The patient from whose analysis I propose to give a few extracts was a young man of twenty-two, coming of a poor family. A colleague of mine who was interested in psycho-analysis sent him to me on account of his homosexual inclinations.

This colleague told me in a letter that the young man had been to his clinic and had asked whether he ought to have himself castrated, since he was afraid that his inversion would bring him into collision with the law and lead to the ruin of both himself and his family. Up till then, the letter said, the patient's tendencies had been mainly an active pædophilia. He had no inclinations towards young men of his own age. He had already undergone treatment, lasting several months, by different medical men, partly as an out-patient, partly in a sanatorium, but had never received any lasting benefit from it.

The first thing that came up in the patient's analysis was an