was formerly exalted to a position of the first importance in books on
sexual inversion. This is not because I underestimate the great part
played by suggestion in many fields of normal and abnormal life. It is
because I have been able to find but few decided traces of it in sexual
inversion. In many cases, doubtless, there may be some slight elements of
suggestion in developing the inversion, though they cannot be traced.[189]
Their importance seems usually questionable even when they are
discovered. Take Schrenck-Notzing's case of the little boy whose ears were
boxed for what his father considered improper curiosity. I find it
difficult to realize that a mighty suggestion can thereby be generated
unless a strong emotion exists for it to unite with; in that case the seed
falls on prepared soil. Is the wide prevalence of normal sexuality due to
the fact that so many little boys have had their ears boxed for taking
naughty liberties with women? If so, I am quite prepared to accept
Schrenck-Notzing's explanation as a complete account of the matter. I know
of one case, indeed, in which an element of what may fairly be called
suggestion can be detected. It is that of a physician who had always been
on very friendly terms with men, but had sexual relations exclusively with
women, finding fair satisfaction, until the confessions of an inverted
patient one day came to him as a revelation; thereafter he adopted
inverted practices and ceased to find any attraction in women. But even in
this case, as I understand the matter, suggestion merely served to reveal
his own nature to the man. For a physician to adopt the perverted habits
which the visit of a chance patient suggests to him can scarcely be a
phenomenon of pure suggestion. We have no reason to suppose that this
physician practised every perversion he heard of from patients; he adopted
that which fitted his own nature.[190] In another case homosexual advances
were made to a youth and accepted, but he had already been attracted to
men in childhood. Again, in another case, there were homosexual
influences in the boyhood of a subject who became bisexual, but as the
subject's father was of similar bisexual temperament we can attach no
potency to the mere suggestions. In another case we find homosexual
influence in childhood, but the child was already delicate, shy, nervous,
and feminine, clearly possessing a temperament predestined to develop in a
homosexual direction.

Th