=Dr. Steinach's Experiments= show the close relationship between
homosexualism and the secretions of the interstitial cells of the
genital glands.
After castrating young rats which, after the operation, remained in
an infantile stage of development, Steinach transplanted into their
inguinal region male or female gonads.
Males into which female gonads had been implanted, developed all the
physical characteristics and all the mannerisms of the female, paid no
attention to females at mating time and, on the contrary, attracted the
rutting males and were attracted to them.
Castrated females in whose body he implanted testicles, showed the
hardier hair growth of males, tried to mate with females and remained
indifferent to males.
Prof. Brandes, director of the Zoological Garden in Darmstadt, has
repeated those experiments on deer with identical results. The female
in which testicles were implanted behaved like a male and grew antlers.
The male's mammary glands grew very fast after the implantation of
female gonads.
It is said that Steinach has successfully transformed homosexuals
into normal men but the last statement of his on the "Histology
of the Gonads in homosexual Men," (Vol. 46, No. 1, Archiv für
Entwickelungsmechanismus der Organismen) contains no mention of such
results.
=Perverse Birds.= If we now turn to experiments reported by William
Craig in the _Journal of Animal Behavior_, we see an apparently
different process at work. Young male birds kept for a year in a cage
with females and away from all males, will at mating time ignore
entirely the females, and offer themselves to males in the mating
position of the female.
The same process is observable in females brought up with males
exclusively.
Imitation in this case seems to give exactly the same results which
Steinach obtained thru castration and transplantation of gonads.
If we now leave the physiologists and consult the psychoanalysts,
Freud, Ferenczi, Stekel and Adler will show us that homosexualism can
be produced by "purely" psychic factors.
=Freud Rejects the Hypothesis of a Third Sex=: "Homosexual men who have
started in our times an energetic action against the legal limitations
of the sexual activity," Freud writes, "are fond of representing
themselves, thru theoretical spokesmen, as evincing a sexual variation,
which may be distinguished from the very beginning, as an intermediate
stage or sex, a third sex. In other words, they maintain that they are
men who are forced by organic determinants originating in the germ
to find in a man the pleasure which they cannot find in a woman. As
much as one would wish to subscribe to their demands, out of humane
considerations, one must nevertheless exercise reserve regarding
their theories which were formulated without regard for the psychic
genesis of homosexuality. Psychoanalysis offers the means to fill the
gap and to put to test the assertions of the homosexuals. It is true
that psychoanalysis has fulfilled that task in only a small number of
people, but all the investigations thus far undertaken have brought the
same surprising results.
"In all our male homosexuals, there was a very intense erotic
attachment to a feminine person, as a rule to the mother, which was
manifested in the very first period of childhood and later entirely
forgotten by the individual. This attachment was produced or favored
by too much love from the mother herself, but was also furthered by
the retirement or absence of the father during the childhood period.
Sadger emphasises the fact that the mothers of his homosexual patients
were often masculine women, or women with energetic traits of character
who were able to crowd out the father from the place allotted to him
in the family. I have sometimes observed the same thing, but I was
more impressed by those cases in which the father was absent from the
beginning or disappeared early so that the boy was altogether under
feminine influence."
"It almost seems that the presence of a strong father would assure for
the son the proper decision in the selection of his love object from
the opposite sex.
"Following this primary stage, a transformation takes place whose
mechanism we know but whose motive forces we have not yet grasped. The
love of the mother cannot continue to develop consciously so that it
merges into repression. The boy represses his love for the mother by
putting himself into her place, by identifying himself with her, and
by taking his own person as a model thru the similarity of which he is
guided in the selection of his love object. He thus becomes homosexual;
as a matter of fact, he returns to the stage of autoerotism, for the
boys whom the growing adult now loves are only substitute persons or
revivals of his own childish person, whom he loves in the same way as
his mother loved him. We say that he finds his love object on the road
to narcism, after the Greek legend of Narcissus to whom nothing was
more pleasing than his own mirrored image.
"Deeper psychological discussions justify the assertion that the person
who becomes homosexual in this manner remains fixed in his unconscious
on the memory of his mother. By repressing the love for his mother, he
conserves the same in his consciousness and henceforth remains faithful
to her. When as a lover he seems to pursue boys, he really thus runs
away from women who could cause him to be faithless to his mother."
=Active and Passive Types.= Ferenczi draws a distinction between the
active and the passive types of homosexuals, that is, between the man
who, in love acts like a woman, in a submissive way, and the man who
loves men as he would women, in an agressive way.
"A man who in his love relations with men feels himself to be a woman,"
he writes, "is inverted in respect to his own ego (homo-erotism thru
subject inversion, or, more shortly, subject-homo-erotism). He feels
himself to be a woman, and this not only in the love relationship but
in all relations of life.
"It is quite otherwise with the true active homosexual. He feels
himself a man in every respect, is as a rule very energetic and active,
and there in nothing effeminate to be discovered in his bodily or
mental organisation. The object of his inclination alone is exchanged,
so that one might call him homo-erotic thru exchange of the love
object, or more shortly, object-homo-erotic.
"A further and striking difference between the subjective and the
objective homo-erotic consists in the fact that the former (the invert)
feels himself attracted by more mature, powerful men, and is on
friendly terms, as a colleague, one might say, with women; the second
type, on the contrary, is almost exclusively interested in young,
delicate boys with an effeminate appearance, but meets a woman with
pronounced antipathy, and not rarely with hatred which is badly or
not at all concealed. The true invert is hardly ever impelled to seek
medical advice, he feels at complete ease in the passive rôle and has
no other wish than that people should put up with his peculiarity and
not interfere with the kind of satisfaction that suits him. He is not
very passionate and chiefly demands from his lover the recognition of
his bodily and other merits.
"The object-homo-erotic, on the other hand, is uncommonly tormented
by the consciousness of his own abnormality; sexual intercourse never
completely satisfies him; he is tortured by qualms of conscience and
overestimates his sexual object to the uttermost.
"The subject-homo-erotic is a member of the intermediate sex, in the
sense of Magnus Hirschfeld and his followers. The object-homo-erotic,
is the victim of an obsessional neurosis."
The distinction between active and passive homosexuals is convenient
but slightly arbitrary. Certain homosexuals are at times passive and
at times active. Both types become at times the victims of obsessions
and seek the help of psychotherapists. Active as well as passive
homosexuals may be married and heterosexually potent.
=The Homosexual Neurosis.= Dr. Wilhelm Stekel of Vienna calls
homosexualism the homosexual neurosis. He summarises the genesis of
homosexualism as follows:
"As a child the homosexual is very precocious sexually and can only
repress his cravings by developing fear, hatred and disgust at the
thought of heterosexual relations. The result of that repression is a
flight from normal into abnormal forms of sexual gratification."
=A Safety Device.= To Adler, homosexualism is a detail of the
neurotic picture, a compromise and a safety device.
"Every neurotic," he writes, "experiences at some time during his
childhood doubts as to whether he will ever attain complete virility.
Giving up the hope of being a real man, is, for a child, synonymous
with being a woman. This carries in its wake a whole cycle of childish
valuations: aggression, activity, power, freedom, wealth, sadism are
male attributes; inhibitions, cowardice, obedience, poverty are female
attributes.
"The child plays for a while a dual part, being submissive to his
parents and teachers but indulging in dreams which express his craving
for independence, freedom and importance.
"This duality in the child's psyche, the forerunner of a split in his
consciousness, can have varying results in later years. The individual
will oscillate between the male and the female poles with a constant
striving toward the unification of those two tendencies.
"The masculine component prevents a complete assumption of the
feminine rôle, the feminine component is an obstacle to complete
virility. Hence a compromise: feminine behavior thru masculine means: a
timid submissive male, masculine masochism, homosexuality. Or masculine
behavior thru feminine devices."
=Above and Below.= A series of comparisons has established itself
in the human mind, owing to the enslavement of the female by the male,
starting with the antithesis: male-female: good and bad, right and
left, HIGH, and LOW, ABOVE and BELOW.
In every female neurotic, according to Adler, there is a refusal to be
a female, that is, to be BELOW (socially as well as sexually).
The female who is inferior in looks or intelligence or position and
cannot either compensate for that inferiority by displaying superiority
in some other way (artistic or scientific accomplishment), or reconcile
herself to her inferior position, wishes consciously and unconsciously
to be a man. Consciously she makes herself as masculine as possible.
Unconsciously, she dreams herself into a male personality, physically,
mentally, socially AND sexually. Her wish to be ABOVE makes her play a
man's part in love as well as in the world's life.
=A Way Out.= Homosexualism is, like every neurotic symptom, a way
out of life's difficulties.
A male homosexual I treated associated the idea of woman with "trouble,
sickness, expense, lack of freedom." "Every" woman was to him a "leg
puller," a "gold digger," a liar, insatiable in her demands, spying on
her husband, constantly suffering from "female trouble."
This man had never been married and his only sexual experiences, which
were of the most ephemeral type, had been gained in the few hours of
his life which he spent with a woman much older than himself, a cabaret
singer and a prostitute. Yet, he was convinced that "women are too much
trouble."
An unconsciously homosexual male who is married, and quite potent and
who consulted me after a serious "breakdown," had a dream in which he
saw himself at the top of a mountain in Africa (flight from reality and
his present environment). Six large negroes (powerful male sexuality)
carried away his wife's coffin, (flight from the sexual partner). A
long line of negroes then walked past him and he felt that as long as
he would be on friendly terms with them, he would not want for anything
(line of least effort).
Female homosexuals who had never had any normal heterosexual
experience ranted along the same line of thought: "A husband is too
much trouble." "The idea of submitting to a brute of a man," "I don't
wish to be a slave to a man," etc.
All this voices what Adler terms the "masculine protest."
=The Escape from Biological Duties.= Kempf also considers homosexualism
as a compromise and a convenient escape from biological duties.
"Heterosexual potency," he writes "judging from the behavior of many
psychopaths and normals of both sexes, varies in its vigor and is never
quite secure from the possibility of disintegration in the face of
depressing influences, such as disease, a frigid, unkind, terrifying,
neurotic or disgusting mate, hopeless economic burdens, fear of
pregnancy, or venereal diseases, social scandals, an inaccessible
or unresponsive love-object, death of the mate or a too fixed
mother-attachment.
The intrigues and usurpations of power by the family of the mate,
suppressing the idealised wishes of the individual, often cause the
regression to the lower level of homo-sexuality, where, at least,
parental sacrifices need not be made."
CHAPTER XVIII
HOMOSEXUALISM, A NEUROTIC SYMPTOM
The varying views as to the genesis of homosexualism, which I have
attempted to summarise in the preceding chapter, can be easily
reconciled.
Doubts as to one's "completeness" and a craving for safety may, even at
an early age, cause the gonads to remain undeveloped or to develop in
the wrong direction. Craig's pigeons were as completely "perverted" by
the wrong environment as Steinach's rats by surgical operations.
Hirschfeld's intermediate sex, in its concealed forms, that is, when
the individual, upon gross examination, appears normal, may well
be produced by the environment. Freud's Oedipus situation is not
incompatible with Adler's theory of the neurotic constitution.
Gonads are not different from any other glands. Thyroid involvement may
produce fear or, at least, a picture of fear (exophthalmic goitre),
but fear also produces many forms of thyroid involvement (goitre and
exophthalmic goitre were alarmingly frequent in French towns submitted
to bombardment during the world war). A study of psychic impotence
in men and frigidity in women has proved that impotence was mainly
a refusal to be a potent man, frigidity a refusal to be woman in
intercourse. In certain cases, exaggerated cravings for impotence or
frigidity may modify the gonads so completely that they present the
condition Hirschfeld has called typical of the intermediate sex.
Homosexualism can be best understood when viewed as a neurotic
phenomenon, not as a neurosis in itself, but as a detail of the
neurotic attitude to life outlined by Adler. Homosexualism is, in its
last analysis, an organic striving away from life's normal goals.
=A Denial of Life.= Homosexualism cannot be understood unless we
associate it with a denial of life and all its duties. Nor could love
be understood if we tried to dissociate it from its primary sexual goal
which is the acceptance of life with its duties, symbolised by the
procreation of life and the creation of new duties by the individual,
duties which he considers as a source of joy.
=Homosexualism Is Love, Negative Love=, quite as involuntary and
as obsessive as normal, heterosexual, positive love.
A homosexual teacher wrote to Plazek: "A glance at the literature and
art produced by homosexuals as well as insight into actual conditions,
reveals that abnormal love can conjure up the same emotional display as
normal love. Longing, faithfulness, devotion, self sacrifice, blossom
forth in abnormal love as well as in normal love.
"In both, complete communion may be the goal and climax of feelings
which are perhaps among the deepest and finest which mankind can
experience."
=Their Love Letters.= The absolute similarity of heterosexual and
homosexual love in their written expression can be judged by perusing
the sonnets which Michael Angelo wrote to young Tommaso dei Cavalieri
and which could very well have been addressed to a woman.
A sober scientist like Winckelman was carried away by his homosexual
love for Frederick von Berg to the point of writing the following
epistle which might emanate from a lovelorn highschool boy:
"All the names I might call you are not sweet enough and do not do
justice to my love. All the things I might say to you sound too weak
to give voice to my heart and my soul. I love you, my dearest, more
than the whole world and neither time nor circumstances nor age could
ever cause my love to diminish."
=Deeds of Violence.= Homosexual love has led to as many deeds of
violence on the part of disappointed lovers as heterosexual love. The
papers frequently publish without comments stories of the shooting of
a woman by another woman, caused by the fact that the victim was "too
attentive to another woman."
Psychiatrists who can read between the lines recognise in those murders
the result of homosexual jealousy and infidelity.
In that respect the behavior of the two sexes seems slightly different.
"It is well known," remarks Havelock Ellis, "that the part taken
by women generally in open criminality, and especially in crimes
of violence, is small as compared with men. In the homosexual the
conditions are to some extent reversed. Inverted men, in whom a more
or less feminine temperament is so often found, are rarely impelled to
acts of aggressive violence, though they frequently commit suicide.
Inverted women, who may retain their feminine emotionality combined
with some degree of infantile impulsiveness and masculine energy,
present a favorable soil for the seeds of passional crime, under those
conditions of jealousy and allied emotions which must so often enter
the invert's life."
=A Homosexual Tragedy.= In a recent case in Chicago a homosexual woman
shot her former roommate and then seriously wounded herself. They had
roomed together and last fall the victim broke off the life together
because the invert "was too affectionate." The victim went to her
parents' house in the South to get rid of the invert. On her return to
Chicago two months later she was bothered by the invert who insisted
that she room with her. On April 22d she received a letter from the
invert containing a bullet and a threat. Alarmed, she had the invert
arrested, but the invert was discharged on promise she would not annoy
the girl. The invert had a number of swagger sticks, one of which she
carried each day. There is no account of her masculinity of attire. She
wrote poems to her victim and made her presents including a diamond
ring and a diamond studded watch, all of which were returned. There had
been several threats of killing the victim, before the letter came, if
she ended the friendship.
=Women More Homosexual than Men.= Remembering how the mother's fetishes
affect us in the choice of a sexual mate we may expect to find more
homosexualism in woman than in man. The facts bear up our theory.
While the gross forms of homosexualism are less frequent among women,
a thousand mild forms of it are observable in the behavior of even
apparently very normal women.
The sentimental attachments of school girls for certain teachers,
the pleasure which they derive from spending nights with some friend
on whom they have a "crush," the thousand and one bodily caresses
female friends shower on each other, the curiosity they manifest about
each other's physical condition, their frequent bed room or bathroom
conferences, are manifestations of a mild homosexualism, which,
however, do not always lead to overt acts.
=Boastfulness.= Many homosexuals compensate for the scorn meted
out to them by normal individuals with a certain proud boastfulness.
"We are supermen," one hears them say when they find a sympathetic
listener, "we have reached beyond the usual, boresome, bourgeois form
of gratification. Our intellect is nauseated by woman's silliness."
And the females say in their turn: "We are super-women, we have
conquered the fear of man and we are tired of man's boorish ways."
Some of the male homosexuals who are bisexual, that is, can also be
attracted by women, pride themselves over the mentality of the women
they love. "Men have accustomed us to a higher intellectual level and
to a more intelligent form of conversation," a homosexual said to me.
This is naturally a defence mechanism. By demanding extremely high
qualification from the women, homosexuals have a ready excuse for
consorting with men exclusively.
=Famous Homosexuals.= Homosexuals are fond of mentioning all the
men famous in art and letters whose sexual life was inverted: the Greek
philosophers, poets and playwrights of the classic age, Julius Cæsar,
Alexander the Great, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Frederick of
Prussia, Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Nietzsche, etc.
=The Nietzsche-Wagner Feud= should be rewritten from a psychiatrist's
point of view. Wagner was to young Nietzsche an attractive, heroic,
father-image. The philosopher never had any real affair of the heart
with a woman. He only indulged in very ephemeral relationships which,
by their disastrous results, drove him further away from women. (Dr.
W. H. White of Washington received the assurance while in Europe that
Nietzsche died of syphilis.) Nietzsche made himself obnoxious to Wagner
by trying to be his press agent. As Wagner, however, a shrewd business
man in his old days, objected to Nietzsche's agnosticism and to his
friendship with certain Jews, Nietzsche, disappointed in his love,
abandoned Wagner and hated him fiercely. He attacked him on every
occasion, his hatred being made the fiercer by the fact that he himself
considered himself as a greater composer, one line in Nietzsche's
letters throws a strange light upon the poor paretic's feelings.
Wagner's "feminine traits" he wrote, finally disgusted him.
=Shall Perverse Love Be Recognized?= Efforts are being made in
various directions at the present day to have homosexual love legally
recognised and given perfect equality with heterosexual love. In
Germany, a number of writers, Von Kupfer, Friedlander and others have
boldly championed that futile attempt.
A cinema film was produced last year (1921) in Berlin depicting the
plight of the homosexual who is unable to control his cravings and
falls a victim to the wiles of a blackmailer. Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld
agreed to impersonate in that production the scientist who attempts to
enlighten the public as to the nature of homosexualism, so as to bring
about a modification of the statute punishing perverts.
=Man's Emancipation.= In 1900, Elizar von Kupfer called upon the men to
proclaim their "independence" from women. "The man who lives in bondage
to women," he wrote, "and who humors her whims, has lost his manhood.
Since woman is emancipating herself, why should not men follow the same
road?"
Illogically enough, Von Kupfer defends the mothers and wives, "flowers
who should not be rooted out of the garden of love." In Schopenhauer's
silly outbursts against woman, however, Von Kupfer sees "a test of
manhood revolting against man's humiliation" and he adds that "it is
only from the closest relation of man to man, adolescent to man, and
adolescent to adolescent, that government and civilisation will derive
real power."
Blüher considers homosexualism as an "essential human trait which must
be granted an outlet with certain restrictions (setting the age of
consent at fourteen and forbidding the use of violence)."
Benedikt Friedlander, in his "Renaissance des Eros Uranios" suggests
"bringing ancient and modern culture into harmony with each other by
reviving the Greek Eros and overthrowing the monopoly which woman has,
of being loved and beautiful."
Removing the legal penalties which punish overt homosexual acts is one
thing. Recognising homosexualism is an entirely different proposition.
Punishing a typhoid fever patient would be absurd, but typhoid fever
sufferers should not be allowed to remain at large without treatment.
Homosexualism is a neurotic trait which should be eradicated, if
possible, by analytic treatment. Hopeless cases, on the other hand
should be protected against their instincts by a form of confinement
which would be neither punitive nor more humiliating than the
confinement imposed upon sufferers from contagious diseases.
=Homosexualism and the War.= Homosexualism has been on the increase
since the war. Stekel reports many gruesome cases of husbands who,
until they went to the barracks and the trenches, where their
unconscious homosexualism found an unusual stimulation, were normal in
their attitude to their wives, and who returned after the armistice
absolutely inverted and unable to give or receive normal gratification.
The bobbed hair craze has many good excuses. Bobbed hair is kept tidy
more easily than long tresses and can be dried quicker after a shampoo.
At the same time, when we consider that the boyish type of women
became fashionable about the same time when short hair did, and that
soon after the war, advertising boards were covered with the praise
of devices enabling women to conceal their natural curves, we must
consider both fashions as symptomatic of an increase in homosexualism.
We might also mention another fashion detail: while dressmakers were
trying their best to obliterate their customers breasts, they would
bare entirely their backs. Anyone familiar with the symbolism and
dreams of homosexuals will understand the import of that style of
dresses.
=Is Homosexualism Necessary?= Dr. Otto Gross, without openly
countenancing homosexualism, holds that a certain proportion of it is
necessary in man's makeup for a mutual understanding of both sexes.
"We can only understand," he writes, "what we have experienced. Unless
a man has a decided feminine trend, he is not likely to understand a
woman, or to live with her harmoniously and vice versa."
A consideration of the purely physical side of love lends a slight
plausibility to that view. Unless a man can clearly imagine love's
pleasure as experienced by a woman, he may not be able to vouchsafe her
complete gratification.
The progress of civilisation certainly demands that men become less
masculine (translate: boorish) and women less feminine (meaning: silly).
We could not tolerate, however, what Friedländer called a Renaissance
of Eros Uranios, leading to the conditions which obtained in Greece
where men, while consorting with other men, were also potent with women.
No parallel can be drawn between Greek culture and modern culture.
Hellenic culture was decidedly masculine, women being solely tools of
lust, or beasts of burden, or means of proliferation. As I will show
in another chapter, one really modern woman can give to the modern
man what Demosthenes sought in three kinds of women, a prostitute, a
concubine and a wife, not to count a male mistress.
=What is Really Needed= is a better understanding of homosexualism
by the public and by the homosexuals. After which, homosexuals, no
longer despised and punished for their obsessive cravings, and no
longer proud of their condition, will be given sympathy and treatment,
voluntary or compulsory. Psychoanalysts will remove their complexes and
lead them toward a positive goal; surgeons, performing on them some
of Steinach's operations, may raise their heterosexual potency to the
point at which no doubt will obsess them any longer.
Those things will avail little, however, until parents watch their
offspring carefully to discover in them the first symptoms of a
homosexual trend and adopt ways and means to prevent the growth of the
neurosis.
We may for convenience quote Hirschfeld's description of the homosexual
child, a very superficial one, indeed, sufficient, however, to cause
the average parent to seek psychological and medical advice before it
is too late and before mental and physical habits have compromised,
perhaps hopelessly, the love life of their children.
"The homosexual boy prefers girls' games, shuns boys' games, is girlish
in disposition and behavior, if not in appearance. People often say
that he is like a girl. He is happy in the company of girls. He has a
psychic fixation on his mother. He is reserved and embarrassed before
other boys. He often becomes unduly attached to a male teacher or a
schoolmate.
"The homosexual girl prefers boys' games, does not care for sewing or
other feminine occupations, is boyish in her disposition, her motions,
often in her appearance. People call her a tomboy. She likes to romp
with boys. She is overattached to her father. She shows embarrassment
in the presence of other girls. She often falls madly in love with a
female teacher or some older woman."
CHAPTER XIX
CRUELTY AND LOVE. SADISM
In normal individuals the idea of love is inseparably associated with
tenderness, caressing gestures, words or glances, readiness on the part
of either mate to go to extremes in order to enhance the loved one's
enjoyment of the amorous relationship, or to protect him against all
dangers or suffering.
In normal individuals, love and suffering are antithetic terms, love
meaning joy and pleasure, (sexual and egotistical), suffering being
only conceivable when the craving for love is ungratified, when the
lonely lovers are parted by life, when one of them has been robbed by
death of his mate, etc.
=Algolagnists.= There are abnormal human beings, however, known
technically as algolagnists (from algos, pain, and lagneia, enjoyment),
who cannot imagine or enjoy love when it is entirely dissociated from
some form of suffering.
The active algolagnists must inflict some pain, physical or mental,
upon their mate in order to enjoy the pleasures of love to their full
extent. The passive algolagnists only attain the highest degree of
amorous satisfaction when they are submitted by their mate to painful
or humiliating treatment.
Active algolagnists are known more commonly as "sadists," an expression
created by Moreau de Tours. Krafft-Ebing, the most famous writer on
sexual perversions coined for passive algolagnists the expression
"masochists."
The word sadist is derived from the name of Marquis de Sade, a French
pervert of the eighteenth century, whose life and writings well
illustrate the form of love which is constantly associated with acts of
cruelty.
=Donatien Alphonse François de Sade= was born in Paris, June 2 1740,
the offspring of an aristocratic family of Provence. Among his
ancestors was the Laura of Petrarca's sonnets.
At fourteen, he joined a cavalry regiment. He went thru the Seven
Years War during which he witnessed the most ruthless atrocities. On
his return, at the age of twenty-seven, he married, but soon after his
marriage was arrested for some deed of cruelty committed in a house of
prostitution.
His father's death left him heir to an important government position
but his life of excesses gave him little time to attend to his duties.
At twenty-eight, he attracted much attention by a scandal in which he
played a prominent part. He lured a shopkeeper's wife, Rose Keller to a
house in the suburbs of the French capital where he used to hold revels.
Threatening the woman with a pistol, he bound her hands and feet and
whipped her to the blood.
The next morning, Rose Keller managed to free herself, jumped out of
the window and summoned help. De Sade was arrested but the affair was
soon hushed up by powerful friends at the court of Louis the Fifteenth.
That incident is characteristic of sadism in love's relations. His
victim's sufferings supplied De Sade with the artificial stimulation
which normal desire would produce in a normal man.
Soon after this, De Sade eloped to Italy with his wife's sister.
On his way to Italy, he stopped in Marseille and organized an orgy in
the course of which he gorged his guests with candy containing some
poisonous aphrodisiac drug. Two of them died.
This time, a court rendered a death sentence against the murderous
pervert, who eluded the police for a time and was finally confined in
the fortress of Vincennes for thirteen years.
It was said at the time that a woman had been found in a house where
he indulged in all sorts of debauches, unconscious and bleeding from a
hundred scalpel wounds which had severed many veins.
De Sade devoted his enforced leisure to writing. His published works
fill up ten volumes. They contain a description of the most atrocious
sexual cruelties. The author makes a childish attempt at establishing
a "satanic" morality based on the fact that "virtue is always punished
by the world and vice always rewarded." His atheism is no more than a
satanic ritual.
De Sade's literary output, which is devoid of any artistic merit and
is only of interest to the student of abnormal psychology, bears the
stamp of hopeless intellectual inferiority trying to justify itself
by representing the entire world as a combination of a brothel and a
torture chamber and mankind as a herd of blood-thirsty and sex-crazed
lunatics. A sinister autobiography and wish fulfilment.
The revolutionists of 1789 who opened the doors of all jails and insane
asylums gave De Sade his freedom on July 14. He sided politically with
his deliverers but after a while, became suspicious to them and again
spent one year in prison (1793-1794).
=What Bonaparte Thought of Him.= De Sade, who had been very liberal in
presenting free copies of his obscene novels to men prominent in the
days of the Revolution and the Terror, made the mistake of sending a
set of his works to Bonaparte.
The Corsican caused the entire edition to be suppressed and diagnosed
the author very accurately as a murderous pervert, unfit to be at
large. De Sade was committed to an insane asylum where he remained
until his death on December 2, 1814.
Sadism is a morbid phenomenon which remained mysterious until recently,
when the experimental work of physiologists like Cannon, Sherrington
and others, revealed to us the close connection existing between mental
states, muscular tensions and the secretions of ductless glands of the
body.
Adler's "individual psychology" also has thrown much light upon many
morbid actions which are simply attempts at compensation for a feeling
of inferiority. The neurotic, briefly speaking, feels inferior, that
is, afraid of some imaginary danger. He casts about for something
which can be done quickly, simply, with the least effort, and which
will restore his peace and safety by filling him, were it only
temporarily, with a sense of actual or imaginary superiority.
=Glandular Drunkenness.= Wulffen suggests an interpretation of sadism
which is ingenious but unconvincing. He considers every act of violence
as provoked by the faulty functioning of some glands.
He compares the effect of the gonadal hormones (one of the secretions
of the sex glands issuing from the interstitial cells) with that of
alcohol. Alcohol destroys the inhibitions and allows unconscious
cravings of an inacceptable sort to express themselves thru overt acts.
The drunken man loses all shame and all fear, becomes boisterous and,
at times, murderous. Likewise, Wulffen says, oversecretion of the
gonadal hormones creates a sort of sexual drunkenness in the course of
which the individual is forced into violent or cruel behavior.
This would be acceptable if all the sadists were strong healthy
specimens of manhood and womanhood. Most of them, on the contrary, show
plainly signs of glandular insufficiency.
Wulffen's thesis is not confirmed as some writers assume by a study of
the mating habits of many animals. Cocks during the act of mating peck
cruelly the back of the hen's head. Tomcats bite the necks of their
mates. Toads, at times, choke the female to death in their clinging
embrace.
In those acts of animal "cruelty" there is probably another element
to be considered. The tomcat, digging his teeth into the female cat's
neck, may not so much relieve his sadistic impulses as produce in his
mate some welcome sensation of pleasurable pain. We know how willingly
the most rebellious cats allow any one to grab them by the backs of
their necks, making no effort at freeing themselves and apparently
enjoying that partial strangulation. (Remember the aphrodisiac
influence of hanging.)
=Atavism.= Eulenburg considers that sadism is an atavistic trait. "Not
only animals," he says, "but primitive races associate mating with
violence."
The caveman is supposed to have beaten the female he captured into
insensibility before dragging her to his cave.
We do not know, however, whether it was THE caveman or SOME cavemen
who indulged in that practice, the existence of which may be merely
a subject for speculation. It goes without saying that whenever
females were carried off by victorious tribes after armed conflicts the
"wooing" of the captives must have been synonymous with violence and
rape.
Old documents offer many examples of the combination of love and
violence. There is the old legend of Griseldis in which a sadistic man
tested in the cruellest way the woman who was to be his life mate.
The epic poem Gudrun recites one of the prehistoric struggles between
male and female. The unfortunate male in this case is overpowered by
the Nordic Valkyrie who binds him with her girdle and keeps him lashed
to the wall till morning.
The modern honeymoon trip is undoubtedly a survival of the primeval
habit of carrying off the bride.
=Primitive Religions= constantly associate sadism with love. In fact
the Goddess of Love, in the Greek mythology, owed her existence to an
act of sadism. Kronos' male organ, cut off by his Zeus, fell into the
sea, fertilized it, and Aphrodite was born.
Many primitive gods demanded the sacrifice of virgins, primitive
goddesses decapitated or castrated men with whom at times they
consorted. The priests and priestesses of certain religions could only
please their gods by submitting to sexual indignities, the priestesses
of Cybelea prostituting themselves to every one, the priests castrating
themselves.
Some of those acts of violence, however, must be considered from an
entirely different point of view.
=In Primitive Races= real achievement was always associated with
violence. The "real man" was the victorious fighter and killer. Even in
Roman days, gladiator duels terminated with the death of the defeated
man, unless he were a popular ring idol whom the mob saved for further
encounters.
The robber, designated by more flattering names, of course, gained more
glory by stealing goods or gold than the merchant who, in ways more
socially acceptable, accumulated goods and gold.
Civilisation has changed those things. In neurotic states, however,
we always observe a return to archaic modes of action which are more
direct. We nowadays kill off a competitor thru advertising. Instead of
levying tribute on the defeated rival, we compel him to sell out to us
at our price, etc. The neurotic kills or steals, as archaic heroes did.
=Animal Love Fights.= Also, as far as animals are concerned, the
more or less playful fights with which they prelude their mating is
not, as Wulffen suggests, due to gonadal drunkenness. On the contrary,
it is meant to produce a stronger outpouring of gonadal secretions in
both male and female, thereby increasing the energy of the male and
assuring the pregnancy of the female.
Fights preceding animal mating increase, among other things, the
secretions of the adrenal cortex which impart to all the muscles (among
them the sexual muscles) a considerable tension.
Let us bear in mind that physiological detail while interpreting the
fact that many neurotics are only potent sexually with women who resist
them. We see how a certain amount of struggle, producing perhaps slight
anger (and possibly leading to acts of violence), would strengthen the
sexual faculties of the weak neurotic and enable him to possess his
mate. From that type of neurotic, who requires glandular excitement of
the adrenal type, to the sadist, typified by the famous Marquis, and
up to the Ripper who disembowels his victims we see merely a series
of gradations in glandular insufficiency, not as Wulffen said, in
glandular hyper-secretion.
=A Neurotic Trait.= Furthermore, sadism should not be considered
as a phenomenon of purely sexual character. Sadism is merely a detail
of the neurotic make up. It is one of the neurotic short cuts whereby
an inferior individual acquires a temporary superiority.
The section foreman who takes pleasure in driving his men at a killing
pace, the detective engaged daily in the task of man hunting, the
so-called "strict" parent who beats his children, the surgeon who never
tires of performing operations, the futile reformer who is constantly
trying to deprive some one of some form of enjoyment, the jealous
husband who deprives his wife of many pleasures, the jealous wife who
relishes the thought that her husband is giving up his club or his
former associates for her sake, are sadists, some of them partly normal
and useful, some of them morbid or ridiculous.
=The Mob.= Sadism is one of the great "mob characteristics." Why do we
run to fires and to the scene of an accident? To help? No. To enjoy the
sight of some one's life or property being destroyed. If our impulses
were humane or charitable we should be relieved, nay exultant, when we
learn that the conflagration has only destroyed a curtain or a shade,
when we see the man bowled over by a taxi getting up and walking away,
little the worse for the experience.
Notice on the contrary the indignation of the average man when the fire
"does not amount to anything", when the "victim" of an accident escapes
unharmed.
=Is the Male More Cruel?= It has been said that sadism was a masculine
trait, masochism a feminine characteristic. Like the majority of
generalisations on the subject of sex differences, it is inaccurate.
Man, the hunter, is more aggressive in love, but his aggressiveness
need not include cruelty. His strength, in modern life, is put to quite
a different use, to protect the weaker female, not to overwhelm her.
Woman is supposed to be more submissive but mythology, legend and
history present to us thousands of cases in which the female of the
human species betrayed many sadistic instincts, not infrequently
associated with her love activities. Even in the animal world, while
we behold males apparently submitting the female to much suffering,
we find not a few cases, for instance in the insect world, of females
killing or even devouring their mate immediately after the love
communion.
CHAPTER XX
LOVE THAT CRAVES SUFFERING. MASOCHISM
The man whom Krafft-Ebing selected as the typical masochist, Leopold
von Sacher-Masoch, was born in Lemberg, January 27, 1836.
He was extremely frail in infancy and childhood. He compensated for
his physical inferiority thru unusual mental activity, for at the
age of nineteen he won his degree of doctor of law. At twenty he was
appointed instructor in German history at an university. At the age
of twenty-five he was the author of several books of history. He then
turned to fiction, first of the historical and then of the purely
psychological type.
A morbid tendency was observable in his very first books, a tendency
which became more and more marked and which led him to write almost
exclusively descriptions of perverse love entanglements.
He showed a decided preference for delineating cruel, mannish types of
women and incredibly weak types of men.
As in the case of Marquis de Sade, we observe here a strange
parallelism between the man's writings and his own biography.
Sacher-Masoch's first love was a woman much older than himself, Anna
von Kattowitz, who for four years humiliated, insulted and victimised
him in every possible way, finally running away with a Russian
adventurer.
Then he met Princess Bogdanoff for whom he abandoned temporarily his
professional and literary ambitions. She took him to Italy where he
was compelled to serve her as a secretary and valet. He enjoyed the
relationship, but the princess soon tired of him.
His next liaison was with Baroness Fanny Pistor, with whom he had his
picture taken once in the following position: she seated on a sofa and
clad in furs, he kneeling at her feet on the floor.
Then came Baroness Reizenstein, whom he could not love very long for
she refused to satisfy his morbid craving for physical torture and
humiliating treatment and, besides, was homosexual.
Then he became engaged to a young artist, Miss Bauerfeld, of Graz.
Soon after, however, he met an ugly, mannish hysterical person, Vanda
Dunayef, who gratified better his perverse leanings and compelled him
to break his engagement. A child was born of their union and in 1873
they were married. They traveled from town to town, apparently unable
to find peace anywhere, and she finally left him to elope with a
reporter from the Paris Figaro.
Sacher-Masoch secured a divorce and married again, this time a motherly
type of woman, Hulda Meister, retired with her to the small village of
Lindheim and died there on March 9, 1895.
A few incidents of his life describe well his perversion.
=Love of the Whip.= Once, according to Havelock Ellis, in the
course of an innocent romp in which the whole household took part,
Sacher-Masoch asked his wife to whip him. She refused. Then he
suggested the maid should do it.
His wife did not take this seriously, but he had the servant whip
him to his full enjoyment. When his wife urged that it would not be
possible to keep the maid after this, Sacher-Masoch agreed and she was
discharged.
He constantly found pleasure in placing his wife in awkward or
compromising circumstances, a pleasure she was too normal to share.
This led to much domestic unhappiness. Against her wish he persuaded
her to whip him with whips to which nails were attached. This he
claimed was a literary stimulus.
Dr. Eulenburg tells of a young woman with whom Sacher-Masoch
corresponded for a while and to whom he wrote that "his greatest joy
would be to be whipped by a woman." Later on, Sacher-Masoch met her in
Vienna and asked her to don a fur coat and to whip him. She however,
pretended to treat the matter as a joke, and dismissed him.
His numerous books of fiction present over and over again the same
theme: the domineering woman, "clad in furs," who tortures a weak
helpless man.
We behold in Sacher-Masoch a clear case of physical weakness and
glandular insufficiency. His endocrines, in particular his adrenals and
gonads, required the actual stimulation of pain (whipping) before they
could react properly to a sexual stimulus.
It is a curious coincidence that among all forms of stimulation used
to accelerate the gait of beasts of burden or draft horses, the whip
is the most commonly used the world over and that, on the other hand,
perverts of the masochist type have, the world over and at every age
of history, more frequently resorted to the whip to torture themselves
than to any other means of physical punishment.
=The Masochist is Like a Weak or Tired Horse.= Why does whipping
make a horse go faster? Not merely on account of the fear or pain which
the beast experiences, but because that fear and pain MAKE HIM STRONGER.
The adrenalin liberated by the fear-and-pain-producting stimulus
stiffens every muscle in his body and his strength is doubled.
This is why frightened animals or insane people in a panic can perform
feats of strength of which they would be absolutely incapable in a
normal state.
Masochism is much more, however, than an organic attempt at
compensating for glandular inferiority and acquiring in a morbid
way increased sexual potency. It is a neurotic expedient whereby an
inferior man or woman compensates for his or her weakness thru more
weakness.
By belittling themselves, by disparaging their own ability,
masochist lovers can take advantage of their mate, let him bear all
responsibilities.
=Shoe Fetishism.= We understand from that point of view the meaning of
the shoe fetishism which Krafft-Ebing has noticed in male masochists.
In fact Hirschfeld states that every male shoe fetish is a masochist.
To the masochist, the shoe, especially the high buttoned shoe, is
symbolical of woman's power, of her ruthless cruelty. He sees himself
trod on by that shoe, he imagines that shoe pressing on his neck,
pinning his head to the ground.
Curiously enough, long gloves seem to arouse the same ideas in the mind
of the male masochist. Both shoes and gloves are found in the dreams or
visions of neurotics, symbolizing the female organs.
A masochist wrote once: "The gloved hand of a woman, altho like her
foot, smaller and prettier than a man's, can wield the whip powerfully
over her slave whose greatest joy consists then in kissing his
mistress's shoes while submitting to that punishment."
=Craving for Humiliation.= The masochist welcomes every form
of humiliation and not infrequently derives great pride from his
"patience," "tolerance," "self-sacrifice," "martyrlike resignation" etc.
Like Sacher-Masoch himself, some men, husbands or lovers, (pimps,
cadets, etc.) have been known to enjoy the sight of their wife or
mistress in another man's arms.
Hirschfeld was consulted by a woman whose husband compelled her at
frequent intervals to have relations with a man in his own house. He
would invite a business associate for dinner and then leave his wife to
explain that he had been suddenly called out of town.
The guest and his wife would dine together. Wine would flow freely
and she would coquettishly goad the man into making advances to her.
Concealed in the next room, the husband would watch thru a peep hole
the proceedings which ended with a passionate scene.
It was only after beholding that humiliating sight that the masochistic
husband could enjoy his wife's embraces.
A man who consulted me confessed to me that he was absolutely impotent
with his own wife or with any unmarried woman. It was only with married
women that he felt perfectly virile. The thought of his mistress in
her husband's arms was the only thing that could arouse him physically.
Many neurotics of the masochistic type have dreams of being school
children punished by a masculine female teacher. Those dreams, be
they night or day dreams, are always associated with erotic thoughts.
Remember Jean Jacques Rousseau enjoying viciously the spankings which
mademoiselle Lambercier gave him when a child.
Masochists, male or female, are often very anxious to perform menial or
disgusting tasks for the person they love, thus placing themselves in a
subordinate, protected, position and at the same time, claiming a great
deal of credit for their devotion.
=Masochistic Fancies.= The male masochist, eager to place himself
in the position of safety toward his mate, not infrequently imagines
himself to be an animal and asks to be treated as such. Greek antiquity
has bequeathed to us the story of Aristotle the philosopher, allowing
a prostitute to ride on his back, whipping him like a horse, while he
would crawl about on all fours.
Medical literature contains many descriptions of establishments where
male masochists are submitted to voluntary torture thru various
appliances.
The ascetics who in the Middle Ages whipped themselves, wore hair cloth
studded with sharp nails, etc., to manifest their love to God or the
Virgin, the Russian Skooptsy who mutilate themselves to please God, are
religious examplaries of masochistic love.
The Christian ideal of suffering and renunciation as a means of
conquering everlasting happiness is also purely masochistic.
Suffering, be it physical or mental (remorse), assures to them in the
end, well-being (glandular well-being) and enables them to reach Heaven
(will-to-be-above).
=Are Women Masochistic?= I denied in the preceding chapter the
frequently heard assertion that sadism in a typically masculine trait.
I would deny quite as emphatically that masochism is peculiarly
feminine, a view held by many sadists, as an attempted justification of
their cruel perversion.
Oscar Wilde, a bisexual, stated once that of all the masculine traits
it was cruelty which women appreciated most. To his morbid mind cruelty
meant power. It is power of course which woman, disabled several times
in her life by pregnancy and lactation, seeks in the man with whom she
mates. He must be a good fighter and a good hunter, not, however,
merely to capture her and brutalise her, but on the contrary, to
protect her and feed her.
The sadist Kurnberger in his novel, "The Castle of Horrors" also bids
us believe that man's greatest victory, appreciated as such by woman,
consists in making a woman suffer, in bringing tears to her eyes, in
outtalking and outwitting her, "a victory compared to which," he says,
"Marengo and Austerlitz look like thirty cents."
And the sadistic Nietzsche puts in the mouth of an old woman in his
"Zarathustra" the following statement: "when you go to women, don't
forget to take your whip."
Other sadists remind us of the Russian woman's wail that her husband's
love must be cooling off, because he hasn't beaten her in an age.
Barring a number of exceptions, the fact remains that masochism in
women is as abnormal as masochism in men, or sadism in men or women.
=Women Who Enjoy a Beating.= There are women who enjoy unconsciously
being beaten by their husbands, much as they may resent the outrage
consciously.
They are in every case hypothyroid and hypoadrenal types in whom the
distribution of energy and the emergency production of energy are very
subnormal. Nothing but a violent stimulus, physical or mental, whipping
or insult, can make them feel strong and active.
The dreams of those women, like those of masochistic men, are often of
the nightmarish type. They suffer in their night visions all sorts of
torture. Analysis brings out the fact that every detail of those dreams
is associated with energy, achievement, etc.
De Sade's wife belonged evidently to the masochistic type. She remained
faithful to him to the end in spite of his perverse life, his prison
record and the fact that he deceived her with her own sister. Her life
of sorrow must have vouchsafed her, after all, a good many masochistic
compensations of the neurotic variety.
=Famous Women Sadists.= As against the assumption that "all" women
are masochists, we may mention many famous women sadists, several
Byzantine and Roman Empresses, Frankish queens, two Russian empresses,
the treatment meted out by women to Theroigne de Méricourt, tortured
publicly by the Jacobine women in 1793, not to mention legendary
characters like the Amazons and mythological goddesses who killed or
tortured their lovers.
Sadism and masochism in love are pathological disturbances due to a
neurotic attempt on the part of an inferior individual to dominate the
sexual partner thru violence or weakness, and to assure himself against
defeat in the sexual relationship.
=The Freudian Suggestion= that the sadist identifies himself with
the powerful and apparently, brutal father, the masochist identifying
himself with the weaker and submissive mother, applies to a too
restricted number of cases to be of positive help in understanding the
nature of those two perversions. Even when that explanation seems to
fit the case, we must, nevertheless, fall back upon the Adlerian view
of the neurotic temperament in order to understand why a child decides
to identify himself with one parent instead of the other.
CHAPTER XXI
WHAT LOVE OWES TO SADISTS AND MASOCHISTS
Love that inflicts suffering and love which craves suffering are
travesties on love, for normal love gives joy and craves joy.
Yet, it may be that a too perfect adaption, one vouchsafing constantly
to the mates the security they seek in each other's arms would soon
pall on them. They might not remain attached to each other any longer
than the animals who, in the majority of species, part as soon as they
have fulfilled their biological mission.
A perfectly normal couple might die of boredom. What makes animals,
when they have not been slightly perverted by contact with human
beings, so uninteresting, is their absolute normality.
A very slight touch of "perversion" in at least one of the mates, seems
necessary if the novelty of the relationship is not to wear off too
soon. Maybe I should not say perversion, but perverseness.
The normal husband who would die rather than hurt his life mate cannot
compete with the romantic, lover, a little mysterious, unreliable,
suspected of flirting with other women, who "keeps a woman guessing,"
pretends at times to be indifferent and has to be won over and over
again.
The normal husband whose affection is taken for granted and who always
says the proper thing at the proper time, remembers all anniversaries
and celebrates them officially, pales in comparison with a tender,
masochistic lover, whom every unkind gesture seems to wound deeply,
whose affection is tinged with a melancholy longing, who treasures
little sentimental memories which his earnestness makes at times rather
poignant.
=The Sadistic Lover= carries a woman off her feet by the daredevil
things he may indulge in when away from her. The masochist touches
deeply the motherly chord in her by the acts of kindness and devotion
he may perform for others, by his charitable or professional activities.
=The Vamp.= How much the world, especially the world of art, owes
to the slightly sadistic, "vampish" woman, who, if she is endowed
with much physical beauty sets, a little cruelly, all the males
competing for her favors. How many flaming poems of passion, what
priceless canvasses, statutes and monuments has she conjured up out of
her admirers' minds. Even the perverse female beasts of the Italian
Renaissance made love infinitely romantic.
On the other hand, what worshipful tenderness meets even the memory
of the patient Aude who silently closed her eyes and died when Roland
was brought home dead, of Solvejg, waiting with saintly resignation
for the return of the rover Peer Gynt. Of course the sadistic braggart
earns much hatred and the whimpering masochistic male much scorn. The
sadistic vamp gets shot by jealous lovers and the clinging masochistic
vine is called a pest. To the lovers who are not unbearably normal
and whose slight pituitary instability causes them to do and say the
unexpected, love owes its poetry, the love life its charm and its
inspirational power.
All other things being equal, when a slightly sadistic male, seeking
as his mate the image of a pliant mother, meets a slightly masochistic
female who seeks the image of the powerful, domineering father, there
are many chances that the match will, for a long period of time, retain
its original qualities.
The sadistic female, on the other hand soon emasculates the masochistic
male. Sadistic mates and masochistic mates land in the divorce court,
the former throwing at each other charges of cruelty, the latter, for
unfaithfulness of one or both mates, who seek in adultery relief from
the monotony of their too peaceful existence.
CHAPTER XXII
LOVE AMONG THE ARTISTS
Frequent are the divorces in the artistic world. Platitudinous
moralisers explain that fact with the stupid statement that the morals
of the stage are "loose." Like the Freudians, they always seek in sex
the origin of every disturbance in human life.
Sex in the life of an artist, however, plays an infinitely less
important part than egotism, the desire to be above.
The so-called normal man, who works, eats, sleeps, reproduces himself,
and, at his death leaves the world exactly as he found it is probably
subnormal.
He differs very little from the animals who do exactly the same things
in the same way and seem perfectly pleased with the endless repetition
of an immutable life ritual.
=Dissatisfaction= is really the element which we must consider when
we try to draw a line of cleavage between men and the animals.
Dissatisfaction breeds either neurosis or creation.
The dissatisfied person, devoid of intellectual resources, either
commits a crime or kills himself or goes off into another world thru
the door that leads into insanity.
The dissatisfied person gifted with powers of self-expression, makes
the world in which he lives better, more beautiful or more comfortable.
That sort of achievement presupposes a certain amount of healthy
sadism, the courage to criticise, to offer suggestions, to force the
products of one's mind upon the community, to say "look at me, I am
perfect or, at least, better than you."
Every budding actor assumes unconsciously that he can delineate a rôle
better than the other histrionic lights of his time; every new novelist
must assume that he can tell a story more attractively than his readers
could picture it to themselves, etc., etc.
The artist who is willing to yield, soon relapses into the ranks of
the business men. Whoever panders to the popular taste of his time
may derive therefrom financial advantages but very little egotistical
gratification.
The real artist must know that he is right and must not be, therefore,
soft clay to be moulded by any one else's desires.
How then could the artist obtain lasting happiness from any form of
love relationship?
=The Male Artist=, if married to a submissive, masochistic wife, may
live happily with her for a time. Egotists, male or female, however,
need flattery. Familiarity breeds contempt. Flattery must come from a
constantly changing source or lose its power, as drugs do when we grow
accustomed to them.
Flattery coming from a pretty woman whose attraction has not been
weakened by daily contact will soon lead the artist husband into
forbidden paths. Unless endowed with the wisdom of the musician's wife
in "The Concert," his wife will soon be granted a divorce on the ground
of his too obvious infidelity.
Woe to the male artist who takes unto himself a female artist for his
wife. As I said in the preceding chapter, sadist plus sadist equals
divorce suit for cruelty alleged by both parties. In this type of
matrimonial castastrophy, the fault lies more frequently with the wife
than with the husband.
=Female Artists= are more unbearable than male artists. They are more
touchy, more easily offended and angered, more apt to suspect the
people in their environment of harboring veiled hostility. The reason
for that state of things is not far to seek.
Women require infinitely more flattery than men do. Not that a craving
for attention is by any means a typically feminine trait. That craving
has been forced upon them by the masculine domination.
We have made woman inferior to man politically, socially, economically,
we have, as Adler would word it, put her "below." Until we allow her
to rise to man's level, she will never feel safe and will constantly
require assurances of her superiority, at least, from the men who fancy
her looks and enjoy her company.
=The Woman Who Accomplishes Things= in this world, who, in spite
of woman's handicap in her dealings with the world, wins recognition
as a painter, sculptor, writer, singer, etc., feels, and justly so,
that she deserves more credit for her accomplishment than a man
would. Winning power in a man's world is for the woman who reaches
that aim ethically, that is, without bartering her sexual favors for
success, as difficult as it would be for a Jew to arrive in a bigoted
Christian community, for a negro to establish his prestige in a white
anglo-saxon environment.
Having reached the top after much fighting, she never feels as secure
as a man would under similar circumstances. Her ego is steadily on the
defensive and whatever interferes with her ego maximation appears to
her dangerous and hateful.
The female artist who marries a male artist will soon become jealous
of him. Every bit of publicity he receives is something which he has
stolen from her, which he should, she thinks, if he loved her enough,
have renounced in her favor.
The female artist who marries a man incapable of artistic achievement,
may be violently attracted to him sexually. Her egotism, on the other
hand, prompts her to disparage him and to scorn his judgment of
her. However much he may admire her, his praise lacks weight in her
estimation. He is not a member of the enchanted circle.
A word from "one in the know", insignificant as he may be, will bring a
smile to her lips, a flash of pleasure in her eyes, which will cut her
mate to the quick. I have observed many a time an angry tension in the
face of the business husband of some actress or singer when she would
visibly gloat over the not too disinterested praise of some trashy
professional.
=Flattery.= The artist is at the mercy of the flattery lavished on
him or her by a fellow artist and absolutely blind to the flatterer's
ulterior motives. A great musician who died recently was an easy victim
to every budding musician who would sycophantically sing his praises.
The mere statement "if I could ever hope to sing a few notes like you"
enabled any young exploiter who could approach him to negotiate a
"loan."
For the reasons I have mentioned in the preceding pages, the woman
artist is even more easily victimised, financially or sentimentally
than the male artist.
Sexual jealousy wrecks the unions of artists with non-professional
mates. Sexual jealousy and professional jealousy make the union of two
artists a very problematical expedient for the attainment of happiness.
Fortunately, very few heartbreaks result from the steady grinding of
the divorce mills in concert land, opera land or stageland.
The egotistical artist loves himself more than he could ever love
any other human being. Separation from his life mate does not mean
loneliness to him. He remains in his own company, to his mind, the best
company on earth. And furthermore his egotism tells him, and rightly so
in the majority of cases, that being as wonderful as he is, he cannot
fail to meet soon "the great love" of his life. And he will probably
embark upon another experiment with the same optimism and with the same
results.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE PERSONALITY BEHIND THE FETISHES. GLANDS
A man selects a mate because he finds in her fetishes the assurance
of safety which those fetishes portended when observed in the
appearance of his affectionate, devoted, self-sacrificing mother, whose
intelligence and wisdom he never doubted when he was, let us say, ten
or fifteen and she was thirty or thirty-five.
And likewise, a woman expects, consciously or unconsciously, that
certain physical characteristics which once indicated, when observed
in her father's appearance, power, protection, a gainful occupation,
sympathy and understanding, etc., will mean exactly the same thing when
she finds them reproduced totally or in part in a male human being of
the marriageable age.
=The Parent-Child Relationship=, involving at first boundless devotion
on the part of the strong parent to the helpless nursling, infant
and child, and later, complete submission of the growing child and
adolescent to the older and, supposedly world-wiser, parent, has very
little, if anything, in common with the relationship of mate to mate.
Sex plays no conscious part in the parent-child relationship.
It does not tinge every action and every thought of the two parties
concerned. The secret cravings or the secret repulsion it may
awaken never distort consciously the judgments passed by parents on
their children, children on their parents. Of neurotic unconscious
distortions of judgment there is a plenty. Never, however, does the
strife narrow down to this: "He or she does not satisfy me sexually,"
"he or she humiliates me sexually by being attracted to others," "he or
she is an obstacle to my complete sexual gratification with another,"
etc., sources of open hostility of the most painfully conscious kind
between mates.
The mother who satisfied our egotism became to us beautiful and
perfect. The female who employs the same means our mother did, to
win us, but who cannot arouse us sexually, never appears to us very
attractive physically or mentally.
On the other hand we are apt to disregard, temporarily at least, the
mental deficiencies of the man or woman who gives us the most complete
sexual gratification.
From this it will be easily understood that choosing a mate _solely_ on
the strength of his or her fetishes, is likely, unless the union be of
the most ephemeral kind, to lead to profound disappointment.
It behooves us then to determine accurately what every fetish means
and what sort of personality is actually to be found associated with a
certain set of physical characteristics.
For I repeat, a man's or woman's personality is to be studied, not
in their attitude to their offspring, (for the most savage beast is
transformed by the paternal or maternal instinct into a marvel of
tenderness, kindness and patience), but in their relation to the social
herd and to their sexual mate.
Until the study of the ductless glands was given the importance we
attach to it today, the word personality denoted a set of attitudes
which many psychologists considered as mainly voluntary and amenable
to "moral suasion" and other forms of pedagogical approach of the
individual. When we read the works of Freud, Jung, Adler, Ferenczi and
their disciples, we never receive an intimation of the rôle which the
endocrines may play in moulding the human personality.
=Modern Endocrinologists= on the other hand, seem as indifferent
to psychology as the psychoanalysts of yesterday were to neurology and
endocrinology. Some of them assume that the personality IS the glands
and that our glands alone shape our thinking and our actions.
Both views are narrow and unsatisfactory. The personality is made up
primarily of an _organism_ which outward influences can or cannot
influence easily. Pleasure and pain then shape that organism thru
the memories which they leave in it in the form of infinitely small
modifications of our autonomic nervous system. That system, in its
turn, develops, thru constant stimulation, certain glands or allows
them to remain undeveloped thru lack of stimulation or thru negative
stimulation.
Some of those glands may, thru mere accident of growth, have been
already overdeveloped or stunted at birth. Individuals free from
complexes, however, may easily reestablish the balance of cravings
and social inhibitions which threatens at times to be upset by an
overdeveloped or underdeveloped gland. Complex-ridden individuals on
the other hand, use their glandular inferiority unconsciously as a
scapegoat for absurd or morbid behavior.
=Reciprocal Influence.= We cannot say, therefore, that our behavior
is _dictated_ by our glands, but it is influenced by them and
reciprocally, our behavior influences our glands. As I said in a
previous chapter, hyperthyroidism creates fear, but fear may also
create hyperthyroidism. Overdevelopment of the sexual apparatus creates
a predisposition to sexual overactivity, but sexual thoughts also have
a tendency to provoke unusual sexual activity.
There is one thing, however, for which the secretions of our ductless
glands are mainly responsible, and which is most important to consider
in a study of fetishes. They determine the shape, color and consistency
of many parts of our body, such as complexion, hair, teeth, skeletal
frame and growth.
A glance at a human body enables one to determine as accurately as an
autopsy would, the size of a person's thyroid, adrenals, etc.
As the development of those glands corresponds to the social and sexual
behavior of the individual, a review of the various bodily fetishes
from the endocrinological point of view will be helpful to the average
reader.
In order not to use too many technical terms we shall consider only
four of the endocrine glands, the pituitary, the thyroid, the adrenals
and the gonads.
=The Pituitary Gland= is a small body, the size of a pea, located
in the Turkish saddle (sella turcica), at the base of the brain and
closely behind the root of the nose. Some have called it a brain within
the brain with a miniature skull of its own within the skull.
The pituitary regulates the rhythms of the body, from the bony growth
of the skeleton to the rate of the heart and respiration, from the
periods of sleep and waking time to the periods of menstruation.
If a part of the pituitary of a dog is removed, the animal becomes
sleepy, fat, perverse in its sex cravings; puppies cease to grow when
submitted to such an operation; autopsy of many human dwarfs has
shown that their pituitary was undeveloped. People whose pituitary is
insufficient in its action have a tendency to lose their hair, have
a very dry skin, a dull mentality, sometimes suffer from epilepsy
and crave sugar in large quantities. They are generally obese, the
fat accumulating on the lower abdomen and the feet and ankles. Louis
Berman in his excellent book on the endocrines "Glands regulating the
Personality," presents as a perfect likeness of the "hypopituitary
type" the Fat Boy of the Pickwick Papers whose emloyment with Mr.
Wardle consisted in alternate sleeping and eating.
I will quote from Berman's book a description of the opposite type, the
individual in whom the pituitary gland is too active.
"If the overaction begins in childhood or adolescence, that is, before
puberty, there results a great elongation of the bones, so that a giant
is the consequence.... If the overaction happens after puberty, when
the long bones have set and can not grow longer, a peculiar, diffuse
enlargement of the individual occurs, especially of his hands and feet
and head. The nose, ears, lips and eyes get larger and coarser. All
those people are rather big and tall to begin with, heavy jawed, burly,
with overhanging eyebrows and an aggressive manner. Rabelais' most
famous character, Gargantua, belongs to the group. We recruit more drum
majors than prime ministers from among those people."
The pituitary has a strong influence on sexual activities. Young
animals whose pituitary has been surgically damaged will not be able to
reproduce themselves when reaching adulthood. Feeding pituitary glands
to hens on the other hand, causes them to lay thirty per cent more eggs
than they would naturally.
=The Thyroid= is a transformer of energy. It is a large reddish
mass located in front and on both sides of the trachea, consisting of
two lobes connected by a bridge of the same tissue.
The thyroid activates the fires of the body. An active thyroid means
life at "concert pitch." A sluggish thyroid means a slow, negative
existence.
To a poor thyroid correspond a pasty complexion, watery eyes with heavy
lids, a depressed pug nose, large ears, thin hair, scanty eyebrows and
eyelashes, short, brittle nails, irregular, bad teeth, broad, pudgy
hands and feet, generally cold.
With an overactive thyroid we observe a high color, sleeplessness,
restlessness, a tendency to lose weight, emotionalism, profuse
perspiration, bright, large eyes, good white teeth.
=The Adrenal Glands= are about the size of a bean and located on top of
the kidneys. They secrete adrenin which, when poured into the blood,
causes muscular tension, accelerates the heart beats and the breathing
rate, dilates the pupil and produces fear or anger according to the
relative size of the core (medulla) or envelop (cortex) of the adrenals.
In timid animals (and women) the cortex is thin, in courageous animals
(and men) the cortex is rather thick. According to the thickness of
your cortex you shall, in an emergency, resort to either fight or
flight.
A man with a thin cortex looks feminine, a woman with a thick cortex
looks mannish.
The adrenals control the color of the skin, the growth of hair, the
size of the canine teeth and the color of the teeth. To good adrenals
correspond an olive complexion, much hair on the body, rather yellowish
teeth and strong canines. The bearded lady of the circus is a woman
with overdeveloped adrenals and a thick cortex.
Weak adrenals go with cold extremities, a hairless body, poor canines,
lack of ambition, discouragement, fatigability, etc.
=The Gonads or Sex Glands=, testes in man, ovaries in woman,
affect thru the secretions of their interstitial cells, the pitch of
the voice, the growth of pubic hair, the size of the breasts, the
distribution of fat.
Good gonads mean masculine looking men and feminine looking women.
Poor gonads mean feminine looking men, hairless and with overdeveloped
breasts, talking in a high-pitched voice, with a tendency to obesity
and laziness (eunuchs); scrawny looking women who may later in
life grow abnormally fat, with, in their youth, flat chests, scanty
menstruation, etc.
Healthy gonads also retard senility. Gonads whose interstitial cells
have been rehabilitated by the Steinach operation bring a new youth to
the organism, mentally and physically.
Other glands, the thymus, pancreas, parathyroid, pineal body also
play an important part in shaping the human body and with it the
personality. The limits of this book do not allow me, however, to
discuss them even superficially.
CHAPTER XXIV
GLANDULAR PERSONALITIES
I stated in the preceding chapter that to every degree of glandular
development there corresponds a certain set of physical characteristics
which, in the love life, may be transformed into fetishes, (beautiful
features, laymen call them), which are necessary to arouse sexual
desire in one's mate, but which are not necessarily attractive to any
one else.
Those physical characteristics are, in turn, the tangible evidence of
the presence of certain mental attitudes and predispositions.
Individuals seeking in the love union, not merely a passing
gratification of their erotism, but a lifelong arrangement, gratifying
both the physical and the mental aspects of the organism, should be
trained to recognise the presence or absence of characteristics which
would make such an arrangement a lasting pleasure or a lasting torture.
For instance, the woman who falls in love with a man because her
fetishism requires a short, round, plump, man, with a good head of
hair but hairless limbs, must not expect him to ever grow into a
fighter, a good provider or even a companion of placid moods.
A man of that type is capricious, unstable, unresisting, and prefers
the gentler arts to any form of competitive struggle.
Likewise a man who picks out a woman for his mate because she has
pretty, doll-like features, is "cute" and slight, has a soft skin,
white and pink, must not expect to live peacefully with her on a farm,
or even on Main Street or in a distant suburb.
That type of woman grows easily emotional, is constantly in search of
new excitement and new pleasures. It is only at forty that she will
become more settled (and rotund), retaining, however, a certain jollity
of disposition.
=The Olive Skinned Dark Haired Type=, and the freckled, red haired
are very much alike. Both have a low forehead, hair is plentiful all
over the body, thick and coarse. Their canines are long and sharp.
Men and women of that type are good fighters, more easily angered
than scared; they are generally successful, with a tendency to
slave-driving. In the face of great difficulties, of painful
disappointment, however, they are prone to turn embittered and cranky.
People of this type who show large birth marks are likely to be
imbalanced and irritable. They may at times give the impression of
being weak and lazy, altho their minds may be extremely active.
=The Tall Type=, with strong frame, firm muscles, generous hands and
feet, a thick skin, oval face, head flattened at the sides, thick
eyebrows, prominent eyes, placed rather wide apart, large nose, square
chin, large upper middle incisors, heavy joints, hairy legs and arms,
is characterised by intelligence and self-control. At times that type
has a tendency to be a little calculating if not sordid.
=The Lean Type= with clean-cut features, thick hair, thick, long
eyebrows, big, keen eyes, sometimes slightly protruding, well developed
white teeth and a very masculine or very feminine mouth, according
to sex, is active, restless, a live wire, emotional and likely to be
easily prostrated by an unexpected defeat. Men and women of that type
have a tendency to be sleepless and to do too much planning at night
instead of resting peacefully.
=The Short, Obese, Sallow Type=, with a high forehead, scanty eyebrows,
deep set, narrow eyes, irregular teeth that decay early, with poor
circulation, cold and blue hands and feet, is rather "animal" and lacks
self-control.
=The Slender Type=, with narrow waist line, rounded limbs, long
chest, (which in women may carry poorly developed breasts), very white,
hairless skin, delicate features, silky hair, childish teeth, flat
feet, knock-knees, may be at times very brilliant, but is generally
queer, eccentric, irresponsible, perverse, dishonest. That type is
observed in many petty thieves, prostitutes, drug addicts, suicides.
Those are the most striking physical types. They present hundreds of
shadings and combinations.
=Environment.= The last mentioned type, if reared and kept in a
comfortable environment, among people of slightly lax behavior, of
artistic inclinations, exposed to none of life's onslaughts, may do
very well, and be considered by his associates as sensitive, gentle and
likeable. It is the pressure of social and economic conditions which
cause him to seek safety in theft (quick acquisition of wealth), drug
stupor, (escape from reality, perversion, escape from biological duties
connected with a normal sex life), or suicide, (return to the fetal
stage and escape from life).
Those people are children who can only thrive in the nursery.
Even as infant mortality depends solely upon the family income, the
death rate being five times as high in poor as in wealthy families, the
stability and social charm of almost any glandular type depends upon
the social pressure that type has to bear.
Almost any type is bearable, if not lovable, in a comfortable
environment requiring little planning and no fighting.
One of the details of the social pressure is, of course, the attempts
at repression or modification to which a personality may be subjected
by the life mate. The fault lies in this case, not so much with the
type in itself, however inferior it may be, as with the incurable
optimist who attempts the impossible task of changing a human
personality.
In other words, it might be said, that in an environment which exerts
no pressure on the individual, that is, where there is abundance of
wealth and comfort, one can select a mate with bad fetishes, that is,
indicative of weakness, while those less favored financially must lay
greater stress on fetishes denoting strength and fighting ability.
=What Teeth Indicate.= Fraenkel and Kaplan have pointed to the teeth as
indicators of the general glandular condition of the individual and of
his probable mental and physical powers. Good middle incisors indicate
good thyroid and pituitary, hence strength and balance.
Good lateral incisors indicate sexual power; good canines indicate
strong adrenals, hence good fighting ability.
Lack of any of those teeth, or their stunted growth, gives naturally,
the contrary indication as to make up and character.
One must not forget either that certain fetishes are superficial and
likely to disappear early in life. Blondes may turn into brunettes;
sveltness may yield to invading obesity, altho this last change is to
be blamed more on the individual's stupidity than upon his glandular
condition; a white skin may become yellow, etc.
Preference should, therefore, be given, when in doubt, to more durable
fetishes, stature, strength, general appearance, attitude, which are
less likely to change with the years.
=Matrimonial Engineers.= Here is a new field for educators; there
may grow from this very new knowledge a new profession, that of the
matrimonial engineer, who will diagnose the chances of happiness two
human beings may have, if they decide to associate their destinies.
Much has to be studied and experimented upon before any one can
consider himself qualified to pass final judgments upon the decisions
to which love leads couples.
"However" as Berman writes, "the fact remains that, though we are only
upon the first rungs of the ladder, we are on the ladder. We possess a
new way of looking upon humanity, a fresh transforming light upon these
strange phenomena, ourselves. Of the ugly achievements of that dreadful
century, the nineteenth, the most illuminating was the discovery of
itself as the ape-parvenu. Yes, we are all animals now, it said to
itself, and set its teeth in the cut-throat game of survival. But there
was no understanding in that evil motto of a disillusioned heart. The
ape-parvenu, desperately lonely and secretive, has still to understand
itself....
"Personality embraces much more than merely the psychic attributes. It
is not the least important of the lessons of endocrine analysis that
here is no soul, and no body either. Rather a soul-body or body-soul,
or the patterns of the living flame. The closer tracking of the
internal secretions leads us into the secrets of the living flame, why
it lives and how it lives, the strange diversities of its coloring and
music and the odd variations in its energy, vitality and longevity.
Why it flickers, why it flares and glares, spurts, flutters, burns hard
or soft, orange-blue or yellow."
CHAPTER XXV
LOVE AND MOTHER LOVE
Is the perfect mother a perfect wife? Is the perfect mother, in every
case, the result of mental perfection and ethical superiority? Or is
there a hidden strife between love and motherhood? Is mother love
always the enchanting image presented to us by poets and intimidated
sons? Or is it an alloy of higher qualities, biological necessity and
egotistical neurotic cravings?
I do not intend to settle all those problems within the limits of a
short chapter, but rather to point out some of the morbid components of
mother love which a psychoanalyst detects in his women patients, and
which, exaggerated in the neurotic, exist to a slight degree in every
woman.
=Sex Cravings and Motherhood Cravings= are so closely related that few
psychologists have ever dreamt of dissociating them for the purpose of
study. The average moralist, who prefers cheap popularity to scientific
accuracy, excuses the existence of sex cravings only on one condition,
that they become absolutely subservient to motherhood cravings.
The birth control agitation which is making such rapid headway at the
present day, on the other hand, means, in part, that while motherhood
may be the consequence of unregulated sex activities, it is not, for
all women, their conscious motive.
Why is it that some women with an erotic disposition and a voluptuous
physique, fear pregnancy while other women, apparently indifferent to
men, crave motherhood?
Physiology does not give us a very satisfactory answer to this
question. Endocrinologists tell us that sex cravings are determined
by the ovaries and motherhood cravings by the posterior part of the
pituitary gland, but this leaves us exactly where we were when we
started out.
=Pregnancy and Health.= All physiologists will agree with the statement
that in a normal, complex free woman, a type which unfortunately,
the complexity of our civilization does not allow us to behold very
frequently, pregnancy is accompanied by an unusual activity of all
the organism, imparting to the female a sense of great power and,
consequently, of well-being, mental and physical. The adrenals work
at high pressure to produce the muscular tone necessary in gestation.
The thyroid is called upon to transform more and more of the electric
current produced by the brain cells. New glands of a temporary nature
develop in the woman's body, regulating her life functions more
accurately and imparting to her a feeling of dreamy happiness and
relaxation.
After delivery, another part of her body enters into activity, her
mammary glands, so closely related to the genitals that any stimulation
of either region finds a strong echo in the other. Many are the women
in whom lactation produces intensely erotic feelings affording them at
times full gratification.
=Fear of Pregnancy.= Unfortunately, civilisation has surrounded
motherhood with so many complications, social, ethical, financial,
sentimental, etc., that in very few women, indeed, is that biological
process an unmixed pleasure, dissociated from all pain and anxiety.
Vomiting, which expresses the female's disgust for her condition, or
her mate or the offspring; cramplike tensions, expressing her worries
about her appearance, her anxious thought of financial or social
consequences; anxiety states, affecting the adrenals, which discolor
her face (pregnancy mask), make pregnancy hideous in many cases.
Even the process of parturition seems to have become more painful and
dangerous with advancing civilisation.
Any one who has seen, for instance, Mexican women barely interrupting
their labor in the fields to give birth to a child, and resuming their
tasks an hour later, must realise that autosuggestion has much to do
with the physical disability of the civilised woman in child bed.
In spite of the complexities of modern life, the female organism which
is not affected by fear complexes, must expect a pleasure premium from
pregnancy, lactation and other duties of motherhood. This would supply
us with an organic basis for the mother's attachment to her offspring
which is observable almost in every animal species.
That a number of women may be found who hate their children owing to
the suffering to which unwelcome motherhood and difficult parturition
have subjected them, is easily understandable. In fact we face a
vicious circle. The unwelcome pregnancy will be an unpleasant one,
followed almost unavoidably by painful delivery, etc.
=When Mother Love is Lacking= or when a mother hates a very young
child, the psychologist must look for morbid unconscious influences
which analysis should remove as soon as possible.
Stekel, the Viennese analyst, tells of a woman who was very fond of
three of her daughters but, for some mysterious reason, detested the
fourth one. Analysis revealed that she imagined she saw every one of
her husband's faults reproduced and magnified in the unfortunate child.
She also imagined that she loved her husband very deeply.
The year when the unloved child was conceived, however, she had fallen
in love with another man, a young poet. She remained "technically
faithful" to her husband, altho, when in his arms, it was always the
poet to whom she was giving herself.
She hoped sentimentally that the forthcoming child would look like
her platonic lover but the little girl reproduced with striking
faithfulness her father's features.
Unwilling to accept her dislike of her husband, the romantic mother had
transferred it to the child who served as a scapegoat in various ways.
=Frigid Wives.= We often observe a great craving for motherhood in
frigid wives.
Let us not rehash on this occasion the poetical and silly statement
that the frigid woman is one whose love has been spiritualised and can
only find an outlet thru her children.
The frigid woman is a cripple or a neurotic. Either she was born with
poorly developed genitals or she was made abnormal by the unconscious
fear of yielding to man's domination, or by a morbid sense of sin due
to asceticism, or by painful or humiliating sex experiences before or
after marriage.
Her craving for motherhood is not infrequently the hypocritical
expression of her desire for intercourse, which her puritan training
would otherwise make lewd and sinful. It is, at times, a desire for
the superiority which age and bodily size will give her over infants,
helpless and inarticulate.
This is why, in a good many cases, a perfect mother makes a detestable
wife. Unable to dominate her husband she craves children whom she can
dominate with a minimum of bodily strength and mental effort, and she
devotes all her time and care to them.
When the children grow up and develop independent personalities, the
neurotic mother often loses her interest in them. How many times have
we heard women (and men) remark that children should remain "babies,"
that young children are far more lovable than adolescents, etc.
=Mother and Father Love= differ in several respects.
Fathers look upon their children, especially their sons, as a visible
proof of their virile power. In their sons they see their own image,
the more attractive to them as they are more egotistical.
The weak, infirm or unsuccessful son, however, receives little love at
the hands of his father. He is not a credit to his progenitor.
No mother, on the other hand, seems to neglect a cripple or idiotic
child. Be it male or female, it is a human being which she can dominate
easily. The more neurotic she is, the more she will idolise the
ill-favored child.
=Mothers Always Adore Their Sons=, young and old, for they behold
in them males whom they can easily dominate.
And fathers love their daughters, young or old, for similar reasons.
The relations of aging mothers and growing daughters, however, are
almost invariably tinged with a certain hostility, overt or concealed,
according to the women's habits, training, manners, etc.
=Girls at the Flapper Stage= who resent the attraction which their
mothers still wield over younger men, constantly remind them of their
age and bid them to behave in a way more in keeping with their mature
years.
The flapper's mother on the other hand, who sees her daughter gradually
monopolising the attention of men callers, reminds the girl with
monotonous regularity that she is only a child and bids her to behave
as befits her tender years.
The mother resents her daughter's fresh beauty, the daughter, her
mother's experience in dealing with males.
Both watch each other closely, protecting each other's modesty and
virtue and trying to make each other's life as uninteresting and
uneventful as possible.
The girl becomes an ethical critic on her mother's smoking or gowns.
The mother blossoms into a puritan who allows her daughter no freedom
and seems to have entirely forgotten her own girlhood years.
The strife lasts until the daughter is old enough to have her own
circle of friends and no longer needs a chaperone. After which mother
and daughter, if matched intellectually, may once more become friends.
=Repressed Hatred.= I have treated a number of neurotic mothers who
seemed to be obsessed by their adoration of their children. That
exaggerated tenderness was, as I mentioned in another chapter, a cover
for death wishes directed toward those children.
Some never allowed knives to be left in evidence in the house, some did
not dare to carry their children in their arms on the stairs, while
boarding trains, or while near open windows.
One never dared to administer a medicine to her little girl "for fear
of making a mistake and poisoning her." One did not dare to bathe her
child for fear of drowning him "accidentally" in the tub.
Neurotic women who do not wish to become mothers and rebel against
motherhood, (which some of them consider as a symbol of woman's
inferior role), often compensate for their lack of love by an almost
criminal indulgence and weakness toward their children.
Unable to give them genuine love, they pretend to idolise them and are
apparently unable to deny any of their wishes. This, in last analysis,
is simply a total indifference to the little ones' welfare. That type
of mother spoils her children and makes them unfit to face life and its
emergencies.
Her extravagant adulation, her outbursts of artificial tenderness,
however, do not always deceive the children themselves who feel
automatically, thru nervous and muscular imitation, the tensions of
their mother's body. The little son of the woman who was obsessed
by the fear of drowning him (and who compensated for her murderous
cravings by showering the wildest caresses upon him), could not be
prevailed upon to ever go near the water until her obsessions, of
which, he, of course, had no conscious knowledge, had been removed by
psychoanalytic treatment.
Neurotic mother love trains children for a neurotic life.
CHAPTER XXVI
SHOULD WINTER MATE WITH SPRING?
This is the poetical way in which many newspaper editors have been
introducing to their readers accounts of two recent incidents which,
at the time of writing (this chapter), keep headline writers busy. One
of the news items is the idyll of an heiress, still in her teens, who
has made up her mind to marry a man of fifty or thereabout. The other
is the heartbreak of a seventy year old husband, deserted by his twenty
year old wife.
The mating of winter and spring is a daily occurrence, both seasons
being divided up about equally between the two sexes. The two unnatural
matches which I mentioned above, however, stand in a class by
themselves.
Many a young idler, gifted with good looks, has managed to play on
the erotic feelings of some woman in her dotage and to annex a goodly
portion of her wealth. Many an attractive girl, seeking the line of
least effort, has been known to prefer a union with a silly old man to
the daily struggle for existence.
=Disinterested Brides.= In the two cases under discussion, on the other
hand, no suspicion of sordidness could be cast on the bride-that-was or
on the bride-to-be.
Both are wealthy, one of them immensely so. The bridegroom to be is, if
not a poor man, at least in very modest circumstances.
A genuine love match in both cases. But the genuineness of love did
not prevent a catastrophe in one case and will probably bring about a
catastrophe in the other case as well.
In both cases, the men are probably normal and yielding to the very
natural attraction of youth combined with beauty and refinement.
Both women, however, are abnormal, altho one of them, the runaway wife,
may have regained her normality and awakened from her absurd dream.
Both are, or were, the victims of a fixation of the most acute type, on
the father image indicating a morbid neurotic disposition.
Such unions can hardly ever hold out any promise of lasting happiness.
=The Case of Wagner.= There is, of course, the famous example of Wagner
who, at fifty-seven carried off the beautiful wife of Hans von Bülow,
almost thirty years his junior, and lived happily with her until his
death. But Wagner was at the time a marvelous example of physical and
mental activity, energy and creative power. In no way, barring his
facial appearance, could he suggest age or decay to his young wife. He
remained to the last a romantic figure.
The glamor, however, which may surround a successful composer with a
picturesque past, is not likely to dazzle in any way the bride of a
riding master or of a New England manufacturer.
=A Parent Fixation=, as I explained in the chapters on the Family
Romance and on Incest, is the more acute as it drives its victim to
seek a closer duplicate of the parent type.
The man who seeks a woman for his mate because his mother was a woman
is influenced by the most normal and biologically valuable of mother
fixations. The race would come to an end but for that form of fixation.
The son of a blonde mother who cannot love a woman unless she is also
a blonde, is less normal and less free in his choice of a mate than
the preceding type. He is inhibited by childhood memories, but then,
education and civilisation are little more than inhibitions caused by
childhood memories. That type simply marries in "his set" and can lead
an otherwise very normal life.
He, however, who is irresistibly attracted by a woman exactly like his
mother, not only as far as appearance, but also as far as age goes,
is a childish, regressive neurotic, seeking the safety of childhood
conditions and obsessed at times by unconscious incestuous cravings.
=The Rock of Physical Incompatibility= is often one on which such
adventures are shipwrecked. A very young woman, ignorant of the sex
life and its problems, unable to realise its meaning before marriage,
may develop immediately after her union to an elderly man a very
passionate temperament.
Either she will repress her cravings for physical love, which her too
mature mate is unable to gratify, and she will develop anxiety states
or hysteria.
Or she will be too healthy to repress her desires, and her
disappointment may change her love into scorn, especially when
conversation with other women or a clever suitor opens her eyes to what
is lacking in her life.
A separation, sometimes complicated by the usual triangle situation,
may become unavoidable.
There are cases in which both mates are frankly neurotic and were drawn
together as invalids and weak-minded often are, by the similarity of
their predicament.
=The Plight of Two Neurotics.= Both of them may, as I observed it
once, seek safety in a mock-incestuous relationship, the older mate,
seeking safety in a union with an immature human being, the younger
mate in a union with the parent image. In one case which I have in
mind, the husband, fifty-five years old, had been several times on the
verge of exposure for unlawful "liberties" he took with very young
girls. The wife, a few days after her father's death, married the old
man who had been her father's associate and who had tried to seduce her
when she was barely ten.
She visited me when a new scandal in which her husband became
implicated caused her to leave him. She was considerably "mixed up"
for, while young men had begun to attract her, she felt extremely
self-conscious in their presence and could only enjoy herself in the
company of elderly men who, in turn, reminded her too much of the
nightmare thru which she had lived for two years.
A pious Catholic, she solved the conflict prematurely, before I had
time to bring insight into her mind, by fleeing from all sorts of men
and into a convent.
Other cases have a less tragic history: A young woman of twenty-eight
who had never been happy with her husband, (thirty), took advantage of
the numberless opportunities war work and war drives gave to women, to
become faithless to her husband. She had four short-lived affairs with
men twice her age, then "broke down" when her husband secured a divorce
for adultery. Analysis gave her insight into her father fixation which
was not very deep and might never have driven her into overt acts but
for the unusual conditions in which she found herself.
She is now happily remarried to a man of her age.
=What the Community Says.= Mates whose ages are out of proportion,
are often thrown into deep discord by the pressure of the community's
criticism. They might thrive on a desert island or on a farm or, as in
the case of an explorer I knew, when surrounded almost continuously by
an "inferior" race whose opinion they can easily disregard.
The community's smiles or open disapproval, on the other hand, are a
heavy burden, especially for the more neurotic mate, who is likely to
feel very self-conscious in everything he or she does.
The too young wife and the too young husband may at first smile when
hotel clerks, shopkeepers, chauffeurs, etc., allude to their aged
mate as "your father" or "your mother." After a while, a feeling
of embarrassment will get the best of their sense of humor. Shame
and humiliation will soon set in when those mistakes are repeated
frequently. When the ego is wounded by love complications, unless the
individual is a pronounced masochist, love fares very badly.
It turns into hatred for the mate causing the humiliating remarks, as
unconscious incest ideas gradually break into consciousness and provoke
protective measures, critical attitudes, disgust, etc.
In one case which came under my observation, the community's criticisms
worked as effectively as psychoanalytic treatment would have.
=Having Her Fixation-Fling.= A young woman married to a man of her age,
but discontented and frigid, had a passing liaison with an elderly
man, which exposed her to many jeers on the part of her associates who
suspected it.
She was very intelligent and well acquainted with psychoanalytical
literature and only consulted me to make sure of her correct diagnosis
of her own case.
She did the proper thing under the circumstances, confessed a part of
the truth to her husband, went away with him for a while and has been
happy with him ever since. She had had her "fixation fling" as she
called it, had sown her neurotic wild oats and ridden herself of a
morbid element which may never bother her again.
This sort of solution, however, is one which is neither scientific nor
safe, for the person affected by a fixation of that morbid sort is at
the mercy of a recurrence of it, should life's problems compel him to
seek once more the line of exaggerated safety and regression to the
childish level of conduct.
=Physical Results.= If matches between the young and old were
successful physically and otherwise, they would be extremely beneficial
to the older mate. Normal sexual stimulation, far from driving the aged
to an early grave, as old time puritans have taught us, is probably the
most potent factor of rejuvenation.
The Steinach operation which enables the hormone-producing cells of the
gonads to overdevelop at the expense of the seminiferous cells, seems,
when successful, to confer new youth upon the entire organism.
Lorand, Stekel, Hufeland and others hold that sexual activity in the
old, when it is possible, is conducive to longevity.
Lorand mentions many interesting cases in which remarriage at
incredibly advanced ages seemed in no way to curtail one's life span.
Thomas Parré, who died at 162, was arrested for assault at 102 and
married again at 120. The Dane Drackenberg, who died at 150, married at
111 a woman of 60, became a widower at 130, and tried to woo a young
peasant girl who, however, refused to accept him.
Peter Albrecht, who died at 123, married again at 80 and had seven
children. Gurgon Duglas, who died at 120, married at 85 and had 8
children, the youngest one being born when the father was 103. Baron
Baravicion dès Capelles died at 104, having had four wives, the last
one whom he married when 80.
Lorand adds that, according to his observations, old people with an
erotic temperament have a better chance of survival than "cold blooded"
ones.
Hufeland says that married people live much longer than the unmarried
and that no bachelor was ever known to reach a ripe age.
The sudden bloom and general appearance of rejuvenation of old maids
finally finding a mate, of widows who remarry and of neglected wives
who give themselves to a potent lover, is a good physiological argument
why winter should try to seek the violent stimulation of a union with
spring.