Discussion of Hilda S. Rollman Branch and Paul J. Moses's Article, The Hermaphroditic Ideal and the Voice

Dr. Rollman-Branch is to be thanked for letting us recall this very original thinker, Paul Moses. Perhaps those who knew him can best appreciate our debt to her, first for having clarified, rounded off, and completed this work of his; second, for having brought more order to it than he probably would have done; and third, for her own fine contributions. (We are also fortunate that Dr. Rollman-Branch loves and understands opera, or Moses' work might not have reached us.)

Moses' work illustrates how a creative mind, illuminated by

psychoanalytic concepts, can make valuable discoveries where the rest of us would not even think to look. For instance, as soon as one reads the Rollman-Branch and Moses material, one knows that the concept of a vocal hermaphroditic ideal is valid. This is only one—though an especially enjoyable—concept that Drs. Moses and Rollman-Branch have spun off for us. There are many more, but instead, indulging myself, and in keeping with the spirit of the paper, I shall desist from presenting research data on aberrant masculinity and femininity, and wander into even less certain fields.

To proceed to the Beatles and their colleagues (and to my only disagreement with the paper).

Bisexuality has, among others, three important meanings. The first is biological, wherein “bisexuality” is the simultaneous presence of varying amounts of maleness and femaleness. The second, psychological, refers to the simultaneous presence of masculinity and femininity. The third is a euphemism for desire for sexual relations with a person of the same sex. Since by now we all know that the first two are present in all human beings, the opportunity is available for playing a familiar, unpleasant psychoanalytic game. So long as one is not obliged to say where the balance lies between maleness and femaleness or masculinity and femininity, one can, if one chooses—since for most of our culture bisexuality in almost any form is nasty—point to the presence of bisexuality and, sil