the patient’s part is necessary,” Naecke, again (Sexual-Probleme, September, 1911, p. 619), after quoting with approval the remark of one of the chief German authorities, Dr. Numa Praetorius, that “a great number of inverts’ histories are at the least as trustworthy as the attempts of psychoanalysts, especially when they come from persons skillful in self-analysis,” adds that “even Freudian analysis gives no absolute guarantee for truth.  A healthy skepticism is justifiable—­but not an unhealthy skepticism!” Hirschfeld, also (Die Homosexualitaet, p. 164), whose knowledge of such histories is unrivalled, remarks that while we may now and then meet with a case of pseudo-logia fantastica in connection with psychic debility on the basis of a psychopathic constitution, “taken all in all any generalized assertion of the falsehood of inverts is an empty fiction, and is merely a sign that the physicians who make it have not been able to win the trust of the men and women who consult them.”  My own experience has fully convinced me of the truth of this, statement.  I am assured that many of the inverts I have met not only possess a rare power of intellectual self-analysis (stimulated by the constant and inevitable contrast between their own feelings and those of the world around them), but an unsparing sincerity in that self-analysis not so very often attained by normal people.

The histories which follow have been obtained in various ways, and are of varying degrees of value.  Some are of persons whom I have known very well for very long periods, and concerning whom I can speak very positively.  A few are from complete strangers whose good faith, however, I judge from internal evidence that I am able to accept.  Two or three were written by persons who—­though educated, in one case a journalist—­had never heard of inversion, and imagined that their own homosexual feelings were absolutely unique in the world.  A fair number were written by persons whom I do not myself know, but who are well known to others in whose judgment I feel confidence.  Perhaps the largest number are concerned with individuals who wrote to me spontaneously in the first place, and whom I have at intervals seen or heard from since, in some cases during a very long period, so that I have slowly been able to fill in their histories, although the narratives, as finally completed, may have the air of being written down at a single sitting.  I have not admitted any narrative which I do not feel that I am entitled to regard as a substantially accurate statement of the facts, although allowance must occasionally be made for the emotional coloring of these facts, the invert sometimes cherishing too high an opinion, and sometimes too low an opinion, of his own personality.

HISTORY I.—­Both parents healthy; father of unusually fine physique.  He is himself a manual worker and also of exceptionally fine physique.  He is, however, of nervous