Psychoanalysis and Love

by André Tridon

"There is no doubt," Ferenczi writes, "that this was a case of alcoholic delusion of jealousy. The conspicuous feature of his homosexual attachment to me, however, allows the interpretation that the jealousy he felt of every man, was only the projection of his own desires for the male sex. Also, his lack of desire for his wife was not simply impotence but was determined by his unconscious homosexuality.

"To him alcohol played the part of an inhibition-poison and brought to the surface his crude homosexual erotism, which, as it was intolerable to his consciousness, he imputed to his wife.

"It was only subsequently that I found a complete confirmation of this. He had been married before, years ago. He lived only a short time in peace with his first wife, began to drink soon after the wedding and abused his wife, tormenting her with scenes of jealousy until she left him and secured a divorce.

"In the interval between his two marriages, he was said to have been a temperate, reliable and steady man and to have taken to drink only after his second marriage. Alcoholism was not the deeper cause of his paranoia; it was rather that, in the insoluble conflict between his conscious heterosexual and his unconscious homosexual desires, he took to alcohol, which brought the homosexual erotism to the surface, his consciousness getting rid of it by way of projection, of delusions of jealousy. He saddled his wife with his desires and by jealous scenes assured himself that he was in love with her."

A Jealous Wife. The other case is that of a woman, still young, who after living in harmony with her husband for a number of years and bearing him daughters, began to suffer from violent fits of jealousy soon after the birth of another child, a boy. Alcoholism played no part in this case.

She suspected every move her husband made. She dismissed maid after maid and finally had only male servants in the house. Curiously enough, her jealousy was directed against very young and very old, even very ugly women, while she was not jealous of her society friends or of the pretty women whom she and her husband occasionally met. Her conduct at home became so unbearable and her threats so dangerous that she was taken to a sanatorium upon Freud's advice. After which Ferenczi proceeded to analyse her.

She harbored many delusions of greatness and ideas of reference. She thought she found in the local paper veiled allusions to her depravity and to her ridiculous position as a betrayed wife. The highest personalities in the land were banded against her, etc.

She had married her husband against her wishes and when she bore the first daughter and he manifested his disappointment, she began to feel that she had indeed married the wrong man. She then made the first scene of jealousy in connection with a little girl of thirteen who came to help the servant girls. While still in bed after her confinement, she made the little girl kneel and swear by her father's life that she was still pure. This oath calmed her at the time.

After the birth of her son, she felt she had fulfilled her duty to her husband and was free. She flirted with every man but would not tolerate the slightest liberty from them. At the same time, she made her husband violent scenes of jealousy and tried to incapacitate him, thru her constant passionate advances, for relations with any other women. When taken to a sanatorium, she gave evidence, thru her behavior toward the other women inmates of strong homosexual leanings. She confessed to Ferenczi that there had been homosexual experiences in her childhood. She then became more and more unmanageable and the analysis had to be abandoned.