there are a number of observations which are characteristic of the
whole man:
“I remember nothing of my early childhood. What happened during that
time I cannot recollect; my earliest memories date from the time when
I was already in school. I only know that both parents were nervous. I
lost one brother early, I know nothing of the circumstances. There were
a number of insanities in our family, especially on father’s side.
“My sexual feelings asserted themselves at a very early age. I remember
that when I was seven years old I played with myself before father,
without any feeling of shame, because I did not know that it was wrong.
Father scolded me and forbade me doing this. But his threats only
had the effect of forcing me to continue under cover what I tried to
do openly before him. I believe that my power of concentration and
my ability to work were impaired already at that time. From playing
I merged quickly into systematic masturbation, a habit in which I
indulged excessively. At ten years of age we had at school a regular
ring of masturbators and we carried on all sorts of things jointly. Nor
did we limit ourselves to manual handling....
“At about that time I had terrible nightmares. I saw wild animals,
was overcome or bitten by them, thieves wanted to kidnap me, and in
my dreams I often saw my father coming after me with a great long
stick. These nightly dreams tortured me considerably, every night I was
feverish and bathed in sweat.
“In the morning I had an ‘all gone’ feeling. I gazed blankly before
me at school always holding my hand on the penis,—in fact, I often
masturbated during class. I became less and less able to concentrate
on the work or to carry on my school tasks. In various ways I
attempted first to keep up with the work and then I tried all sorts of
makeshifts to avoid my school duties. As early as at that age it was
characteristic of me that what interested me I had no difficulty in
doing. I learned easily but only subjects which I was not taught in
school. Thus, for instance, as a boy I became interested in mineralogy,
astronomy and botany, and I acquired quite a fund of information on
these topics. I should have never learned a hundredth part of what I
knew about the subjects if they had been drilled into me at school....
Everything that was a duty seemed unbearable to me. Work was a hard
duty and always unpleasant. Therefore I got along rather poorly in
school. I reached the status of a one-yearling (the privilege to do
but one year military duty) only with the aid of home coaching and by
the use of influence. And I attained that privilege only at the last
moment, during my twentieth year, when I faced the danger of having
to serve three years. In a few weeks I prepared and crammed, so as to
pass my examinations because I knew that, unless I did, I would be in
trouble. I always went to extremes that way, the midway never appealed
to me. I would pour over my astronomical books for five hours at a
stretch or devote myself uninterruptedly to my plants and my collection
of stones, but if I spent a half hour upon my school lessons it made me
mad and in my fury I tore the note book.
“My memory for past events is poor. But some incidents, here and
there, I recall very vividly. For instance, I remember nothing of a
journey through Thuringen which I made with my uncle when I was ten
years of age. I was like in a trance during that journey. I made that
same journey a second time and then I recalled of one spot that I had
already been there. There was a stone there where I had tripped and
fallen during the first journey.
“As a boy I was often punished for my laziness and I was even strapped
for my obstinacy. I thought I was treated unjustly for I considered
my lack of concentration as something I could not help. I was always
restless, perennially moody, sometimes very joyous and again very
depressed.
“Masturbation I carried on excessively. I masturbated daily—seldom a
day passed,—sometimes several times daily, up to the 21st year, when
I first had intercourse. Then I decided to give up onanism. At first
I had only normal intercourse and felt great satisfaction. But I had
to do it very often or my nerves would be all to pieces. During my
military service I felt excellently well. I endured easily all sorts of
physical exertion and I was very proud of my uniform. As I am very tall
and well built I attracted attention in my uniform and the girls looked
at me and this made me very proud. But I continued masturbating at the
time and avoided intercourse. During the service I was often nervous
when I had to carry out an order or if I was kept at one station for
any length of time. I pressed myself forward wherever I could, and
finally a horse kicked me and I used that accident as a chance to
be freed of the service and received for some time the accident pay
granted under the circumstances.
“If I am able to get the best of some one, especially of some one in
authority, it pleases me beyond measure.
“After the military service I took a position. As I had intercourse
daily with women I was in good condition to keep up my work. But I
could not endure to have two tasks piled up on me at the same time. I
could do only one thing at a time. I was not easy to get along with and
had to change positions because I quarreled with my chiefs and because
I always avoided hard work. Then I came to Vienna and got a place which
I kept for some time. The business interested me, because it dealt with
an article which appealed to me. Here I began to grow restless and my
uneasiness increased when we removed to Berlin. Normal intercourse no
longer satisfied me. I became acquainted with a French woman who became
my sweetheart and with whom I practiced all sorts of perversities. I
became more and more unstable in my work, often neglecting it for hours
at a stretch. I do not know whether that was on account of the Berlin
air, which did not agree with me, or because of an accident I met with
on the railway. I gave up my position, that is, my chief advised me
to do so, although it was a responsible position of great trust, of
which I was very proud, especially as my father had bonded me heavily.
But I grew more and more restless, it drove me continually to women.
I had nothing else on my mind and I wracked my brain to think of new,
unheard of perversities to try out. I even tried _podicem lambere_ and
for a time this brought me great satisfaction, but it quieted me only
for a few hours. Then I turned again to Friedrichstrasse looking for
the other girls I kept on string besides my regular sweetheart. These
adventures required a great deal of money, only a part of which I was
able to earn at the time. It was to me always a pleasant thought that
father had to pay for my indulgences.
“My unrest reached its highest point when my father came to Berlin to
see me and I lived in Charlottenburg. I had a formidable anxiety about
meeting him and so it happened that he was mostly alone and saw me
but seldom. He did prevail upon me to see a specialist who promptly
put me in a sanitarium. While there I was much more quiet, but only
outwardly. Within me the old struggle kept on as usual. The physician
ordered me to give up women for a time because I was super-excitable
and indulgence would harm me. I was abstinent for a few weeks but
thoughts troubled me every night and I was plainly afraid of losing
my mind. Then I turned to my old remedy, onanism. I did this in spite
of the fact that the physician and the specialist both declared that
my condition was due to excessive masturbation. I was torn between
conflicting thoughts at the time but noticed that I became more quiet
after masturbating. At any rate after three months of sanitarium
treatment I was still in no condition to work. I am depressed and life
loses its zest the moment I turn to work. After the first few minutes
my mind turns to women and I must interrupt whatever I am doing and
run into the street. Leaving the sanitarium I returned to Vienna where
the old vicious cycle began once more. I made the round of physicians
and was given any quantity of bromides. Neither the medicines nor the
various hydrotherapic courses helped me in any way. Only if I have
intercourse about three times during the night do I feel a little
quieted down in the morning. Then I am a little more alert and can work
for a short while. But already on the following day, usually the first
thing in the morning, the old trouble reasserts itself. I am irritable
and depressed. After a coitus which does not gratify me I feel worse
than ever. Then I am tremendously excited and want right away another
woman who might satisfy me better. Sometimes I long for true love and
for the companionship of a lovely being. I then feel the terror of
loneliness fastening upon me. I literally pant for air and again rush
to the street where temptations meet me. I feel as if something within
me has taken possession of my soul driving me on from one adventure
to another. Personally I am inwardly inclined towards everything that
is noble; but something within me compels me to act as a bad and evil
person.
“I believe I am like a man who is the victim of an insatiable hunger.
I have often thought of poor Prometheus, condemned always to linger in
hunger and thirst. In the same way I feel within me an unquenchable
thirst for love and its pleasures and I have no other thought than to
satisfy this thirst in some way. I feel like a mechanism destined only
to serve the penis in its demand for gratification.
“I have often resolved to change. But I am unable to carry out any
resolution, I cannot undertake a thing. I can only hunt after women.
_Ich kann nur coitieren_, (I can only ——,) every other activity about
me is in a state of suspension. I am uncertain and vaccilating about
everything. Today I feel a little religious twinge, tomorrow I poke
fun at church and priest. Today I decide to learn something new or to
find a job, tomorrow I think something else entirely. I want to buy a
new hat. I decide today to go to a certain store. I go to the place but
linger before the windows, unable to make up my mind to step in. “No,”
I say to myself, “I don’t want to buy a hat just yet.” And meanwhile I
also think about women for that is a subject which never leaves my mind
for a moment. I stroll up and down the street watching the hundreds of
women before I make up my mind to speak to one.
“I draw no distinction between old and young, pretty or plain ones. I
weigh the matter over considerably but in the end I pick up the first
one that comes along. If it only quieted me! But it lasts only an hour,
sometimes, at best, a whole day, then I must rush out again to the
street and hunt. Sometimes I cohabit with three women in a day.
“My worst time was when I had gonorrhea (not yet completely healed). I
was forbidden to have intercourse for a time. But I could not listen
to the doctor, because I was afraid that I would go literally to
pieces. I kept up intercourse right along and was inwardly glad to
think that so many others will also have to suffer what I suffered.
Then I felt remorse over my meanness, I felt myself a reprobate, a
criminal, and resolved that I must change my ways. I fell into a deep
depression and for a few hours I was free of my usual erotic thoughts.
Then they started again and the same thoughts now plague me night and
day as before.” ...
* * * * *
We have listened to the poor man’s terrible confession. His hunt after
gratification has that tragical quality which the poet has so fittingly
expressed: “_Und im Genuss verschmacht’ ich nach Begierde._”—“And
I starved with yearning even while I tasted.” The deep depressions
indicate that this trouble is approaching a crisis. For the depressions
occur at closer intervals and satisfying experiences are more rare.
That is also the reason why he seeks professional advice. He feels that
this cannot go on. He cannot and does not want to endure life under
such conditions. He wants to work like other men and to be capable of
turning his mind to other matters than sexual.
Two things stand out in the patient’s account. First, his complete
amnesia regarding his first journey through Thuringen, as pointed out
by himself—except for the slight accident of tripping—and next, the
fact that his condition became so much more serious during his stay in
Berlin, when he was already on the way to get well. He had given up
masturbation of his own initiative, substituting for it intercourse
with women, he was working, he held a responsible position, and kept
up his work, according to the statement of his superiors in office, in
spite of disturbances ... then suddenly his condition made a turn for
the worse. Some strong impression or unusual experience in Berlin must
have brought on this sudden change.
It is noteworthy that the subject denies having ever carried on any
homosexual act. He claims such men only fill him with extreme disgust.
The childhood experiences, of course, do not count. All children did
the same things; one would conclude that all boys were homosexual. As
a matter of fact they are married and happy, most of them heads of
happy families. “I have a frightful passion,” he says, “exclusively for
women. Men do not exist for me.”
At night he dreams:
_I see a turbulent ocean before me. The waves are in continuous
agitation. I think to myself: it were a pity if the waves ceased their
agitation. A ship passes by, and the boat carries everything that I
love. I believe my mother is also upon that ship. There is an orchestra
playing on board: “Oh, how could I possibly leave you!” I awake feeling
sad and depressed._
Such a dream is a resistance dream and indicates that the subject does
not want to get well. His soul is an ocean, continuously in a state of
agitation. “I think it a pity that the waves should cease,” means: _I
do not want to become quiet at all!_ The boat symbolizes the illness,
the neurosis. His neurosis covers everything he loves, including his
mother; and should he give up all that? Impossible! He cannot renounce
his infantile sexuality. He wants to remain a child and be ill.
The analysis is carried out under very great resistance but
satisfactory progress is made. I want to outline the results limiting
myself to the most important points.
His sexual life comes more and more to light. It appears that in his
free account he covered under silence a important form of pleasurable
gratification because he was ashamed of it. He indulges in a very
curious form of infantile sexuality. The habit must be widespread but
in this form I have met it only twice.
Every two weeks he does as follows: he lies down in bed dressed in his
underclothes and defecates. Then he lies in his stools for several
hours. After that he takes great pains to remove every trace. He washes
the drawers and the shirt or he burns them up. At the baths, where he
is always very excited sexually he does the same thing. He does that
there more readily because the means are at hand for cleaning himself
afterwards. He usually takes along a package of clean linen. At the
public baths every cabin has a couch. He lies down and allows his
bowels to move. There he lies feeling very satisfied and masturbates
or has a spontaneous ejaculation. Then he bathes to clean himself and
the package of soiled linen he throws into a river or anywhere where it
disappears quickly.
In these scenes he reproduces the infant in swaddling clothes. He even
presses the covers tightly around him so that he cannot move, to give
himself the illusion of being tied down. He repeats the infantile
scenes of cleaning by the mother, during which in his fancy he plays
the double role of mother and child.
He struggles with greatest anxiety against this remarkable paraphila
but always submits to it in the end. The longest interval up to
the time of the psychoanalysis was four weeks. After that “orgy of
filth,”—as he calls it—he feels depressed and is ashamed of himself.
He has not mentioned this to a living soul and even the physician at
the sanitarium knew nothing about it. He went through this act several
times not at the sanitarium, but in his room because the baths were not
private. When discussing sexual infantilism we shall learn of several
similar cases. His attitude towards his mother is very changeable but
not so emotionally tense as his relations with his father. He carries
on a quiet and occasionally affectionate exchange of letters with his
mother, but with his father, never. He is to a certain extent fond of
his mother. As he tried masturbation in front of his father as a child
so now he keeps nothing of his sexual life secret before me. He relates
frankly everything. As a child he loved his mother very much and often
wished to be with her. His mother is now an old woman, partially
paralysed. Nevertheless he noticed during his last visit home that
she is still a pretty woman and repeatedly felt impelled to approach
her.... At such times he treats her very roughly and scornfully, and is
inclined to make fun of her and her age. He has had repeatedly affairs
with old women. At his last lodging place there was an elderly woman,
whose face was badly wrinkled, with whom he became intimate but after a
short time he sought a quarrel with her and moved out. That is the way
he behaves with everybody. He quarrels over some trifle, becomes very
excited and makes a terrible scene. Then he is through with that person
for good.
We shall see that this is his way of protecting himself against
temptation. He quarrels only with persons with whom he has pleasant
relations and who play some role in his sexual fancies. That is also
how he parts from his mother, for he usually leaves her after a bitter
quarrel. This is also why his parents let him dwell among strangers,
although they think a great deal of him. His letters are sufficiently
irritating but easier to endure than the scenes he creates when at home.
His attitude towards his father is worse. He is easily moved to anger
when speaking of him. He makes copious use of vile terms when referring
to him. Such expressions as “the old rascal,” the “miserable thief,”
are customary with him when speaking of his father. He knows no reason
why he should feel so bitter towards his father. That is, he gives
a thousand reasons but all trivial and hardly relevant. The father
brought him up badly; the father is responsible for his condition; the
father is wealthy, nevertheless complains always that he has nothing;
the father lives only for his mother and cares nothing for _him_. He
wants to make himself independent and wants to get money from his
father for that purpose. The very thought that his father may deny him
the money makes him angry: “I shall go to him and kill him and shoot
myself.” Such murder fancies are not infrequent about his father.
How close the neurotic is to the criminal! Against his father he raises
all sorts of complaints, equally unreasonable. One day he called on me
to say that, having passed a sleepless night he has figured out at last
the reason for his illness: the father has murdered his brother! The
brother was incurably ill and a burden to his father. He knew it well
and had decided to go home and confront his father with the truth,
then demand his share of the inheritance. Even as a boy it was clear to
him that the father had deliberately put his brother out of the way.
The father always felt uncomfortable when the talk turned to the boy
and always tried to avoid the subject.
He judges his father according to his own inner self. He carries within
himself the soul of a murderer, as the pathologic strength of his
instinctive cravings already indicates. The suspicion directed against
his father is determined psychically by the fact that during his own
youth he wished his brother’s death because he did not want to have any
competitor for household favors and he knew well that the fortune would
have to be divided between them. But he was not the kind of man who
would consent to dividing anything. He wanted everything for himself
exclusively. He wanted his brother out of the way and had actually
indulged in various fanciful dreams how to go about it. Now he shifted
his fancies over to his father, while for himself he conjured up an
attitude of sympathy and regret whenever his brother was mentioned. He
is most unhappy because he has no brother, his father has robbed him of
what was most precious in his life. Had his brother lived he would not
be ill, only the realization of his father’s deed is what brought him
to such a state. The father passes for a prominent person and enjoys
a high position in his community, he has been mayor of the town, but
should he start proceedings against him, the father would land in jail.
He is filled with jealousy because his father has done so well; his own
incapacity he explains away chiefly on the score of his illness.
It takes a long time for the original love of the father to come to
the surface, back of this thick cover of hatred and jealousy. But the
masking layer melts, surely though slowly, and meanwhile explanations
for which the subject is as yet unprepared would do more harm than
good. The art of analysis consists in showing up only so much as
reveals itself from time to time. Our subject is not yet prepared to
see that he is in love with his father. Nevertheless he begins to talk
about his father’s preeminence and other favorable sides, the man’s
knowledge, his great library, etc.
Gradually the father’s picture looms up in terms more and more
favorable. The subject relates pleasant episodes from youth, when he
botanized along with his father who introduced him to the science; he
withdraws his murder notion, admitting at last that it was only part of
his over-heated fancy. At this stage when he takes me for the _locum
tenens_ of his father, he assumes an aggressive attitude towards me
and uses an expression which amounts to an insult. I had already made
clear to him that he sees his father in me. Now he undertakes to treat
me as he would his father. At once I break up the analysis. Three
days later he returns remorsefully and begs forgiveness. It will not
happen again, I must not leave him in the lurch, he cannot stand this
condition any longer, and I must save him. That was the only conflict
I ever had with him; after that he behaved well and to this day he
shows himself appreciative and filled with gratitude. He was ready
to recognize how strongly his homosexuality determined his attitude
towards his superiors, towards his father, as well as towards me. He
now sees it clearly. He admits he practically fell in love with his
last chief and that is why he had to quit the place. He relates a dream
which he had kept to himself till then, and which shows his homosexual
attitude towards me, and admits that during childhood he had idealized
his father and loved him deeply.
We learn more than that. We find out what brought on his turn for the
worse at Berlin. At his lodging house there was a young boy 14 years
of age, very attractive, whom he coached evenings. He began to play
with that boy. He masturbated him and was masturbated by the boy in
turn. The relationship kept up for about three months. These were the
first three months of his stay in Berlin. Then he felt remorse, sought
a quarrel with the landlady and moved out. From that moment began his
insatiable craving for women. It was his last homosexual period. He had
led astray other boys before that one and always gladly introduced
them to the habit. A court case in which the defendant was sentenced
for a similar offence decided him to give up the homosexual practices.
He never repeated them after that Berlin episode.
His satyriasis developed on account of the repression of his homosexual
tendencies. Back of his morbid passion for woman stood his ungratified
longing for man.
The subject now sees clearly that he carried on with the boy the act
which he expected of his father. His hatred of the father is reversed
love. In the chapter devoted to sadism we will describe more fully this
relationship between father and son.