There can be no doubt that in slight and superficial cases of homosexuality, suggestion may really exert an influence.  We can scarcely expect it to exert such influence when the homosexual tendency is deeply rooted in an organic inborn temperament.  In such cases indeed the subject may resist suggestion even when in the hypnotic state.  This is pointed out by Moll, a great authority on hypnotism, and with much experience of its application to homosexuality, but never inclined to encourage an exaggerated notion of its efficacy in this field.  Forel, who was also an authority on hypnotism, was equally doubtful as to its value in relation to inversion, especially in clearly inborn cases.  Krafft-Ebing at the end said little about it, and Naecke (who was himself without faith in this method of treating inversion) stated that he had been informed by the last homosexual case treated by Krafft-Ebing by hypnotism that, in spite of all good-will on the patient’s side, the treatment had been quite useless.  Fere, also, had no belief in the efficacy of suggestive treatment, nor has Merzbach, nor Rohleder.  Numa Praetorius states that the homosexual subjects he is acquainted with, who had been so treated, were not cured, and Hirschfeld remarks that the inverts “cured” by hypnotism were either not cured or not inverted.[250]

Moll has shown his doubt as to the wide applicability of suggestive therapeutics in homosexuality by developing in recent years what he terms association-therapy.  In nearly all perverse individuals, he points out, there is a bridge,—­more or less weak, no doubt,—­which leads to the normal sexual life.  By developing such links of association with normality, Moll believes, it may be possible to exert a healing influence on the homosexual.  Thus a man who is attracted to boys may be brought to love a boyish woman.[251] Indications of this kind have long been observed and utilized, though not developed into a systematic method of treatment.  In the case of bisexual individuals, or of youthful subjects whose homosexuality is not fully developed, it is probable that this method is beneficial.  It is difficult to believe, however, that it possesses any marked influence on pronounced and developed cases of inversion.[252]

Somewhat the same aim as Moll’s association-therapy, though on the basis of a more elaborate theory, is sought by Freud’s psychoanalytic method of treating homosexuality.  For the psychoanalytic theory (to which reference was made in the previous chapter) the congenital element of inversion is a rare and usually unimportant factor; the chief part is played by perverse psychic mechanisms.  It is the business of psychoanalysis to straighten these out, and from the bisexual constitution, which is regarded as common to every one, to bring into the foreground the heterosexual elements, and so to reconstruct a normal personality, developing new sexual ideals from the patient’s own latent and subconscious nature.  Sadger has