Mechanisms of Inversion of Sexual Orientation
The most common type of inversion of sexual orientation is homosexuality. And this is what we are going to primarily discuss in this chapter. Mechanisms of other types of sexual perversions (about which you can read in the books that were cited above), which form on the conditioned reflex basis, will become clear as we proceed.
Mechanism of forming of a homosexual attraction has for more than a century been the problem that occupied the minds of numerous scientists. Yet, there has not appeared a theory that would provide a comprehensive explanation of this phenomenon until recently. A wide use of experiments on animals contributed to this breakthrough.
In the end of 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries there appeared two opinions as to the origin of this disorder. A number of scientists [27,33,46,58,69] considered a congenital predisposition as the leading factor in forming of a homosexual orientation, since the first signs of the disorder were observed at a very early age. However, while this hypothesis did explain the passive form of male and the active form of female homosexuality as a “psychic hermaphroditism”, the origin of the active form of male homosexuality with preservation of both outer male features and the nature of sexual attraction (except its object) remained unclear. It is equally impossible to understand the nature of the passive form of female homosexuality when basing on this concept.
Later on other authors noticed that beginning stages of homosexuality and fetishism, are very similar, whereas fetishism could not be acknowledged to belong to congenital-type disorders. They started to work out a new approach that would acknowledge the leading role of environment in development of these diseases [29-32,46,48,53-54]. This approach was based on the assumption that forming of a “pathological conditioned reflex” (per V.M.Bekhterev) takes place during one of the first sexual arousals: either towards the object or the action, on which the attention of the patient was concentrated at that moment. The scientist considered the period of adolescent intersexuality as the most dangerous in terms of possible development of sexual abnormalities.
However, this concept also failed to explain why only relatively few people develop this kind of sexual abnormalities, while all of them go through this “dangerous” stage of their development. For example, per Kinsey et al. [90], only 4% of men are exclusively homosexual all their lives (except bisexual ones), although 60% had homosexual experience at the adolescent age!
As further research showed, both approaches proved correct to a certain extent. We are going to discuss this below.
In order to explain the possibility of congenital homosexuality we need to look at the processes of differentiation and development of the reproductive system in embryogenesis.
Sex glands of both male and female fetuses develop from originally undifferentiated in terms of sex structures of an embryo — the embryonic gonads. Starting from approximately 6th week of embryonic period of human fetus’s life under influence of genetic information stored in the sex chromosomes a sex differentiation begins.
In a male fetus an internal part of the gonad starts developing, which later forms testicles, while in a female fetus it is a cortical part of the gonad which starts developing which later forms the ovaries. This differentiation process ends in general outline by the 7th week of the fetal life, after which interstitial cells of the male fetus’s sex glands begin producing androgens. Under influence of the androgens a differentiation of genitalia towards the male type starts. Starting from approximately 32nd week of pregnancy interstitial cells of a male fetus undergo a retroactive development, after which they remain in an atrophied state until the beginning of pubescence [44,55, and others].
A female fetus lacks androgens at this stage, and under these conditions the development by the female pattern takes place. A lack of androgens in a male fetus or their pathological presence in a female one (where they can get, for instance, from the organism of the mother) as well as a number of other outer negative influences can lead to the development of hermaphroditism.
But it was discovered that not only development of genitalia, but also differentiation of sex centers of the brain occurs under influence of sex hormones during another critical period that takes place some time after the first one.
The most suitable object for the experimental study of this phenomenon turned out to be rats, since the latter critical period in rats takes place during the first few days after birth and not during the prenatal stage, as it is the case with other animals and humans.
It was discovered that castration of male rats or injection of anti-androgens before the critical period begins leads to their demonstration upon reaching pubescence of sexual behavioral patterns of females and to cyclical production of gonadotropin (hormones of hypothesis that regulate the activity of sex glands according to the female pattern) [82-84,104]. And vice versa — injection of androgens (or of large doses of estrogen that apparently interfere with functioning of estrogen sensitive brain structures) to females during the critical period leads to manifestation of male-type sexual behavior and acyclic production of gonadotropins according to the male pattern [78,83,94].
It has been discovered that the center responsible for male-type sexual behavior is located in the medial preoptic area of hypothalamus, while the center responsible for manifestation of the female-type sexual behavior — in the arcuate/ventromedial complex of hypothalamic nuclei [76,79,82,92]. In genetic males, provided that develop naturally under influence of androgens that are produced by the testicles, activation and development of androgen-reactive structures of the male-type sexual behavior centers and inactivation of the centers that regulate female-type sexual behavior and cyclical activity of hypophysis take place. In genetic females, provided that androgens are not present during the critical period (this probably happens as a result of influence of estrogens that get into the fetus through placenta from a mother’s organism), development of only female sexual centers takes place.
By the way, Dörner et al. [82] showed that hormonal male homosexuality of experimental animals can be eliminated by means of destroying female sexual centers in the ventromedial hypothalamic nuclei, while Röder and Müller [101] obtained the same result in two homosexual men by means of similar surgery.
Thus it becomes clear how the female-type sexual behavior can form in genetic males and the male-type sexual behavior in genetic females, as a result of hormonal disbalance during a certain stage of embryogenesis. Such men and women can demonstrate various degrees of congenital physical or mental feminization or masculinization, respectively. The homosexual attraction formed in this way is not subject to the principle “all or nothing”, but is expressed to a higher or lower extent depending on the size of the injuring factor [81].
Dörner [78] points out the following possible pathogenic factors of this type of sexual inversions:
1) pathologic secretion of placental gonadotropins or sex hormones by placenta; 2) disruption of the fetal sex hormones synthesis; 3) altered sensitivity of fetal hypothalamic sexual centers of the to sex hormones, which may occur as a result of genetic derangements; 4) hormones production abnormalities in the organism of the mother; 5) injection of sex hormones to the mother’s body during pregnancy.
It is possible that in case of men this type of pathology can be a result of chromosome set disproportion, namely increase of X-chromosomes. In Klinefelter's syndrome (XXY) physical and mental feminization is frequently observed [73,98-99].
It was also shown that feminization of a male fetus occurs if certain teratogenic (causing fetal deformity) drugs, for example, reserpine [87-88] or chlorpromazine [89], get introduced into the organism of the mother during the mentioned critical period.
Such non-specific impacts on the fetus, as reduction of uteroplacental blood circulation during the same critical period [10-11].
Although the mechanism that we have just discussed is highly corroborated, it accounts for origination of only some cases of the passive form of male and the active form of female homosexuality. The men who demonstrated mental feminization features in their childhood: who wanted to become girls (or even felt themselves as girls) and played girl games with girls, later on shunned company of boys, liked to dress like girls, etc., — can most likely be classified to the same group, just as the women who have been demonstrating similar masculinization features since their childhood.
In order to illustrate another way of forming the pathology — based on a conditioned reflex — we conducted special studies on dogs.
Sixteen outbred male dogs were separated from their mothers within the first month of their lives and raised by two in cells with an area of 3 square meters (two males per one cell). The walls of the cells were made of non-transparent material to prevent a visual contact of the dogs with other animals.
After one year, i.e. after the dogs demonstrated reactions of sexual arousal in response to contact with sex pheromones, each male was brought together with a bitch in heat, and within several days of this — with the same bitch and the male dog, with whom he had been raised, at the same time. Each test lasted 30 minutes.
Behavior of three animals during the first contacts with a bitch demonstrated their inability to perform a mount. After feeling the smell of sex pheromones, these males would get sexually aroused, which nonetheless did not lead to copulation attempts, but to intensive playing around with the bitch. This kind of behavior persisted despite repeated injections of large doses of androgen (testosterone propionate) (6 ml of 5% solution a day for 6 days in a row). One of the males began to mount a bitch starting from only the seventh test, but his mounts were so few and lacking energy that he failed to perform a single copulation. Despite this fact he was quite energetically mounting the male dog with whom he had been raised when two of them were left together with the bitch.
Two other males started attempting to perform sexual contacts with a bitch only when two of them were brought to the bitch at the same time. That is to say that their sexual arousal was reaching the critical level only in response to inadequate visual signals.
The remaining 13 males manifested their sexual reactions towards a bitch and made their first copulation quite fast. But during consecutive meetings with the same bitch and a male, 9 of them also demonstrated sexual reactions towards the male. Three of them performed an insignificant number of mounts on the male compared to those on the female; two — 25-30% of the total number of mounts each; another two — approximately 60% each; and two males that had been raised together mounted strictly each other without paying any attention towards the bitch, with which both of them had had sexual contacts earlier.
It was also observed that homosexual manifestations took place only in those male pairs where at least one animal positively reacted to the mounts that another one performed on it (which we had never observed in case of male dogs that had been raised under regular circumstances). At that, the male who was the object of the mounts, obviously enjoyed what his partner was doing (the sacral region of the back is the dogs’ erogenous zone) and frequently had erection.
Thus, these experiments demonstrated the fact of homosexual attraction forming on the basis of conditioned reflex. Observations of the passive form of homosexual pattern on the basis of conditioned reflex are also of value.
This is an interesting fact that homosexual men are usually not attracted to women even after injection of androgens; the only exception is certain young men, who apparently are still at the stage of adolescent intersexuality [77,95,102].
Basing on examination of homosexual men in 1976 we [66] pointed at different origin of the active and the passive forms of the disease [67].
The observations of the homosexual patients that we conducted during the next several years allowed us to classify homosexual people not into two, but into three groups — by the mechanism of the disease origin:
1) Men with the passive and women with the active form of congenital homosexuality. Such men and women felt themselves respectively girls and boys since their childhood, they preferred to play games and wear clothes that typical to the opposite sex. Many men had congenital feminine while women — congenital masculine features. In sexual relationships the men felt themselves as women, while the women — as men. A high percentage of them have some kind of hereditary anomalies and report pregnancy pathologies or premature birth.
2) Men with the passive and women with the active form of acquired homosexuality. These patients do not have congenital homosexual mentality and perverted feminine or masculine features. Their attraction to the same sex forms on the basis of conditioned reflex during the period of adolescent intersexuality.
3) Men with the active and women with the passive form of acquired homosexuality. Such men look masculine and possess male-type sexuality. Correspondingly, the women possess feminine features and female type of sexual behavior. Their pathological attraction to the opposite sex forms also on the basis of conditioned reflex, usually at the juvenile age. Later on their homosexual attraction either a) transforms into regular but then reverts to homosexual as a result of mental traumas as a result of heterosexual contacts or impossibility of the latter for various reasons, or b) moves on to their adult life either totally displacing the regular-type sexual attraction or coexisting with it. A significant percentage of patients of this group report hereditary abnormalities, various serious somatic diseases in their childhood as well as pregnancy pathologies and premature birth. Such anamnesis points at influence of some injuring factor, which could impair the brain structures that regulate the congenital component of sexual orientation.
It follows from the above stated data that homosexuality represents a disease of polymorphic origin, which accounts for the difficulties that exist in its treatment. This is why there can be no universal method applicable to all those who wish to get cured of homosexuality; the specific treatment has to be chosen depending on the etiologic group that the patient belongs to. Apart from psychotherapeutic measures various medications can also be used.
In some cases of male homosexuality drugs (in combination with psychotherapy) can be used in order to induce or intensify the reaction to “key stimuli” of sexual behavior and thus to increase a regular-type sexual attraction.
In case of women who do not have heterosexual attraction as a result of disrupted differentiation of brain centers, a sygethin therapy, which proved to be effective for treating these problems in our experiments on animals [12], can be used.
It goes without saying that only those patients who insist on treatment should be subject to it. On the whole, they should realize that homosexuality should not be considered as an obstacle on the way to realization of the meaning of their lives. What is really important though — is that they should get a clear understanding of what it consists in. And having transcended this problem, without getting stuck with it, they should move further along the path to God.
It also makes sense to learn how to tell ethic principles that are part of the Teaching of God — and people’s morality that is constantly changing without being ethically pure in all cases. And this is not morality that we should follow but the Teaching of God [22] (although not without taking people’s opinions into consideration).
