(_Verkleidungstrieb_). I often entertain such fancies. I am particularly
fond of Salome and I often portrayed myself in that rôle with keenest
interest. My teachers were the prophets whose cold, severed head I
kissed.”
This trend distinctly sadistic is fortified by numerous small details.
He is jealous. He saw once his friend entertaining himself in friendly
and lengthy conversation with a lady and the thought occurred to him
that perhaps his friend was in love with her. He figured that he would
be justified to take his friend’s life for he loved him more than any
one else in the world. He pictured to himself that deed and what he
would do to his friend. The chief motive he confessed reluctantly: “I
should abuse sexually his body.” With that fancy there is linked also
the portrayal of immense sadness.
The two features he mentions today are represented in the _Merchant of
Venice_. A scene which always excited him, representing transvestitism.
Portia as judge and the Jew bent on carving out a pound of flesh.
Shylock and Salome. The bloody head of John is obvious enough.
Today, too, he is in a hurry and must get through quickly. He is always
relieved when the hour is over. This raises the suspicion that he is
trying to cover up further revelations....
He relates particulars regarding his homicidal fancies against his
friends. His favored phantasy is the thought of pushing his favored
friend into an abyss. They often take walks on the seashore. At a
certain spot the coast is very steep and rocky and a fall there would
mean certain death. He is also obsessed with the reflection: what would
he do afterwards? Run away? No ... he would jump after his friend to be
united with the latter in death....
The next dream carries us deeply into the structure of his
homosexuality. First he relates the dream as he had written it down and
then he adds reluctantly the portion indicated as “additional.” The
addition usually contains the most important features.
The dream just before falling asleep:
_Place_: _the grotto across the_ Schönbrunn _Castle. I was descending
the rocky incline and reached the lowermost declivity. I was very much
afraid of falling into the water basin. I was wondering what to do, and
I had the feeling that back of me, instead of rocks there were high
stairs which I could never climb up. Suddenly I found myself on level
ground, beyond the water. An automobile passed me by noiselessly and
with lightning rapidity disappearing specter-like in the bushes. I saw
no driver and nobody else in the machine. It seemed very uncanny but
presently I knew that I was at home and in my bed. I should have liked
to keep on dreaming but the wish to hold on to what I had dreamed thus
far prevailed over all other desires. I was afraid I should forget my
phantasy so far as it had unfolded and that I should have nothing to
report to my consultant._
_Shortly afterwards I fell actually asleep and i dreamed a great deal. I
have tried to recall some of the things in the morning. It seems
noteworthy that the dreams were but lightly intimated rather than
carried out; there was always still something more about to take place
but the next dream picture intruded before the previous one was all
done._
Additional: _Once I found myself in a theater in the first row of a
balcony. Tristan was being given for the occasion. Instead of the
orchestra leader, André Rose was leading. A fine one-year volunteer_,
Einjahrig-Freiwilliger, _back of me, in the second row, was singing
Tristan in the style of the modern recital song. Next to me sat my aunt
who is linked with memories of my kindergarten age. I had the unpleasant
feeling that I was involuntarily sliding down towards the ground floor,
and therefore I leaned heavily back in my seat stretching out my legs
and trying to support myself by pressing my toes against the foot
support (bed foot-board?). I had the uncanny feeling that the foot rest
might give way and fall off like a piece of paste board. I begged my
aunt to lift me carefully. I felt like a very sick person. Sitting again
upright I felt well and refreshed and I was just in time to see the
curtain drop over the stage and a number of persons appearing in front
of it, among them several gentlemen in evening dress. Obviously the
performance is being cancelled. The public broke into ironic applause,
whistled and howled._
Another dream: _Late at night in a big garden. Many people about to take
their leave after an afternoon spent in irrelevant gossip. My parents
were also among those present. My father was in a hurry to get to town.
He leaves. It is very dark. Presently a station bell, the whistle of a
locomotive. I shout into the night’s darkness not knowing whether any
one hears me or not: he is lucky! He is just in time to catch the train.
And I think of following in an hour. I am very tired. I am happy in my
bed at home._
_Sunny afternoon in a poor quarter of a suburb. Under a window of an
apartment window there are a number of tin vessels which I know, belong
to the woman above. An elderly woman is preoccupied with the vessels,
holding each vessel up to the light, as if testing them, but I know that
she is merely awaiting the opportunity to run off with them. A window is
raised in the neighboring house, a woman calls out to the woman living
in the apartment under whose window the vessels are lying, to watch out
for the stranger. By that time I myself am standing in the owner’s room.
She is just putting on her best toilette. The warning neighbor appears
and scolds the vain woman who on account of her vanity neglects to watch
out for her things._
Addition: _I was in the next room. The woman had a little girl with her.
I held my penis in hand pursued the two and wanted them to take it in
their hand; and thus the ejaculation...._
_The woman’s hands disgusted me because they were dirty._
This is hardly the place for a complete analysis of the whole dream. The
first part, the falling into a deep basin is a hypnagogic vision and
represents the process of falling asleep, the descent into the depths of
primordial man. The rapidly passing automobile, the danger. The
representation of Tristan refers to a great passion for a queen.
_Schœnbrunn_, the former Kaiser’s summer residence, refers to the
parental home. Isolde is also a queen, who is lost forever for Tristan.
Is it not rather remarkable that he should dream of Tristan and Isolde,
the quintessential epic of heterosexual love? And does not the
cancellation correspond precisely to his cryptic wish? The thought of a
fall into the depths is continually recurring as well as the inhibitions
about things not holding out (hence the steadying with the feet for
support). The man in evening dress represents the love of a modern
cultural man in contrast with a Tristan. He himself is Tristan, the
onlooker and the singing _Einjährig-Freiwillige_. Finally another
picture: parting, _i.e._, his father’s death: “He was lucky.” What is
the meaning of that? He has caught the train on time! Recalling that in
one of his previous dreams the subject was unable to catch the electric
car, we understand that his father found time to attain his aim,—a
tempo—while he himself is late. We shall be informed presently about the
meaning of this aim. And back of all inhibitions another picture breaks
forth: he runs after an old woman with his erect membrum (the child is a
symbol for the genitalia. _Cp._, in this connection, _The Language of
Dreams_, _Dreams and Sex_, Chapter, “Children in Dreams,” translation by
_James S. Van Teslaar_, Badger, Gorham Press, Boston, 1922).
He is not a little surprised that his dreams portray heterosexual
feelings. Heretofore he had paid no attention to his dreams.
I have not yet stated whom the old woman represents. He is asked to
mention any woman that occurs to him and after some hesitation he
states: my mother.
Here we come across one of the roots of his homosexuality, one that
perhaps we anticipated. But thus far I avoided any inquiries about his
attitude towards the mother.
What is the meaning of that portion of the dream which portrays a number
of tin dishes? I perceive this as follows: He does not possess many
treasures, it is all mere tin, but such as it is it all belongs to the
woman above ... the mother. The neighbor warns the mother that another
woman might rob her of her son’s affection. The mother is very vain and
spends considerable time preparing her toilette.
The key to the dream rests in the pollution with which it ends and the
deepest effect: the disgust on account of the dirty, unclean hands of
the woman above.
We see that the pollution is slowly prepared. First there is a
representation of the heterosexual love (Tristan). But his inner
voices—the public—express themselves against that love, the latter is
deprecated: there is whistling and shouting and ironic applause. Next
the father is upon the scene of action. He is represented in the act of
leaving. Other women appear,—the old woman, the neighbor. But the orgasm
is achieved only through the “woman above” (“upstairs,”—_Frau da oben_,
literally, woman above),—the mother. This form of pollution, which at
bottom represents merely an unconscious onanism (unclean hands!) brings
on a feeling of disgust in him.
The next dream portrays a scene in which a man talks about his son. The
scene takes place in a lavatory. Probably this reproduces an infantile
scene wherein he may have observed his father at the lavatory. The dream
following that is much clearer. I reproduce here both:
_I found myself in a lavatory compartment and I watched my “victim.” The
man turned his back to me and spoke to himself about his son. I noticed
that the woman guardian was keeping watch on me from the outside and I
started to leave, grabbing my hat just as she was opening the door to
catch me at my observation post. I acted as if I were unconcerned,
quietly picked up my handkerchief on which I had knelt down, picked off
the floor the various things of mine that were still strewn about,
gloves, muffler, etc., and went off with the feeling that through my
cool behavior I disarmed the woman of her suspicions and had avoided a
public scandal...._
_I went upstairs to a wide open store. Half way across I saw the
saleswoman standing in a corner. At the sight of her I am seized with
tremendous bowel cramps. I turned around and defecate publicly in the
room. The woman over there will not see me?_
This dream reminds him of the childhood incident already mentioned: When
he was two years of age he was playing out of doors with another boy who
prepared himself to move his bowels close to the street, in the open.
Now he admits also that his own _libido_ is greatly increased if he
imagines he is watched during defecation. This is a typical instance of
sexual infantilism. He is not only _voyeur_; he is also exhibitionist.
The first dream discloses the fear that the mother, the guardian, might
find out his scatological tendencies. In the second, the woman upstairs
was the onlooker during an infantile scene. It reproduces undoubtedly a
frequent scene of childhood.
He has carried out a number of homosexual acts at public baths. In
Denmark the men bathe together in steam rooms. Thus he had opportunity
to permit himself bodily contact with others to the extent of inducing
_ejaculatio_. He must also add something to yesterday’s dream about
defecation. Once at the seashore he heard a man groan in the lavatory.
He climbed upon the side wall and saw the man masturbate. This so
excited him that he climbed down at once and also masturbated. The
stranger revenged himself by looking on in his turn and that increased
tremendously the subject’s _libido_.
His dreams today are very characteristic.
_I am in a carriage and I am playing with an infant in swaddling
clothes. I would gladly be rid of it. A man advises me to pack the child
in a tin box,[39] and I actually do to._
Interpretation: he wants to be rid of his infantilism; he preserves it
in a tin box. Compromise between the two trends. The next dream relates
about a minister of the gospel who stands before a big hole in the
ground and who interprets that hole to mean that asceticism is not a
possible ideal. It is necessary to masturbate, at least occasionally.
There were roots in that hole, which looked like hair. Next he is with
his mother in a carriage. The mother turns into the holy Madonna or the
holy Zara(?)
The earth, too, stands for the mother: mother earth. The hole refers to
both, birth and death. One comes from the mother and returns to the
mother. The mother appears again as the holy one, and as the Czarina,
hence the mystifying Zara. The father is the Czar, just as in the
Tristan dream he is represented by the king. Further meaning is obvious.
Hairs recall his peculiar attitude. Women’s hairs are abhorrent to him.
His mother has long blond hair. The father was very hairy. Formerly all
hairy men were abhorrent to him. Downy, young, feminine men are his
ideal. He is continually seeking woman in man....
He reverts once more to the dream about the hole in the ground. He now
recalls that dream very clearly.
I am again a pupil at school and I am being conducted to confession
along with the other school mates. We stand in a wide, round
amphitheater scooped out of the ground. The natural wall rises to a
height of about 2 meters, all around. Above it there stands a wonderful
temple-like edifice. A monk points to the wet spots upon the earthen
walls and compares them to the erotic thoughts, which are also not to be
rooted out of the believer’s conscience. I notice a bunch of roots on
the wall and involuntarily I think of pudendal hair. The monk condemns
asceticism.
A dream full of religious meaning. Already in some of the previous
dreams the woman “upstairs,” or “above,” was perceived through religious
over-determination as mother Mary to whom alone his love belongs and
which he therefore must not squander on any earthly woman. He sees his
grave which like a _memento mori_ admonishes him to regard this life as
a preparation for the next.
Woman seems to be here the quintessence of sinfulness. Now we understand
why the woman upstairs had a little child by her. It was little Jesus.
He has soiled his pure faith. The brain which holds his belief (the
earthen wall!) is likewise stained with his sinful erotic thoughts.
The great wall surrounding the place to a height of a couple of meters
symbolizes all the inhibitions. He himself is the monk, he had a passing
desire to become an ecclesiastic, he is a heterosexual ascete....
Last night many dreams of going through urinals. In one urinal he found
a man who instead of a _phallus_ had a vagina.
Dissolute dreams. Among others a dream that he _podicem lambit_ a
friend. He also entertains consciously fancies of like character....
Further dreams of mutual masturbation with a strange man. Finally the
scraps of dreams culminate in a lengthier one in which he finds himself
in the company of the girl he was very fond of as a boy. The struggle
against the heterosexual tendencies goes on throughout the night and
finally he is conquered.
Obvious resistance against the uncovering of the heterosexual
tendencies.
One dream out of a large number deserves to be reproduced:
_I go on a walk with mother. We are tender with one another and she
tells me sweet words. I pluck wonderful anemones from a river and want
to make a garland to crown my mother with it. But the petals fall off
and only the empty green stems remain in my hand._
Any one familiar with the symbolism of plucking flowers (_vid._ my
_Dreams and Sex: The Language of Dreams_, translated by _Dr. James S.
Van Teslaar_, Badger, Gorham Press, Boston, 1922, Publisher) will
readily recognize that this is a reference to an indulgence of an erotic
nature. These love pats lead to empty stems. The love cannot come to
blossoms or fruition.
He dwells on his relations with his mother. It is virtually a marriage
without any erotic elements. He does not tolerate his mother’s
tendernesses and he has asked her to refrain. There is now between them
genuine shyness. Erotic matters are never so much as touched upon.
Against his incestuous leanings he secures himself by the wall of an
apparent aloofness. But they live together, they go out together, they
share every enjoyment. His mother is a woman who has a grip on his whole
life. And at bottom he is not angry because she has interfered with his
other friendship. He understands her, that is, he sympathizes with her.
That friendship was an attempt to free himself of the mother. But the
mother instinctively did the right thing when she stepped in between her
son and his friend. He does not at bottom care to be liberated from the
slavery of his affection. He allows himself to be led about and to be
treated as a child. He talks as if the love and the chain were
disagreeable to him. Both trends—towards the mother and away from
her—are active in his soul: bipolarity.
The treatment should improve his neurotic condition only but should not
interfere with his attitude towards his mother. He dreams that he is
well and that he tells his mother, now he is all well and they are going
to be happier together than ever.
In connection with a dream another love affair comes to surface, dating
some 16 years back. He courted a certain girl and sent her some poems.
He thinks it was mere play, an attempt to “imagine” that he was also
capable of loving girls. That is how he endeavors to dismiss lightly his
heterosexual tendencies. But he thinks that the love poems were
irrelevant. He also composed poems to his mother, when he was away from
home for a short time:
“_Du meines keuschen Herzens Allgebieterin,
Der ich mich neige in tiefer Demut_ ...”
_“You, mistress of my chaste heart,
To whom I bow in deep humility_ ...”
The verses are full of yearning and passion. His blood calls for her,
his heart is filled only with yearning for her. These are the utterances
of a man who has lost his head by falling in love.
This case illustrates plainly the manner in which monosexuality leads to
homosexuality. But the subject himself did not want to recognize any of
these relations. All the powers of sublimation at his disposal he had
turned into his love for the mother. Therefore he had to cling to a
portion of his mysophilia (dirt compulsion). What he overdid on one side
in the way of cleanliness was compensated for on the other by a sinking
into filth. It is noteworthy that he does not care to be cleared of his
homosexuality. He looks upon it as a protection and as something that
sets him apart from other men. This again shows the hopelessness of any
therapeutic endeavors in most cases of this type.
Since taking account of his dreams he is astonished how often
heterosexual excitations come to the surface. Last night he dreamed,
first, that he was with a naked woman, of wonderful build and that he
_in vaginam et in anum immisit_ his finger.
Further, another remarkable dream, which played an important rôle in the
solution of his neurosis:
_I am with mother at the Opera. A long hallway at the end of which one
obtains a view of Vienna. One sees the wonderful St. Stephen’s Church, a
fine cloud like a smoke or like a fine powdery water spray over its
tower. The Opera is changed. Instead of Don Juan, the Donna carissima._
Already the first dream indicated a definite trend towards woman and now
the change of program discloses the source of his neurosis. I ask him
for a description of the woman in the first dream. He did not see her
face at all. He merely saw the wonderful bewitching white body.
Such dreams—figures without faces—are very frequent and serve to hide
the beloved person and to prevent recognition. I know dreamers who have
pollutions with such half figures. The face is never visible. Often only
a portion of the body. Through the second dream we may assume that the
figure represents the mother. Otherwise it is hardily possible to
explain why the face should have been subjected to the dream’s
censorship.
The second dream belongs to the category of maternal body fancies. He is
within the mother’s womb. The long passage he associates with: life’s
pathway. It is in fact the pathway through which he came into life.
Stephen’s tower is a phallic symbol. The smoking room, _ejaculatio_ or
_mictio_. It is a representation of the illusion that he is within the
maternal body and is able to observe from that point of vantage the
process of generation. The dream becomes even more transparent when we
learn that his father’s name is Stephen.[40]
Now his sexual infantilism becomes intelligible. He is under the spell
of _Mutterleibsphantasie_, maternal body phantasy. Every lavatory
becomes for him the symbol of the maternal body. There he watches the
man urinating as he might have watched the father in the maternal body
if he had had enough intelligence to do so as an embryo. It seems
unbelievable that intelligent persons should become victims of so
puerile a phantasy. Various facts always uphold the sense of such a
phantasy. In this particular instance there was dislike for, and
unpleasant sensations in, closed rooms, also a series of paraphiliac
trend which found their explanation only through that phantasy. He
revelled in the thought of permitting himself to be besprinkled with the
spermatic fluid by his beloved male friend; he had a craving _membrum
erectum amati viri fellare_; his urolagnic and coprolagnic proclivities,
too, were dominated by the same phantasy. He behaved as if he were still
in the maternal body.
But the dream declares clearly that a change of program is taking place
in the play of his life. Don Juan becomes a _Donna_—_Carissima_,—she who
is most dear to him. He has changed programs; and the love for the
father he has transferred to his mother. He is within the maternal
body,—he himself is the mother. He seeks himself, he is his dearest
woman, he loves the womanly in himself. We have here the never absent
love of the homosexual for himself—narcissism.
Various recollections come to surface, all showing alike that his
earliest predisposition was distinctly heterosexual. Thus, for instance,
at five years of age he fell in love with a girl, wanted to marry her,
and called her his bride. We hear only of three heterosexual episodes
belonging to his later life. It is not yet clear how this complete
turning away from woman came about. Further inquiries reveal dreams of
which I can only give a part. Thus he dreams:
_I study for an hour. My textbook is on various physical experiments,
further on it turns into history. There is something in it about
Bavarian history. The year 4005 plays an important rôle. The whole thing
ends with a fairy tale about three pines which stand on a winter’s night
before the house and signify three dead women._
_Later I act successfully as an imitator of women._
The figure 4005 brings the following associations: 00 is the sign for
lavatory; 45 is the opus number of one of his favorite opera scores, the
Salome of Richard Strauss; 4 and 5 are the bad marks at school.
The Salome of Strauss and a previous dream lead us to his sadistic
trends. It becomes progressively clearer that his aboriginal sadism was
extraordinarily great. To this day he revels in phantasies about sexual
crimes, violent murders, etc. He toyed with the plan of killing himself
as well as his whole family. Any opposition at home immediately suggests
to him thoughts of murder. His original attitude towards woman, too, was
sadistic. The chief motive of Salome is the severed head of the prophet.
Also the pound of flesh in Shylock, in the first dream, refers to this
trend; finally the dream about the bedbug. His religious trend set in
early, thus protecting him against the wild beast within him. At six
years of age he played that he was a preacher and he had his own altar.
He fled from woman because he was not sure of himself....
He has a large number of idiosyncrasies which may be explained through a
repressed sadism. He cannot eat peaches because their skins resemble
human skin; he cannot tolerate the skin on parboiled milk, it brings on
disgust and nausea; he often turns against meat and for a long time he
confined himself to vegetarianism. Meat he calls animal carcass. The
thought of a menstruating woman is particularly repulsive to him. All
associations with blood are strongly affective, partly in a positive and
partly in a negative way.