Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read Ebook: The Prosperity of Humankind by Bah International Community
Font size:
Background color:
Text color:
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page Prev Page
Ebook has 104 lines and 5476 words, and 3 pages
While proving to me through letters which were in his possession and which were addressed to him under various pseudonyms, that he had submitted his work to different men of learning, all of whom commented upon it favorably, still the fact that he had unsuccessfully tried to find a publisher among the various publishers of medical works, was not a very good introduction of his manuscript to me; yet the open statement of this fact spoke for his honesty, and although very busy at the time, I promised him that I would read it.
Now a word about the author: While, according to his own statement, he is in the fifth decade, he would pass as considerably younger. I have seen him during the preparation of the work a score of times and have had some slight chance of observing him.
His language was always very carefully chosen and showed considerable polish.
His manner was always very gentlemanly and inoffensive.
In figure he is short, stout and has a very arched back.
His voice is rather hoarse, trembling and has, perhaps, a certain female timbre.
His manner seemed generally timid and embarrassed, and he blushes very easily.
From his appearance and manners he can, by the gnoscenti, be easily recognized as an Androgyne.
His avowed purpose in writing and desiring the publication of his Autobiography, is, as I stated before, by describing his martyrdom, to lighten the burdens which other Androgynes have to bear; yet my study of him makes me think that the underlying and perhaps to him unknown reason for the creation of this Autobiography is vanity.
The author is extremely vain.
My impression of him is, that while he really suffered the agonies he describes; while he really in the beginning of his career underwent the soul struggles he tells about; yet he is at present extremely proud of the, to him undisputable fact, that he is all of a woman's soul in a body which he believes to be one-third female and thus only two-thirds male.
There is no doubt but that his body shows some female characteristics; especially so his breasts.
He glories in it.
To him, this at least is my impression, to be all woman would be heavenly.
Some years ago he underwent the operation of castration.
He says, and perhaps he believes, that the reason why he underwent the operation was, that he suffered from spermatorrhea.
My belief is, that, feeling as a woman, desiring to be a woman and wishing to seem as much as possible like a woman to his male paramours, he hated above all the testicles, those insignia of manhood, and had them removed to be more alike to that which he wished to be.
I read through his AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE.
I cannot say that I enjoyed it.
I neither liked the style in which it was written, nor the manner in which, to me, unimportant details were given a great deal of space, nor the manner in which vital questions were entirely overlooked.
I did not see any scientific value in the conversations related nor any poetical value in the verses recited.
The subject matter was all well known to me and nauseating.
I was to edit this "Autobiography" and stood aghast at the task that I thought was before me.
I saw the author and told him what I have just stated and that in my opinion the book had neither literary nor scientific value in the way in which he thought it had.
I found that the author was severely hurt. This Autobiography was his joy--a work which this epoch had been waiting for and which futurity will crown as a classic.
He fought with all his might against any of his verses being omitted. Every single word that I wanted to change or expunge was of vital importance to him.
And then I saw a light.
The AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE would serve its mission best unedited, and so it practically remains.
The author, in writing this book, has written into it his own soul, for him to read who can see further than the printed word.
He has lighted a torch to show in his own way the baser sex feelings of a sexual invert.
He has shown some of the suffering which he has undergone at the beginning of his career.
He has shown the contempt in which the Androgyne is held by reason of a psychical aberration not of his own making.
He has shown how the homosexualist who does not do because he wills but who does because he must, is exploited by the criminal classes.
Thus then, while the author offers the AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE as a plain chronological statement of facts slightly covered to hide his identity, I offer it at the same time as a psychological study, well worthy of a careful analysis.
Whether this volume is read from the author's viewpoint or from mine, only one conclusion can be reached:
Such as he are not to be punished.
ALFRED W. HERZOG.
October, 1918.
From childhood I have been unusually introspective. I began to keep a diary at the age of fourteen, and have continued it up to past the age of forty almost without intermission. Even my earliest diaries dealt with the phenomena of my sexual life, so that in general I have had to keep them under lock and key.
The third physician from whom I sought a cure for my sexual abnormality gave me to understand as early as 1892 that my case was a remarkable one. This pronouncement incited me still further to keep a record of what life brought me with a view to writing an autobiography some day.
In 1899, at the age of twenty-five, I wrote the accompanying account of my life down to that age, and subsequently added accounts of significant events as they occurred. I also from time to time edited and made inserts in what I had already written. As a result, parts of some pages were written in different years. The book has been fated to wait eighteen years for publication, primarily because American medical publishers--on the basis of the attitude of the profession--have had an antipathy against books dealing with abnormal sexual phenomena.
I wish to impress upon the reader that I have not let the sexual appetite possess first place in my life. It had to have its place, but the appetite itself, exclusive of its effects, occupied only a small place. From this autobiography a hasty reader might obtain the impression that I was completely absorbed in the line of life and thought here presented, that it was all I lived for. But it is to be remembered that the object of the book is to delineate the phenomena of androgynism, passive sexual inversion, and psychical infantilism as they manifested themselves in the life of its writer, and to give only such part of his life as was out of the ordinary. My nonsexual life has been along the same lines as that of all other intellectual workers, and is barely touched upon in this autobiography, that is, only where it has a bearing on the phenomena to be delineated. Taking my adulthood as a whole, the sexual side of life has probably occupied my attention only to the same extent as in the case of the average virile man, although much more than in the case of the average woman.
I am uncertain whether the writing out of my experiences has tended to mitigate my sexual instincts. If it has had any influence in this direction, nearly a score of years has been requisite to make perceptible its curative quality.
My own is not an isolated case. Among most races and in all ages of the world, one individual out of about every three hundred physical males--on a conservative estimate--is by birth predominantly female psychically. I merely furnish an extreme case of passive inversion, and my life experience has simply been unusually varied and noteworthy.
The author trusts that every medical man, every lawyer, and every other friend of science who reads this autobiography will thereby be moved to say a kind word for any of the despised and oppressed stepchildren of Nature--the sexually abnormal by birth--who may happen to be within his field of activity.
April, 1918.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF AN
ANDROGYNE
Footnote 1:
Harmar's translation of Beza, page 173.
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page Prev Page