INSANE JEALOUSY
One form of jealousy which has absolutely nothing to do with love in
the normal sense of the word, and one which not infrequently leads to
acts of violence, to the "love tragedies" of newspaper headlines, is
simply one of the first symptoms of paranoia.
=In Delusional Jealousy=, the patient suffering repressed homosexual
cravings, projects his own desires into the personality of his life
mate. An unconsciously homosexual husband, attracted sexually by every
man in his environment, assumes that his wife is also subject to the
same attraction and suspects her of having sexual relations with every
man who arouses him. An unconsciously homosexual wife imagines that
her husband has a liaison with every woman who appeals to her perverse
fancies.
The paranoiac being at times very clever and convincing, that form
of jealousy, insane as it may appear to the man or the woman who is
the victim of it, may deceive the outsiders. In certain cases, the
delusional character of it is obvious to everybody, including the
jealous person.
A paranoiac told me that every night he "saw" a man entering his wife's
bedroom thru a window protected by solid iron bars so close to one
another that a cat could have squeezed thru them only with difficulty.
This was, of course, a case of hallucination, pure and simple.
=Homosexualism.= Other cases are more complicated. Dr. S.
Ferenczi, of Budapest, reports two of them which illustrate well the
mechanism of insane jealousy due to unconscious homosexualism.
He had a housekeeper whose husband, a man of thirty-eight, also busied
himself about the house in his spare time. He was constantly cleaning
Ferenczi's rooms, putting fresh polish on the doors and floors,
pottering around, evidently anxious to show his good will and his
devotion to his wife's employer.
This man was very intemperate and beat his wife on several occasions.
Altho she was most unattractive, he constantly accused her of
infidelity with Ferenczi and every male patient treated by him.
When the woman revealed those facts to Ferenczi, he gave the couple
notice but decided to have a serious talk with her husband.
The man denied having beaten his wife, altho this had been confirmed by
witnesses. He maintained that his wife was a real vampire, whose lust
was sapping his life strength. During this explanation, he impulsively
took Ferenczi's hand and kissed it, saying that he had never met anyone
dearer or kinder than the doctor.
A talk with the woman revealed to Ferenczi that the man had always been
very distant in his attitude to his wife. He would often push her away
brutally, calling her all sorts of opprobrious names.
When he learnt that Ferenczi had given her notice, the insane man
abused and hit his wife, and threatened to throw her out on the street
and to stab "her darling." Ferenczi at first paid no attention to those
threats for the man remained very devoted, respectful and well behaved.
When he learnt, however, that the man was sleeping with a sharp kitchen
knife under his pillow and when he woke up one night to find him
standing in his bedroom, he notified the authorities and the maniac was
committed to an insane asylum.
"There is no doubt," Ferenczi writes, "that this was a case of
alcoholic delusion of jealousy. The conspicuous feature of his
homosexual attachment to me, however, allows the interpretation that
the jealousy he felt of every man, was only the projection of his own
desires for the male sex. Also, his lack of desire for his wife was not
simply impotence but was determined by his unconscious homosexuality.
"To him alcohol played the part of an inhibition-poison and brought to
the surface his crude homosexual erotism, which, as it was intolerable
to his consciousness, he imputed to his wife.
"It was only subsequently that I found a complete confirmation of this.
He had been married before, years ago. He lived only a short time in
peace with his first wife, began to drink soon after the wedding and
abused his wife, tormenting her with scenes of jealousy until she left
him and secured a divorce.
"In the interval between his two marriages, he was said to have been
a temperate, reliable and steady man and to have taken to drink only
after his second marriage. Alcoholism was not the deeper cause of his
paranoia; it was rather that, in the insoluble conflict between his
conscious heterosexual and his unconscious homosexual desires, he took
to alcohol, which brought the homosexual erotism to the surface, his
consciousness getting rid of it by way of projection, of delusions of
jealousy. He saddled his wife with his desires and by jealous scenes
assured himself that he was in love with her."
=A Jealous Wife.= The other case is that of a woman, still young, who
after living in harmony with her husband for a number of years and
bearing him daughters, began to suffer from violent fits of jealousy
soon after the birth of another child, a boy. Alcoholism played no part
in this case.
She suspected every move her husband made. She dismissed maid after
maid and finally had only male servants in the house. Curiously enough,
her jealousy was directed against very young and very old, even very
ugly women, while she was not jealous of her society friends or of the
pretty women whom she and her husband occasionally met. Her conduct
at home became so unbearable and her threats so dangerous that she
was taken to a sanatorium upon Freud's advice. After which Ferenczi
proceeded to analyse her.
She harbored many delusions of greatness and ideas of reference. She
thought she found in the local paper veiled allusions to her depravity
and to her ridiculous position as a betrayed wife. The highest
personalities in the land were banded against her, etc.
She had married her husband against her wishes and when she bore the
first daughter and he manifested his disappointment, she began to feel
that she had indeed married the wrong man. She then made the first
scene of jealousy in connection with a little girl of thirteen who came
to help the servant girls. While still in bed after her confinement,
she made the little girl kneel and swear by her father's life that she
was still pure. This oath calmed her at the time.
After the birth of her son, she felt she had fulfilled her duty to her
husband and was free. She flirted with every man but would not tolerate
the slightest liberty from them. At the same time, she made her husband
violent scenes of jealousy and tried to incapacitate him, thru her
constant passionate advances, for relations with any other women. When
taken to a sanatorium, she gave evidence, thru her behavior toward the
other women inmates of strong homosexual leanings. She confessed to
Ferenczi that there had been homosexual experiences in her childhood.
She then became more and more unmanageable and the analysis had to be
abandoned.
=A Case of Projection.= This is Ferenczi's comment upon this example
of insane jealousy: "This case of delusional jealousy becomes clear
when we assume that it was a question of projection upon the husband of
her desire for her own sex. A girl who had grown up in an exclusively
feminine environment is suddenly forced into a marriage of convenience
with a man she dislikes. She reconciles herself to it, however,
and only shows indignation when her husband proves cruelly unkind
(disappointment over the birth of a girl) by letting her desire turn
toward her childhood ideal, the little girl of thirteen. The attempt
fails, she cannot endure homosexuality any longer and has to project it
upon her husband.
"Finally after the birth of her son, when her 'duty' is done, the
homosexuality she had kept in bounds takes possession in a crude erotic
way of all the objects that offer no possibility for sublimation (young
girls, old women etc.), although all this erotism, (with the exception
of cases when she can hide it under the mask of harmless flirtation),
is imputed to the husband. In order to support herself in that lie, the
patient is compelled to show increased coquetry toward the male sex,
to whom she had become very indifferent and, indeed, to demean herself
like a nymphomaniac."
I have cited both cases at length for they confirm the statement I have
made elsewhere in this book that very exaggerated feeling is usually
a mask for the opposite feeling. Ferenczi's two patients, in love
with persons of their own sex, "simulated" neurotically a passionate
attachment for their heterosexual mates, who, naturally could not
attract them.
=Masked Sadism.= Their stormy jealousy was more akin to hatred than
to love. There was no tenderness in it but a good deal of sadism, of
cruelty, and they used it in order to torture their mates on whom, in
the course of their jealous scenes, they could heap up abuse, which
they would not, under any other circumstances, dare to voice as freely.
Many a husband would like to insult a wife he detests. Neurotic
jealousy supplies him with an excuse which he might not find elsewhere.
After which, if the vocabulary he used on that occasion is especially
vile, he has a good scapegoat at his disposal. "I was crazed by
jealousy and did not realise what I was saying."