[From Time Stood Still by Paul Cohen-Portheim]

XII MEN WITHOUT WOMEN

[126]Even extreme puritans do not deny that there is such a thing as sex, though they may consider it a forbidden or painful subject. The authorities responsible for prisoners' camps apparently gave it no consideration whatsoever. This, I suppose, applies to all prison life, but as so far I have had no experience of peace time and normal prisons I cannot affirm this fact. Apart from prison life, however; in which such treatment may possibly be considered part of the punishment, I can only think of school life or that of monasteries which can be compared to existence in an internment camp in that respect. Soldiers, whether in peace or in war, have their outings, and all armies recognized the need of making same sort of provision for the satisfaction of the sexual needs of the troops. As little as possible was said about this, but puritanical protests were ignored and facts faced. As far as prisoners' camps went, the same facts were not faced, but ignored. No person in their senses could deny that sex plays quite a considerable part in men's lives, from Freudians who think of all life in terms of sex to ascetics who think it a regrettable inconvenience, but the men who invented the prison camp system or those who were responsible for its application treated it simply as non-existent. During the years of their imprisonment the interned civilians never came into contact with women except on the infrequent occasions when they received a visit. [127]The the visitors sat on one side of a long table, the prisoners on the oppasite side, officers between them and armed guards round them. These precautions having been taken, they were allowed a conversation of about twenty­five minutes, after which the visitors had to leave, and when they were safely out of the camp the prisoners were conducted back to their abodes. That was the only form of intercourse between the sexes for the duration of the war in the camps I have known.

I have said that school life and monastic life provide parallels, but this statement needs qualifications. A boy who lives at school does not live there all the year round, he has his holidays in which to meet the female species, besides which he is-rightly or wrongly-supposed to be too young to stand in need of sexual intercourse. The monastery is like the camp in its rigorous exclusion of women and in its disregard of sexual needs, but there is one great difference : monastic chastity is voluntary and self-imposed. Furthermore, both schools and monasteries have evolved disciplinary systems for suppressing or sublimating the sexual urge, they do not simply ignore it. But in spite of these obvious and important differ­ences, sex life in camp had many similarities with that of schoolboys and-I imagine-with that of monks. The furtiveness with which such matters soon began to be treated was schoolboyish and so was the fondness for dirty jokes and talk which was no more than an outlet for unsatisfiable needs, a form of regression. It was rumoured that the tea we got contained some sort of bromide intended to calm passion ; whether that was a fact I cannot say, it certainly had an odd sort of taste, nor can I say whether it had any of the desired effect if it -was thus composed. In any case, it seems to me a supremely naive attempt at solving a most arduous problem.

[128]Many hundreds of thousands of men were subjected to similar treatment in all countries, and in most cases they survived it, but how did they survive it and what happened really ? I have read several accounts, same very lurid and some very bashful, out they have only convinced me of one thing, that here again one can and must not generalize. One should only speak of things as one experienced them personally, and that again must to a great extent remain guesswork, because even in camp the majority continue to treat their sex life as a private matter. Perhaps even more so than in everyday life where some may be inclined to boast about their love adventures, whereas it is quite certain that in camp there could toe nothing to boast about whatever happened. 'The first and obvious conclusion anyone considering the matter dispassionately would arrive at is this : when you lock up thousands of men between eighteen and fifty years for a very prolonged period and prevent any intercourse with the opposite sex, you inevitably drive them, indeed, almost force them into homosexual inter­course. As this conclusion would have been considered painful and not good for the ears of the public, the matter was never discussed or even alluded to in the papers, and the whole problem was ignored, but it can and should not be ignored by any writer on the subject of prison life. The conclusion is, as I said, obvious, but I am not at all sure that it is true. In the sense commonly given to the term homosexuality, that is to say, sexual acts between two of the same sex, it was certainly not true in the camps I have known. Such acts were, I should say, extremely infrequent, and personally I know of none at all. This may seem improbable, and would be more than improbable if there was not one most important point to be considered : the camp offered no possibility of isolation. [129]With the insignificant exception of the few single huts (hardly a dozen there was no possible privacy for anybody, and such intercourse would have had to be wonducted within hearing (if not seeing} of others, and therefore to the general knowledge. Now one of the things camp life has taught me is the quite surprisingly strong sense of shame and reticence between men, which in ordinary life has no occasion to show itself Whenever they could avoid it, they would not even dress or undress in front of each other; in that respect, as in all others, men clutch at the slightest chance of privacy, and 1s to their committing sexual acts of any kind while under abservation - as they always were - that was almost unthinkable. I read with interest some time ago that elephants share this prejudice and invariably retire to secluded spots on such occasions, so as there are undoubtedly humans who do not find seclusion a conditio sine qua non, I will say that the prisoners I knew were elephantine in their habits. I must, however, insist on this being but my personal impression and conviction, while several of my fellow-prisoners held quite differ­ctit views. I have been told, for instance, that in the list year or so homosexuality became almost general at ltnockaloe, that some men were put in gaol for it (which would be th real acme of hypocrisy), but though that is quite possible, I cannot say whether it is true or not. To my own knowledge there was nothing of what is called homosexuality, but what I learnt was that homosexuality is not what it is called. It is a complicated and profound phenomenon, and its roots go deeper than sexuality, it is also very difficult to discuss for lack of a precise termino­logy. The majority limit sexuality to its narrowest sense, and are immensely shocked when it is pointed out to them that there is no hard and sharp division between what they admit to be sexual acts or sensations and a great many other things which they like to consider perfectly 'harmless' or maybe of a spiritual nature.[130] To them homosexuality means an unnatural sin or else a disease, for they believe sexuality to be a sort of definitely circumscribed province of the human personality to which it must remain confined, and any transgression of the boundaries is to them immoral if not criminal, or at the least abnormal, that is to say, diseased. Against them there are arrayed a growing mass of people influenced by the psycho-analysts who teach that sex is everything, and that everything can be reduced, analysed back to a sexual desire. If with the first, sexuality is so narrowly circumscribed that it must limit itself to a few definite acts or else be looked on as criminal and diseased, with the others sexuality becomes so universal a conception that there is no imagin­able art, sensation, or relationship, which is not based on sex. Neither opinion is at all helpful, for to the first homosexuality is just an abomination not to be mentioned, or at the least a very painful subject which they wish to ignore, while to the latter it is just a matter of course: The great stumbling-block is really the term sex or sexuality. If you call it affection, for example, you will find everyone of the first group quite ready to agree that affection between people of the same sex is the most natural and obvious thixig in the world, but that it has nothing in common with sexuality. The truth lies, I think, somewhere between the two extremes. Nothing is entirely unrelated to the sexual, but there are so many varying degrees that there should be a series of differenti­ating terms. If you go back far enough, which psycho­analysis does, you are bound to arrive at the most primi­tive bases of human psychological life, and thus you arrive at the sex-impulse. You can therefore state as a truth that all human spiritual achievement is an expression of sex and that all human relationships are of sexual nature; this is not untrue, but it is on:y part of the truth. [131]Things of common origin are not therefore similar ; without manure you cannot grow roses, but a rose is not the same as manure, or even as its leaf or the stem of its tree or its roots. Everything is derived from the sex-impulse, is of sexual nature in its origin, but may be so far removed from that origin that there is no longer any similarity.

The point of view of those who would narrowly circumscribe sex life may be dismissed as false and as conventional for such conventions vary from age to age and clime to clime, but the point of view of their antagonnists cannot be accepted either : it is too superficial. I t is not only based on what is but a half-truth, but it simply does not go deep enough into the matter. It considers all as derived from sexual impulse, which is true, Imt it considers sexual impulse itself as ,,primitive and mderived, which it is not. If you accept the beliefs of science as psychoanalysts profess to do, you cannot stop at human psychology in your attempt at explanation. Nothing divides what used to be called inanimate matter from animate, the mineral from the vegetable kingdom, or that from the animal, and sex as we understand it only makes an appearance rather high up in the scale. The most primitive and universal impulses we know are those of attraction and repulsion, the most primitive and universal tendencies of forces we consider the positive and negative, which act on each other, and from them all seems derived. In all life there is the will to live and to grow, all is attracted to what furthers growth, repulsed by what hinders it, is therefore inclusive and exclusive. Love and hate are the names given to these impulses when we come to human relationships ; humans love (instinctively) what furthers growth, hate what hinders it. But there are innumerable degrees between the mutual ,attraction and repulsion of, let us say, electrons; and human love and hate. Hunger, for instance, the animal desire for suitable nourishment, is somewhere between the two, and it is a much more primitive impulse than the sexual. [132]There are in sex life plenty of traces of its derivation from that more primitive impulse, and yet more traces in language. In its desire for expansion each human being is instinctively attracted by all that furthers it, repelled by what hinders it, that and not sex is the real basis of man's relations with all the world outside himself. Every being is and feels incomplete and seeks for what can complete it, and that is of infinitely manifold nature. In the higher (or what we call the higher) forms of life there is a division into two sexes, attractive and comple­mentary to each other, and with that sexuality as we know it enters life. But it is not the simple thing it seems, for it goes back far deeper end is not divorced from any other urge of growth. No male is simply male, no female simply female ; one is not purely positive and the other negative, one not active and the other not passive entirely. Every human is of mixed composition and what he needs to complete him is equally mixed. If at one end you have the pure and exclusively male and at the other the pure and exclusively female they would form a perfect whole, but they do not exist. Instead of that you have all sorts of mixtures of the elements, in which as a rule one predominates : in most men the masculine element is much stronger than the feminine ; in most women the feminine much stronger than the masculine, but there are both in all. A predominantly masculine nature wi11 seek one where the feminine predominates, but such a predominantly masculine nature may belong to a person of the female sex and a predominantly feminine one to a person of the male sex. I think, therefore, that one of the profounder truths of homosexuality is that it is based on the universal and normal need for that which com­pletes the individual and which it does not invariably find in the opposite sex. [133]But in the vast majority of such cases the people concerned would consider that the sexual element does not enter at all into their relationships.

For many reasons, of convention, education, and heredity, such homosexuality would not lead to anything approaching sexual intercourse and would go by the name of friendship, comradeship, mutual sympathy. It need not be sexual at all in the ordinary sense of the word, But in my opinion that is really a side issue. What I have been trying to show is that the sexual appetite is but one form or derivation of a deeper and more essentially vital instinct, that of growth, of self-fulfilment by the complementary.

That instinct is ever present and at work, but most strongly in youth - a youth which lasts as long as the desire for growth, that is to say, all their life with some people, and but a short time with others, but while it lats the search continues. Outer circumstances cannot change its nature, but they may alter its direction, and such outer circumstances are those ofa prisoners' camp.

I must apologize for having strayed far from my theme,but this digression is necessary to its comprehension. All such problems are and will probably ever remain controversial, and I do not offer my explanations as the only possible ones. They are besides necessarily incomplete and sketchy, for it would need a volume to exhaust the subject, but my object is not to write a treatise on the problem of homosexuality, but to explain the nature of relationships between a crowd of men deprived of all non­masculine companionship for years. I give my interpre­tation of what I have seen, one which I believe to be true.

The basic fact is that a human being is self-suficient in only a very few exceptional cases. All the vast majority need other human beings, need human intercourse and human affection. Plato's myth of the hermaphrodite split in halves and ever seeking the wanting half is a very profound one, every human is incomplete and seeks completion through another.[134] That other as a rule belongs to the opposite sex, thus a rather masculine woman will prefer a rather feminine man, but possibly another woman, What does this really amount to, what is it we call masculine or feminine characters ? Active and passive seem to me more just terms, because divorced from sex proper. Attraction is a polar force. There are characters whose instinct is to conquer, to vanquish, to dominate, but also to protect, to care and provide for, active natures, and active, therefore, as well in their sexuality, ' masculine ' natures, and the opposite ones wishing to be protected, directed, and willing to be courted and conquered, ' feminzne ' characters. But these characters do not necessarily correspond to the physique or the sex ; there are very delicate women of very active masculine character and very athletic young males of very passive feminine mentality. The mutual attraction between the active and the passive you will find in every school among bays whose sexuality proper is still dor­mant ; always there are protectors and protected, leaders and led. Age plays an important part in such relation­ships, the younger liking to submit to the leadership of the elder. And you will find exactly the same kind of relationships in a prisoners' camp where there are men of different ages. There will be a sort of retrogression to that boyish mutual affection, to strongly emotional friendships that rarely find expression in words. There were a great many such friendships of a mare or less affectionate nature, furthered by the intimacy of life in common. Often the partner's age differed a good deal, for what is more natural than the intense admiration of a boy of nineteen thrown together with ' wise ' and experienced men of thirty or more ? But there were many as well where the partners were of equal age but had complementary natures. [135]In most cases, I think that order normal circumstances one of the partners would have belonged to the feminine sex ; cases like the classical example of the countess and the page in Figaro or the siimilar figures in Rosenkavalier, for instance ; here both partners belonged of necessity to the same sex, but that did not seem essential.

I think that the elder married men did not enter into all this, partly because they were elder and their growth had come to a stop, partly because the memory of their wives remained vivid in spite of their absence, nor is it possible to say how many others remained unaffected. But there certainly were a very great number of friendly couples considered to belong together. I could not say how far any of them were self-conscious, for-strange as this may appear-I have never heard this question discussed, but facts were silently accepted One thing I learnt in camp life is that nearly all men have an infinitely greater desire for and power of affection and tenderness than they could ever be got to admit to others or even to themselves, just as I learned how easily and strongly they hate. Men are very much more emotional and irrational, and very much less 'grown-up' than they are supposed to be or wish to appear. That side of their character is in everyday life revealed to their family only or else to their intimates, but here in a way everyone was intimate. Man is incapable of being happy without making others happy ; he must - according to his nature - protect, care for, ' mother ' others or let himself be cared for and guided. But as everyone's nature is mixed, he generally needs both. A very happily married and wise friend of mine once explained to me the basis of that happiness : A man in me is married to a woman in her and a woman in me to a man in her. [136]That I consider a profound saying ; sexuality in the ordinary and limited sense is very much of a surface phenomenon, but the need for human lova is deep. Most people's lives are in reality filled by the love and life of one other human or more than one. Man cannot and should not (as the Bible says) live alone; that is, incidentally, why single confinement is of inhuman cruelty. No prison, no compulsion can change man's nature in that respect. Where for outer reasons or inner (constitutional) reasons the normal solution is impossible, that is to say, where the need for love and that for sexual fulfilment cannot be achieved together as between man and woman, that need will find other ways of expression, that love will flow into different channels. Psychoanalysis has coined the term sublimation for the transformation of what might have remained sexual into another and higher form of activity. The power of emotion is directed into impersonal and more universal love, that is ivhy there are 'saints' amongst nurses and teachers and all sorts of humanitarians ; that is also why humans who find neither other humans or causes. to love spend their emotion on cats and dogs. All that is not simply sexuality, but ail that may grow from what sexuality has not absorbed. And after all, all religious precepts of chastity, in particular the celibacy of the Catholic priesthood, monastic life of the Christians or Yogha of the Hindus are founded on this recognition of the possibility of sublimation of sexuality.

The direction of the sexual instinct into other channels than the normal was enforced in prisoners' camps. The most obvious change would have been a simple change of object, a transference of sexual love to the own sex. I began by saying that in spite of its obviousness this was very rare in my opinion. Amongst the elder men a good many did not worry much about sexuality, amongst the younger the coarser took refuge in dirty jokes, possibly in certain acts. Amongst the majority the instinct took the form of friendships. [137]These did not, I think, lead to acts of a sexual nature, but I have been at pains to explain that I think this an irrelevant aspect of the problem. Amongst a minority there was sublimation of a more intellectual nature, devotion to work, to research, to spiritual experiments of a more than ordinarily emotional nature, bordering in some cases on insanity. But if there was sublimation, there was also its opposite leading to brutalization and bestiality.

Whichever way you look at it, you cannot deny that relationships among prisoners as among all men are predominantly of an emotional nature. Barbed wire Was responsible for an all-pervading atmosphere of hate ; it was also responsible for the birth of a great deal of love, and the manifestations of both hate and love were conditioned by it, were of a peculiar nature, were as far removed from the normal, conventional, and usual as was all that existence. It would be interesting to know how far the influence of those years in a prison camp has been a permanent one, but there is no answer to that question. On the whole I am inclined to think that most of the young men, below perhaps twenty-three, have been permanently influenced or definitely modelled by it, while to the older men who were more settled it has remained more of an episode. But all of them have learnt, or should have learnt, this lesson : sexuality in the narrow sense goes much less deep than one is inclined to think and flows into other channels when forced to by circumstances, but the need for love never dies. Attrac­tion and repulsion are at the basis of life. It oscillates between love and hatred, and in a prison camp between the hatred bred by enforced community and the love which counteracts that hatred.

Any comments, errors or omissions gratefully received The Editor HTML© F Coakley , 2021