Page:Homo-sexual Life by William John Fielding (1925).pdf/18

 tasy,—the condition developing in spite of such influences.

4. Since as a predisposition (not as sexual instinct) homosexuality appears long before puberty and before the actual functioning of the respective genital glands, it suggests that in homosexuals some physiologic action pertaining to "sexuality," but not necessarily related to the functioning of the genital glands, undergoes some subtle change as the result of which the sexual instinct is turned from its goal.

5. The condition suggests chemical changes, alteration in the chemistry of sexual tension, the latter being fairly independent of the activity of the sexual glands proper, as is shown by the fact that it may be preserved among eunuchs and others who undergo castration. Krafft-Ebing, Hirschfeld and Bloch, as well as many other investigators and writers, have failed to appreciate the psychological factors involved in homosexuality. Every young individual unconsciously patterns its conduct, especially in the matter of its attitudes toward persons of the opposite sex, after some one in the home environment. When the boy, for instance, is raised under conditions which cause him to pattern his actions after the mother-model, to feel himself woman-like, he will unconsciously and automatically imitate feminine ways and adopt woman's attitudes, in the sexual sphere as well as otherwise.

To illustrate this point, if a boy is brought up by a widowed mother, let us say, in a home environment in which there is no male pres-