematic Work Relationships volumes and this book are cross-
referenced. For example, Ronald C. Arnett’s chapter on professional civility
and Becky Omdahl’s chapter on effective work relationships from the 2006
volume provide conceptual touchstones here, and the chapter on protecting
and promoting workplace relationships in the second volume can be read as
an extension of Chapter 8 (protecting and promoting persons).
| XIII →

Acknowledgments
I have many persons and communities to thank for ongoing support in
bringing this work to completion. Leeanne Bell McManus provided much-
needed impetus to persuade me to undertake the final stages of this work.
Jeanne Persuit was instrumental in moving the project forward. Annette
Holba and Elesha Ruminski prompted my thinking on care for institutions
through an invitation to write a chapter for their edited volume,
Communicative Understandings of Women’s Leadership Development: From
Ceilings of Glass to Labyrinth Paths (2012, Lexington Books). I offer deep
appreciation and thanks to Mary Savigar, Bernadette Shade, Phyllis Korper,
and all the Peter Lang staff who brought this book to finished form through
their outstanding professional work, and to Hannah Belmonte, who
constructed the author index.
Students in multiple sections of the Communication Ethics and
Professional Civility course listened to draft chapters of the first half of the
book. Participants in the National Communication Association’s 2011 Hope
Conference offered constructive feedback, insights, and thoughtful responses.
Robert H. Woods Jr. offered good counsel and enthusiastic encouragement.
Becky Omdahl’s friendship and care are precious gifts; she embodies the true
professional ideal. My brother, Bobby, who began his own professional
studies as I worked on this book, supported me with prayers and
encouragement. My husband, Carl, patiently awaited the completion of this
project and provided all manner of support. ← XIII | XIV →
Duquesne University is a wonderful academic home. Chancellor John
Murray and President Charles Dougherty have provided years of outstanding
leadership for this place. I honor in this work the memory of Michael P.
Weber, who believed in me when the evidence was yet to emerge. He
understood the difference between imagination and fantasy. James Swindal,
dean of the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts, provides
a model of scholarly leadership and productivity, as did his predecessors
Christopher Duncan and Francesco Cesareo. My colleagues in the
Department of Communication & Rhetorical Studies bring joy to the work; I
will always be grateful to them, especially to Ronald C. Arnett, who taught
me to love the work, care for institutions, and support people—Ron, you
make places and persons flourish through productivity.
 I offer this book to the Spiritans, the priests and brothers of the
Congregation of the Holy Spirit, who remind us that there is always a heart
propelling the best practices.
—JANIE HARDEN FRITZ, PHD
|1→

Introduction
A Framework for Professional Civility
A Call to Responsibility: Civility and the Professions
A growing body of research points to the presence of interpersonal
communicative practices contributing to problematic relationships in the
workplace (Fritz & Omdahl, 2006a, Omdahl & Fritz, in press). Problematic
workplace behaviors such as social undermining, interpersonal harassment,
and bullying, for example, continue to receive attention in the scholarly
literature and the popular press (Fritz, 2009, 2012a; Keashly, in press).
Identification and conceptualization of additional behaviors—for example,
backstabbing (Malone & Hayes, 2012) and swearing in the workplace
(Johnson, 2012)—join existing research on organizational misbehavior (Fritz,
in press-a) as further refinement and clarification of the domain of
problematic behaviors in the workplace ensues. This crisis of incivility (Fritz,
2012a) in workplaces in the United States carries significant implications for
organizations and their members, resulting in outcomes such as employee
turnover, lowered productivity, and stress (Fritz & Omdahl, 2006b; Davenport
Sypher, 2004; see Pearson & Porath, 2009, for a book-length review of
personal and institutional costs associated with incivility). We spend a large
proportion of our lives in the company of other persons in the workplace;
when interactions are marked by rudeness and incivility, the quality of work
life is diminished, ← 1 | 2 → compromising the “good” of organizations as
dwelling places for shared constructive activity (Arnett, Fritz, & Bell, 2009).
Several explanations for this increase in incivility have been advanced: a
climate of informality in the workplace in the midst of diversity of cultural
and generational backgrounds, prompting misunderstandings due to
differences in implicit communication rules; proliferation of technology that
removes face-to-face interaction, making impulsivity more likely; increased
demands for productivity, generating stress and frayed tempers; and changing
norms in society at large for standards of behavior (Andersson & Pearson,
1999; Davenport Sypher, 2004; Johnson & Indvik, 2001a, 2001b; Pearson,
Andersson, & Porath, 2000; Pearson & Porath, 2009; Zemke, Raines, &
Filipczak, 2000). This latter point prompts a key question: Why be civil at all?
Why should we bother to engage others with a discourse of care, respect, and
thoughtful attentiveness befitting their humanity? Work by authors such as
Steven Carter (1998), M. Scott Peck (1994), and P. M. Forni (2002, 2008)
suggests that being civil to others is no longer a “common sense”
communicative practice in a world lacking a shared virtue structure (Arnett et
al., 2009). In a moment of economic collapse, failing corporations,
irresponsible institutional leadership, and rampant individualism (Putnam,
2000), civility no longer appears to be a taken-for-granted or normative
interactive practice for either public life in general or organizational life in
particular.
In academic circles, explicit disputes about the theoretical and practical
status of civility ensue. Some scholars argue the case for civility and note its
benefits, tying civil discourse practices to justice in the public sphere. Carter
(1998), for instance, holds civility as the only hope for those in positions of
low status and power, because civility as a normative practice calls those who
have power into account. Kingwell (1995) offers civility as the foundation for
“just talking” necessary for democratic societies to function. Bone, Griffin,
and Scholz (2008) suggest that civility helps establish an invitational stance
between and among citizens with deeply held differences on issues of
importance in the public domain. Other scholars recognize civility’s
pragmatic functionality, proclaiming it a vital resource for business and
professional life (Davenport Sypher, 2004; Gill & Davenport Sypher, 2009;
Troester & Mester, 2007) and a necessary remedy for incivility and related
problematic behavior in the academy (Hickson & Roebuck, 2009; Omdahl, in
press; Twale & De Luca, 2008). P. M. Forni (2011b) connects civility to the
“thinking life”—one that is marked by reflection, a holistic sense of meaning,
and service to the larger human community. However, some scholars identify
civility and its communicative restraint as a problematic concept linked to
hegemonic formations of class and race (e.g., Ashcraft & Allen, 2003;
Cheney & Ashcraft, 2007; Kisselburgh & Dutta, 2009; Lozano-Reich ← 2 | 3
→ & Cloud, 2009), a dangerous and superficial substitute for political critique
(Mayo, 2002). The very idea of civility is contested terrain.
I propose that civil communicative practices fostering coordinated action
in institutional settings establish a minimal common ground of the good
(Arnett et al., 2009; Bok, 1995) for life together in organizations. The history
of civility as an interactive norm reflects an ongoing concern for order and
structure in public and private life that permits the accomplishment of
personal, institutional, and community goals (Carter, 1998; Davetian, 2009;
Elias, 1978, 1982; Forni, 2002, 2008, 2011a; Kingwell, 1995, 2000; Selznick,
1992/1994), contested though these goals may be at particular points in time.
What Sypnowich (2000) referred to as “the accessibility of the modern idea of
civility” (p. 110) suggests that behavior showing consideration toward others
is a pragmatic practice adoptable by, and efficacious for, any group, class, or
status level. The constraints of civility permit honesty in communicative
action and the free exchange of ideas (p. 111), protecting and promoting
public discourse necessary to accomplish shared goals in civil society (Arnett
et al., 2009; Kingwell, 1995; Sellars, 2004). This framing of civility is
consistent with Patton’s (2004) distinction between a “civility that supports a
common good for an inclusive collectivity” (p. 65) and a hegemonic civility
that suppresses and silences opposition in support of an oppressive status quo.
The purpose of this project is to place civility within a theoretical
framework of ethical interpersonal communicative action in organizations,
with a specific focus on the role of the professions in embracing a
communicative ethic of civility that remains an implicit element of the
historic legacy of the professional ideal in the United States, as articulated by
Kimball (1995). At the broadest level, I conceptualize civility in interpersonal
interaction in public and private settings as a communicative virtue (Fritz,
2011). From a virtue ethics perspective, behaving with civility toward others
is an integral part of a flourishing human existence that defines the good of,
and for, human life; civility contributes to the well-being of others with whom
one comes into contact in the course of daily life. Civility, within this general
framework, is a communicative virtue that protects and promotes respect for
human beings and supports the various social contexts within which human
lives find meaning and significance (Laverty, 2009).
In the workplace, treating others with civility creates a constructive,
humane environment that makes the context of work functional and even
enjoyable (Fritz, 2011; Omdahl, 2006; Davenport Sypher, 2004). Workplaces
that encourage civil interaction among employees reap the benefits of
increased employee satisfaction and productivity and decreased personal and
organizational harms associated with incivility (Pearson & Porath, 2009;
Troester & Mester, 2007). The work of most ← 3 | 4 → occupations requires
coordinated action carried out in some form of organizational setting, which
civility can sustain and foster. This understanding of civility resonates with
emerging work on positive organizing (Fredrickson & Dutton, 2008) that is
being explored by organizational communication scholars (e.g., Lutgen-
Sandvik, Riforgiate, & Fletcher, 2011), a perspective that highlights a
generative, constructive approach to the workplace for the flourishing of
institutions and persons.
 Although all work done in organizational settings would appear to be
helped along by a work environment marked by civil interaction, professional
work— broadly conceived—seems particularly connected to an
understanding of a civil workplace as a necessary condition for excellent
practice. From the perspective of the professions, a civil work environment
creates conditions for the accomplishment of a larger project that contributes
something good and necessary to the world, one of the defining features of
the professions (Kimball, 1995). Kimball’s (1995) history of the professional
ideal in America traces shifts in the way professions have been understood in
the context of the larger society, highlights the increasingly broad scope of
occupations considered to be professions, and notes changes in conditions of
professional work that have brought a closer connection between occupations
once considered to be autonomous and the contemporary organizational
context within which civility as a professional interactive norm becomes
relevant. Kimball’s work, along with Sullivan’s (1995, 2005) exploration of
the crisis and promise of professionalism in America, provides a background
for the relationship of the professions to the communicative virtue of civility.

The Professions: A Legacy of Civility

The professions hold a unique role in the public imagination of the United
States as a social ideal (Sullivan, 2005, p. 4). The four original “learned”
professions are traditionally identified as theology, law, medicine, and
education (Kimball, 1995). Today, the professions represent a wide variety of
occupations engaged in specialized and/or knowledge work in a service
economy. In previous centuries, practitioners of professions were assumed to
work, for the most part, with a high degree of autonomy (Kimball, 1995). In
our contemporary moment, professionals are employed primarily in
organizational settings (Kultgen, 1988; Noordegraaf, 2007; Sullivan, 2005;
Wallace, 1993, 1995), where they work with members of other professions
and support staff who make the conditions for their practice possible.
Professionals as a group have been characterized as having an esoteric
knowledge base essential to fulfilling society’s needs, as working with
relative autonomy, as controlling access to those who practice a given
profession, and as espousing an ethic of service (Barber, 1963; Brien, 1998;
Friedson, 1991; Larson, 1977; Moore, ← 4 | 5 → 1970; Sullivan, 2005). As
Sullivan (2005) noted, the professions are high-status occupations that bring
power and privilege to their members. The scope of occupations claiming
professional status has increased over time (Hatch, 1988; Oakley & Cocking,
2001); the category of “profession” now encompasses a wide range of job
types, including architecture, engineering, forestry, journalism, management,
scientific agriculture, and social work (Blackburn & McGhee, 2004; Borden,
2007; Gardner, Csikszentmihalyi, & Damon, 2001; Schein, 1968; Squires,
2005; Sullivan, 2005), to name a representative few.
Kimball (1995) examined rhetorical moments characterizing changes in
societal images of, and expectations for, the set of occupations categorized as
professions, including how persons who practice professions are expected to
behave in personal and professional life and the place of the professions in the
marketplace, community, and larger public sphere. Throughout these changes,
at least two enduring features have continued to characterize both the
“original” professions and the extended set of occupations that now claim
professional status: an expectation of relative autonomy stemming from their
specialized knowledge base, and an expectation of adherence to ethical
norms, which professionals bring to the work-places in which they practice.
The ethical norms binding members of professions and guiding their practice
define what it means to be a “good” member of a profession (Borden, 2007;
Brien, 1998; Pritchard, 2006). These ethical norms provide a basis for self-
evaluation of professions as communities of practice, defining the good that is
protected and promoted by a given profession.
For professionals, who now conduct most of their work in organizational
environments populated with other professionals and members of affiliated
occupations, civility as an interactive norm should be relevant not only as a
feature of the work environment that permits professional practice to take
place with a minimum of disruption, but also as a salient communicative
element of professional identity, given the educational background, vocational
dignity, and service orientation historically associated with the professions
(Kimball, 1995; Sullivan, 2005). It might be expected that professionals
would consider civil communicative behavior toward others an indispensable
part of a professional ethic, that professionals would comport themselves in
interaction with others with a high degree of civility—courtesy, tact, and
forbearance—befitting the identity of a member of what is still considered in
the public imagination to be a respected and honored calling (Sullivan, 2005).
Growing evidence, however, suggests that professional employees’ interaction
is marked by incivility to an alarming degree (e.g., Gonthier & Morrissey,
2002; Sutton, 2007; Twale & De Luca, 2008). Furthermore, professionals as a
group have experienced a decline in attributed respect and status, stemming
← 5 | 6 → from what Sullivan identified as a public deconstruction of the
professional ethos. The ideal of the “good professional” has been challenged
as the landscape of the social milieu has changed over the last half century.
 To some extent, this challenge stems from the uneasy relationship between
the ideals of democracy and the assumed privilege embodied in the very idea
of a profession. As Hatch (1988) noted, “Americans admire professionals for
their dedication to public service and revile them for the extent to which such
claims serve as masks for financial greed” (p. 2). Many scholars have
articulated concerns related to the professions in the marketplace, noting
increased cynicism and doubt on the part of the general public accompanying
discovery and revelation of professionals’ unethical behavior (Kultgen, 1988;
Ohman, 2003; Sullivan, 2005). Professionals are characterized by critics as
status- and power-hungry oppressors who hoard the deposit of indispensable
knowledge—specially trained and valuable members of society who have
abandoned professed accountability to the larger public and an ethic of
service for pursuit of private gain (e.g., Kimball, 1995; Kultgen, 1988;
Larson, 1977; Ohman, 2003, pp. 65–69; Pellegrino, Veatch, & Langan, 1991,
p. vii). The larger picture within which these issues arise includes concerns
about the nature of life in an “organization society” that threatens colonization
by corporations (Deetz, 1992) and control of more and more of workers’ lives
in the service of profit and accumulation (MacIntyre, 2007).
Scholars have answered this critique in volumes written to rehabilitate the
“good work” (e.g., Gardner et al., 2001) of the professions, noting the
commitment to “responsibility at work” (Gardener, 2007) that many
professionals exhibit and addressing “the crisis and promise of
professionalism” in the United States (Sullivan, 2005). These writers typically
examine the role of the professional with regard to service to the larger
community—the call to envision responsibility beyond immediate profit and
self-interest, a concern paralleled by a move toward social responsibility in
the marketplace engaged by corporations in the last decades (e.g., Carroll,
2008). These volumes, however, do not typically address the crisis of
incivility in interpersonal interaction in the workplace (Fritz, 2012a), a
condition that affects the well-being of all employees as well as the health of
organizations within which most professionals carry out their vocations and,
hence, affects the amount and quality of personal and institutional resources
available for both ordinary tasks of the workplace and civic participation.
Professionals are uniquely poised to address the crisis of incivility in the
work-place, beginning with their own day-to-day practices in organizational
settings. Professionals, marked historically by a tradition of service to the
human community defined by their position as bearers of elements of the
“good” in life necessary ← 6 | 7 → for human flourishing (Oakley &
Cocking, 2001), develop incipient habits of service as a result of their conduct
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with these every kind of sexual artifice is practised (Dempwolf,
“Medical Notes on the Tauni Islanders,” published in the Zeitschrift
für Ethnologie, 1902, p. 335).
Thus between primitive and civilized races in these respects there
are no important differences; and according to recent researches we
find the same may be said with regard to civilized nations, that there
is no difference between town and country.[478] I quote here the
account given by an experienced author sixty years ago:
“People usually believe that in the country morals are much better than in the
towns, but this belief is quite erroneous. Brothels and professional prostitutes
naturally cannot exist in the country, but nearly every peasant-girl in the country is
equivalent to a secret prostitute. It is incredible what sexual excesses go on
between the masculine and feminine inhabitants of the villages. Every barn, every
shed, every haystack, every copse, bears witness to this. Especially
disadvantageous to morals is it when in the heat of summer persons of different
sexes work side by side, half undressed, in remote fields for the whole day, and lie
down to rest side by side.”[479]

We may here allude to a fact that we shall have to discuss later—

that young men, after the conclusion of their term of military
service, carry back with them to the country the knowledge of
sexual excesses and perversities which they have acquired in the
town, and thus diffuse these tendencies more and more widely.
Since sexual anomalies constitute a phenomenon generally
characteristic of humanity, race and nationality, as such, have less
to do with the matter than is commonly imagined. The Mongol and
the Malay are not less voluptuous than the Semites, or than many
Aryan races. Among the Semites, the Arabs and the Turks are pre-
eminently sexually perverse nations. They seek sexual gratification
indifferently in the female harem and in the boys’ brothel (see
numerous descriptions of travellers on the moral customs of Turkey,
the Levant, Cairo, Morocco, the Arabian Soudan, the Arabs in Africa,
etc.). Among the Aryan races the Aryans of India must be considered
pre-eminent as refined practitioners of psychopathia sexualis, which
they have reduced to a system. In addition to recognizing forty-
eight figuræ Veneris (different postures in sexual intercourse), they
practise every possible variety of sexual perversion; and they have in
various textbooks[480] a systematic introduction to sexual immorality.
Here there is manifestly no trace of morbid conditions, of
degeneration, or of psychopathia; it is simply a matter of popular
manners and customs. Sexual perversion among the Greeks and the
Romans, two other Aryan nations, is too well known to need detailed
description. In modern Europe the French were at one time believed
to lead the way in sexual artifices. For a long time this has ceased to
be true, and, in fact, never was true. They do, indeed, excel, if one
may use the expression, all other nations in the outward technique
and in the elegance of their sexual excesses. To them from very
early times there has been ascribed a certain preference for the
skatological element in the sexual life; but according to the recent
researches of Friedrich S. Krauss regarding the Slavs, published in
his “Anthropophyteia,” this alleged pre-eminence is extremely
doubtful. That among the Slavs sexual perversions of every kind
have an extraordinarily wide diffusion has been shown by this
investigator by the collection of an enormous mass of material. It is
also very generally known that the English from early days have
exhibited a marked tendency to sadistic practices, and especially to
flagellation. I will return later to this remarkable phenomenon. The
French accuse the Germans of an especial tendency to
homosexuality (le vice Allemand), but there are no sufficient grounds
for this accusation. In psychopathia sexualis, the Germans are as
cosmopolitan as they are in other respects.
With regard to the age of the individual in relation to sexual
perversions, the frequency of these is greater after puberty than
before,[481] and the frequency increases with advancing years. The
time at which the imagination unfolds its greatest activity, the
commencement of manhood, is extremely favourable to the
origination of sexual aberrations, and to their becoming habitual
practices; and, again, the age at which the sexual powers begin to
decline, and when for their incitation new stimuli are needed, is one
at which abnormal varieties of sexual gratification frequently
originate.[482]
Which sex is more inclined to abnormalities of the sexual impulse,
the male or the female?
 The primitively more powerful sexual impulsive life of man in
association with his greater use of alcohol makes him distinctly more
inclined to follow sexual bypaths than woman, whose sexuality at
first develops very gradually, and experiences, in consequence of
motherhood, powerful inhibitions to the development of any sexual
anomalies. On the other hand, the much more difficult
development of voluptuous sensations in women, by means of
normal coitus, is not rarely the cause of a tendency to perverse
varieties of sexual intercourse. They often seduce man in this
direction, and excel him in the discovery of sexual artifices. Among
primitive races, where the relationships are clearest, this is still easily
recognizable, whereas by civilization the matter is often obscured. All
the artificial deformities of the male genital organs amongst savages,
which give the man much more trouble than pleasure, but which, on
the other hand, increase the voluptuous enjoyment of the woman
during the sexual act, cannot otherwise be explained except on the
ground of an original demand on the part of women. To this
category belong incisions in the glans penis, and the implanting of
small stones in the wounds until the skin has a warty appearance
(Java); perforation of the penis to enable rods beset with bristles,
feathers, rods with balls (the well-known “ampallang” of the Dyaks
of Borneo), bodkins, rings, bell-shaped apparatus, to be inserted
through these perforations; the wrapping up of the penis in strips of
fur with the hair outwards, or enveloping it in a leaden cylinder, etc.
The feminine imagination has proved inexhaustible in this direction.
Miklucho-Maclay, the great authority on the sexual psychology of the
savage races of the Malay Archipelago and the South Sea Islands,
declares it to be extremely probable that all these customs and
all these apparatus were invented by or for women. The
women reject all men who do not possess these stimulating
apparatus on the penis. Finsch and Kubary confirm this, and state
that in most cases it is the frigidity of the women which makes them
desire such means of artificial stimulation. Among civilized races,
also, abundant material can be collected with regard to sexual
perversities among women, as has recently been done by Paul de
Régla in “Les Perversités de la Femme” (Paris, 1904), and by René
Schwaeblé in “Les Détraquées de Paris” (Paris, 1904).
The following case shows that European women sometimes
demand artificial changes in the male genital organs, in order to
increase their voluptuous sensations. Some years ago a man, fifty
years of age, was admitted into the syphilis wards of the Laibacher
Hospital. The discharge from the penis was, however, found to be
due merely to balanitis. On examination the greatly enlarged penis
was found to be perforated by rod-shaped objects, and an incision
through the skin showed that these were pins and hairpins. The pins
were about two inches long, with brass heads the size of a
peppercorn, and they were at least ten in number. One of the pins
was run partly into the testicle. After the foreign objects had been
removed, the man informed us that his mistress had stuck these in,
in order that she might experience more ardent sensations. The pins
were all subcutaneous; several of them ran right round the penis.
Social differences in respect of the frequency of sexual
perversions do not exist. Sexual perversions are just as widely
diffused among the lower classes as among the upper. A. Ferguson,
Havelock Ellis, Tarnowsky, and J. A. Symonds are all in agreement
regarding this fact, which, indeed, in view of the anthropological
conception of psychopathia sexualis, does not require additional
explanation.
Finally, we come to the last and most important point—to the
question of the relation of culture and civilization to psychopathia
sexualis. Even though psychopathia sexualis is in its essence
independent of culture, is a general human phenomenon, still we
cannot fail to recognize that civilization has exercised a certain
influence upon the external mode of manifestation, and also upon
the inner psychical configuration of sexual aberrations. Especially as
regards the latter—the psychical relationships—the perversity of the
civilized man is more complicated than that of primitive man,
although in essence the two are identical.
The modern civilized man is in respect of his sexuality a peculiar
dual being. The sexuality within him leads a kind of independent
existence, notwithstanding its intimate relationship to the whole of
the rest of his spiritual life. There are moments in which, even in
men of lofty spiritual nature, pure sexuality becomes separated from
love, and manifests itself in its utterly elementary nature beyond
good and evil. I expressed earlier the idea that this frequent
phenomenon reminded me of the “monomania” of the older
alienists. “Il y a en nous deux êtres, l’être moral et la bête: l’être
moral sait ce que mérite l’amour véritable, la bête aspire à la fange
où on la pousse,” we find in a French erotic work (“Impressions
d’une Fille” par Léna de Mauregard, vol. i., pp. 57, 68; Paris, 1900).
No other human impulsive manifestation is so ill adapted as
sexuality to the coercion and conventionality which civilization
necessarily entails. Carl Hauptmann, in an interesting socio-
psychological study, “Unsere Wirklichkeit” (“Our Reality”; Munich,
1902), has described very impressively this frightful conventionality,
especially characteristic of our own time, which so painfully
represses the “reality” of love, suppresses everything primitive in it,
banishes it into the darkness of its own interior, and only allows the
conventionally sanctioned forms of sexual love to subsist. This
coercion, this outward pressure, develops a volcano of elementary
sexuality, which usually slumbers, but may suddenly break out in
eruption, and give free vent to excesses of the wildest nature.
Dingelstedt in his poem “Ein Roman,” has excellently described this
condition:
 “Wenn du die Leidenschaft willst kennen lernen,
Musst du dich nur nicht aus der Welt entfernen.
Such’ sie nicht auf in friedlicher Idylle,
In strohgedeckter und begnügter Stille...
Da suche sie in festlich vollem Saale
Bei Spiel und Tanz, an feierlichem Mahle,
Dort, eingeschnürt in Form und Zwang und Sitte,
Thront sie wie Banquos Geist in ihrer Mitte.”

[“If you wish to learn to know passion,

You must, above all, not remove yourself from the world.
Do not look for it in a peaceful idyll,
In padded and satisfied quietude....
Look for it in the full festal hall,
At the game and the dance, at the brilliant banquet;
There, entrapped amid form, and coercion, and custom,
Enthroned, like Banquo’s ghost, it sits amid the throng.”]

Similarly, Charles Albert[483] remarks:

“If love nowadays so often manifests itself in the form of aberration or passion,
this is almost always to be explained by the hindrances of every kind which have
been opposed to it. No other feeling is so hindered, opposed, detested, and
loaded with material and moral fetters. We know how education makes a
beginning in this way, declaring that love is something forbidden, and how the
hardness of economic life continues the process. Hardly has a young man or a
young girl gone out into life, hardly have they begun to feel their way into society,
but they encounter a thousand difficulties which are opposed to their living out
their life from a sexual point of view. How would it be possible that, in the limits of
such a society, love could become anything else but a fixed idea of the individual,
and how could it fail to give rise to continuous restlessness? Nature does not allow
herself to be inhibited by our artificial social arrangements. The need for love
within us remains active; it cries out in unsatisfied desire; and when no answer is
forthcoming, beyond the echo of its own pain, it takes a perverse form. The love
which is prevented from obtaining complete satisfaction and repose is to many an
intensely painful torment.... The over-rich imagination and the unsatisfied longing
give rise to the most horrible and abnormal forms of love. Above all, in a society
which will make no room for love, the love-passion must give rise to the greatest
devastation. The impulse to love which is repressed by the organization of society
does not only fight violently for air—the inevitable consequence of any pressure—
but it discovers also all those artifices and corruptions which are supposed to
make the enjoyment of love more intense. Conscious of being despised by society,
it endeavours to regain by violence what is wanting to it in sensuality.”

The struggle for reality in love, for the elementary and the
primitive, manifests itself in the search for the greatest possible
contrast to the conventional, to the commonly sanctioned mode of
sexual activity. Love cries out for “nature,” and comes thereby to the
“unnatural,” to the coarsest, commonest dissipation. This
connexion has been already explained (pp. 322-325). Certain
temporary phenomena exhibit also this fact—for example, the
remarkable preference for the most brutal, the coarsest, the
commonest dances, mere limb dislocations, such as the cancan, the
croquette (machicha), the cake-walk, and other wild negro dances,
which rejoice the modern public more than the most beautiful and
gracious spiritual ballet. It was only when the above-described
connexion became clear to me that I was able to understand the
remarkable alluring power of these dances, which had hitherto been
incomprehensible to me.
An additional factor which favours the origination of sexual
perversions is the unrest always connected with the advance of
civilization, the haste and hurry, the more severe struggle for
existence, the rapid and frequent change of new impressions. Fifty
years ago the celebrated alienist Guislain exclaimed:
“What is it with which our thoughts are filled? Plans, novelties, reforms. What is
it that we Europeans are striving for? Movement, excitement. What do we obtain?
Stimulation, illusion, deception.”[484]

There is no longer any time for quiet, enduring love, for an inward
profundity of feeling, for the culture of the heart. The struggle for
life and the intellectual contest of our time leaves the possibility only
for transient sensations; the shorter they are, the more violent, the
more intense must they be, in order to replace the failing grande
passion of former times. Love becomes a mere sensation, which in
a brief moment must contain within itself an entire world. Modern
youth eagerly desires such experience of a whole world by means
of love. The everlasting feeling of our classic period had been
transformed, more especially among our leading spirits, into a
passionate yearning to reflect within themselves truly the spirit of
the time, to live through in themselves all the unrest, all the joy, all
the sorrow, of modern civilization.
From this there results a peculiar, more spiritual configuration of
modern perversity, a distinctive spiritualization of psychopathia
sexualis, a true wandering journey, an “Odyssey” of the spirit,
throughout the wide province of sexual excesses. Without doubt the
French have gone furthest in this direction, and the names of
Baudelaire, Barbey d’Aurevilly, Verlaine, Hannon, Haraucourt, Jean
Larocque, and Guy de Maupassant, indicate nearly as many peculiar
spiritual refinements and enrichments of the purely sensual life.
We have no longer to deal with the pure love of reflection, as in
the case of Kierkegaard and Grillparzer, and in the writings of young
Germany, where, indeed, reflection predominates, but which still
more extends to the direction of higher love. Contrasted with this
is the simple lust of the senses, by means of which new psychical
influences are to be obtained. Voluptuousness becomes a cerebral
phenomenon, ethereal. In this way the most remarkable, unheard-
of, sensory associations appear in the province of sexuality—true fin-
de-siècle products which are, above all, specifically modern, and
could not possibly exist in former times. For it is always the same
play of emotion, the same effects, the same terminal results:
ordinary voluptuousness. The dream of Hermann Bahr, of “non-
sexual voluptuousness,” and the replacement of the animal impulse
by means of finer organs, is only a dream. The elemental sexual
impulse resists every attempt at dismemberment and sublimation. It
returns always unaltered, always the same. It is vain to expect new
manifestations of this impulse. Such efforts end either in bodily and
mental impotence, or else in sexual perversities. In these
relationships the imagination of civilized man is unable to create
novelties in the essence; it can do so only as regards the objective
manifestations. This is confirmed by the increase of purely ideal
sexual perversities in connexion with certain spiritual tendencies of
our time. Martial d’Estoc, in his book, “Paris Eros” (Paris, 1903), has
given a clear description of these peculiar spiritual modifications of
sexual aberrations. (It is interesting to note that Schopenhauer
remarks, in his “Neue Paralipomena,” pp. 234 and 235: “The caprices
arising from the sexual impulse resemble a will-o’-the-wisp. They
deceive us most effectively; but if we follow them, they lead us into
the marsh and disappear.”)

APPENDIX
SEXUAL PERVERSIONS DUE TO DISEASE
It is the immortal service of Casper and von Krafft-Ebing to have
insisted energetically upon the fact that numerous individuals
whose vita sexualis is abnormal are persons suffering from disease.
This is their monumentum ære perennius in the history of medicine
and of civilization. Purely medical, anatomical, physical, and
psychiatric investigations show beyond question that there are many
persons whose abnormal sexual life is pathologically based.
I shall not here discuss the peculiar borderland state between
health and disease, the existence of which can be established in
many sexually perverse individuals; I shall not refer to the
“abnormalities,” the “psychopathic deficiencies,” the “unbalanced,”
etc.; nor shall I discuss the question of the significance of the
stigmata of degeneration, because these will be adequately dealt
with in connexion with the forensic consideration of punishable
sexual perversions.
Here we shall speak only of actual and easily determined diseases
which possess a causal importance in the origination and activity of
sexual perversions. The great majority of these are, naturally,
mental disorders.
Von Krafft-Ebing, to whom we owe the most important
observations regarding the pathological etiology of sexual
perversions, enumerates the following conditions: Psychical
developmental inhibitions (idiocy and imbecility), acquired weak-
mindedness (after mental disorders, apoplexy, injuries to the head,
syphilis, in consequence of general paralysis), epilepsy, periodical
insanity, mania, melancholia, hysteria, paranoia.
Among these, epilepsy possesses the greatest importance.[485] It
comes into play much more frequently as a causal morbid
influence in the case of sexually perverse actions and offences than
has hitherto been believed. The psychiatrist Arndt maintains that
wherever an abnormal sexual life exists, we must always consider
the possibility of epileptic influence. Lombroso assumes that all
premature and peculiar instances of satyriasis are instances of larval
epilepsy. He gives several examples in support of this view, and also
a case of Macdonald’s which illustrates the connexion between
epilepsy and sexual perversity.[486] Especially in the so-called
epileptic “confusional states” do we meet with sexually perverse
actions; exhibitionism and other manifestations of sexual activity
coram publico are frequently referable to epileptic disease. Similar
impulsive sexual activities and similar confusional states are seen
after injuries to the head and in alcoholic intoxication, also
after severe exhaustion. Many cases of “periodic psychopathia
sexualis” are due to epilepsy.
Senile dementia and paralytic dementia (general paralysis of
the insane), also severe forms of neurasthenia and hysteria,
often change the sexual life in a morbid direction, and favour the
origin of sexual perversions.
It is a fact of great interest that Tarnowsky and Freud attribute to
syphilis an important rôle in the pathogenesis of sexual anomalies.
In 50 % of his sexual pathological cases Freud found that the
abnormal sexual constitution was to be regarded as the last
manifestation of a syphilitic inheritance (Freud, op. cit., p. 74).
Tarnowsky observed that congenital syphilitics, and also persons
whose parents had been syphilitic, but who themselves had never
exhibited any definite symptoms of the disease, were apt later to
show manifestations of a perverse sexual sensibility (Tarnowsky, op.
cit., pp. 34 and 35). Obviously this is to be explained by the
deleterious influence upon the nervous system (perhaps by
means of toxins?) which syphilis is also supposed to exert in
the causation of tabes dorsalis and general paralysis of the
insane. When investigating the clinical history of cases of sexual
perversion, it appears that previous syphilis is a fact to which some
importance should be attached.[487]
From syphilis we pass to consider direct physical abnormalities
and morbid changes in the genital organs as causes of sexual
anomalies. In women prolapsus uteri sometimes leads to perverse
gratification of the sexual impulse—for example, by pædication;[488]
in men, shortness of the frænum preputii plays a similar part,[489]
also phimosis. Wollenmann reports the case of a young man
suffering from phimosis, who, at the first attempt at coitus,
experienced severe pain, and since that time had an antipathy to
normal sexual intercourse. He passed under the influence of a
seducer to the practice of mutual masturbation. Only after operative
treatment of the phimosis did his inclination towards the male sex
pass away, and the sexual perversion then completely
disappeared.[490]
[456] Hermann Joseph Löwenstein, “De Mentis Aberrationibus ex Partium
Sexualium Conditione Abnormi Oriundis” (Bonn, 1823).
[457] Joseph Häussler, “The Relations of the Sexual System to the
Psyche” (Würzburg, 1826).
[458] Heinrich Kaan, “Psychopathia Sexualis” (Leipzig, 1844).
[459] R. von Krafft-Ebing, “Psychopathia Sexualis” (Stuttgart, 1882).
[460] We must not omit to mention the fact that a little earlier the French
physician Moreau de Tours published a comprehensive work upon
psychopathia sexualis, entitled “Des Aberrations du Sens
Génésique” (Paris, 1880).
[461] S. Freud, “Three Essays in Contribution to the Sexual Theory,” p.
70.
[462] Cf. the interesting remarks of G. H. C. Lippert, “Mankind in a State
of Nature,” p. 1 et seq. (Elberfeld, 1818).
[463] Christian Muff, “What is Civilization?” pp. 30, 31 (Halle, 1880).
[464] G. L. N. Delvincourt, “De la Mucite Génito-Sexuelle,” p. 64 (Paris,
1834). Apt remarks on the alleged degeneration of the French are
to be found also in the work of P. Näcko, “The Alleged Degeneration
 of the Latin Races, more Especially of the French,” published in
Archives for Racial and Social Biology, 1906, vol. iii.
[465] As, for example, Immermann, in his work “Epigonen,” published at
the same period (1836), assumes. In the mouth of the physician he
puts the following words: “The physician has a great task to
perform in the present day. Diseases, especially nervous troubles, to
which for a number of years the human race has been especially
disposed, are a modern product.” Cf. Leopold Hirschberg, “Medical
Matters as dealt with in General Literature: the Judgment of a
Member of the Laity regarding Nervousness in the Year 1876,”
published in Medizinische Wochenschrift, 1906, No. 41, p 428.
Seventy years ago the German people was “nervous”; thirty-four
years before Sedan, thirty years after Jena! Therefore neither Jena
nor Sedan can be connected with the nervous “degeneration.” The
authors of the eighteenth century (!) made similar complaints of the
nervousness of their time, upon which Cullen and Brown founded
their medical theories.
[466] J. Pohl-Pincus, “The Diseases of the Human Hair, and the Care of
the Hair,” third edition, p. 57 (Leipzig, 1885).
[467] Carl Bleibtreu, “Paradoxes the Conventional Lies,” sixth edition, pp.
1, 2 (Berlin, 1888).
[468] See “Nature and Man,” E. Ray Lankester’s Romanes Lecture, 1905.
—Translator.
[469] G. Hirth, “Hereditary Enfranchisement,” published in “Ways to
Freedom,” pp. 106-127 (Munich, 1903).
[470] Näcke’s thesis is in agreement with this, that “all sexual abnormal
practices in an asylum are for the most part much more rare
than the laity, or even many physicians, imagine.” Cf. P. Näcke,
“Some Psychologically Obscure Cases of Sexual Aberrations in the
Asylum,” published in the Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages,
vol. v., p. 196 (Leipzig, 1903). See also, by the same author,
“Problemi nel Campo delle Psicopatie Sessuali,” in Archivio delle
Psicopatie Sessuali, 1896; “Sexual Perversities in the Asylum,” in the
Wiener klinische Rundschau, 1899, Nos. 27-30.
[471] S. Freud, op. cit., pp. 19, 20.
[472] A. Hoche, “The Problem of the Forensic Condemnation of Sexual
Transgressions,” published in the Neurologisches Centralblatt, 1896,
p. 58.
[473] Ploss-Bartels, “Das Weib in der Natur- und Volkerkunde,” eighth
edition, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1906).
[474] Mantegazza, “Anthropological and Historical Studies on the Sexual
Relationship of Mankind.”
[475] F. S. Krauss, “Morals and Customs relating to Sexual Reproduction
among the Southern Slavs,” published in “Kryptadia,” vols. vi.-viii.
(Paris, 1899-1902); and in the larger work, “Anthropophyteia”
(Leipzig, 1904-1906).
[476] In all his works.
[477] Cf. Charles Darwin, “The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation
to Sex,” vol. i., p. 182 (2 vols., London, 1898).
[478] Cf. the inquiry of C. Wagner, containing extremely valuable material,
“The Sexual and Moral Relationships of the Protestant Agricultural
Population of the German Empire” (3 vols., Leipzig, 1897, 1898).
[479] “Prostitution in Berlin and its Victims,” p. 27 (Berlin, 1846).
[480] Cf. the detailed bibliography of these works in my “Contributions to
the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis,” vol. i., pp. 29, 30.
[481] Typical sexual perversions have, however, been observed even in
children, and it is this fact which has chiefly given rise to the
doctrine of the “congenital” character of sexual perversions.
[482] Cf. the remarks of the Marquis de Sade regarding the abnormal
sexuality of elderly men, in my “New Research Concerning the
Marquis de Sade,” pp. 421, 422 (Berlin, 1904).
[483] C. Albert, “Free Love,” p. 148.
[484] Joseph Guislain, “Clinical Lectures on Mental Diseases,” p. 229
(Berlin, 1854).
[485] Kowalewski, “Perversions of Sexual Sensibility in Epileptics,”
published in the Jahrbücher für Psychiatrie, 1887, vol. vii., No. 3.
[486] C. Lombroso, “Recent Advances in the Study of Criminology,” pp.
197-200 (Gera, 1899).—Tarnowsky has even described a form of
“epileptic pæderasty” (cf. B. Tarnowsky, “Morbid Phenomena of
Sexual Sensibility,” pp. 8, 51; Berlin, 1886).
[487] E. Laurent (“Morbid Love,” pp. 43-45; Leipzig, 1895) regards
tubercular inheritance as an important etiological factor of sexual
anomalies, for these occur more frequently in blonde, weakly
individuals, than in brunettes (?).
[488] Bacon, “The Effect of Developmental Anomalies and Disorders of
the Female Reproductive Organs upon the Sexual Impulse,”
published in the American Journal of Dermatology, 1899, vol. iii.,
No. 2.
[489] M. Féré, “Sexual Hyperæsthesia in Association with Shortness of the
Frænum Preputii,” published in the Monatshefte für praktische
Dermatologie, 1896, vol. xxiii., p. 45.
[490] A. G. Wollenmann, “Phimosis as a Cause of Perversion of Sexual
Sensibility,” published in Der ärztliche Praktiker, 1895, No. 23.
Matthaes has shown that morbid changes of the genital sphere or
its vicinity are apt to give rise to offences against morality (“The
Statistics of Offences against Morality,” published in the Archiv für
Kriminalanthropologie, 1903, vol. xii., p. 319).
 CHAPTER XVIII
MISOGYNY

“Thou priestess of the most flowery life, how is it possible

that such things should draw near to thee—one of those pale
phantoms, one of those general maxims, which philosophers
and moralists have invented in their despair of the human
race?”—G. Jung.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XVIII

Non-identity of misogyny with homosexuality — History of misogyny — Misogyny
among the Greeks — Christian misogyny the true source of the modern
contempt for women — Characteristics of modern misogyny — De Sade and
his modern disciples (Schopenhauer, Strindberg, Weininger) — Scientific
misogyny (Möbius, Schurtz, B. Friedländer, E. von Mayer) — Distinctions
between the individual varieties — Counteracting tendencies — Beginnings of
a new amatory life of the sexes — A common share in life — Freedom with,
not without, woman.

CHAPTER XVIII
Before proceeding to the consideration of homosexuality I propose
to give a brief account of contemporary misogyny, in order to avoid
confusing these two distinct phenomena under one head, and also
to avoid making the male homosexuals, who are often erroneously
regarded as “woman-haters,” responsible for the momentarily
prevalent spiritual epidemic of hatred of women. This would be a
gross injustice, because, in the first place, this movement has in no
way proceeded from the homosexual, but rather from heterosexual
individuals, such as Schopenhauer, Strindberg, etc.; and because, in
the second place, the homosexual as such are not misogynists at all,
and it is only a minority of them who shout in chorus to the
misogynist tirades of Strindberg and Weininger.
The misogynists form to-day a kind of “fourth sex,”[491] to belong
to which appears to be the fashion, or rather has once more
become the fashion, for misogyny is an old story. There have always
been times in which men have cried out: “Woman, what have I to do
with you? I belong to the century”;[492] times in which woman was
renounced as a soulless being, and the world of men became
intoxicated with itself, and was proud of its “splendid isolation.”
Of less importance is it that the Chinese since ancient times have
denied to woman a soul, and therewith a justification for
existence,[493] than that among the most highly developed civilized
races of antiquity such men as Hesiod, Simonides,[494] and, above
all, Euripides, were all fierce misogynists. In the “Ion,” the
“Hippolytus,” the “Hecuba,” and the “Cyclops” we find the most
incisive attacks on the female sex. The most celebrated passage is
that in the “Hippolytus” (verses 602-637, 650-655):
“Wherefore, O Jove, beneath the solar beams
That evil, woman, didst thou cause to dwell?
For if it was thy will the human race
Should multiply, this ought not by such means
To be effected; better in thy fane
Each votary, on presenting brass or steel,
Or massive ingots of resplendent gold,
Proportioned to his offering, might from thee
Obtain a race of sons, and under roofs
Which genuine freedom visits, unannoyed
By women, live.”[495]
 In this passage we have the entire quintessence of modern
misogyny. But Euripides betrays to us also the real motive of
misogyny. In a fragment of his we read “the most invincible of all
things is a woman”! Hinc illæ lacrimæ! It is only the men who are
not a match for woman, who do not allow woman as a free
personality to influence them, who are so little sure of
themselves that they are afraid of suffering at the hands of woman
damage, limitation, or even annihilation of their own individuality.
These only are the true misogynists.
It is indisputable that this Hellenic misogyny was closely
connected with the love of boys as a popular custom. To this we
shall return when we come to describe Greek pæderasty.
Among the Romans woman occupied a far higher position than
among the Greeks—a fact which the institution of the vestal virgins
alone suffices to prove. Among the Germans, also, woman was
regarded as worthy of all honour.
The true source of modern misogyny is Christianity—the
Christian doctrine of the fundamentally sinful, evil, devilish nature of
woman. A Strindberg, a Weininger, even a Benedikt Friedländer,
notwithstanding his hatred of priests—all are the last offshoots of a
movement against the being and the value of woman—a movement
which has persisted throughout the Christian period of the history of
the world.
“If I were asked,” says Finck,[496] “to name the most influential, refining
element of modern civilization, I should answer: ‘Woman, beauty, love, and
marriage’! If I were asked, however, to name the most inward and peculiar
essence of the early middle ages, my answer would be: ‘Deadly hostility to
everything feminine, to beauty, to love, and to marriage.’”

The history of medieval misogyny was described by J. Michelet in

his book “The Witch.” Since woman and the contact with woman
were regarded as radically evil, it followed that in theory and
practice asceticism was the ideal; celibacy was only the natural
consequence of this hatred of woman; so also were the later witch
trials the natural consequence. Therefore to this medieval misogyny,
in contrast with modern misogyny, which represents only a weak
imitation, we cannot deny a certain justification. The misogyny of
the middle ages was earnestly meant; but it has become to-day
mere phrase-making, dilettante imitation, and ostentation. In
contrast with the utterances of the modern misogynist, the coarse
abuse of women by such a writer as Abraham a Santa Clara has a
refreshing and amusing character.[497]
Modern misogyny is certainly an inheritance of Christian doctrine,
and a tradition handed down from much earlier times, but still it has
its own characteristic peculiarities. Misogyny is, however, now much
more an affair of satiety or disillusion than of belief or
conviction; whereas in the days of medieval Christianity belief and
conviction were the effective causal factors of misogyny. In addition,
among our neo-misogynists we have the factor of the spiritual
pride of a man who, from the standpoint of academic theoretical
culture (which to men of this kind appears the highest summit of
existence), looks down upon women, whom he regards as mentally
insignificant, while he sympathizes with her “physiological weak-
mindedness.” He smiles on her with pity, and completely overlooks
the profound life of emotion and feeling characteristic of every true
woman, which forms a counterpoise to any amount of purely
theoretical knowledge—quite apart from the fact that women of
intellectual cultivation are by no means rare.
If, in fact, we regard the lives of those who have reduced modern
misogyny to a system, we shall be able to detect the above-
mentioned causes in their personal experiences and impressions.
The first important modern advocate of misogyny, the Marquis de
Sade, lived an extremely unhappy married life, was deceived also in
a love relationship, and nourished his hatred of women by a
dissolute life and a consequent state of satiety.
And as regards Schopenhauer, who does not recall his unhappy
relations with his mother? For he who has really loved his mother,
he who has experienced the unutterable tenderness and self-
sacrifice of maternal love, can never become a genuine,
thoroughgoing woman-hater. But the mutual relationship of
Schopenhauer and his mother was rather hatred than love. Beyond
question, also, his infection with syphilis, to which I was the first to
draw attention, played a part in his subsequent hatred of women.
Strindberg, in his “Confessions of a Fool,” has himself offered us
the proof of the causal connexion between his misogyny and his
personal experiences and disillusions; and in Weininger’s book we
can read only too clearly that he had had no good fortune with
women, or had had disagreeable experiences in his relations with
them.
De Sade, who, perhaps, was not unknown to Schopenhauer,[498]
was the first advocate of consistent misogyny on principle. It is an
interesting fact, to which I have alluded in an earlier work (“Recent
Researches regarding the Marquis de Sade,” p. 433), that de Sade’s
and Schopenhauer’s opinions on the physical characteristics of
women are to some extent verbally identical. While Schopenhauer,
in his essay “On Women” (“Works,” ed. Grisebach, vol. v., p. 654),
speaks of the “stunted, narrow-shouldered, wide-hipped and short-
legged sex,” which only a masculine intellect when clouded by
sexual desire could possibly call “beautiful,” we find in the
“Juliette” (vol. iii., pp. 187, 188) of the Marquis de Sade the following
very similar remarks on the feminine body: “Take the clothes off one
of these idols of yours! Is it these two short and crooked legs which
have turned your head like this?” This physical hatefulness of
women corresponds to the mental hatefulness of which de Sade
gives a similar repellent picture (“Juliette,” vol iii., pp. 188, 189). In
all his works we find the same fanatical hatred of women.
Sarmiento, in “Aline et Valcour” (vol. ii., p. 115), would like to
annihilate all women, and calls that man happy who has learned to
renounce completely intercourse with this “debased, false, and
noxious sex.”
Quite in the spirit of de Sade, to whom the misogynists of the
Second Empire referred as an authority, Schopenhauer, in the
previously quoted essay “On Women,” Strindberg, in the
“Confessions of a Fool,” and Weininger, in “Sex and Character,”
preached contempt for the feminine nature;[499] and this seed has
fallen upon fruitful soil in modern youth. Every young blockhead
inflates himself with his “masculine pride,” and feels himself to be
the “knight of the spirit” in relation to the inferior sex; every
disillusioned and satiated debauchee cultivates (as a rule, indeed,
transiently) the fashion of misogyny, which strengthens his
sentiment of self-esteem. If we wish to speak at all of “physiological
weak-mindedness,” let us apply the term to this disagreeable type of
men. As Georg Hirth truly remarks (“Ways to Freedom,” p. 281),
such masculine arrogance is merely a variety of “mental defect.”
Unfortunately, this misogyny has intruded itself also into science.
The work of P. J. Möbius,[500] notwithstanding the esteem I feel for
the valuable services of the celebrated neurologist in other
departments, can only be termed an aberration, a lapsus calami.[501]
But he does not stand alone. The admirable work of Heinrich
Schurtz, also, upon “Age Classes and Associations of Men” (Berlin,
1902), is permeated by this misogynist aura; not less so is the
equally stimulating work, “The Vital Laws of Civilization” (Halle,
1904), by Eduard von Mayer. This book, in association with the
equally thoughtful and compendious work “The Renascence of Eros
Uranios” (Berlin, 1904), by Benedikt Friedländer, and in conjunction
with the efforts of Adolf Brand, the editor of the homosexual
newspaper Der Eigene, and Edwin Bab (cf. this writer’s “The
Woman’s Movement and the Love of Friends”; Berlin, 1904), to
found a special homosexual group demanding the “emancipation
of men,” have been the principal causes of the belief that the male
homosexuals are the true “repudiators of woman,” and that from
them has proceeded the increasing diffusion of modern misogyny. I
repeat that this connexion is true only for the above-named group;
that, on the contrary, genuine misogyny has been taught us by the
world’s typically heterosexual men, such as Schopenhauer and
Strindberg. Benedikt Friedländer and Eduard von Mayer preached,
above all, a “masculine civilization,” a deepening of the spiritual
relationships between men; whereas Strindberg and Schopenhauer,
and even Weininger, really leave us in uncertainty as to what they
imagine is to take woman’s place. All five agree in this, that the
“intercourse” of man with woman is to be limited as much as
possible; but only the two first-named openly and freely advocate
homosexual relationships, or at least a “physiological friendship” (B.
Friedländer), between men. Schopenhauer, Strindberg, and
Weininger did not venture to deduce these consequences. Yet this is
the necessary consequence of misogyny based on principle.
To the heterosexual men—and such men form an enormous
majority—the noble, ideal, asexual friendship of man for man
appears in quite another light from that in which it appears to the
misogynist, to whom it is to serve to replace sexual love, whereas
for heterosexual men friendship for other men is a valuable treasure
additional to the love of woman.
Is there, then, any reason for this contempt and hatred for
woman? Do not the signs increase on all hands to show us that new
relationships are forming between the sexes, that a number of new
points of contact of the spiritual nature are making their appearance
—in a word, that an entirely new, nobler, most promising
amatory life is developing? I will not fall into the contrary error to
misogyny and inscribe a dithyramb of praise to feminine nature, as
Wedde, Daumer, Quensel, Groddeck, and others, have done; but I
merely indicate the signs of the times when I say that woman also
is awakening! Woman is awakening to the entirely new existence
of a free personality, conscious of her rights and of her duties.
Woman, also, will have her share in the content and in the tasks of
life; she will not enslave us, as the misogynists clamour, for she
wishes to see free men by her side. What would become of woman
if men became slaves? How could slaves give love?
Life has to-day become a difficult task both for man and for
woman. Man and woman alike must endeavour to perform that task
with confidence in their respective powers; but each, also, must
have confidence in the powers of the other—a confidence which
becomes palpable in the form of love or friendship, so that those
who feel it have their own powers strengthened.
Not “Free from woman” is the watchword of the future, but “Free
with woman.”
[491] V. Hoffmann, in a bad novel, “Das vierte Geschlecht” (Berlin, 1902),
gives this name to the non-homosexual misogynists.
[492] Karl Gutzkow, “Säkularbilder,” vol. i., p. 55 (Frankfurt, 1846).
[493] In the Shi-king we find the following characterization of woman:

“Enough for her to avoid evil,

For what can a woman do that is good?”

Indian literature is also full of such ideas. Cf. H. Schurtz,

“Altersklassen und Männerbunde” (Age Classes and Associations of
Men), p. 52.
[494] Simonides considered that women were derived from various
animals. W. Schubert (“From the Berlin Collection of Papyri,”
published in the Vossische Zeitung, No. 23, January 15, 1907)
reproduces long fragments of a Greek anthology which collates
praise and blame of woman in the original words of the poets.
[495] I quote from “The Plays of Euripides in English,” in two volumes,
vol. ii., p. 136 (Everyman’s Library, Dent, London).—Translator.
[496] H. T. Finck, “Romantic Love and Personal Beauty,” vol. i., pp. 186,
187 (Breslau, 1894).
[497] Equally amusing is the misogynist “Alphabet de l’Imperfection et
Malice des Femmes,” by Jacques Olivier (Rouen, 1646), in which all
the bad qualities of woman, observed down to the year 1646, are
described with effective care and completeness.
[498] We know that Schopenhauer was a lover of erotic writings; a fuller
account of this matter will be found in Grisebach’s “Conversations
and Soliloquies of Schopenhauer.”
[499] That Nietzsche is wrongly accredited with misogyny is convincingly
proved by Helene Stocker (“Nietzsches Frauenfeindschaft,”
published in Zukunft, 1903; reprinted in “Love and Women,” pp. 65-
74; Minden, 1906).
[500] P. J. Möbius, “The Physiological Weak-mindedness of Woman,”
fourth edition (Halle, 1902). Näcke terms the recently deceased
Möbius the “German Lombroso,” in order by this term to indicate,
on the one hand, the man’s indubitable genius, and on the other
hand the superficiality and purely hypothetical character of his
scientific deductions.
[501] The grounds for this opinion were given in the fifth chapter.
 CHAPTER XIX
THE RIDDLE OF HOMOSEXUALITY

“Through Science to Justice!”—Magnus Hirschfeld.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XIX

Actual existence of original congenital homosexuality — Its distinction from
pseudo-homosexuality — Homosexuality an anthropological phenomenon, not
a manifestation of degeneration — Secondary origin of “homosexual
neurasthenia” — Rarity of stigmata of degeneration among homosexuals —
Early spontaneous appearance of homosexuality — As an essential product of
personality — Homosexuality in the child — Physical and mental
characteristics of completely developed homosexuality — Effeminate and virile
urnings — Physical peculiarities of the homosexual — Mental peculiarities —
Diffusion — Numbers — Ethnology of homosexuality — Earlier history and
literature — Celebrated homosexual individuals — Modes of activity of
homosexual love — Relations between homosexual and heterosexual
individuals — Mode of sexual intercourse — Examples — Social relationships
of the homosexual — Places of rendezvous — The “Allée des Veuves” of Paris
— An adventure of Victor Hugo’s — Urning clubs in the Second Empire —
Urning balls at Paris — Social relationships of the homosexuals of Berlin —
Meeting-places of urnings — Men’s balls in Berlin — Male prostitution — Male
brothels — Blackmail — § 175 — Criticism of this section — Demonstration of
the necessity for its repeal — Blackmail of homosexuals and suicide — Need
for the diffusion of general enlightenment regarding homosexuality — Activity
of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee — Homosexuality in women — The
smaller percentage of genuine female homosexuals — “Thoughts of a Solitary
Woman” — Relations of homosexual women to men — The Woman’s
 Movement and homosexuality — Sexual relationships of tribades — The
“protectrices” — Social life of tribades — Lesbian prostitution.
Appendix: Theory of Homosexuality. — Homosexuality a heterogeneous
sexuality — Insufficiency of the theory of intermediate stages — My own
theory of homosexuality — The significance of homosexuality in relation to
civilization.

CHAPTER XIX
Homosexuality—love between man and man (uranism), or
between woman and woman (tribadism), a congenital state,
or one spontaneously appearing in very early childhood—I
consider “a riddle,” because, in fact, the more closely in recent years
I have come to know it, the more I have endeavoured to study it
scientifically, the more enigmatical, the more obscure, the more
incomprehensible, it has become to me. But it exists. About that
there is no doubt.
In the years 1905 and 1906 I was occupied almost exclusively
with the problem of homosexuality, and I had the opportunity of
seeing and examining a very large number of genuine homosexual
individuals, both men and women. I was able to observe them
during long periods, both at home and in public life. I learnt to know
them—their mode of life, their habits, their opinions, their whole
activity, not only in relation to one another, but also in relation to
other non-homosexual individuals and to persons of the opposite
sex. This experience taught me the indubitable fact that the diffusion
of true homosexuality as a congenital natural phenomenon is far
greater than I had earlier assumed;[502] so that I find myself now
compelled to separate from true homosexuality the other category of
acquired, apparent, occasional homosexuality, of the
existence of which I am now, as formerly, firmly convinced. I
denote this latter by the term “pseudo-homosexuality,” and treat
of it in a separate chapter.
Formerly I believed that true homosexuality was only a variety of
pseudo-homosexuality—in a sense larval pseudo-homosexuality.
Now, however, I must recognize that true homosexuality constitutes
a special well-defined group, sharply distinguishable from all
forms of pseudo-homosexuality. From my medical observations,
which have been as exact and objective as possible, I must draw the
conclusion that among thoroughly healthy individuals of both
sexes, not to be distinguished from other normal human beings,
there appears in very early childhood, and certainly not evoked
by any kind of external influence, an inclination, and after puberty
a sexual impulse, towards persons of the same sex; and that
this inclination and this impulse are as little to be altered as it is
possible to expel from a heterosexual man the impulse towards
woman.
Above all, in this definition of true original homosexuality I lay the
stress upon the word “healthy”; for von Krafft-Ebing, though he
admits the existence of congenital homosexuality yet regards it as a
morbid degenerative phenomenon, as the expression of severe
hereditary taint and of a neuro-psychopathic constitution; and this
view is shared by many alienists.[503] Now, we must admit that a
portion of genuine homosexuals—just as is the case with a portion
of heterosexual individuals—possess such a morbid constitution; and
we must acknowledge that yet another portion exhibit
manifestations of nervousness and neurasthenia, which, beyond
doubt, have developed during life out of an originally healthy state,
in consequence of the struggle for life, the painful experience of
being “different” from the great mass of people, etc.; but we
ascertain that a third, and, in fact, the largest, section of original
homosexuals are thoroughly healthy, free from hereditary taint,
physically and psychically normal.
I have observed a great number of homosexuals belonging to all
ages and occupations in whom not the slightest trace of morbidity
was to be detected. They were just as healthy and normal as are
heterosexuals. At an earlier date, though I was not yet aware of the
relatively great frequency of true original homosexuality, it had
become clear to me, on the ground of my own anthropological
theory of sexual anomalies, that homosexuality might just as well
appear in healthy human beings as in diseased. Therein I have
always agreed with Magnus Hirschfeld, the principal advocate of this
view, in opposition to the theory of the degenerative nature of
homosexuality. For me there is no longer any doubt that
homosexuality is compatible with complete mental and
physical health.
It is very interesting to note that von Krafft-Ebing himself later
came to the same view, and thus formally abandoned the
degenerative hypothesis. In his “New Studies in the Domain of
Homosexuality” he writes:[504]
“In view of the experience that contrary sexuality is a congenital anomaly, that it
represents a disturbance in the evolution of the sexual life, and of the physical and
mental development, in normal relationship to the kind of reproductive glands
which the individual possesses, it has become impossible to maintain in this
connexion the idea of ‘disease.’ Rather, in such a case we must speak of a
malformation, and treat the anomaly as parallel with physical malformation—for
example, anatomical deviations from the structural type. At the same time, the
assumption of a simultaneous psychopathia is not prejudiced, for persons who
exhibit such an anatomical differentiation from type (stigmata degenerationis)
may remain physically healthy throughout life, and even be above the
average in this respect. Of course, a difference from the generality so
important as contrary sexual sensation must have a much greater importance to
the psyche than the majority of other anatomical or functional variations. In this
way it is to be explained that a disturbance in the development in the normal
sexual life may often be antagonistic to the development of a harmonious
psychical personality.
“Not infrequently in the case of those with contrary sexuality do we find
neuropathic and psychopathic predispositions, as, for example, predisposition to
constitutional neurasthenia and hysteria, to the milder forms of periodic psychosis,
to the inhibition of the development of psychical energy (intelligence, moral
sense), and in some of these cases the ethical deficiency (especially when
hypersexuality is associated with the contrary sexuality) may lead to the most
severe aberrations of the sexual impulse. And yet we can always prove that,
relatively speaking, the heterosexual are apt to be much more depraved than the
homosexual.
“Moreover, other manifestations of degeneration in the sexual spheres, in the
form of sadism, masochism, and fetichism, are relatively much commoner among
the former.
“That contrary sexual sensation cannot thus be necessarily regarded as
psychical degeneration, or even as a manifestation of disease, is shown by
various considerations, one of the principal of which is that these variations of
the sexual life may actually be associated with mental superiority.... The
proof of this is the existence of men of all nations whose contrary sexuality is an
established fact, and who, none the less, are the pride of their nation as authors,
poets, artists, leaders of armies, and statesmen.
“A further proof of the fact that contrary sexual sensation is not necessarily
disease, nor necessarily a vicious self-surrender to the immoral, is to be
found in the fact that all the noble activities of the heart which can be associated
with heterosexual love can equally be associated with homosexual love... in the
form of noble-mindedness, self-sacrifice, philanthropy, artistic sense, poietic
activity, etc., but also the passions and defects of love (jealousy, suicide, murder,
unhappy love, with its deleterious influence on soul and body, etc.).”

According to my own investigations and observations, the

relationship between health and disease is among
homosexuals originally identical with that among
heterosexuals, and only in the course of life, in consequence of
the social and individual isolation of the homosexual, which acts on
them as a psychical trauma, is this relationship somewhat altered
in favour of the predominance of disease. Here, however, we have,
as a rule, to do chiefly with acquired nervous troubles and
disorders, with the development of a peculiar type of “homosexual
neurasthenia,” and in these cases by superficial observers there
may easily be a confusion between post hoc and propter hoc.
Magnus Hirschfeld, who unquestionably possesses, relatively and
absolutely, the greatest experience in the domain of homosexuality,
maintains[505] that, according to his material of investigation—and
this is of gigantic extent—at least 75 % of homosexuals are born of
healthy parents and of happy marriages, often prolific marriages,
and that nervous or mental anomalies, alcoholism, blood-
relationship, and syphilis are no more frequent among the ancestors
of homosexuals than among the ancestors of those endowed with
normal sexuality. Only among from 20 to 25 % of homosexuals was
he able, in conjunction with E. Burchard, to find hereditary taint.
Only in 16 % could they find well-developed “stigmata of
degeneration”; and, indeed, those with stigmata were throughout
hereditarily tainted. This view is supported also by the facts (to
which I already alluded in my “Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis”)
that homosexuality is universally diffused in space and time; that it is
independent of civilization, occurs among savage races who are not
exposed to the conditions giving rise to degeneration in the same
degree as civilized races; and that it is prevalent in the country,
where the degenerative influence of life in large towns is not
operative.
The most important characteristic of genuine homosexuality, its
spontaneous appearance very early in life, which can only be
referred to natural inheritance, appears to me to be a fact proved
altogether beyond dispute. Men of the highest and most respected
professions—above all, judges, practising physicians, men of
science, theologians, and scholars—have described themselves
to me as having been through and through homosexual from early
childhood, so that I am thoroughly convinced that primary
homosexuality makes its appearance at any rate very early in life.
The reports of physicians are of especially great importance.
Hirschfeld (op. cit., p. 12) quotes the utterance of a leading alienist,
himself homosexual: “I can and must declare that I have never
known a case of homosexuality which I could regard as other than
congenital,” and the accuracy of this statement has been confirmed
to me personally by several homosexual physicians. The idea
“congenital” harmonizes very well with the demonstrable casual
objective cause of the first homosexual tendencies, which we are
able to learn in almost every case of homosexuality. These can, as is
well known, also occur transiently in heterosexual individuals—a
matter which is discussed in the chapter “Pseudo-Homosexuality.” In
the case of genuine homosexuality, however, these homosexual
activities play from the very beginning a predominant rôle, and
remain permanent, because they result from a natural
inheritance, from a deeply rooted impulse. This is shown in the
following interesting autobiography of a man of letters thirty years of
age:
“From my earliest childhood there was something girlish in my whole nature,
both outwardly and (more especially) inwardly. I was very quiet, obedient, diligent,
sensitive to praise and blame, rather bright. I associated chiefly with adults, and
was generally beloved. Sexual activity began in me unusually early. When I was
about six years of age a tutor sat down on my bed, in which I was lying in a fever.
He caressed me, and with his hand membrum meum tetigit. The voluptuous
sensation which resulted was so intense that it has never disappeared from my
memory. At school, where I always distinguished myself by my application and
success, I sometimes enjoyed mutual ‘feeling’ with several other boys. From which
side I inherited the unusual intensity of the sexual impulse I do not know, but I
remember that when I was about twelve years old I already suffered a good deal
from sexual desire, and that it came to me as a solution of a great difficulty when
a comrade instructed me in the practice of masturbation. It is remarkable that for
some time afterwards there was no evacuation of semen. When this first appeared
I was very much alarmed and disquieted, but I soon became accustomed to it,
and this the more readily because I had no doubt whatever that all men regularly
indulged in the same pleasure. This ‘paradisaical’ state did not, however, last for
long; and after a time, when I recognized the unnatural and dangerous nature of
my conduct, I conducted a severe and unsuccessful contest against my desires. In
my life generally I had a good deal to bear, and I can say that I have hardly
preserved a single really pleasant memory of my past; and yet I could look back to
this past with a certain pride and satisfaction if it had not been that the sexual side
of my life has left such gloomy shadows in my soul.
“I remember that from very early days my eyes involuntarily turned with longing
towards elderly vigorous men, but I did not pay much attention to this fact. I
believed that I only practised masturbation (the influence of which I doubtless
exaggerate in memory to some extent) because it was not possible for me to have
sexual intercourse with women. I was accustomed sometimes to have friendly
association with young girls, who appeared to be extremely attracted towards me.
I always took care, however, that such love tendencies were nipped in the bud,
because I felt that it was impossible for me to go any further with them. Ultimately
I determined to seek salvation in intercourse with prostitutes, although they were
disagreeable to my æsthetic and moral feelings; but I got no help here: either I
was unable to complete the normal sexual act, or in other cases it was completed
without any particular pleasure, and I was always consumed with anxiety with
respect to infection. I had, indeed, often the opportunity of forming an ‘intimacy’
with a woman, but I did not do it, and always supposed that my failure to do so
depended upon my ridiculous bashfulness and upon the excessive sensitiveness of
my conscience. But though there is some truth in both of these suggestions, I
have not taken into account the principal grounds—namely, that I am congenitally
homosexual, and that I feel no physical attraction, or almost none, towards the
other sex. This suffices to explain the fact (which can be explained in no other
way) that when masturbating I almost always represented in imagination
handsome elderly men. In my lascivious dreams, also, such men play the principal
rôle. These longings were so powerful that it was impossible that I should not
soon have my attention directed to them; but as I could not understand them and
would not take the matter seriously (I knew, indeed, that man must feel drawn
towards woman, and not towards man), I continued unceasingly and despairingly
to fight against these fixed ideas, while at the same time with varying success I
endeavoured to cure myself of masturbation; for in the first place it now gave very
little satisfaction, and in the second place it destroyed my hopes of eventually
procreating healthy children. I had almost come to believe myself no longer
competent for the sexual life when I noticed one day that the view of a membrum
virile set my blood flowing fiercely. I then remembered that this had sometimes
happened before, although to a less marked extent. I was now compelled to
recognize that I was not the same as every one else. This fact, which I had before
suspected, and of which I now became more and more firmly convinced, reduced
me to despair, which was all the greater because in other ways I felt extremely
unhappy, and because I did not dare to speak of it to any human being.
Sometimes I still thought that there must be some ‘misunderstanding,’ and that
there must be some salvation for me. Then it happened that a simple girl fell in
love with me, and I went so far as to enter into an intimacy with her, although I
openly assured her that as far as I was concerned it was simply a matter of
physical enjoyment, and that I could not in any way make myself responsible for
her future, for which reason care must be taken that there should be no offspring.
During this intimacy, which lasted several months, I sometimes overcame my
enduring inclinations towards men, but completely to suppress them was
impossible. My association with the girl was still continuing, when one day in a
public lavatory I saw an elderly gentleman whose appearance greatly pleased me.
He looked at me tentatively. Cautiously he leaned over, in order membrum meum
videre; he gradually drew near to me, moved his shaking hand and ... membrum
meum tetigit. I was so much surprised and alarmed that I ran away, and avoided
for some time afterwards passing by the same place. All the stronger, however,
was the impulse to find this remarkable man once more, and this was not at all
difficult. What an enigma such a man seemed to me! How could it happen that he
dared to do that of which I had always been able only to think, to dream, with
heart-quaking and horror? Could there, perhaps, be another man like this—
perhaps several such exceptional beings? A short period convinced me that I was
not quite alone in my way of feeling; but this was a weak consolation. Rather,
since that time—that is to say, during the last five years—my inward battle has
become more unbearable, for earlier my only battle was to reject homosexual
ideas, and to overcome the habit of solitary self-abuse. Now sometimes I practise
with another mutual onanism (to me the proper ‘natural’ mode of sexual
gratification), and yet I cannot forgive myself for doing it because it is effected in
so unæsthetic a manner, and is associated with such dangers. Notwithstanding all
my endeavours, however, I have never been able to resist the temptation for a
long time together; and thus I am hunted always by my impulse as by a wild
animal, and can nowhere and in nothing find repose and forgetfulness. I have
frequently changed my place of residence, but I always before long form new
‘relationships.’ The tortures which I suffer in consequence of the incomparable
power of the impulse are greater them I can possibly express in words. I can only
wonder that I did not lose my reason, and that in the eyes of my friends and
acquaintances I am now, as before, ‘the most normal of all human beings.’ In the
senseless and utterly unsuccessful contest with an impulse which, as far as I am
concerned, is wholly, or almost wholly, congenital, I have lost the best of my
powers, although I have long recognized the fact that this impulse in and by itself
is neither morbid nor sinful, for a divergence from the norm is not a disease, and
the gratification of a natural impulse, which in no respect and for no human being
leads to evil consequences, cannot be regarded as sinful. Why, then, must I
continue to strive against this impulse like a madman? Because it is very generally
misunderstood, so unpardonably condemned. What help is it that I am now
surrounded by love and respect? I know that so many would turn away from me
with horror if they were to learn my sexual constitution, although it is a matter
which does not concern them at all. Scorn and contempt would then be my lot. I
should be regarded by the majority of human beings as a libertine; whereas I feel
and know that, notwithstanding all the sensuality of my nature, I have been
created for some other purpose than simply to follow my lustful desire. Who will
believe that I suffer in the struggle with myself? Who will have compassion upon
me? This idea is intolerable. I am condemned to eternal solitude. I have not the
moral right to found a home, to embrace a child who would give me the name of
‘father.’ Is not this punishment sufficiently severe for God knows what sins? Why,
then, should the consciousness be superadded that I am a pariah, an outcast from
society? Owing to the opinion of society regarding the homosexual—an opinion
based upon ignorance, stupidity, and ill-nature—society drives these unhappy
beings to death (or to a marriage which in their case is criminal), and then
triumphantly exclaims: ‘Look what degenerate beings they are!’ No, they are not
degenerates, those whose lives you have made unbearable; they are for the most
part spiritually and morally very healthy human beings. I will speak of myself. Why
do I long for death? Certainly not because I am mentally abnormal. I am no
morbid pessimist, and I know well enough that life can be very beautiful. But,
unfortunately, it cannot be so for me; for my life is a hell; I am intolerably weary
of my internal conflict; it has become horribly difficult to me to play the hypocrite,
to pretend continually to be a happy man rejoicing in life; I am bending beneath
the burden of my heavy iron mask. Recently I had myself hypnotized, in order to
have my thoughts turned away as far as possible from sexual matters. My
hypnotist said to me: ‘You see, you will be at rest now,’ and involuntarily in sleep I
had to swallow these words, ‘Be at rest’! Good God, is that possible? Does the
‘normal’ man know how this word sounds in our ears? Who will understand my
intolerable pain? Perhaps my dear parents could have done so, as they loved me
above all, as if they had a presentiment that I should be the most unhappy of their
children; but they have been dead for several years, and so, notwithstanding my
numerous relatives and friends, I stand quite alone in this world, and vainly seek
an answer to the questions ‘Why?’ and ‘Wherefore?’”
 Genuine homosexuality exhibits, like heterosexuality, the character
of an impulse arising from the very nature of the personality,
which, in activity from the cradle to the grave, expresses the
continuity of the individual in respect also of this peculiar sexual
tendency. Thus there does not exist a homosexuality limited merely
to a certain age of life, as to childhood or youth, to maturity, or even
to old age. Hence we must distinguish from genuine homosexuality
the pæderasty of old men described by Schopenhauer, which does
not begin till old age appears. We must distinguish, also, the love of
Greek boys for elderly men; these must be included in the category
of pseudo-homosexuality. An inclination which, like original
homosexuality, is an outflow of the essential nature of the
individual concerned, cannot disappear so long as the individual
himself persists, cannot begin or end except with the beginning or
end of his life. Homosexuality extends throughout the lifetime, and if
by any cause whatever—for example, enforced marriage—it is
apparently temporarily suppressed, it always reappears. It seems
very doubtful if there really exists, as von Krafft-Ebing[506] assumes,
a genuine retarded homosexuality—that is, original homosexuality
which does not manifest itself until a comparatively advanced age.
There do, doubtless, exist transient cases of pseudo-homosexuality,
which have in some cases developed in those previously
heterosexual, and which in other cases are superimposed upon a
bisexual basis. These belong to the category of “acquired”
homosexuality, which is always a pseudo-homosexuality.
The course of life of genuine homosexuals is a complete
expression of the results of simple inversion of the sexual impulse,
and the homosexual type makes its appearance in childhood. The
fact of the “difference” between the homosexual and others is not
experienced merely by the person himself, but is also noticed very
early by those who have care of him. The “girlish” (in the case of
female homosexuality, “boyish”) and “peculiar” nature is often
observed by members of the family, by comrades, and by tutors, and
gives rise to the use of nicknames. These manifestations and
perceptions are a valuable objective confirmation of the subjective
sensations of homosexual children. A Protestant clergyman whose
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