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While up to this time contrary sexual instinct has had but an anthropological, clinical, and forensic interest for science, now, as a result of the latest investigations, there is some thought of therapy in this incurable condition, which so heavily burdens its victims, socially, morally, and mentally.

A preparatory step for the application of therapeutic measures is the exact differentiation of the acquired from the congenital cases; and among the latter, again, the assignment of the concrete case to its proper position in the categories that have been established empirically.

The diagnostic differentiation of the acquired from the congenital condition is made without difficulty in the early stages of the anomaly.

If sexual inversion has already taken place, then the history of the development of the case will throw light upon it.

The important decision, prognostically, as to whether the contrary sexual instinct is congenital or acquired, can only be made in such cases by means of the most minute details of the history.

The establishment of the fact that contrary sexual instinct existed before indulgence in masturbation is of great importance with reference to deciding whether the anomaly is congenital or not. In this, however, a difficulty arises, owing to the possibility of imperfect localization of past events (illusions of memory).

For the presumption of acquired contrary sexual instinct, it is important to prove the existence of hetero-sexual instinct before the beginning of solitary or mutual onanism.

In general, the acquired cases are characterized in that:—

1. The homo-sexual instinct appears secondarily, and always may be referred to influences (masturbatic neurasthenia, mental) which disturbed normal sexual satisfaction. It is, however, probable that here, in spite of powerful sensual libido, the feeling and inclination for the opposite sex are weak ab origine, especially in a spiritual and æsthetic sense.