VI
May Disgust Produce the Homosexual Attitude? Cases by Krafft-Ebing, Fleischmann, Liemcke—Observation (personal) and Case by Bloch.—Late Trauma as Cause of Homosexuality—Personal Observation of a case of Late Homosexuality—Two Cases of Bloch—Further Discussion of the Problem—A Case of Pfister’s with the Analysis of several Dreams.
Wären nicht die Details unseres geschlechtlichen Lebens so unendlich mannigfaltig und läge es nicht bei den meisten Menschen fast in allen wichtigen Erscheinungen und Fragen unterhalb des Bewusstseins, und wäre es nicht eine Wesenheit der Liebe, immer wieder die Schleier des Mysteriums über unsere sexuellen Empfindungen zu werfen, so dass allen stark empfindenden unverdorbenen Menschen, namentlich in der wichtigen Periode der Geschlechtsreife, Zynismen und Offenheiten über das geschlechtliche Leben sogar als unwahr erscheinen (Frauen und keusche Jünglinge sind schon beleidigt, wenn man über die Liebe auch nur wissenschaftlich anders als schwärmerisch, allgemein oder poetisch metaphorisch redet) und hätten wir nicht endlich mit der grossen Heuchelei und Verlogenheit der Gesellschaft in erotischen Dingen zu rechnen, so dass sogar die Anomalen und Perversen von ihr angesteckt werden, die es gar nicht mehr nötig haben, zu lügen und unwissend zu bleiben; kurz könnten wir unsere Erotik in seelischer und körperlicher Hinsicht bis zu den letzten Zusammenhängen analysieren, dann würden wir vielleicht mit Schauder erfahren, einen wie kleinen Bruchteil unseres Lebens wir unserem eigentlichen Geschlecht angehören.
Leo Berg.
VI
If the details of our sexual life were not so endlessly manifold; if they did not belong for the most part and in their most important aspects to the realm beyond ordinary consciousness; if it were not a peculiarity of love continually to throw the cover of mystery over our sexual feelings, so that all normal persons of strong feeling, particularly during the period of their sexual ripeness look upon frankness in sexual matters as untruth (women and shy young men feel insulted if one speaks about love even scientifically, in other than romantic or poetic and false, metaphorically veiled, language); and if we did not have to consider the tremendous hypocrisy, and falsehood of society in all matters pertaining to sex, so that even the abnormal and the perverse, who no longer need to lie and assume ignorance, are inspired to assume a similar ‘chaste’ attitude; in short, if we could analyze our eroticism in its physical as well as in its psychic aspects down to the last details, we should then probably discover with horror to what a small extent we truly belong to our own sex.
Leo Berg.
The form of homosexuality which develops late in life is perhaps best suited to serve as an introduction to our inquiry into the psychogenesis of homosexuality and may help us understand the origin of the more complicated cases.
There are, in fact, a number of cases, in which homosexuality appears to have developed in consequence of a feeling of dislike for the other sex. Many authors consider the development of homosexuality among prostitutes as due to this cause. Bloch, for instance, writes:
“The naturally heterosexual prostitutes are driven to homosexuality for one of two reasons: First through the contact with and the influence of their truly Lesbian comrades, which strengthens the inner feeling of solidarity common among all prostitutes; Second, through their dislike of intercourse with men which grows with their experience and with the passage of time, the more so because they see man only in his brutal and raw aspect. The continual compulsion under which they find themselves of satisfying the animal sensuousness of oversophisticated men often by means of disgusting procedures, rouses in them eventually an unconquerable dislike of the male sex, and therefore they devote to their own sex the nobler feelings of which they may be capable. The homosexual relationship appears to them as something ‘higher, something nobler and more innocent,’ something pertaining to a purer realm than sexual contact with men, a fact which Eulenburg (Sexuelle Neuropathie, p. 143-144) has rightly observed.” (Bloch, l.c., p. 603.)
Krafft-Ebing (Neue Studien, l.c.) also holds this view and thinks that, “many prostitutes endowed with great sensuousness, repelled by contact with perverse or impotent men who misuse them in connection with detestable sexual deeds, turn to pleasing members of their own sex.”
In connection with my discussion of the Messalina type I have already shown that latent homosexuality is what drives many women to prostitution. They run away from woman and into the arms of man, into the arms of a great number of men! They expect quantity to replace what quality fails to supply them. We have additional reasons to assume that the women who lean most strongly towards the homosexual side are those who supply the ranks of prostitutes. That of course is true of the largest number though by no means holding true of every case. For there are prostitutes who are attached to their lover (cadet), and who experience orgasm only during intercourse with him, while the embraces of other men leave them unaffected. Here and there the factors pointed out by Bloch and Krafft-Ebing may also enter into the situation. In the presence of an already avowed homosexual inclination disgust brought about through a number of possible circumstances may act as an effective barrier against heterosexuality.
This is revealed to us through the life histories of certain homosexuals. We often come across the statement that certain men, and women too, became homosexual after an infection, particularly gonorrhea. The fear of infection also plays an important role in the psychogenesis of homosexuality.[37]
Krafft-Ebing mentions (Late Homosexuality, etc.) the case of a young man, 27 years of age, who after masturbating since 7 years of age, at 19 years had intercourse with women and enjoyed it. After a gonorrheal infection he became so disgusted with women that when frequenting houses of prostitution he found himself impotent. Old masochistic-homosexual phantasies reappeared and before long he was attracted to the respective circle and seduced.[38] I must draw attention particularly to the fact that this man was able to experience orgasm during intercourse with women. Nevertheless his experience was so impressive that it intensified his revulsive attitude towards heterosexuality by generating a feeling of disgust. (In other cases under similar circumstances there arises a dislike for prostitutes, and the subject seeks as sexual partner a healthy woman.) The infection often becomes the root of a phantastic hatred of women without leading all the way to the development of a manifest homosexuality.[39] The next case which has come under my own observation belongs to this category:
I. P., engineer, 30 years of age, appears to me a typical anxiety neurotic. He is unable to leave his room, a personal servant must accompany him wherever he goes. For the past ten years has been sexually abstinent, because he had the misfortune to acquire a very serious luetic infection from a so-called “respectable” woman. Since that experience he feels a tremendous hatred for the sex. He reads with interest Strindberg, gloats over Weininger and he has translated into a foreign language Moebius’ “Der physiologische Schwachsinn des Weibes.” Homosexual activity does not inspire him with disgust but he claims that it has no attraction for him. Analysis discloses that the anxiety attacks appear as a defence against homosexual deeds. After the syphilitic infection he was for a time in danger of becoming homosexual. Now he protects himself against that tendency by various defensive measures. The path to woman is effectively blocked for him through his disgust and hatred of the sex.
The cure of his anxiety state was not very difficult. A few years later I found him a married man. He had married a woman who was 10 years older than he and who lacked every womanly characteristic. He is entirely potent in his marital relations, claims to experience orgasm satisfactorily, and believes his orgasm would be even greater if he did not have to use precautionary measures against pregnancy. As a syphilitic he wants to avoid bringing sickly children into the world. For coitus he prefers the a posteriori position and situs inversus and justifies this theoretically on the basis of the structure of the female genitalia....
Concerning the relationship between sexual infection and homosexuality we also have an illuminating observation by Fleischmann.[40] This case is an urlind (homosexual woman):
She is an illegitimate child. Father a heavy drinker. She was badly brought up, neglected and persecuted. As a child she avoided work and was unruly. Prison experience. “At 16 years of age I had to earn my own living. My first position was in a restaurant serving beer. There I met Mr. X., the man who seduced me and gave me a sexual disease.
“At the hospital I saw and heard things that opened my eyes. From that time on I worked no longer. Years passed in struggle with suffering and want; prison life; house of correction; solitary confinement. In the house of correction most girls handled one another at night and from that time on no man could interest me any more. I have intercourse only with girls who are pretty. For the past year I have been a prostitute,—mostly drunk,—for I wanted to forget what has become of me and the morbid inclination to which I have fallen a victim.”
The first sexual experience of the poor girl an infection! Then followed the homosexual seduction and the heterosexual channel was blocked. We see here the characteristic homosexuality of the prostitute, already mentioned; then alcoholism, obviously to forget her longing after true love. It must be clear also that her hatred of the father played a certain role and that this feeling towards the drunkard who brought her into the world a bastard she transferred towards all men.
The two cases reported by Ziemke[41] are also fairly clear:
An artist; between the age of 16 and 17 years a relative taught him to masturbate and he kept up the practice regularly every week. At 18 years of age first intercourse with woman; acquired gonorrhea; later, once more coitus, this time with a prostitute; never took any particular interest in the female sex; on the other hand as a boy 9 years of age he already was pleased at the sight of the membrum virile so much that it brought on erection. First sexual dreams were definitely of homosexual import, according to his own declaration, and continued of that character. Later has had repeated sexual experiences with other men, always feels fresh and well after that, while normal sexual intercourse fills him with disgust. His sexual partner he seeks among men of middle age; he is familiar with the literature on homosexuality.
Another case: Former officer, 38 years of age, mother said to have been a very nervous woman. Very shy and bashful as a child in the presence of older persons or strangers. At high school had to repeat the same class twice, was coached and succeeded at last to pass the army examination for officer. After a few years was dismissed from the army because he had mishandled his man-servant, went to South-West Africa, there settled as a farmer, and as a volunteer participated in several small riots.
His first sexual feelings arose around the 12th year; he contends that till that time he knew absolutely nothing about sexual matters. At that age an experience brought his attention to the subject of sex for the first time; he played circus with a younger sister and with his 10-year old uncle and sat on the latter’s back. While imitating a rider’s movements he noticed that his penis became stiff and he had a pleasurable sensation wetting himself in front. He did not know the meaning of this occurrence but was too shy to tell anyone about it. Shortly after that he tried deliberately to reproduce similar situations; whenever he succeeded he also tried to attain ejaculation. He insists that he was not attracted particularly to his uncle, whom alone he had used for this form of gratification, nor to any other boy or man, his only desire at the time was to achieve ejaculation. Later during his high school years, when he had opportunity to gratify himself in the same way, he met a young colleague of his own age, a strong and beautiful boy, who appealed to him very strongly and with that boy playing the passive role he indulged more and more frequently in sexual deeds. In fact as soon as he met that particular boy the thought occurred to him that he would like to have him for the gratification of his sexual feelings in the manner peculiar to himself. During play he used all manner of excuses to climb upon his friend’s back and to imitate a rider’s galloping movements until he had ejaculation. Subsequently he found frequent occasion to use other colleagues in the same way. After drinking it was particularly difficult for him to restrain himself; that is why he frequently had to do with soldiers while intoxicated and one day he was caught and this led to his dismissal from the army. In order to get rid of his unnatural inclination he took up a girl, had normal intercourse with her a few times but without any pleasurable feeling on his part, although in order to accomplish this he had to suppose himself riding a man in the manner customary with him, and eventually he acquired a gonorrheal infection. Then he migrated to South-West Africa, but even there was unable to master his inclination, felt himself impelled to maintain relations with young Hottentots, was caught at it, sentenced to jail, and finally banished from the Country.
In this case the gonorrheal infection seems to have put an end to his heterosexual period.
I recall a number of other cases in which homosexuality broke out after gonorrhea, according to the testimony obtained during my consultation hours. In fact, there was a time when I was a firm believer in the theory of inherited homosexuality, in Hirschfeld’s sense, so that I turned down all these cases and did not care to undertake a psychoanalysis of them. In the homosexual circles I had quite a reputation at the time as a man worthy of their confidence. But since I have found that homosexuals are really bisexual neurotics who have repressed their heterosexuality, these men come to me more rarely and consult me chiefly when they get into conflict with the law. The solidarity of homosexuals and their will to hold on to the notion that their condition is inborn goes hand in hand. Their secret organisation is thorough, and even where formal organisations are lacking, homosexuals know each other and they are always ready to introduce to one another their friends and colleagues.
Dr. S. K., physician, 32 years of age, relates that he has a pronounced heterosexual past. At any rate his longing previously was purely physical and psychically he was completely indifferent. As ship surgeon he acquired a severe gonorrhea in a port and this trouble lasted some six months. He suffered all possible complications: epididymitis, a posterior prostatitis and finally, a gonorrheal rheumatism of the joints. Since that trouble he has felt a terrific disgust for women. In Alexandria while entering a cabin he saw one of the ship lieutenants committing pederasty with a local boy. He knew that at the various ports young boys visited the ships and offered themselves to the homosexual officers. The scene evoked in him a terrific nausea and he wanted to drop that officer from among his acquaintances. But the latter spoke up frankly confessing that he became homosexual after being seduced and since then he was completely impotent in the company of a woman. He begged the physician to keep his secret and not to betray him. He was the only intellectual man on board that ship with whom it was pleasant to have relations. In a few weeks the two men became intimate with each other: “Then, for the first time, I learned what love was and I had never before been as happy as that. My heterosexual past now seemed unbelievable. But in Platen’s diary I came across a passage telling that as a young man he too had been in love with a girl named Euphrasia and that he learned only later the true direction of his sexual instinct. It was the same with me. I was born a homosexual although I had to go through some experiences before my eyes opened.”
In this case the gonorrheal infection and the trivial incident during the journey through the Orient furnished the occasion for the outbreak of homosexuality. But is not the subject in error regarding the strength of his homosexual predisposition? It is interesting to note that his homosexual attitude is promptly beatified and idealized through the addition of psychic factors. Indeed, the homosexuals display a greater love intoxication than the heterosexuals. Such a degree of love frenzy as is displayed by the homosexuals is hardly ever seen among the heterosexuals. Homosexuality represents a harbor of refuge, an attempt to lose one’s self exclusively in one direction, which must be conceived as an attempt on the part of the psyche to neutralize all other tendencies by the overemphasis of that supreme passion.
We find frequently that the homosexuals contend that their previous heterosexual leanings were exclusively physical.[42] Psychically their love relations must be exclusively homosexual. In fact it is common to find men sublimating into friendship their craving for psychic love while woman remains with them merely an instrument for sin (instrumentum diaboli).
A certain homosexual whose history is of particular interest because he recalls clearly his heterosexual period told Bloch:
“At what age my sexual feelings first arose I am unable to recall. My sexual desires are directed towards the male. Before and during my puberty the actual direction of my desire was not clear, in fact I believe I did entertain at the time a wish to have once intercourse with a girl. But it was not love, what I felt was merely a physical longing,—the psychic counterpart of the instinct was entirely absent at the time. Now I feel myself inclined exclusively towards young boys. I have had no intercourse thus far either with males or females, but I believe I would be able to carry out the sexual act in a normal way; I know, however, that it would not be pleasurable to me, it would not amount to more than masturbation so far as I am concerned. Towards the female sex I am completely indifferent, I feel neither disgust nor any dislike. My love dreams are always concerned with persons of my own sex.” (Bloch, l.c., p. 566.)
Homosexuality often develops also in women following an infection:
Miss Erna, 42 years of age, writer, shows preeminent male features, behaves peculiarly like a male, smokes, drinks, is a preeminent champion of women’s rights. She claims to be innately homosexual, even as a child she assumed a male role, and was wilder than her brothers. She always passed for an uncontrollable tomboy. Had no intimation about her homosexual condition. Masturbated very early and already at the age of 15 she maintained clandestine relations with an army officer who had seduced her. But she claims that her experience was exclusively physical. She has experienced orgasm with men. At 19 years of age another army officer gave her a venereal disease. Since that time she feels a tremendous dislike for all men. At 22 years of age she conceived a romantic love for a woman friend. They kept up a relationship during which she maintained the male role. She even procured for herself an artificial phallus and wore male clothes in the house. It was like a genuine marriage. “I know only since then what love really means. Formerly I only felt a liking for men. It was merely a physical attraction. But for the past 20 years my love has been exclusively for women.” After the first “homosexual marriage,” which lasted only three years because her friend deserted her and married, she had numerous relations with other women.
Very convincing are the cases in which the homosexual outbreak occurs first after some powerful trauma! It is not always gonorrhea. Often various other experiences furnish the inciting moment as I can easily prove on the basis of my own observations. But first I must quote a case reported by Krafft-Ebing which is illuminating on this score:
Miss X., 22 years of age, is considered a beauty, men flock around her whenever she appears in society; she is decidedly of a sensuous nature, seems born to be an Aspasia, but rejects all advances. One of her admirers, however, a young scientist, she looks upon with some favor, becomes intimate with him, allows herself to be kissed by him, but not like a loving woman; and when the young man believes himself close to the consummation of his supreme desire she begs him with tears in her eyes to desist because she is utterly unable to yield to him, not on account of moral grounds so much as for deeper psychic reasons. In the course of the exchange of written confidences which followed that unsuccessful meeting between the two the homosexual character of her inclination was clearly revealed to her.
Miss X. had a father who was addicted to drink and a hysteropathic mother. She herself is of a neuropathic constitution; has full breasts, and generally the outward appearance of an unusually attractive woman but reveals boyish ways about her and various male peculiarities,—she fences, rides horseback, smokes and has a decidedly mannish way of standing and walking. Lately her romantic attachment to young women has become quite noticeable. She has a young woman with her sharing her apartment.
Miss X. claims that up to the time of puberty she was sexually indifferent. At 17 years of age she became acquainted at a summer resort with a young foreigner whose “majestic” figure made a tremendous impression upon her. The privilege of dancing a whole evening with him made her happy. The following evening, at twilight, she witnessed a horrible scene—from her window she saw that wonderful man in the bushes futuare more bestiarum mulierem quandam inter menstruationem.
Adspectu sanguinis currentis et libidinis quasi bestialis viri Miss X. felt shocked, she seemed powerless and crushed, could hardly recover her psychic equilibrium and for some time after that could neither sleep nor eat; from that time on man stood in her mind for the quintessence of bestiality.
Two years later a young woman approached her in a public garden, smiled and glanced at her with a very peculiar look which penetrated deeply into her soul. The following day Miss X. felt impelled to visit again that public garden. The woman was there, in fact, she seemed to have been expecting her. They greeted one another like old acquaintances; they talked and joked pleasantly and thereafter met by appointment daily, first in the garden, and later, when the weather became unpleasant, in the woman’s living apartment. “One day,” Miss X. relates confidentially “the woman led me up to her divan and allowed me to glide to the floor while she seated herself. She lifted her shy eyes at me, stroked the hair off my forehead softly with her hand, saying: ‘Oh, if I could once love you the real way, may I?’ I consented, and as we sat close by gazing into each other’s eyes, before we knew it we passed to that love from which there is no drawing back.... She was bewitchingly beautiful. For me the whole experience was something new and intoxicating.... I do not believe that man is ever able to feel such delicate, bewitching, exquisite intoxication.... Man is not sufficiently sensitive, he is not delicate enough for that.... Our foolish abandon lasted until I fell back exhausted, helpless, intoxicated. In this exhausted state I was lying on her bed when suddenly an exquisite feeling thrilled through me and awoke me from my half dreamy state, something unspeakably sweet and unlike anything I had ever experienced before; I found J. on top of me, cunnilingus perficiens—that was her highest pleasure, tandem mihi non licebat altrum quam osculos dare ad mammas—and with every motion she shook convulsively.”
Miss X. acknowledged further that during her homosexual relations she always assumed the male attitude towards her womanly companion and that once, faute de mieux, she allowed one of her male admirers to perform cunnilingus on her. (Krafft-Ebing, l.c., Obs. 165.)
Let us consider closely the case of an exalted nature like that girl. She goes through her first graceful love fever, she is about to become a true woman, she thinks “him” a princely man, a “majestic” personality when unexpectedly she undergoes the experience of witnessing that very God-like man behave like a common beast.... Jealousy and a revulsion of feeling unite in her at the terrible sight rousing such a tremendous affect that forever after she feels an unspeakable horror of all men.
Many women must have become urlinds as a result of just such experiences. One must also take into account that among many women homosexual love shows itself merely in kisses and embraces and that it seems to them something nobler and much more esthetic than the manifestations of heterosexual love. Fear of the phallus is something that may be roused by a relatively slight infantile occurrence. In her homosexual indulgences Miss X. is not particularly esthetic by any means, nevertheless even she remarks: “man is not delicate enough!”
This highly interesting case illustrates the development of homosexuality following a trauma which must have had a tremendous effect upon so sensitive and romantic a nature as this young woman and which could not but strengthen the existing predisposition to homosexuality. But in spite of all she is still bisexual and I do not think it impossible that she should yet overcome her tremendous horror of man. We must consider that the father was a drinker and that she had probably witnessed in the parental home scenes like the one she has described. What a pity that the case has not been analyzed. Traumatic incidents during later life are particularly powerful in their effect if they resemble and therefore re-echo infantile memories of similar childhood experiences. It may even be possible that the woman did not actually witness the scene at the time she states but that she experienced merely a hallucination, repeating in her mind a scene which she may have witnessed only during her childhood.
A remarkable parallel is furnished by the next case which I record from among my own observations:
Miss K. S. is 32 years of age and calls to consult me about her various compulsions. She confesses that she is an urlind and that she had never felt herself attracted to men. Her father, a heavy drinker, died three years ago; her mother lives quietly and is not neurotic.
Our subject has had a number of chances to get married but she withdraws coyly from every man the moment one comes close to her. She feels a certain inclination towards older married men and she understands in consequence how a woman might become interested in a friend’s husband. “When I did find a man whom I liked, I was unlucky,” she declares, “for I discovered that he was already engaged to a friend of mine.” Truly she fell in love only with girls and women. Her first romantic attachment was to a woman school teacher, whom she also visited at her home. That teacher wanted this wealthy girl to marry her brother and brought the two into contact as often as possible. She liked the brother because he looked so very much like her beloved friend. But if the sister was not in the room their conversation lagged and she could talk only in monosyllables. She sent flowers and costly gifts to her teacher. Her supreme desire was to sleep once in the same bed with that teacher and she often dreamed of it. She even proposed to take her on a journey. The teacher could not go and hesitated also because she found her pupil’s attentions too oppressive. The teacher actually suffered on account of her admirer’s deep jealousy, for the girl turned ill if she so much as found other girls visiting her. At any rate, quite a circle of girls in the class admired the teacher.
Later she fell in love with a girl friend whom she embraced and kissed warmly numberless times because it gave her a wonderful warm feeling to do so. On the other hand the kisses of an uncle made no impression on her whatever. No man interested her in the least. For a long time she did not know that she was homosexual, but she was well aware since her childhood that she was unlike other children. She was always as wild as a boy and her mother frequently said to her: “there are ten rough boys in you!” She climbed trees, ran around wildly and always preferred to play with boys, did not care for dolls, coaxed to be given a saddle horse and a gun until her father was driven to despair over her and exclaimed sometimes: “you are really a spoiled boy!”
During the analysis she recalled a number of homosexual and heterosexual experiences. Already at 12 years of age she had an experience with an uncle who came to her in bed and played with her. She could not recall whether they indulged in coitus that time. With girl friends she also had various adventures. She confesses in fact that she has been in the habit of masturbating since her 12th year, when she was taught by a girl, and that at one time she often indulged in the phantasy that a man was having coitus with her. In fact, as late as her 16th year she fell “heels-over-head” in love with a friend of her father’s. He was much younger than her father but belonged to the same circle.
While she talks at first only in favorable terms about her father (his drinking habit was not so very excessive) and dwells mostly on his lovely qualities, his mild character, his imposing appearance, etc., at the same time she begins to show underneath a growing hatred. The father had in fact left her in critical circumstances. Every one considered them millionaires, because her father had kept up a very big house. After his death it turned out that he had been spending his capital and that there had been left practically only her share which was, however, large enough to permit her and her mother to live in comfort. Her mother had always endured the life of a martyr. The father had maintained relations with the cook in the house during the last ten years. She was a fat, shapeless vulgar person. In fact, mother and daughter were just tolerated in their home. Once her mother endeavored to dismiss the cook and the father was mad and grew almost violent showing her mother the door threatening that she might leave and take along her daughter if she did not like it in the house. After that the cook was naturally more arrogant and unbearable than ever so that the poor mother passed her days weeping until finally she reconciled herself to that state of things. It was possible to throw that cook out of the house only after her father was lying ill in bed. That daring woman started a law suit claiming that the father had promised to settle on her a home and an income.... She lost that suit because the father testified upon his death-bed that the woman’s contentions were false. The subject relates a number of other relevant incidents but does not recall having ever witnessed any intimacies between her father and the cook.
However, her dreams seem to point in that sense. Thus, for instance, among others she had the following dream:
I go carefully into the kitchen and do not find the cook there. Then I tiptoe slowly up the back stairs to the garret and through the key hole I see the cook lying in bed with the driver.
She recalls that that particular driver was in their service when the cook was a younger woman and that her father had dismissed him. He watched for her father once, as he was coming out of a restaurant to waylay him. But her father was stronger and threw the servant to the ground with such force that the fellow fractured a bone. But she thinks that the neighborhood did not know the true reason for the battle, every one naturally thinking that the servant planned the attack out of revenge.
Finally she confessed to me that there was one experience of which she had not thought before for a long time which she must tell me about. She wanted to tell me about it for some time but an inexplicable shyness prevented her. She was 16 years of age when she once heard her father leaving his study room to steal upstairs to the garret. It was the maid’s day out and her mother was lying down not feeling well. She took her shoes off and followed him quietly up the stairs. The door to the servants’ room stood open. The father was somewhat under the influence of drink and so was also the cook, who always managed to secure some liquor for herself on the sly. A candle was burning in the room and the stairway was dark. She could see plainly everything that was going on. She now saw pater membrum suum in os ancillæ immisit. The sight of his reddish face now distorted under the influence of passion was so repulsive to her and struck her so powerfully that she could never forget it in her life. Even to this day when she thinks of it she feels nauseated. (While she is telling the incident she is struggling against the impulse to vomit.) After that episode she developed a nervous complaint of the stomach, chiefly a nervous vomiting. Even during the year just passed there were times when she could not swallow a morsel of meat and she had attacks of uncontrollable vomiting.
It was after that occurrence that she fell in love with her teacher. That episode was what had determined the course of her sexual development and what drove her to homosexuality because it made her look at all men in the light in which she had seen her father. Her inclination towards elderly married men (always platonic) is also traceable to her father Imago. She was aiming to find a nobler and more delicate father.
Whenever a man tried to get closer to her it reminded her of the painful incident she had witnessed, which summed up in her mind all the misery in her home, the whole outrageous situation, the humiliation of her mother, and her father’s morbid passion. For her father who did have some splendid qualities and who enjoyed an enviable position in society she once had as great a love and as deep a respect as for her noble mother. Then she had to go through the disastrous situation in the house. That experience could but serve her as a warning against men, a warning and a lesson! It could not but implant deeply in her soul a lasting dread of man and of man’s terrible passion. She naturally shrank back from any close contact with man for there was always a picture before her mind which plainly carried the message: “do not trust any man lest you should go through what your mother did!”
What might have been the future of this brave girl if the father had not acted in that way, if the marriage of the parents had been a happy one, if she had not witnessed that terrible scene which impressed her the more painfully because she had no inkling whatever of the brutal side of sexuality? I make bold to assert that she would have developed into a quiet pleasant housewife and she would have given vent to her homosexual tendencies along quiet and innocent paths. But as it was she devoted herself to girls and avoided men more and more. She did permit herself to be attracted by men. But they had to be married and unattainable. Thus there could be no danger for her. When the husband of a friend of hers of whom she also was very fond declared that for her sake he would be willing to divorce his wife, she fled and presently found some other unreachable ideal to which she attached herself. All her ideals were practically desexualized while her sexuality she exercised exclusively on women. The love among women loomed up in her mind as pure and elevating, while the love of men she considered brutal. Even coitus seemed to her a disgusting brutal act.
The traumatic incident occurred after puberty yet it had a very tremendous effect. The question rises whether the traumas occurring during childhood may also influence the particular direction of sexual development. This question has long since been solved in harmony with Binet’s view and psychoanalysis has taught us some additional facts regarding the influence of traumas. The narrower Freudian school has gone so far as to overvalue the influence of traumas and has designated as traumas certain relatively trivial experiences which do not deserve that designation. I want to sound again a warning against underestimating the role of traumas. Certain minor fetichistic tendencies are easily and sometimes fairly satisfactorily explained on that basis, although the more complicated forms of fetichism, such as we shall study later, are not to be explained solely upon the theory of traumatic causation. Here the association hypothesis of Binet completely breaks down. We must bear in mind that the neurotics conceive many traumas which in reality did not occur and that their phantasy turns innocent incidents into alleged traumas whenever it suits the trend of their emotions to do so. The neurotic’s memory serves him poorly and that is also true of the homosexuals who construct a purely homosexual life history for themselves.
But are not first impressions of fundamental determinative value for future development? Jean Paul very appropriately declares: “All first impressions persist forever in the child!”
I wish to add here a couple of observations which we owe to Bloch and which illustrate very well the influence of first sexual impressions:
“I was about five years of age when during a walk accompanied by the nursemaid I saw at some distance a man in the act of masturbating; without knowing what it was, the picture persisted in my mind for years. In my dreams until my fourteenth year a playmate occupied the chief role. At thirteen years of age I fell in love with a school comrade who took but little interest in me; what roused my interest in him in particular was probably the fact that he was the one who brought to the class information about sexual matters. We removed to another City and I lost sight of the boy. Although I knew nothing specific about sex at the time I sought contact with those who roused my feelings.
“A stranger, a man of about 35 years of age, enticed me and as soon as he had me he carried on pederasty with me. I felt that there was something repulsive in what he was doing, but I was too weak to oppose myself against his influence. In about three months he disappeared. Now I knew what masturbation was especially as there had occurred a number of orgies at school.
“At eighteen years of age I left school, and while the others among my comrades began showing an inclination towards the female sex I found myself attracted in every way exclusively to man. Often at the insistence of some of my friends I tried to come into contact with women of the half world but every time the attempt filled me only with disgust and aversion. When I see a woman taking an interest in me I am filled with a horrible feeling. That was one more reason why I felt attracted to the male sex. When I love a man I do not think (only) of sexual attraction, but I seek to find in him precisely what I, in turn, feel myself ready to give; exclusive devotion, loyalty, tenderness; when I love a man, everything else pales into insignificance for me.” (Bloch, l.c., p. 565.)
It would seem that in this instance the memory of the masturbating man, an incident which the boy had witnessed during childhood, determined for him the actual course of his sexual development. In the previous case the trauma acted as a warning. In this case it seems to have acted like a perpetual stimulus, since a child does not possess the usual moral scruples, and the first excitation (the sight of the erect organ) must have been tremendous. That picture stayed in his memory for years, it fixed itself and persisted permanently in that young man’s memory. In the K. S. case, mentioned above, the trauma was associated with disgust; it served as a revulsion against heterosexuality.[43]
In this particular case the memory of the incident was associated with desire. It was utilized in positive form as an inciter to homosexuality. Thus we find that the problem is rather complicated. I confess that for some time I was unable to see my way clear in the midst of these facts so long as I was one-sided in my views and thought that the condition arises exclusively in one way. But I know now that a number of paths may lead equally to homosexuality and that this is a subject which requires a much more thorough study. We must find out whether psychic factors are invariably at work behind every case of homosexuality or whether there is an exclusively psychic and a specially organic homosexuality. Such cases could be called pseudo-homosexuality.
As a contribution to this question I find of interest the following case, reported by Bloch, as the history reveals the trauma and the bearing of the trauma upon the development of the condition. It is a case of male homosexuality:
“From my early childhood I was aware of something peculiarly girlish in my whole nature outwardly as well as inwardly (the latter in particular). Sexual excitation I experienced also very early. I was about 6 years of age when I remember that a private instructor seated himself on the edge of the bed where I was lying ill with fever, petted me and then membrum meum tetigit with his hand; the pleasurable sensation which thus arose was so intense that I cannot get it out of my mind to this day. At school where my conduct and studies were always excellent I indulged occasionally in mutual ‘touching games’ with other boys. I do not know on what side of the family I may have inherited the unusual intensity of my sexual desire, but I remember that around my 12th year the flaring up of the instinct caused me a great deal of unrest and when a comrade once showed me how to masturbate it proved a welcome relief. This ‘paradisaic’ state did not last long and when I learned about the dangers and forbidden features of my habit I had a terrific and useless struggle with myself.
“I remember that as far back as my memory goes I had the habit of gazing at older, vigorous men almost involuntarily and with a feeling full of longing, without knowing what it meant. As to masturbation I thought that I fell into the habit because I had no chance to come into contact with women. As a matter of fact I did occasionally entertain friendly relations with certain girls who appeared to be strongly attached to me; but I always saw to it that these love excitations were ‘nipped in the bud’ because I was afraid I should be unable to carry out my role to the end. Finally I decided to seek relief among prostitutes, who were otherwise repellent to my esthetic and moral sense, but the attempts proved useless: either I found myself unable to carry out the normal sexual act at all or if I did it, I experienced no satisfaction and thereafter I was also plagued with the fear of infection. I did have rather frequently the opportunity to enter into amorous relations with married women but I never did so even though I inwardly scorned my shyness and my oversensitive conscience. Although these facts are true, I must not omit to mention the chief thing responsible for the whole situation, namely, the fact that I am homosexual in my inclination and that the other sex has hardly any attraction for me.
“I believed myself totally unfit for ordinary sexual relations when I found one day that the sight of the membrum virile alone made the blood boil in me with excitement. I then recalled that this had occasionally happened before, although not to such a remarkable extent. Secretly I had to face the plain fact that I was ‘not like others.’ This fact which I had previously suspected and of which I grew more and more convinced, brought me to the brink of despair.
“Then it happened that a simple little girl fell deeply in love with me, and I made up my mind to start relations with her. During the time while this lasted, a period of several months, my inclination towards the male sex persisted though occasionally I tried to subdue it; but to overcome it completely was for me, I found, impossible. I was still keeping up my relations with the girl when I once noticed in a public lavatory an elderly gentleman who appealed to me very strongly; he scrutinized me carefully and bent over in order membrum meum videre, came close by, moved forward his hand shaking with excitement and ... membrum meum tetigit. I was so surprised and scared that I ran off at once and for some time after that I avoided passing by that place. But my impulsion was the greater on that account to meet that man again; this was not at all difficult.... In this continuous struggle, so meaningless and so useless, against an instinct which was at least partly inborn in me, I have squandered my best energies, although I have long ago reached the point of realizing that in itself the instinct is neither morbid nor sinful.” (Bloch, l.c., P. 545.)
Does not this case illustrate clearly the influence of first impressions and the significance of the bisexual foundation in the homosexual attitude? The man is seduced by an elderly man and after that he longs continually to be seduced by an elderly man, in a manner recalling that unforgettable scene. Although capable of heterosexual acts, this side of his nature persists as a sort of compulsory tendency and drives him again into the arms of elderly men to seek that form gratification which was the first he had ever experienced in his life. His heterosexual leanings are repressed. He himself admits that he always saw to it that all such love affairs were nipped in the bud. In other words he is deliberately fighting off all heterosexual stimuli and encouraging the homosexual excitations. Then he arrives at the realisation that he is not like others.... In fact he is bisexual and has the capacity to act as a bisexual being. A careful analysis would have disclosed many interesting features. We wanted only to show how this young man was continually seeking to find his teacher (father?), and what a great deal of neurotic overgrowth stood back of this desire.
The next case quoted from Krafft-Ebing is also very remarkable:
A merchant, 34 years of age, mother neuropathic; at 9 years of age was taught masturbation by a schoolmate; also, homosexual relations with a brother; fellatio; urolagnia; at 14 years of age first love for a school colleague.
At 17 years of age his love ideal changes completely. He is no longer attracted by young, beautiful boys, but by decrepit old men.
T. traces this back to the fact that he had once overheard his father in the next room uttering pleasurable exclamations after he retired for the night and this excited him tremendously because he thought his father was ... (weil er sich den Vater coitierend dachte).
Since that time old men carrying on various homosexual deeds play a predominant role in his dream pollutions and during masturbation. But even through the day the sight of an old man is enough to excite him, especially if the man is very old and decrepit when his excitement may be so tremendous as to end in ejaculation. Attempts at intercourse with women in houses of prostitution proved unsuccessful and ordinary men and boys do not rouse him. From the age of 22 years on he carried on a platonic love towards an old gentleman whom he met on the latter’s daily walks. During these walks T. had ejaculation. In order to free himself of this peculiar dependence after several unsuccessful attempts at intercourse with prostitutes he took along with him a decrepit old man whom he induced to have coitus before his eyes. The scene so excited him that he in turn proved potent. Later on he was able to dispense with the old man’s presence and could carry out the act successfully without that aid. But this improvement did not last long; soon he became impotent once more.
This case is in every way interesting and of great significance for our problem. It proves to us the great determinative role of a childish reminiscence and the persistence of a scene which is continually repeated in memory. The whole of that young man’s libido is centered around that particular scene. He stages it also in the brothel when he hires an old man to have intercourse in his presence. That old man assumes then the role of the father, the prostitute is the mother, while he is once more the onlooking child. The act of looking on so excites his passion that with that aid he proves potent in his intercourse with the prostitute. But that continues only so long as the exciting influence of the scene persists. After that he reverts to his former impotence and he again ... seeks his father. It is perfectly plain, and only the blind could fail to see that T. seeks his father. His wish was obviously that his father should also start something sexual with him. It is possible that he had identified himself with his mother. But we have no direct proof of that. This is particularly significant because Sadger and the others who belong to Freud’s narrower circle place great emphasis upon the role of the mother in the genesis of genuine homosexuality while neglecting ruefully the role of the father. This case shows us a “Japhet, who seeks his father.” The promenades with the respectable old gentleman are repetitions of the walks with his father.
This patient does not recall any heterosexual experiences during his youth, probably because the memory of them has been repressed from consciousness. In the other case which I shall now quote from Krafft-Ebing the heterosexual period is clearly recalled. I refer the reader to that author’s Observation 144. Here I quote the first part of the history of that case:
“I am at the present time 31 years of age, lean yet well built, devoted to male love, therefore unmarried. My relatives were in good health, mentally normal, there were two suicides in our family, on mother’s side. My sexual feelings arose when I was about seven years of age, the sight of the naked abdomen being particularly exciting. I gratified my instinct by allowing my sputum to trickle down the abdomen. When I was eight years old we had in our house a little nurse maid of about thirteen years. I found it very pleasurable to rub my genitals against hers, but there could be no coitus on my part at that time. During the ninth year I went to live among strangers and went to the gymnasium. A colleague showed me his genitals and that filled me with disgust. But in the family where my parents arranged for me to board there was a very beautiful girl who prevailed upon me—I was but little over nine years old at the time—to sleep with her. I found the experience most pleasurable. My penis, though small, was already capable of erection and I had intercourse with her almost daily. This continued for several months. Then my parents transferred me to another gymnasium; I missed the girl very much and during my tenth year I began to masturbate. But the act inspired me only with disgust. I masturbated but moderately, always felt deeply remorseful afterwards, although I could discover no bad consequences.”
Here is a man who actually felt disgust at the sight of a friend’s genitals and who found intercourse with women pleasurable. He is excellently on the way to become a heterosexual. At fourteen he falls in love with a school colleague, an experience which every person goes through at about that age, the “normal,” no less than the homosexual. After the final examination (high school) he has intercourse with girls and great pleasure in the act, but he is already making use of some homosexual makeshifts. Soldiers must precede him in the act of using the prostitutes and the thought of having access to a vagina which had just been in contact with another penis, stimulates him. “At the same time I can never kiss women without feeling disgust; even my relatives I kiss only on the cheek.” ... Hinc illæ lacrimæ! He protects himself against the sexual excitations emanating from his family circle. His homosexuality is somehow linked to his family. The peculiar action of a boy who allows sputum to trickle down his abdomen, imagining that it is spermatic fluid could probably be traced by means of analysis to a definite childhood trauma. Particularly clear in this case is the heterosexual attitude which under certain influences and inhibitions merges almost imperceptibly into the bisexual and homosexual.
Whether late homosexuality is determined every time through definite traumatic incidents, I am unable to state, because I have not had the opportunity thoroughly to analyze such a case. The next case seems to me to show that strong emotionally toned episodes may turn a latent into manifest homosexuality:
An army officer, 46 years of age, consults me for complete impotence with women. The impotence is of four years’ duration. He has become acquainted with a lady of whom he is very fond and who enjoys an excellent financial status. He could now be a happy man, if he only were a complete man. Asked about his morning erections he blushes. The trouble is not with erections, they do not fail him on other occasions. He is impotent only in contact with women. Finally he admits that since his 38th year he has been carrying on homosexual relations. Since that time his interest in women gradually vanished and he has become impotent. His anamnesis reveals some significant facts. He recalls no homosexual deeds or excitations during childhood and before puberty. He was sexually precocious, masturbated already during the primary school period and was attracted by girls. First coitus at seventeen in a house of prostitution. After that he felt he wanted women very badly but had no homosexual inclination. Then a tremendous experience came into his life which agitated him and after that he was depressed for some time. That was just before his first homosexual act.
“Can you tell me something about the nature of that agitation?”
“I find it painful to speak of it.”
“But you expect help in a rather difficult situation. How should I appraise the situation in its true light if you won’t furnish me the necessary information?”
“You are right. But there are things of which it is almost impossible to speak. It is about my mother. But I suppose I cannot help myself otherwise. I must tell you all.
“I have always honored and respected my mother. I was 38 years of age when I received a telegram calling me to her sick bed. She passed away shortly after my arrival. As the only son it was my duty to put everything in order after her. I went through her old correspondence and in a box I came across a mass of love letters. First I was not going to read them. But curiosity got the best of me. I said to myself: ‘every married person loves once in his or in her life some one else, why should not that be permitted to my mother when father died while she was still very young.’ If I only had not done that! I found not one letter, I found hundreds of letters and ... they were not all from one man. The letters were so vulgar, so plain, so cynical, so revolting that I wished myself dead. I lost the holiest thing in my life. Before then I always dreamed of finding a woman like mother, and her type of womanhood always stood before me as the ideal. Now I found that she could be bought and she was to be had for ordinary degrading purposes. The tone which her lovers assumed in those letters was so revolting that I imagined the worst. Since then I feel a deep scorn for all womanhood. Shortly after that I yielded to the temptations of a homosexual friend....
“Do you believe that my impotence has some relation to that occurrence? I have often thought of it. Whenever I go to a woman I cannot help thinking of the box in which I found mother’s letters. After such an experience how is it possible for one still to consider marriage?”
A late homosexuality induced by a very tragic experience. Naturally the man was always latently homosexual. But it was that experience which turned him into a manifest homosexual. Unfortunately I am unable to state whether he married the woman and became heterosexual again or not, because I never saw him after that.
The reader will observe that in this chapter I have quoted quite a number of cases culled from the reports of other practitioners. I do this for a double reason. First, I want to prove, on the basis of other material than my own, that homosexuality has its psychogenesis; and, in the second place, I aim by this means to disprove the contention unfortunately rather widespread in some circles and actually expressed by some critics, that my case histories correspond to the “genius loci.” As if the Viennese differed in sexual matters from the North-German or from the Englishman! My material is derived from the world at large. I have been unable to discover thus far any difference with respect to sexual matters between any two nations, except that one may keep things under cover more cleverly than the other.
This series of cases aiming to illustrate the rôle of psychic trauma in sexuality may be concluded with the following case, reported by Pfister (l. c. p. 169):
A 28-year-old woman, member of an educational institution, of high moral repute, is in despair because she fears she is no longer able to control her homosexual longings. If she meets a young girl she is nearly overpowered with the impulse to kiss her then and there. The unknown girl’s face haunts her for weeks afterwards and she can not sleep tortured with regret because she did not gratify her impulse to kiss the girl as she does with her acquaintances. She is particularly distracted at the thought that with her tendernesses and attentions, she may mislead into homosexual counter-affection a fourteen-year-old girl who is close to her, although nothing out of the way has happened between them. But the little friend already trembles with excitement when she is embraced and her great affection leads her to tears if she does not see her beloved often enough.
Our homosexual girl had a physically attractive but otherwise insignificant, nervous father who left the conduct of his business to the capable hands of his energetic and intelligent wife. The little daughter learned early to admire her mother and to look upon her father as a “light weight.” As a small girl she was normal. She played equally with boys and girls. With her playmates of both sexes she underwent various sexual experiences: the girls played the game of doctor and this gave them an opportunity to touch the sexual parts, and a small, ailing boy who was one of the girl’s playmates between her seventh and ninth years, did the same thing. Around the age of eight years she fell in love with an uncle who had the habit of throwing her playfully into the air, a game which always gave her a very peculiar feeling. At ten or eleven years of age a 40-year old housekeeper abused her repeatedly. Definitely homosexuality broke out when the girl was thirteen. She was at the time a great deal in the company of a teacher who resembled her mother in many ways but who was better educated. That passionate woman was distinctly homosexual and for two years she treated the girl with greatest affection. During that time her passion for kissing developed while the grossly sexual cravings which the sensuous housekeeper had roused in her gradually quieted down. A few love affairs with boys also led to kisses but she experienced no particular passion in that connection. Those affairs she took up as a pastime and to be in fashion rather than because she was interested.
At the boarding school her one-sided erotic inclination was further developed in the course of passionate friendships. At the age of nineteen she made a couple of heterosexual erotic attempts but they proved unsuccessful. The first affair was with a hot-blooded artist of womanly appearance. Her love was deep, the young girl floated in ideal conversations and gladly exchanged kisses with the young man. After his departure they maintained a warm correspondence full of tenderness but without giving one another any formal promise.
Five or six weeks after parting from the beloved friend she became engaged to a smart young man because she was in despair and she had given up the plan of a higher education for herself as she was not getting along at all well with a relative at home. She thought she loved her young man but soon after the engagement she began fearing that she had perhaps undertaken more than she intended to carry out. The soft, shy young man apparently resembled her father. For seven months she played at being in love, vomitted every morning and wished she were dead. Finally she gave up her engagement and concentrated all her feelings upon members of her own sex. She maintained however her delicate womanly sensitiveness throughout and always gave the impression of a girlish creature. So long as she found homosexual gratification, she took little interests in a career, or in nature, art and religion; but as soon as her inclinations were thwarted, her ideal interests came strongly to the foreground. She herself compared these vacillations with the movements of a pair of scales.
When she felt deeply in love she was fairly free of grossly sexual excitations. But during her loveless engagement she felt herself sexually roused a number of times when the young man played with her in a thoroughly respectable manner.
Pfister then relates that the young woman interrupted the analysis just as she was making rapid progress towards recovery. But he adds a number of interesting details, including her first dream, which usually contains the nucleus of the neurosis.
The first dream is as follows:
A cat bit me on the left index finger and held on to it for some time. The finger swelled and burst down to the bone. The tendon was broken and a great deal of fluid was oozing out. It meant I shall always have a stiff finger. I said to myself: “What a pity! Now I won’t be able ever to play the piano again.”
I woke up and found my finger so fast asleep that I could not move it.
Just before the dream the girl in her despair had offered a fervent prayer which made her feel a little easier. Before the analysis the girl was extremely restless and longed for her beloved, but she said to herself that she would only bring misfortune upon that poor girl’s head.
The analysis of this dream, which Pfister unfortunately, did not carry out with complete success, shows that her whole emotional life is governed by the infantile experience with that housekeeper. The first recollection brought up by the free associations with this dream relate to the housekeeper, who in the dream is represented by the cat.
I have discussed elsewhere in a lengthy contribution, the Representation of the Neurosis in Dreams.[44] In this dream the trouble is symbolized by a stiff finger. “Playing the piano” is again a symbol for sexual intercourse as well as for masturbation. Probably the symbol here has acquired its emotional coloring from the masturbation habit. But the heterosexual meaning is also obvious (piano playing—coitus). If we interpret the dream we have:
The housekeeper, that false cat who played a dependent rôle towards my parents, made me ill with her long-continued tendernesses (A cat bit me on the left index finger and held on for a long time). The trouble grew worse, something valuable tore in me (the ability to love a man) and the homosexual form of love established itself permanently (stiffening). Now I am incapable of loving a man, I cannot be a mother or raise a family of my own,—a wish that has already cost me so many tears (the water flowing out of the wound).
Perhaps this interpretation will be doubted as something artificial and rather forced. But the subject recalls further details of the dream and relates them subsequently. Such additions are of extraordinary significance because usually they contain the censured, the repressed material. She recalls that the cat was going to bite her at first on the foot (significant because of the proximity of the sexual parts). Further on she relates a continuation of the dream:
The water flowed down the steps. I ran to a friendly woman physician for aid to my wound. On the way I met her unexpectedly in the neighborhood of a merry-go-round. Then my sister speaks up saying: “She will fix your finger in good shape right away.” The woman physician retorts: “I am sorry, but I do not operate.” She sends me instead to a surgeon (male).
The interpretation is not difficult. There is a great deal of weeping. Her tears inundate her whole soul (House as symbol of soul). At first she is looking for a woman healer. A woman shall cure her trouble. Life is a merry-go-round, everything in life revolves, she may yet be happy. But the woman physician gave her the correct answer. You need a surgeon. Only a man can heal thee. I do not operate. I am not the one to awaken your femininity (defloration?).
A further supplementary account shows that the finger became the muzzle of a repeating revolver. Pfister’s interpretation that this is a phallic symbol and that it shows the dreamer’s phantasy that she was a male with a phallus, may be correct. Every homosexual woman has the wish to transpose the psychic state into an actual physical condition. But another possible meaning of the repeating fire arm seems to me more plausible. The subject’s traumatic incident had the effect of facilitating subsequently other homosexual experiences. The traumatic experience required repetition.
I pass over for the present the other meanings of the dream (over-determination), which Pfister discloses with keen insight. I am concerned here merely with pointing out the determining influence of a trauma. Naturally there are other factors at work along with the traumatic incident, it would be necessary to find out why the incident influenced her in that particular manner, the precise constellation of her family circle ought to be taken into consideration, etc. But the dream points so clearly to the cause of the psychic trauma that the cross section it furnishes enables us to reconstruct the whole picture of her trouble.
The case is convincing also from another standpoint. The subject gave up early her psychoanalysis because she felt in a short time that she was well. These apparent cures which serve to circumvent the danger of a thorough psychoanalysis, are well known occurrences. The subject is unwilling to acknowledge that she is also heterosexually predisposed, that her whole longing, in fact, is directed towards the fulfilment of motherhood. The dream says plainly: “I want to be a woman, like all other women, I want to bear children! Save me from the danger of homosexuality!”
But her consciousness is unprepared to acknowledge this desire. She meets difficulties upon the heterosexual path. Pfister believes that she identified herself with her father. In that sense the kissing episodes (with girls) signify: I let father (who was a very handsome and well appearing man) kiss me! But her mother was also in the habit of kissing her with great show of affection. It appears thus that the most varied forces were at work to determine the fixation (stiffening) of her emotional attitude.
In fact homosexuality does resemble ankylosis. The free operation of sexuality appears to be restricted, a single point is fixed and every movement takes place thereafter only within the range of that point of fixation.
Is it possible for psychoanalysis to loosen up such psychic ankyloses and to free once more the bound-down energies? In this particular case can psychoanalysis remove the fear of man and the woman’s doubt whether she can fill a woman’s rôle? How far reaching are the possibilities of psychic orthopedics in the case of homosexuals?
I must ask the reader to follow me patiently through the complex inquiries which follow before attempting to answer these questions.