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For some time past translations of various of Dr. Stekel's writings have been appearing, formerly in journals, and more recently in book form. The present book is a translation of a portion of one of the volumes of the author's great work on the disorders of the instincts and the emotions which he is now writing. This great work is nothing less than an attempt to cover the entire field of the neuroses and psycho-neuroses, and represents, therefore, an effort the magnitude of which one rarely sees equaled in medical authorship.
As is well known, Stekel is one of that early group of associates and pupils of Freud in Vienna, but already some years ago he broke away from the master and developed along his own individual lines, both as regards theory and practice. In his writings he therefore takes very little for granted, and demonstrates his own point of view with an extraordinarily rich case material.
The present volume is entitled “Bi-sexual Love,” and is a study of those manifestations of the psychoneuroses which are traceable to the homosexual component. Stekel defends the thesis most ably that all persons are bisexual. It is therefore not exceptional, but the rule, to find evidences of the homosexual component. The question is not whether such a component is present, but how active and how important it is. This is the point of view of this book, and for those who are unacquainted with Stekel's theories or with psychoanalytic literature it will come as a considerable surprise that such conditions as satyriasis, nymphomania, and Don Juanism may be evidences of homosexuality.
The style of the book, with its rich case material and constant reference to actual experiences, makes fascinating reading. Perhaps no one who writes on psychoanalytic subjects wields so facile a pen as Dr. Stekel. While the facility of his style makes for interest, it is possible that it