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Ellis, Havelock, 1859-1939

"Sexual Inversion"

It may be added here that the question of the hereditary nature
of the sexual instinct has been exhaustively discussed and decisively
affirmed by Moll in his _Untersuchungen ueber die Libido Sexualis_, 1898.
Moll attaches importance to the inheritance of the normal aptitudes for
sexual reaction in an abnormally weak degree as a factor in the
development of sexual perversions.
[232] This view was revived in a modified form by Naecke (_Zeitschrift fuer
die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie_, vol. xv, Heft 5, 1913), who
supposed that there may be an anatomical "homosexual center" in the brain;
i.e., a feminine libido-center in the inverted man, and a masculine
libido-center in the inverted woman. He expressed a hope that in the
future the brains of inverted persons would be more carefully
investigated.
[233] I do not present this view as more than a picture which helps us to
realize the actual phenomena which we witness in homosexuality, although I
may add that so able a teratologist as Dr. J.W. Ballantyne considers that
"it seems a very possible theory."
[234] This explanation of homosexuality has already been tentatively put
forth.


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