n when adolescence is
complete, it is conceivable, though unproved, that a very strong
impression, acting even on a normal organism, may cause arrest of sexual
development on the psychic side.

Another exciting cause of inversion is seduction. By this I mean the
initiation of the young boy or girl by some older and more experienced
person in whom inversion is already developed, and who is seeking the
gratification of the abnormal instinct. This appears to be a not uncommon
incident in the early history of sexual inverts. That such
seduction--sometimes an abrupt and inconsiderate act of mere sexual
gratification--could by itself produce a taste for homosexuality is highly
improbable; in individuals not already predisposed it is far more likely
to produce disgust, as it did in the case of the youthful Rousseau. "He
only can be seduced," as Moll puts it, "who is capable of being seduced."
No doubt it frequently happens in these, as so often in more normal
"seductions," that the victim has offered a voluntary or involuntary
invitation.

Another exciting cause of inversion, to which little importance is usually
attached, but which I find to have some weight, is disappointment in
normal love. It happens that a man in whom the homosexual instinct is yet
only latent, or at all events held in a state of repression, tries to form
a relationship with a woman. This relationship may be ardent on one or
both sides, but--often, doubtless, from the latent homosexuality of the
lover--it comes to nothing. Such love-disappointments, in a more or less
acute form, occur at some time or another to nearly everyone. But in these
persons the disappointment with one woman constitutes motive strong enough
to disgust the lover with the whole sex and to turn his attention toward
his own sex. It is evident that the instinct which can thus be turned
round can scarcely be strong, and it seems probable that in some of these
cases the episode of normal love simply serves to bring home to the invert
the fact that he is not made for normal love. In other cases, it
seems,--especially those that are somewhat feeble-minded and
unbalanced,--a love-disappointment really does poison the normal instinct,
and a more or less impotent love for women becomes an equally impotent
love for men. The prevalence of homosexuality among prostitutes may be, to
a large extent, explained by a similar and better-founded disgust with
normal sexuality.[242]

These three influe