Bi-sexual love; the homosexual neurosis

by Wilhelm Stekel

II

The development of Sexuality—The Bisexual Ideal of all persons—The fundamental Law of Sexuality—The role of homosexuality in Neurosis—Womanly men and mannish women—Gerontophilia—Love of Prostitutes—The significance of Sexual symbols—Various masks of Homosexuality—Transvestites—A case of Transvestitism—The significance of the hose as a Symbol—Love at first sight—The critical age—The pleasure Seeker—The case of a man passing through the critical age—Neurotic types of homosexuality—The Don Juan type—Psychoanalysis of a Don Juan—Passionate falling in love during advanced age, significant—Analysis of a Don Juan.

Das Christentum gab dem Eros Gift zu trinken:—er starb zwar nicht daran, aber er entartete zum Laster.—Nietzsche.

II

Christianity has given Eros a poison cup; Eros was not killed thereby but has been turned into a taint.—Nietzsche.

Freud who supports the theory of bisexuality with all the weight of his authority, points out that hitherto we have entertained wrong notions concerning the nature of the relations between sexual instinct and sexual goal. The sexual instinct is at first independent of its object and owes not its origin to the excitations roused by the sexual object. The earliest stage of man he has designated as autoerotic and he has described for us the infantile form of onanism.

The development of sexuality may be conceived, broadly, as follows: the first stage is autoerotic, although all-erotic stimuli are also present (suckling at the mother’s breast, caressing of the infant, etc.). The child is more sensitive to all forms of excitation and all vegetative functions are surcharged with pleasurable feelings more strongly in him than in the adult. Sexual life is autoerotic, but it is bisexually autoerotic. The child makes no distinction between the persons to whom it is attached. Young or old, male or female,—it is all alike to him. But autoerotism is characteristic of this sexual life. Gradually this feature is overshadowed by the appearance of the all-erotic tendency. At first the child seeks to find the goal for its sexuality among the possible objects of his limited surroundings. Just as the first period of autoerotism is overcome so the normal fixation upon one’s family must be eventually outgrown. (Thou shalt leave thy father and thy mother and follow thine husband!) But even during the earliest period all libidinous excitations are distinctly bisexual. This bisexuality persists until the period of puberty, that is, throughout that stage of sexual indifference, of which Desoir also speaks. But the tendency to bisexuality is unable to withstand the powerful stress of puberty. The girlish boy becomes a man, the tomboy girl becomes a young woman. The development of the secondary sexual characters displace man’s heterosexual characteristics with the stamp of monosexuality. Usually at this time there develops also a decisive struggle against homosexuality leading, sooner or later, to the complete suppression of that tendency. (Naturally there are exceptions, as some persons retain their bisexual character traits without trouble throughout life.) I have not examined a person thus far in whom I failed to recognise clearly the signs of juvenile homosexuality.

It is proper to hold that the neurotics show themselves functionally bisexual. Among the neurotics the males often have little or no beard growth, plump and roundish bodily figure, high voice and soft facial features, especially nose and lips; they have small hands, small feet, their penis is remarkably small, scant hairy growth upon their mons veneris, cryptorchism (undescended testicle), hernias. On the other hand neurotic women show hairy growth on face, flat chest, strong, male figure—more angular than is characteristic of women,—large, full hands, large feet, disorders of menstruation including amenorrhea (complete suppression), infantile uterus, male larynx and deep voice. I do not maintain that this is invariably the case. Now and then I have met with exceptions; but I believe that a thorough investigation would support this contention.

The tendency to neurosis is due to the strong instinctive cravings which manifest themselves bisexually.

There is a process at work which I am inclined to designate as the fundamental law of sex. According to this law every individual tends to sum up all his instinctive sexual cravings in one image. Every person seeks the sexual ideal capable of satisfying all his sexual longings.

The sexual ideal of the ancients was, clearly, a bisexual being. Divinity is the ideal erotic goal magnified. The first divinities were always bisexual. They were either women with a penis or men with a female breast. The longing for the bisexual ideal may be traced throughout humanity. In his Banquet, Plato has excellently expressed this longing in the well-known words of Aristophanes.

We feel that we are utilizing but a portion of our sexual energy and that the remainder is allowed to remain fallow. The various sexual trends are sometimes so split up in life that no part of them is sufficient alone to furnish the whole driving power for the proper sexual activity. This is the case with those who apparently manifest a diminished sexual craving, as Freud and Havelock Ellis have observed with reference to certain homosexuals. This condition is only apparent, however, and analysis discloses that it is not real. Persons of this type, apparently asexual, really vacillate back and forth between various possible sexual goals never reaching the stage of aggression, because they are incapable of attaining a sufficient summation of sexual libido. Their libido splits up into a number of autoerotic acts, through which the fore-pleasure instead of centering on a focus is expended in small instalments, as I have pointed out when I described the various forms of cryptic onanism.

I repeat: the ideal of every person is to be able to concentrate all libido upon a single goal. That explains why the homosexual does not seek the typical male, except in the rarest instances. Freud has drawn our attention to this apparent contrast. Many homosexuals, particularly those who, themselves, possess strong virility, do not seek out the complete male for their ideal, but the womanly male. They prefer the female type of man, men in female clothes, or of female habitus,—a fact which has shaped a great deal the course of male prostitution. The male prostitute endeavors always to imitate the female through the use of trinkets, corset, the adoption of articles of female apparel, close shaving, peculiar gait and speech.

What the homosexual seeks consciously the latent homosexual, as we designate the neurotic and, in smaller measure, every individual who acts exclusively as a heterosexual, endeavors to attain through vague yearnings which he fails to understand but which are strong enough to break through.

Let us now turn our attention to these hidden forms of sexuality, before attempting to explain the rise of the manifest and of the overt forms of homosexuality. Among the latent homosexuals who struggle with all the problems of bisexuality which to them appear unsolvable and inscrutable, and who have recourse to various compromises which bring them some temporary relief, we may find the various transitional stages leading all the way up to the overt forms of homosexuality.

Latent homosexuality is a fact, not uncovered by analysis, but analysis has tremendously enlarged our understanding of the mental processes involved. The deeper we penetrate into the psychic mechanism of the neuroses and psychoses, the more vital appears to us the role of homosexuality. The difference between my method of analysis and the customary anamnesis is shown nowhere so clearly, as in connection with the disclosures of the neurotics regarding their hidden homosexuality. No other component of the sexual instinct undergoes repression to such an extent or shifts so far from the sphere of ordinary consciousness. I know persons who have frankly adopted a great many forms of paraphilia but have completely repressed the homosexual component of their condition. I have analysed, for instance, a young woman who had quite an eventful life history. She became neurotic because she could neither master nor suppress her homosexuality. Like all other neurotics she skilfully covered her homosexuality and this trait of hers remained unknown to her consciousness.

It will be helpful to the beginner, therefore, to know the various disguises which serve as masks for homosexuality. As is well known, all neurotic symptoms are the results of compromise and they cover, on the one hand, as much as they disclose, on the other. The tendency to adopt compromises, which is typical of the split personality, is a subject worthy of special consideration. The most antagonistic impulses are stressed and summed up under the same symptom. This tendency to adopt compromises governs the mental life of the neurotic. It is seen in dreams as well as in political life, in artistic products no less than in neurotic symptoms. If the need to adjust opposing tendencies under some compromise is not met successfully a condition of uncertainty arises,—of vacillation and doubt. Doubt is the result and the sign of unsuccessful compromises.

This superficial building up of compromises is seen most clearly in the case of homosexuality. The neurotic endeavors to focus the most divergent tendencies of his psyche upon the same goal. His ideal is a being at once male, female, and infantile (and perhaps also beast and angel at the same time).

The neurotics always describe their ideal in a way which corresponds to this polymorphous picture. The males rave about women of a strikingly manly bearing; heavy, angular figure, flat chest, energetic, bony facial features, short hair, deep voice, traces of facial hair or of a mustache. The hidden bisexual ideal is thus partially fulfilled (Woman with penis or man with vagina!). The repressed cravings, thus partly freed, serve during sexual aggression and further the attainment of gratification.

When nature fails to meet these needs, external features, such as dress and ornaments are brought into play to enhance the illusion. The symbol is made to replace reality. Men fall in love with women who wear tights (or who sport mannish hats, officers’ coats, walking canes, etc.) and consequently they are attracted by actresses, fencers, cycle-riders, mountain-climbers, horseback-riders, or by girls whom they chance to see in under-pants. Others require of their sexual objects the adoption of various male symbols before their libido is roused. The woman, appeals to them, for instance, at best, wearing a military blouse, a mannish hat, or in some male attitude or other, capable of yielding a suggestion of something genuine.

Women display parallel tendencies. They fall in love with men who are beardless, gynecomastic, men who have a large panniculus adiposus, broad hips, delicate throat, female voice, or who wear long coats and long hair. I will quote here only a few examples: the priest, the physician in his hospital coat, particularly surgeons with graceful arms, female impersonators, beardless men, or men with high voices who perfume themselves and wear bracelets, and artists with long, flowing locks of hair are likely to prove very attractive. (Perhaps the great erotic attraction exercised by all artists is due to their pronounced bisexual character.)

Physical factors are also of great significance. Women who smoke, ride, go mountain climbing and who are generally aggressive, make a very strong impression upon the neurotic. This is true also about the influence of men with strong womanly features upon women. Many neurotic men dream of being overpowered. (The “pleasure without guilt” principle!). Energetic women fascinate them, just as delicate, sensitive men fascinate the hysterical woman.

Less known are other masks of homosexuality which I now mention. The love of old women (gerontophilia) and passion for children often covers a homosexual tendency. Persons deviating from the complete male or female type often prove irresistible for the same reason. Age eventually wipes out the typical secondary sexual characters. Man becomes like an old woman and old women acquire remarkable male features (including mustache) and male habits. Children also may figure as a strong bisexual attraction since they lack the secondary sexual characters.

A peculiar cryptic form under which male homosexuality manifests itself, is the love of prostitutes. The unconscious factor which here appeals to the homosexual component of the sexual libido is the fact that the body of the prostitute has been previously enjoyed by other men.[15]

This process,—mediation through the other sex,—plays a great role in homosexuality in various other ways. The prostitute may be enjoyed only in the presence of one or more male witnesses. The carrying out of coitus jointly in one room, looking on, or allowing onlookers, also betray this motive besides others.

In many cases the form of sexual intercourse preferred betrays a latent homosexuality. Men choose to lie underneath, or carry out coitus a posteriori, or per anum. Women show corresponding preferences. They attain supreme enjoyment only if they are on top during intercourse. Many paraphilias (fellatio, cunnilingus) betray a homosexual trend besides showing sexual infantilism.

Various external signs may betray a strong homosexual trend or mark a sudden outbreak of it. Men suddenly decide to cut or shave off their beard. They unexpectedly turn their interests to sports which give them the opportunity of watching men undressed. They become passionate fans around prize rings, are seen at sun bathing establishments and sporting places, or rave about the culture of nakedness as a hygienic fad, etc. Women suddenly find that they cannot possibly wear their long hair and decide to cut it short. Sometimes they do it without telling their husband so as to ‘pleasantly’ surprise him. They change fashions, take readily to English jackets, tight coats and Girardi hats and begin to show tremendous interest in the emancipation of women.

Joint suicide as a mask is a subject to which I can only refer briefly. Persons who do not have the courage to live together are the ones likely to commit suicide jointly. The suicide of two friends, male or female, is often due to unsatisfied homosexuality, however ideal, apparently, the motives may be. A life which does not yield to the full gratification craved by the unconsciously operating instincts, loses its zest. Frenssen states: “Sun, moon and stars no longer carry any message to one who has lost interest in them; a thing degenerates unless cultivated assiduously; it is so with everything. Indifference deadens; love breathes life into everything.”

I have already pointed out in my treatise on Onanism that those who have not given up the habit may give expression to tendencies distinctly homosexual through their autoerotic acts. The feeling of guilt is due in part, although only in part, to this cause. The greater hold the habit has upon the individual the stronger also seems the homosexual trait back of it. Many onanists are asocial in their inclinations and avoid group life. But I know a number who are enthusiastic ‘joiners,’ belonging to numerous organisations and always eager to assume honorary membership in all sorts of clubs. That female lawyers are particularly apt to show homosexual tendencies is well known and the fact is often exploited in the comic papers under slight disguise.

Lastly, I must mention another important form of masked homosexuality: the artistic. Poets whose preference is the delineation of female characters are partly homosexual. They perceive accurately the female emotions, they are able to portray with fidelity the life of that sex, because they carry within their breast, as it were, a goodly portion of womanhood. Chamisso described so wonderfully womanly love, because he himself was largely woman, as his portrait is enough to indicate. Painters may also show the reverse tendency. They paint preferably male scenes or, as sculptors, create statues of men. Their appraisal of esthetic values betrays their hidden homosexuality. Some artists find the male figure much more beautiful than the female, others find the male body repulsive. An overstressed aversion betrays the homosexual trend as clearly as an emotionally overstressed preference.

The choice of a pseudonym may also prove a characteristic sign. Just as the transvestites (wearers of clothes of opposite sex) clearly show their homosexual peculiarities thereby so do men choosing a female pseudonym for their contributions or writings, often betray their homosexuality by the act. Of course, in the case of women, the choice of a male nom de plume is determined partly by the well known common notion that works obtain a wider circulation if attributed to male authorship. At any rate, it betrays a desire to be taken for a man, by the readers, at least. A woman writer whom I know and who is active under a male nom de plume has told me, as an objection to this view, that she is decidedly interested in men. She confessed herself a Messalina. But back of such an unsatisfied craving, there stands, as I have already mentioned, homosexuality, the blind instinct, ungratified. This woman preferred relations with well known “women killers,” typical Cassanovas. Obviously, the thought of the numerous female conquests must have furnished here the chief attraction. Such men carry about them the aroma of many women. They must be proven masters of the art of love and a woman is disposed to expect of them special thrills and, possibly, new refinements of the art; but the heroes, as a rule, when tried fail to come up to the expectations lodged in them; they in turn become easily tired of their new conquest. The unsatisfied homosexual male is incapable of gratifying completely the love hungry homosexual woman. (That is the tragedy back of many unhappy marriages.) It is also significant that this woman, who otherwise had allowed herself an unusual degree of freedom about sexual matters, looked upon homosexuality as Tabu.

I have mentioned only a small number of the possible masks of homosexuality. Some of the screens are so transparent they cannot but be noticed even by those who are still novices in psychoanalytic matters. One marries a girl, for instance, after falling in love with that girl’s brother; or a girl marries the brother of her homosexual choice, as I have clearly shown in connection with the highly instructive case history No. 93, in my study of Anxiety States.

For this reason a friend’s wife may be a very dangerous person and this mediation of homosexuality through a third person has often been the cause of terrific household dramas. I know men who are regularly prone to fall in love with their friends’ sweethearts, naturally, without suspecting that back of this proclivity there stands the hidden passion for their friend.

In conclusion I may point out another very significant mask of homosexuality. I refer to psychic impotence, which shows itself particularly during attempted intercourse with respectable women. Men potent with prostitutes but unable to carry out coitus with a ‘decent’ woman, are latent homosexuals whose libido is sufficiently roused in the presence of the prostitute by the realisation that the woman has been used before by another man. Of course, a relative impotence of this character has many other determinants. But the factor here mentioned is never absent.

The study of this cryptic form of homosexuality alone will enable us to appreciate the inestimable role of bisexuality in the mental life of modern man.

Other forms of masked homosexuality, manifested in phobias and compulsion, I must mention only superficially. There are men who become extremely uneasy if some other man walks directly behind them, men who are unable to remain with another man alone in a room, men who always dream of scenes in which some man points a revolver or knife at them, or who have the uncomfortable feeling that some hard substance, perhaps nothing more than an indurated cylindrical mass of fæces, is pressing within their rectum. With these peculiarities such men betray their homosexuality, just as the paranoiacs do with their delusions of persecution.

Women show similar phobias and more especially morbid anxieties often centering around servant girls. Women who change servant girls continually, who worry themselves over the servant problem or quarrel with the girls, or feel impelled to touch them (acts which really take the place of sexual deeds) are frequently homosexual. Similarly, various forms of fetichism may be a cover for homosexuality.

It is plainly obvious that the study of sexual masks promises to further immensely our knowledge about matters of sex. At the same time it is clear that the opposition of many circles to the new studies must remain a tremendous one. Possibly a great deal of the opposition to the new psychology has its roots in this very peculiarity of human nature. Their basic bisexual predisposition is precisely what men are least disposed to recognise.

These general statements I now propose to prove on the basis of various observations from my practice illustrating the great role played by the homosexual components in the love life of average men and women. This will show clearly why I never use such terms as “contrary,” or “inverted” sexual feeling, and why I never speak of “inversion,” or of “perversion,” when I discuss homosexuality. The very purpose of this work is to bring out the homosexual components in the life of every person and to bring out the normal feature of that state. For normal is everything that is natural; and from the standpoint of nature we are never monosexual and always bisexual.

I regret that I must contradict so worthy an investigator as Hirschfeld. But I fail to understand the need of setting up, besides the hetero- and homosexuals, a third group, the so-called transvestites.[16] Among the transvestites (personifiers) we find the most pronounced examples of masked homosexuality and stressed bisexuality. This is a designation proposed by Hirschfeld for men who—obeying an overwhelming inner impulse—wear women’s apparel and for women who similarly attire themselves in things belonging to a man’s wardrobe. In the course of an extensive review (Zentrbl. f. Psychoanalyse, vol. I, p. 55.) I pointed out that it is unnecessary to consider the transvestites as a distinct sexual species, but that they are merely bisexual persons with strong homosexual leanings. Hirschfeld lays great emphasis upon the fact that the transvestites experience normal sexual feelings, being subject only to the impulsion to change their clothing for that of the opposite sex. Unfortunately here he takes into consideration only the conscious sexual manifestations. He considers merely the facts as they appear upon the surface neglecting the important mechanisms of repression and masking,—the tendency to play before, and with, one’s self. The data obtained upon superficial examination must be subjected to careful analysis; then the results are most surprising. Analysis invariably reveals that there is no such thing as monosexuality and that the transvestites, like the homosexuals, have their repressions. The homosexual represses his heterosexuality, the transvestite his homosexuality. In his phantasy the man is a woman (the woman fancies herself the reverse) and thus he combines the two components of his libido. It were nothing less than doing violence to facts to attempt to distinguish the transvestites from the homosexuals.

As one reads carefully the cases published by Hirschfeld, with an eye for signs of homosexuality, one cannot fail to note characteristic traits of homosexuality in every one of the cases. For instance, one of them carries out succubus in coitu, which is clearly a symptom of latent homosexuality; if he appears as a woman, the men who follow him cause him nausea. Another was able to carry out the heterosexual act only under the influence of alcohol, and when going out in women’s clothes was fond of eating in the company of men and coquetting with them. A third is repelled by the thought of homosexual relations, but dreams of pregnancy, plays succubus in coitu, and fancies that his wife is a man. The fourth hugs his wife tightly, sinks his nails into her ears, etc., so as to gain the illusion of being overpowered through sheer force by some man.

Then, most interesting of all, case 12: A man who during four years of married life has carried out coitus only once. This subject actually betrays an open inclination towards homosexuality, which Hirschfeld declares is only apparent.... How is one to determine between an apparent and a real homosexual trend? In order to succeed in that one must purposely overlook the phenomenon of human bisexuality and be anxious to hold on at all costs to the notion that homosexuality is inborn and irreducible.

The transvestite last mentioned relates concerning his homosexuality: “About homosexuality I learned for the first time through reading the book: Die Enterbten des Liebesgluecks. Some passages gripped me powerfully, even more so than the works on masochism, of which I also had read a large number. As I had to renounce my womanly ideal (for reasons mentioned previously), it occurred to me to seek a man as the complement to my yearnings. For even the strongest woman wants to be beneath man during love. But I felt I needed a partner who should overpower and conquer me with some display of force. So I said to myself that such a role can be filled properly only by a man. A great deal of what I read in books about homosexuality confirmed me in this view.”

If this is not a tell-tale rationalization of homosexuality—what may we designate as homosexuality?

Comments are hardly needed in this connection. On all sides and from all directions homosexuality is proven in the history of the case. But Hirschfeld finds that the tendency to homosexuality is only apparent and that the whole foundation of the subject’s libido consists of transvestism. The homosexuality he looks upon as an incidental manifestation. But there are no ‘incidental’ manifestations in our vita sexualis. A dream, which has also been reported, shows conclusively that M., the subject, was all along actuated by the thought: I wish I were a woman. But there are passages in this case history showing how highly the subject esteems the male and proving that this wish is an infantile attitude and due to a feeling of inferiority. What else should we conclude from the statement: “For the genuine man, who belongs to the proudest specimens of his sex, sexual gratification is merely a hygienic requirement, a form of physical release; beyond that his wonderful creative spirit dwells in higher realms ... etc.”

In the chapter devoted to masochism I explain the meaning of a case like the above more fully. The man wants to be a woman and to be overpowered. He is able to have relations with women, if they assume the aggressive role. His mind insists upon the fictive notion: I am a woman and I am forced to carry out this part. Naturally he shifts towards homosexual acts. The male trait in him tolerates no submissiveness. The female trait lends itself readily to coercion. The neurosis consists in this suppression of the male components of the sexual instinct.

A careful reading of the following case history will show clearly the homosexual roots of the tendency to personify the opposite sex:

Mrs. H. S. consults me on account of complete sexual frigidity during her marital relations. She is twenty-four years of age and had married at the age of 19. Her marriage was a love affair. She has always been of a loving and sensuous disposition so that from the age of 14 her mind was preoccupied mostly with sexual fancies and thoughts. At the age of 15 she fell in love with an uncle. His kisses roused her passion and she would have readily yielded to him. The father observed what was going on and forbade her uncle the house. She lived in the Country and met no men under circumstances which could have endangered her. She was 19 years of age when she first met her present husband and she fell rapidly in love with him. She withstood her parents’ opposition and married the young man in a few months. Already during her engagement she said to her husband: “I don’t believe one man will be enough for me. You must watch out for me....” During the first few weeks of married life her husband was impotent, and this drove her nearly to distraction. After her husband underwent some medical treatment he succeeded in rupturing her hymen and in a few months she became pregnant. For a short time during that first pregnancy she experienced complete orgasm. After that her feeling for her husband disappeared entirely and she felt very dissatisfied. Her whole character changed completely. Previously she had been happy, joyous, always in good humor. Now she became quiet, lived a retired existence, avoiding men in particular because she was afraid of them.

Deeper investigation of the case shows that, after the death of her father, to whom she felt attached by bonds of deepest affection, she became sexually anesthetic. The father was a very earnest, strong man who adored his pretty wife and he was a model of loyal and dutiful husband. The mother was an artist who, after the death of her husband, lost all interest in life. She could not stay alone and abandoned the country place to live with her daughter in the City. I suspected that the sudden onset of anesthesia probably coincided with the mother’s arrival in the house. Might she not hide some special attachment for her mother?

She emphasized that she felt the greatest compassion for her mother, who had lost her support in life. For her mother’s sake she would have gladly taken her father’s place, if such a thing were possible. And further she declared:

“You would probably find it almost unbelievable, if I told you that I strongly wished I were a man, at the time. I kept thinking of mother all the time! You see—she is so pretty and young yet, so full of life! I also know that she is a very passionate woman. How could she get along without a man? Now, I must confess something, though it is very hard for me to express it. You know already a number of my pet fancies. But there is another which I have persistently kept from you till now. I wanted to put on father’s clothes, as I have a few of them in my possession, and to go to mother’s bed at night. I acquired a sort of an apparatus ... for the purpose. But I did not quite have the courage. I put on the clothes but stayed in my room. I kept standing before the looking glass for hours, looking on.”

“Did the clothes fit you?”

“To tell you the truth, I had used some of father’s old suits for a long time before that. I got hold of them under all sorts of pretexts. I wrote him, for instance, that I wanted to give his unused clothes to a worthy poor man. Then I had them altered for a figure of my size and was glad to wear them while my husband was away. Already as a small girl I remember I was fond of wearing my brother’s clothes.”

“Do you recollect your thoughts while you were wearing your brother’s clothes?”

“Oh, I do. I played I was papa. For a time I felt really dissatisfied because I was a girl. I envied all boys.”

“Later, too, after you were married already?”

“Certainly! Do you know, I have never mustered enough courage to do something downright disloyal. But I was thinking, if I were a man, I could never remain true. I have always envied men. In fact, with my soul I felt myself more like a man.”

“What were your feelings during the time you were in love with your husband?”

“I had plunged headlong into love and forgot all about my liking of men’s clothes. During that time I felt altogether womanly. Especially when I became a mother. Then all my dreams about manliness disappeared.”

“That was also the only time when you enjoyed your relations with your husband?”

“I have never thought of the two things together. But you are right. For a short time during that period I was entirely womanly, until father died....”

“And your mother came to live with you!”

“Yes ... that is so.... Do you mean, that then I wanted again to be a man? Now, I can confess to you that I always envied father on account of mama. I used to think that if I were a man, I should certainly be in love with mama.”

The further analysis reveals interesting details. Repeatedly she dreams that she is a man and that she has a phallus. She dreams also that she urinates standing after the manner of men. She admits that, already as a child, she loved her mother passionately. She had also overheard a number of times her parents getting together in bed and once she watched them in the act of coitus, peeping through a key hole. She was deeply excited by what she saw and thought that her mother must have suffered great pain and that only the father found pleasure in the act. This infantile conception of male gratification has remained with her to this day. Her favorite expression: “If I should come again into the world I would want to be a man.” The homosexual attitude towards the mother deprived her of libido during her marital relations.

I suggested that she should separate from her mother but she resented scornfully this suggestion. She would rather give up her husband. Some time later she actually did so. She now lives with her mother. I was greatly surprised one day, when she called on me clothed in male attire. She requested from me a certificate to the effect that she was an abnormal person and should be permitted to wear man’s clothes. She had heard that in Berlin a number of women had been granted such a permit by the police on the strength of such a statement from a physician.

Upon being questioned regarding her sexual life she states that she now maintains relations with a man who, before the sexual embrace, puts on women’s clothes. This rouses great orgasm in her. Regarding her relations to her mother her answers are elusive. But I must not think, she adds, that she is a “Urlinde.” The thought of such persons only fills her with disgust. Her mother is now merely her dearest friend.

It is plain that this woman has repressed her homosexual love for her mother and is satisfied with the symbol of masculinity, the wearing of trousers. The man whom she meets in embrace, becomes for her a woman, through the wearing of feminine articles. Thus the two partners carry on a comedy in which the heterosexual act replaces the longed-for homosexual embrace.

---

I am familiar with a number of instances in which a man dressing like a woman, or the reverse, was the means of rousing sexual passion, or, at least, of increasing it enormously. Whenever this happens it is plainly a manifestation of latent homosexuality,—a condition of which Blueher appears to have a very poor opinion. Although he seems to agree with my views otherwise (“today it is no longer possible,” he says, “to hold that homosexuality or heterosexuality is inborn; instead we must recognize that bisexuality is inborn in every individual, with a special predilection in one direction or the other,”), he makes a distinction between “healthful inversion” and an outbreak of latent homosexuality; one condition he considers aboriginal and in keeping with cultural development, while the other “arises out of the depths of the unconscious, through the removal of the inhibitions....” This view is also contrary to facts. Blueher, like Hirschfeld, is inclined to consider latent homosexuality as ‘pseudo,’ as something unnatural, and accordingly passes judgment upon it. The practical observations gathered in the course of my practice do not coincide with these theoretical assumptions. I know only one kind of homosexuality, and that is always inborn. Also, I find it always linked intimately with heterosexuality. Awareness of one’s own homosexual tendency or lack of it is not a reliable guide. If the number of consciously homosexual persons be estimated at 2 per cent., we may confidently assert that there are 98 per cent. of persons who know nothing of their homosexual traits, or rather that they do not want to know anything about them.

As we become familiar with the various masks of homosexuality, we learn to appreciate surprising homosexual and heterosexual trends. I shall draw attention merely to the manifold significance of “trousers” in human love affairs. How often men fall in love with women only when and because they are seen in tights! I remember a number of classmates in high school, who had fallen in love with a singer, when they saw her in a role which she played wearing tights. Grillparzer apparently fell in love once in his life and very passionately. It was with the singer to whom he absent-mindedly sent his famous poem. She had appeared upon the stage as a Cherub in tights. The woman wearing the trousers is a by-word,—a typical compromise. Through the medium of such compromises it becomes possible for the homosexual suddenly to act like a heterosexual person. Hirschfeld, who was the first to point out this fact, relates that a lieutenant of cavalry well known in the circle of Berlin urnings one day surprised his acquaintances with the announcement of his engagement and even more with the statement he had become fully heterosexual. Previous to that time he had loved only boys in girls’ clothes but apparently he had found a woman of very youthful type, one who was able to satisfy both components of his libido. Symbols at times disclose tremendous power. The trousers figure as a symbol of masculinity. I remember the storm of popular indignation which arose once when some change in women’s fashions threatened man’s exclusive prerogative. The skirt and long hair are symbols of feminity. The symbol often furnishes the bridge across which traits, otherwise antagonistic, become fused.

---

The following case is an illustration:

Mr. E. W. has practiced onanism since he was five years of age and during the act was in the habit of thinking he was touching girls. Later he masturbated jointly with other school boys. They attempted pederastic acts, in the course of which he felt neither aversion nor pleasure. At 14 years of age he was seduced by a servant girl, and he went to her bed every night for a year. A poor scholar up till that time, he became subsequently one of the best in the class. After a time he became tired of her and he sought other opportunities which were easy to find. He maintains that up to his 20th year he has had intercourse with every one of the girls who served in his parents’ house, and he estimates them to have been about twenty in number. It struck him that he could not always achieve orgasm. But he was always potent, so much so, sometimes the girls wondered. But he would become indifferent before reaching ejaculation. This happened to him with fat women who excited him tremendously and at the same time failed to satisfy him.

He began early to be interested in painting and made special efforts to experience the feeling of love; for the petty adventures with the servant girls did not involve the heart in the least. As he grew all women only appeared to him to be merely objects for the gratification of lust. He had all sort of love affairs but could be true to none for any length of time and did not always reach orgasm with them. He happened to try once the situs inversus and after that he found it always possible to bring about the orgasm. Coitus a posteriori was also a method which enabled him to attain this aim more easily than the normal position. He was already thirty years of age when he saw at a social affair a girl who appeared as a boy in a “living picture.” He felt at once the greatest attraction for her. During the whole evening he kept her in his company, and he felt animated and inspired with the thought that he had found, at last, his soul affinity. A few weeks later he became engaged to her. The picture of her as a boy always floated before his mind. He married soon, experienced tremendous orgasm during coitus and felt himself very happily married. After a few years his potentia began to fail him and this worried him a great deal because he loved his wife tremendously and was ashamed to confess to her the true state of things. He became more frigid and finally his potentia failed him completely.

He came into his wife’s room (they had separate rooms) while she was undressing. She was in her tights, the kind in which he had seen her in the role of a boy. At once this roused his passion and he threw himself upon his wife, covering her with kisses, against her protests, for she was very bashful. This happened in day time. His wife had never consented to coitus in day time before. But this time she was taken by surprise and as he pressed her for it, she called out, over and over: “What is the matter with you today!” He did not tell her the reason for his excitement; he was ashamed to request her to dress herself next time in tights.

He called to have this remarkable occurrence explained and to be cured of the peculiarity. Later he achieved potentia again but always he had to think of his wife as dressed in trousers. The man was an out-of-town resident and had come to Vienna only for the day. I was unable to find out much about the psychic roots of this condition. He recalled no infantile memories, but thought that the sight of his little sister in bloomers had already roused him. He was much interested in women’s underwear and could have easily turned into a fetichist, one gathering a large assortment of women’s underclothes. I advised him to confide in his wife and ask her for his sake to dress herself in the kind of apparel which appealed to him. That was, after all, a harmless desire which he shared with many other men.

A few years later I saw him again. He had followed my advice, and his wife, who loved him devotedly, had finally consented, because he could not attain erection otherwise, and she required the fulfilment of marital relations. Since she “gave in” to her husband’s peculiar request, she is able to rouse him to coitus as often as she desires it. She only needs to put on tights.... He experiences the greatest satisfaction while his wife wears tights and they assume the situs inversus. Through such a small compromise, by meeting some specific phantasy, it is often possible to turn an incompatible marriage into a happy one.

This is not the only case of its kind of which I know. I know men who, when going to houses of prostitution request the women to retain their drawers when undressing. Others actually demand that the girls should put on male trousers. These latent homosexuals are well known to the prostitutes. They remain passive and expect the woman to be aggressive. This shows they maintain the fiction that they are females and they require relatively but little in the form of overt acts to maintain this fiction in their mind. Many an instance of love at first sight is induced in the same way.

---

Case. Z. I. A man, 48 years of age, had several light love affairs, was twice unhappily married. After the second separation—some six years previously—he left women severely alone because he had a poor opinion of them. He used to say: all women are worthless decoys and it is a pity to turn a single hair grey on their account. In the circle of women haters he was known for that reason as the decoy-man. His physical sexual needs he satisfied with prostitutes or street acquaintances. Beyond that he avoided women and sought only the company of men. It was obvious that he was drifting away from heterosexuality and leaning towards psychic homosexuality. Then it happened that he agreed once to sit as a model for a woman artist. The sculptress was in ordinary clothes and had made no particular impression on him. She asked him to wait a few moments and then she stepped out to put on her working clothes. When she reappeared, a few moments later, he was astonished. She wore a long white coat, which covered her whole dress, a pleasing little cap, under which she had tucked her hair to protect it against the dust, and a pair of glasses which she wore only when working. She appeared so attractive that he fell in love with her that moment. He did not hide his feelings but immediately hastened to make up on the spot what he had lost in six years of opportunities to worship at the shrine of womanhood. She accepted his compliments good-naturedly. He fell in love with her as he had never been in love before. A few weeks later he proposed marriage, but she politely refused. She had made up her mind never to marry. But he did not give her up; on the contrary he pursued her with his attentions and tendernesses. His club and all his cronies he abandoned. He was head over heels in love, like a frisky boy, and held that now he knew the meaning of love. One of his friends proposed to cure him of his infatuation and told him in confidence that he had heard the sculptress was a homosexual who maintained relations with a chorus girl wearing tights. The whole town knew about it. It was an open secret. This information had the contrary effect upon him. His passion reached such a point that life seemed to him worthless without her. He struggled with thoughts of suicide and told the beloved about it. This made a strong impression upon her and she stated frankly: she would agree to be his sweetheart, but his wife, never. For a time he fought against accepting this compromise, desiring nothing short of a union for life. Finally he acquiesced. She was a virgin no longer and told him that she had already been her instructor’s sweetheart. That is why she did not want to consider marriage. With her instructor, however, she had never achieved orgasm. His embrace left her cold. She could achieve satisfaction and orgasm only with the aid of manipulatio cum digito.

Z. I. remained faithful to her for a few years and during that time tried several times to induce her to consider marriage. He was always most excited when he saw her wearing the apparel which had first roused his love for her. They always met in her studio while she was wearing her working clothes. Finally his love cooled and he returned to the society of his woman-hating companions. An attempt to have intercourse with a girl in his employ failed him and he called for advice.

He believed himself impotent. But it was merely the homosexual trait which comes to the fore at this age in various manifestations which physicians call the climacterium of man.

Analysis disclosed that the woman sculptor was the cousin of one of his favorite old school mates, whom she resembled closely. This young man also wore, while at work in his laboratory, a white coat, like the sculptress. It was this similarity that roused his libido so tremendously. The young man had become engaged a few weeks previously. He disapproved the young man’s step on various grounds. (A young man should not jeopardise his scientific career on account of a woman.) He was in love with the young man without realising it. The transference of the feeling into a heterosexual one was mediated through the fact that the woman looked like her cousin and the costume also helped to transfer some of the homosexual tendencies into the heterosexual channel.

In connection with this case I may make a few remarks about the so-called climacterium of man and about woman’s critical period. The psychic process is well known, in so far as it involves a parting from one’s youth, and it has been repeatedly outlined and described. The whole love instinct of man rebels against growing old and fosters the utilization to the utmost of the opportunities during the few remaining years. The milder the sexual life in the past, the greater and more stormy becomes the need of making up for lost opportunities “while there is time.”

But the significance of homosexuality during this critical period is a matter which most investigators have overlooked. It may be that the involution of the sexual glands brings the opposite sex into stronger relief at this period. One who conceives bisexuality as a chemical process—and there are some data apparently supporting such a view—may speak of the conquest of man’s heterosexuality over homosexuality. Hirschfeld would say of a man: as he now produces less andrin the gynecin achieves upper hands. Perhaps many cases of so-called late homosexuality (Krafft-Ebing) may be explained in this manner. I have known a man who, up to the 50th year of his life, has had no sexual experiences and who was also unaware of his homosexuality. At that age he happened to drift into the company of homosexuals and now he is a confirmed member of the third (intermediate) sex. Possibly the outbreak of homosexuality leading all the way to paranoia—a subject which I shall take up more fully in another chapter—depends on changes in the sexual glands, these changes leading to characteristic psychic expression.

In the last case disappointment after marriage (both women proved unfaithful to the man) induced the breaking forth of the homosexual tendencies.

The behavior of those persons who do not care to acknowledge their homosexuality is characteristic. So passionately do they fall in love, their impulsion to loving is so tremendous that every new passion surpasses all previous experiences.

This peculiarity gives us an insight into the mentality of the Don Juan type, the desolute adventurer, and the Messalina type....

The flight away from homosexuality leads the individual to overstress his heterosexuality (with the formulation of compromises and the adoption of homosexual masks) but that seldom yields the satisfaction craved by the individual. The sexual adventurer is always a person who has failed to find proper gratification. He who has found complete gratification becomes thereby master of his libido and knows the meaning of satiety. When the gratification is only apparent the craving leads soon again to new adventures. Just as the compulsory acts of neurotics cannot be permanently removed, because such acts are only symptomatic and stand for hidden cravings, the unsatisfied homosexual longing which stands masked under an apparently excessive heterosexuality cannot be completely gratified on that path. The sexual instinct,—as Freud has pointed out—is of complex character and is seldom brought into play in its full form. Man’s unattainable ideal is the whole instinct, undivided and unhampered in any of its component parts; falling in love manifests the expectation of a gratification previously unattained.

During man’s critical period—as well as woman’s—a number of troublesome compulsion neuroses are likely to break forth and these have been erroneously attributed to excitement, overwork, and other secondary factors. Every compulsion neurosis appearing at this period is a complicated riddle through which the subject aims to hide before his own consciousness no less than before the world at large the true significance of the psychic impulses which reassert their supremacy at the time. Frequently back of the various symptomatic acts it is possible to discern the clear mechanism of defence against homosexuality.

---

The next case shows an interesting array of symbolisms and of symbolic acts, which are easily understood if one has the key to the psychology of such mental processes.

Mr. B. experiences the outbreak of an acute neurosis at 60 years of age. Suddenly he becomes obsessed with the fear of tuberculosis. He is firmly convinced that he is a victim of the disease and the reassurance of famous specialists quiets him only for a few days. He reads all popular works on tuberculosis as well as the scientific works of Cornet, Koch, and other investigators. He has worked out for himself a systematic method for the cure of tuberculosis. He holds, in the first place, that cold air is the best, and takes long walks out of doors, sleeps with all windows wide open, goes to Davos and generally prefers winter sporting places. He is a confirmed believer in the theory of infection through particles of sputum and therefore avoids the proximity of ... men.

“Why be afraid specially of men? May not women also carry the infection?”

“No; women do not expectorate so vigorously. Men spit all over, women only close by!”

“How do you know these things?”

“You see, I have given the matter a great deal of thought and I have studied the subject. I thought to myself, coughing and urinating are very much alike. In both operations products of the organism are removed from the body. A woman urinates with a small stream which does not reach far. But many men urinate with force and are able to throw out their stream,—a distance of several feet.”

Already this statement showed that back of the fear of consumption there stood some hidden sexual motive. B. carried the analogy still further:

“Men are also able to ejaculate, while women only omit a little moisture which trickles down upon their parts.... At any rate, I am particularly afraid of infection through some tubercular man.”

I inquired into the circumstances under which this fear first showed itself and how long he had it and in reply received the following interesting confession:

“For a long time I lived with a nephew who occupied a separate room in my home. My married daughter came once to pay us a visit because her child had whooping cough and she was advised that a change of air would be beneficial.”

(It is characteristic that he was not afraid of catching whooping cough, although he knew of a serious case,—an elderly man who had caught the infection and as a result was seriously ill for months. The fear of tuberculosis thus shows itself to be a misdirected notion.)

“It became necessary for me to share with my nephew the same sleeping room,” continued the man. “He had but recently returned from Meran and was considered cured.... But you know, how these alleged cures turn out upon closer examination. During the night I became uneasy and several times I heard my nephew coughing. I noticed that he did not sleep, and I also could not fall asleep because the thought tormented me that I would surely catch the infection. The first thing I did next morning was to call my physician; he laughed at me but upon my persistent questioning he told me: ‘If you are as afraid as all that, you better sleep in a separate room!’ I did not wait to be told twice and for a number of weeks after that I slept at a hotel. But here too, I began to think, perhaps some tubercular man has occupied the room before me, and could not sleep! I had night sweats and after that I no longer believed the physicians’ reassurances and was convinced that this was a sign of the first stage of consumption....”

We note that the elderly gentleman had become homosexually roused by the presence of his nephew and this craving appeared to his consciousness masked under the form of a fear of tubercular infection.

“I could tear my hairs out by the roots, to think that I had done such a foolish thing!”

“What foolish thing?”

“I mean, sleeping in the same room with my nephew. If I had at least put up a Japanese screen. But, unfortunately, one does foolish things without reflecting upon the consequences....”

B. also displays various compulsory mannerisms, the meaning of which becomes obvious once we appreciate that, in his case, ‘tuberculosis’ really means ‘homosexuality.’ As he walks upon the City streets he meets a man coming his way. While still at a distance he steps aside or crosses on the other side; he no longer shakes hands with any man, not even with his friends; one may become infected with tubercle bacilli in that way. All places where men are seen naked or in partial undress, such as gymnasia or bathing resorts, are breeding spots for tubercular infection.

Moreover, B. shows some female traits in his nature. He has shaved his beard because hairs may be nests for tubercle bacilli; he has become emotional, whining and he is unable to arrive at decisions promptly. He finds the fashion of wearing short coats not “dressy” and wears a long coat that has almost the appearance of a jacket. (Similar mannerisms are found in Jean-Jacques Rousseau; vid. his Confessions.)

This case is one of almost complete outbreak of femininity, closely allied to the paranoiac forms, which will be considered more fully in another chapter. He is also jealous of his wife and thinks he is slighted,—that he is not given the proper degree of attention. He is excitable, sleepless, dissatisfied with life. After a few hours the analysis is given up.

Such persons are tremendously afraid of the truth; they wander from physician to physician and really want but one thing: to preserve their secret and to devote themselves more and more to their hidden homosexuality. If the condition were once disclosed before their eyes they could not continue their indulgence so easily. They always break up the treatment after a few hours under some pretext or other and this justifies the suspicion that, sooner or later, they come to regard the physician also as a man and, transferring their homosexual attachment to the physician they flee from the danger of being together with the object of their love.

This case illustrates, I believe, what remarkable masks the outbreak of the homosexual trait is capable of assuming. Similar masks are the fear of syphilis, the fear of “blood poisoning,” and the dread of physical contact with other persons or objects. The fear of syphilis covers also other dreads. Formerly I thought that syphilidophobia was only a mask for incest craving. I am now convinced that it stands for “forbidden love” generally. Syphilis stands as a symbol either for incest or for homosexuality. ‘Becoming infected’ means: ‘being oppressed’ by homosexual or incestuous tendencies. These figures of speech are suggested by the every day use of language. One hears, for instance, that the whole city of Berlin is infected with homosexuality; the opponents of homosexuality fight against the plague which threatens the whole German nation; young men are warned against being infected with homosexuality. It is not surprising, therefore, that the morbid expressions of neuroses assume similar figurative forms.

The rise of such morbid fear during advanced age is always suspicious of an outbreak of homosexuality, against which various protective devices are thus raised. If I should attempt to describe all these forms of outbreak and all the protective devices I would have to write a special treatise on anxiety states. We well know already that all neuroses have a bisexual basis. But, what is more, I maintain that homosexuality plays a far greater role in the development of neurotic traits than any other suppressed instincts.

I am now turning my attention to a character in whom homosexuality would hardly be suspected as a motive power. I refer to the Don Juan type of personality. The Messalina type I shall describe in connection with my study of sexual anesthesia in woman. But the Don Juan character deserves special attention in this connection.

One would think that a man who devotes his whole life to women, who dreams day and night only of new conquests, who considers every woman worth while when opportunity favors him, a man for whom no woman is too old, or too ugly, if he desires her,—that such a man would be far removed from any homosexual trend. Yet the contrary is the fact and the greater my opportunity to study the ‘woman chaser’ the stronger my conviction becomes that, back of the ceaseless hunt, stands the longing after the male. Though many explanations have been offered for the Don Juan type,—that prototype of Faust’s—none has solved satisfactorily the riddle of his psyche. Only the recognition of latent homosexuality promises to clear for us the meaning of this character.

What are the typical character traits attributed to the Don Juan type? His easily stirred passion; secondly, his indiscriminate taste; thirdly, his sudden cooling off. Of course, there are any number of transitional forms and mixed stages.

I choose for examination the fundamental type, as he is known to me through a number of concrete examples. This triad: “quickly roused, not particular as to choice, just as quickly cooled,” admits of numerous variations. Particularly the choice of the sexual object is something that in many woman chasers becomes determined on the basis of particular fetichistic preferences, such as red hair, virginity, a particular figure, a special occupation, etc. The Don Juan collectors of women are differentiated into various distinct classes. I knew one who for his record of adventures specialized in widows. The shorter the period of widowhood the greater was his ambition to make the conquest. Only women in mourning attracted him. But beyond this point he was not particular. It made no difference to him whether the woman was young or old, beautiful or homely, so long as she was a widow in mourning. His greatest pride he took in his conquest of widows on the burial day.

Oskar A. H. Smitz, (in his Cassanova und Andere erotische Charaktere, Stuttgart, 1906, quoted after Bloch), has attempted to trace a fine distinction between the Don Juan and the Cassanova type: “Don Juan is a deceiving, cunning seducer to whom the sense of possessing the woman, the feeling of danger, and the pleasure of overcoming resistance and of exercising his manly strength are the chief things, but he is not erotic, whereas Cassanova is the erotic type par excellence; he, too, is tricky and remorseless, but he craves the satisfaction of his sensuous needs rather than of his sense of power. Don Juan sees only women, for Cassanova every woman is “the woman.” Don Juan is demonic, devilish, he deliberately plans the destruction of the women who yield to him and drives them to perdition, while Cassanova is humane, he is always interested in the happiness of his sweethearts and preserves of them tender memories. Don Juan hates woman, he is a typical misogynist, the satanic type of woman hater, whereas Cassanova is a typical feminist, he has a deep and sympathetic understanding of woman’s soul, he is not deceived by his love affairs but needs continual intercourse with women as the condition of his happiness. Don Juan seduces through his demonic character, with the brutal, and wild, attraction exercised by his uncanny power, Cassanova achieves his conquests through the more refined gentle atmosphere generated by his charming presence.”

Bloch introduces a third type, the pseudo-Don Juan, or more correctly, the pseudo-Cassanova,—the adventurer perennially disappointed in his conquests, of whom Retif de la Bretonne is the nearest widely known type. He is continually looking for the true love and never finds it. While I admit that the seducer as a type belongs to one of these categories, I must designate all three classes mentioned above, that is, the Don Juan, the Cassanova, and the would-be type of either, as bearers, alike, of a latent homosexuality. None of them finds his ideal. Retif de la Bretonne is the perennially disappointed type, and true love is something he can never find; in his love he displays considerable dependence on woman. He portrays the hopeless flight to woman and away from man. Cassanova feels all the time impelled to prove to himself how seductive a fellow and man he is and every new conquest gives him a new opportunity to do so. Woman is to him but a means to enhance his sense of virility. He must not depreciate his conquest for the glory of his achievement would be lessened in his own eyes if he were to do so.

The Don Juan type is close to the level which leads directly to the well known Marquis de Sade type of character. He scorns woman because she is incapable of yielding to him all the gratification for which he yearns. He is perennially searching for release and in that respect bears some resemblance to the Flying Dutchman who is similarly in quest of love and whom the quest leads eventually to death. But I cannot concur with the idea that these types are so sharply differentiated as Schmitz and Bloch are inclined to maintain. We meet the finest gradations and the most varied combinations. Moreover individuals change, their character shifting from one type to another by imperceptible degrees in the course of time.

I propose to consider Don Juan as the representative of the type of seducer, irrespective of further variations. In fact it is characteristic of all the types mentioned above that they are alike unable to remain loyal in their love. And, in my view, this is the most important characteristic.

Ready excitability, scorn of womankind, latent cruelty, and perennial readiness for love adventures are traits which show that, in the last analysis, Don Juan represents a type of unsatisfied libido. For him the most important moment is the conquest of the woman. In the joy of this conquest there is betrayed something of the scorn of woman which plays such an important role in the lives of all homosexuals—whether latent or manifest. For the genuine Don Juan the conquest of a woman is a task which appeals to his play lust. Will he succeed with this one, and with that one, and with the third woman? Each new conquest reassures him that he is irresistible, magical in his charm, so that he can say to himself: thou art a real man! He must reassure himself over and over that he is fully a man because he fears his femininity too strongly; with the aid of his feminine trait he is the better able to achieve his conquests among women because that trait enables him the better to feel and know what every woman wants. He is really but a woman in man’s clothes. His narcissistic character (the morbid self-love) requires continually new proofs of his irresistible powers. This type of man, one who practices all sorts of perversions on women and in this very changing of the manner of his loving betrays his insatiable quest for new and untried gratifications, never permits himself any homosexual act, although he is far from particular otherwise and has run the gamut of tasting all ugly and forbidden fruit. Homosexuality strikes this type of man as disgusting and unbearable, he must spit out when meeting a fellow of that kind, he would have all men and women of that kind in jail, he would have them rooted out as one would a plague. Towards homosexuality his attitude is emotionally overstressed, showing that this negative form of disgust and neurotic repulsion really covers the positive trend of longing. But at the same time he looks for women who are mannish in appearance and who lack the secondary sexual characteristics, thin, ephebic women, matrons and girls who are so young as to look like children and thus represent really intermediary stages towards manhood.

Certain aversions, which Hirschfeld has described as antifetichistic, sometimes disclose the homosexual character of their libido and the protective means adopted against the recognition of homosexuality. One man dislikes woman with large feet, another is repelled by women with hair on their bodies. Such a woman causes him to have distinct nausea. A third one is repelled by the presence of hair upon the woman’s upper lip, or by a deep voice. There are, besides, all sorts of transitional types. One seeks only the completely developed and typical female figure, another is attracted particularly by the type of woman resembling the male figure but without disdaining the former type.

His search is endless because he is truly, though secretly, attracted by the male. His sexual goal is man. Through each new woman he expects to experience, at last, the completely satisfactory gratification which he craves. But he turns away from each one equally disappointed because his libido cannot be fully gratified by any of them. In the manner of his conquering and abandoning each woman he shows his scorn of the sex. The true woman lover is really no Don Juan because he distributes his sexual libido among a few women at the most and the emotional overvaluation of these women furnishes the key to his attitude towards the whole sex. Don Juan makes love in a manner apparently as if he respected womankind. But the cold manner in which he dismisses his victims betrays his complete contempt for the sex. He admires only the women who withstand him and whom he cannot subdue. Such resistance may lead eventually to the marriage of a Don Juan, a marriage which necessarily proves unhappy and he continues his former life. For the step has not furnished him what he is really seeking, man has eluded him again.

Closer examination reveals the characteristic fact that frequently the choice of lovers is determined by homosexual traits of one kind or another. The Don Juan who runs after married women may be goaded on by the fact that he likes the physical appearance of their husbands. Naturally the thought heightens his feeling of self-esteem because it must be a harder task to induce the wife of a handsome man to deceive her husband than it would be to bring to one’s feet the wife of an ugly man. A Don Juan told me once: “I have possessed all sorts of women, but never cared for the wife of a simpleton. I have always considered it beneath me and not worth while to deceive a fool.” Here we have a type of man desirous to measure his wit against that of a sharp rival. (If you are so very sharp, why don’t you look out better for your wife!) The emphasis here is really upon the fact that he likes the husband, admires him, and considers him a bright man. Before he makes up his mind to get a woman he must like her husband, and he can be attracted only by intelligent men. That condition is imperative before he engages in any love adventure. Maupassant describes this type of man in one of his stories. The hero is interested only in married women whose husbands attract him and are among his friends. I give the history of an extreme case of this type in my chapter on jealousy in the present work.

---

H. O., 49 years of age, is undergoing a severe mental crisis. He relates that he was happily married, until an actress crossed his path. He fell so deeply in love he could not leave her, he neglected his home, was unable to follow his calling and was on the point of committing suicide. It was not his custom to cling for long to any one woman. Usually he changed sweethearts every few weeks.

“Did you say that your married life was happy?”

“Yes; that has never troubled me. I cannot be true to any woman. I must change all the time. I am a polygamous being. This woman is the first to whom I feel loyal and true right along, I did not feel so towards my wife and only a few weeks after marriage I preferred the embrace of other women, but this sweetheart of mine,—she has taken me off my balance entirely, to her I am loyal. Think of it! I stand for her going with other men, who support her. Who could have told me that I would come to this! Every little while I decide to break with her and never see her again. I have sworn it to my wife, who is heartbroken over the affair. But I am too weak.... Save me! Free me from this terrible plight! Restore me to my family.”

... This man’s life history is typical of the neurotic. He understood sexual matters and masturbated at a very early age. He began to masturbate as early as the sixth year at school and thinks that he can even trace the beginning of the habit to an earlier date. He had many play mates with whom he carried on the “usual childish games.” These “usual childish games” turned out to be fellatio, pederasty, manual onanism, and zoophily. The children pressed into service a dog who by licking the parts produced the highest orgasm in them. The last homosexual love he carried on at 14 years of age. He and a colleague performed mutual masturbation. Once the two were warned against the dangers of masturbation and they went together to a house of prostitution. This they kept up for a long time because it increased their satisfaction. Often they exchanged their sexual partners. (This is not an uncommon practice through which latent homosexuals achieve a heightening of their orgasm and cryptically reach after their male companion. In houses of prostitution this practice is common among friends.)

In a short time he developed into a genuine Don Juan. At 16 years of age he had already become a full-fledged woman hunter and succeeded in attracting his high school professor’s wife as his sweetheart. He went after every woman, young or old, pretty or plain. He claims that old women have yielded the highest pleasures and shows me a letter in which Franklin advises young men to cling to old women. But this pronounced gerontophiliac tendency does not prevent him from having relations with girls below age, almost children. His whole thought, night and day, was concentrated upon women. His first thought upon rising in the morning usually was: “What adventures await me today?” If he finds himself in a room with a woman alone invariably he thinks: “How can I get her?” Every woman he gets hold of he looks upon merely as a means for gratification and soon tires of her. With the exception of one elderly woman whom he occasionally visits he has not kept up with any woman longer than a few weeks. Often after the first intercourse he feels disgust for his new sexual partner and thinks to himself: “You are not any different than the others!” Since his 16th year he has had intercourse almost daily and often several times a day. He was 32 years of age when he first met his present wife. Her father was his superior at the office, a man for whom he had the very highest respect. (“There are not many such men as he.”) He married the man’s daughter, whom he held high in esteem high above all others of her sex, and it was a very happy marriage. His only fear was that his wife would find out about his amorous escapades. For no woman was safe near him and even during the early part of their married life he kept up sexual relations with their cook. Finally he managed to control himself at least to the extent of avoiding any escapades under his own roof so as to be more sure of keeping his wife in ignorance of his amorous proclivities. But he always kept on the string a lot of women and girls who were at his disposal whenever he wanted any of them.

He became acquainted with a young man whom he liked a great deal. But there was one thing about that young man which repelled him: he was homosexual and proud of it. This was something he could not understand and he endeavored very zealously to rouse in his friend a love for women. He failed completely; on the other hand his new friend introduced him to the local homosexual circle, in which he became interested merely as a “cultural problem.” He frequented a café where homosexuals were in the habit of congregating and noticed that many among them were of pronounced intellectual caliber. He was particularly impressed by the fact that their common peculiarity levelled so completely persons of different social standing. A Count met a waiter or post office clerk as cordially as he would a most intimate friend. A few weeks later he met the sister of his new friend and fell deeply in love with her at first sight. That was his tremendous attachment.

It was plain that contact with the homosexuals had released some of the inhibitions which had kept back his own latent homosexuality and the latter trait now threatened to overpower him. There was but one safeguard against that, namely: flight into love. The attachment to his friend became now a passionate love for his friend’s sister, who resembled her brother very closely. During coitus with his new sweetheart it occurred to him early to give up succubus, and to try the anal form of gratification, and this produced in him tremendous orgasm such as he had never before experienced.

His wife was informed through anonymous letters of the state of affairs. Moreover he had become very weak in his sexual relations with her and was able to carry on his marital duties only with greatest difficulty.

Psychoanalysis brought wonderful results in this case. He learned quickly to recognise his emotional fixations and only wondered that he was too blind not to have seen for himself that he really loved the brother through that woman. He broke with the actress in a dignified manner. He proposed that if she should give up her intimate relations with all other men he would keep his word and marry her. He still loved her but he was no longer in the dark. She laughed in his face. Did he really think that he could meet the cost of her wardrobe and other needs? That put an end to the attachment. He was ashamed afterwards to think that he should have preferred such a woman to his wife. The analysis of a remarkable dream brought about the complete severing of his infantile fixations.

The dream: I am with Otto—that was his friend’s name—in a room. He walks up to me and says: “Don’t you see that I love you and want you!” I try to avoid his love pats and draw a revolver out of my pocket. I hold it high and am ready to shoot my friend. But instead of my friend I see standing before me my son, and my boy’s sincere blue eyes look up at me imploringly: ‘Protect me!’ I throw down the revolver and run out of the room.

His young friend resembled somewhat his boy to whom he was specially devoted just before the unfortunate love affair....

This case shows that sometimes a great and passionate love arises to save the lover from himself. There are times when it becomes necessary to love and then the object of one’s love, though falling short of the actual yearnings of one’s soul, becomes emotionally overvalued so that the intoxication of love leads to forgetfulness (like every other intoxication). Any love affair which breaks out during later life rouses the suspicion that it is an attempt to save one’s self with all one’s might from homosexuality. The characteristic signs of such a love are its exaggerated and compulsory character. The lovesick man is unable to keep away from his sweetheart; he wants to have her by his side all the time; she must accompany him everywhere; even in sleep he puts his hand out to his sweetheart as if to protect him from every temptation. And I have seen cases in which the curious infatuation was able to withstand all opposition when it must be looked upon as a successful healing process.

In the course of analysis it not infrequently happens that those who call for advice transfer their attachment to their consultant, feel tremendously attached to him and in this state of emotional readiness the first woman who happens along becomes the object of their most intense love emotion as the shortest way out of a sexual danger. The sexual danger in question is homosexuality.

Don Juan, Cassanova, Retif de la Bretonne,—all flee from man and seek salvation in woman. Retif is a foot fetichist. The choice of this fetich, typically bisexual, already indicates latent homosexuality. Insatiable woman hunters often end their flight away from homosexuality by falling into the deepest neuroses.

The next case history illustrated this fact:

G. K., a prominent inventor, 32 years of age, consults me for a number of remarkable compulsory acts which he must always carry out before retiring for the night. He must prove about twenty times to make sure that the doors are all locked. Then he goes through the house and submits every foot of the place to the most painfully detailed and careful search to make sure that no burglar is hidden anywhere. He looks not only under the beds but into every box and drawer and closet, opening and closing each one in turn, and very carefully. One can never tell where a burglar may hide himself! By the time he has concluded this search it is nearly midnight. The terribly arduous procedure fatigues him for he has to look everywhere, emptying even the book cases in the course of his search for fear that the burglar may be hidden back of the books, and it is midnight when he crawls into bed, although he begins his preparations around ten o’clock. Then he is usually tormented with doubt whether he has done everything. It occurs to him that he did not go into the nursery at all, where his three children are asleep. The boy’s room, too, has not been searched. Jumping out of bed he lights a candle and in his night toilette makes his way to the children’s rooms, unable to rest any longer. The girls are already accustomed to seeing him that way, nevertheless they jump out of their sleep scared. In his white nightgown, like a shadow, he moves from place to place with lighted candle in hand, looks under the children’s bed, under the servant girl’s bed and incidentally makes sure that no man lies by her side in bed. During these rounds every door and every window is tried whether it is safely locked. It is now long past midnight. Exhausted he returns to his bed. Again various doubts begin to torture him: did or did he not try this, or that, or the other particular door, is the gasometer safely turned off, and again in his thoughts he rehearses every detail. His logical faculty tells him: you have done everything, you need not have any further concern, it is high time you went to sleep! But logic is powerless when his doubts overpower him. Again he rises and takes a few additional precautions which I need not detail here. Thus it may be three or four o’clock in the morning and even later before he is finally through. Then he lies down in his wife’s bed and wakes her up. Only after coitus, which he carries out regularly every night, he falls asleep. But by that time the night is over and the dawn is just breaking. He remains in bed exhausted, often sleeping till past the noon hour, much to his wife’s disgust. The whole house is in uproar. The children wake up but are taken to another wing of the house because “papa is asleep and must not be waked up!” As he is very wealthy, he has his way. The servants are paid extra well so that they are willing to put up with “that queer household.” Afternoons he is at work in his chemical laboratory. His researches have made him famous. He is a very capable chemist, possessing wonderful ideas and his patents have brought him a great fortune.

In addition to all that he is obsessed by another compulsory thought, which seems very extraordinary. Continually he wants to know how everybody likes his wife and whether she is still considered a pretty woman. Regard for her appearance is his greatest concern. Many afternoons he spends with her in the fitting rooms of modistes and tailors. He reproaches her for not knowing how to dress tastily, and scolds her because she does not take proper care of herself. On the other hand he is entirely indifferent regarding the manner of her appearance in the house. He is greatly concerned only with the impression his wife makes upon other men. It also disturbs him if other women do not find his wife beautiful but he worries more if men fail to notice her. As he dreads evenings he spends the time in the company of friends. (Thus the ceremonial on retiring is delayed and he sleeps to a late hour into the day.)

His chief thought is his wife’s appearance. If a man says to him: “Your wife is charming today!” or if some stranger says to him: “Who is that beautiful woman?” as has actually happened at balls and entertainments he feels supremely happy. Or, if he introduces his wife to some man who gallantly remarks later: “I did not know that you had such a charming wife!” his happiness knows no bounds and his wife has a good time in consequence. The very next day he buys her a costly gem, he is tender with her and bestows upon her pleasant flatteries.

But, on the other hand, if he sees that his wife passes unobserved in a crowd, or if there is some other pretty woman in the room, he feels unhappy. Then he meets his wife with severest reproaches because she does not know how to dress attractively, he growls, and raves, and is angry for several days until another event takes place and his wife is again noticed by men and women when he quiets down. He cannot endure to hear that some other man also has a pretty wife. He does not rest until he meets that woman and is happy if some one says to him: “Your wife is really prettier.” But if he hears that another woman is praised and his wife is not mentioned at same time he feels again very depressed and his wife pays unpleasantly for it. His uncles—he has no brothers—all have pretty women. His chief concern is to find out whether his wife is really the prettiest. He asks this question frequently of his acquaintances, in an offhand manner of course, for he would not have them suspect his feelings for anything in the world and the opinion of a man towards whom he is otherwise completely indifferent often determines his disposition for the whole day. He is happy if he notices that some one is making love to his wife. On the other hand it troubles him if he sees there are young men around and they fail to gather around his wife. He is not jealous because he knows his wife well, can trust her and, besides, she is never alone. She is either with him or in her mother’s company. That is why he is very happy to see men gather around her. He goes with her wherever any beauty contests are on and spends a great deal of money to make sure that his wife will win the prize. If another woman is the winner it makes him unhappy and he genuinely envies the man who possesses or will possess such a woman.

In spite of all that, the man is a Don Juan and was never true to his marital vows. He maintains a second house where he receives girls and also such of his friends’ wives as find favor in his eyes and are willing to accept his attentions. As he is a well preserved, stately man of most attractive appearance he is very lucky with women.

Besides that he receives a number of girls in his laboratory where he has fitted out a room for this purpose. Not a day passes in which he does not possess some woman—any woman—in addition to his wife. He looks well, though occasionally a little pale, feels physically very fresh and energetic. He works really but two or three hours a day. In this brief time he accomplishes more than other men in a day’s grind.

The character of his sexual gratification is noteworthy. While carrying out normal coitus with his wife, with the girls and other women he indulges in the kind of practices which furnish him the greatest orgasm. He gives them his phallus which they take hold of, and kisses them, dum puella membrum erectum tenet et premit. He carries out coitus if the partner requests it. But the act is interrupted and again exchanged for hand manipulation. As he is a very potent man, he is able to satisfy the woman and still has time to withdraw his penis before ejaculation and put it in the woman’s hand to be manipulated by her. There have been also various other indulgences. He has tried everything. The form of gratification just mentioned he prefers to all others. A certain feeling of shame has prevented him from asking his wife to do it for him.

His anamnesis is very fragmentary. He remembers no particular incidents of childhood or early youth. He began to masturbate very early and up to the time of his marriage masturbated regularly every night before falling asleep. Already before marriage he had had such compulsory habits, but usually he was through his bed time searching in about one half hour. At any rate he masturbated daily even when he had intercourse with women. He never took women to his house. They always came to his laboratory. He is greatly attached to his mother who is yet a very attractive woman and shows great veneration for his father who brought him up with strict but just discipline and who showed some light neurotic peculiarities.

He recalls no homosexual episodes. He masturbated excessively and began intercourse with women at 18 years of age; after that he rapidly became a confirmed woman hunter but he developed a very particular taste. All his women had to be very fair, have a pretty, round, strongly feminine figure, a delicate tint and be, above all, very beautiful. Yet a very white and smooth skin would make up for the lack of other points of beauty in his eyes. With the perfectly white face he required dark, fiery eyes. This type of beauty seems to coincide with his mother’s who was a remarkably attractive woman and who to this day carries with great dignity the obvious signs of her former great beauty.

He had also certain antifetichistic peculiarities. If he notices hair on a woman’s body, for instance, at once she loses all attractiveness in his eyes. Such a woman he finds as disgusting as a woman with a mustache. Equally disgusting to him are all women with sharp figures and no breasts such as remind one of a man. “A woman should be a woman,” is his favorite remark. He despises all “blue stockings” and emancipated women and has requested his wife to drop the acquaintanceship of a friend of hers who had taken an interest in various women’s movements.

In the course of the analysis he refers continually first of all to his wife. According to him he has married an angel of patience. It takes great love to endure this man’s moods and whims. But the wife loves him devotedly and has learned to stand everything from him because she knew that he loved her and she said to herself: every man has his peculiarities. She was contented and the house vibrated with her happy laughter. If he troubled her with his foolish reproaches she did not pout for long. On the contrary she soon smiled forgiveness so that their married life was really a model.

He insists that his wife is an ideal person. When early in the course of analysis one confesses such a deep affection, the opposite feeling, scorn, is sure to become disclosed before long. First the advantages,—then the disadvantages. But this woman seemed to have no unpleasant component in her nature. He could tell only favorable things about her and about his concern regarding her beauty.

But before long—in the course of a few weeks—the tone of his talk changed. There was another trauma about which he felt he must tell me, something of tremendous significance which had shattered his whole married life. At the time of his marriage he had resolved nothing less than to give up his Don Juan adventures and to be true to his wife. Just before marriage he had been carrying on with six different girls at the same time and it kept him on the jump to keep each woman from finding out about the others. He wanted to live quietly after marriage and be true to his wife. He had also resolved solemnly to give up masturbation after marriage. As a married man this would be easy,—instead of masturbating before going to sleep he would have intercourse with his wife.

Before the marriage ceremony he became obsessed with the thought that his bride might have hair growing on her breasts. That would be unbearable. He was on the point of demanding that his bride should be examined by a physician but, as a man of high standing, he was ashamed to make such a suggestion. During the bridal night he discovered a few light hairs on her breast and a light soft down on her abdomen. He was so shocked that he would have wanted to send her back to her parents. For months after that he was very unhappy and every night he wept over his misfortune. His great hope, to find a woman who would take the place of all other women in his life, was gone.

This notion about his wife’s hairs made him most unhappy and prevented his moral resurrection. He had planned to turn a new leaf. But he continued to feel himself irresistibly attracted to beautiful white women with marble-like smooth skin and no hair to remind one of a man’s body.

The most remarkable feature, characteristic of the whole case is the fact last mentioned.

The man is avowedly bisexual with a strong leaning towards homosexuality. This homosexual trend was gratified up till that time through masturbation—as he has pointed out. He sought contact with fully developed women, to forget man. He wanted a very beautiful wife because he imagined her beauty would serve to drive away from him all thought of man and to focus his libido exclusively upon her. He wanted to have the prettiest woman in the world: Helen. If his wife’s appearance pleased other men, this so roused the homosexual component of his libido that he enjoyed sexual intercourse with her more keenly. Above all he wanted to avoid the thought of man. The anxiety on account of man came over him particularly before retiring at night and it was a morbid anxiety over masturbation at the same time. In his head, within his brain, man was a living thought, something that threatened him and demanded release. But this was also something his consciousness refused to recognize and therefore the thought of man tortured him and he could not fall asleep. He projected this intruder into his room and it led him to search his empty closets for a non-existent man, as if saying to himself: I have no trace of any homosexual leaning whatever! That is what he actually told me when I referred to the homosexual significance of his compulsory acts: such a Don Juan as I! I have devoted myself completely to woman. The thought of man is repulsive to me.

I explained to him that disgust is but a hidden form of longing. If he were indifferent to the thought of man it would be more convincing.

“Well then, I am indifferent to the thought.”

Thus he tried to convince me that he was not homosexual. But we conceive that the hairs he discovered upon his wife’s body reminded him of the fatal homosexuality. He felt so unhappy over it he was considering a separation on that account. Whatever reminded him of man was painfully unpleasant to him. He threw himself into love adventures to forget man. He gave up his clubs and male companions because he wanted to be all the time in the company of his wife.

I pass over for the present the further significance of his neurosis as disclosed by the analysis of his dreams. I shall only give an example illustrating how untrustworthy are the statements of those who attempt to give an account of their lives and insist that they remember everything accurately. This or that particular kind of incident, they are sure, has never occurred in their life. Regarding sexual matters all men lie consciously, unconsciously and half-consciously.

After further, continuously progressive analysis the subject himself came to the conclusion that he must have been struggling against homosexuality. Now he understood his sudden decision to get married, after having maintained right along that he would remain a bachelor. He was interested at the time in a laboratory assistant, a young man with pretty rosy cheeks. He showered gifts upon that young man and planned to give him an education so as to have a friend always close to him. The first compulsory acts appeared at the time. He married, felt unhappy for a time but for a few years he lived at least a relatively quiet life. Then another man came into his life destroying his peace of mind, a man who had lived for some time in foreign countries and now returned to his fatherland. This was an uncle.

Now he recalls something of which he had not thought for many years—for he was going to keep this from me,—namely, that he had maintained certain intimacy with this uncle for about a year. They lived in a boarding house where they occupied a room together. The uncle always came to lie in his bed and they played with each other before falling asleep.

His uncle carried out the kind of manipulations which he now required of his women lovers: manual gratification. During his relations with his wife, however, he wanted to avoid all thought of homosexuality; she should not practice this form of gratification for him nor should her body remind him of homosexuality. She must save him of the burden of homosexuality which still plagued him under the form of onanism.

After resurrecting this memory a mass of other homosexual data came trooping forth out of his past.

This man was strongly bisexual from childhood with particular predisposition towards the male sex. As a child he did crocheting and showed various female characteristics. After the onset of puberty his homosexuality was strongly repressed, persisting chiefly under the guise of onanism. For the act of masturbation takes place just before falling asleep in a half dreamy state during which he thinks, though indistinctly, of his uncle and of other men. The latent homosexuality was the most important factor in his neurosis.

The result of the analysis was most gratifying in this case. The subject soon abandoned his compulsory acts and was able to sleep quietly. His life became regular; he ceased being a Don Juan. He allowed his wife to carry out those manipulations which seemed essential for his orgasm and for his peace of mind. Occasionally I see him.

These observations show that in the dynamics of the “polygamic neurosis,” homosexuality plays a tremendous role. The observation that every love is really self-love receives new confirmation. Don Juan seeks himself in woman and finds in her that femininity which has turned him into a Don Juan.

---

In his book (Don Juan, Cassanova and other Erotic Characters) already mentioned (Stuttgart, 1906), Oskar A. H. Schmitz states:

“Cassanova would not begrudge woman the possession of all those traits which are called ‘male,’ through ignorance, just as he himself has been described as possessing many female traits. The division of mankind in men and women is a great convenience. But he who undertakes to investigate erotic problems to their bottom must bear in mind that there are no absolute male and female persons any more than there are persons who are purely quick tempered, good-natured, envious, Germans or Semites. All these designations, like Theophrast’s characters, represent so many psychic elements which must have a name. But they are met only in various combinations which may be compared and contrasted with chemical combinations. I believe it is noticeable that men of overstressed virility do not necessarily appeal to women, who find them, instead, partly repulsive, partly amusing. On the other hand it is certainly true that all female tempters were remarkable for their intellect and wit—some of them were veritable amazons intellectually—and we note in our own day with great reason the disappearance of the “crampon” together with the leaning instinct of Epheus. Even the disappearance of Don Juan may be due partly to his overstressed virile characteristics. The erotic temperament includes a number of female traits; such peculiarities as tenderness, vanity, talkativeness need not interfere with his amorous adventures.”