Raffalovich put forward many
just and sagacious reflections on the nature and treatment of inversion,
and the attitude of society toward perverted sexuality. The historical
portions of the book, which are of special interest, deal largely with the
remarkable prevalence of inversion in England, neglected by previous
investigators. Raffalovich, whose attitude is, on the whole, philosophical
rather than scientific, regards congenital inversion as a large and
inevitable factor in human life, but, taking the Catholic standpoint, he
condemns all sexuality, either heterosexual or homosexual, and urges the
invert to restrain the physical manifestations of his instinct and to aim
at an ideal of chastity. On the whole, it may be said that the book is the
work of a thinker who has reached his own results in his own way, and
those results bear an imprint of originality and freedom from tradition.
In recent years no one has so largely contributed to place our knowledge
of sexual inversion on a broad and accurate basis as Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld
of Berlin, who possesses an unequalled acquaintance with the phenomena of
homosexuality in all their aspects.
Pages:
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165