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

PSYCHOLOGY OF SEXItThe Diagnosis of Sexual Inversionhas already been remarked that the sexual impulsetends to be more diffused in children than itsubsequentlybecomes in adults. Probably as a result of this diffusion,it is not so precisely focused on individuals of the oppositesex. Max Dessoir went so far as to say that up to the ageof fourteen or fifteen in both boys and girls the sexualinstinct isnormally undifferentiated. More recently Freud(following William James and others) has repeatedlystated that in allyoung subjects there is normally a homosexualstreak. Theoretically that view is entirely sound.Since every individual contains the physical germs of theopposite sex, it is reasonable to suppose that he should alsocontain the psychic germs, and since in childhood his ownsexual characters, physically and psychic are still undeveloped,we should expect the opposite traits to be relativelyprominent.The appearance of a homosexual tendency in early lifeharmonizes with the results independently reached by thephysiologists. Thus Heape concludes that the evidenceshows that "There is no such thing as a pure male orfemale animal; ... all animals contain the elements ofboth sexes in some degree/7Some of the reasons for thisconclusion are fairly obvious and it has long been recognizedas the most reasonable explanation of inversion.It isquite intelligible that the I tent sexual elementshould more easily come to the surface in early life whenthe dominant sexual element is still too undeveloped tobe able to suppress it. "I have never," wrote Freud in1905, "yet come through a single psycho-analysis of a manor a woman without having to take into account a veryconsiderable current of homosexuality." If we may acceptthis statement by so penetrating and experienced[234]an in-