also usual to say that when they wrote
autobiographical accounts of themselves they merely sought to
mold them in the fashion of those published by Krafft-Ebing. More
recently the psychoanalysts have made a more radical attack on
all histories not obtained by their own methods as being quite
unreliable, even when put forth in good faith, in part because
the subject withholds much that he either regards as too trivial
or too unpleasant to bring forward, and in part because he cannot
draw on that unconscious field within himself wherein, it is
held, the most significant facts in his own sexual history are
concealed. Thus Sadger ("Ueber den Wert der Autobiographien
Sexuell Perverser," _Fortschritte der Medizin_, nos. 26-28, 1913)
vigorously puts forward this view and asserts that the
autobiographies of inverts are worthless, although his assertions
are somewhat discounted by the fact that they accompany an
autobiography, written in the usual manner, to which he
attributes much value.

The objection to homosexual autobiographic statements dates from
a period when the homosexual were very little known, and it was
supposed that their moral character generally was fairly
represented by a small section among them which attracted more
attention than the rest by reason of discreditable conduct. But,
in reality, as we now know, there are all sorts of people, with
all varieties of moral character, to be found among inverts, just
as among normal people. Sadger (_Archiv fuer
Kriminal-Anthropologie_, 1913, p. 199) complains of the "great
insincerity of inverts in not acknowledging their inversion;"
but, as Sadger himself admits, we cannot be surprised at this so
long as inversion is counted a crime. The most normal persons,
under similar conditions, would be similarly insincere. If the
homosexual differ in any respect, under this aspect, from the
heterosexual, it is by exhibiting a more frequent tendency to be
slightly neuropathic, nervously sensitive, and femininely
emotional. These tendencies, while on the one hand they are
liable to induce a very easily detectable vanity, may also lead
to an unusual self-subordination to veracity. On the whole, it
may be said, in my own experience, that the best histories
written by the homosexual compare favorably for frankness,
intelligence, and