Page:Homo-sexual Life by William John Fielding (1925).pdf/15

 and instinctive life, and holds true of both sexes, occasionally reducing to zero the yearning after the opposite sex, so that in the end masturbation is preferred to every other form of gratification."

Dr. Stekel has answered this statement very effectively in the following words (from "Bisexual Love," translated by James Van Teslaar, M.D.): "This contention is altogether wrong. I have never seen so many and such pronounced idealists as among masturbators. Young artists, poets and musicians in particular often show, I have found, a strong tendency to masturbation, and this agrees with the pronounced bisexuality of all artists, which has been particularly pointed out by Fliess. The youths of this type are often so delicate and sensitive that they see in the sexual act only animal brutality and hide their own sexuality from the whole world. Among masturbators we find the champions of truth, the over-moralistic preachers, the ethical reformers and dreamers."

If Krafft-Ebing's theory of masturbation being an index of homosexuality were true, it might well be set forth as a demonstrable fact, in the hope that this knowledge would be a stepping-stone to constructive results in our understanding of the sexual life. However, in addition to being a fallacious conception, it has the further discredit of probably having wrought great damage to masturbating youths in giving them a false and hopeless impression of their actual situation. If a youth in his effort to overcome masturbation, believes himself, in addition, to be a predestined victim of