seen quite a number of people in whom the sexual impulse made its
first appearance very late; in childhood, and also later, some of these
were regarded by their associates as models of chastity. They had no
intercourse with prostitutes, because even at the age of twenty they had
not yet experienced any definite sexual impulse. They despised other
young men who practised irregular sexual intercourse, and they
themselves had no difficulty in refraining from such intercourse. But
many such persons are the subjects of a remarkable self-deception; for a
long time they really believe themselves to be exceptionally moral, and
succeed in convincing themselves that their abstinence from sexual
intercourse is dependent upon ethical motives, whereas often the real
reason has merely been the lack of inclination and of capacity for
sexual intercourse. In most cases the real nature of the case
subsequently becomes clear to them, and they come to understand that
their previous sexual abstinence was not determined by ethical motives.
When we analyse such cases more accurately, we often find that we have
to do with abnormal individualities; abnormal not merely in respect of
the retarded development of the sexual life, but also as regards other
phenomena. Not infrequently we have to do with neuropathic and
psychopathic natures, and the reality of this is quite unaffected by the
fact that the superficial observer is convinced that such persons are
exceptionally moral. I possess a considerable number of autobiographical
case-histories of this kind, and it is quite usual to find that they
state that their associates have wrongly accredited them with peculiar
virtue, whereas in reality their apparently irreproachable conduct
depended simply upon abnormality of development, and the strict morality
was an illusive appearance. Many of them also produce an altogether
unmanly, effeminate, bashful, and timid impression. Although I have
always honoured, and continue to hold in honour, those young men who
avoid illegitimate sexual intercourse on genuinely moral grounds, the
persons exhibiting the peculiarities just explained must be regarded as
pathological subjects. If our moralists hold up to us as exemplary
specimens such young men as these, we have to answer that in that case
sexual abstinence, and also chastity and morality, may depend upon a
pathological inheritance. Just as we are unable to regard eunuchs as
exceptionally virtuous individuals,