lement in
Inversion--The Freudian Theory--Embryonic Hermaphroditism as a Key to
Inversion--Inversion as a Variation or "Sport"--Comparison with
Color-blindness, Color-hearing, and Similar Abnormalities--What is an
Abnormality?--Not Necessarily a Disease--Relation of Inversion to
Degeneration--Exciting Causes of Inversion--Not Operative in the Absence
of Predisposition.

The analysis of these cases leads directly up to a question of the first
importance: What is sexual inversion? Is it, as many would have us
believe, an abominably acquired vice, to be stamped out by the prison? or
is it, as a few assert, a beneficial variety of human emotion which should
be tolerated or even fostered? Is it a diseased condition which qualifies
its subject for the lunatic asylum? or is it a natural monstrosity, a
human "sport," the manifestations of which must be regulated when they
become antisocial? There is probably an element of truth in more than one
of these views. Very widely divergent views of sexual inversion are
largely justified by the position and attitude of the investigator. It is
natural that the police-official should find that his cases are largely
mere examples of disgusting vice and crime. It is natural that the asylum
superintendent should find that we are chiefly dealing with a form of
insanity. It is equally natural that the sexual invert himself should find
that he and his inverted friends are not so very unlike ordinary persons.
We have to recognize the influence of professional and personal bias and
the influence of environment.

There have been two main streams of tendency in the views regarding sexual
inversion: one seeking to enlarge the sphere of the acquired (represented
by Binet,--who, however, recognized predisposition,--Schrenck-Notzing, and
recently the Freudians), the other seeking to enlarge the sphere of the
congenital (represented by Krafft-Ebing, Moll, Fere, and today by the
majority of authorities). There is, as usually happens, truth in both
these views. But, inasmuch as those who represent the acquired view often
deny any congenital element, we are called upon to discuss the question.
The view that sexual inversion is entirely explained by the influence of
early association, or of "suggestion," is an attractive one and at first
sight it seems to be supported by what we know of erotic fetichism, by
which a woman's hair, or foot, or even clothing, becomes the focus of a
man's sexual aspirations.