Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/552

 as himself. Every now and then, he is beset by homosexual feelings and thoughts, He has attempted to withstand them by masturbation. Lately his self-possession has had a hard proof, upon his falling love with a handsome young man. He has been victorious over the feeling; but only through the penalty of severe neurasthenia again. He has therefore turned to me, the more because lately he is sexually so excitable that he hardly can hide his homosexual inclinations, and by their disclosure might become not only ridiculous but damaged in social life,—in which he has a dignified position. Like others of his genus, Z— has taken refuge against his neurasthenic troubles in alcoholic drink, which as a fact relieves him in part; but still his sexuality increases. I have found him.an intellectual man and a fine-feeling one; outwardly thoroughly manly, of normal education, also deeply lamenting his condition, looking on his masturb. solit. with disgust, as it is contrary to his ethical nature. He is sexually appeased with a man by mutual kissings, embracings, and his happiest sexual remembrances are of this kind, beyond which he has not gone. He feels himself morally ruined … … He is also so deeply depressed that he would have committed suicide in his terrible battle, save for consideration for his wife and child. I advised his battling-on, at any price. In the case of his not becoming 'cured', and also of the unendurableness of his situation, I advised resignation to it, with the sexual intercourse, with a man, which has been described."

The following example, from the same high source, is of rather a different type, as denoting considerable femininism of the uranian type. It is equally admonitory in its way:

… " Mr. P— thirty-seven years of age, married, descends from a very nervous mother, who was constitutionally migrainée. He himself, as a lad, suffered with hysteria; ever since then he has felt himself sexually attracted by good-looking young men. (With adspic. genitalia much excitement.) Soon after puberty came—with other men—masturb. mut. Only such types as are between 25 and 30 years of age attract him. He feels himself rather in the feminine role psychically, in sexual acts with men, with that complete glow of soul that a woman who loves possesses; and so while P— is only masculine in his corporeal relations with males, he is like an actor in a part. As a youth he was mocked at by other lads for his femininism of gestures and ideas; but girls have never made any impression on him. It was in hoping to cure his vita sexualis that he married, some years ago, but without any other wish to do so.