Page:Homo-sexual Life by William John Fielding (1925).pdf/16

 homosexuality—especially with the prevailing social stigma which that condition carries—the injurious effect may quite conceivably be disastrous.

Magnus Hirschfeld, one of the greatest of contemporary authorities on the sex question in all its phases, is convinced that homosexuality is a normal state, and that genuine homosexuality is always an inborn condition. His views may be summed up in the statement that there is a genuine inborn homosexuality which must not be considered a morbidity. Furthermore, it should not be confused either with bisexuality or with pseudo-sexuality.

Those who look upon homosexuality from the psycho-pathological viewpoint are in agreement to this extent—that the homosexual condition is not a product of degeneration in the ordinary sense, but, rather, a neurosis.

Stekel states emphatically, "I have never yet found a homosexual who was not a neurotic.

The relationship of neurosis and homosexuality is set forth by the same authority as follows:

(a) Pronounced physical and mental stigmata of degeneration are relatively rare among homosexual men and women; at any rate such signs are not more frequent in proportion to the total number of homosexuals than among the heterosexuals of both sexes.

(b) On the other hand, we find frequently and not merely as a result of homosexuality, a greater instability of the nervous system (frequently shown in the periodic character of endogenous temperamental instability.)