On May 17, 1890, the patient returned for treatment. He asserted that he had not masturbated in the interval, and that he had resisted his inclination to men. Too, he had not dreamed of men, but twice of women, though only platonically. His cerebral asthenia (ex abstinentia?) had increased. He apparently suffers for the want of mental and sensual satisfaction of his vita sexualis; for homo-sexual love and masturbation have become impossible for him, and intercourse with women is denied him. The patient is thus painfully depressed to the extent of tædium vitæ.
He is now subjected to anti-neurasthenic treatment (hydro-therapeutic and electro-therapeutic), and the treatment by hypnosis is resumed. Only after ten weeks of painstaking treatment did the neurasthenic symptoms disappear. Progressing parallel with this, there was a change of his mental personality.
The patient was gratified to note that he grew stronger; that his sexual life no longer played a dominating part. Though he felt more drawn toward men than women, yet he easily resisted homo-sexual desires. His former boudoir became a work-room; instead of to adornment and frivolous reading, he gave himself to walks in the mountains and forests. On account of the danger of a fiasco, the initiative in hetero-sexual attempts was left to the patient.
It was not until the fourteenth week of treatment that the patient made an attempt. It was perfectly successful. The patient became happy, and sound in body and mind, and expressed the best hope of his future, even having thoughts of marriage.
He experienced increasing pleasure in normal sexual intercourse; he occasionally had lascivious dreams of women, and no longer dreamed of men.
The patient stopped treatment at the end of September. He felt perfectly normal in hetero-sexual intercourse, devoid of neurasthenia, and had thoughts of marriage. Yet he freely confessed that he still always had erections at the sight of a naked, handsome man; though he could easily resist the desires that arose, and in dreams had exclusively “relations avec la femme.”
In April, 1891, I again saw the patient, and he was in the best of health. He regarded his vita sexualis as perfectly normal; for he had coitus regularly with pleasure and full virility, dreamed only of women, and had no inclination to masturbation. Yet he made the interesting confession that frequently, post coitum, he still had a temporary “gout pour l’homme,” which he could easily control. He thought he was lastingly cured, and was occupied with thoughts of marriage.
Case 143. Congenital Contrary Sexual Feeling. Successful Removal of Homo-Sexual Feelings by Suggestions.—L., doctor of philosophy, aged 34, German, consulted me, in the spring of 1888, on account of perversion of his vita sexualis, and asked whether he could not be freed from it by means of hypnotic treatment.
Patient came of a healthy mother, in whose family, for generations, there had been neither insanity nor nervous disease. He, like his only brother, is much like his father mentally. His brother is very sensual, and also psychically abnormal, and given to over-indulgence in drink.
His father was a neuropathic, eccentric man. Nothing is known of any abnormal sexual manifestations in him, though, like all his brothers, he had a tendency to over-indulgence in alcohol.