ies that we are fairly justified in
asserting that we have to deal with a condition of degeneration. Inversion
is sometimes found in such a condition. I have, indeed, already tried to
suggest that a condition of diffused minor abnormality may be regarded as
a basis of congenital inversion. In other words, inversion is bound up
with a modification of the secondary sexual characters. But these
anomalies and modifications are not invariable,[241] and are not usually
of a serious character; inversion is rare in the profoundly degenerate. It
is undesirable to call these modifications "stigmata of degeneration," a
term which threatens to disappear from scientific terminology, to become a
mere term of literary and journalistic abuse. So much may be said
concerning a conception or a phrase of which far too much has been made in
popular literature. At the best it remains vague and unfitted for
scientific use. It is now widely recognized that we gain little by
describing inversion as a degeneration. Naecke, who attached significance
to the stigmata of degeneration when numerous, was especially active in
pointing out that inverts are not degenerate, and frequently returned to
this point. Loewenfeld, Freud, Hirschfeld, Bloch, Rohleder all reject the
conception of sexual inversion as a degeneracy.

Moll is still unable to abandon altogether the position that
since inversion involves a disharmony between psychic disposition
and physical conformation we must regard it as morbid, but he
recognizes (like Krafft-Ebing) that it is properly viewed as
being on the level of a deformity, that is, an abnormality,
comparable to physical hermaphroditism. (A. Moll, "Sexuelle
Zwischenstufen," _Zeitschrift fuer aerztliche Fortbildung_, No.
24, 1904.) Naecke repeatedly emphasized the view that inversion is
a congenital non-morbid abnormality; thus in the last year of his
life he wrote (_Zeitschrift fuer die Gesamte Neurologie und
Psychiatrie_, vol. xv, Heft 5, 1913): "We must not conceive of
homosexuality as a degeneration or a disease, but at most as an
abnormality, due to a disturbance of development." Loewenfeld,
always a cautious and sagacious clinical observer, agreeing with
Naecke and Hirschfeld, regards inversion as certainly an
abnormality, but not therefore morbid; it may be associated with
disease and degeneration, but is usually simply a variation from
the norm, not t