Ulrichs first referred to the significance of the dreams of inverts.  At a later period Moll pointed out that they have some value in diagnosis when we are not sure how far the inverted tendency is radical.  Then Naecke repeatedly emphasized the importance of dreams as constituting, he believed, the most delicate test we possess in the diagnosis of homosexuality;[196] this was an exaggerated view which failed to take into account the various influences which may deflect dreams.  Hirschfeld has made the most extensive investigation on this point, and found that among 100 inverts 87 had exclusively homosexual dreams, while most of the rest had no dreams at all.[197] Among my cases, only 4 definitely state that there are no erotic dreams, while 31 acknowledge that the dreams are concerned more or less with persons of the same sex.  Of these, at least 16 assert or imply that their dreams are exclusively of the same sex.  Two, though apparently inverted congenitally, have had erotic dreams of women, in one case more frequently than of men; these two exceptions have no apparent explanation.  Another appears to have sexual dreams of a nightmare character in which women appear.  In another case there were always at first dreams of women, but this subject had sometimes had connection with prostitutes, and is not absolutely indifferent to women, while another, whose dreams remain heterosexual, had in early life some attraction to girls.  In the cases of distinct bisexuality there is no unanimity; 2 dream of their own sex, 2 dream of both sexes, 1 usually dreams of the opposite sex, and 1 man, while dreaming of both, dislikes those dreams in which women figure.  In at least 3 cases dreams of a sexual character began at the age of 8 or earlier.

The phenomena presented by erotic dreams, alike in normal and abnormal persons, are somewhat complex, and dreams are by no means a sure guide to the dreamer’s real sexual attitude.  The fluctuations of dream imagery may be illustrated by the experiences of one of my subjects who thus indirectly summarises his own experiences:  “When he was quite a child, he used to be haunted by gross and grotesque dreams of naked adult men, which must have been erotic.  At the age of puberty he dreamed in two ways, but always about males.  One species of vision was highly idealistic; a radiant and lovely young man’s face with floating hair appeared to him on a background of dim shadows.  The other was obscene, being generally the sight of a groom’s or carter’s genitals in a state of violent erection.  He never dreamed erotically or sentimentally about women; but when the dream was frightful, the terror-making personage was invariably female.  In ordinary dreams, women of his family or acquaintance played a trivial part.  At the age of 24, having determined to conquer his homosexual passions, he married, found no difficulty in cohabiting with his wife, and begat several children, although he took but little passionate delight in the sexual act.  He still