KARL JASPERS' scientific methodology re: true homosexuality

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Let's start with a footnote from his General Psychopathology, subtitle "Specific Mechanisms—Abnormal Mechanisms". The footnote emphasizes not only his categorizing technique but also his scientific objectivity and the nonjudgmental aspect of his scientific approach, methodology, and attitude.

In regard to sexual perversions (homosexuality in particular) views are opposed. There are those who interpret them as inborn instinctual tendencies, the content of which is determined from the start and those who regard them as accidents of the life-history, a fixation of the first experience of waking sexuality directed to inappropriate objects and so acquired. As usual with such opposite opinions, both parties can be right, depending on the case. …[Jaspers gives references to specific works]… Some workers think that in many cases homosexuality is due to a predetermined Anlage of sexual feelings, while the perversions (e.g. fetichism, exhibitionism) are acquired through experience and rest on sexual fixations that can be partly reversed. (GP,University of Chicago Press, English Translation 1963, p.395.)

Although the perversion may be clear, the connection with first cause (Anlage) is not clear in psychopathogy, though the lessoning or reversal of morbid behavior only tending to suggest some connection with an anlage (a cause less clear than biological or corporeal causes). As regards this "anlage" referred to here by "some workers think", the clearest thought manifests more than less how such causes are the preference side of metaphorical inferences regarding unseen forces. So anlage (a force more or less clear on the existential gamete from existing thoughts about genderless angels to the existentially corporeal enhanced thinking derived from observed chromosomes) to the gamut that includes all that encompasses consciousness and the non-conscious.

In general homosexuality runs the existential gamut cantilevering off into homosexuality as the highest progression in "evolutionalism" (where the use of the word becomes as outstanding in usage as does the "gay-accent", i.e. chanting like Inflections).

Jaspers, as we have seen above, categorizes homosexuality as a perversion, but moreover he speaks of "true homosexuality which comes" "in exceptional cases [when] both sex-organs can be developed (hermaphroditism of every stage)" (GP p. 632). That's graphically the highest point and is "true" homosexuality and judgment is without prejudice (in every sense including the prejudicial-legal meaning—any case can be retried). This sort of homosexuality may not result in observed perverted behavior and thus not psychopathological material.

The comment about homosexuality "evolving" to the perfection of the "species" (a Priestly milieu or culture) is my expression--but it seems clear to me that Jaspers considers "evolutionism" as an example of rationalism vs. the scientific attitude. These thoughts are drawn from that subtitled "The Human Species". His treatment of the subject is extensive and not all references are listed in the index.

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