Note 22 — IV

Hirschfeld naturally traces this morbid tendency back to the social ostracism of the homosexual. In my opinion that is a forced explanation. The very proneness of the homosexuals to affective disorders, their heightened sensibility, their morbid irritability, their endogenous depression prove that all homosexuals are severe neurotics. Hirschfeld may be able to trace the homosexual’s acute outbreaks of affective psychoses back to the actual conflicts. But it is impossible to link this heightened affectivity to the feminine attitude of the urnings. For if it were so, how could we explain the equally distressing analogous disorders among the urlinds? Hirschfeld refers to the anxiety states of the homosexuals (p. 916) and expressly states:

“This very condition is found frequently also among homosexuals who are psychically normal so far as their home relations are concerned.”

No—they are not normal with regard to home relations, they are severe neurotics on account of the repression of their heterosexuality. Superficial appearances are deceptive and many a person who appears outwardly to be the picture of health, a well balanced temperament, is inwardly the victim of a serious neurosis.... Hirschfeld refers further to the homosexual’s proneness to persecution manias and to delusions of reference. Concerning homosexual women he states:

“Compelled against their inclination to fulfill their marital duties the homosexual women become very nervous and, in addition to anxiety attacks, they suffer severe depressions.”...

How does Hirschfeld know that the depressions are due to the enforced fulfillment of marital duties? I know homosexual women who are divorced and suffer even more; I know homosexual unmarried women, who are as neurotic as the married women, and, like the latter, suffer of serious depressions. All these facts prove that the homosexual pays for his monosexuality just as dearly as the neurotic monosexual who is heterosexual.