BOOKS

Notices and reviews of books, ar. ticles, plays and poetry dealing with homosexuality and the sex variant. Readers are invited to send in reviews or printed matter for review.

ASEXUALIZATION, A Follow-up Study of 244 Cases. By Johan Bremer, 1959, New York, Macmillan Company, pp. 366, $5.00.

The present volume is an elaborate and detailed, scientific research study of the effects of castration upon two hundred forty-four clinical cases, two hundred fifteen men and twenty-nine women, by the Medical Director of the Gaustad Mental Hospital in Oslo, Norway. An excellent review of the laws and practices of various countries is included.

There seem to be three types of persons subject to possible castration: oligophrenics or mentally deficient "with adjustment difficulties mainly of a sexual origin," sex criminals, and finally habitual sex deviates, largely homosexuals, "who fight against and suffer from their urge, who have committed or are in danger of committing sexually criminal actions particularly when they are in danger of forfeiting their social standing." Thus most of the cases where the question of the desirability of castration arises have some institutional connection and very often a frankly abnormal or criminal element in the situation which is not necessarily inherent in the sexual deviation. A few cases of the third category are perhaps the only ones pertinent to our interest here in view of the strenuous effort being made elsewhere to define much more clearly the difference between criminal and non-criminal deviational behavior. As

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a matter of fact there were only twenty-two homosexuals among the two hundred fifteen men studied. The results with this group are summarized as follows:

The homosexuals show fundamentally the same quantitative reduction in sexual activity as the heterosexuals, but the fundamental sexual direction is definitely unchanged. The transvestic traits of a homosexual showed no change. Four cases two homosexuals, a pedophile and an exhibitionist with a masochistic trait showed a "normalization" after castration with heterosexual activity with adults. The normalization is interpreted as a result of a decreasing urge that makes it possible for them to govern the deviating urge stimuli. (p. 306)

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More general conclusions as to somatic changes, etc., are difficult to make since the groups are not differentiated with reference to these effects, although the author does say that "by far the most satisfactory results were obtained in the case of the habitual sexual deviates, including the homosexuals and the oligophrenics or feeble-minded." He says further:

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The castration operation always involves an injury owing to the mutilation itself, to the changes of endocrine origin sexual, somatic and psychic and to the unfortunate emotional reactions (p. 318)

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