stand either above or below woman, must be either hammer or anvil, an
unprejudiced relationship I find impossible, because as soon as I see a
pretty woman I lose my senses, and would like preferably to be at her
feet and obey her like a slave. But women do not wish that, they want to
be submissive themselves, they want to feel the man above them._
Intercourse on the level of equality I find tiresome, so there remains
only sadism for me, through which, I may confess frankly, I have already
enjoyed pleasant times. True friendship on the basis of mutual love and
respect I am capable of maintaining only with men, as in my childhood.”
This sounds like the history of a typical bisexual strongly on the way
to become a genuine homosexual. Let us turn to his psychoanalytic
treatment before we examine his sexual attitude. He went to a
psychoanalyst who had been recommended to him by _Freud_. He was wholly
unable to work, impotent with women at the time, and had recourse to
masturbation. During the first sitting he learned that he had been in
love with his mother. The knowledge of this fact acted as a “relief,”
according to his testimony. (He even told it to his mother.) Shortly
afterwards he had his first successful coitus with a woman. But the
neurosis did not change and in a short time he came to me for analysis.
I found a tremendous resistance against the discovery of the true
attitude. He employed all sorts of subterfuges to take up the time
during the consultation hours and to disclose only what he wanted. He
soon exhausted the account of his pronounced sadism and of his
masochistic tendencies. But concerning his relations to his father he
was very hazy. He became able to go to work, attended the lectures and
turned once more diligently to his studies. I saw the hopelessness of my
endeavors and broke the analysis under some pretext or other.... There
are patients, whom I have described as the psychoanalytic
_Ahasverus-type_[31] who are among the most thankless of subjects for
our professional endeavors. They rush from one analyst to another,
imploring the new consultant to remove the last of their troublous
symptoms, and stay all the time very much as they have been from the
beginning. They look upon the analysis, too, as a test of power, they
want to triumph over their consultant, they want to come out stronger
than he and—what is most important—they do not want to recognize the
real background of their attitude. They stubbornly overlook the real
foundation of their neurotic trouble and their ‘unwillingness to see’ is
made worse by their superficial acquaintance with psychoanalysis and
their fragmentary introspection. They thus run from one physician to
another, criticize the first to the second, the second to a third, the
third to a fourth. This conduct stands partly in relation to their
attitude towards the father,—a subject to which we shall have occasion
to revert more fully later.
It happened precisely as I had surmised. He went back to _Freud_, who
recommended a third analyst, because he refused stubbornly to return to
the first. After a few months he gave up the treatment and considered
himself well. One half year later he came back to me and told me that
since adopting exclusively homosexual relations he was entirely well,
able to work, and as lively “as a fish in the brook.” But something
still seemed to be lacking. At my request he wrote the account which I
have given above, stating that he had no objection to its publication.
He added orally a few statements which I shall use later.
The characteristic feature of his attitude towards woman is emphasized
in his own written statement. Either he must torture or he must be
tortured—he can either love or must hate, and only to excess. He is
afraid of his terrific love passion. Therefore he feels impelled to
humble himself before woman, to serve her as a slave, which is his
symbolic expression for the longing after _cunnilingus_ and for his
willingness to submit to _mictio in os_. He wants to serve woman as a
means for the attainment of gratification, as a vessel for her excreta,
to be a submissive slave to all her whims. His submissiveness goes so
far that he is willing to be killed by woman. This sadistic
transposition of this attitude signifies: only through doing away with
the sexual partner one achieves complete mastery and may claim complete
possession.
In his feeling-attitude towards woman he vacillates between two
extremes: hatred to the point of annihilation and a love so great as to
include the willingness to be sacrificed. Clearly, he must protect
himself so as not to give way to his hatred and become a murderer. A
deeper insight into the parallelogram of the psychic forces involved in
such situations leads plainly to the conviction that the instinct to
live and the will to power prevent him from subjecting himself to woman
actually to the point of self-annihilation. His feeling-attitude towards
woman is too affective for him to be able to reduce it to a proper
emotional level. How plain is the significance of his boyhood
experience,—his great passion for the girl whom he followed like a
shadow. But he did not dare to bring that love affair down to reality.
He was afraid of himself, afraid of the subjection. The girl gave him to
understand that he need not belittle himself at all. In his eyes that
was enough for her to lose her charm after he became acquainted with
her; she attracted him again only after all danger of his trying himself
out with her was over. He considered himself plain-looking and thought
he could not attract any one. He hated the women on account of their
charm, because he himself would have liked to have been a pretty woman.
He also cleverly covered that wish by beginning to overstress the value
of manliness. “I had a feeling,” he states, “that a man loses something
of his manliness and dignity through his intimacy with a female person.”
One must bear in mind that this man esteemed his mother very highly,
holding her above all others as a person and as a woman. The normal
person forms the image of his ideal woman after his mother. But he looks
upon his mother as an exception and, like many other homosexuals,
excepts his mother alone from the scorn with which he looks down upon
the whole female sex. Now he tolerates woman but only with a sadistic
feeling-attitude. For hatred vanquishes woman easier than love.
The question, what is he seeking in man and why does he prefer men to
women?, he answers as follows: “I seek the penis in man. I think chiefly
of his penis. With men I find no resistance at all. Woman I consider
ugly while man is beautiful. I look chiefly for womanly men who to me
stand for the girl with the penis. _I was attracted only once to an
elderly man with a very energetic face._ And what particularly attracts
me to man: there is no question of any submissiveness with him. Man does
not humble himself,—only woman does that.”
But he does not seek the submissive woman. He needs a strong woman who
shall domineer over him. He confesses that intercourse with a woman
sadist would gratify him. But, as he states in his written account:
women do not care to domineer, they want to be overpowered themselves.
We note that the polar sexual tension between male and female is most
extreme in his case. He could kill the woman who humiliates him,
belittles him, as Judith killed Holofernes, because he had conquered her
sexually.[32]
His peculiar manner of masturbating (squeezing flies to death against
the penis) discloses his specific onanistic fancy. He squeezes a woman
to death, he strangles her, while cohabiting with her. A short time
after the first analysis he had sexual intercourse with a servant girl.
He described her to me: “a gigantic girl, and so powerful that she could
have overpowered me with one hand!” With such a girl he felt safe. But
he never dared to have sexual intercourse with weak persons, even though
they exerted a stronger sexual attraction on him. He had every reason to
flee from woman, because he feared the transposition of his excessive
love passion into a deadly aggressive hatred. He claims he could have
intercourse now only with a woman addicted to all sorts of perversities.
Only such a woman could rouse his passion and could offer him something.
He has never tried this out. It looks as if he feared the involvement of
his heart, but that could use woman merely as a vehicle for his lust. A
perverse woman would drown the urgings of his strongest paraphilia: the
impulse to kill a woman.
Now we may understand through his family history how this attitude must
have arisen.
He belonged to a family where both parents had very pronounced
individualities of their own. The father was a self-made man, who rose
through his own efforts and became a millionaire. He was strict,
energetic, always preoccupied with his business, and never had any spare
time for his family. With the children he was tender while they were
small and pretty playthings. Later he changed completely his attitude
and the patient was required and expected to show a good record of his
conduct at school. He continued to be tender with the girls, so that the
boy must have unconsciously envied his sisters. This change from
tenderness to severity on the part of parents is very common and is
responsible for many instances of stubborn contrariness on the part of
children, especially towards the father. The child always longs for the
early childhood when the father was so loving and tender. Perhaps this
longing for early childhood is the reason why so many homosexuals are of
a decidedly infantile type.[33] The kindly old gentleman sought by so
many homosexuals is perhaps merely the affectionate father of their
youth, who never punished severely....
Our patient’s mother was a remarkably intelligent and very beautiful
woman, who all her life contended with her husband for rulership over
the house. I had an opportunity to obtain a deep insight into that
marriage situation. I know of no other marriage where the struggle for
supremacy was so bitter between the two personalities. There were
constantly quarrels in the house, often on the point of breaking out in
violence. Each one avoided showing any affection for the other. To do so
would have meant acknowledging the other’s superiority. They did
everything they could to each other. They bore themselves with aloofness
and appeared indifferent towards one another, though keeping up a
continuous quarrel. If the husband noticed some other man courting his
handsome wife, he smiled indulgently and accorded his rival a free
field, as if to prove to his wife that he was not jealous in the least,
and was willing to accord her every freedom. She also seemed to overlook
the seamy side, in her husband’s conduct. Nevertheless they were ready
to jump at each other on the slightest provocation. Once the situation
reached a crisis and the woman pointed a revolver at her husband
threatening to end everything in a terrible tragedy.
The children divided between the contesting parents, taking sides. The
son was entirely with his mother. He was unhappy because she had to put
up with so much and he goaded her on all the time, urging her to carry
the fight to a successful issue and even advising her to seek separation
from her husband. He had nothing good to say about his father, outside
the latter’s business ability. He described the father as a cold-blooded
fellow without a heart, a mere adding machine, etc.... On a superficial
examination it looked as if he loved his mother and hated his father.
But back of that hatred there stood the carefully preserved love of his
earlier years. That love, however, he was unwilling to acknowledge. That
was the critical point in the analysis. He always recoiled whenever the
analysis led to his fondness of the father, or various signs pointed out
his aboriginal attitude towards the father. Any analysis leads sooner or
later to a similar experience. Nothing is more difficult than to
dissolve the father hatred and reduce it back to its infantile
components,—love.
But in his homosexual acts he played the rôle of the father who is
tender with the child. We also perceive now why he felt himself suddenly
attracted to that elderly gentleman with the energetic face. He was an
image of his own strict father.
Having witnessed in his childhood a terrific struggle between man and
woman, and having himself taken a part in that merciless struggle for
supremacy, he was bound to conceive the problem of love as a struggle
for supremacy, a competitive struggle in the will to power. His supreme
question always was: “_Who is the stronger one?_” This case shows us
with remarkable clearness the mechanisms on which _Alfred Adler_ lays
such great stress. But it also shows the incestuous love for the sister,
a tendency of which he was aware. In the young men he sought the
reproductions of his sister’s picture. He also showed a fixation upon
the mother, with whom he was seldom on agreeable pleasant terms.
Nevertheless he has not forgotten the early tendernesses of his father.
In the wish to be squeezed to death, his masochistic fancies revolve
around the masked image of his severe father standing like a shadow. To
be master, to be slave—his whole system of thinking revolved around
these two notions. He has social intercourse only with men towards whom
he feels himself superior. Already as a child he chose his comrades
among the children of the poor, because he could domineer them. He
abandoned one friendship because his friend made jokes at his expense.
He was not a handsome child. That drove him into the path of hatred and
envy. He hated all women because they were his rivals with the father.
He thought he would have been liked better if he had been a handsomer
fellow.
He was a slave to his family and unable to wean himself away. He moved
to another city in order to free himself of the family ties. That made
him homesick. His mother had to visit him. He was proud when they went
on walks together and were taken for a pair of lovers. But secretly he
really yearned for his father, and never forgives himself that he did
not interrupt that vacation journey to go to his father.
In reality he continued the struggle between his parents. Within him
struggled man and wife. Possibly also the child, though acting more in
the rôle of a bystander, and ready to give the stereotypic answer “both”
to the question, “whom do you like better?” He thinks he has overcome
the man in him. I consider his homosexuality a passing phase. He will
achieve health only after complete emotional detachment from the family
circle.
We often note that the neurotic gets well only after the death of one of
the parents or of both. But in many cases, the parents even after they
are dead continue to hold their sway over the infantile soul and their
dominion ends only with the death of their child who, in that devotion
to them, loved but himself and loved himself unto death....
VI
HISTORY AND ANALYSIS OF A HOMOSEXUAL—CHILDHOOD REMINISCENCES—ANAL
EROTISM—ATTACHMENT TO THE MOTHER—INTERPRETATION OF DREAM
SYMBOLISMS—LOVE OF THE FATHER—REGRESSION THEORY OF HOMOSEXUALITY.
_Was ist das Siegel der erreichten Freiheit?—Sich nicht mehr von sich
selber schämen._
—_Nietzsche._
VI
_What is the stamp of achieved freedom?—To be no longer ashamed of one’s
self._
—_Nietzsche._
The complete analysis of a homosexual would require a whole volume.
Before concluding the present work I propose to give a portion of such
an analysis. The treatment lasted six weeks, when it was interrupted by
the war. This analysis, too, only led as far as the father complex. But
even so it yields important data and enables us to draw together the
observations made in connection with the various briefer illustrations
already discussed.
84. Mr. Sigma, a student from Denmark, 28 years of age, consults me on
account of various nervous difficulties. For a number of months past he
has felt very depressed, is always fatigued, generally unable to sleep
and unable to concentrate on his work. He is facing his final
examinations but is unable to study. He complains of a lack of any sense
of joy in living. He admits having entertained also ideas of suicide
which he has rejected chiefly on account of his mother. He is very much
afraid that he may yield some day to just such a temptation.
Sigma is consciously homosexual. He emphasizes: He has never felt any
interest in the female sex and already as a child he fell in love only
with boys. He is the only son of a very hard-working, brave, mother in
comfortable circumstances who is wholly wrapped up in him. His father
died a few years ago. He lives a wholly retired existence, he has no
friends,—for his mother prevents that. Once—he was 17 years of age at
the time—he had a close friend to whom he felt very attached, but his
mother interfered and broke up their friendship. Now he is completely
isolated. All his spare time he devotes to his mother, when he is not
gone to the theater or to a concert. He also visits no families; his
mother prevents it.
He begins—spontaneously—an account of his life with his first
recollections:
I was 2 years of age and we—a number of children—played out of doors. A
pretty lady walked up and threw a ball into the grass. She said: He who
catches the ball may keep it. I was nearest to it but did not dare to
trespass upon the finely kept lawn. Therefore another one caught the
ball....
This recollection seems typical of Sigma. Like all first recollections
it contains the determinants of his whole life.[34] It shows us a man
who lacks self-confidence, whose activity is inhibited by considerations
regarding others. He explains that for the sake of his mother he has
renounced all pleasures in life. He is always hesitant (_kleinmütig_),
overwhelmed by his feeling of inferiority and dares not assume any
important enterprise.
His sexuality awoke very early. He played always with girls and felt
more like a girl. He liked to put on his mother’s hat and clothing. His
mother was the master in the house, the breadwinner and law giver. The
father always played a subordinate rôle. We see again a reiteration of
the fact that the child identifies itself with the stronger parent.
Under the circumstances it was natural that Sigma should identify
himself with the mother....
Already, in the public school, at seven years of age, he fell in love
with his teacher. That is why he became one of the best scholars. He
also loved some of his colleagues, but was too bashful to betray himself
to them. At 12 years of age he began to masturbate and during the act
his fancies were centered on the image of a naked man. He was very
religious up till that time and during confession distinguished himself
by the lengthy list of his sins and the depth of his dejection. At 12
years of age he became free and progressively developed into a
full-fledged atheist. The struggle against masturbation began at 14
years of age, when he heard that the habit was very harmful. After that
he indulged more rarely. Great feeling of fatigue on day after
pollution. The subject regards his present condition a consequence of
his masturbation habit.
Already during his gymnasium years (high school) his mind was distracted
and he barely managed to squeeze through his finals (_Matura_). He was
always bashful and avoided the colleagues who spoke cynically among
themselves about girls so that he was called “Miss Sigma.” For a few
years he lived away from home. They lived formerly in the country and he
had to stay in Copenhagen. He lived with some older sisters with whom he
did not get along very well. He played music with them, joined them on
walks, experienced considerable excitation ... short of erotism. His
whole erotic feeling was directed only to men and boys. In the course of
his endless day dream fancies he never thought of a woman at any time in
his life. He dreams only of men and thinks only of them. That concludes
the first visit.
Sigma again emphasizes his one-sided inclination towards men.
Nevertheless he must correct a small detail of his account as given on
the previous day. This, I repeat, is a common typical occurrence in the
anamnesis of homosexuals. When giving an account of their life they
neglect entirely all the heterosexual episodes. But today Sigma adds
that occasionally he did have erotic dreams concerning women; perhaps
four or five times. But not more often than that. These dreams led to
pollutions and were rather indefinite as to content. Sigma was also in
love, transiently, with a girl cousin, at sixteen years of age. He at
once attempts to weaken the force of this declaration: it was merely a
pastime, a pose, because an uncle was in love with the same girl. He
thought it was his duty also to make love to this girl cousin. But it
was soon over. And he must emphasize again that he never indulged in any
phantasies centering on women. He had such phantasies. But they were
always about men.
He was brought up almost wholly in female society. If his mother was
away, there was an aunt in the house who looked after him. He was taken
to school and was called for when he was already a grown-up boy—the
typical training for dependence. His mother wanted to procure friends
for him. There were always some boys whom she wished he would accept as
his friends. But usually he himself found nothing in those particular
boys to interest him. If he himself chose some boy for a friend his
mother was sure to interpose her veto as soon as their friendship became
too warm. And he was always prone to fall in love with his friends. He
composed poetry at a very early age, deifying his friends; to this day
his poems are devoted almost wholly to Eros Uranos.
At this point he reflects for a while; and he continues: “I identified
myself always with the female figures who were mostly strong, aggressive
women. I could always enthuse over such strong, energetic women
displaying male aggressiveness about them. If a woman or a girl ever
interested me and played a rôle in my day dreams, she was of this type.”
Next he recalls a heterosexual episode. He admired for a time the
landlady’s daughter, kept company with her, they played music together,
but he felt very unhappy when she married off afterwards.
The Eulenberg trial made him aware of his own homosexuality. That made
him very unhappy for he discovered that he was unlike others. In the
high school he was always looked upon as peculiar and he kept aloof from
his schoolmates. The famous trial made it clear to him that his end
would be either insanity or jail. He went through some dreadful days. He
was in love with a friend and when the latter asked him why he was so
depressed, he broke into bitter tears and poured out his heart
circuitously describing his passion. He felt that he was not like
others, he felt lonely and closed in, unrecognized and weak. His friend
advised him to devote himself more to art. He looked upon the subject’s
suffering as due to thwarted ambition.
His typical dreams are concerned with pursuit by men and breaking in. A
particular dream made a strong impression on him: He was pursued in bed
by a great mass of bedbugs and finally himself turned into a bedbug.[35]
Like all homosexuals he had for a time the fear of infection and
especially of tuberculosis. He was almost convinced that he would die
prematurely of tuberculosis.
We are also familiar with tuberculosis (as well as syphilis) as the
representative of what is evil, of incest and homosexuality. But for the
present our patient sheds no light on this aspect of the subject. We do
not care to influence Sigma and therefore do not disturb the course of
his associations. Sigma shows but little interest in the analysis. He is
mistrusting and hesitant. He does not have much time and seems relieved
when the sitting is over.
The next sitting opens as follows: “I have come to ask you to make an
appointment with me for tomorrow. I want to skip today. I must take a
little rest and gather strength. Yesterday’s sitting has sort of taken
me to pieces....”
During the first couple of sittings I had hardly spoken a word and had
allowed Sigma to do all the talking. But the flight reflex, which
dominates all homosexuals, because they are afraid of the truth, is here
already coming to surface:
“What roused you so yesterday?”
“That you kept so quiet. It was an uncanny silence....”
“Would you have preferred to see me excited?”
“No.... I know, of course, that the physician must keep his balance. But
that is precisely what I lack. What an awful impression I must have made
on you!”