A Case of Projection. This is Ferenczi's comment upon this example of insane jealousy: "This case of delusional jealousy becomes clear when we assume that it was a question of projection upon the husband of her desire for her own sex. A girl who had grown up in an exclusively feminine environment is suddenly forced into a marriage of convenience with a man she dislikes. She reconciles herself to it, however, and only shows indignation when her husband proves cruelly unkind (disappointment over the birth of a girl) by letting her desire turn toward her childhood ideal, the little girl of thirteen. The attempt fails, she cannot endure homosexuality any longer and has to project it upon her husband.
"Finally after the birth of her son, when her 'duty' is done, the homosexuality she had kept in bounds takes possession in a crude erotic way of all the objects that offer no possibility for sublimation (young girls, old women etc.), although all this erotism, (with the exception of cases when she can hide it under the mask of harmless flirtation), is imputed to the husband. In order to support herself in that lie, the patient is compelled to show increased coquetry toward the male sex, to whom she had become very indifferent and, indeed, to demean herself like a nymphomaniac."
I have cited both cases at length for they confirm the statement I have made elsewhere in this book that very exaggerated feeling is usually a mask for the opposite feeling. Ferenczi's two patients, in love with persons of their own sex, "simulated" neurotically a passionate attachment for their heterosexual mates, who, naturally could not attract them.
Masked Sadism. Their stormy jealousy was more akin to hatred than to love. There was no tenderness in it but a good deal of sadism, of cruelty, and they used it in order to torture their mates on whom, in the course of their jealous scenes, they could heap up abuse, which they would not, under any other circumstances, dare to voice as freely.
Many a husband would like to insult a wife he detests. Neurotic jealousy supplies him with an excuse which he might not find elsewhere.
After which, if the vocabulary he used on that occasion is especially vile, he has a good scapegoat at his disposal. "I was crazed by jealousy and did not realise what I was saying."
CHAPTER XVII
Homosexualism; its Genesis
Love's normal goal is the union of the male and the female in a way which may insure the reproduction of the species. At times, however, we behold love deviating from the path that leads to that goal: a man may love another man as passionately as he would love a woman, a woman may be consumed with desire for another woman.