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Ellis, Havelock, 1859-1939

"Sexual Inversion"

Naecke was
careful to set aside the cases, to which much significance was
once attached, in which old men with failing sexual powers, or
younger men exhausted by heterosexual debauchery, are attracted
to boys. In such cases, which include the majority of those
appearing late, Naecke regarded the inversion as merely spurious,
the _faute de mieux_ of persons no longer apt for normal sexual
activity.
Such cases no doubt need more careful psychological study than
they usually receive. Fere once investigated a case of this kind
in which a healthy young man (though with slightly neurotic
heredity on one side) practised sexual intercourse excessively
between the ages of 20 and 23--often impelled more by _amour
propre_ (or what Adler would term the "masculine protest" of the
organically inferior) than sexual desire--and then suddenly
became impotent, at the same time losing all desire, but without
any other loss of health. Six months later potency slowly
returned, though never to the same extent, and he married. At the
age of 35 symptoms of locomotor ataxia began to appear, and some
years later he again became impotent, but without losing sexual
desire.


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