firmly established, but in a small percentage of cases this fails to result. Here," say some psychiatrists, “the individual's development has been halted at an infantile phase,” the arrest having been mediated by psychological factors—a dominating mother, an unfortunate and revolting homosexual experience, and so on. Indeed, some psychiatrists are so convinced of the validity of their contentions that they claim to be able to complete the lapsed development by psychiatric means, and thus to effect a cure. Other psychiatrists are by no means so confident however, and have said so in our pages.

For our part, we confess, not for the first time, to a very lively scepticism on the point. For, in the first place, future homosexuals may frequently be detected by the discerning eye long before puberty supervenes at all, by such features as body build, general development, and innate tendencies and aptitudes. Puberty appears to affect them relatively little if at all. But a far more cogent and fundamental reason for our belief lies in the work of Kallman as quoted, for instance, recently by Stafford-Clarke*. 'In identical twins, where

one twin develops homosexual behaviour, the other twin has been found to develop it in seventyfive per cent. of cases; whereas the concordance rate in non-identical twins is about five per cent. no higher than that estimated as the overall incidence of homosexual tendencies in the population as a whole." Surely no more convincing evidence could be adduced that the seeds of abnormality lie buried deep in the somatic and biochemical make-up of the individual than this observation.

Indeed, if psychological factors come into the question at all, they would seem to bias the individual heavily in favour of conventional practise. Gibbon may, in his rich imagination, have credited the pleasure-loving degenerates of pagan Rome with "delicious" orgies of vice, but in our civilisation at the present day the lot of the homosexual

mattachine REVIEW

is hardly to be envied. Every honest and respectable citizen's hand is against him. He is compelled to frequent such unsavoury trysting-places as public lavatories and dubious saloons, where he is liable to be harried and chivvied not only by the police, but by the proprietors of such establishments, anxious as they are to retain what modicum of good repute may still belong to them. To the normal individual, homosexuality is so revolting that the mere attempt at solicitation has more than once resulted in retaliatory murder, in which event the individual thus outraged is assured of In addition to public sympathy in advance. which, the practising homosexual is fair game for the blackmailer. What man in his senses would persist in such practises unless under irresistible compulsion? the more so when we consider that he is often a conspicuously able and talented individual, of otherwise high character with much more than most to lose by exposure.

That this compulsion arises from the individual's own physiological make-up no impartial observer can doubt, nor is he to be swayed by accusations of ' determinism.' The opinion of one experienced contributor to these pages was reinforced recently by a remarkably interesting series of cases recorded in The Lancet. The current view that the homosexual deliberately chooses to be perversely wicked for the sake of gratifying his personal appetites is clearly nonsense. He has no more conception of what heterosexuality may mean than we have of his perversion. When he comes for treatment he does not come to be converted to heterosexuality, a state which he cannot imagine, but to be in some way relieved of the intolerable burden that is pressing on him. As our contributor put itt, he does not wish to be made a heterosexual Until we have but a successful homosexual. grasped this primary fact, and recognised this gulf that separates us we cannot be said to have any understanding of the problem at all.

* Brit. med. J.. 1959. 2, 1199

+ Lancet. 1959. 2. 1077