a very nervous woman. Very shy and bashful as a child in the presence
of older persons or strangers. At high school had to repeat the same
class twice, was coached and succeeded at last to pass the army
examination for officer. After a few years was dismissed from the army
because he had mishandled his man-servant, went to South-West Africa,
there settled as a farmer, and as a volunteer participated in several
small riots.
His first sexual feelings arose around the 12th year; he contends
that till that time he knew absolutely nothing about sexual matters.
At that age an experience brought his attention to the subject of sex
for the first time; he played circus with a younger sister and with
his 10-year old uncle and sat on the latter’s back. While imitating a
rider’s movements he noticed that his penis became stiff and he had
a pleasurable sensation wetting himself in front. He did not know
the meaning of this occurrence but was too shy to tell anyone about
it. Shortly after that he tried deliberately to reproduce similar
situations; whenever he succeeded he also tried to attain ejaculation.
He insists that he was not attracted particularly to his uncle, whom
alone he had used for this form of gratification, nor to any other
boy or man, his only desire at the time was to achieve ejaculation.
Later during his high school years, when he had opportunity to gratify
himself in the same way, he met a young colleague of his own age,
a strong and beautiful boy, who appealed to him very strongly and
with that boy playing the passive role he indulged more and more
frequently in sexual deeds. In fact as soon as he met that particular
boy the thought occurred to him that he would like to have him for
the gratification of his sexual feelings in the manner peculiar to
himself. During play he used all manner of excuses to climb upon his
friend’s back and to imitate a rider’s galloping movements until
he had ejaculation. Subsequently he found frequent occasion to use
other colleagues in the same way. After drinking it was particularly
difficult for him to restrain himself; that is why he frequently had
to do with soldiers while intoxicated and one day he was caught and
this led to his dismissal from the army. In order to get rid of his
unnatural inclination he took up a girl, had normal intercourse with
her a few times but without any pleasurable feeling on his part,
although in order to accomplish this he had to suppose himself riding
a man in the manner customary with him, and eventually he acquired a
gonorrheal infection. Then he migrated to South-West Africa, but even
there was unable to master his inclination, felt himself impelled to
maintain relations with young Hottentots, was caught at it, sentenced
to jail, and finally banished from the Country.
In this case the gonorrheal infection seems to have put an end to his
heterosexual period.
* * * * *
I recall a number of other cases in which homosexuality broke out after
gonorrhea, according to the testimony obtained during my consultation
hours. In fact, there was a time when I was a firm believer in the
theory of inherited homosexuality, in _Hirschfeld’s_ sense, so
that I turned down all these cases and did not care to undertake
a psychoanalysis of them. In the homosexual circles I had quite a
reputation at the time as a man worthy of their confidence. But since
I have found that homosexuals are really bisexual neurotics who have
repressed their heterosexuality, these men come to me more rarely
and consult me chiefly when they get into conflict with the law. The
solidarity of homosexuals and their will to hold on to the notion that
their condition is inborn goes hand in hand. Their secret organisation
is thorough, and even where formal organisations are lacking,
homosexuals know each other and they are always ready to introduce to
one another their friends and colleagues.
* * * * *
Dr. S. K., physician, 32 years of age, relates that he has a pronounced
heterosexual past. At any rate his longing previously was purely
physical and psychically he was completely indifferent. As ship surgeon
he acquired a severe gonorrhea in a port and this trouble lasted some
six months. He suffered all possible complications: epididymitis, a
posterior prostatitis and finally, a gonorrheal rheumatism of the
joints. Since that trouble he has felt a terrific disgust for women. In
Alexandria while entering a cabin he saw one of the ship lieutenants
committing pederasty with a local boy. He knew that at the various
ports young boys visited the ships and offered themselves to the
homosexual officers. The scene evoked in him a terrific nausea and
he wanted to drop that officer from among his acquaintances. But
the latter spoke up frankly confessing that he became homosexual
after being seduced and since then he was completely impotent in the
company of a woman. He begged the physician to keep his secret and
not to betray him. He was the only intellectual man on board that
ship with whom it was pleasant to have relations. In a few weeks the
two men became intimate with each other: “Then, for the first time, I
learned what love was and I had never before been as happy as that. My
heterosexual past now seemed unbelievable. But in _Platen’s_ diary I
came across a passage telling that as a young man he too had been in
love with a girl named Euphrasia and that he learned only later the
true direction of his sexual instinct. It was the same with me. I was
born a homosexual although I had to go through some experiences before
my eyes opened.”
In this case the gonorrheal infection and the trivial incident
during the journey through the Orient furnished the occasion for the
outbreak of homosexuality. But is not the subject in error regarding
the strength of his homosexual predisposition? It is interesting to
note that his homosexual attitude is promptly beatified and idealized
through the addition of psychic factors. Indeed, the homosexuals
display a greater love intoxication than the heterosexuals. Such a
degree of love frenzy as is displayed by the homosexuals is hardly
ever seen among the heterosexuals. Homosexuality represents a harbor
of refuge, an attempt to lose one’s self exclusively in one direction,
which must be conceived as an attempt on the part of the psyche to
neutralize all other tendencies by the overemphasis of that supreme
passion.
We find frequently that the homosexuals contend that their previous
heterosexual leanings were exclusively physical.[42] Psychically their
love relations must be exclusively homosexual. In fact it is common
to find men sublimating into friendship their craving for psychic
love while woman remains with them merely an instrument for sin
(_instrumentum diaboli_).
* * * * *
A certain homosexual whose history is of particular interest because he
recalls clearly his heterosexual period told _Bloch_:
“At what age my sexual feelings first arose I am unable to recall. My
sexual desires are directed towards the male. _Before and during my
puberty the actual direction of my desire was not clear, in fact I
believe I did entertain at the time a wish to have once intercourse
with a girl._ But it was not love, what I felt was merely a physical
longing,—the psychic counterpart of the instinct was entirely absent
at the time. Now I feel myself inclined exclusively towards young boys.
I have had no intercourse thus far either with males or females, but I
believe I would be able to carry out the sexual act in a normal way;
I know, however, that it would not be pleasurable to me, it would not
amount to more than masturbation so far as I am concerned. Towards the
female sex I am completely indifferent, I feel neither disgust nor any
dislike. My love dreams are always concerned with persons of my own
sex.” (_Bloch_, l.c., p. 566.)
* * * * *
Homosexuality often develops also in women following an infection:
Miss Erna, 42 years of age, writer, shows preeminent male features,
behaves peculiarly like a male, smokes, drinks, is a preeminent
champion of women’s rights. She claims to be innately homosexual, even
as a child she assumed a male role, and was wilder than her brothers.
She always passed for an uncontrollable tomboy. Had no intimation
about her homosexual condition. Masturbated very early and already
at the age of 15 she maintained clandestine relations with an army
officer who had seduced her. But she claims that her experience was
exclusively physical. She has experienced orgasm with men. At 19
years of age another army officer gave her a venereal disease. _Since
that time she feels a tremendous dislike for all men._ At 22 years of
age she conceived a romantic love for a woman friend. They kept up
a relationship during which she maintained the male role. She even
procured for herself an artificial phallus and wore male clothes in the
house. It was like a genuine marriage. “I know only since then what
love really means. Formerly I only felt a liking for men. It was merely
a physical attraction. But for the past 20 years my love has been
exclusively for women.” After the first “homosexual marriage,” which
lasted only three years because her friend deserted her and married,
she had numerous relations with other women.
* * * * *
Very convincing are the cases in which the homosexual outbreak occurs
first after some powerful trauma! It is not always gonorrhea. Often
various other experiences furnish the inciting moment as I can easily
prove on the basis of my own observations. But first I must quote a
case reported by _Krafft-Ebing_ which is illuminating on this score:
Miss X., 22 years of age, is considered a beauty, men flock around her
whenever she appears in society; she is decidedly of a sensuous nature,
seems born to be an _Aspasia_, but rejects all advances. One of her
admirers, however, a young scientist, she looks upon with some favor,
becomes intimate with him, allows herself to be kissed by him, _but not
like a loving woman_; and when the young man believes himself close
to the consummation of his supreme desire she begs him with tears in
her eyes to desist because she is utterly unable to yield to him, not
on account of moral grounds so much as for deeper psychic reasons. In
the course of the exchange of written confidences which followed that
unsuccessful meeting between the two the homosexual character of her
inclination was clearly revealed to her.
Miss X. had a father who was addicted to drink and a hysteropathic
mother. She herself is of a neuropathic constitution; has full breasts,
and generally the outward appearance of an unusually attractive woman
but reveals boyish ways about her and various male peculiarities,—she
fences, rides horseback, smokes and has a decidedly mannish way of
standing and walking. Lately her romantic attachment to young women has
become quite noticeable. She has a young woman with her sharing her
apartment.
Miss X. claims that up to the time of puberty she was sexually
indifferent. At 17 years of age she became acquainted at a summer
resort with a young foreigner whose “majestic” figure made a tremendous
impression upon her. The privilege of dancing a whole evening with
him made her happy. _The following evening, at twilight, she witnessed
a horrible scene—from her window she saw that wonderful man in the
bushes futuare more bestiarum mulierem quandam inter menstruationem._
_Adspectu sanguinis currentis et libidinis quasi bestialis viri Miss
X. felt shocked, she seemed powerless and crushed, could hardly
recover her psychic equilibrium and for some time after that could
neither sleep nor eat; from that time on man stood in her mind for the
quintessence of bestiality._
Two years later a young woman approached her in a public garden, smiled
and glanced at her with a very peculiar look which penetrated deeply
into her soul. The following day Miss X. felt impelled to visit again
that public garden. The woman was there, in fact, she seemed to have
been expecting her. They greeted one another like old acquaintances;
they talked and joked pleasantly and thereafter met by appointment
daily, first in the garden, and later, when the weather became
unpleasant, in the woman’s living apartment. “One day,” Miss X. relates
confidentially “the woman led me up to her divan and allowed me to
glide to the floor while she seated herself. She lifted her shy eyes
at me, stroked the hair off my forehead softly with her hand, saying:
‘Oh, if I could once love you the real way, may I?’ I consented, and
as we sat close by gazing into each other’s eyes, before we knew it
we passed to that love from which there is no drawing back.... She
was bewitchingly beautiful. For me the whole experience was something
new and intoxicating.... I do not believe that man is ever able to
feel such delicate, bewitching, exquisite intoxication.... Man is
not sufficiently sensitive, he is not delicate enough for that....
Our foolish abandon lasted until I fell back exhausted, helpless,
intoxicated. In this exhausted state I was lying on her bed when
suddenly an exquisite feeling thrilled through me and awoke me from
my half dreamy state, something unspeakably sweet and unlike anything
I had ever experienced before; I found J. on top of me, _cunnilingus
perficiens_—that was her highest pleasure, _tandem mihi non licebat
altrum quam osculos dare ad mammas_—and with every motion she shook
convulsively.”
Miss X. acknowledged further that during her homosexual relations she
always assumed the male attitude towards her womanly companion and that
once, _faute de mieux_, she allowed one of her male admirers to perform
_cunnilingus_ on her. (_Krafft-Ebing_, l.c., Obs. 165.)
Let us consider closely the case of an exalted nature like that girl.
She goes through her first graceful love fever, she is about to become
a true woman, she thinks “him” a princely man, a “majestic” personality
when unexpectedly she undergoes the experience of witnessing that very
God-like man behave like a common beast.... Jealousy and a revulsion
of feeling unite in her at the terrible sight rousing such a tremendous
affect that forever after she feels an unspeakable horror of all men.
Many women must have become _urlinds_ as a result of just such
experiences. One must also take into account that among many women
homosexual love shows itself merely in kisses and embraces and that
it seems to them something nobler and much more esthetic than the
manifestations of heterosexual love. Fear of the phallus is something
that may be roused by a relatively slight infantile occurrence. In her
homosexual indulgences Miss X. is not particularly esthetic by any
means, nevertheless even she remarks: “man is not delicate enough!”
This highly interesting case illustrates the development of
homosexuality following a trauma which must have had a tremendous
effect upon so sensitive and romantic a nature as this young woman
and which could not but strengthen the existing predisposition to
homosexuality. But in spite of all she is still bisexual and I do not
think it impossible that she should yet overcome her tremendous horror
of man. We must consider that the father was a drinker and that she had
probably witnessed in the parental home scenes like the one she has
described. What a pity that the case has not been analyzed. _Traumatic
incidents during later life are particularly powerful in their effect
if they resemble and therefore re-echo infantile memories of similar
childhood experiences._ It may even be possible that the woman did
not actually witness the scene at the time she states but that she
experienced merely a hallucination, repeating in her mind a scene which
she may have witnessed only during her childhood.
* * * * *
A remarkable parallel is furnished by the next case which I record from
among my own observations:
Miss K. S. is 32 years of age and calls to consult me about her various
compulsions. She confesses that she is an _urlind_ and that she had
never felt herself attracted to men. Her father, a heavy drinker, died
three years ago; her mother lives quietly and is not neurotic.
Our subject has had a number of chances to get married but she
withdraws coyly from every man the moment one comes close to her.
She feels a certain inclination towards older married men and she
understands in consequence how a woman might become interested in a
friend’s husband. “When I did find a man whom I liked, I was unlucky,”
she declares, “for I discovered that he was already engaged to a
friend of mine.” Truly she fell in love only with girls and women. Her
first romantic attachment was to a woman school teacher, whom she also
visited at her home. That teacher wanted this wealthy girl to marry
her brother and brought the two into contact as often as possible.
She liked the brother because he looked so very much like her beloved
friend. But if the sister was not in the room their conversation lagged
and she could talk only in monosyllables. She sent flowers and costly
gifts to her teacher. Her supreme desire was to sleep once in the same
bed with that teacher and she often dreamed of it. She even proposed
to take her on a journey. The teacher could not go and hesitated also
because she found her pupil’s attentions too oppressive. The teacher
actually suffered on account of her admirer’s deep jealousy, for the
girl turned ill if she so much as found other girls visiting her. At
any rate, quite a circle of girls in the class admired the teacher.
Later she fell in love with a girl friend whom she embraced and kissed
warmly numberless times because it gave her a wonderful warm feeling to
do so. On the other hand the kisses of an uncle made no impression on
her whatever. No man interested her in the least. For a long time she
did not know that she was homosexual, but she was well aware since her
childhood that she was unlike other children. She was always as wild
as a boy and her mother frequently said to her: “there are ten rough
boys in you!” She climbed trees, ran around wildly and always preferred
to play with boys, did not care for dolls, coaxed to be given a saddle
horse and a gun until her father was driven to despair over her and
exclaimed sometimes: “you are really a spoiled boy!”
During the analysis she recalled a number of homosexual and
heterosexual experiences. Already at 12 years of age she had an
experience with an uncle who came to her in bed and played with her.
She could not recall whether they indulged in coitus that time. With
girl friends she also had various adventures. She confesses in fact
that she has been in the habit of masturbating since her 12th year,
when she was taught by a girl, and that at one time she often indulged
in the phantasy that a man was having coitus with her. In fact, as late
as her 16th year she fell “heels-over-head” in love with a friend of
her father’s. He was much younger than her father but belonged to the
same circle.
While she talks at first only in favorable terms about her father
(his drinking habit was not so very excessive) and dwells mostly on
his lovely qualities, his mild character, his imposing appearance,
etc., at the same time she begins to show underneath a growing hatred.
The father had in fact left her in critical circumstances. Every one
considered them millionaires, because her father had kept up a very
big house. After his death it turned out that he had been spending his
capital and that there had been left practically only her share which
was, however, large enough to permit her and her mother to live in
comfort. Her mother had always endured the life of a martyr. The father
had maintained relations with the cook in the house during the last
ten years. She was a fat, shapeless vulgar person. In fact, mother and
daughter were just tolerated in their home. Once her mother endeavored
to dismiss the cook and the father was mad and grew almost violent
showing her mother the door threatening that she might leave and take
along her daughter if she did not like it in the house. After that
the cook was naturally more arrogant and unbearable than ever so that
the poor mother passed her days weeping until finally she reconciled
herself to that state of things. It was possible to throw that cook out
of the house only after her father was lying ill in bed. That daring
woman started a law suit claiming that the father had promised to
settle on her a home and an income.... She lost that suit because the
father testified upon his death-bed that the woman’s contentions were
false. The subject relates a number of other relevant incidents but
does not recall having ever witnessed any intimacies between her father
and the cook.
However, her dreams seem to point in that sense. Thus, for instance,
among others she had the following dream:
* * * * *
_I go carefully into the kitchen and do not find the cook there. Then I
tiptoe slowly up the back stairs to the garret and through the key hole
I see the cook lying in bed with the driver._
She recalls that that particular driver was in their service when the
cook was a younger woman and that her father had dismissed him. He
watched for her father once, as he was coming out of a restaurant to
waylay him. But her father was stronger and threw the servant to the
ground with such force that the fellow fractured a bone. But she thinks
that the neighborhood did not know the true reason for the battle,
every one naturally thinking that the servant planned the attack out of
revenge.
Finally she confessed to me that there was one experience of which she
had not thought before for a long time which she must tell me about.
She wanted to tell me about it for some time but an inexplicable
shyness prevented her. She was 16 years of age when she once heard
her father leaving his study room to steal upstairs to the garret.
It was the maid’s day out and her mother was lying down not feeling
well. She took her shoes off and followed him quietly up the stairs.
The door to the servants’ room stood open. The father was somewhat
under the influence of drink and so was also the cook, who always
managed to secure some liquor for herself on the sly. A candle was
burning in the room and the stairway was dark. She could see plainly
everything that was going on. She now saw _pater membrum suum in os
ancillæ immisit_. The sight of his reddish face now distorted under
the influence of passion was so repulsive to her and struck her so
powerfully that she could never forget it in her life. Even to this
day when she thinks of it she feels nauseated. (While she is telling
the incident she is struggling against the impulse to vomit.) After
that episode she developed a nervous complaint of the stomach, chiefly
a nervous vomiting. Even during the year just passed there were times
when she could not swallow a morsel of meat and she had attacks of
uncontrollable vomiting.
It was after that occurrence that she fell in love with her teacher.
That episode was what had determined the course of her sexual
development and what drove her to homosexuality because it made her
look at all men in the light in which she had seen her father. Her
inclination towards elderly married men (always platonic) is also
traceable to her father _Imago_. She was aiming to find a nobler and
more delicate father.
Whenever a man tried to get closer to her it reminded her of the
painful incident she had witnessed, which summed up in her mind all the
misery in her home, the whole outrageous situation, the humiliation of
her mother, and her father’s morbid passion. For her father who did
have some splendid qualities and who enjoyed an enviable position in
society she once had as great a love and as deep a respect as for her
noble mother. Then she had to go through the disastrous situation in
the house. That experience could but serve her as a warning against
men, a warning and a lesson! It could not but implant deeply in
her soul a lasting dread of man and of man’s terrible passion. She
naturally shrank back from any close contact with man for there was
always a picture before her mind which plainly carried the message: “do
not trust any man lest you should go through what your mother did!”