Havelock Ellis, a well-known English physician, writer, and intellectual, deems homosexuality "a congenital and physiological abnormality." His text Sexual Inversion provides a detailed overview of homosexuality as genetic, as opposed to the prevailing belief in the Western world at the time that it is caused by excessive masturbation or is a form of sex addiction. Ellis writes about homosexuality as a natural phenomenon, citing examples from the animal world and from non-Western cultures, and does so with the aim of removing morality from debates about homosexuality.