ical error to assume that increased or decreased publicity about a certain activity reflects a corresponding change in the extent of the activity itself. News media today, for example, can exaggerate or minimize various social conditions at will, simply by journalistic outcry or silence. In the field presently being considered, very extensive contemporary surveys must be conducted and thoroughly analyzed before any sociological principle can be declared which relates specific sexual behavior to the specific social status of men and women. It would seem almost certain that there is some such principle, but sufficient statistical evidence does not yet exist to formulate it, or even to be sure of the direction in which it might operate. On the basis of opinions stated in earlier portions of Sexual Inversion concerning the dynamic influence of social and cultural factors on sexual orientation, it appears likely that the relative social status and role of the sexes will be found to govern general patterns of sexual orientation and behavior, rather than vice versa as FISHER encourages his readers to assume.

The clinical survey occupies at least half of the entire text, and includes the work of nine contributors, under headings as follows:-"A Critical Examination of the Concept of Bisexuality" (RADO), "Passing and the Continuum of Gender Identity" (STOLLER), "Pseudohomosexuality and Homosexuality in Men; Psychodynamics as a Guide to Treatment" (OVESEY), "Latent Homosexuality" (SALZMAN), "Clinical Aspects of Male Homosexuality" (BIEBER), "Clinical Aspects of Female Homosexuality" (WILBUR). "Sexuality and Homosexuality in Women" (ROMM), and "Psychotherapy of Homosexuals: A Follow-up Study of Ninteen Cases" (MAYERSON & LIEF).

10

In Sexual Inversion and other tech-

nical works in the field, the reader must carefully distinguish between biological bisexuality, which is the subject discussed by RADO, and behavioral bisexuality, which simply means the capacity for sexual interest in individuals of both sexes. The nowdiscredited biological theory of bisexuality, RADO points out, was suggested in part by the ancient mythologies concerning sex, in which the sexes were considered as having been created or derived from a single, androgynous root. This appeared to be related in some way to 19th Century embryological studies, which established that both male and female genito-urinary systems develop in the uterus from the same embryonic cellular materials. Putting this fact together with the contentions of mythology (and without reference to the possible truth or falsity of the latter) it was concluded that, whether male or female parts of the total sexual apparatus are produced in the fetus, the organism retains essential characteristics of the so-called "opposite" sex. This led to the concept of the essential biological bisexuality of the individual, as a means of explaining the phenomena of homosexual as well as heterosexual orientation. But the most recent findings for the human species, however, indicate that regardless of the particulars of embryological history, the direction of fetal sexual development is irreversibly set by genetic factors at the time of conception. The results of these faced), are limited to tors, however (as previously mentioned), are limited to the biological sphere, and do not determine later psychosexual development. The latter, according to RADO, involves a "total pleasure organization in the individual"-including powerful orientational factors not genitally based or determined. Because of genetic evidence, biological bisexuality can no longer be considered a scientific principle, and the search for orientational factors