family, and several cases of insanity on
mother's side. In this case affinity for the same sex and
perverted desire for the opposite sex existed, a combination by
no means infrequent. Hypnotic suggestion tried, but without
success. Cause was evidently suggestion and example on the part
of another female pervert with whom she associated before her
marriage. Marriage was late, at age of 35. In all these cases
there was an element of what may be called suggestion, but it was
really much more than this; it was probably in each case active
seduction by an elder person of a predisposed younger person. It
will be observed that in each case there was, at the least, an
organic neurotic basis for suggestion and seduction to work on. I
cannot regard these cases as entitled to modify our attitude
toward suggestion.

MASTURBATION.--Moreau believed that masturbation was a cause of sexual
inversion, and Krafft-Ebing looked upon it as leading to all sorts of
sexual perversions; the same opinion was currently repeated by many
writers. It is not now accepted. Moll emphatically rejected the idea that
masturbation can be the cause of inversion; Naecke repeatedly denies that
masturbation, any more than seduction, can ever produce true inversion;
Hirschfeld attaches to it no etiological significance. Many years ago I
gave special attention to this point and reached a similar conclusion.
That masturbation, especially at an early age, may sometimes enfeeble the
sexual activities, and aid the manifestations of inversion, I certainly
believe. But beyond this there is little in the history of my male cases
to indicate masturbation as a cause of inversion. It is true that 44 out
of 51 admit that they have practised masturbation,--at all events,
occasionally, or at some period in their lives,--and it is possible that
this proportion is larger than that found among normal people. Even if so,
however, it is not difficult to account for, bearing in mind the fact that
the homosexual person has not the same opportunities as has the
heterosexual person to gratify his instincts, and that masturbation may
sometimes legitimately appear to him as the lesser of two evils.[191] Not
only has masturbation been practised at no period in at least 7 of the
cases (for concerning several I have no information), but in several
others it was never practised until long after the homosexual instinct had
appeared, in 1