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As a result of a study of the psychiatric and endocrine aspects of eunuchoidism carried out in collaboration with Dr. Allan T. Kenyon1, I was led to make a further investigation of the psychosomatic relationships in this condition by the use of the psychoanalytic method.
Eunuchoidism is a syndrome characterized by hypoplasia of the testes and accessory genitalia, deficiency in secondary sex characters, delay in fusion of the epiphyses of the long bones and a tendency to elongation of the extremities. There is no particular impairment of health. Post-mortem histological studies have regularly revealed degenerative and hypoplastic findings in the gonads, but no characteristic changes in the other endocrine glands. Assays of the urine for androgenic and estrogenic materials have shown an excretion of about one-third of the normal amounts. Treatment by injections of testosterone propionate may produce remarkable physical changes similar to those which occur at puberty in the normal boy2 Claims that eunuchoids present a characteristic psychological picture are not substantiated by the available evidence which tends rather to support the conclusion that the sexual defect is the only thing that eunuchoids have in common and that otherwise they differ as other men do.3 Although the