distinguish
either from a sexual love for another girl. To a very acute observer,
certain slight indications may in many cases give some idea of how the
matter really stands; but we are here largely concerned with subjective
interpretations, rather than with distinctions that are objectively
demonstrable. The difficulty of drawing distinctions is all the greater
in view of the fact that in the case of non-sexual feelings sexuality
constantly plays a certain part. Our sentiments are complex, and
compounded of many and various elements; sexual contrasts play their
part in family relationships; and it is not by pure chance that harmony
exists by preference between father and daughter, and between mother and
son. This sexual contrast tends to manifest itself in all displays of
family affection. Thus, many men will tell us that in early boyhood they
loved to kiss their mother and sisters, rather than their father and
brothers. In my experience, the analogous sexual contrast does not show
its effects so clearly in the case of women as in the case of men. I
cannot be certain if the differences I have observed in this respect
depend merely upon chance. It is certainly a fact that men, in their
confidences to me, have remarkably often reported childish memories of
the working of this sexual contrast. And conversely, many homosexuals
have assured me that in boyhood they kissed their father with much
greater pleasure than their mother.

Our diagnosis will, naturally, be greatly facilitated in those cases in
which the phenomena of contrectation are plainly reflected to the
reproductive organs. I, at any rate, believe that in practice such an
association suffices completely to establish the diagnosis. We can,
indeed, recognise this also in the dream life, at least as soon as the
first nocturnal emissions have occurred. In the first edition of my work
on _Contrary Sexuality_ (Berlin, 1891), I drew attention to the fact
that those affected with perverse sexuality commonly have perverse
dreams; and Naecke has further discussed the significance of sexual
dreams for the diagnosis of sexual perversions. In children also we
shall find in their sexual dreams, especially when these dreams have
begun to be accompanied with seminal emissions, a certain assistance in
the delimitation of their sexual sentiments from other manifestations of
sympathetic sentiment. But this aid in diagnosis is not available till
comparatively late in childhood, _i.