ONTOGENESIS OF SEXUAL BEHAVIOR 



1413 



chologic nonhealthiness. The importance of 

 body appearance in the establishment of 

 gender role is dealt with more fully in a later 

 section. 



6. Assigned Sex and Rearing 



In the foregoing tables, chromosomal sex, 

 gonadal sex, hormonal sex, internal repro- 

 ductive organs, and external genital appear- 

 ance have been considered in turn with re- 

 spect to (1) the assigned sex and rearing, 

 and (2) the gender role established by each 

 individual. In only 7 of the cases repre- 

 sented in these tables was there any incon- 

 sistency between the sex of rearing and gen- 

 der role despite other incongruities between 

 these and the other variables of sex. Paren- 

 thetically, it is to be noted that 3 of the 7 

 appear in more than one of the tables. 



Thus it appears legitimate, once again, to 

 conclude that there is a very close relation- 

 ship between the sex of assignment and 

 rearing and the establishment of a mascu- 

 line or feminine gender role and psychosex- 

 ual orientation. 



7. Psychologic Sex: Gender Role 



The evidence of human hermaphroditism 

 indicates that psychologic maleness or fe- 

 maleness in the human is not to be at- 

 tributed to any single one of the physical 

 variables of sex, i.e., the gonads, sex hor- 

 mones, sex chromatin pattern, or the mor- 

 phology of the external genitals and internal 

 rejiroductive structures. It is, of course, con- 

 ceivable that some other intrinsic body fac- 

 tor could have an important bearing on psy- 

 chosexual development. Anthropometrists 

 in Europe (Vague, 1953) and in this country 

 (Sheldon and Stevens, 1942) have suggested 

 a relationship between body build and psy- 

 chosexual orientation. Their data, however, 

 are not beyond alternative interpretation 

 insofar as the psychologic importance of 

 body structure is concerned. 



In the late nineteenth century von Krafft- 

 Ebing (1890) suggested special bisexual 

 brain centers as an explanation of the psy- 

 chologic differences between men and 

 women. There have never been established 

 any anatomic or neurophysiologic data 

 to support such a conjecture. From 

 1890 to the present day, however, von 

 Krafft-Ebing's views on the l)isexual na- 



TABLE 23.7 



Gender rule in patients with same diagnosis 

 reared male or female: 65 cases 



ture of man have been taken up in 

 turn by such theorists as H. Ellis, Hirsch- 

 feld, Freud and others in a way that has 

 shaped psychiatric theory (see also Rado, 

 1940). The presence of chromosomal, hor- 

 monal, gonadal, or genital incongruities in 

 an individual does not automatically confer 

 incongruous or disordered masculine or fem- 

 inine psychologic development. It would 

 seem that the theory of bisexuality must be 

 laid to rest when one considers the evidence 

 of hermaphroditic individuals with the same 

 diagnosis some of whom have been reared 

 as boys and some as girls (Table 23.7). 



There are 65 cases represented in Table 

 23.7 including 5 of the 7 in the entire series 

 studied in whom ambivalence of gender role 

 was found. These 5 had all been reared as 

 girls. Of the 60 remaining, the 49 patients 

 reared as girls had established an entirely 

 feminine gender role, whereas the 11 reared 

 as boys had established a masculine gender 

 role and orientation. 



One can conclude that an individual's 

 gender role and orientation as boy or girl, 

 man or woman does not have an innate, 

 preformed instinctive basis as some have 

 maintained. Instead the evidence supports 

 the view that psychologic sex is undifferenti- 

 ated at birth, a sexual neutrality in the 

 place of the Freudian bisexuality, and that 

 the individual becomes differentiated as 

 masculine or feminine, psychologically, in 

 the course of the many experiences of grow- 

 ing up. 



The comjK'lling quality of the genital 

 erotic component of sex role has led to the 

 utilization of a concept of drive as an ex- 

 planation of sex role differences. In that 

 event sex drive should be considered gender- 

 less at birth and can be assumed to have no 



