The Homosexual Neurosis

by Wilhelm Stekel

VI

HISTORY AND ANALYSIS OF A HOMOSEXUAL—CHILDHOOD REMINISCENCES—ANAL EROTISM—ATTACHMENT TO THE MOTHER—INTERPRETATION OF DREAM SYMBOLISMS—LOVE OF THE FATHER—REGRESSION THEORY OF HOMOSEXUALITY.

Was ist das Siegel der erreichten Freiheit?—Sich nicht mehr von sich selber schämen.

—Nietzsche.

VI

What is the stamp of achieved freedom?—To be no longer ashamed of one’s self.

—Nietzsche.

The complete analysis of a homosexual would require a whole volume. Before concluding the present work I propose to give a portion of such an analysis. The treatment lasted six weeks, when it was interrupted by the war. This analysis, too, only led as far as the father complex. But even so it yields important data and enables us to draw together the observations made in connection with the various briefer illustrations already discussed.

84. Mr. Sigma, a student from Denmark, 28 years of age, consults me on account of various nervous difficulties. For a number of months past he has felt very depressed, is always fatigued, generally unable to sleep and unable to concentrate on his work. He is facing his final examinations but is unable to study. He complains of a lack of any sense of joy in living. He admits having entertained also ideas of suicide which he has rejected chiefly on account of his mother. He is very much afraid that he may yield some day to just such a temptation.

Sigma is consciously homosexual. He emphasizes: He has never felt any interest in the female sex and already as a child he fell in love only with boys. He is the only son of a very hard-working, brave, mother in comfortable circumstances who is wholly wrapped up in him. His father died a few years ago. He lives a wholly retired existence, he has no friends,—for his mother prevents that. Once—he was 17 years of age at the time—he had a close friend to whom he felt very attached, but his mother interfered and broke up their friendship. Now he is completely isolated. All his spare time he devotes to his mother, when he is not gone to the theater or to a concert. He also visits no families; his mother prevents it.

He begins—spontaneously—an account of his life with his first recollections:

I was 2 years of age and we—a number of children—played out of doors. A pretty lady walked up and threw a ball into the grass. She said: He who catches the ball may keep it. I was nearest to it but did not dare to trespass upon the finely kept lawn. Therefore another one caught the ball....

This recollection seems typical of Sigma. Like all first recollections it contains the determinants of his whole life.[^[34]] It shows us a man who lacks self-confidence, whose activity is inhibited by considerations regarding others. He explains that for the sake of his mother he has renounced all pleasures in life. He is always hesitant (kleinmütig), overwhelmed by his feeling of inferiority and dares not assume any important enterprise.

His sexuality awoke very early. He played always with girls and felt more like a girl. He liked to put on his mother’s hat and clothing. His mother was the master in the house, the breadwinner and law giver. The father always played a subordinate rôle. We see again a reiteration of the fact that the child identifies itself with the stronger parent. Under the circumstances it was natural that Sigma should identify himself with the mother....

Already, in the public school, at seven years of age, he fell in love with his teacher. That is why he became one of the best scholars. He also loved some of his colleagues, but was too bashful to betray himself to them. At 12 years of age he began to masturbate and during the act his fancies were centered on the image of a naked man. He was very religious up till that time and during confession distinguished himself by the lengthy list of his sins and the depth of his dejection. At 12 years of age he became free and progressively developed into a full-fledged atheist. The struggle against masturbation began at 14 years of age, when he heard that the habit was very harmful. After that he indulged more rarely. Great feeling of fatigue on day after pollution. The subject regards his present condition a consequence of his masturbation habit.

Already during his gymnasium years (high school) his mind was distracted and he barely managed to squeeze through his finals (Matura). He was always bashful and avoided the colleagues who spoke cynically among themselves about girls so that he was called “Miss Sigma.” For a few years he lived away from home. They lived formerly in the country and he had to stay in Copenhagen. He lived with some older sisters with whom he did not get along very well. He played music with them, joined them on walks, experienced considerable excitation ... short of erotism. His whole erotic feeling was directed only to men and boys. In the course of his endless day dream fancies he never thought of a woman at any time in his life. He dreams only of men and thinks only of them. That concludes the first visit.

Sigma again emphasizes his one-sided inclination towards men. Nevertheless he must correct a small detail of his account as given on the previous day. This, I repeat, is a common typical occurrence in the anamnesis of homosexuals. When giving an account of their life they neglect entirely all the heterosexual episodes. But today Sigma adds that occasionally he did have erotic dreams concerning women; perhaps four or five times. But not more often than that. These dreams led to pollutions and were rather indefinite as to content. Sigma was also in love, transiently, with a girl cousin, at sixteen years of age. He at once attempts to weaken the force of this declaration: it was merely a pastime, a pose, because an uncle was in love with the same girl. He thought it was his duty also to make love to this girl cousin. But it was soon over. And he must emphasize again that he never indulged in any phantasies centering on women. He had such phantasies. But they were always about men.

He was brought up almost wholly in female society. If his mother was away, there was an aunt in the house who looked after him. He was taken to school and was called for when he was already a grown-up boy—the typical training for dependence. His mother wanted to procure friends for him. There were always some boys whom she wished he would accept as his friends. But usually he himself found nothing in those particular boys to interest him. If he himself chose some boy for a friend his mother was sure to interpose her veto as soon as their friendship became too warm. And he was always prone to fall in love with his friends. He composed poetry at a very early age, deifying his friends; to this day his poems are devoted almost wholly to Eros Uranos.

At this point he reflects for a while; and he continues: “I identified myself always with the female figures who were mostly strong, aggressive women. I could always enthuse over such strong, energetic women displaying male aggressiveness about them. If a woman or a girl ever interested me and played a rôle in my day dreams, she was of this type.” Next he recalls a heterosexual episode. He admired for a time the landlady’s daughter, kept company with her, they played music together, but he felt very unhappy when she married off afterwards.

The Eulenberg trial made him aware of his own homosexuality. That made him very unhappy for he discovered that he was unlike others. In the high school he was always looked upon as peculiar and he kept aloof from his schoolmates. The famous trial made it clear to him that his end would be either insanity or jail. He went through some dreadful days. He was in love with a friend and when the latter asked him why he was so depressed, he broke into bitter tears and poured out his heart circuitously describing his passion. He felt that he was not like others, he felt lonely and closed in, unrecognized and weak. His friend advised him to devote himself more to art. He looked upon the subject’s suffering as due to thwarted ambition.

His typical dreams are concerned with pursuit by men and breaking in. A particular dream made a strong impression on him: He was pursued in bed by a great mass of bedbugs and finally himself turned into a bedbug.[^[35]] Like all homosexuals he had for a time the fear of infection and especially of tuberculosis. He was almost convinced that he would die prematurely of tuberculosis.

We are also familiar with tuberculosis (as well as syphilis) as the representative of what is evil, of incest and homosexuality. But for the present our patient sheds no light on this aspect of the subject. We do not care to influence Sigma and therefore do not disturb the course of his associations. Sigma shows but little interest in the analysis. He is mistrusting and hesitant. He does not have much time and seems relieved when the sitting is over.

The next sitting opens as follows: “I have come to ask you to make an appointment with me for tomorrow. I want to skip today. I must take a little rest and gather strength. Yesterday’s sitting has sort of taken me to pieces....”

During the first couple of sittings I had hardly spoken a word and had allowed Sigma to do all the talking. But the flight reflex, which dominates all homosexuals, because they are afraid of the truth, is here already coming to surface:

“What roused you so yesterday?”

“That you kept so quiet. It was an uncanny silence....”

“Would you have preferred to see me excited?”

“No.... I know, of course, that the physician must keep his balance. But that is precisely what I lack. What an awful impression I must have made on you!”

Hinc illae lacrimae! The subject is concerned over the impression he makes upon the physician. He wants to know whether the physician has sympathy for him, whether he is impressed or indifferent. He is afraid of making himself appear ridiculous. The physician becomes the chief person around whom his own life interests are being centered for the time.

“But that is irrelevant. You want to get well; and that has nothing to do with personal matters.”

“To be sure,—that is just what I was saying to myself. Doctor, you are my last hope. And yet, I am already losing patience and feel like running off. It is less than two weeks since I went to purchase a revolver intending to shoot myself. The plan fell through only on account of my lack of adroitness. I was unable to procure a revolver. The saleslady demanded to be shown a purchase permit and I did not have one. There must have also been a tremor in my voice. I was so excited.... If I had been able to procure that revolver I would not be now sitting in your office.”

“Why did you want to die?”

“A life full of trouble! No friends! No prospect of improvement! The everlasting depression!”

“And did you not think of the suffering you would have caused your mother? To your mother who sacrificed her life for you?”

“No, I was indifferent about that. It would have only served her right, because it is she who has ruined my life. It might have been the end of her too.... But I was truly sorry for my friend. He has so many cares and so much to think about. It would have shaken him up. He is a writer and is now at work on a new novel. It would have certainly thrown him out of the writing mood and it would have interfered with his creative activity.”

“What has your mother done you that you should want to punish her so severely?”

This brings out the last repressed grudge against the mother who came near separating him from his much beloved friend.

“Mother has ruined my whole life,” he continues, “she has separated me from my only and best friend. You have no idea what I suffered. He came daily to our house. He accompanied me on the piano so that we enjoyed unforgettable evenings together. Father was once a good singer. As there was no accompanist at hand he neglected the beautiful gift. Now we resurrected the old songs once more. Every evening was a festival. On account of a pulmonary apical catarrh I had to go to Egypt. During my absence a catastrophe occurred. Mother found that my friend was robbing her of a son’s love. She was jealous because he heard more often and received longer letters from me than the parents. She compelled my father to write Ernst a curt letter forbidding him to come to the house any longer or to correspond with me. From Ernst, to whom I wrote regularly three times weekly while he answered once, I received next an ironic letter, stating that I ought to enclose the parent’s permission next time I write him. Only then will he write me again. I did not understand what that meant until I read the enclosed father’s letter. I felt like one against whom the gates of heaven have been suddenly closed tight. I returned to Copenhagen at once, but did not dare to take openly a stand against mother. She had a bad heart spell the first time I reproached her bitterly and all the relatives called me her murderer. I made up secretly with Ernst and met him on the street. But mother found out. She followed me stealthily and when she discovered that I was meeting Ernst there followed terrible quarrels which I am unable to relate. I was thus very badly embittered and that innocent relationship was turned into a morbid whim. You will appreciate, therefore, that I cannot but hold a grudge against mother....”

“Have you not tried to rebel openly against the situation?”

“I was too weak for that. Father begged me not to disturb the happiness of our family circle. It was a terrible situation and I did not see my way out of it. That happened when I was 19 years of age. I have since told mother that I must meet Ernst once in a while. She is against the idea and wants to link me up to other friends. I am brought into contact with girls in the hope that I will take an interest in them. But the very fact that they are brought in my way under mother’s patronage, as it were, makes them repulsive to me from the outset. Moreover, I know that mother would be equally jealous if I should really love a girl. She will stand for no other love besides her. I am too broken up to ever break away and be self-reliant. So I remain everlastingly a mother’s boy. But I cannot endure this sort of thing any longer. I have had enough of this torture and want to see an end to it....”

“I feel much better. Last evening I worked fairly well, for the first time in a long period. I am beginning to like Vienna. I was out in the woods (Wienerwald) and I was pleased with the sight of the first violet. I am again beginning to feel pleasure in nature’s beauties. It was my first excursion.”

“Don’t you go out of doors otherwise?”

“Yes, every Sunday. Always in mother’s company. We start in the morning, have our lunch out of doors and spend the day together.”

“Do you not go on excursions with your friend?”

“Unfortunately, I do not. But hold on! I did, just once. I was going to tell you about it anyway, today. He invited me to join him with a number of his colleagues on an excursion to a distant island. I was enthusiastic over the plan at once for I hoped that it would prove an opportunity for greater intimacy between us. But I was disillusioned. We were happy the whole day. I was thinking all the time of the night. I hoped we would have a room with double bed.... Unfortunately all the rooms in the hotel were taken and we had to be content with occupying quarters in common. Here, too, luck failed to serve me. My friend slept next to another member of the party. Next day, under the pretext of fatigue, I started back. I felt unhappy and was all day long on the point of tears. I reached the next village alone. It was on a holiday. I did not know what to do. So I went into the church....”

“To pray?”

“Not at all. I was no longer religious at the time. I went to be among people. It did no good. The many dressed up folks, the holiday atmosphere, the music, the songs, the organ. I calmed down a little. Next I went to a restaurant because I felt a great craving for something sweet. Thus the majestic and the trivial stand close in my case.[^[36]] Then I returned home, after first driving around through the streets and was happy when it was so late that I had to go back to the house....”

There follow various accounts of his passion for his friend Ernst. He always dreams of physical union with the friend and has no other thought. Only once he attempted aggression on his friend. In a urinal he suddenly reached for his friend’s penis. The latter good-naturedly avoided him and never afterwards referred to the incident. But he saw clearly that he would never achieve his aim. Meanwhile his friend fell in love with an actress. He was jealous only so long as his friend did not confide in him. Thereafter he was happy because the actress preferred another man and paid no attention to Ernst. He was in a position to console his friend like a mother. He emphasizes that his feelings are distinctly maternal towards men who are ill or unhappy and that he makes an excellent nurse,—thus bringing out his pronounced identification with the mother. But he was unable to nurse his father when the latter was taken with gastric cancer; the disease was terribly repulsive to him....

He has dreamed the following dream:

I am called up in school. I had to solve a mathematical problem but could not arrive at the right result. Next it was an English translation from Shakespeare. I did not know the vowels. It seemed that the various persons of the play were represented by some of the colleagues in theatrical costumes.

The analysis of this dream would lead us into endless bypaths. The most important feature is the affective character of the dream which in simplest terms may be formulated as follows: “I am facing problems in life for which I do not feel prepared. I am an actor and I am wearing a theatrical costume. I am playing the homosexual, I have transposed one aboriginal trend into another. The English play, The Merchant of Venice, comes to his mind. The teacher who examined him in mathematics was also Kaufmann (merchant) by name. This Kaufmann is the center of a rather tragic episode in his life. He was studying “exact” branches (Realschule) but was interested in the classical (Gymnasium) course; he was always weak in mathematics; he failed in his last examination for engineering. His attitude towards money matters has always been morbid. His mother continually reproaches him for not appreciating the value of money and for being unable to handle money wisely. He is different from his parents, both of whom are merchants.”

The Merchant of Venice portrays the tragedy of the relations of a Jew to his only daughter. She runs off with her beloved and abandons the greedy father, who, however, never begrudged her anything. He wants to do likewise. He would like to flee with his friend and abandon the mother. His basic problem is: how to get around his mother, how to free himself of her.

He places great weight on the jewel box scene, which has always impressed him. He, too, is confronted by the difficult problem of a choosing among the boxes. There are three paths open before him: man, woman and child. He is a child, would like to be a woman and is afraid to be a man. His inner conflicts are locked up like the valuables in the box. We shall see whether analysis is capable of disclosing them....

There are some vague relations to Shylock’s coldbloodedness. He emphasizes the pound of flesh. The associations lead to certain sadistic trends which are wholly unconscious. At any rate, the first dream in the analysis is of greatest significance. Its complete solution and interpretation becomes possible much later....

He dwells for a long time on his attitude towards money. One familiar with dream analysis at once suspects that this money complex has its bearing on anal eroticism. He keeps to his theme. Requests to leave early.

Again comes very late and asks whether he may leave early. He is hungry. (One notices his extremely resistant attitude. He is afraid he might disclose something.) He has dreamed wild and profuse dreams, he can no longer remember what. He must have spoiled his stomach for he vomited in the morning.

This vomiting in the morning, a symptom which appears in many neurotics and also in the case of many neurotic children is a reaction of the ethical, moral self against the dreams of the previous night. Plainly, one is disgusted with one’s self. Hence the vomiting which is subsequently ascribed to something inoffensive that may have been eaten on the previous evening. But the subject believes that the beer he drank did not agree with the dessert....

He is asked whether he can recall at all the dream.

“No, not a trace.”

“Better try and see.”

“I only remember scraps; nothing worth mentioning.”

“Please tell me these scraps.”

“I have dreamed only about various water closets and urinals. There was a urinal here and one in the office ... the rest is gone. I cannot recall.”

“The vomiting in the morning seems to me to point at something going on in the urinal which strikes you as disgusting.”

“May I not have simply spoiled my stomach?”

“Indeed. That is a possibility not to be excluded. But the other is also a possibility to be thought of. Do you often vomit in the morning?”

“Yes, but only as I did today. Only fluid. It is more a nausea than real vomiting. May I leave now?”

“You know that I never compel you to stay. Only I want to draw your attention that I am fully aware you want to hide something from me. How do you imagine you can get well if you do not have the courage to confide in your consultant? Or perhaps you are afraid that you will lose something of my respect if you should disclose the peculiarities of your sexual life? You are anxious to run off and keep your secret. Very well. You are free to do as you wish. But do not expect, under the circumstances, that a consultant should spend his time on your case. One who wants really to get well must first be willing to face his problems clearly.”

“You are right, doctor. I have kept from you the most important thing: I do indulge in a form of sexual excitation which is perhaps the most unpleasant possible. You will appreciate at once why I have kept the knowledge of this from you so long. I thought I have told you already too much and I wanted to keep to myself this particular morbid turn. But you will surely despise me.”

“I despise no sufferer.”

“Already as a small boy I had felt the greatest interest in the water closet. My wish was always: to see another man in the act of defecating. In my school fancies I always thought of the teacher being compelled to defecate in my presence. I was always trying to watch other men in the act. If I succeeded in witnessing the act I became very excited and masturbated. My whole mind and thought to this day revolves around the water closet and the feces. Think of it! I, a person with certain æsthetic tastes, an artist, poet, enthusiastic musician, a man aspiring to all that is beautiful and noble,—to be fettered down to so horrible a perversion! Think of this abyss between my body and my soul! If I become acquainted with a new man and I like him, my first thought is: I should like to see him empty his bowels.”[^[37]]

“Have you perhaps, as a child, witnessed such a scene which may have made a deep impression on you?”

“I do not remember. I only know that already in the primary grades I was interested in watching my schoolmates. In Denmark there is a greater freedom about these matters than elsewhere. Sexual freedom, too, seems to me to be greater in our country. In later years I found sufficient opportunity to satisfy my craving. Finally I had recourse to a tiny augur which I keep always with me as an aid to secure the opportunities for observation which have now become indispensable to me. But usually I find boring holes unnecessary. Little appropriate convenient holes may be found when one looks for them. I must have many colleagues for I have found that most closets show these observation spots. Here in Vienna, too, I have seldom come across a water closet, where it was not possible to watch the act. I fight with all my powers against this unfortunate trend. But I give in each time again. I think of it all forenoon. By noontime I am wholly out of patience. I am impelled to seek a public lavatory. There I wait till a man comes along. When I see him defecate, I masturbate....”

“Have you watched women, too?”

“No, I find women disgusting when I think of them in this situation.”

We are here confronted with a form of anal erotism of a pronounced infantile character. All children without exception show a great interest in the lavatory and in the processes of micturition and defecation. These processes form the theme of a whole group of infantile sexual theories. The children come through the anus, they are generated through the urine, etc. It is quite likely that we have here an instance of the fixation of certain infantile impressions. The fact that the first phantasies which he is able to recall revolve around his teacher, proves that someone who was an authority played a rôle as the intermediary for these early infantile impressions. Who can that authority be? We can only surmise. We must await patiently the further development of the analysis.

He complain that he has an ugly appearance, because everything about him is so unprepossessing; his whole physiognomy seems to him womanly, soft, and the obverse of striking. He often turns to the looking-glass and examines himself. As in the picture of Dorian Grey he finds the traces of his paraphilia expressed in his features. He symbolizes his mental processes and localizes them in his face. He fights, a relentless fight against his scatologic phantasies and trends, he seems to himself weak, womanly, repulsive. Vice, low thoughts, animal cravings, low passion—all that he sees expressed in his face.

His first recollection of his paraphilia is noteworthy. He is playing with a little friend, an uncle, who wants to defecate near the street. He points out that people may pass and prevents the deed.... This recollection already indicates the two tendencies: the coprophiliac trend and the struggle against it.

Moreover, his coprophilia reaches farther than he has confessed thus far. We discover today that there is present a predisposition to coprophagia, that the condition is really a mixture of homosexuality and stark infantilism. He would like to allow the partner to defecate on him. Identifications with lavatory come to surface. The place chosen for the deposition of the feces is the abdomen, occasionally the mouth. There are also frequent phantasies of fellatio, active and passive. The reading of various medical and popular books excites his phantasy and feeds his paraphilia.

He relates two dreams. In the first he was running after an electric car which he could not reach. He tried to jump on but in vain, the car just passed before his nose. In the second dream he led his dog for a walk, the dog met another and copulated while he himself ran off. The first dream represents an unattainable ideal. The second illustrates the endeavor to get rid of the animal-like trends (within himself). He avoids similarly coitus with a woman.

He relates that for a long time he has been in the habit of writing up phantastic homosexual orgies and that he carries around these erotic stories for months. The last story he wrote some 14 days ago. He is much interested in these doings, because the writing and the reading excite him tremendously. He tells me the content of the last phantasy which he has written up: A round table of sixteen soldiers. One of them holds a naked woman on his knees. She must urinate in a glass. The soldier pours beer in that glass. Then all those present partake of the beer.[^[38]]

He confesses next that he has already carried out a number of times various urolagnic acts and felt great pleasure doing so. In fact these cravings did not bother him only so long as the friend visited him daily and he was keeping up his spiritual love for the fellow. That is why he was so broken up when his mother deprived him of that friend.

He relates a number of episodes illustrating his activity as voyeur. At first it was chiefly men of advanced age who roused him. They had to have very clean and attractive linen. Ejaculation ensued when he had an opportunity to see the man naked and the phallus interested him more than the podex.

He also admits having entertained phantasies about his father. But he found these phantasies unbearable and they proved at last so discomforting that he had to abandon them. On the other hand he was able to state emphatically that his mother never figured as an erotic object in his fancies.

As a genuine homosexual he was very much surprised that a “naked woman” should figure in his last phantasy or story and he could not explain the intrusion. But he is telling me everything without reserve....

He fears that perhaps his mother is having some understanding with me. She is in the habit of tracing all his secrets.... I point out to him the fact that the mothers of homosexuals always show the strongest opposition against the analysis when they find out that their sons free themselves and turn their affection (temporarily, of course) to the analyst. Sigma’s mother, who has accompanied him to Vienna, also tolerates no intimate friendship on her son’s part, as we know. Thus he tells me that she had reproached him yesterday for leaving her alone on Sunday. She wants to be everything to him. She also tries to be tender with him, to coddle him, a habit which he strongly resents. He believes that this resentment is due to his aversion against all womanhood. This sort of protection against all tendernesses on mother’s part is typical of all sons who are incestuously fixed on their mother.

He relates how his mother once confessed to him that she found no support in his father and actually felt lonely. On that occasion he wept over his mother’s plight and passed a sleepless night.... His further associations lead him to his father’s fatal illness: it was a slow breaking down due to cancer. He could not take care of his father, and was but of little service to the latter. It was shortly after his father had dismissed his friend. He was still too absorbed in his own troubles. He witnessed with detachment the terrible phases of the dying man’s last struggle. A few days before the end he dreamed that he saw his father’s body lying peacefully on the bier. It was plainly a dream of impatience. He could hardly await his father’s passing away. He declares that he hated his father heartily at the time, because the latter had allowed himself to be induced by the mother to write that letter to his friend. Strangely, he was never so angry with his determined mother as he was with his weak-willed father. During the father’s funeral and upon returning home he was unable to weep. This occurrence is typical of those men for whom a death is the fulfillment of an old wish. In point of fact the father was a burden and drag in the house. The mother sacrificed herself and his death was a release for everybody. Moreover his attitude towards his father had always been rather peculiar. They had never had much in common....

He reports a number of small details illustrating how tirelessly his mother endeavors to bind him to herself. Yesterday afternoon he was at the theater and later went to the Prater. In the evening he found his mother morose and pouting. She looked at him reproachfully saying: “Did it not occur to you during your rounds of pleasure that you are leaving your poor mother alone?”

He must think only of his mother and always feel that he is bound to her forever. Aunts and neighbors always come to him to tell him how much suffering he causes his poor mother by neglecting her. While he was still suffering acutely the distress caused by his mother’s breaking up his friendship with Ernst, he met the latter once secretly and they went to a theater together. The mother knew it in some way and when he returned home he found her in bed, her head wrapped in towels. Her disappointment made her ill and she had to keep to her bed for a week. Finally an aunt accused him of behaving like a murderer towards his mother. She cannot understand that passion of his for that friend! Was he perhaps in love with the young man’s sister? Happy to have a way out of his difficulty suggested to him he answered the question in the affirmative. That roused his mother’s jealousy to the highest pitch. But she soon convinced herself that she had been fooled by him and that he had no interest whatever in the girl.

He found the household ties so unbearable that at one time he entertained the notion of shooting his parents and running off. There were frequent quarrels during which he displayed unexpectedly a terrible venom against his mother and an unexplainable tendency to violence. But these episodes soon blew over, and he again felt himself helpless under the tyrannic sway of her love. Perhaps not as unwillingly as he makes out ... for there were opportunities available for freeing himself and he did not take advantage of them. He remained inactively at home, to be taken care of and to allow his mother to worry over him....

He dreamed of visiting numerous urinals running from one to the other. This dream portrays him as searching for something. It appears that he is trying to trace down a particular infantile scene. He relates how obsessed he becomes with the desire to go from lavatory to lavatory until he finally sees the longed-for scene. He is seldom satisfied. Often there follows a feeling of disappointment and disgust. Occasionally an uncommon sense of peace during which he is able to gather his thoughts.

“I did not tell you the truth when I denied transvestitism (Verkleidungstrieb). I often entertain such fancies. I am particularly fond of Salome and I often portrayed myself in that rôle with keenest interest. My teachers were the prophets whose cold, severed head I kissed.”

This trend distinctly sadistic is fortified by numerous small details. He is jealous. He saw once his friend entertaining himself in friendly and lengthy conversation with a lady and the thought occurred to him that perhaps his friend was in love with her. He figured that he would be justified to take his friend’s life for he loved him more than any one else in the world. He pictured to himself that deed and what he would do to his friend. The chief motive he confessed reluctantly: “I should abuse sexually his body.” With that fancy there is linked also the portrayal of immense sadness.

The two features he mentions today are represented in the Merchant of Venice. A scene which always excited him, representing transvestitism. Portia as judge and the Jew bent on carving out a pound of flesh. Shylock and Salome. The bloody head of John is obvious enough.

Today, too, he is in a hurry and must get through quickly. He is always relieved when the hour is over. This raises the suspicion that he is trying to cover up further revelations....

He relates particulars regarding his homicidal fancies against his friends. His favored phantasy is the thought of pushing his favored friend into an abyss. They often take walks on the seashore. At a certain spot the coast is very steep and rocky and a fall there would mean certain death. He is also obsessed with the reflection: what would he do afterwards? Run away? No ... he would jump after his friend to be united with the latter in death....

The next dream carries us deeply into the structure of his homosexuality. First he relates the dream as he had written it down and then he adds reluctantly the portion indicated as “additional.” The addition usually contains the most important features.

The dream just before falling asleep:

Place: the grotto across the Schönbrunn Castle. I was descending the rocky incline and reached the lowermost declivity. I was very much afraid of falling into the water basin. I was wondering what to do, and I had the feeling that back of me, instead of rocks there were high stairs which I could never climb up. Suddenly I found myself on level ground, beyond the water. An automobile passed me by noiselessly and with lightning rapidity disappearing specter-like in the bushes. I saw no driver and nobody else in the machine. It seemed very uncanny but presently I knew that I was at home and in my bed. I should have liked to keep on dreaming but the wish to hold on to what I had dreamed thus far prevailed over all other desires. I was afraid I should forget my phantasy so far as it had unfolded and that I should have nothing to report to my consultant.

Shortly afterwards I fell actually asleep and i dreamed a great deal. I have tried to recall some of the things in the morning. It seems noteworthy that the dreams were but lightly intimated rather than carried out; there was always still something more about to take place but the next dream picture intruded before the previous one was all done.

Additional: Once I found myself in a theater in the first row of a balcony. Tristan was being given for the occasion. Instead of the orchestra leader, André Rose was leading. A fine one-year volunteer, Einjahrig-Freiwilliger, back of me, in the second row, was singing Tristan in the style of the modern recital song. Next to me sat my aunt who is linked with memories of my kindergarten age. I had the unpleasant feeling that I was involuntarily sliding down towards the ground floor, and therefore I leaned heavily back in my seat stretching out my legs and trying to support myself by pressing my toes against the foot support (bed foot-board?). I had the uncanny feeling that the foot rest might give way and fall off like a piece of paste board. I begged my aunt to lift me carefully. I felt like a very sick person. Sitting again upright I felt well and refreshed and I was just in time to see the curtain drop over the stage and a number of persons appearing in front of it, among them several gentlemen in evening dress. Obviously the performance is being cancelled. The public broke into ironic applause, whistled and howled.

Another dream: Late at night in a big garden. Many people about to take their leave after an afternoon spent in irrelevant gossip. My parents were also among those present. My father was in a hurry to get to town. He leaves. It is very dark. Presently a station bell, the whistle of a locomotive. I shout into the night’s darkness not knowing whether any one hears me or not: he is lucky! He is just in time to catch the train. And I think of following in an hour. I am very tired. I am happy in my bed at home.

Sunny afternoon in a poor quarter of a suburb. Under a window of an apartment window there are a number of tin vessels which I know, belong to the woman above. An elderly woman is preoccupied with the vessels, holding each vessel up to the light, as if testing them, but I know that she is merely awaiting the opportunity to run off with them. A window is raised in the neighboring house, a woman calls out to the woman living in the apartment under whose window the vessels are lying, to watch out for the stranger. By that time I myself am standing in the owner’s room. She is just putting on her best toilette. The warning neighbor appears and scolds the vain woman who on account of her vanity neglects to watch out for her things.

Addition: I was in the next room. The woman had a little girl with her. I held my penis in hand pursued the two and wanted them to take it in their hand; and thus the ejaculation....

The woman’s hands disgusted me because they were dirty.

This is hardly the place for a complete analysis of the whole dream. The first part, the falling into a deep basin is a hypnagogic vision and represents the process of falling asleep, the descent into the depths of primordial man. The rapidly passing automobile, the danger. The representation of Tristan refers to a great passion for a queen. Schœnbrunn, the former Kaiser’s summer residence, refers to the parental home. Isolde is also a queen, who is lost forever for Tristan. Is it not rather remarkable that he should dream of Tristan and Isolde, the quintessential epic of heterosexual love? And does not the cancellation correspond precisely to his cryptic wish? The thought of a fall into the depths is continually recurring as well as the inhibitions about things not holding out (hence the steadying with the feet for support). The man in evening dress represents the love of a modern cultural man in contrast with a Tristan. He himself is Tristan, the onlooker and the singing Einjährig-Freiwillige. Finally another picture: parting, i.e., his father’s death: “He was lucky.” What is the meaning of that? He has caught the train on time! Recalling that in one of his previous dreams the subject was unable to catch the electric car, we understand that his father found time to attain his aim,—a tempo—while he himself is late. We shall be informed presently about the meaning of this aim. And back of all inhibitions another picture breaks forth: he runs after an old woman with his erect membrum (the child is a symbol for the genitalia. Cp., in this connection, The Language of Dreams, Dreams and Sex, Chapter, “Children in Dreams,” translation by James S. Van Teslaar, Badger, Gorham Press, Boston, 1922).

He is not a little surprised that his dreams portray heterosexual feelings. Heretofore he had paid no attention to his dreams.

I have not yet stated whom the old woman represents. He is asked to mention any woman that occurs to him and after some hesitation he states: my mother.

Here we come across one of the roots of his homosexuality, one that perhaps we anticipated. But thus far I avoided any inquiries about his attitude towards the mother.

What is the meaning of that portion of the dream which portrays a number of tin dishes? I perceive this as follows: He does not possess many treasures, it is all mere tin, but such as it is it all belongs to the woman above ... the mother. The neighbor warns the mother that another woman might rob her of her son’s affection. The mother is very vain and spends considerable time preparing her toilette.

The key to the dream rests in the pollution with which it ends and the deepest effect: the disgust on account of the dirty, unclean hands of the woman above.

We see that the pollution is slowly prepared. First there is a representation of the heterosexual love (Tristan). But his inner voices—the public—express themselves against that love, the latter is deprecated: there is whistling and shouting and ironic applause. Next the father is upon the scene of action. He is represented in the act of leaving. Other women appear,—the old woman, the neighbor. But the orgasm is achieved only through the “woman above” (“upstairs,”—Frau da oben, literally, woman above),—the mother. This form of pollution, which at bottom represents merely an unconscious onanism (unclean hands!) brings on a feeling of disgust in him.

The next dream portrays a scene in which a man talks about his son. The scene takes place in a lavatory. Probably this reproduces an infantile scene wherein he may have observed his father at the lavatory. The dream following that is much clearer. I reproduce here both:

I found myself in a lavatory compartment and I watched my “victim.” The man turned his back to me and spoke to himself about his son. I noticed that the woman guardian was keeping watch on me from the outside and I started to leave, grabbing my hat just as she was opening the door to catch me at my observation post. I acted as if I were unconcerned, quietly picked up my handkerchief on which I had knelt down, picked off the floor the various things of mine that were still strewn about, gloves, muffler, etc., and went off with the feeling that through my cool behavior I disarmed the woman of her suspicions and had avoided a public scandal....

I went upstairs to a wide open store. Half way across I saw the saleswoman standing in a corner. At the sight of her I am seized with tremendous bowel cramps. I turned around and defecate publicly in the room. The woman over there will not see me?

This dream reminds him of the childhood incident already mentioned: When he was two years of age he was playing out of doors with another boy who prepared himself to move his bowels close to the street, in the open. Now he admits also that his own libido is greatly increased if he imagines he is watched during defecation. This is a typical instance of sexual infantilism. He is not only voyeur; he is also exhibitionist.

The first dream discloses the fear that the mother, the guardian, might find out his scatological tendencies. In the second, the woman upstairs was the onlooker during an infantile scene. It reproduces undoubtedly a frequent scene of childhood.

He has carried out a number of homosexual acts at public baths. In Denmark the men bathe together in steam rooms. Thus he had opportunity to permit himself bodily contact with others to the extent of inducing ejaculatio. He must also add something to yesterday’s dream about defecation. Once at the seashore he heard a man groan in the lavatory. He climbed upon the side wall and saw the man masturbate. This so excited him that he climbed down at once and also masturbated. The stranger revenged himself by looking on in his turn and that increased tremendously the subject’s libido.

His dreams today are very characteristic.

I am in a carriage and I am playing with an infant in swaddling clothes. I would gladly be rid of it. A man advises me to pack the child in a tin box,[^[39]] and I actually do to.

Interpretation: he wants to be rid of his infantilism; he preserves it in a tin box. Compromise between the two trends. The next dream relates about a minister of the gospel who stands before a big hole in the ground and who interprets that hole to mean that asceticism is not a possible ideal. It is necessary to masturbate, at least occasionally. There were roots in that hole, which looked like hair. Next he is with his mother in a carriage. The mother turns into the holy Madonna or the holy Zara(?)

The earth, too, stands for the mother: mother earth. The hole refers to both, birth and death. One comes from the mother and returns to the mother. The mother appears again as the holy one, and as the Czarina, hence the mystifying Zara. The father is the Czar, just as in the Tristan dream he is represented by the king. Further meaning is obvious.

Hairs recall his peculiar attitude. Women’s hairs are abhorrent to him. His mother has long blond hair. The father was very hairy. Formerly all hairy men were abhorrent to him. Downy, young, feminine men are his ideal. He is continually seeking woman in man....

He reverts once more to the dream about the hole in the ground. He now recalls that dream very clearly.

I am again a pupil at school and I am being conducted to confession along with the other school mates. We stand in a wide, round amphitheater scooped out of the ground. The natural wall rises to a height of about 2 meters, all around. Above it there stands a wonderful temple-like edifice. A monk points to the wet spots upon the earthen walls and compares them to the erotic thoughts, which are also not to be rooted out of the believer’s conscience. I notice a bunch of roots on the wall and involuntarily I think of pudendal hair. The monk condemns asceticism.

A dream full of religious meaning. Already in some of the previous dreams the woman “upstairs,” or “above,” was perceived through religious over-determination as mother Mary to whom alone his love belongs and which he therefore must not squander on any earthly woman. He sees his grave which like a memento mori admonishes him to regard this life as a preparation for the next.

Woman seems to be here the quintessence of sinfulness. Now we understand why the woman upstairs had a little child by her. It was little Jesus. He has soiled his pure faith. The brain which holds his belief (the earthen wall!) is likewise stained with his sinful erotic thoughts.

The great wall surrounding the place to a height of a couple of meters symbolizes all the inhibitions. He himself is the monk, he had a passing desire to become an ecclesiastic, he is a heterosexual ascete....

Last night many dreams of going through urinals. In one urinal he found a man who instead of a phallus had a vagina.

Dissolute dreams. Among others a dream that he podicem lambit a friend. He also entertains consciously fancies of like character.... Further dreams of mutual masturbation with a strange man. Finally the scraps of dreams culminate in a lengthier one in which he finds himself in the company of the girl he was very fond of as a boy. The struggle against the heterosexual tendencies goes on throughout the night and finally he is conquered.

Obvious resistance against the uncovering of the heterosexual tendencies.

One dream out of a large number deserves to be reproduced:

I go on a walk with mother. We are tender with one another and she tells me sweet words. I pluck wonderful anemones from a river and want to make a garland to crown my mother with it. But the petals fall off and only the empty green stems remain in my hand.

Any one familiar with the symbolism of plucking flowers (vid. my Dreams and Sex: The Language of Dreams, translated by Dr. James S. Van Teslaar, Badger, Gorham Press, Boston, 1922, Publisher) will readily recognize that this is a reference to an indulgence of an erotic nature. These love pats lead to empty stems. The love cannot come to blossoms or fruition.

He dwells on his relations with his mother. It is virtually a marriage without any erotic elements. He does not tolerate his mother’s tendernesses and he has asked her to refrain. There is now between them genuine shyness. Erotic matters are never so much as touched upon. Against his incestuous leanings he secures himself by the wall of an apparent aloofness. But they live together, they go out together, they share every enjoyment. His mother is a woman who has a grip on his whole life. And at bottom he is not angry because she has interfered with his other friendship. He understands her, that is, he sympathizes with her. That friendship was an attempt to free himself of the mother. But the mother instinctively did the right thing when she stepped in between her son and his friend. He does not at bottom care to be liberated from the slavery of his affection. He allows himself to be led about and to be treated as a child. He talks as if the love and the chain were disagreeable to him. Both trends—towards the mother and away from her—are active in his soul: bipolarity.

The treatment should improve his neurotic condition only but should not interfere with his attitude towards his mother. He dreams that he is well and that he tells his mother, now he is all well and they are going to be happier together than ever.

In connection with a dream another love affair comes to surface, dating some 16 years back. He courted a certain girl and sent her some poems. He thinks it was mere play, an attempt to “imagine” that he was also capable of loving girls. That is how he endeavors to dismiss lightly his heterosexual tendencies. But he thinks that the love poems were irrelevant. He also composed poems to his mother, when he was away from home for a short time:

“Du meines keuschen Herzens Allgebieterin,

Der ich mich neige in tiefer Demut ...”

“You, mistress of my chaste heart,

To whom I bow in deep humility ...”

The verses are full of yearning and passion. His blood calls for her, his heart is filled only with yearning for her. These are the utterances of a man who has lost his head by falling in love.

This case illustrates plainly the manner in which monosexuality leads to homosexuality. But the subject himself did not want to recognize any of these relations. All the powers of sublimation at his disposal he had turned into his love for the mother. Therefore he had to cling to a portion of his mysophilia (dirt compulsion). What he overdid on one side in the way of cleanliness was compensated for on the other by a sinking into filth. It is noteworthy that he does not care to be cleared of his homosexuality. He looks upon it as a protection and as something that sets him apart from other men. This again shows the hopelessness of any therapeutic endeavors in most cases of this type.

Since taking account of his dreams he is astonished how often heterosexual excitations come to the surface. Last night he dreamed, first, that he was with a naked woman, of wonderful build and that he in vaginam et in anum immisit his finger.

Further, another remarkable dream, which played an important rôle in the solution of his neurosis:

I am with mother at the Opera. A long hallway at the end of which one obtains a view of Vienna. One sees the wonderful St. Stephen’s Church, a fine cloud like a smoke or like a fine powdery water spray over its tower. The Opera is changed. Instead of Don Juan, the Donna carissima.

Already the first dream indicated a definite trend towards woman and now the change of program discloses the source of his neurosis. I ask him for a description of the woman in the first dream. He did not see her face at all. He merely saw the wonderful bewitching white body.

Such dreams—figures without faces—are very frequent and serve to hide the beloved person and to prevent recognition. I know dreamers who have pollutions with such half figures. The face is never visible. Often only a portion of the body. Through the second dream we may assume that the figure represents the mother. Otherwise it is hardily possible to explain why the face should have been subjected to the dream’s censorship.

The second dream belongs to the category of maternal body fancies. He is within the mother’s womb. The long passage he associates with: life’s pathway. It is in fact the pathway through which he came into life. Stephen’s tower is a phallic symbol. The smoking room, ejaculatio or mictio. It is a representation of the illusion that he is within the maternal body and is able to observe from that point of vantage the process of generation. The dream becomes even more transparent when we learn that his father’s name is Stephen.[^[40]]

Now his sexual infantilism becomes intelligible. He is under the spell of Mutterleibsphantasie, maternal body phantasy. Every lavatory becomes for him the symbol of the maternal body. There he watches the man urinating as he might have watched the father in the maternal body if he had had enough intelligence to do so as an embryo. It seems unbelievable that intelligent persons should become victims of so puerile a phantasy. Various facts always uphold the sense of such a phantasy. In this particular instance there was dislike for, and unpleasant sensations in, closed rooms, also a series of paraphiliac trend which found their explanation only through that phantasy. He revelled in the thought of permitting himself to be besprinkled with the spermatic fluid by his beloved male friend; he had a craving membrum erectum amati viri fellare; his urolagnic and coprolagnic proclivities, too, were dominated by the same phantasy. He behaved as if he were still in the maternal body.

But the dream declares clearly that a change of program is taking place in the play of his life. Don Juan becomes a Donna—Carissima,—she who is most dear to him. He has changed programs; and the love for the father he has transferred to his mother. He is within the maternal body,—he himself is the mother. He seeks himself, he is his dearest woman, he loves the womanly in himself. We have here the never absent love of the homosexual for himself—narcissism.

Various recollections come to surface, all showing alike that his earliest predisposition was distinctly heterosexual. Thus, for instance, at five years of age he fell in love with a girl, wanted to marry her, and called her his bride. We hear only of three heterosexual episodes belonging to his later life. It is not yet clear how this complete turning away from woman came about. Further inquiries reveal dreams of which I can only give a part. Thus he dreams:

I study for an hour. My textbook is on various physical experiments, further on it turns into history. There is something in it about Bavarian history. The year 4005 plays an important rôle. The whole thing ends with a fairy tale about three pines which stand on a winter’s night before the house and signify three dead women.

Later I act successfully as an imitator of women.

The figure 4005 brings the following associations: 00 is the sign for lavatory; 45 is the opus number of one of his favorite opera scores, the Salome of Richard Strauss; 4 and 5 are the bad marks at school.

The Salome of Strauss and a previous dream lead us to his sadistic trends. It becomes progressively clearer that his aboriginal sadism was extraordinarily great. To this day he revels in phantasies about sexual crimes, violent murders, etc. He toyed with the plan of killing himself as well as his whole family. Any opposition at home immediately suggests to him thoughts of murder. His original attitude towards woman, too, was sadistic. The chief motive of Salome is the severed head of the prophet. Also the pound of flesh in Shylock, in the first dream, refers to this trend; finally the dream about the bedbug. His religious trend set in early, thus protecting him against the wild beast within him. At six years of age he played that he was a preacher and he had his own altar. He fled from woman because he was not sure of himself....

He has a large number of idiosyncrasies which may be explained through a repressed sadism. He cannot eat peaches because their skins resemble human skin; he cannot tolerate the skin on parboiled milk, it brings on disgust and nausea; he often turns against meat and for a long time he confined himself to vegetarianism. Meat he calls animal carcass. The thought of a menstruating woman is particularly repulsive to him. All associations with blood are strongly affective, partly in a positive and partly in a negative way.

What is the meaning of the three pines which symbolize dead women in the dream? Has he lost three female ideals? He associates with “Ein Fichtenbaum stand einsam im Norden auf kahler Höhe,” etc., “a pine tree stood lonely on the bleak heights of the north,” the famous poem by Heine. That pine tree dreams of palms in the glowing climate of the Southern Country. There are no further associations. The theme “dead women” is met with considerable resistance.

I pass over a number of days which amounted merely to a preparation for the coming solution; and I shall report merely the most significant of the dream material.

Very important appears the following dream:

Standing with father at a wide stream. A little white steamboat departs from us, turning and twisting like a reptile. I would have liked very much to be on it (though I do not know where I could have found place, it was like a microcosm). The ship is delayed and now we have to return by train. That the ship would have made better time is an opinion I dare not share with father.

Next day I enter a grotto through which a number of others are wandering ahead of me. The pathway is tortuous and leads upwards. Who among my acquaintances is joining me I do not know. My whole attention is centered on snakes which I carry on a cord. They have very friendly heads, yet somehow I have the impression they can bite. I say to some one close by that their poison glands have already been removed. Eventually I reach a house in full daylight and at the top they turn into dogs who escape my control and quickly clatter down the deep stairway. Presently they are back and allow meekly to be held in leash.

At home I find a package of handkerchiefs neatly wrapped in tissue paper.

This is a combination of a spermatozoon dream and a maternal body phantasy. The stream in which the tiny boat is moving about, the life stream, the stream of spermatic fluid carries a particular spermatozoon, himself. He, now grown up, wants to revert back to the tiny thing, wiggling like a reptile. He wants to be tiny again, not a child merely, a spermatozoon (Samenfaden). He is dissatisfied with life and would like to begin his life all over. The path leads from the stream into a grotto cave,—the maternal body. At the same time the dream symbolizes his whole life, which leads him upwards through pitfalls and dangers to the sunshiny heights. His thoughts are represented here as snakes. They have friendly heads, to be sure, i. e., sin beckons, but he holds them captive. All sins are overcome, all snakes are captive and wear muzzles. The shiny house is the church. Thus this dream shows the life’s beginning and end.

The next dream about handkerchiefs, becomes intelligible when we find out that he masturbates into his handkerchiefs. The packing in tissue paper shows that the specific masturbatory phantasy is covered up.

The dream is concerned with the father. During the last few days he has been thinking a great deal about his father. He tells me about that:

“I have had some hard days and I only see now how strongly I was fixed on father and what a tremendous rôle he has played in my life. Yesterday I felt in me all the strong hatred that I bore for years against father.”

“Why did you hate your father?”

“In the first place because he made me and passed on to me his weakly characteristics. Such men should have no children. I have taken over all his morbid predispositions. Then I hated him because he parted me from my friend through that letter which he wrote at mother’s behest.”

“Then you ought to hate your mother. Is it not strange that you should condone the same conduct in the mother but not in the father? You seem to appreciate your mother’s side but not your father’s.”

“Naturally, when you put it that way I see clearly that I was unfair to father. The letter was but an excuse for the great hatred. I recall with shuddering his last day. I had the feeling that father was afraid of me. He gazed at me continually with his great glassy eyes while holding on to mother’s hand. I felt something like jealousy over mother,—now I know that I was always jealous. My maternal body phantasy means, of course, that I want to be present at the parental love act. I want to replace the father in mother’s life. As a small child I loved him very devotedly and I suffered on account of his coolness. He was immeasurably loving and devoted; nevertheless I felt that there was something lacking.”

He looked for tendernesses from his father. To this day he indulges in two phantasies during his sexual acts. He is the boy watching his father during coitus. That is the particular lavatory phantasy when he watches elderly men. He permits himself to be used as a receptaculum seminis by a favored person. (Strong desire to carry on fellatio on his teachers or to subject himself to pederasty.) He is within the maternal body und wird vom Vater päderastiert oder felliert. Or else, he himself is the father, he identifies himself with the latter, and seeks young boys who in that case stand for himself.

But we see that these phantasies differ as widely as possible from reality. He is unable to secure his contact with reality, because he is continually under the sway of the maternal body phantasy, as shows by his peeping into lavatories.

His love for the father proves to be the strongest root of his homosexuality. He wanted to assume the mother’s place in the father’s life. In his phantasies he is either the father or the mother; he has not attained his own individuality. He loves himself either with maternal or with paternal feelings.

I record the following dream among many others. It shows us his typical attitude towards the mother:

Am going with mother to the country where we expect to spend a few days to recuperate ourselves. Locality: forest neighborhood. The journey, stopping station, roadway familiar partly from actuality partly through precious dreams. Wonderful woods with fragrant blooming flowers. But the blooms show numerous brown spots of decay, as after excessive rains. Elder bushes badly torn up by the weather and by plunderers. The path leads to an incline which offers a view of the numerous villas in the valley. I find that we have wandered off, in order to reach the place where we proposed to stay for a while; we should have taken the path to the right half way up the road.

This dream represents a love whose bloom is decaying. They have wandered off (note the double meaning of the expression, vergehen), and they are off the right path.

His past is illumined not only by his dreams. Among his youthful compositions he finds a poem which portrays clearly a paternal body phantasy and speaks longingly of the time when he was yet “unformed and rested quietly in his father’s loins.”...

The revelations in the course of the following days bring to light new associations. His reveries continually slight the immediate past and carry him back over a number of generations. He is a person of wonderful ancestry, he is not at all the son of his father, he is a child whom gypsies have changed in the cradle, he has fallen into the midst of his family by accident.

It turns out that two lives were much talked of at home and that has had a great deal to do with determining his life course and specifically his fear of woman. In the first place, there was his father’s life. The man had been previously married to a woman whom he caught in a breach of marital faithfulness and it led him to fight a duel. He carried a scar on his forehead as a memento. Then, an uncle took his life when he found out that his wife whom he considered loyal, proved unfaithful.

These lessons stood before his eyes already when he was a mere boy. They served as terrible warnings: beware of woman!

During the next days his fear of woman is the chief theme of his associations. His father’s and his uncle’s fate stand before him as a perpetual warning. Already as a small child he had absorbed very clearly the thought: one must beware of women! His mother did everything to fix permanently this fear in his mind.

But every fear is the fear of self. This fear of women must have a deeper determinant. The deeper relations are indicated by the following dream:

I am on the street and it is towards evening. The roadbed in front of me is badly torn up. A wagon drives by; it rolls past at dusk and the farther end of the street is already plunged in darkness. Horse and driver will not be able to see that the road is torn. A powerful bear jumps up to warn the horse, the driver draws tight his reins, the animal turns around at the same time holding his head anxiously away from the torn pavement until he finally reaches again the straight road. Before the wagon disappears into the night the powerful bear jumps once more at it.

I am tremendously roused to think that such wild animals are sent out as warning. There might be small children in the wagon who would be frightened to death.

Every statement in this dream is a psychic disclosure. The dream records his life’s journey. A portion of the street is torn and impassable. He can only go through the homosexual pathway. The heterosexual is so broken up as to be unusable. It is dark and he might easily meet with disaster in his life’s journey over this point. The darkness symbolizes the forgetting of the aboriginal determinants; the driver is consciousness, the horses are the instincts.

A bear warns him of the dangers of the torn-up road. He is angered at this form of warning. The reference to small children shows that the warnings date back to childhood, when he was actually threatened with a bear.

“There may be small children in the wagon who would be frightened to death,” records the dream. As a child he has heard repeatedly about his uncle’s suicide, because of the wife’s faithlessness. In the depths of his soul this story could not but act as a perpetual warning against woman. The story of his father’s duel, too, and the latter’s scar on the forehead influenced his childhood and filled him with fear of woman.[^[41]] It made him resolve to submit to no woman. And is not hatred the surest self-defence against the dangers of love?

Who or what is the mysterious bear in the dreams? Naturally,—like every figure in the dream, it is the dreamer himself. There is the power of a wild beast in his breast. We recall that one of his dreams was staged at Schönbrunn, the Zoölogical Garden of Vienna, where the wild beasts may be seen. We recall Shylock, the pound of flesh, and the various sadistic determinants of his neurosis.

We now approach the kernel of his homosexual neurosis which turns out to consist of a powerful protective wall against his criminal self. His attitude towards woman is characterized by a tremendous hatred. He is a Lustmörder, the wild bear who attacks women, who strangles them and would drink their blood. The bear represents his own image and a terrible warning.

Beware of the women! It will turn you into a murderer. Better remain a child, enjoy whatever brings gratification to a child. Woe to you if your life’s journey should lead you through the open road where all wild passions lurk which have already filled you as a child! Oh, better if you had never been born, or if you could begin life all over....

Blood is his true requirement. Spermatic fluid, urine, fæces,—all these are substitutions representing blood.[^[42]]

Now we begin to understand why he must not be a man and why he wants to be a woman. His great aggressive trend is linked with the notion of maleness. The passive attitude, suffering, patience, is identified with femaleness.

After these revelations, which were supported by a large mass of memories, the patient stayed away for a few days. Then he reappeared and told me that he had successful intercourse with a puella publica. He thought he might be able to overcome his homosexuality. But he received a telegram recalling him to Denmark.

I have not heard anything about his subsequent history. Did he become bisexual? Did he overcome his infantilism? Did the torn portion of the road become passable at last?

I am unable to state anything definite. But we have obtained here a clear insight into the psychogenesis of homosexuality and we have seen that many determinants are at work shaping the original predisposition.

Let us briefly mention the most important data in this clinical history. It must be looked upon really as but a fragment of an analysis. But it leads us to the core of the neurosis and shows us the subject’s inner predisposition, so sharply contrasting with his conscious attitude.

This man carries within himself the aboriginal instincts of mankind. His dreams carry him back to the paternal body and back to the prehistoric phase of his existence not without reason. He carries within himself the engrams of thousands of years, the remnants of the wildest instinct of primordial man. The phylogenesis of his being corresponds with his ontogenesis. What does he lack for a typical primordial being? In his dreams and phantasies he shows the terrible blood lust, the imperativeness of wishes, the brutal egoism of the periods of long past. Even man’s primordial toleration of filth is not absent; this subject’s history discloses urolagnistic and coprophagic tendencies.

Consider the contrast between his instinctive and his cultural self. He is a man of refinement and a marked personality, a genuine artist, a man who appreciates the beautiful, a man who is transfixed before a representation of Tristan, or before a statue and whom the beauties of nature plunge into ecstasy; a man who seems capable of adding some day to the world’s art possessions a worthy contribution.

This case proves most decidedly that my view that homosexuality represents a regression is correct. Other physicians will prefer to speak of degeneration. Indeed,—but this subject has no sign of physical degeneration, there is no pathologic family history such as might be regarded as predisposing to degeneration. One might as well consider all artists degenerates inasmuch as all artists show the primordial cravings which we find in our patients. The very fact that all human progress is brought about through individuals who represent regressions should teach us more carefully the term degeneration and to apply it only to the cases in which the conjunction of physical signs of degeneration with moral inferiority leaves no doubt.

We trace here the operation of that primordial hatred which threatens to smother the mind’s safety valve as it presses for expression. A portion of this hatred may turn into love and lead the subject into the pathway which makes prophets, religious reformers, philanthropists or champions of the people. Another part of it persists and strengthens infantile trends.

What is Sigma’s conscious attitude? Love for men, indifference towards women, hatred of the father, a bipolar vacillation towards his mother,—love and hate![^[43]] But unconsciously he loves his father and hates all women,—perhaps because he must love them. His ordinary attitude requires the projection of his love feeling in its bipolar form upon all the objectives of his affection. One loves and hates at the same time. But he hates only the women. How has this primordial hatred been attained by the subject? Why is he incapable of assuming the usual bipolar attitude towards women?

If we go far back into his childhood we find that he was in love with his father and jealous of his mother. At that time all women were possible rivals in love for the father. He himself wanted to be a woman, the woman to love his father. This father Imago he seeks to this day in all his teachers, older friends, in his superiors. He must necessarily stand in a homosexual relationship towards them so long as he is unable to overcome his infantile constellations. Everything peculiar about his attachment to the mother is traceable back to his identification with the father. From the latter he has derived his quiet, timid, patient temperament,—that attitude of passivity which really masks a tremendous aggressivity. That infantile attitude determines the survival of all infantile excitations in his vita sexualis.

How may the cure be effected? The subject must be made to understand that he will never really carry out the crimes which contact with women suggest to his unconscious. He must learn to apply love in its bipolar form alike to men and women. His plethora of cravings should enable him to awaken within himself the hitherto badly neglected love for woman. Before the analysis all his erotic trends were directed towards male friends. The cure leads through approach of woman as friend. First she is a friend, and subsequently—after much struggle and searching—the beloved. He must learn to play the rôle of father to some strange woman.

Is analysis the proper means? Who, in the present state of our knowledge, knows another? What can we accomplish through commands, punishment, formal training, or hypnosis? Primordial love achieves supremacy only through the exacting process of self-knowledge and through the recognition of the primordial instincts, including the primordial hatred. The subject has concentrated his primordial love feeling wholly upon his own person.

Like all homosexuals he loves only himself. This peculiarity, too, he shares with all primordial beings. Does primordial man know any other love than love of self?[^[44]]

I have already pointed out that urnings always seek themselves first and assume subsequently the rôle of another person; or else they seek in the male different variants of their own childhood. The same is true pari passu also of the urlinds. To be in love always means to find one’s self in another. But why do urnings not find themselves in the female Imago? This question cannot be covered with a generalization that will hold good for all cases. In the two last cases the fact that the subjects regarded themselves as the reverse of handsome played an important rôle. They had a sense of inferiority with regard to woman and a feeling of envy. Self-love induced fear of defeat by woman on account of lack of attractiveness. How could they feel confident of conquering woman in view of their ugliness? How could they play the rôle of a Don Juan to which their latent homosexuality might otherwise have driven them? Among men physical beauty does not matter. What is important is the size of the genitalia.

If love capacity be measured by the size of one’s genitalia, the patient Delta (Case 83) could measure himself against any one. He took ridiculous pride in his great penis,—a pride shown by many men. His whole sexuality was centered upon the symbol of masculinity. With Sigma, with whom the penis played but a secondary rôle, the case was different. Sadger who sees in narcissism the love of one’s genitalia would find his view corroborated by the history of the first case but not by the second, the subject in the latter instance showing not the least interest in his penis.

The first of these cases portrays the mechanisms described by Adler, the second barely a trace. This shows how easy it is to build certain assumptions through a one-sided selection of cases. It is obvious that every earnest investigator must come upon certain aspects of the truth. What we obtain always are mere sectional views of homosexuality. A cross section yields merely a corresponding view of the picture. Only the apposition of the various sectional views can furnish us the proper perspective for reconstructing the whole picture of homosexuality.

Infantile reminiscences in both cases were partial determinants which lead to a lasting fear of women and to withdrawal from heterosexual love. Delta had witnessed an unhappy marriage as a child, Sigma heard a great deal about faithlessness and about woman’s lack of loyalty. Both shared also a strong sadism, a feature which we have observed in all cases of homosexuality thus far analyzed.

We are thus led to a synthetic formulation of male homosexuality which, in reversed terms, holds true also of women:

The homosexual neurosis is a flight back to one’s own sex induced by a sadistic predisposition towards the opposite sex.