Note 6 — I

It was clearly the duty of the new editor of Krafft-Ebing’s popular work to have recorded therein the author’s latest views. In his “Neuen Studien auf dem Gebiete der Homosexualitaet,” he states: “In contrast with the conception that contrary sexuality is an inborn anomaly, a disorder in the evolution of the sexual function of monosexuals and of the glandular development of the sex glands, the conception of ‘morbidity’ is untenable. We may rather speak in this connection of a malformation and compare the anomaly with bodily malformations,—for instance, with the anatomic deviations from the average type. But the concept of a simultaneous psychopathic state remains a legitimate assumption, because subjects presenting anatomic as well as functional deviations from type (stigmata degenerationis), may preserve good physical health for a time, and may even show points of superiority.

“At the same time so tremendous a deviation as contrary sexual feeling must have a far wider influence upon the psyche than many of the anatomic or functional stigmata of degeneration. That is the reason why any disturbance in the usual development of a normal sexual life reflects so commonly in an unfavorable sense upon the harmonious psychic development of personality. Victims of contrary sexual feeling often show neuropathic and psychopathic predispositions, such as, for instance, a tendency to constitutional neurasthenias and hysteria, milder forms of periodic psychosis, inhibitions against the unfoldment of psychic energies (intelligence, moral sense), including moral inferiority, especially associated with hyper-sexuality, eventually leading to most serious disorders of the sexual instinct. At any rate, it can be shown that, relatively speaking, heterosexuals prove greater cynics about sexual matters than the homosexuals. Also that other degenerative signs upon the field of sexuality, such as sadism, masochism, fetichism, etc., are much more commonly found among the former....”