Not only is “suggestion” unnecessary to develop a sexual impulse already rooted in the organism, but when exerted in an opposite direction it is powerless to divert that impulse.  We see this illustrated in several of the cases whose histories I have presented.  Thus in one case a boy was seduced by the housemaid at the age of 14 and even derived pleasure from the girl, yet none the less the native homosexual instinct asserted itself a year later.  In another case heterosexual suggestions were offered and accepted in early life, yet, notwithstanding, the homosexual attraction was slowly evolved from within.

I have, therefore, but little to say of the influence of suggestion, which was formerly exalted to a position of the first importance in books on sexual inversion.  This is not because I underestimate the great part played by suggestion in many fields of normal and abnormal life.  It is because I have been able to find but few decided traces of it in sexual inversion.  In many cases, doubtless, there may be some slight elements of suggestion in developing the inversion, though they cannot be traced.[189] Their importance seems usually questionable even when they are discovered.  Take Schrenck-Notzing’s case of the little boy whose ears were boxed for what his father considered improper curiosity.  I find it difficult to realize that a mighty suggestion can thereby be generated unless a strong emotion exists for it to unite with; in that case the seed falls on prepared soil.  Is the wide prevalence of normal sexuality due to the fact that so many little boys have had their ears boxed for taking naughty liberties with women?  If so, I am quite prepared to accept Schrenck-Notzing’s explanation as a complete account of the matter.  I know of one case, indeed, in which an element of what may fairly be called suggestion can be detected.  It is that of a physician who had always been on very friendly terms with men, but had sexual relations exclusively with women, finding fair satisfaction, until the confessions of an inverted patient one day came to him as a revelation; thereafter he adopted inverted practices and ceased to find any attraction in women.  But even in this case, as I understand the matter, suggestion merely served to reveal his own nature to the man.  For a physician to adopt the perverted habits which the visit of a chance patient suggests to him can scarcely be a phenomenon of pure suggestion.  We have no reason to suppose that this physician practised every perversion he heard of from patients; he adopted that which fitted his own nature.[190] In another case homosexual advances were made to a youth and accepted, but he had already been attracted to men in childhood.  Again, in another case, there were homosexual influences in the boyhood of a subject who became bisexual, but as the subject’s father was of similar bisexual temperament we can attach no potency to the mere suggestions.  In another case we find homosexual influence in childhood, but the child was already delicate, shy, nervous, and feminine, clearly possessing a temperament predestined to develop in a homosexual direction.