beloved, I rest absorbed in gazing on him.  Absent, I think of nought but him.  If the beloved unexpectedly appears I fall into confusion.  My heart beats faster.  I have eyes and ears only for the beloved.’

“I feel that my capacity of affection is finer and more spiritual than that which commonly subsists between persons of different sexes.  And so, while trying to fight my instincts by religion, I find my natural feeling to be part of my religion, and its highest expression.  In this sense I can speak from experience in my own case, and more especially in that of my brother, that what you have said about philanthropic activity resulting from repressed homosexuality is very true indeed.  I can say with one of your female cases:  ’Love is to me a religion.  The very nature of my affection for my friends precludes the possibility of any element entering into it which is not absolutely pure and sacred.’  I am, however, madly jealous.  I want entire possession, and I can’t bear for a moment that any one I do not care for should know the person I love.

“I am never attracted by men older than myself.  The youths who attract me may be of any class, though preferably, I think, of a class a little lower than myself.  I am not quite sure of this, however, as circumstances may have contributed more than deliberate choice to bring certain youths under my notice.  Those who have exercised the most powerful influence on me have been an Oxford undergraduate, a barber’s assistant, and a plumber’s apprentice.  Though naturally fond of intellectual society, I do not ask for intellect in those I love.  It goes for nothing.  I always prefer their company to that of the most educated persons.  This preference has alienated me to some extent from more refined and educated circles that formerly I was intimate with.

“I have been led entirely out of my old habits by association with younger friends, and now do things which before I should never have dreamed of doing.  My thoughts now are always with certain youths, and if they speak of leaving the town, or in any way talk of a future that I cannot share, I suffer horrid sinkings of the heart and depression of spirits.”

This case, while it concerns a person of quite different temperament, with a more innate predisposition to specific perversions, is yet in many respects analogous to the previous case.  There is boot-fetichism; nothing is felt to be so attractive as the foot-gear, and there is also at the same time more than this; there is the attraction of repression and constraint developed into a sexual symbol.  In C.P.’s case that symbolism arises from the experience of an abnormal heterosexual relationship; in A.N.’s case it is founded on auto-erotic experiences associated with inversion; in both alike the entire symbolism has become diffused and generalized.