DE LA REVOLUCIÓN AL LIBERALISMO
3. LA PERSPECTIVA GUBERNAMENTAL
While Marañón refined his theories of intersexuality throughout the 1920s, and incorporated into them some concessions to the psychiatric and psychological sciences, the latter constituted an important reservoir of ideas on homosexuality far beyond the audience they received in endocrinological frameworks. Psychia- try had undergone, according to Michel Foucault, a revolution in the second half of the nineteenth century that obliged it to construct a number of what he called ‘large theoretical edifices’. These slowly replaced the idea that a certain crime was a symptom of an underlying pathology that burst forth at a particular moment (i.e. monomania) with the idea that a crime was commit- ted by an individual with permanent physical or mental stigmas.74
According to this thesis, the three principal changes that psychia- try underwent in this period were, firstly, the description not now of symptoms of an illness but syndromes of an illness. These constituted a whole set of deviant or aberrant behaviours. Syn- dromes were significant in their own right: ‘those people . . . do not carry the symptoms of illness but rather abnormal symptoms in themselves, of oddities consolidated into anomalies’.75 Such
conditions, which responded to something internal in the person that characterized his or her whole character and behaviour, included kleptomania, agoraphobia, exhibitionism and eventu- ally, the sexual perversions including sexual ‘inversion’.
A second characteristic of this new psychiatry was the return or the re-evaluation of the idea of ‘delirium’ that allowed for the concept of the instinct to permeate psychiatry, coupled with the notion of pleasure. The instinct thus became fundamental to the designation of abnormalities. Third was the appearance of the idea of the ‘state’, introduced by Falret in the 1860s, and which became coupled to the expression ‘psychic foundation’. Once one had a ‘state’, one could be ‘predisposed’ towards an abnor- mality and, as such, the state was the ultimate explanatory resource: ‘its aetiological extent is total and absolute. The state can produce absolutely anything, at any time and to any degree’.76
What kind of body and mind could produce such a state? The answer lay in the affected person’s ancestry. It was necessary, therefore, to investigate the delinquent’s hereditary character
and, eventually, to institute a series of measures to defend society against the rise of the ‘degenerate’.
Foucault’s analysis of the changing face of psychiatry was, to a large degree, based on his interpretation of the French discipline. Nevertheless, it can be argued that Spain underwent a similar process, despite differences in timescales. It is important to note, however, that despite the entry of, for example, Tardieu’s ideas and those of other foreign psychiatrists from the 1860s onwards, it was only in the second decade of the twentieth century that psychiatrists in Spain in their majority moved on from biological interpretations of the mind to embrace a more instinctual model.77
César Juarros, attached to the Madrid Instituto Criminológico, is illustrative of Foucault’s third period of psychiatry whereby the psychic state of the individual, influenced by a combination of ancestral and environmental factors, could ‘predispose’ him or her towards a certain abnormality. Juarros is significant not only for his own work on the causes of mental illness, in which the sexual perversions were included, but also for his role in translat- ing and disseminating the ideas of foreign authors. Before turn- ing to Juarros’s considerable publications throughout the decade of 1910–20 we focus on the significance of his role in the dissemination of new psychiatric ideas coming from abroad, notably in the context of his translation of the work by the French psychiatrist Emmanuel Régis,Tratado de Psiquiatría(1911).78
The work by Régis exemplified the areas that the theories of psychopathology were attempting to occupy at the beginning of the twentieth century. Régis noted that the causes of psychopatho- logical states could result from a huge variety of determinants: ‘En realidad no hay una condición patógena, hereditaria ó adquirida, individual ó colectiva, moral ó física, externa ó interna, que no pueda convertirse en determinadas circunstancias, en una causa de psicopatía’ [In reality, there is no pathogenic, hereditary or acquired, individual or collective, moral or physical, external or internal condition that cannot become, under certain conditions, a cause of psychopathy].79 This left little terrain free from a
degree of pathology. A number of ‘predispositional’ causes, which might result in mental illness included race, political circum- stances, religious ideas, inheritance, age, sex, climate and civil state. There were also ‘occasional’ causes which were divided into the psychic (including fatigue, the passions, contagion, puberty),
physiological (menstruation, pregnancy and birth, lactation) and pathological (infections, illnesses of the nervous system, endo- crine disorders) and these, once more, included a huge range of possible sources.80
Régis followed the theories of the most renowned psychiatrists of the time to classify and explain the ‘sexual perversions’. In a section on the ‘sexual impulses’, he took his principal framework from Krafft-Ebing and noted that the sexual perversions resulted, above all, from a morbid predisposition, a degenerate terrain upon which exhibitionism, fetishism, sadism, masochism and homosexuality grew.81Régis also argued in favour of changes in
the taxonomy and typology of those who engaged in same-sex activity. His principal term of reference was ‘Uranism’, but he also referred to sexual inversion and to ‘homosexuality’. On this subject he noted ‘Nos limitaremos á señalar aquí el uranismo, inversión genital ó sexual, homo-sexualidad, perversión caracteri- zada por la dirección exclusiva de la inclinación amorosa hacia personas del mismo sexo’ [We will confine ourselves to Uranism, sexual or genital inversion, homosexuality, a perversion character- ized by the exclusive interest in the amorous inclination towards persons of the same sex].82The newness of such thought is shown
by Régis’s comment that authors who had studied the subject, above all in Germany, had insisted that Uranism was very different from common pederasty. Uranism, he continued, was above all a psychic disturbance, in which the soul and body of the individual did not conform to the same sex. What would spark off this morbid predisposition? The psyche of such individuals was so fragile and so damaged that any incident susceptible of harming the imagination of the subject by creating a ‘psycho-genital’ association in their childhood or youth ‘orienta su vida sexual exclusiva, impulsivamente, hacia una perversión en relación con el incidente primitivo’ [would orient, exclusively and impulsively, his life towards a perversion in accordance with the original incident].83 Once more, the importance of the inheritance of
certain traits was coupled to particular environmental conditions that could spark off the slide into perversion is evident in this psychiatric account.
It is striking that Juarros, on writing his Psiquiatría forense
imitated not only much of the structure of the French psychia- trist’s book but also its contents to the extent of using in some places practically the same wording as Régis. This was basically a
degenerationist analysis, and Juarros covered the concepts of hereditary and non-hereditary predisposition extensively in the volume which was arranged in twenty lessons or chapters.84When
it came to the ‘sexual perversions’, Juarros followed Régis’s account, understanding these as symptoms of mental illness, and added to Régis’s list by including some others of a much more archaic variety such as nymphomania and satyriasis.85The sexual
perversions were listed from (a) to (i), beginning with masturba- tion, passing through exhibitionism, fetishism, sadism, maso- chism, and finally Uranism.86 ‘Uranism’, Juarros declared, was
love towards another of the same sex: ‘Antes se tenía de los uranistas un concepto totalmente distinto del actual’ [Before, one had a totally different idea about Uranians].87Furthermore, it was
necessary to distinguish the Uranian from the pederast ‘que llega á esta perversión arrastrado por una vida de crápula’ [who arrives at this perversion through a life of debauchery]. The Uranian, Juarros wrote on the other hand ‘es físicamente hombre y psíqui- camente mujer ó viceversa’ [is physically a man and psychically a woman or vice versa].88In contrast, Juarros was then to note, ‘El
pederasta es un hombre que prefiere el amor de otro hombre’ [Thepederastis a man who prefers the love of another man]. In this schema, the Uranian would have been predisposed to engage in the sexual acts hinted at or would have a hereditary condition making him do so, if the degenerationist framework were to be made explicit. On the other hand, the pederast would have lent himself to acquired tastes. Both, nevertheless, were either danger- ous for the individual concerned or for society at large.89How the
Uranian could be distinguished from the pederast was not explained.
Such a framework was equally explicit in his 1919 work, La Psiquiatría del médico general.90Among the causes of mental illness
(‘enfermedades mentales’ or ‘psiconeuroses’) Juarros listed degeneration, inheritance and predisposition. He was careful to separate the latter two concepts, which, he noted, had become confused in the writings of many psychiatrists of the time. An inherited trait would eventually become manifest, while a predis- position had to be triggered by some event or state of affairs.91
The ‘deformations’ that degeneration could entail were mani- fested in physical and psychic symptoms or stigmas which could be detected clinically.92The causes of mental illness, thus broken
(1914) and included degeneration, hereditary factors, predisposi- tion, infection, fatigue, race, age and sex, contagion and profes- sion. From these causes of mental illness, a number of ‘symptoms’ could arise such as a dysfunctional memory, delirium, phobias, questions of conscience, physical symptoms such as blood disor- ders and insomnia and a number of instincts. In the latter case, there were two kinds of symptoms, individual and ‘los instintos de la especie’.93These ‘instincts of the species’, the sexual instincts,
were understood to be ‘El instinto eje de la vida de la especie’ [The key instinct in the life of the species].94 Interestingly, they
could be both the cause and the symptom of mental illness: ‘por ser tan hondo, tan recio, tan indomable, el instinto sexual desempeña un papel importantísimo en la Psiquiatría como síntoma unas veces, como causa otras’ [because it is so profound, so strong, so indomitable, the sexual instinct plays an all impor- tant role in psychiatry as a symptom some times and at other times as a cause].95Homosexuality was understood in this section
to be a symptom of psychic inhibition or of the influence of civilization, which ‘ha introducido en las manifestaciones sexuales un elemento psíquico que explica esta última reciprocidad entre el instinto y lo puramente intelectual’ [has introduced in sexual life a psychic element that explains this reciprocity between instinct and that which is purely intellectual].96
Was homosexuality purely a volitional or intellectual symptom or something larger then? Juarros did not wish to imply this. Homosexuality and sapphism, he wrote, ‘tienen su punto de partida en la infancia, que como hemos dicho, es bisexual. En ciertos individuos se conservan ambas tendencias; son varios los homosexuales que además tienen relaciones sexuales con mujeres, como abundan las safistas que desdeñan buscar también el placer entre brazos masculinos’ [have their starting point in childhood, which, as we have said, is bisexual. In certain individu- als both tendencies are conserved; there are many homosexuals who also have sexual relations with women, just as there is an abundance of sapphists who do not eschew pleasure in the arms of men].97 Apart from childhood influences, these individuals
also betray stigmas of degeneration ‘pero la alteración sexual no tiene carácter constitucional’ [but the sexual deviancy has no constitutional character].98
The actual causes of homosexuality (in the forms of Uranism and pederasty), in Juarros’s schemes as detailed in hisPsiquiatría
forense and hisPsiquiatría del médico general, begin to become less and less clear. As we have seen in the work of Marañón, and will see from discussions held in later years with respect to homosexu- ality, the acquired/congenital conundrum that many psychiatrists and others entered into was never really resolved satisfactorily. Juarros had declared that degeneration was something constitu- tional which was rooted in the subject’s ancestors. Despite having declared that sexual deviancy was not constitutional in one part of his book, he went on to write that the ‘sexual perversions’ were ‘always a degenerative stigma’,99resulting from the union, in most
cases, of physical and psychic sexuality. Thus, most ‘sexual perver- sions’ would be constitutional, either because of physical or psychic causes, or a combination of both: ‘Podrá ocurrir que la influencia del medio, o el contagio mental determinan en algu- nos sujetos la aparición de perversiones y aberraciones sexuales; pero esto es lo excepcional, lo común es que tales aberraciones y perversiones sean traducción de un estado degenerativo’ [It may come to pass that the influence of the environment or mental contagion determines on some occasions the appearance of sexual aberrations and perversions. But this is exceptional and what is more common is that these aberrations and perversions are the product of a degenerate state].100 The definition of the
pervert as a constitutional degenerate in many respects still retained elements of the volitional, an aspect that was characteris- tic of the days in which Mata spoke of those who ‘had thehabitof committing a [pederastic] act’ and those who did not.101
Another foreign work of psychiatry, written by E. Bleuler, was published in Spain in 1924. In his prologue to this work the nerve specialist and histologist Santiago Ramón y Cajal lamented the fact that few Spanish psychiatrists were acquainted with the German language and the ‘conceptos elaborados allende el Rin’ [concepts elaborated on the other side of the Rhine].102 Part of
the objective of translating foreign works such as those of Régis, Bleuler and Bumke103 in the first two decades of the twentieth
century was, naturally, the dissemination of psychiatric ideas on mental illness and, concomitantly, on the ‘sexual perversions’. If the percolation of such ideas in the Spanish medical sciences was slow, or if such ideas were resisted in some quarters as was the case of the more somatic sciences discussed earlier, two areas where they were to find a home was in the disciplines of pedagogy (see
Chapters Two and Four) and, as we will see below, the more popularly oriented sexology of the 1930s.