The sentimental attachments of school girls for certain teachers, the pleasure which they derive from spending nights with some friend on whom they have a "crush," the thousand and one bodily caresses female friends shower on each other, the curiosity they manifest about each other's physical condition, their frequent bed room or bathroom conferences, are manifestations of a mild homosexualism, which, however, do not always lead to overt acts.
=Boastfulness.= Many homosexuals compensate for the scorn meted out to them by normal individuals with a certain proud boastfulness.
"We are supermen," one hears them say when they find a sympathetic listener, "we have reached beyond the usual, boresome, bourgeois form of gratification. Our intellect is nauseated by woman's silliness."
And the females say in their turn: "We are super-women, we have conquered the fear of man and we are tired of man's boorish ways."
Some of the male homosexuals who are bisexual, that is, can also be attracted by women, pride themselves over the mentality of the women they love. "Men have accustomed us to a higher intellectual level and to a more intelligent form of conversation," a homosexual said to me.
This is naturally a defence mechanism. By demanding extremely high qualification from the women, homosexuals have a ready excuse for consorting with men exclusively.
=Famous Homosexuals.= Homosexuals are fond of mentioning all the men famous in art and letters whose sexual life was inverted: the Greek philosophers, poets and playwrights of the classic age, Julius Cæsar, Alexander the Great, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Frederick of Prussia, Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Nietzsche, etc.
=The Nietzsche-Wagner Feud= should be rewritten from a psychiatrist's point of view. Wagner was to young Nietzsche an attractive, heroic, father-image. The philosopher never had any real affair of the heart with a woman. He only indulged in very ephemeral relationships which, by their disastrous results, drove him further away from women. (Dr. W. H. White of Washington received the assurance while in Europe that Nietzsche died of syphilis.) Nietzsche made himself obnoxious to Wagner by trying to be his press agent. As Wagner, however, a shrewd business man in his old days, objected to Nietzsche's agnosticism and to his friendship with certain Jews, Nietzsche, disappointed in his love, abandoned Wagner and hated him fiercely. He attacked him on every occasion, his hatred being made the fiercer by the fact that he himself considered himself as a greater composer, one line in Nietzsche's letters throws a strange light upon the poor paretic's feelings. Wagner's "feminine traits" he wrote, finally disgusted him.