Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

Excerpts from the Professional Press on the work of

DR. WM. STEKEL

We have lacked thus far a systematic clinical application of Freudian analysis. Stekel’s work fills this need.

Jung, in Medis. Klinik.

... A standard work; a milestone in the psychiatric and psychotherapeutic literature.

Geh. Sanitätsrat Dr. Gerstor, in Die Neue Generation.

It would be regrettable if the work did not attract fully the attention of the scientific world; its deep sobriety and the fulness of its details render it a treasury of information, primarily for the physician, but, in large measure, of interest also to the educationist, the minister, the teacher and, not least, to the student of criminology....

Horch, in Archiv f. Kriminalogie.

These case histories will be read with great interest by everyone, including those who are inclined to maintain a sceptical attitude towards psychoanalysis.

Eulenburg, in Medizinische Klinik.

Stekel’s work teaches practitioners a great many things they did not know before, particularly about the significance of psychology and sexual science in the practice of medicine.

Hitschmann, in Internat. Zeitschrift f. Psychoanalyse.

It is Stekel’s extraordinary merit that he compels us to take into account a pressing mass of data which he brings to light with a scientific zeal which is unfortunately still rare,—facts and observations so penetrating, so true to life that these often render unnecessary any formal statement of the obvious deductions which flow from them.

Die Neue Generation.

The most modern problems are considered, new viewpoints are brought out, while the excesses in the technique and interpretation of the earlier stages of psychoanalysis are avoided.

Kermauner, in Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift.

All in all, Stekel’s is a work for which I bespeak the widest interest not only among physicians, but also among jurists, educationists, sociologists and ministers. Only an understanding of the mental life of the individual will yield a proper view of our social life.

Liepmann, in Zeitschrift f. Sexualwissensch.

The work is a treasury for all who have occasion to probe the depths of human life and should be a source of considerable information and stimulus to every jurist who takes in earnest his professional duties.

Geh. Justizrat Dr. Horch, in Archiv f. Kriminalogie.

It does not matter from what angle the work of Stekel is approached. Any consideration of it reveals rich material. Stekel is a writer who handles his subjects in a lavish manner; lavish, but with that restraint which bends all to the urgency of his themes. He evidently approaches his clinical work with the same exuberant interest. There he reaps through psychoanalysis a rich harvest of results. He has collected these results and presented them for the dissemination of such knowledge of the sexual disturbances as he thus obtained. Facts are there in great number. They cannot be gainsaid. Stekel’s own evaluation of such facts and his earnest plea for their consideration, both by the medical profession and by the society of men and women where these facts exist, can speak only for themselves to the truly conscientious reader. There is not much in these books that the psychotherapeutist can afford to pass over.

New York Medical Journal.

THE HOMOSEXUAL NEUROSIS

BY

DR. WILLIAM STEKEL

(VIENNA)

Authorized translation by

JAMES S. VAN TESLAAR, M.D.

(For sale only to Members of the Medical Profession.)

BOSTON

RICHARD G. BADGER

THE GORHAM PRESS

Copyright, 1922, by Richard G. Badger

All Rights Reserved

Made in the United States of America

The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A.

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

The present volume completes my English version of the Homosexualität portion of the author’s Onanie und Homosexualität. The first portion has been issued a few months ago, under the title Bisexual Love, and it is very gratifying that the publication of the present volume was made possible so soon after the appearance of the first. The translation of the part dealing with Autoerotism is also completed, and will appear shortly. One of the most important works of clinical psychopathology will thus be available, for the English reading professional ranks, in unabridged form.

These three volumes, though available separately, in some respects form an instructive continuity. At any rate those interested in any of the fundamental problems discussed therein will find most helpful an acquaintance with all three volumes.

Furthermore the student or physician interested in mental problems will find the implications of the principles set forth herein of the utmost practical significance, aside from their specific bearing on the problems of Homosexuality and Autoerotism. These clinical studies stand forth, in the first place, as lessons in analysis and therapy; but incidentally they reveal certain fundamental aspects of human nature more clearly than such a revelation was possible without the aid of the psychoanalytic method of research. The knowledge thus gained for therapeutic purposes is also applicable to many other practical problems of life. One approaching the study of a work like the present, with the intention of improving one’s therapeutic efficiency and of thus increasing one’s professional usefulness, is quite likely to discover before long that his whole outlook, as a professional man, and, above all, as a social being, has undergone a wholesome transformation.

Indeed, all fundamental knowledge has this quality of spreading, fan-like, clearing up with its helpful implications more than appears obvious at the beginning. It is not surprising, therefore, that Psychoanalysis, at the present stage primarily a therapeutic method, but reaching into the inner recesses of the human soul more penetratingly than any other method of inquiry, should also prove the most helpful method of interpreting all other problems generated by the functions of the human instincts and emotions.

Van Teslaar.

September 30, 1922

Brookline, Mass.

CONTENTS

I

THE RELATIONS OF THE HOMOSEXUAL TO THE OTHER SEX—FEAR, DISGUST, HATE, AND ANGER—HOMOSEXUALITY AND EPILEPSY—SADGER’S RESEARCHES—HIRSCHFELD’S THESES—FEAR OF THE SEXUAL PARTNER—DISGUST FOR WOMAN—SADISTIC ATTITUDE—EPILEPSY AND HOMOSEXUALITY—OTHER REACTIONS INDICATING REVULSION—MY FIRST EARLY EXPERIENCES—SADGER’S INVESTIGATIONS.

Jedermann trägt ein Bild des Weibes von der Mutter her in sich: davon wird er bestimmt, die Weiber überhaupt zu verehren oder sie geringzuschätzen oder gegen sie in allgemeinen gleichgültig zu sein.

—Nietzsche.

THE

HOMOSEXUAL NEUROSIS

I

Everyone carries within himself a pattern of womanhood derived from his mother: that determines whether he should respect or depreciate woman; or whether his attitude towards woman in general should be one of indifference.

—Nietzsche.

Our investigations thus far have repeatedly shown us that in the case of homosexuals the heterosexual path is merely blocked, but that it would be incorrect to hold that the pathway is altogether absent. I have proven that the individual, as representative of our modern culture, finds it impossible to maintain his bisexuality; therefore he represses either his homosexuality or his heterosexuality. We also convinced ourselves that organic bisexuality has nothing to do with psychic bisexuality. Hirschfeld expressly emphasizes that he has met with homosexuality among strongly virile men and among persons typically female. The organic theory of homosexuality has broken down completely. One would suppose that the investigators would necessarily turn to the psychologic concept. No. The psychic forces are still underestimated and the heterosexual period of homosexuals is still overlooked. Although Hirschfeld emphasizes that to psychoanalysis belongs the merit of having pointed out first the heterosexual component, why does he not draw the natural deductions from this acknowledged fact? He arrives at the following conclusions:

1. Genuine homosexuality is always an inborn condition.

2. This inborn state is conditioned by a specific homosexual constitution of the brain.

3. That specific brain structure is brought about through a peculiar mixed condition of male and female hereditary plasm.

4. That ambisexual state is found frequently associated with pronounced instability of the nervous system.

5. Between the specific and the nervous constitution there exists an intimate relationship.

6. All external causes are operative only in the presence of the inner homosexual constitution.

7. External causes—provocative—are so common that in 99 per cent. of cases the innate homosexual disposition breaks forth sooner or later and becomes clearly manifest in consciousness.

8. Homosexuality is neither a morbidity nor a degeneration; it is neither a taint nor a criminal trait, representing merely an aspect of natural development, a sexual variant, like many analogous sexual modifications in the animal and vegetal world. (Hirschfeld, Homosexualität, p. 394.)

Our data do not uphold these contentions. How can Hirschfeld speak of an innate homosexual constitution when elsewhere in his work he admits the constant presence of heterosexual instincts? How can he maintain that homosexuality is a trait reaching back to the very roots of individuality when every careful investigation proves the contrary?

The following statements show his contradictions on the subject:

“Here too it has been contended that all these deviations from the sexual type during childhood and puberty do not conclusively lead to the diagnosis of homosexuality, that the earlier periods of life are undifferentiated with respect to sex, that boys as well as girls, young men as well as young women, often become eventually fully heterosexual in spite of pronounced androgyny and sexual incongruities; even the transvestites of both sexes show early traits inharmonious with their respective sex, and certainly many passivists, succubists, or masochists show themselves already as boys somewhat lacking in ‘mannish’ traits while female activists, incubists and sadists lack certain womanly traits already in their girlhood, though all retain the capacity to love the opposite sex and therefore prove themselves later heterosexual....

“At any rate one thing is certain. If a child is a urning, it grows up a heterosexual person with the same unconditional certainty with which the ‘normal’ child becomes heterosexual. Thus the special character of the urning looms forth as something fundamental having its roots in the depths of personality.” (Hirschfeld, Homosexualität, p. 121.)

Naturally, Hirschfeld adopts a safe method of excluding all cases which do present a history of heterosexuality. He calls such cases “pseudohomosexuality” thus placing them in a category apart from the genuine urning. Bloch also calls the heterosexual inclination of typical homosexuals a sort of “pseudoheterosexuality.”[^[1]] This method of dealing with the subject admits of no proofs. Bloch suggests the test that a genuine theory of homosexuality must be capable of embracing all cases. The Hirschfeld theory of “the third sex” cannot do so. It is neither founded nor proven either on organic or on psychologic grounds.

But why is it that the homosexual shifts so completely away from the sexual partner? A. Adler has conceived in these cases the hypothesis of a “fear of the sexual partner.” This observation certainly holds true in the case of many homosexuals, but is not true of all cases. Nature does not operate in such simple ways and a single key does not unlock the riddle of homosexuality.

In accordance with the results of our investigation thus far we may conclude: the homosexual finds closed for him the path which leads to the other sex, and the barrier is psychical. Anxiety, disgust and scorn support the forces of homosexual love. These feelings do not exhaust the range of inhibitory factors and we shall presently turn our attention to others. But we must take up the psychogenesis of these inhibitions in a thorough and systematic manner.

May fear of the sexual partner drive a person into homosexuality? We must answer this question in the affirmative inasmuch as we are able to trace that fear in a number of cases.

First, let us take up the case of Krafft-Ebing (Obs. 159) since it is so simple and obvious:

54. Mrs. X., 26 years of age, married 7 years, confesses herself attracted for some time to persons of her own sex; she respects and even feels a certain sympathy for her husband but marital relations with him she finds repulsive. She has made him abstain from sexual relations with her since the birth of their youngest child. Already at the boarding school she felt a keen interest in other young women, which she can only describe as love attraction. But occasionally she had also felt herself attracted to particular men and lately a certain man had put her resistance to test. She was often afraid she might forget herself with him and therefore avoided being alone with the man. But these are merely passing episodes in contrast with her passionate inclination towards persons of her own sex. Her true love is expressed in kisses, caresses and intimate contact with the latter. Failure to gratify that yearning is painfully uncomfortable and is largely responsible for her present nervous state. The subject does not assume a particular sexual rôle in relation to persons of her own sex, and she did no more than indulge with them in kisses, petting and embracing. The subject considers herself of a passionate nature. Quite likely that she masturbates. Her sexual perversion she looks upon as “unnaturally morbid.” Nothing in the woman’s ordinary conduct or external appearance betrays such an anomaly. About her childhood she is unable to report anything of significance. She was quick to learn, had poetic and æsthetic inclinations, was considered somewhat nervous, loved reading of novels and sentimental romances, was of a neuropathic constitution, and extremely sensitive to changes in temperature. It is noteworthy also that at ten years of age, because she thought that her mother did not love her, the patient dissolved matches in coffee and drank the solution so as to make herself very ill and to draw her mother’s affection to her.

Here we see an inclination to heterosexual relations which is not cultivated on account of fear. This young woman, with a tremendous homosexual leaning as shown already by her attachment to her mother, marries a man, in whose embrace she remains frigid, but fears to be alone with a man who rouses her, because he may prove dangerous to her. We see that her pronounced bisexuality leads her to fall in love with a man, to be his sweetheart, in her fancy, but she hesitates to turn her fancy into a reality, the “fear of sinning” preventing her from carrying out the step. Then she looks upon the heterosexual inclinations as passing whims and turns to her homosexual fancies. She is running away from the male. She fears the man she loves because a strong love implies submission to the male. She gravitates away from him, not because the male is unable to yield her gratification but because she fears him. But we must understand how this flight from the male, which manifests itself also in her dyspareunia, originated. How little such life histories bear on this point, without psychoanalysis! In my study of dyspareunia[^[2]] I describe similar cases and show how aversion towards the male originates in the first place.

Through Freud we have learned that fear, like disgust, is a repressed form of libido. Though this view is correct, it is not always adequate. My own researches have shown that every fear represents in the first place fear of self.

But why should the homosexual entertain any fear of himself during intercourse with woman? What he fears is his excessive sexuality when it is commingled with criminal tendencies.

The frequency with which fear of one’s own criminal aggressiveness stands back of impotence and homosexuality can hardly be overestimated. Krafft-Ebing describes a typical bisexual who had experienced orgasm but once in contact with woman. But that happened during the commission of a delict (Obs. 142, p. 273) on his part.

“It is remarkable that he did experience gratification that one time during the (forced) act. After the act he was overcome with nausea. One hour after the assault he again had coitus with the same woman and with her consent but that time he no longer experienced any satisfaction.” That proves that the orgasm depended on his abuse of force. The fear is fear of violence, the disgust is disgust of self, both coming into play so as to protect one against deeds incompatible with one’s ethical standards.

I know a large number of homosexuals who have actually confessed to me that they are able to have intercourse with women only while they are in a strong rage. But then they are in fear of themselves, so dangerous do they become. One subject confessed to me that he had nearly strangled his sexual partner. Other homosexuals feel an inexpressible rage just after coitus. In such cases the heterosexual act is associatively related to some criminal act. Some unconscious fancies depict and urge cutting up, strangling or beating the female companion. These men are extreme woman-haters and hatred is always deadly.

I reproduce here a single relevant observation:

55. Mr. H. K. is a well-known homosexual who prefers particularly males of low standing. The more powerfully built the men are the greater is his orgasm. He prefers to choose packers, furniture movers, expressmen and generally individuals of strong build. His greatest orgasm he experienced during intimacy with a member of an athletic club, a man who had a very small penis. He feels such a strong fear of women that he does not trust himself in a room alone with one. He does not remember having ever been sensuously stirred by a woman. Several times he tried intercourse with prostitutes but fled each time as soon as he found himself alone in the room with the woman. A cold sweat breaks out over his brow and he runs off precipitately as if pursued by a thousand demons. A short analysis over a few days revealed that this was a typical case of a criminal fancy, the subject having indulged for a long time in the onanistic fancy of strangling a woman. (“All women ought to be exterminated” ... is a favorite sentiment often expressed by this man.) In his phantasies he has also committed assaults on men, and the thought of ripping open the anus of a man has occurred to him already several times.

His fear of women is the fear he may forget himself and strangle one of them. But he is also afraid of men, that is, he also fears he may commit some assault on a man. Therefore he protects himself through choosing men of powerful physique. They should be stronger than he. Thus he feels assured that he will not be able to assault them. Lately he has been seeking a mannish woman who should also be stronger than he. Evidently he proposes to protect himself also in that case ... against himself. The homosexuality showed itself to be a flight from his criminal heterosexual tendencies.

Other homosexuals protect themselves against woman through disgust. How closely hatred, fear, and disgust stand in this connection may be seen in the following observation by Hirschfeld:

“A certain homosexual related to me that he is able to have intercourse with a woman but that immediately afterwards he is seized with a terrible anger against the woman and once after the act he spat at her in disgust; since that, in order to avoid consequences, he leaves the room as hastily as possible immediately after the ejaculation.

“How far the aversion may go is shown by the case of the homosexual Herzog von Praslin-Choiseul who at Paris in 1864 strangled post coitum his young bride, the daughter of General Sebastiani. It may be mentioned in this connection that by far the greater number of sadistic women who prevail upon masochistic males of grossest physical and mental type to carry out acts of violence upon them are in reality homosexual women with a sexual aversion to men. Professor Albert Eulenburg told me that all the alleged sadists among females whom he knows have proven themselves in reality to be homosexuals. I, too, know but three women among twelve sadists who deny homosexuality.” (Hirschfeld, loc. cit. p. 96).

First we learn that this homosexual, through fear of himself, runs off in the nick of time. The act of spitting may be the symbolic substitute for a more serious act. If additional testimony were needed to support the relevance of my conception, the case of the Duke von Praslin-Choiseul stands forth as the clearest proof one could wish. Plainly Hirschfeld, as usual, confuses here cause and effect. The Duke did not strangle his bride because he was homosexual,—he had taken flight in homosexuality, because he felt impelled to commit a “passion crime” and he tried to protect himself against his own wild instincts.

Particularly interesting from the criminologic-psychologic standpoint are the cases of epileptics who during the attack are diverted from their usual sexual path. The epileptic is a criminal who during the attack carries out some criminal deed. Ordinarily the deed is carried out in the phantasy, but here and there the epileptic commits overtly some deed of uncommon cruelty. During his epileptic attack the patient gives expression to his criminal trend. The attack is the equivalent of the crime. Readers interested in this important problem I must refer to my original study.[^[3]] I have been much surprised that it has received so little attention on the part of neurologists and criminologists. It is the fate of psychoanalysts. The current fashion in science has decreed our ban, our works are overlooked and are neglected even when they are of fundamental significance, like my contribution on epilepsy.

Epilepsy, with the exception of the Jacksonian type, is a particular form of hysteria. In the hysterical attack, too, the unconscious forces break through and the individual carries out various instinctive promptings while his consciousness is side-tracked. The epileptic attack represents more the criminal, the hysterical corresponds more to the sexual urge. Naturally the epileptic attack may also substitute some sexual crime (crime passionelle), and that, frequently, is the theme of the attack. It is thus obvious that homosexuals who shun crimes of passion may fall easily a victim to attacks during which the crimes are carried out vicariously. In our study of sadism we shall analyze in detail such a case.[^[4]] Here I wish to point out merely the interesting fact that during the epileptic attack heterosexuals commit homosexual acts and reversely.

56. Mr. W. H., 39 years of age, a strongly built young man, comes to me to be treated for epilepsy and every time he is accompanied by an attendant. Since his 16th year he suffers attacks and several times he was seized while on the street. For that reason he does not go out alone and is always accompanied by his attendant, a simple fellow to whom he seems much attached. He is totally incapacitated from following any occupation for it turns out that his attacks are more frequent when he endeavors to work. On account of his attacks he has prevailed upon his well-to-do father to keep him in the country where he has nothing to do but to go on walks. He is soft and pliant so long as things go his way. But if contradicted he flies into great rage. He does not burst out with anger but tries to control himself and soon afterwards he has an attack during which he sees red. He reproaches himself a great deal on account of his failure to achieve something in life and because he is the cause of so much trouble to his parents. His ethical standard is a very high one and that is a point of great significance in the differential diagnosis of genuine epilepsy. He bemoans his misspent life and wants to be cured. If only there were some way to free him of the trouble! Regarding his sexual life: he relates that he is decidedly homosexual and that boys and handsome young men particularly attract him. The attendant is clearly a protection against his homosexual excitations. When he meets boys who attract him he clings to his attendant pretending to fear an oncoming attack. While living in the country at the present his attacks come on only at night and in bed. He does not recall the aura, except that he sees red, and he remembers no dream starting or accompanying the attack. He masturbates occasionally; always with the fancy that he is playing with small boys. I suggest to his parents that he ought to be psychoanalyzed. In view of the hopeless character of other current therapy this may be his only chance of recovery. The father agrees. But as the patient lives some distance from Vienna I advise the father to remove him to the city for the duration of the treatment. This he also agrees to do. Next day the mother calls and asks me to use my influence to prevent the boy from staying in Vienna. That would bring him back home and she is tremendously afraid of him. Her husband does not know it, she has kept it from him. During the attacks the son turns on her and attempts to attack her. Once she succeeded to repel him only by the exercise of her strength. During the attack he rolls his eyes fearfully and threatens she must die because she is responsible for everything. I arrange that the patient should see me only twice a week after that. But on the third appointment he failed to appear, because I had stipulated as one of the first conditions of my treatment that he must go to work. The very next day he reacted with several attacks. The father found that the treatment proved “too exciting” for the boy, and I agreed readily to give up the analysis when the father took entirely the son’s side and disagreed with the suggestion that the boy must take up some occupation.

This case shows the outbreak of homosexuality during the attacks and an affective relationship to the mother such as is shown by many homosexuals, as we shall explain more fully later.

The reverse also happens,—heterosexuals committing homosexual deeds during the attacks. The repressed components of sexuality always break through during the attack.

Tarnowsky, too, speaks of “epileptic pederasty.”[^[5]] The “epileptic pederasts” are usually of active character. As an example he mentions the case of a criminal who came under his personal observation. A young man, wealthy, apparently fully heterosexual, goes to the house of his beloved after a sumptuous dinner during which he had imbibed a great amount of wine. The lady of the house not being at home he went to a room where a 14-year-old boy was asleep, assaulted him and also the chamber maid who ran to the spot attracted by the boy’s outcries. After that he fell into a sleep which lasted 12 hours. When he awoke he recalled nothing of the episode. It was found that he was subject to epileptic attacks particularly after wine. Hirschfeld observes in this connection:

“Usually the epileptic neurosis—which, as a matter of fact, I have noticed but rarely among homosexuals—influences homosexuality in the sense of removing the inhibitions and increasing the impulsive energy of the instinctive cravings. I have had under examination a particularly serious case of this character, a man-servant, subject to epilepsy who during a fit of rage and anger strangled to death and then hacked to pieces a boy. In this, as in similar cases, there was a previous history of a fusion of homosexuality and epilepsy. At any rate it is conceivable that during the beclouding of consciousness induced by the epileptic seizure all psychic factors undergo such a complete transformation that even tendencies ordinarily wholly foreign to consciousness and not even tolerated in the foreconscious, insofar as the latter may be revealed, find ready outlet. Burchard, too, has observed an epileptic of normal sexuality who during the seizures committed homosexual assaults on other patients.” (Hirschfeld, loc. cit., p. 214.)

What I have said about the influence of alcoholics holds true also of epileptic attacks. The latter also neutralize the inhibitions and the bisexual and criminal aspects of human nature come clearly to surface. It is noteworthy that Tarnowsky’s patient also indulged in alcohol before the onset of the attack.

The following case shows that the attacks may also be simulated:

57. Mr. Z. T., a bisexual, subject to anxiety attacks, relates that he suffered a great deal once because his mother devoted herself very lovingly to a brother during the latter’s illness. He was 22 years of age at the time and extremely jealous. Once he found himself alone in the room with his mother. Without knowing what he was doing he threw himself on her with the intent of assaulting her. The mother shouted and the sisters and servants came rushing in. He simulated an epileptic fit, threw himself on the floor and remained for an hour apparently in a faint. Physicians were called in and they declared the condition epilepsy. For two days he acted as if he heard nothing of what was said and knew nothing of what was going on. His deed caused him endless shame. He was not reproached on account of it and he spent two months in a comfortable sanatorium.

How closely related are make-believe and illness with every neurotic! This young man suffered also from fear and disgust of women but that, as well as his whole anxiety neurosis, disappeared completely under psychoanalytic treatment. The case stands as one of my most successful therapeutic accomplishments.

We turn our attention now to a consideration of the disgust with which homosexuals are inspired by the other sex. I have already repeatedly stated that the disgust represents a repressed desire, that it stands for the repulsion of unbearable tendencies. Heterosexuals show a similar aversion for their own sex,—a feeling which the homosexuals have repressed. That much the very beginner in psychoanalysis knows; the observation belongs to the a b c of practical psychology. Nevertheless, we still find disgust and scorn of woman pointed out as proofs of homosexuality. Disgust is not a proof of the absence of the proper libido. The true homosexuals would show a complete indifference towards the opposite sex. Occasionally they do assume such indifference for their attitude is always affective and negativistic. Hirschfeld contradicts himself repeatedly on this point.

In one place he emphasizes that the genuine homosexual is indifferent towards woman and shows no disgust:

“On this point also I find myself in agreement with Numa Praetorius,[^[6]] who in one of his essays remarks that most persons ‘show an inclination towards one sex but only indifference towards the other sex.’ He is of the opinion that the disgust of heterosexuals’ feeling-attitude of disgust towards homosexual deeds, too, is an intellectual process induced by the prevailing social attitude and judgment rather than instinctive and innate. If the dislike were genuine heterosexuals would hardly get along so easily and so often with homosexuals nor would the latter carry on so readily masturbatory acts with the opposite sex, even though the acts be limited to mechanical excitations.” (Hirschfeld, loc. cit., p. 218.)

But another passage of the work reveals the opposite view:

“A 26-year-old workingman relates: ‘At 17 years of age an older friend of mine induced me once to have sexual intercourse with a woman—I was unaware at the time of my urning disposition—and I felt such disgust that I vomited. Since that time I have a “holy horror” of any contact with woman, until a few weeks ago when driven to despair I tried to control myself. It was useless, I could attain neither erection nor ejaculation and instead, the continuous irritation brought on an inflammation of the member.’”

“A Bavarian merchant relates: ‘As a result of repeated intercourse with women I have acquired a serious nervous derangement, a strong sense of lassitude associated with vomiting and migraine lasting for days. The odor exhaled by woman causes me greatest distress. I am now unable to gratify a woman, but on the other hand contact with a soldier makes me happy, it strengthens and revives me.’” (Hirschfeld, loc. cit., p. 96.)

In the passage next following he expresses himself even more plainly:

“It is very striking to note that women in executive positions, directresses, etc., are much more severe with the male employees, servants, etc., than with the female personnel. There are homosexual males who avoid any service by women and chiefly for that reason dislike restaurants employing female waitresses. Also, there are homosexual women who avoid business relations with men for similar reasons. Without knowing why, homosexually predisposed girls begin early to feel that being conducted home by gentlemen is something superfluous as well as unpleasant. Many urnings and urlinds actually experience a physical distress when some member of the opposite sex so much as helps them on with their coat. I know several homosexual physicians of extreme sensitiveness whose aversion to the female characters is so strong that physical examinations of women, particularly of their sexual parts or breasts, is highly repulsive to them and the aversion may go so far as to make it impossible for them to undertake such an examination.” (Hirschfeld, loc. cit., p. 98.)

Such accounts prove that the attitude of the homosexual towards the opposite sex is not one of indifference. Where that is claimed it may be doubted; at any rate it does not correspond with psychoanalytic experience. Hatred, anger, disgust, physical discomfort serve as protections against the other sex. That is true of male as well as of the female homosexuals.

For a short space I shall now limit my observations to male homosexuals. I shall attempt to make clear how I have arrived at my present conception. The homosexual’s scorn of woman, his emotional revulsion-attitude against the other sex, is precisely what led me to formulate my new conceptions. I had the opportunity to analyze a homosexual. During the very first consultation hours there was revealed that heterosexual stage through which every homosexual must pass. Previously it was my custom to refuse to analyze homosexuals because I had assumed Hirschfeld’s view that uranism is an innate condition. This particular patient suffered of various anxiety attacks and came to be treated for his anxiety not for his homosexuality. His anxiety state showed itself particularly as a fear of woman so that he could not trust himself to be alone with one. Among his acquaintances there was also a very sympathetic spinster. They went on walks together for hours but his fear still dominated him and he could never trust himself with her alone in a room. They held their conversations either in a public garden or at a restaurant. Naturally I looked into this anxiety condition and began to investigate this homosexual who had maintained relations with an elderly gentleman for years, with reference to his heterosexuality. I was surprised when he brought forth countless heterosexual reminiscences from his childhood. During the first few days I heard the usual history of urnings: the liking for girls’ games, womanly behavior, he had always been more like a girl in everything, etc. But soon the picture changed and the heterosexual tendency became gradually more evident. His dependence on the attachment to the mother was striking. One-sided as my attitude was at the time, I made certain deductions, somewhat hastily, regarding the roots of homosexuality, and in the first edition of my Angstzustände (1908), after several similar experiences, I wrote:

“As is shown by my latest investigations these cases are frequently neuroses. Some time homosexuality improves or may disappear under psychoanalysis. Homosexuality represents merely the complete revulsion of infantile incestuous thoughts. Homosexual males never experience any erotic feeling in contact with a strange woman; they confess that they can feel towards these women only as towards a sister or the mother. That discloses to us the roots of homosexuality. The concept ‘woman’ is unalterably fused with the concepts ‘mother’ and ‘sister.’ The Abwehr of incestuous fancies determines the flight into homosexuality. That transposition naturally is facilitated through corresponding somatic changes. The homosexual, too, is a victim of infantile reminiscences. Thus homosexuality turns out to be but a special form of the neurotic repression.”

With youthful impetuosity I formulated the results of my investigations somewhat hastily at the time and expressed the therapeutic results in too optimistic a tone. In the course of time I learned to know better. Many patients who considered themselves cured were only improved and stuck to their uranism. We shall have to speak of that with full particulars.

For the present I must consider more fully the theme “mother and homosexuality.” The relationship between the two I had originally conceived according to the Freudian formula. I did not see at the time the influence of other forces, such as I have already pointed out here. The earliest dream of my first homosexual, for instance, was about a murder, the victim being a woman; I did not understand that dream. I did not know that the fear of woman stood for the fear of criminal tendencies, that the subject was a sadist who had saved himself through homosexuality from committing some regrettable deed. These impulses accompanied the incest phantasies which were unusually strong and of which he was fully aware long before analysis. The latter were merely pushed out of consciousness as unbearable. A short time later Sadger published his first analysis of a homosexual and in that contribution he formulated the thesis that like every other neurosis homosexuality arises during the fourth year and that the task of analysis, therefore, must be to reach back to the fourth year.[^[7]]

Sadger emphasized: “From the very first I assumed that the homosexual tendencies may be acquired only if they are formed during the first four years, precisely as in the case of hysteria and compulsive neurosis and that psychoanalysis ought to uncover the fact. What stood beyond psychoanalysis must be innate and corresponds to the sexual constitution proper.”

That work, extremely one-sided and full of contradictions, still attempts to reduce homosexuality to the love of the father. The mother plays a limited rôle. It is mentioned passingly that the subject of the analysis had never loved a being so dearly as the mother; but even before the mother’s death an aunt had attracted to herself the boy’s love.

But what are the conclusions drawn by Sadger from the case? None whatever! He is pleased that he has been able to bring to light such interesting material but knows not what to do with it. Among the various questions and answers there is a very significant passage suggesting an important conclusion. Concerning his attachment to the mother the subject states: “And my love arose chiefly through compassion, because father drank a great deal lately and paid attention to other women and mother often wept and that made me feel badly.”

That is a fact which I have had occasion frequently to corroborate. The children of drinkers and “woman-chasers” turn easily homosexual, in the endeavor to be unlike the father. They then hate woman and scorn everything that the father liked in particular. They become abstinent and try to behave contrary to the father in every respect.

Sadger’s patient actually points out this tendency. He states: “Father clearly had no homosexual inclination as he was a great admirer of women. From the time he began telling me about the school—he was particularly fond of French women—he also advised me to marry only a French woman and showed me French pictures and the photos of various French women. It was thus instilled in me that I ought to marry a French woman.” And what did the father accomplish thereby? Was it jealousy or pity and love for the mother? The father accomplished the contrary of what he set out to do. Instead of obedience he was met with spite. The subject relates: “Later when I became aware of my homosexual inclinations, everything French-like was particularly hateful to me, especially the French women, I no longer liked the French language or anything whatever related to French....”

The subject had a pronounced fear of marriage, having seen a sad example of it in his own home. He dreams of getting married, a minister is about to perform the ceremony, and he is so unhappy in the midst of it that upon awakening his happiness knows no bounds. He fears every great passion. “I am afraid of a really tremendous love, because such a passion always makes me unhappy.” The analysis discloses other relations to the father which are of greatest significance.

The feeling-attitude in question dates in fact from the earliest childhood. As yet we are ignorant of child nature and we do not fully appreciate that the fundamental traits of life show themselves very definitely during early childhood. This boy must have conceived early the thought: I must not be like the father! and so he turned away from women because the father was an admirer of that sex. Whether this choice of attitude was also influenced directly by love for the father I am unable to assert in that particular case. It seems to play a contributory rôle and greatly denied love may enhance the child’s attachment to the mother. But does not the example of a drinking “woman-chaser” contrasted to the picture of a quiet suffering mother seem to be enough to induce the differentiation and to maintain it as its underlying determining motive? Back of the homosexuality of the first case of the kind analyzed by Sadger stands the subject’s fear of becoming like his father. The violent fancies disclosed in the course of the analysis show that there are also other reasons for the subject’s fear of woman. He is so constituted that he cannot see blood. This peculiarity denotes the conversion of a craving for violence and signifies a repressed sadism.

In Russia he once witnessed how a man split his wife’s head open with a stone.... The occurrence so impressed him that he could never get it out of his mind, and he also likes to dwell on wars and other bloody scenes.

There can be no doubt the man is a sadist and that with reference to women in particular. He has full reason to fear woman. His fear is fear of himself. He must turn to man, towards whom he does not feel the instinctive sexual hatred which makes heterosexual excitations impossible for him. When he has intercourse with a woman, he feels subsequently a tremendous disgust and revulsion, the whole thing seems to him unnatural. In the end he gives up all such attempts.

Obviously he is all the time seeking a kindly preeminent father for he falls in love with an elderly philosopher, out of respect for philosophy, as he paralogizes, because he looks to philosophy to redeem him from his suffering. The differentiation is an attempt at gaining freedom, a tendency to overcome the nature of the father. The love of the philosopher is a substitution for the love of the father.

Thus we see the importance of the early life history of every subject for the understanding of homosexuality. The constellation of childhood permits the reading of the horoscope for the future. Perhaps this uncontrovertible truth contains the root of all astrologic art, “the planetary laws governing the facts of life.” The father as the sun, the mother as the milder moon and the children, the stars. Our fate arranges itself in accordance with the constellation of these planets. Blind accident and innate forces cooperate to create man as he is.

But let us look further into the investigations of Sadger to whom the credit must not be denied of having applied himself earnestly to the attempt of solving the problem of homosexuality.

His next publication appeared also in 1908.[^[8]] Here we find clearly taken into account the infantile heterosexual attitude which all homosexuals usually forget but which always precedes genuine homosexuality.

“The young student, 21 years of age at the time, was sent to me, because he was tormented by various homosexual inclinations, especially directed towards young boys 14–20 years of age, associated with all sorts of masochistic feelings. In contact with woman (a prostitute with whom he sought intercourse three times till then, the first two times spontaneously, to see whether he is at all potent, the third time, on medical advice as well as upon his father’s insistence) he found himself entirely impotent. Questioned whether he ever felt any inclination towards the opposite sex, he only recalls that when he was two or three years of age he once opened the garden gate for a girl of about his own age, with a flourish of extreme gallantry. Concerning any hereditary factors he can only relate that a brother of his mother’s had some mental trouble. The mother herself seemed to have something boy-like and manly about her, on the other hand the father showed very little sensuousness and rather pronounced inverted traits, while a sister, who died early, had a very boy-like facial expression. She preferred boyish games and at 4 or 5 years of age she chose a boy’s hobby horse for her Christmas present. Some female cousins—on mother’s as well as on father’s side—were clearly amphigenously inverted. The subject himself had unusually broad hips and the growth of his facial hair was noticeably scant. As a child he is supposed to have played only with dolls, never with soldiers, he never took part in boys’ games and he also learned embroidery.

“Plainly a clear case of inversion with masochistic traits. What was revealed through the analysis of this particularly intelligent subject? In the first place, a remarkable peculiarity: his earliest inclinations were directed towards women,—not some one in particular, but a number of them. His first beloved was the mother and, of course, after a time he turned away from her. After that he felt himself tremendously attracted to an elderly mother of children, proposed marriage to her and that woman later figured in many of his pubertal coitus dreams. Next he displayed such an extreme gallantry towards a girl of his own age that it became very noticeable and his mother spoke to him about it and he felt very ashamed and uneasy.

“During his childhood a servant maid also had made a deep impression on his feelings and she reappears in various male types. Among the homosexual inclinations traceable to the first years I look upon his attachment to a couple of uncles as the strongest and most significant, next the love of a 9-year-old boy belonging to the nobility (baron). In his fourth year the attachment to a boy who taught him masturbation, in his sixth and seventh years the influence of a private teacher. During his fourth year, on account of his mother’s condition, following childbirth, he slept for a time with his father in one bed and this suggested various homosexual wishes and fancies. When a little sister came into the world he promptly fell in love with her. Even more striking is the subject’s normal sexual calf-love affairs in his seventh and eighth years with three or four schoolgirl mates of about his age. It turned out that each one of these girls contributed some traits to the types, both male and female, which later were alone capable of rousing his emotional interest.

“These facts, of which the subject was entirely unconscious and which had to be brought to surface after months of diligent analysis, yield an entirely new picture. First of all they show us how little even the most intelligent person knows himself, and, consequently, how careful we must be in accepting even the most candid statements. Secondly,—that even pure cases of inversion do not exclude the presence of normal sexual inclinations, indeed, that the latter may actually be present, though the subject be unaware of the fact. Thirdly,—and finally,—that the inversion is traceable as far back as the fourth year although it may reach consciousness only during puberty.”

Here already I must point out the first contradiction. It is not a fact that the inversion is traceable back to the fourth year. I have analyzed a number of cases in which the inversion arose after puberty and much later. The beginnings of the homosexual disposition reach into childhood with all persons. This turning away from the other sex may break forth early in some cases and in others much later. But it is a fact that every analysis discloses the heterosexual trait which the homosexuals forget, or speaking more correctly, repress, because it does not appear to fit into their system. Analytically this case of Sadger’s seems to me to be an instance of fixation upon the sister. The boys are substitutes for the sister. We will give the histories of several such cases. He who understands the neurotic’s art of metamorphosing his ideals, he who has learned through their dreams to appreciate this trick of substitution, will readily appreciate that a girl may be loved through falling in love with a boy. It is related of Platen that he possessed a marvelous phantasy. For a long time a colleague was changed for him into an owl whom he avoided on the way. In Neapel he kept for days a cat on his lap pretending it was an enchanted princess. Genuine fetichism shows to what unbelievable metamorphoses the sexual ideal is subjected. With the homosexuals to find a boy who stands as symbol for self or for a sister is a common experience. Like all neurotics they do not possess the capacity to distinguish between the world of fancy and that of reality. I have called neurosis the tyranny of symbolisms. This is particularly true of the neurotic who becomes homosexual. All values are transformed, the object becomes subject and vice versa. In the midst of this transformation of all facts one thing remains fast and true: the infantile ideal which is yearned for with the persistence generated by the eternally ungratified craving.

In his next contribution Sadger reports the results of the analysis of an invert during a period of six months (Zur Ætiologie der konträren Sexualempfindung, Med. Klinik, 1909, No. 2). The special preference of his patient for passive pederasty he traces to the frequent use of enemas during childhood. (In fact it seems to me that the many unnecessary enemas administered during early childhood may contribute towards the fixation of the anus as an erogenous zone.) He also traces out in this case the repressed heterosexuality. “The vacillations of the libido between male and female are like the facial innervation which, as is well known, is based on the equilibrium between the muscles innervated simultaneously by the pair of facialis nerves. Paralysis of the facialis nerve on one side causes not only weakness of the muscles on the affected side but induces also contractures of the muscles on the opposite side.” The patient referred to was attached exclusively to his father, who, himself somewhat homosexually inclined, won the child’s heart through his excessive tenderness, in contrast to the rather severe mother. During his fourth year, on account of the mother’s pregnant state, he slept with his father, an occurrence to which Sadger attaches great significance. The objects of the boy’s homosexual attachments bore some resemblance to the beloved sister. He weaned himself away from his attachment to his mother during his fifteenth year, when he saw his mother deformed with a tremendous ascites on account of which she had to be tapped a number of times. Her appearance at the time filled him with disgust for all women. As over-determination of this feeling-attitude of aversion he recalls the following: after the puerperium referred to above his mother had a profuse leucorrheal discharge which the boy, already sensitive to all scents—he was four years of age at the time—found very repulsive whenever he approached his mother. The subject also recalls vividly how his mother repulsed his aggressive ways with her, between his 3rd and 6th year. (“He always wanted to grab her by the breasts and tried to go to her room and to the bathroom as soon as she went in.”)

Much as physicians unacquainted with infantile sexuality may ignore such aggressions they do take place and some mothers have verified them for me. On the other hand it is hardly likely that a child four years of age should be repelled from the mother on account of scent. At that early age scent is rather a stimulant and is never accompanied by disgust.

I turn now to the last and most comprehensive deductions formulated by Sadger in his study entitled: Ein Fall von multipler perversion mit hysterischen Absenzen (‘A case of multiple perversions with hysterical amnesias’).[^[9]]

This work contains a chapter entitled “New Contributions to the Theory of Homosexuality.” Here Sadger abandons entirely his former notion about the significance of the fourth year and states: “Permanent inclination towards one’s own sex usually comes to surface and is certainly increased during puberty, or during the prepubescent period at the earliest, in our latitude around the tenth or eleventh year. Occasionally an earlier onset is recorded and every case of that kind is due to some special factors.” Permanent homosexuality is established through some significant incident which leads to the repression of the mother in her rôle as helper and teacher. Such incidents are death, sudden financial reverse, and consequent serious neurosis, making sanatorium treatment necessary, inconsiderate persecution of the boy on account of masturbation and similar traumata. The love feeling is turned from the mother to the father, or to older comrades, or to comrades of about the same age, who stand as substitutes for the mother and initiate the boy into the facts of love....

The path to homosexuality leads over love of self, through narcissism. “The state of being in love with one’s own person, which shows itself also in the admiration of one’s own genitalia (sic), is never absent as a developmental phase.” Every person has two aboriginal sexual objectives to which he clings throughout life: the mother and self. The father replaces self only for a short period because as the primary rival in his relationship to the mother the child early assumes an antagonistic attitude towards him. The urning hates woman for an obvious reason: “when the best of women, my own mother, amounts to no more than that, what can there be to any other woman?”

Here follows a convincing proof that the urning identifies himself with his mother. The urning always plans to instruct his beloved, for the mother does it. (Does not the father, rather, do it?) The patient has instructed a waiter in geology and history of art, subjects which did not interest the latter. But the mother had done the same....

Most urnings are said to be “only” children. (This statement like many another of Sadger’s, is positively false. Among 500 homosexuals Hirschfeld found only 67 “only” children and among them only 54 were sons. My own statistical figures are even smaller. But the percentage among my neurotics is practically the same.)

Sadger summarizes his findings in five fundamental statements:

“1. The urning is a victim of withdrawal from the mother (the first caretaker or nurse, respectively) in whom he is himself seriously disappointed. He represses the mother by identifying himself completely with her.

2. The path to homosexuality leads through narcissism, that is, love of self, as one was, or as one may ideally be.

3. The sexual ideal of the invert includes not only traits of former female and male sexual objectives but also features of one’s own beloved self.

4. Being brought up in surroundings exclusively feminine—the father does not count in such circumstances—fosters homosexuality in the male as well as in the female, for reasons that are not sufficiently clear as yet. Moreover the urning is usually an only child.

5. Finally inversion may be fostered by a sort of ‘latter-day obedience’ to the mother’s commands. I have observed not rarely that mothers warn their children against harmless, though warm and friendly contact with the other sex, as something unpermissible and bad and that the teaching thus instilled may unfortunately increase the disposition to one’s own sex through later obedience.”

The first of these conclusions is a false one. The homosexual is not a victim of withdrawal from the mother, but rather of a fixation on her. But this subject will be discussed fully later.

One represses no person with whom one identifies one’s self. Identification is direct love, differentiation means repression. Many homosexuals identify themselves with the mother—of that there can be no doubt. But that identification already implies the repression of the father-ideal. The problem of homosexuality cannot be solved one-sidedly, and I have the records of a number of cases in which the mother plays no rôle whatever.

The only psychologic hypothesis we possess—Sadger’s—fails to satisfy on account of its onesidedness. It holds true of certain cases. But it neglects entirely the great significance of sadism, it overlooks the fact that the attachment to the father is more important and more deeply repressed than the love for the mother, it overlooks entirely the identification with the father and the differentiation from him and it fails altogether to explain the occurrence of later homosexuality, which is of particular interest to us (tardive Homosexualität). The awakening of homosexuality is ascribed to a period which varies according to the different investigators all the way from the fifth to the twentieth year, and even later. I mention here the ages shown in the first twenty of my cases taken at random. Homosexuality became manifest at 12, 10, 12, 15, 16, 22, 13, 11, 14, 8, 14, 12, 17, 17, 17, 13, 21, 15, 17, 24 (Average, 15).

The ages as given are generally high,—only in one subject did the homosexual attitude become manifest as early as the eighth year. But that, certainly, is incorrect. For we know that the homosexual leaning is present already during the earliest period and positively that children’s feeling-attitude is bisexual during the first few years. The figures are significant only as showing us that “genuine homosexuality” is preceded by a lengthy period of latency.

II

RÔLE OF THE FATHER AND OF OTHER MEMBERS OF THE FAMILY—DISLIKE OF CHILDREN—LETTER OF A HOMOSEXUAL WHO FEARS THE “PENETRATING EYE” OF WOMEN—A MARRIAGE WITH THE FATHER—JEALOUSY OF THE FATHER—A HOMOSEXUAL WHO HATES HIS MOTHER—A BELOVED BOY AS THE IMAGO OF THE SISTER—PSYCHOLOGY OF LOVE WITHIN THE FAMILY CIRCLE—FEAR OF THE CHILD—A GIRL WHO HATES ALL CHILDREN—DIFFERENTIATION FROM THE MOTHER.

Wenn wir nun alles dieses uns vergegenwärtigen und wohl erwägen so sehen wir die Päderastie zu allen Zeiten und in allen Ländern auf eine weise auftreten, die gar weit entfernt ist von der, welche wir zuerst, als wir sie bloss an sich selbst betrachteten, also a priori, vorausgesetzt hatten. Nämlich die gänzliche Allgemeinheit und beharrliche Unausrottbarkeit der Sache beweist, dass sie irgendwie aus der menschlichen Natur selbst herausgeht; da sie nur aus diesem Grunde jederzeit and überall unausbleiblich auftreten kann als Beleg zu dem naturam expelles furca, tamen usque recurrent.

—Schopenhauer.

II

Considering all that and taking everything carefully into account we find that pederasty has been manifest at all times and in all countries in a manner very unlike what we had at first presumed a priori, that is, by considering abstractly the subject. Precisely its complete universality and irradicable character everywhere shows that the thing somehow flows out of human nature itself; only in that way could it persist at all times and everywhere as an accompaniment to naturam expelles furca, tamen usque recurrent.

—Schopenhauer.

I begin this chapter with the history of a case, a subject with whom I have never spoken. I know him only through correspondence. Nevertheless the case seems to me of great significance as it substantiates many of my previous conclusions. The need of psychologic insight as shown by our necessarily brief histories of homosexuals becomes more fully obvious as we become acquainted with a complete analysis of a homosexual.

62. Mr. G. L. writes me:

“I shall attempt to conform with your request and give you a cursive and true insight into my sexual and mental life. Born and raised the youngest of ten children, three of whom died early of children’s diseases, I lived in the country till my 5th year, when I started going to school and I remember nothing of that period except that I was tremendously fond of playing with fire and that I kept up till then, more or less, the habit of bed-wetting, an act which was associated with the pleasurable feeling that I was sitting on the chamber. I know also that I envied my sisters a great deal. My unusually strict and religious parents naturally subjected me to rigorous training and thus I learned early to distinguish between mine and thine, good and evil, truth and falsehood. Continually watched over by parents and instructors—a custom contrary to the modern spirit—I was kept from many of the children’s games.

“When I did play, it was mostly with boys and I do not recall having preferred the company of girls. My free time was taken up a great deal with agricultural pursuits and I was about 8 years of age when the first sexual episode took place which left an impression on my mind, having witnessed that year how some boys of my own age played with the sexual parts of a dog and, another time, how the same boys played with their own sexual parts, taking one another’s member in the mouth,—but without feeling on my part any desire to imitate them. With girls I came but little into contact as a child, but I remember once having been present when several boys, 11–12 years of age, abused a girl but I took no part in the deed. At about that period I put on women’s clothes a few times though today a man in women’s clothes rather disgusts me. Two incidents concerning me personally are still vivid in my memory, namely, playing once with my privates, in the presence of other boys, and another time, warmly embracing the naked body of another boy while playing a ‘mother and father’ game. Thirteen years thus passed with nothing eventful taking place, except a fall from a tree as the result of which I hurt myself rather seriously. It was at that period that my teacher, who considered me not only a bright boy but a model student as well, prevailed upon my struggling parents to permit me to continue my schooling. I was able to secure, in fact, a free scholarship at an Institute. Shortly after that a schoolmate grew attached to me and he taught me to masturbate. Although I had already erections, there was no seminal loss, probably on account of deficient development. He and another schoolmate prevailed on me to masturbate then—but nothing more. About that time other comrades were in the habit of speaking of some girl or other, admiring her beauty. This talk about a ‘pretty girl’ struck me as strange, so far as I remember. It was during my second high school year (gymnasial-klasse),—I may have been just over my 14th year, at the time,—when a teacher appeared in class with the trousers absent-mindedly unbuttoned and when I noticed it my eyes became glued on his trouser fly as though in a trance, and thus I awoke, for the first time, to the sad realization of my sexual bend. From that time on I noticed that I was extraordinarily attracted to this teacher although he did not like me in school. It was then that my first struggles, the first wishes in my awakened boyish soul, began to shape themselves. There were two boys in particular who, among others, charmed me with their attractiveness. I masturbated a great deal during that period, without indulging in any particular phantasies,—occasionally in the company of other boys. But I had the feeling of being sexually attracted to boys and in my dreams appeared the wish to be their friend. But the stimuli were not of a character which I found impossible to curb. Next I felt myself irresistibly attracted to an elderly man. Neither in the waking state nor in my dreams did I think at all of women during that time. Around my 18th year I experienced the first stormy upheaval which nearly unbalanced me. I came into close touch with a distant relative, an attractive, interesting and splendid intellectual man who, moreover, was happily married. I then passed through the anguish of unrequited love, kept dreaming of what was beyond my reach, and endeavored to still my unnatural passion through excessive onanism. The keen struggle to preserve my secret, the intense mental torture, caused me one day to break down. The strict but kind-hearted talk of my relative in whom, of necessity, I forced myself to confide, saved me that time from suicide. The next day the house physician was called, a cordial and kindly young man, who took a strong professional interest in me. Day after day he spoke to me and tried to influence my mind and he succeeded in shifting my sexual feelings entirely into the background and in about five months he thought I was ready to try regular intercourse. But the attempt proved a new defeat for me. The secret aversion, the fear of infection, made me prove myself impotent at the critical moment. But I did not tell the physician and shortly thereafter he dismissed me as cured. There followed again years of struggle. Fearing mental breakdown I was driven to the idea of seeking final release through suicide. But I lacked courage for the deed.... Was it cowardice, was it the yearning of my sickly body that prevented me from ending then a life unblessed by a single experience of that highest yearning of a healthy body,—the consummation of love? During that time my relative also died and my anguish was unbearable. For I was absorbed in that great passion of mine so deeply that I had forgotten all about the rest of the world. I was hardly reconciled to that misfortune when further anguish came into my life; several men crossed my path with whom I would have no doubt entered into intimacy if I had found any points of contact. In my despairing mood I confided in Hofrat W., who consoled me saying that my misfortune could not be very deep rooted since I had come to him about it. He advised me to seek intimacy with girls (I came a great deal in contact with girls in the course of my daily work and also forced myself to learn dancing). In accordance with his advice I resorted to puellæ publicæ and had intercourse a number of times but without particular pleasure or satisfaction. Yes, I went so far as to propose marriage to a girl of a good family. It was my fate not to meet with a favorable response, although secretly I was gratified at that. For I could not think that my supreme passion intimately and indissolubly linked to the nature, the appearance and form of boyhood and charming old age would ever be overcome. Springtide and autumn, boyhood and old age, evoke in me the wonders of development and suggest the soft quiet stealing in of blissful eternal peace. Although the sense of touch alone is enough to rouse in me the most wonderful feeling of bliss, contact with a woman leaves me indifferent, if it does not actually inspire me with disgust. Thus I kept up for a time longer, greatly agitated but unyielding, the fear of being discovered keeping me back. Tortured at night by the yearnings of the day while dreaming of endless bliss by conjuring up the most intimate scenes depicting contact, dreaming and thinking also of oral (lip) contact, but never of any love act a posteriori. In terror of being found out—I blushed at the lightest pointed joke when in company—I often thought of joining the foreign legion or to migrate to some country where homosexual love is not looked upon as a crime or as something shameful.

“Often I heard of places where persons of my bent may be found but I never had the courage to look them up, fearing that I would be recognized, that I would be put to shame and that I should lose my means of subsistence. I am particularly pained at the thought that I must pass for an inferior dissolute type while millions and millions of insignificant tramps are placed on a higher level in the eyes of the law, enjoy life and are even honored and respected while I, in spite of possessing the qualities of a truer manhood, must waste my life in joyless existence. Two women came into my life with whom I became somewhat intimate, one attracting me temporarily because her physical appearance was like that of a boy underdeveloped, the other, because I was at the time under the influence of alcohol. But I noticed in connection with those two experiences that I felt no particular satisfaction during bodily contact with the women or while kissing them, in fact, many women cause me nausea if I so much as take food out of their hand. Several puellæ publicæ have tried to rouse my sexual feelings (lambentes glandem membri), but in spite of erection I felt no particular pleasure, and the act was always followed by a feeling of despair—the same old story. Sometimes in my anguish I sought the church and there I broke into tears and I yearningly clasped my hands in prayer without being a believer at heart. Ofttimes I thought my mind must be affected and thought I had to go to an asylum for the insane but it would make my trouble known to do so and I feared I should have to forego contact with men forever after that. Occasionally I dreamed also of women, but without any particular feelings, while if I dreamed of clasping in a warm embrace or only touching or even merely looking at a boy, or at an elderly man, I felt great pleasure. I dreamed of contact with the lips. Something more about the family: On account of father’s strict discipline I inclined more to mother who was more indulgent. One of four sisters is married, also both brothers, happy and satisfied, I believe. (I am very bashful with all my relations, old and young.) One uncle only showed eccentricities and he remained single. All my other habits of life are not unlike those of any normal young man, I have friends who are married and who are unaware of my condition. But time after time I am tremendously agitated on account of my mental struggle. Finally, to conclude: my dear doctor, you cannot prevail upon me again to try to look you up at your office because the penetrating look of your office girl inspires me with the fear that my condition is recognized and diagnosed at a glance. If you feel inclined to advise me how best to withstand this craving or to mention some country where I may go, I should be very grateful to you—if not, I have learned to bear defeat.”...

One of the usual confessions, overlooking most important features. The self-incriminating feeling of the masochist who has “learned to bear defeat,” is indicated by the ridiculous fear of the “penetrating look” of my office girl. This fear would probably be traced through analysis to his sadistic attitude towards women. There are a number of other interesting statements. He belongs to a family of many children, a severe father, a negligent mother, he is jealously envious of his sisters. A large number of homosexual episodes are related about his childhood and his habit of putting on women’s clothes. That shows clearly the tendency to identify himself with the mother or sister. But why did he want to be a woman? Why did he want to assume the rôle of mother? He wanted to supply a woman, to substitute the mother to his father. Here it was the strong father who so attracted the boy that the latter wanted to be everything to him; Subsequently he falls in love repeatedly with elderly men who stand for substitutes of his father. The elderly man is always the Imago of the father. During the homosexual episodes with elderly men, either actual or occurring merely in the boy’s fancy, he finds himself still a child towards whom the father displays tenderness and who is permitted by the father to carry on fellatio upon the latter. He is also drawn to young boys. There he plays the rôle of the father while the boy supplies the picture of his own youth.

Interesting is his distinct disgust at women which disappears after alcoholic drinks enough so as to enable him to carry out coitus. He was also near falling in love with a girl who had a boyish appearance. That betrays certain relations between boy and girl. The boys are loved when they show the traits of a beloved sister, the old men when they recall the father.

His path towards woman is blocked. Disgust and fear of infections cover more significant motives bearing a religious coloring. Every prostitute becomes the sister, a younger edition of the mother. Without analysis the genesis of this paraphilia cannot be understood. He avoids me because he is unwilling to discover the truth. The over-severe father seems to have roused in him the yearning for a kindlier one and to have determined the development of his feeling-attitude. An attachment to the sister seems also clearly discernible.

63. Mr. T. D., 26 years of age, has struggled vainly for years against his homosexual disposition. He is attracted to old, gray-bearded men, who always represent to his mind an erotic ideal, and loves to be in their company, go on walks with them, play cards or perform music, and loves also the company of very simple fellows, preferably sailormen, plasterers, and soldiers, and among the latter prefers artillerists. His sexual activity consists in holding the friend’s membrum virile in his hand and giving his own to be held by the other likewise. Orgasm follows rapidly at that. After the deed, regrets and strong avowals never to repeat it. The last time he tried it a watchman caught him in the act and brought him together with his companion, a workingman, to court.

Analysis discloses the following facts: He has repeatedly tried to have intercourse with women but each time great fear and disgust prevented. Strong erections, but before immissio penis, the membrum turns soft and useless. Accomplishment of the orgasm through manual friction of the organ by the woman’s hand is possible, but is followed by a powerful feeling-attitude of disgust and he must leave immediately. He has had various opportunities to become intimate with certain women and girls, they have even incited him to it, but he does not feel tempted.

His family history is as follows: He is the only son of a very kindly man who died four years previously. The mother died at his birth and that has established in his mind an intimate association between coitus and death. He cannot help thinking of that association when with women. His father was extraordinarily tender with him, and for his sake never married again. When he was still young his father always played with him, devoting to him all his spare time. Later their relationship became even more intimate. There was a sort of marriage situation with his father.

He began to masturbate at a very early age and claims to have indulged in phantasies only about common men, imagining they were handling his membrum virile.

His attachment to his father was decidedly morbid. If the father stayed away from the house a quarter of an hour longer than usual, he began to cry and could not be consoled. The whole object of his life was to bring joy to his father and to replace in the latter’s life the lost mother. When the father fell ill he took it so much to heart that it was feared his mind would break down. After the death of his father he attempted suicide and was thwarted in the act by his father’s faithful servant. He made all sorts of resolutions, among others, not to masturbate during the year of mourning. He did not live up to that.... At first he is unable to recall heterosexual episodes from his childhood and his memory fails him equally regarding homosexual facts. But suddenly the cloud which seemed to cover his childhood lifts and a vast number of reminiscences come to surface, showing the developmental course of his homosexual tendency. His father had always been a strong admirer of the other sex and even as a child he had observed that the father was maintaining intimate relations with the nurse, the cook, as well as with the maid servant. Once he surprised his father in the act of embracing the cook while the two were alone in the room. The irate father boxed his ear because he entered without knocking at the door. That was one of the rare occasions on which his father punished him. He also overheard at night how his father crawled into the nurse’s bed, who was still very young and pretty at the time and carried on all sorts of doings with her. Later he received private instruction from a male tutor who conformed to the genius loci and was also intimate with the servant girl. As a child he often wished he were a woman so as to take the cook’s place in gratifying his father. The father seemed to fear that the boy might fall into the women’s hands and did not delay warning his son with appropriate teachings. At 12 years of age his father instructed him frankly about the dangers of masturbation, with the result that he struggled hard against the habit without, however, overcoming it. A few years later his father spoke to him about the terrible dangers of venereal diseases, warning him against prostitutes. He was told he must watch out, for he would have frequently occasion to go through the city, and the prostitutes are always eager to seduce such innocent young boys so that many a one is ruined for life.

It is significant also that at 5 years of age he played with a girl from the neighborhood, trying to imitate the father. He must have hurt the girl for she cried out, the nurse rushed in, a serious scene ensued, and he was severely chastised by the nurse.

An ugly impression was produced on him when he witnessed a terrible quarrel between their cook and the nurse who were jealous of each other on account of the father’s attentions. They grabbed each other by the hair and the whole household was in an uproar. The cook had to leave the house at once. He believes that after that incident his father gave up all intimate relations with the women in the house. At 19 years of age he fell in love with the cashier of a coffee house and would have very much liked to possess her. But his father, to whom he told everything, warned him against all cashier women because they are usually diseased and infected. As a warning he told him that in his youth he once suffered very unpleasant consequences as the result of an affair with that kind of a woman and was even subjected to blackmail.

He filled his heart with a gruesome fear of woman. In addition to that he placed in his hands a book relating all about the evil consequences of sexual diseases, so that after that he did not dare come near a woman without the protection of a condom. After intercourse, which consisted merely of digital manipulations in his case, he had to bathe at once and to wash his genitals with soap several times. After homosexual acts he did not feel the compulsion to carry out these ablutions.

We now come to the analysis of his acts, which show themselves veritable compulsive manifestations. Suddenly he becomes restless, energetically tries to control himself, then paces back and forth for hours, until he falls into the hands of one of the male prostitutes who easily recognize their prospective victims. But as he never mentioned any name and never established any lasting intimate relations, he escaped blackmail. Once he thought that a certain masseur had studied his physiognomy and had later recognized him. He saw that fellow a few times in front of his home. Immediately he left Vienna and undertook an extensive journey which kept him for some months in foreign countries.

In the act he tried to find the love caresses of his father. He split love into its well recognized two components. The erotic side he reserved for elderly men, physicians, and the faithful elderly friends,—while for sexuality proper he turned exclusively towards men of low rank. Similarly he divided his father’s personality into two parts, the high-striving, intellectual, lofty-minded father, and the woman fancier, the lover of ordinary servant girls. He was still playing the rôle of a male but during the act he regressed back to childhood, becoming again a child who longs for the father’s tender love squandered on servant girls. Moreover the ordinary males also had the traits of servants, they were of the servant class.

We have here an instance of the transposition of the love of servant girls to males. He had always a weakness for servant girls and since he feared he might yet get tangled up in marriage with a cook, he tried to keep away from them. Only once in the home of a friend he embraced suddenly a cook and passionately kissed her. “I could have without a doubt cohabited with her,” he told me. But he soon quit visiting that particular friend....

He identified himself completely with the father. He lived in his own house, acted like the father, had the same kind of wardrobe, although his father had aged a great deal. But in one respect he wanted to be different. He engaged therefore a male servant and always took his meals outside, so as to have no cook in the house. But that servant he kept always at a certain distance. He did not care to have any love affairs with servants in the house, like his father.

The analysis disclosed his repressed sadistic attitude towards woman. His first attempts at intercourse with women failed him and he was able to carry out coitus successfully only under the influence of alcohol. Later he did recall a single successful coitus without that aid. The girl had roused his anger with the remark that he was merely an insolent fellow. He jumped at her, ready to strike her, and was tremendously excited. In that roused state he carried out coitus. But he would have rather strangled her.

He showed an idiosyncrasy against certain female occupations. Nurses in their garb he would have gladly torn to pieces. He also hated all nuns. It was not well for any woman to rouse his anger. He could be very dangerous when roused. He confesses entertaining as his favorite phantasy the thought of tearing to pieces a woman.

The reason for this sadistic attitude: His infantile jealousy of all women since woman had robbed him of his father’s love. Among them was also a nurse who had taken care of the father during a prolonged illness.

That hatred of women made him impotent and drove him into the homosexual path. For he was afraid of himself when finding himself alone in the presence of a woman. He rushed away from houses of prostitution suddenly, as if a thousand demons were after him.

I succeeded in convincing him that this sadistic attitude was a rudiment of his early feelings, that he was really fighting against ghosts which he had long since dispelled. Now it was up to him to avow consciously his criminal tendencies and to render them innocuous through meeting them in the open. Presently he began having intercourse with puellæ publicæ, before the analysis was ended, and even undertook to carry out coitus lege artis. He forced himself to do it because he no longer cared to incur the risk of coming into conflict with the law. (The legal case against him was squashed because there had been committed no overt act and such manipulations ordinarily are unpunished in Austria, if they cause no open scandal.) Later he chose a sweetheart who accompanied him on his travels and whom he suddenly abandoned. He had meanwhile met a woman who captivated him mentally and spiritually. Two years later I received their engagement card. In this case the analysis accomplished a complete recovery.

Here we found a complete fixation on the father, which had to be overcome first in order to free the path to woman which had become obstructed by all sorts of infantile imperatives. Neither the mother nor the persons who trained him during his earlier years play any rôle in the psychogenesis of his homosexuality; on the other hand there was his strong sadistic attitude towards women which showed itself in a personally baffling fear of women.

This case shows how one-sided Sadger’s explanation is of homosexuality, when he traces its psychogenesis solely to the relations with the mother and overlooks entirely the rôle of the father.

We must also bear in mind that many children gravitate to the mother only because they feel themselves neglected by the father, because they hate the father, and are unable to attain a proper feeling-attitude towards him. Precisely that overstressed love of the mother and the obvious antagonism against the father adroitly covers the fixation on the father.

I will now report three similar cases from my own practice, relating only the important details:

64. Mr. S. L. has not worked as bank employee for the past three years or more. Three years ago he began to complain of various nervous ailments and was granted a leave of absence to recover his health. That leave proved his undoing. He did not improve; instead, he became totally unable to work and is now no longer able to return to his duties. His father always maintained that the whole trouble was imaginary, and wanted to hear nothing of a prolongation of the leave. But the man’s suffering became gradually worse. Out of spite for his father’s attitude he at first simulated the aggravation of his trouble and his condition in the end actually grew so much worse that it shattered him to pieces and he lost control over himself. He experienced attacks of dyspnea so severe that he could not talk. The dyspnea occurred in paroxysms. After one year he lost his position with the bank and, reduced to want, he appealed to his well-to-do father for aid. The father denied him any assistance because he did not consider the son unable to work; he thought the son was simulating so as to impose on him. S. L. sued his father for sustenance and won, aided by the testimony of a number of physicians who certified that his case was one of severe neurasthenia, so that his father had to give him a monthly allowance. Father and son broke all personal relations so that the payment was made through an attorney. Thereafter S. L. was inspired by no other thought than revenge on his father. He was very clever in thinking out new legal issues and additional suits against him. Finally he came to the conclusion he was not the rightful son of his father and threatened a law suit which only his love for his mother prevented him from actually starting. She was revolted at the son’s terrible accusation but so strongly under his influence that she did not have the will power to break with him. She met him clandestinely, placing money into his hands. He loved his mother above all else and urged her to leave the father. He put detectives on his father’s trail, hoping to be able to fasten against him the accusation of being untrue to the mother. He always spoke of his father as “the old rascal,” “the old scamp,” “that miserable, quarrelsome rake.” “Should I see him today writhe in agony it would be the best and most pleasant day I ever had.” I had never seen before so bitter a hatred of the father.

He was a confirmed homosexual, hating all women with the exception of his mother, whom he held in divine veneration. The alleged breach of faithfulness which he alleged her to have committed with a person of high position (the well-known family romance of the neurotic) he excused as natural for it would have been a miracle for that noble soul to have remained true to so terrible a man. The father compelled her to coitus with brute force. He was the offspring of such a coercion, etc.... He loved only younger men, even boys, and he was fairly brutal towards them. Occasionally he carried on deeds with older men towards whom he then preserved an attitude of submissiveness and passivity, trying to please them in every way. He permitted pederasty on his person and did not shrink from fellatio.

The analysis showed a passionate love of the father, a feeling which on account of its unattainable aspect turned into bitter hatred. He thought the father was partial to the other sons and fled to the mother to whom he often complained about the father’s severity and lack of affection. In his homosexual acts he played actively the rôle of the father, becoming at such times very severe and almost cruel, passively he carried out the act as if he were with the father, being then very submissive, and thus allowing his whole repressed love to outflow as if bent on showing him: that is how loving I would be with you always if you only were agreeable! Cruel phantasies revolving around revenge upon the father as the central theme were confessed under strong resistances. Several times he came near shooting his father. He often fancied himself in situations in which his father depended altogether on his compassion and magnanimity. For instance, he would imagine his father had committed some great fraud. He himself had become a millionaire through an ingenious invention of his own. His father comes begging at his feet and is refused any aid. His favorite reading is books describing cruel punishments, the inquisition tortures, etc. The well-known work of Octave Mirbeau, “Le jardin des supplices,” threw him into ecstasy.

The other roots of this subject’s homosexuality I do not dwell upon because I am concerned here only with the rôle of the father....

The next case shows a very similar situation:

65. Mr. G. Z. for some years has had intimate relations with an elderly man, an artist, whose studio is the meeting place of a number of young men exclusively. He is not a musician like the others, but a jurist, and had met incidentally Mr. X, his fatherly friend, as he calls the man. Before that time he had been entirely abstinent. He became Mr. X’s friend only at the age of 21. The friendship was wholly platonic until they undertook a journey together. At Salzburg they occupied together the same room, because the hotel was filled. They carried on intercourse (coitus inter femora), he playing the female rôle on that occasion as well as subsequently. G. Z.’s relations with his father are very stressed. They hardly speak to each other. He is employed in his father’s office, but has only business relations with him. His whole spare time he devotes to his mother. One day he surprised his mother with the information that he had had his father watched and found out that the father maintained clandestine relations with a number of women. He requested his mother to break with the father. He raised a terrible row with his father, ordering the father to withdraw from the office and leave the business entirely to him, and at that the father showed him the door. A letter from the mother convinces him that he is not the son of his father; thereupon he locks himself in the room and commits suicide by shooting himself.

Jealousy of the father had driven him to suicide. During the acts with the fatherly friend he played the rôle of the son replacing the women in the life of the father.

66. Mr. T. B., 32 years of age, like Case 64, is also unable to work. He has tried everything but cannot make anything go. His father is a common employee reduced to seek occasionally the son’s financial aid. But the young man now stays at home and complains of attacks which he describes as of an epileptic nature, occurring only at night, but which prove to be hysterical anxiety attacks. His brother is diligent and hard-working, the favorite of the family. When the brother is praised he turns so wild that he is boiling with rage. He speaks but little with the brother, exchanging with him only necessary words. Regarding his father he declares that living together with him he finds most painful. He has delicate tastes. But his father’s manner of eating and talking rouses his anger. He will bless the day when he shall once more be working and in a position to leave the parental home. The mother was on his side, believed in his illness and in the genuineness of his attacks, and comes at night during his attacks to his bed, trying to help him and to quiet him to the best of her powers. The mother alone knows that he is homosexual and she does not disturb him in the least on that score. But she turns jealous as soon as she sees him pay any attention to a girl, and every night, too, she comes to the kitchen to make sure that her sons are not taking advantage of the servant girls. She accompanies the ailing son on his errands and is his confidante. She does not get along at all well with her husband and they have ceased marital relations long ago. There are thus two parties in the house, he with his mother, and the father with the other son.

Moreover, the ailing son raises various issues so that there are daily quarrels and conflicts in the house. The father published a statement in the newspaper to the effect that he will no longer be responsible for debts and obligations contracted by the son. Thereupon the mother, who earns an independent income with her piano lessons, left the house together with her favorite son. They rented another home for themselves and the mother hopes that the separation and the quiet care will bring about her son’s complete recovery. At this stage T. B. is brought to me for analysis. Two days later I am called to the father. T. B. had gone there under an excuse and while searching among the books he was seized with a very severe attack and had to be put to bed. He was now so ill that he could not leave the bed. It was the love of the father that had driven him to the place. He could not live without seeing his father and could not endure the thought of leaving the father alone with the brother. The mother moved back to the old home. As prerequisites for my analysis I suggested isolation of the subject and moderate occupation, and the mother apparently agreed. Next day the patient wrote me that on account of his attacks he would be unable to live among strangers, and that therefore he must give up the treatment. An experience similar to that I had with the epileptic, Case No. 51.

The specific phantasy during his indulgences in which he played always a passive rôle, represented him as the mother who gives herself up to the father. The following dream yielded some light on the matter:

“I lie on the bed in a remarkable attire, a hood on my head and dressed in a green robe. I gaze in a looking-glass and instead of my person I see my mother, and father in the act of bending over her to give her a kiss. Now the image in the looking-glass fuses with the original, the two coming together and forming a single picture. I feel myself turning into a woman and everything male about me falls off or disappears. I have long black hair, a white skin and a high voice. My arms stretch out to embrace a man and I awake with a feeling of anxiety and a rapid heart beat.”

An analysis of this dream is superfluous. The subject was unwilling to see its meaning.

But the fixation upon the mother is often also marked with hatred. It must not be thought that the homosexual is always disposed pleasantly towards the mother. It also happens that the love for the mother is covered under an overt hatred and an unnatural disgust, as is shown by the following case:

67. H. U., 24-year-old sculptor, homosexual as long as he can remember. His inclination is always towards waiters and restaurant employees. Has four sisters and an older brother who had to go to America and is lost to them. His father is a writer, a genial but impractical man who stuck to journalism. He clings to his father with every fiber of his heart, protecting him against the attacks of the mother who is tired of her husband’s continual love affairs and cannot stand them any longer. The father lives in a dreamy state continuously, passing from one ecstasy, lasting from several days to a week, into another. He is not finicky in his love adventures, drawing the line neither at servant girls nor at prostitutes; daily he has some new rendezvous and in that way squanders a great portion of his income. There are always quarrels in the house, and the father does not like to stay at home, preferring to spend his evenings in the public houses. The relations between mother and son are as unpleasant as between the parents. The son always lets his mother know that she is repulsive to him. If she attempts to come near him in the room he avoids her, shouting: “Don’t touch me, mir graust vor dir,—you give me the shivers!” He never permits her to fondle him, and has no good word for the poor tortured woman. Towards his sister he is also always sarcastic, aloof, and likes to meet her admirers to make uncomplimentary remarks about her to them. The situation became seriously aggravated, he had to leave the house, and now wants to meet no one of the family except the father, whom he sees daily at the newspaper office. He hates fanatically all women and dotes on Strindberg and Weininger.

Back of this hatred of women stands his great love for the mother, the sisters, and all women. In that respect he is exactly like his father, whose fate he does not want to share. He protects himself against the love for his mother because he would be lost and subordinate to women if he yielded. The gruesome quarrels which he witnessed during his childhood showed him a father who ruined himself on account of women, a man unable to achieve the full expression of his high ideal because he squandered his energies on numerous love adventures. Homosexuality serves him as a protection against all womanhood. His attachment to waiters is explained through the fact that his mother had been a waitress whom his father had married after she had become pregnant by him so as to legitimatize the child. After two weeks he breaks up the analysis because he feels that his attitude towards women is being changed. In that attitude lies his security. Among waiters he prefers small young boys who remind him of his sister.

This fixation upon the sister is not so rare, as is shown by the next case, which dates back to my earlier psychoanalytic experience.

68. Mr. P. G., teacher in a high school (Realschule professor), consults me on account of an ailment which began a few weeks ago and which threatens to destroy all his joy of living. He is 26 years of age and has had no sexual intercourse. In fact, he has not had even one genuine love affair. A few months ago he met a girl whom he liked very much and they became engaged. They were to be married in six months. She is a friend of his sister’s, a girl to whom he had not previously paid any particular attention but during an outing he got to know her and to appreciate her so well that he fell suddenly in love with her. It was not a great consuming passion,—rather a mutual understanding and a strong spiritual kinship. He was abstinent through conviction. He wanted to enter the marriage bond a pure man and was proud that in that respect he was unlike his friends and colleagues. Then something happened in his life which threatened to break him to pieces and even drove him to thoughts of suicide. I relate the occurrence in his own words:

“In my class there is a very beautiful, physically imposing, slim, bright young fellow whom I liked on account of his excellent answers and fine manners. I directed my questions at him with great pleasure, whenever the other boys could not answer, knowing that I would always receive from him the correct answer, and I have often held this favorite scholar of mine up to the others as an example of how they ought to be. One night I dreamed that the boy was lying in my bed and that I embraced and kissed him. I woke up, scared, and presently quieted down. ‘Nonsense,’ I said to myself. ‘Anything may come up in a dream!’ At school that day I found myself somewhat uneasy towards that boy because I could not help thinking about my dream. I avoided putting any questions to him. As was frequently his habit, the boy waited for me after school hours and asked permission to accompany me on the way. We had to go the same road and I was pleased to pass the time talking with him. He entertained me. I heard a great deal about what the pupils were saying about the teachers and it seemed to me very interesting. Teaching means building up souls, and so I wanted to implant every noble and high ideal in the soul of this child.

“I granted him also that day, gladly, permission to come along. I was strikingly distracted and silent. Whereas formerly I had been in the habit of taking him by the arm now and then, this time I avoided all intimate contact, because the dream stood between me and the handsome young boy, rendering any intimacy or informality impossible. I reached home and very promptly went to my bride. She found me absent-minded, wanted to know the reason,—and about that, naturally, I could but be silent. I wanted to show her tenderness; she goaded me with her kisses and caresses. But, oh, horrors! In the midst of her kisses my mind turned to the young fellow and when I felt her lips, so warm, I thought it was the boy’s lips. I pushed her, scared, out of my arms, pretending I did not feel well, and hurried back home.

“I was so excited that for a long time I could not fall asleep. I decided I would fight the insane passion. I had heard before passingly about boy love, knew also that it was the custom and fashion of the day in ancient Greece, but I myself had never before entertained the least thought of a man or boy. I felt I ought to remain a teacher no longer if I failed to conquer the feeling and to master the impression of the dream picture on my mind, conjured up, undoubtedly, by unconscious wishes. I resolved to be strict with myself, to give up the attachment to the boy, and to avoid his company after school hours. For it was I who first spoke up and invited him to keep me company on the way home. I resolved to be strong and to devote once more all my affection and my love to my bride.

“Next school day I forced myself not to turn my gaze towards the boy’s seat. But I could not help looking that way and the first glance rushed the blood to my cheeks. He was as beautiful as a Greek boy, his form so delicate, his eyes so smiling,—I could have lost myself for hours in the contemplation of that wonderful face. I roused from my day dreaming, which, fortunately, had passed unnoticed by the class. But I wanted to neutralize the impression that my gazing at the boy may have made upon the class and called upon the boy. I was severe, unmercifully severe with him, and sought to catch him in some error. And who fails to find an error when looking hard for it? Then I reprimanded the boy so severely that he began to cry and returned to his seat weeping, and he was unable to quiet down for some time after that. Then I became really angry. I was trying to stifle the inner voice which was whispering: ‘It is unfair for you to torture thus the innocent boy; he is not responsible for your awful thoughts....’ I disregarded that and scolded him.

“On the street the boy did not dare to offer to join me. I hurried past him and wandered for hours on the streets like a madman. I reproached myself, regretting the lost opportunity for enjoying the boy’s company and wept over the breaking up of the beautiful friendship between scholar and teacher. I resolved to be fair the next day with the boy and to pay no attention to him. But a wild demoniac power, stronger than my good resolutions, impelled me once more to hurt the boy’s feelings and to humiliate him before the class. It looked as if I was bent on revenging myself on him for the trouble he had cost me. I knew that I punished myself doing so, that I suffered far more than the boy, although he, too, changed in appearance, became timid, looked badly and obviously suffered under the unjust treatment. I also became irritable, morose, nervous. I lost completely my nervous equilibrium. I began to avoid my bride’s company. It seemed to me a profanation on my part of her pure love so long as I was consumed with such passion for a boy. She also became cooler and more reserved, because she could not understand me.

“Eventually things improved at school. I learned to control myself and to act more fairly. We resumed the walks once more; the boy accompanied me again after school hours; sometimes we walked on and on for hours, and we even met specially during the holidays. In his company I felt happy and all my wishes seemed gratified. I enjoyed his beauty and his lively mind and counted the minutes to pass when we should meet again.

“Then something happened which opened my eyes. My bride wrote me a letter breaking up our engagement. It did not even affect me as deeply as I had thought it would, whenever reflecting previously on the possibility. Very well—I thought to myself—now you can devote yourself entirely to your beloved boy! At the same time I felt during the day the same physical excitation which I had theretofore experienced only in my dreams. Then I realized that I must avoid the boy if I was to keep from committing a crime. My first task, I thought, would be to make up again with the bride; secondly, I must give up the school so as to not meet the boy again. My bride was resolute, however, insisting that she had become convinced that I did not love her. I kept secrets from her. I was on the very point of confessing everything and of telling her the whole truth. I threw myself, weeping, to her feet. She said quietly: ‘Don’t! What is done cannot be undone. It is better that we should part. Don’t make the parting hard for me. Let’s leave one another good friends and think kindly of me.’ Then she hurried out of the room and left me to myself.

“Next day when I went to the school the boy was not there; he was ill. Another boy reported he was kept at home on account of scarlet fever. My anxiety about him was boundless. I could think of nothing but that boy. A schoolmate had to bring me daily reports about his condition. Often I wandered in the neighborhood of his home, up and down the streets, and at night I watched the lamplit window of the room where a sister was taking care of him. Finally I heard that he was convalescing, that all danger was over, and that he would return to school in a few weeks. I had to keep a strong grip on myself at school to be able to carry on my lectures at all. My thoughts were perpetually centered on my beloved boy pupil. Continually I kept thinking: How many days longer must I keep longing? In three weeks he will be here! My heart danced with joy at the thought....

“There had to be a change. I could not keep on living that way. I took my father into confidence and he sent me to you, thinking that you would be able to furnish good advice and aid in this difficult case.”

I offered at first no advice and no help. To begin with, I allowed the love-sick fellow to speak out everything that was on his mind and that in itself lightened his burden. Then I undertook to obtain an insight into his mental life before the advent of his boy love.

It turned out that he had really loved and still loves but one person in the wide world: his sister. The affection for the bride was but a substitute for his love of the sister. His bride was also homosexual and loved in him but the brother of her best girl friend. As the girl friend (his sister) cooled off during their engagement, preferring another friendship (obviously led thereto by unconscious jealousy of the brother), her own affection for the young man cooled off and she promptly made use of the opportunity to break off with him. The opportunity arose conveniently enough and the severing of the engagement reacted most painfully upon the school teacher who had reasons of his own for reproaching himself most bitterly.

The more his bride kept away from his sister the greater was his indifference to the bride. But the boy resembled his sister very closely.

He never thought of this similarity before. They had the same eyes, the same color of hair, and the same voice, and these played a strong rôle with him. During that critical period his sister was interested in a certain physician. He felt he was about to lose her affection and sought a substitute for her and that he found in his pupil....

Now he was in a position to come to an understanding with his sister. She had the requisite psychologic insight to understand him fully and to lend him intelligent assistance towards his recovery.

His whole tremendous excitation simmered down. The love for the boy calmed down to an attitude of kindly interest which no longer troubled him. He took his walks only with his sister who often called for him at the school. Months later I heard that he was very quiet and had no reason to complain. He succeeded in sublimating his affection for the sister into joint intellectual interests, insofar as that is possible. But frank relations create a healthy atmosphere in which it is easier to overcome incestuous phantasies than in the byways and hidden bypaths of repression and transference.

I have given a detailed account of this case because it is typical and because the transference of affection from the sister to a boy is more common than would be recognized a priori in the light of our current contributions on homosexuality. We must also bear in mind that the sister represents a younger likeness of the mother Imago.[^[10]]

But father, mother and sister do not exhaust the ideal of the homosexual. I also know cases—one I have described in a previous chapter—in which the love of an older brother plays a tremendous rôle.[^[11]] We are thus led to the conclusion that fixation on the family plays a determinative rôle in the genesis of homosexuality, that homosexuality often may represent a flight from incest. True, we have also seen cases in which these roots are not traceable, particularly cases of late homosexuality. But why may not other psychic forces, manifesting themselves as hatred, disgust, fear and shame, likewise lead to homosexuality?

Love of the family is a form of narcissism. Every member of the family is a mirrored image of one’s own personality. One may love one’s self in one’s parents or other members of the intimate family circle more readily than through strangers. Leo Berg was the first to express this truth and he has done it very clearly. In his inspiring work, Geschlechter (Kulturprobleme der Gegenwart, 2nd ser., Vol. II, Berlin, 1906), he states:

“What does the homosexual substitute for procreation? In the first place self-seeking, the love of like (die Liebe zum Gleichen), plays a greater rôle in his case than with the heterosexual who is responsive to the unlike, and that is why the instinct of procreation is as a rule very much weaker in the former though not entirely absent. A young physician who confessed to me that he was homosexual, told me of a colleague who was passionately attached to a child. It was a powerful motherly instinct in him, a sign of his female sensitiveness in a male body; he is wholly womanly, a submissive being, and loves like a woman cursed only because he cannot bear a child for the man of his heart.”

Berg also points out that the homosexuals transfer to the intellectual sphere their reproductive and creative urge.

The case mentioned by Berg shows nothing in itself more than a complete identification with the mother. But I have observed long ago that this love of the like bears some relations to purposive sterility. The homosexual renounces the immortality implied in procreation. (Many homosexual artists achieve immortality in the realm of spiritual endeavor.) Such an attitude discloses a revolt against natural law and order. The homosexual, in fact, always conceives himself as unique. The world contains not his equal and that feeling is the hidden source of his pride. The “bearing of aloofness,” already pointed out by Freimark,[^[12]] the pride of being “different,” determine also his opposition to the procreative instinct. He does not care to be like others. Against the notion that God had ordained man to have offspring he wants to oppose all teleology and, in spite of God, maintain a purposeless, meaningless love, contrary to nature, a love for its own sake. Conceivably women manifest even more clearly the corresponding revulsion against the motherly instinct.

Who will deny that fear of children, of motherhood, is an important social manifestation? Can it be that this fear is characteristic only of women and is not shared also by men? May it not manifest itself as a form of flight from sexual determinism? We need only look around us. There are any number of married couples who want no children and others who want no more than a child or two. Undoubtedly this state of things is partly due to homosexuality, to a deviation from the biblical injunction concerning the duty of increasing offspring. But let us also glance over our professional experience. The relationship between children and their parents carries within itself the beginnings of a new phase. The everlasting conflict between the new and the old generation, between fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, children and parents, requires, fosters new forms. Not without reason has our age been called “the century of the child” with its slogan raised about the Rights of Children. The greater the (unconsciously motivated) antagonism of the child against his parents, the stronger will be the fear of its own children, who loom up as potential enemies and rivals.[^[13]] It seems that our own image attracts and repels us at the same time, that there is a fear of the like as strong as the fear of the unlike. The aboriginal conflict between the old and the new goes on forever within us. Hungry for the new though we be, yet we cling to the old. Having acquired the new we turn longingly to the old.

This bipolarity shows itself nowhere so distinctly as upon the sexual sphere. It means that contraries have the power of sexual attraction. That is an observation substantiated by everyday experience. But there is an extreme point at which the opposite touches upon the like. Les extrêmes se touchent, extremes meet. In each of us there lives also another who is the precise counterpart of ourselves. In the other sex we love our counterpart and through the love for our own sex we endeavor to run away from that counterpart.

The mother instinct and hatred of motherhood are not split in the human soul. The homosexual woman always shows the hatred of motherhood and her alleged love of children, when such a sentiment is claimed at all, proves but a self-deception and lip-service at best. In our study of female dyspareunia we propose fully to prove that conclusion in connection with the histories of several homosexual women. We do find many instances of alleged affection for children but in reality these are only caricatures of the true sentiment and only rarely the affection as it is characteristic of normal woman. Our school teacher in love with the boy pupil, whose case we gave in full in the preceding pages, did not love children as such and did not care to have children of his own. Through his love for the boy the repressed father instinct also found outlet.

The life histories of homosexual women differ from those of males only in the fact that occasionally there seems present a certain yearning for children, as if the child could bring about release from the passion and a new state of bliss. Beyond that the urlind shows the same psychogenesis as the urning. There is a strong fixation on the family, though not always on the father, as Hirschfeld claims. In addition to that, rather commonly there is found affection for the mother which is fairly open, and tenderness for some sister which persists through life and assumes remarkable masks.

I want to conclude this chapter with the histories of some cases of female homosexuality which may serve to illustrate clearly the points I have just made:

69. Miss Ilse—we shall call her by that name—after a series of various exciting episodes has fallen a victim to depression, during which she lost a great deal of weight, but in spite of a successful fattening régime her stay at a sanitarium did not effect a complete cure. She is an impressively attractive girl, 24 years of age, voluptuous, feminine in every way up to her angular, somewhat energetic nose and prominent, curved eyebrows. Her mother, of whom the girl speaks with much feeling, believes that the girl’s breakdown dates from the death of the father. Ilse irritatedly contradicts the mother several times, breaking into a quarrelsome attitude towards her mother over trifles. Reprimanded by her mother, she falls into her depression and speaks no word. I take her under treatment and for a week I have in her a heavy burden on my hands. She hardly says anything, is very negativistic in her attitude, only muttering from time to time: “Don’t trouble yourself. It will never be any different. Better give me something that will put me quickly out of the way.” She livens up somewhat only when referring to her father,—thinks he should have not passed away. The mother should have called in a specialist. In fact, it was as much her fault as anybody’s, for she had failed to insist on calling the best aid while there was time.

Gradually she extends me her confidence and one day she appears,—like a changed person. She must tell me the truth. She is not a normal person. Since childhood she has been homosexual and had never cared for men. Her mother had implied as much when she said to me: “I cannot understand the girl. She always fled from the room when young men called on Alfred (her brother). The girl is a man hater.” This fact the girl had denied during the first visit, but now she herself admitted. She had never cared for men. On the other hand, at 11 years of age she had already fallen passionately in love with a woman school teacher. She was a frolicsome girl, often wore her brother’s clothes, and played with all the young boys of the neighborhood. At 14 years of age she again fell in love with a girl friend.

Her current depression is due to a terrible disappointment. She had maintained a love affair with a French woman and was happy. She said nothing about the character of the relations, but admitted that they were very intimate. Suddenly she found out that the French woman was not true to her, but was keeping up intimate relations more often with other girls than with her. She suffered tremendously on account of her jealousy. She began to feel a disgust against all women not unlike her former aversion to men. Asked why she was so antagonistic to men, she answered: “Because they are, all, without exception, disgusting brutes....”

At this point Ilse begins to relate her past experiences. She was seven years of age when she visited an uncle. He showed her his big membrum virile and asked her to hold it in her hand. She did this as well as other things he requested her usque et ejaculationem. “How shall I have any respect for men when they don’t hesitate thus to poison the innocent soul of a child?” The uncle is still living.... She has since thought that it must be some morbid tendency and has forgiven him. “It happened only a few times and the uncle believes I have forgotten it....”

Another traumatic incident impressed her more seriously; it was, in fact, a series of traumas. Her mother was a light-minded person and is so to this day, despite her 50 years. But she knows enough to dress herself so attractively and with such a display of refinement that she is still capable of achieving conquests. There follow a number of serious complaints against the mother, which must have been true, for I have had opportunity to convince myself of the truth of some of the statements. The mother always kept on the string a number of lovers who gratified her extravagant requirements. As a child she had been taken along to a number of rendezvous and has repeatedly witnessed the display of tendernesses between the lovers. She also recalled various household scenes from her early childhood. As a child she was already very sensuous and masturbated jointly with the sister and the brother. She was precocious as well as prematurely spoiled and every one thought she would early turn out to be like her mother. Then her sister underwent a great change in character. She became religious and wanted to join a nunnery. She made fun of her religious-minded sister but secretly admired her for her chastity. She was 14 years of age at the time. She now knows that she was in love with the family physician and that she was interested in men, but at the same time she was in love at different times with various teachers and girl friends. When her sister was 16 years of age she had a love affair with an army lieutenant and had to go to a sanitarium to be curetted, fever set in after the operation, and for several weeks the girl was seriously ill.

Her sister’s experience shook her to pieces. Inwardly she had been proud that there was such a pure, innocent girl in the family. Now that her sister followed the example of her mother it seemed to her that she, too, was fated to follow in the same path and that there could be no escape for her. During that period her character underwent a change and she acquired a tremendous dislike for all small children. She could not suffer to see a small child. She thought to herself, if she were its mother she would strangle it. The feeling was so horrible that she could not sleep. In time she improved somewhat, but the dislike of children or, rather, the fear of them, that is, the fear that she might do some harm to them, never left her.

I suspected that back of this feeling-attitude towards the children might be found the solution of her problem. I reverted back to her sixteenth year, for it was at that period that she turned definitely against all men.

“Why do you hate children?”

“Not that, exactly.... In fact, I was at one time foolish over them. I have always wanted children. When I told you that I always played boyish games it was not exactly the truth. I remember now that I played nurse to my doll and that we often played the game of childbirth. Brother was the doctor and I was the pregnant lady in bed.”

“Did you happen to witness childbirth as a little girl?”

“Yes, everything.... Our aunt gave birth to a child in our home,—a romantic story. An illegitimate child; her parents were not to know anything about the birth, or they would have disowned her. But we children knew everything. Afterwards she married the man but was very unhappy with him. The little baby was with us for a time. I was very fond of it and carried it around....”

“Have you other such aunts in the family?”

“Between us: mother’s family has a poor reputation. There were six sisters, each more flighty than the next. None was a virgin at marriage. Things were always happening and there was never any peace. That is why I was so shocked over sister’s experience. I was getting to think it was my fate also to become ... merely a prostitute. You will pardon me for speaking so harshly about my own mother. But unfortunately it is the truth....”

“A prostitute is purchasable.... There is some difference whether one is light-minded through passion or for gain.”

(After a lengthy pause.) “Just what I did find out at the time. Mother was to be had for money. Father was a humble employee, an unsuccessful jurist, who eked out a living doing secretarial service for an attorney. He could not keep up with the large household expenses even though he occasionally transacted a business deal on the side which netted him a considerable sum. Mother always had a friend who took care of our needs. Thus we were brought up rather well educated, my brother could afford to study, we did everything.”

“Did you know all that already as a child?”

“I knew it at a very early age....”

“You think, then, that your sister was also paid and that she sold herself?”

“No, nothing like that. In addition to the paying lover mother always had one, a purely heart affair, on the side. It was funny! The men always brought us candies and all sorts of presents. When we grew older mother became a little more careful. Still, there was enough going on to bring shame as I look back. And so there came into our house also a young lieutenant whom mother had picked up—God knows where. This fellow was mother’s avowed lover and could do as he pleased. The terrible thing was that he began to pursue also sister and after a few jealousy quarrels mother had to put up with it,—she perhaps even encouraged the affair. For I overheard once a talk between them and heard mother reproach ‘Shikki,’—that was the lieutenant’s nickname,—that he had used sister. She could have obtained a large sum of money for the girl because she was a virgin and the girl would have been provided for. Then there followed bitter quarrels between mother and sister.”

I interrupt the conversation at this point. It turns out that she, too, was in love with the lieutenant, and so were the others of the household, including the father and the brother; she was also jealous of her mother. Her jealousy opened her eyes. That is how it happened that she heard the unpleasant rumors about her mother circulating among the neighbors. She began hating her mother, but that continued only for a short time. Then her hatred turned to children. She hated first herself, the child who bore no respect for the mother. She did not want to be like her mother and her sister. She knew that she would have to submit to similar experiences; that her fate was sealed. She strove against her feminine and motherly instincts. But the analysis disclosed that she really entertained one supreme wish which she was unwilling to countenance openly: she wanted to be a mother and to bear many, many children. But the neurotic reaction thwarted her powerful motherly instinct. To be a mother meant identification with the despised mother. Her better feelings prompted her to draw herself far apart from the mother.

She did not want to be a woman. She did not want to be so easy-going as her mother. At that time her brother also showed a temperamental change. He became serious-minded, began to write verses, and to take an interest in all sorts of idealistic endeavors. She linked herself to him and before long she differentiated herself completely from the rest of the household, and particularly from the mother. She sought earnest-minded girl friends and came into frequent contact with her brother’s companions, but was unapproachable, even though she expressed herself freely and frankly about all subjects. Her strongly sensuous temperament threw her next into the arms of the Frenchwoman and she preferred that to a love affair with a man as she was afraid of children. After the Frenchwoman’s breach of loyalty she fell into her depression.

This circumstance also disclosed an interesting sidelight. She confessed to me that the Frenchwoman was also her brother’s sweetheart. It had never been mentioned by the woman but she knew it even before she entered into intimate relations with her. Nevertheless it was her happiest period.

The depression is thus traceable to a second source. The brother had abandoned the Frenchwoman, having chosen another sweetheart, of whom he was very fond and whom he intended to marry. The Frenchwoman was only a sensuous play affair with him, the brother belonged wholly to her. They were always together and she knew all his secrets. She was never jealous when she knew that he kept up relations with some girl or woman so long as he did not love soulfully. But now the brother became acquainted with a wealthy, beautiful girl, with whom he fell in love and whom he was going actually to marry. This, for the brother, lucky event,—came to nothing in the end on account of the opposition of the girl’s family,—left her cool. All she saw was that she was losing her brother, and that he no longer belonged to her. He could not marry the girl because her parents required that he should first prove his ability to support her. But the two lovers agreed to wait for one another and the brother had gone already pretty far and he may yet succeed to marry the girl, despite the mother’s deplorable reputation. He lives no longer with his family and avoids the old home. He only sees her from time to time and they are still good old pals, whenever they meet....

This interesting analysis illustrates all the chief points to be found in the psychogenesis of male homosexuality. In fact the girl was on the point of becoming as fond of men as her mother, perhaps of indulging in bisexual activities. Her sister’s experience opened her eyes and acted as a terrible warning. The yearning for purity which animates every soul and is the polar counterpart of the desire for tasting every sort of experience, became uppermost in her case, the fear of becoming like the sister, or like the mother, and her hatred of the mother, jointly, had the effect of shaping her into a different being. She probably would have not yielded to the homosexual love of the Frenchwoman had she not been overcome by the fact that the woman was her brother’s sweetheart. It was a case of incest through a third person.... She hated her mother and had to protect herself against the danger of having children who grow up to be one’s enemies. Thus children became her enemies. The father played a negligible rôle in her life and had no influence on the development of her homosexuality.

I do not know well her subsequent history. Her depression was soon relieved and her hatred of children disappeared entirely. But she left Vienna and went to another country, obviously to get away from her family and to forget her whole past. I had advised her to do so and the fact that she had followed my advice permits us to hope that, after the tempestuous course of her past life, she may have succeeded, at last, in finding a friendlier harbor.

III

HOMOSEXUALITY AND JEALOUSY—MASKED JEALOUSY—THE JEALOUS WIFE OF A PHYSICIAN—WHY WOMEN ABUSE SERVANT GIRLS—TRANSFERENCE OF JEALOUSY TO THE SURROUNDINGS—JEALOUSY OF THE FATHER—JEALOUSY OF THE RESIDENCE—JEALOUSY OF THE PAST—A YOUNG WOMAN OVERSENSITIVE TO ANY NOISES.

In der Eifersucht liegt mehr Eigenliebe als Liebe.

—Rochefoucauld.

III

Jealousy involves self-love rather than love.

—Rochefoucauld.

Jealousy is the projection of one’s own insufficiencies to the surroundings.[^[14]] It is an atavistic awakening of the brutal sense of self such as was common to the primordial man protecting his possessions. All children are jealous. Jealousy leads us back to the sources of man’s instinctive life.

It is not my intention to take up the whole subject of jealousy. But morbid jealousy shows certain definite, almost regular, relations to homosexuality which we must consider. We have seen that homosexuality may be hidden from consciousness. That is also true of jealousy. I have seen many neurotics who have suffered tremendously on account of their jealousy, without being aware of it. In the masking of neurosis jealousy assumes most remarkable forms.

The next case illustrates the masking of jealousy, its fusion with homosexuality, and contains various points of psychologic interest:

70. A highly intelligent subject, H. J., writes me: “Have you already reflected on how we discern certain similarities on certain days and fail to do so at other times? You are undoubtedly aware that neurotics and normal persons are fond of finding resemblances when they formulate identifications. The lover finds that the beloved walks like mother, or that she talks like the latter, and if physically no resemblance can be established he finds the same mental characteristics, the same soul, perhaps the same shortcomings. But I want to speak of an entirely different peculiarity. One forenoon I see a man, who looked enough like my friend, X, the painter, to be taken for the latter. I walk up to him and say: Hello, X,—still under the impression of that mistake. A strange face wearing a beard of familiar form is staring at me. I offer the usual apologetic explanation and go my way. After a while I see again my friend X, this time somewhat dimly, not quite so certain of it as before. I recover from this illusion quickly enough.

“By that time my psychologic curiosity is roused and it occurs to me that my wife told me that morning she was going to visit the painter, X, during the forenoon. I listened indifferently to the statement, merely asking her to give him my greetings. But a certain unrest must have risen in the unconscious: your wife goes to the painter who likes her and makes love to her. Nothing of that in consciousness at all. Painters are a light-minded class who do not take such things seriously. Who knows whether your wife will be strong enough to resist?

“These secret fears led to a symptomatic act. I accosted a stranger as X, the painter. In other words,—a wish fulfilment. For if I meet X on the street he cannot possibly be in his studio at this time. My wish is that he shall not be at home. My wife shall go to the studio and find: Mr. X is not in.... That wish came up on three different occasions that morning. For I thought I saw Mr. X in the street three different times. Moreover, I project X upon strange faces. Because I think constantly of X, because my mind is wholly preoccupied with him, because I am innerly preoccupied with the uncountenanced thought: what does X now do with your wife?—I see X everywhere. Ringstrasse is filled with men looking like him; every man is a Mr. X.

“The illusion at this juncture denotes also another suspicion. An additional thought renders the first one pregnant with significance. Yesterday I heard the opinion expressed at a gathering, ‘Any woman may be had and there is no such thing as a virtuous woman!’ I opposed vehemently that cynical thought (Pauschalverdächtigung) and I tried to the best of my ability to point out the ridiculous and unfair implications of this notion. And today I am surprised to find myself entertaining the thought. These men who look like X, the great unknown, are alike attractive and powerful men, just like X. You are reflecting: Who knows whether this or that man is not actually your wife’s lover? Why do the words from Faust come into my mind: ‘The whole town has her’?... In justice to my wife’s honor I must now state that she is in fact an exemplary woman and that I entertain no trace of suspicion about her conduct. But I am deliberately looking for excuses to vindicate myself. I mean to believe that every woman is guilty, including therefore my own wife, so as to justify in my eyes my new love affairs.... I am envious of X, of his free ways with women, and would like to be in his place, receiving ladies in the studio. I would like to be X. In my phantasy I am X, and see myself as X in every stranger.

“A lady of my acquaintance always saw her deceased husband on the street in the person of some stranger who seemed closely to resemble him. This peculiar resemblance to strangers was noticeable particularly when her mind turned to light and frivolous thoughts. As if the image of the husband came forward to warn and protect her: ‘It is only three years since I have passed away and already you begin to turn your mind to trivial joys? Beware. I watch you from Heaven and I see everything you do.’”

We admit freely that our subject is a keen-minded psychologist possessing an extraordinary capacity for introspection, yet this excellent piece of self-analysis seemed to me to overlook something important. I therefore write Mr. H. J. that I should like to talk this interesting episode over with him and I invite him to call on me. He accepts the invitation. From our conversation I report only some of the more important points:

“Has it not struck you that the men who impressed you as bearing resemblance were exclusively attractive and powerful men?”

“No, because my friend, X, the painter, is also an attractive and well built man. Others would not look like him....”

“Are you also otherwise jealous?”

“No; not in the least; only about X,—and even that I did not know or was perhaps too proud to admit to myself.”

“What is your attitude towards X? Do you care for him also as you do...?”

“... For my wife, you mean? I do. I love him. He is a charming fellow.”

“Is it not strange that you should be jealous precisely of the one man whom you also like so well?”

He reflects a while and finds no answer. I explain to him that it shows a repressed homosexual disposition towards his friend. The trend of his unconscious thought is: “If I were a woman I could not withstand him.” Perhaps the thought goes even further than that: “Too bad I am not a woman for then I would enjoy that beautiful man....”

He sees at once the relationship between his jealousy and the unrecognized inner homosexual disposition. He relates that this man is the only friend whom he greets with a kiss after a prolonged absence, that he likes to take him by the arm and to hold his hand.

In short, he himself is in love with his friend. He sees his friend everywhere and the slightest resemblances impress themselves strongly on his mind. They are emanations from his one thought: I like him and I wish I were a woman to yield to him.

It is very tempting to try to trace the various paths of unconscious jealousy. But that would lead us too far off our present theme. As we are confronted with a very complicated condition which may have the most varied roots I propose to give a few clinical illustrations from my own practice and to discuss the various forms of jealousy on the basis of these data.

71. The first case of jealousy which I had occasion to observe was that of a physician’s wife. The woman, 45 years of age, relates: “Perhaps you can free me from a painful condition which embitters my whole life and turns my marriage into a veritable hell. I have been married already 22 years and can assert that I have not yet had a happy day except when my husband is all day alone with me and we have no occasion to come into contact with another female person. He is a physician and already during our engagement I was jealous of all his women patients. I did not know this awful trait in myself before. At any rate it was not so pronounced or I should have not married my husband. At first I was jealous of my immediate acquaintances and friends, particularly of the very pretty women among them. After marriage my condition grew worse and worse. During the consultation hours I watched behind the door and shivered with actual nervous chills in my excitement. My husband was a woman specialist and a very popular woman specialist at that. I implored him to abandon that specialty and to take up any other. I admit that the fact of his being a woman specialist had at first excited my interest in him and had a great deal to do with my choice of the man. I thought to myself: the man sees so many beautiful women, he sees them naked, and yet has chosen you,—the thought flattered me immensely. That was well enough at first, but later the feeling of jealousy grew in its stead.

“I had a very pretty woman friend who was taking treatment from my husband. What I endured during her visits is beyond my powers to describe. I said to myself: ‘She is now taking off her blouse and now her petticoat. He is now examining, looking at her bosom, and now she lifts herself upon the examination table, she stretches her limbs apart....’ I suffered hellish torments. I was convinced that my husband could not withstand this woman’s charms and would kiss her. I had a serious quarrel with him; I quarreled with my friend, who turned from me with indignation. Our marriage relations grew worse on that account. I tortured my husband so that he had to allow me to watch through a carefully hidden peep-hole what was going on in the consultation room. In that manner I convinced myself that my husband was physically true to me. But even though he swore a thousand times that the women did not excite him in the least I could not believe him. I stuck to one thing which I harped on daily: ‘Give up your specialty.’ Years thus passed in quarrels and dispute. I have now a married daughter of my own and I thought to myself that with advancing age my condition would change. But not at all! It grows worse and I transfer now my jealousy also to my son-in-law, I am jealous for my daughter. Fortunately, she has no real reason to feel jealous and laughs at me....

“I am also jealous of my daughter. I would like to preserve her love for myself only and I begrudge her husband. Although she made an excellent match, I was not satisfied and treated my son-in-law very unfairly. I was unhappy over it but could not help it. I have consulted already the most famous specialists, have been for six weeks under hypnotic treatment by Prof. X. I have already kept away from my husband for three months at a stretch,—nothing has helped.”

That is the sufferer’s history. What is the meaning of this jealousy?

The root of this jealousy is a non-conscious homosexuality. She is jealous of her woman friend because she herself is in love with the friend. She puts herself in the rôle of the man, the physician, and concludes that in his position she could not resist the temptation. She imagines herself in the man’s place; she scrutinizes every woman with hungry looks. The peep-hole in the consultation room serves on the one hand the purpose of calming down her jealousy and of giving the poor husband a few quiet hours; on the other hand it enables her to participate in everything that is taking place and to gratify her craving as voyeuse. This control is her daily homosexual excitant, the means through which she rouses the flames of her passion only to still them afterwards upon her husband.

After the explanation was reached there was a marked improvement in her condition. The woman saw that her love for the daughter was homosexual and that this was the reason why she was so jealous of her son-in-law.

The occurrence is far from rare, and many a marriage has been wrecked on account of it. The angry mother-in-law is always the mother who cannot live without her daughter and who wants to show her daughter that the husband is untrue and does not appreciate her and how much more she truly loves the daughter.... I have also often seen the daughter, after a timorous attempt at married life, return penitently back to the mother. I have seen mothers who fight for their daughters with a lover’s passion and with their tremendous jealousy putting all sorts of difficulties in the way of any pretenders to the daughter’s hand. I have found that kind of jealousy frequently as the root of melancholia. I refer in this connection to Case 132 in my “Nervöse Angstzustände” (2nd ed., p. 363).

72. The next case of jealousy shows the same roots. A married woman, 30 years of age, consults me on account of an unexplainable jealousy which has been torturing her for about four weeks. She tells the story of her jealousy: She engaged a new servant, a very young girl, somewhat coquettish, but who at first glance seemed to her very sympathetic. After one week she felt jealous and found that her husband, who usually did not so much as look at the servants in the house, was extremely friendly and courteous towards that girl. It seemed to her even that he was bestowing longing glances on the girl. At first she kept silent because she hesitated to speak of the matter to her husband. But after a time she reproached him about it: he must be more strict. She requested him to assume a more severe tone in his relations with the girl. Her husband laughed at her. He said he talked to the girl in his usual manner and nothing more. It was all imagination on her part. The girl was very good; he had no reason to call her down or to assume a more severe tone towards her. That reassured her somewhat but only for a short while. She watched her husband more carefully than ever and thought he was much charmed by the girl. She arose several times during the night to go into the servant’s room and investigate. Once her husband had some gastric trouble and he had to leave the room several times that night. She was convinced that it was but an excuse to go to the girl and several times she followed him along the chilly passage into the hall, so that her husband asked: “What is the matter with you this time?” She said she was worried over his condition and wanted to watch and see that he was all right. Finally her jealousy broke to surface a number of times and she reproached her husband very bitterly with her suspicions. She was absolutely certain that he was intimate with the girl. Her husband was indignant and asked her to dismiss the girl at once so that there might be an end to that “foolish notion.” The remarkable thing was that she felt unable or unwilling to dismiss the girl. The girl was so good and so faithful, it is so hard nowadays to find an efficient girl servant, she insisted only that her husband must show himself more strict with her. He had to declare on his oath again that there was no intimacy between them. Towards the girl she felt a peculiar anger which she could not understand. At times she could have flown at the girl to strike her, which was very baffling as she had never been in the habit of striking a servant. But it would have been a great satisfaction to her to have pummelled this girl who caused her so much anguish. She had to restrain herself forcefully so as not to give vent to her rage. She was very “touchy” with the girl and tolerated not the least contradiction on her part.

Nevertheless she could not make up her mind to dismiss the girl, and yet she was afraid to be alone with her.

All her troubles arose on account of her homosexual attitude towards the girl who was in fact a charming blonde type of beauty. She herself was in love with the girl; that is why she could not conceive that her husband might be indifferent towards her. She figured: If I were a man I would love this girl! Interesting, and at the same time typical, is her rage and desire to strike the girl. The love feeling is converted into its opposite and the longing to touch the girl (that is, to come into contact with her body) manifests itself in the inclination to strike her. How often love contacts disguise themselves as angry blows under the mask of anger!

I explain to the woman that she must dismiss the girl when she saw clearly the meaning of her jealousy. After the girl left all the unpleasant symptoms mentioned above vanished.

Another form of jealousy transfers itself from one object to another, or to the whole surroundings. Such transference of jealousy serves the purpose of masking from self and from others the real object of the original jealousy.

73. Mrs. H. G. is a woman, 38 years of age, who has been living happily with her husband. At present she is unhappy on account of jealousy. Here is her statement: “I have called on you to ask you to relieve me of a condition which I find simply unbearable. I have a good, fine husband against whom I cannot complain of anything. He is a splendid and model man in every way. I am the more distressed therefore to be so jealous of him. I felt that way, first, while my husband was ill with typhus which left him with heart trouble. He has to be more careful of himself because of the illness he has been through, and whereas formerly he had intercourse with me two and three times a week, now it happens only about once a month. My husband is not well,—I know it; his physician has expressly told me that he must keep very quiet and avoid all excitement. Nevertheless I cannot help feeling that he is untrue to me. I am so ashamed of it that I have not yet breathed a word about my jealousy to my husband. In fact, we are nearly always together. I know all his affairs and I often go along wherever he goes. But I cannot hang on to him every minute. So I hold the watch in hand and count the minutes, even the seconds, for him to return. Always the one thought: He is untrue to you this very minute! If he goes to another office, I think he does it because there is a pretty office girl there with whom he is in love. If he takes a meal at a restaurant, it is because he has a rendezvous. If he is a few minutes late coming home from the office, he was with a street woman. In short, I am tormented all the time by these evil thoughts, I struggle against them but cannot put them out of my mind.”

“How long have you been in that state?”

“It began when he went to Franzensbad on account of his heart trouble. There he became acquainted with a spinster, a girl 46 years of age, who was also alone. They two got together and kept each other company. I know the girl; she is very honorable, and when my judgment is uppermost, I say to myself: Nothing has happened; the two have merely felt a temporary intellectual interest in one another. But in my evil hours my mind conjures up the worst thoughts. I have once read a letter which that woman had written my husband. She thanked him for his interesting company during the cure. A few weeks after the Franzensbad cure, there came a box of flowers and a letter for my husband. The woman wrote thanking him for his pleasant company during the cure,—she was very glad to have made the acquaintance of so prominent and intellectual a gentleman and hoped their friendship would endure beyond the time of the cure. At that I reproached my husband and tortured him with my jealousy. He gave me his word of honor that his relations with the woman were strictly of a friendly and formal character; aside of his own considerations, he was a sick man and satisfied to be left alone. But I asked him to give up all further correspondence with the woman and he readily consented. He is really a fine fellow who grants me everything I want, a man who reads in my eyes every wish of mine, and I am ashamed to think ill of him all the time.”

Here we see one source of her jealousy. The woman was married to a man who gratified her in every respect; suddenly she had to restrict herself to an abstinent life. The enforced abstinence suggested the thought: You are still young and attractive, so many men are after you! Take a lover. She was filled with fancies of longing and projected them unto her husband. If he were unfaithful it would furnish an excuse for her. She needed it; she wanted him to be unfaithful, for that would have served her as a defense. Her compulsive thinking is the masking of the thought: Oh, that my husband were unfaithful so that I, too, might take a lover!

The thought was suggested to her by the fact that the wife of one of her husband’s colleagues, a very light-minded person, was able, nevertheless, to keep up a very handsome social position. She spoke with great feeling about that woman.

“Does that woman not take loyalty so seriously as you do?”

“That woman? She does not have one lover; she has six at a time, and even more! She certainly enjoys life. And the lovers pay for everything. She has the finest wardrobe, the prettiest hats, takes wonderful journeys and her husband knows everything.”

“Isn’t her husband jealous?”

“Oh, no! He knows everything, and consoles himself in his own way. But, do you know the curious part of it all? That flighty woman is jealous of her husband! She quarrels bitterly with him when she hears of his escapades, although she has no right. The two have taken reciprocal freedom....”