during the preschool years, which is when psychosexual differentiation chiefly is accomplished ( Money, Hampson, & Hampson, 1955, 1957). At this time all development is susceptible to influence from the social environment--for example, the acquisition of a native language. That the differentiation of a gender identity is also powerfully influ- enced by social experience can be clearly demonstrated in certain cases of hermaphroditism (see subsequent discus- sion). As in the case of a native language, however, the process of psychosexual differentiation is clearly one of interactionism between brain and social stimulus. The child with injury to language centers of the dominant hemisphere may be defective in language acquisition. One cannot be very specific about the human brain in matters of psycho- sexual identity, except to note that psychosexual changes may, in rare instances, be associated with temporal lobe malfunction or injury; and that these changes sometimes are reversed as a consequence of successful brain surgery ( Blumer, 1969; Epstein, 1961, 1969). It may also be of significance that not only psychosexual pathology, but also electroencephalographic abnormality ( Hambert & Frey, 1964) has an elevated frequency incidence in Klinefelter's syndrome. Other syndromes in which the sex chromosomes are im- plicated are the female triple-X syndrome, Turner's syn- drome, and the XYY syndrome in males ( Bartalos & Baramki, 1967; Gardner, 1969; Wilkins, 1965). Triple-X females are morphologically and psychosexually unremark- able. Patients with Turner's syndrome are morphologic females who are dwarfed, without gonads, and subject to a variety of other birth defects. The chromosomal error is most typically an absence of one of the pair of X chromosomes (45, X). Girls with this condition need hormonal replace- ment therapy at the age of puberty in order to mature sexually. Psychosexually they represent virtually the ob- verse of homosexuality which is conspicuous by its absence in this syndrome. The girls not only conform to the style of femininity idealized in our cultural definitions of feminin- ity, but they also are (long before they know the prognosis of their condition) maternal in their childhood play and adult aspirations. This very complete feminine gender iden- tity and absence of homosexual traits may have its origins in a total absence of gonadal hormones during fetal devel- opment, so that there is no malelike hormonal effect on the sex-regulating centers of the developing brain ( Ehrhardt, 1967; Money & Mittenthal, 1970). The XYY syndrome (see review by Money, Gaskin, & Hull, 1970) has so recently been discovered that informa- tion regarding gender identity in men with this chrom- osomal aberration (47, XYY) is still tentative. The condi- tion became noteworthy after it was found to be frequent among tall and slender men detained in institutions for delinquents and criminals. Therefore, it has been conjec- tured that the extra Y chromosome may have some bearing on poorly regulated or impulsive behavior, sexual behavior included. The incidence of homosexual experience is high among institutionalized XYY males and occurs also when they are not institutionalized. The examination of syndromes gives one-half of the story (the half that is traditionally neglected) of the relationship between genetics, specifically chromosomal genetics, and homosexuality. The other half of the story comes from testing a sample group of homosexuals themselves. Nuclear sex-chromatin surveys of homosexuals and eon- ists have disclosed no discrepancies between them and con- trol groups of men with normal masculine gender identity ( Bleuler & Wiedemann, 1956; Pare, 1956; Raboch & Nedoma, 1958). In chromosome counting, there are no reports of discrepancies consistently related to homosexual- ity or to either the transvestite or transsexual form of eonism ( Pritchard, 1962), though there are known sporadic combinations of either homosexuality or eonism with the XXY chromosome complex of Klinefelter's syndrome (as discussed earlier in this review). Though the total number of cases studied has been modest, deviations from normal expectancy have always been in patients whose other clini- cal signs indicated the probability of a cttigebetuc error in advance of the actual test. Homosexual men whose physical examination reveals no bodily abnormality have not been found to have a Barr body, indicative of an extra X chro- mosome; nor when the more time-consuming chromosome count has been performed have chromosomal errors been directly visualized. Since men with the XYY syndrome were overlooked until recent years, one must allow the possibility that a chromosome-counting (karyotyping) sur- vey of a large sample of homosexuals might disclose some hitherto unsuspected abnormality in some individuals. Meantime, on the basis of techniques so far employed, there is no way of implicating an error of the chromosomes themselves in the etiology of ordinary homosexuality. Whether genes rather than entire chromosomes may be implicated is an altogether different matter. There is no technique yet available for visualizing, counting, or other- wise directly implicating certain genes in the etiology of anything. Such implication must always be by inference, is only rarely possible, and has not yet been achieved in any part of behavior genetics, to say nothing of sexual behavior genetics. Statistical genetics The attempt to implicate hereditary mechanisms in homosexuality at the genic, if not the chromosomal, level long antedates the new era of cytogenetics. The older, statistical methods are those of the sex ratio, ordinal posi- tion, and twin comparisons. In sex-ratio studies, the male:female ratio in the sibships of male homosexuals was compared with the expected ratio of 106:100 ( Darke, 1948; Jensch, 1941a, 1941b; Kallman, 1952; Lang, 1940; Slater, 1958). Each study turned up a different ratio, some with and some without statistical significance, ranging from 106: 100 in Darke's small sample to 125:100 in Kallman's twin study. The most often quoted study is that of Lang, based on 1,015 cases. His ratio was 121:100, which could be subdivided to 128:100 for those cases over the age of 25, and to 113: 100 for the younger age group. It is possible that the results of all these -4- |