You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Readers whose expectations of a systematic and scientific study have been aroused by the table of contents will be not a little disappointed by the rather incoherent account of the mechanisms of homosexuality which follows. Stekel's undoubted gifts of observation and speculation are continually hampered not only by an embarrassment of non-analytic material but by an easy knack of popular exposition. Throughout this volume are numerous observations showing intuitive appreciation of and insight into various aspects of homosexuality, but these are unfortunately overgrown by a mass of illustrative material, the elaboration of which can scarcely recommend itself in a majority of instances to those who believe in analytical objectivity.
Written in a style which lends itself to generalisation, the book leaves one with the uneasy feeling not only that scientific detachment has been sacrificed to a desire for authoritarian completeness but that in his hurry the author has not digested his own material. His main contention that the homosexual neurosis is a flight back to one's own sex induced by a sadistic disposition, or feeling attitude, towards the opposite sex (pp. 286 and 312) is a typical generalisation in which two factors are melted down and canonised with only the roughest consideration of their individual psychogenesis and interrelations.
His chapters on the rôle of family fixations might have been condensed with advantage but the criticisms directed against Sadger (pp. 43—49) suggest that Stekel has been content with uncovering and emphasising facets of the 'complete' Oedipus complex. A later remark that he has records of cases in which the mother plays no rôle whatever is not substantiated by case-material and would seem to indicate either superficial observation or a neglect of the dynamics of object-choice. Very probably both, since much of the material submitted elsewhere bears the stamp of inadequate observation, e. g. by correspondence or brief interview.
P