[22] Dr. Paul Bousfield (Elements of Practical Psychoanalysis), states: “In all the cases of paranoid hysteria which I have seen, repressed homosexuality seems to be the most striking feature; homosexuality is always very strongly developed in these subjects, although the patient may be totally unaware of it.”
Similarly Ferencszi, in his Contributions to Psychoanalysis, says: “The observation of several cases, presently to be related, seems to justify the surmise that in the pathogenesis of paranoia, homosexuality plays not a chance part, but the most important one; and that paranoia is perhaps nothing else at all than disguised homosexuality.”
Finally we may quote Freud (Introductory Lectures):
Lecture 20: “One particular mental disorder, paranoia ... invariably arises from the attempt to subdue unduly powerful homosexual tendencies.”
Lecture 26: “In the case of delusions of persecution, however, we observed things which led us to follow up a certain clue. In the first place we noticed that in the great majority of cases the persecuting person was of the same sex as the persecuted one; this was capable of a harmless explanation, it is true, but in certain cases, which were closely studied, it appeared that the person of the same sex who had been most beloved while the patient was normal became the persecutor after the disease broke out....
From these observations, which were continually corroborated, we drew the conclusion that persecutory paranoia is the means by which a person defends himself against a homosexual impulse which has become too powerful.”
[23] Shelley appears to have been easily hypnotised, since both Tom Medwin and Jane Williams succeeded in mesmerising him (see Dowden, vol. 2, ch. ix).
[24] Dr. R. M. Bucke, Cosmic Consciousness.
[25] Dowden’s Life of Shelley, vol. 2, ch. xii.