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

HOMOSEXUALITYmade in the class of medical jurisprudence where certainsexual crimes were alluded to, very summarily and inadequatelybut nothing was said of the existence of sexualinversion as the normal condition of certain unhappypeople, nor was any distinction drawn between the variousnon-normal acts, which were all classed together as manifestationsof the criminal depravity of ordinary or insanepeople. To a student beginning to be acutely consciousthat his sexual nature differed profoundly from that of hisfellows nothing could be more perplexing and disturbing,and it shut me up more completely in my reserve thanever. It was still more unfortunate that neither in the classof systematic medicine nor in the course of the lectureson clinical medicine was there the slightest allusion to thesubject. All sorts of rare diseases some of which I havenot met with in twenty-one years of busy practice werefully discussed, but we were left entirely ignorant of asubject so vitally important to me personally, and, as itseems to me, to the profession to which I aspired." Thisabsence of reference to sexual problemsin the medicalteaching has probably been the experience of most of us,though such defective teaching has usually been less unfortunatefor the student personally than for those whomhe might have been enabled to help. Fortunately this is astate of things which will now rapidly cease to exist.It isnot, however, only among the people who are inother respects obviously exceptional, whether "degenerates'*or men of genius though among these indeed itseems to be peculiarly prevalent that sexual inversion isfound. It is also found among a fair proportion of theapparently average population, among people who areindistinguishable from the average. Inverts are sometimesreferred to, even by physicians, as an "effeminate" class.That is scarcely the case. A certain group of them may[*39]