Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/551

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

ménages, divorces, suicides, are all part of the tale. The adult Uranian who has resolved upon matrimony, in nine cases in ten expiates the step. He does not find that his intellectual sympathy with his wife suffices to overcome the horror corporis feminae, or warms his sexual indifference. His physical relations with her may be to her satisfaction; they are irksome or odious to him. Sometimes he can continue them only by conjuring up homosexual fancies of which she has no idea. He discovers that his experiments with women before wedlock have told him truths he was not willing to believe, or had rejected. He cannot sexually love his wife. He desires to be a father and beloved children are born. His wife is all that a lovely and superiour woman-friend can be. But the other Fire still smoulders; often, it blazes forth tragically.

Instances: the
Uranian Unhappy
in Normal Marri-
age: its Sad
Undersides.

Two instances of such purport, showing the risks of marriage for inborn Uranians, are these, cited by Dr. R. von Krafft-Ebing. In neither case was there mental or physical degeneracy or singularity, or any depraved instincts:

"… Mr. Z— thirty years old; wholesale merchant, states that his parents and grandparents were healthy people. He developed in his youth normally, with only irrelevant childish illnesses. At 14, came onanism by instinct, (not tuition from another lad) at fifteen he began to feel sexual passion for males of his age. Absolutely unimpressed by the female sex in a sexual way, at 24 Mr. Z— made his first visit to a brothel: but he fled from it on account of his horror feminae nudae. After 25 years of age, he had occasional sexual intercourse with young men of similar age. (Passionate embracings, ejaculat., occasionally masturb. mut. ) On account of certain business-reasons, and in belief that he would be cured of his abnormal passion for males, Z— married a lady of 28, remarkably distinguished in person and intellect. Through calling up strong mental pictures of the good-looking young men he had met, Mr. Z— was potent with his wife, whom in a psychic way he loved with his whole heart. But this relation with a woman, contrary to his nature, made Z— very neurasthenic. After a child had been born, Z— returned to frigid sexual relations with his wife, the more because he has feared to procreate children who will be as unfort-

— 533 —

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.