Psychology of sex - Total No. of Records in System :: 2032

PSYCHOLOGY OF SEXflourished not only in camps but also in cloisters, and it isconstantly referred to in the Penitentials. It is not, however,until the Renaissance that it plays a conspicuous partin the world; Latini, Dante's teacher, was inverted, andDante refers to the frequency of this perversion amongmen of intellect and fame. The distinguished Frenchhumanist Muret was from this cause in danger of deaththroughout his life; Michaelangelo, the greatest sculptorof the Renaissance, cherished homosexual ideals and passions,although there is no reason to suppose that he hadphysical relations with the men he was attracted to; Marlowe,one of the chief poets of the Renaissance in England,was clearly of the same way of feeling, as also, there isground for believing, was Bacon.It is quite true that the invert seldom places himselfunder a physician's hands. He usually has no wish to behe isdifferent from what he is, and as his intelligence is generallyquite up to the average level, if not above it,careful to avoid discovery and seldom attracts the attentionof the police. In this way the prevalence of inversionis unknown to those who do not know where to look forit or how to detect it. In Germany Hirschfeld, whoseknowledge of homosexuality is unrivaled, has shown thata large number of separate estimates among differentclasses of the population reveal a proportion of invertedand bisexual persons varying between one and five percent. In England my own independent observations,though of a much less thorough and extensive character,indicate a similar prevalence among the educated middleclass, while among the lower social classes homosexualityis certainly not rare, and even if not innate there oftenappears to be among them a remarkable absence of repulsionto homosexual relations; inverts have referredmanyto this point. Among women, though less[220]easy to detect,