sister who has a phallus. He, the valiant warrior, struggles against
his instinctive promptings and masturbates. This act acquires in his
conscious mind, as pollution, the character of an involuntary act, an
accidental occurrence which cannot be helped, thus being robbed of its
significance.
_Freud_ points out rightly that the psychologist is particularly
interested in cases showing a late development of homosexuality,—a
condition which _Krafft-Ebing_ has described as “_tardive_” or Late
Homosexuality. In such cases homosexuality develops after a period of
hetero-, or bisexuality. We will describe a number of cases of late
homosexuality elsewhere and then we shall also attempt to trace the
reasons for the occurrence.
The next case also represents a transitional stage showing us a woman
in the throes of a struggle between the two tendencies. We have here a
rudimentary, a would-be Messalina, an interesting female counterpart to
the case described above.
Miss Wanda K. complains of an unfortunate split in her mental make-up
which prevents her from enjoying life as she should. She suffers of
strong and uncontrollable vomiting but the trouble arises only when
she is about to keep an appointment. She holds the most liberal views
that “a modern girl can and should have.” She meets gladly men who
interest her and even those who rouse her sexually. She knows she will
never marry. She is 29 years old and although still very pretty and
attractive,—how long will this last? She wants to enjoy life, she
would not care to die without having tasted the supreme gift and prize
of life, love. But she has a “delicate” stomach which interferes at the
most critical moment. Here is an example:
“Last Sunday I was to take an excursion with a gentleman whom I met in
an unconventional way. I am not at all prudish and do not mind being
spoken to on the street. As I walk downtown often I think to myself:
will someone talk to me this time? I try to attract attention, just a
little, and return home disappointed if no one notices me. A few weeks
ago a very elegant elderly gentleman addressed me on such an occasion.
He is a very intellectual man, which is the chief consideration with
me. I like intercourse only with intellectual persons. Persons lacking
culture are a trial to me. We entertained ourselves very pleasantly and
since then we meet daily. When the store where I am employed closes at
the end of the day, I find him already waiting for me at the street
corner. Then we go for a walk and we talk about all sorts of things.
He has never dared yet mention anything erotic in our conversation.
I have no reason, therefore, to fear him. Nevertheless I am watching
and waiting eagerly for the opportunity to show him that I am a modern
girl, unafraid of anything when she finds a man sympathetic and to
her liking, if he should ever begin. I do not expect anything more.
One cannot fall in love all of a sudden! Now, we promise ourselves an
excursion around Vienna for Sunday. Saturday I feel very excited, and
I picture to myself how he is going to bring up sexual matters, how he
will kiss me in the woods, I already plan what I shall say to him, how
I will resist him, just a little, and finally give in. You will excuse
me. It is high time that I quit being an old maid. Is that not a pity,
at twenty-nine? At the office where I am employed all the girls have a
sweetheart and some have several at once. That keeps going through my
mind. I am very excited and I even whistle a tune. But at the evening
meal I am unable to swallow a morsel of foods. My stomach seems shut
tight. Nothing will go down. I hope it will be over in the morning. I
get up early, put on my excursion suit and want to have my breakfast. I
struggle with nausea, try to eat some breakfast, only to vomit promptly
every particle of the food. Then the terrible nausea continues and
keeps up so that I must stay home while the gentleman waits in vain for
me at the appointed spot. Naturally when this happens a second time he
drops me ... unfortunately it ends just that way every time.”
She relates numberless occurrences of this character which always end
in uncontrollable nausea and vomiting. She has a long list of admirers,
young and old, rich and poor, educated and some less so, every one
thinking he can conquer her as she is very free and open in her talk
and does not avoid sexual topics in her conversations with them. She
is a member of various women’s organizations, like _Mutterschutz_,
which is devoted to the protection of the unmarried mother, she is a
champion for women’s sexual freedom and also a Shannaist. But every
one of the men she dangles on her string who tries to pass from theory
to cold fact discovers, much to his astonishment, that there is quite
a difference between this woman’s views and her practical conduct.
She circumvents all occasions which might prove embarrassing to her.
An office colleague invites her to his home. He is an art collector,
she is interested in painting, and he would like to show her his
collection. She finds all sorts of excuses to postpone accepting his
invitation and finally appears at his house ... accompanied by a girl
friend.... She had dwelt so much on all the possible consequences of a
visit of this kind that at the last moment she lost her courage.
It is interesting that her mental state developed first after an
engagement. Until the age of 23 she was fairly normal, very much like
any other girl. At that age she made the acquaintance of a man of good
standing in whom she became much interested. She became engaged to him
and this made her happy for she was in love as much as any girl could
be who thought she had found her ideal.
The man had but one serious fault. He was tremendously jealous. He
tortured her with questions about her whole past life and she had to
relate to him with particularity everything that she had experienced
as a girl. She frankly told him that once she was in love with her
piano teacher and also with her school teacher, a girl, but that there
was nothing else of any significance in her life. Nevertheless he
kept torturing her with further questionings insisting that she must
tell everything before marriage and he will forgive her absolutely
everything, but he did not want to be deceived, he wanted perfect
candor and truth between them.
One night she woke from a dream in which her brother and she had
figured in a rather intimate role. This brought to her mind an
occurrence she had entirely forgotten. She was visiting her married
brother in the country. His wife had gone to some relatives and he
suggested that she should sleep in his wife’s bed. She did so without
having any particular erotic notions, since this was her brother with
whom she had always been frank, not as she was with her other brothers,
for she had four others. During the night she felt her brother’s hand
touching her. He crawled in to her bed and kissed her. She was sleepy
and thought she was dreaming. He kissed her again and sleepy as she
was, she responded. They embraced warmly. She knows that she took hold
of his _membrum_. She thinks her brother must have exercised wonderful
control over himself after that and that he crawled back in his own
bed. The whole experience of that night is rather unclear. That much
she is certain, no coitus took place.
This remembrance awed her for she knew then that she had lied to her
man. It happened only once for next day she left the place and her own
brother advised her to do it. She went to visit a friend of hers in
the neighborhood and returned only after her sister-in-law was back
home. But since her young man had such complete faith in her, she felt
that she must tell him the whole truth. She told him of the occurrence
relating how it took place as in a dream. He began to investigate and
to question until it drove her to distraction and there were times when
she herself wavered in her recollection as to what really occurred.
But she could only repeat the one thing: she knew positively that
they kissed and touched each other that night, but could not say that
between her brother and herself matters had gone beyond that.
Her bridegroom stayed away a few days. Then she received from him a
note stating that he does not feel that he can take her to the altar
after her confession and he considers himself therefore a free man. He
sent her back the engagement ring and demanded the return of all his
gifts and letters.
This was like a physical blow to her. That was the thanks she received
for her complete candor! She had taken at his word the man whom she
dearly loved. How could she help thinking that he merely sought an
excuse in her eyes, and in his own, a pretext to declare himself free?
For a time after that she hated all men. She made no exception,
including in her hatred even that brother who was responsible for her
misfortune, in the first place.
Then she arrived at a second deduction: “it is not worth while to be
honorable! Better be easy going, like all your women friends!”
Shortly after that she apparently ceased hating all men and her great
yearning began causing her to think continually of nothing but men. At
the same time there began also her uncontrollable vomiting.
It seemed that her tremendous inclination to love was struggling with
an equally powerful antagonism. During that difficult period her only
consolation was a woman friend and her sister to whom she felt herself
very closely attached.
But her dreams show that back of her running after men there was
something else: the homosexual instinct which was struggling powerfully
to come to surface and which she tried to hold back by her love
affairs with men. She showed a number of unmistakable signs. She
dressed simply and rather mannishly; she cut her hair short, and
began smoking cigarettes; her appearance and gait assumed more and
more a mannish form; she lost her mildness and soft nature becoming
hardened and strong. Her whole nature expressed one supreme wish: _I
want to be a man, he has a better life!_ And, strange enough! Now
she does attract men and they dangle after her by the dozen. But she
only played and when it came to a serious issue in the course of any
of her adventures,—for some of the men had earnest intentions,—she
deliberately turned the whole thing into a huge joke.
She was no longer lured by men alone. She was on the point of becoming
overtly homosexual passing through the last phase of the struggle. The
nausea stood more and more clearly as a protection and defence against
the homosexual inclination. Her dreams were filled with homosexual
episodes. She herself was astonished when she began to observe her
dreams. The very first dream she related concerned her sister and her
friend:
_I am with my friend on the_ Gaensehäufel _(a popular promenade on the
Danube embankment in Vienna) and we are naked; I say: How beautiful
you are! You are more beautiful than any man. She embraces me and
kisses me on the breast, on the spot where I am so sensitive. I wake
up with dread,—palpitation of the heart and nausea._
Other dreams represent endless variants of this theme. Men figure in
them but seldom. Occasionally she is pursued by them and flees to her
sister or her friend. Thus her conflict is also shown in her dreams as
a flight away from men, an escape through homosexuality.
This young woman also imagined herself to be a radical although
inwardly she was pious. Sundays she visited the church, to hear the
music, she was not a believer, but occasionally she prayed, because
it was an old habit, she was fond of reading the Bible and she had to
suppress a small inner voice which impelled her to go to confession.
One day she said to me: “Do you know, yesterday it occurred to me that
if I were again a believer and could go to confession, everything would
be all right....”
Here we see a young woman who was at first on the proper path to become
a normal, heterosexual woman. She experiences a serious trauma and
begins to despise all men. She turns away from them. This aversion
is favored by the fact that all men remind her of the love for her
brother, which was repressed and forgotten but which flared up again
on the occasion of her unfortunate experience. That was the reason
why she was able to entertain herself best with elderly gentlemen and
go on excursions with them, etc., without being overcome with nausea.
The danger was not so great and these men were less typical of her
brother.... She turns away from men and her sexuality flows into
another channel. We have therefore a regression back to a childhood
phase, apparently past and gone, in _Freud’s_ sense. She also becomes
more agreeable at home, where during the past years she had been
accustomed to pay no attention to her mother. She again becomes fixed
upon her family and turns once more to her childhood piety. The period
of her nausea represents the last stage in her struggle against
homosexuality.
* * * * *
As we glance over the three cases just analyzed we are impressed in the
first place by the powerful rôle of the inner religiosity, which often
passes unrecognized. Both men stood upon that emotional level which
leads to polygamy as a defence against homosexuality. But they were
unable to overcome their religious scruples. Too weak openly to embrace
asceticism, they wandered through complicated neurotic by-paths in the
attempt to circumvent all the dangers that threatened them. One of them
played very cleverly the rôle of ‘_Pechvogel_,’—a man who would gladly
be a libertine but who was not lucky enough to succeed,—the other was
prevented by his stomach trouble from abandoning the path of virtue.
The counterpart is the “modern girl” who dreams about free love and
mother-rights and at the same time generates a nervous nausea as a
defence against any danger to her virtue. Here again we must admire
the subtlety of the neurotic who finds such clever means to assume a
certain rôle in the eyes of the world no less than before himself,
in order to cover up his true nature. All men who really lack inner
freedom are overanxious to act as if they were free. They apparently
adopt some modern liberal principle while as a matter of fact secretly
they adhere to the religious scruples of their ancestors.
As a great sin and “unnatural” act, it is plain that homosexuality
was out of question in these cases. Religion acts here as protection
and outlet at the same time. But it is also clear that under an other
educational régime these men would have found open to them two
paths neither of which they were able to choose under the existing
inhibitions.
The woman may become overtly homosexual and some late episodes indicate
that her resistance to the homosexual longings may yet be overcome. In
this case the traumatic incident which turned her against all men did
not occur during early childhood. It is a great error to assume that
traumas of late occurrence lose their pathogenic rôle.
There are periods in our life when we are impervious to traumas.
But there are also times during which we are hypersensitive to
any influences which play upon us. Every decennium of our life
has its crises and morbid periods during which we show a peculiar
sensitiveness.
V
Resistance of Homosexuals against Cure and their Pride in their
Condition—Acquired vs. Inherited—Insanity and Alcoholism betray the
Inner Man—Three Cases by Colla illustrating Behavior during Alcoholic
Intoxication—Observations of Numa Praetorius—The case of Hugo
Deutsch—Views of Juliusburger—Two Personal Observations—A case by
Moll—Views of Fleischmann and Naecke—A Personal Observation—Bloch
on Woman Haters.
_Die Kranken sind die grösste Gefahr für die Gesunden; nicht von
den Stärksten kommt das Unheil für die Starken, sondern von den
Schwächsten._
_Nietzsche._
V
_The sick are the greatest danger to the healthy; the mischief done to
the strong comes not from the stronger, but from the weakest._
_Nietzsche._
Experience in the course of psychoanalysis has shown us that the
recollections as told by the subjects are partial and incomplete.
The repressed memories and all those images which the subjects are
unwilling at first to see come to surface only after weeks of analysis.
Then the subjects are astonished to discover that they did not really
know themselves. The solution of our problem appears to depend on the
successful analysis of a large number of homosexuals. Meanwhile there
are a number of striking facts which every psychoanalyst can verify
and which those who uphold the theory that homosexuality is inborn
look upon as proof of their contention that homosexuality is truly
hereditary: most homosexuals are apparently well satisfied with their
condition and do not particularly care to be cured of it. They call on
the analyst only after they come into conflict with the law or if they
fear such a conflict. They do not want to have heterosexual feelings,
they are proud of their condition and they always insist that social
ostracism alone is what makes their status an unhappy one. They belong
to those remarkable persons who refuse to appreciate their plight.
Hence the customary statement: since I began homosexual relations I am
happy. I desire nothing else! Only a small number retain any desire for
“wife and child” and for normal relations, but even those fear it as
much as the “manly hero,” proud of his homosexuality.
We must not forget that exclusive homosexuality is the end result of a
long and tortuous psychic process, a sort of self-healing process in
the midst of a quasi-insoluble conflict. The dangerous heterosexual
path is apparently blocked altogether, because certain inhibitions
stand actively in the way. The removal of the inhibitions renews the
acute character of the conflict,—it means changing a state of truce
for a state of active warfare. The homosexual finds in his condition
a makeshift for peace and quiet. It is a poor peace, to be sure, for
the heterosexual inclinations are still powerful enough to generate
neurotic symptoms. But it is a safety outlet and anxiety prevents
its abandon. Just as the woman seized with fear of open spaces
(agoraphobia) finally refuses to leave the house and thus avoids her
anxiety only to experience the attacks of anxiety again the moment she
endeavors to step out of the circumscribed area of peace,—the moment
she endeavors to go beyond the sphere within which her inner voice
keeps quiet,—so the homosexual feels once more the full strength of
his revulsion whenever he attempts heterosexual activity. His customary
attitude towards woman is one of dislike or disgust, she may leave
him indifferent, but never will he admit that—he is afraid of woman.
He would rather assume the mask of indifference; he may be willing
to approach woman but only upon intellectual grounds, he may even
appreciate her as a friend, but he flees from her as a possible lover.
The homosexual resembles the fetichist in this regard: he has found his
compromise, he has become accustomed to his limitation and willingly
puts up with his limitation as being something organic, final,
inherited. That is why we usually hear that the homosexual felt his
peculiarity already in his childhood, that he was from the first unlike
the other children, that he was always “different.”
_The pride over his condition, the continually repeated and stressed
notion that he is exceptional, the attitude of contrariness towards
what is normal, all these things render difficult a subsequent
correction of the trouble._[26]
How may the homosexual be cured? If he is made heterosexual he
represses his homosexuality and becomes neurotic for that reason; the
endeavor to turn him bisexual meets the course of social development.
The proper therapic course would be to remove the inhibitions which
stand between him and woman, to make him de facto again bisexual and
heterosexual for all practical purposes. That is certainly possible
and it may be attained through analysis provided the subjects have the
patience and perseverance to carry it out. Where the will is lacking no
therapist can accomplish anything. Unfortunately in most instances the
will is absent.
Analysis has taught us how misleading the first accounts are as
obtained from the subjects, how much they recollect their past in a
spirit of partizanship. Every person carries out a one-sided choice of
remembrances recalling merely what suits a particular occasion. This
came to me as a great surprise when I first undertook the analysis
of a homosexual especially as at the time my experience was limited
and my knowledge of the technique and my understanding of resistance
very imperfect. At the time I still believed that the patient wills
to get well; I am convinced today that the will to be ill is the
strongest force which we must fight against. That first homosexual
gave me the usual history,—the development from early childhood of
feelings exclusively homosexual. My surprise was great when the subject
recalled a large number of heterosexual experiences in the course of
the following three weeks, all dating from his childhood. I learned
then in one lesson that homosexuality is _developmental_ and not
something _inborn_; _an acquired, not an inherited character_. I was
much impressed with _Hirschfeld’s_ theory of the intermediary stage
(_Zwischenstufentheorie_) but placed no credence in this theory and
awaited further proofs. At the First Psychoanalytic Congress, _Sadger_
reported similar experiences based on psychoanalysis. To be sure,
_Sadger_ conceived the psychogenesis of homosexuality in rather narrow
terms and for a time, I must confess, I too looked upon the repression
of the mother Imago, which every woman is alleged to reproduce, as the
sole cause of homosexuality.[27]
But my diligent researches extending over a period of years have since
convinced me that this problem is very complicated and that there are
clearly a number of genetic factors, and that several of them must and
do cooperate in every instance to bring about the thwarting of the
heterosexual and the enlargement of the homosexual craving.