the phenomenon is morbid, it may not be
superfluous to append the protest of an Urning against that solution of
the problem. I translate it from the original document published by
Krafft-Ebing (pp. 216-219). He says that the writer is "a man of high
position in London"; but whether the communication was made in German or
in English, does not appear.

"You have no conception what sustained and difficult struggles we all of
us (the thoughtful and refined among us most of all) have to carry on,
and how terribly we are forced to suffer under the false opinions which
still prevail regarding us and our so-called immorality.

"Your view that, in most cases, the phenomenon in question has to be
ascribed to congenital morbidity, offers perhaps the easiest way of
overcoming popular prejudices, and awakening sympathy instead of horror
and contempt for us poor 'afflicted' creatures.

"Still, while I believe that this view is the most favourable for us in
the present state of things, I am unable in the interest of science to
accept the term _morbid_ without qualification, and venture to suggest
some further distinctions bearing on the central difficulties of the
problem.

"The phenomenon is certainly anomalous; but the term _morbid_ carries a
meaning which seems to me inapplicable to the subject, or at all events
to very many cases which have come under my cognisance. I will concede
_a priori_ that a far larger proportion of mental disturbance, nervous
hyper-sensibility, &c., can be proved in Urnings than in normal men. But
ought this excess of nervous erethism to be referred necessarily to the
peculiar nature of the Urning? Is not this the true explanation, in a
vast majority of cases, that the Urning, owing to present laws and
social prejudices, cannot like other men obtain a simple and easy
satisfaction of his inborn sexual desires?

"To begin with the years of boyhood: an Urning, when he first becomes
aware of sexual stirrings in his nature, and innocently speaks about
them to his comrades, soon finds that he is unintelligible. So he wraps
himself within his own thoughts. Or should he attempt to tell a teacher
or his parents about these feelings, the inclination, which for him is
as natural as swimming to a fish, will be treated by them as corrupt and
sinful; he is exhorted at any cost to overcome and trample on it. Then
there begins in him a hidden conflict, a forcible suppression of the
sexual impulse; and in proportion