that found among normal people.  Even if so, however, it is not difficult to account for, bearing in mind the fact that the homosexual person has not the same opportunities as has the heterosexual person to gratify his instincts, and that masturbation may sometimes legitimately appear to him as the lesser of two evils.[191] Not only has masturbation been practised at no period in at least 7 of the cases (for concerning several I have no information), but in several others it was never practised until long after the homosexual instinct had appeared, in 1 case not till the age of 40, and then only occasionally.  In at least 8 it was only practised at puberty; in at least 8, however, it began before the age of puberty; at least 9 left off before about the age of 20.  Unfortunately, as yet, we have little definite evidence as to the prevalence and extent of masturbation among normal individuals.

Among the women masturbation is found in at least 5 cases out of 7.  In 1 case there was no masturbation until comparatively late in life, and then only at rare intervals and under exceptional circumstances.  In another case, some years after the homosexual attraction had been experienced, it was practised, though not in excess, from the age of puberty for about four years, and then abandoned; during these years the physical sexual feelings were more imperative than they were afterward felt to be.  In 2 cases masturbation was learned spontaneously soon after puberty, and in 1 of these practised in excess before the manifestations of inversion became definite.  In all cases the subjects are emphatic in asserting that this practice neither led to, nor was caused by, the homosexual attraction, which they regard as a much higher feeling, and it must be added that the occasional practice of masturbation is very far from rare among fairly normal women.[192]

While this is so, I am certainly inclined to believe that an early and excessive indulgence in masturbation, though not an adequate cause, is a favoring condition for the development of inversion, and that this is especially so in women.  The sexual precocity indicated by early and excessive masturbation doubtless sometimes reveals an organism already predisposed to homosexuality.  But, apart from this, when masturbation arises spontaneously at an early age on a purely physical basis it seems to tend to produce a divorce between the physical and the psychic aspects of sexual love.  The sexual manifestations are all diverted into this physical direction, and the child is ignorant that such phenomena are normally allied to love; then, when a more spiritual attraction appears with adolescent development, this divorce is perpetuated.  Instead of the physical and psychic feelings appearing together when the age for sexual attraction comes, the physical feelings are prematurely twisted from their natural end, and it becomes abnormally easy for a person of the same sex to step in and take the place rightfully belonging to a person of the opposite sex.  This has certainly seemed to me the course of events in some cases I have observed.