Bi-sexual love; the homosexual neurosis

by Wilhelm Stekel

The development of sexuality may be conceived, broadly, as follows: the first stage is autoerotic, although all-erotic stimuli are also present (suckling at the mother’s breast, caressing of the infant, etc.). The child is more sensitive to all forms of excitation and all vegetative functions are surcharged with pleasurable feelings more strongly in him than in the adult. Sexual life is autoerotic, but it is bisexually autoerotic. The child makes no distinction between the persons to whom it is attached. Young or old, male or female,—it is all alike to him. But autoerotism is characteristic of this sexual life. Gradually this feature is overshadowed by the appearance of the all-erotic tendency. At first the child seeks to find the goal for its sexuality among the possible objects of his limited surroundings. Just as the first period of autoerotism is overcome so the normal fixation upon one’s family must be eventually outgrown. (Thou shalt leave thy father and thy mother and follow thine husband!) But even during the earliest period all libidinous excitations are distinctly bisexual. This bisexuality persists until the period of puberty, that is, throughout that stage of sexual indifference, of which Desoir also speaks. But the tendency to bisexuality is unable to withstand the powerful stress of puberty. The girlish boy becomes a man, the tomboy girl becomes a young woman. The development of the secondary sexual characters displace man’s heterosexual characteristics with the stamp of monosexuality. Usually at this time there develops also a decisive struggle against homosexuality leading, sooner or later, to the complete suppression of that tendency. (Naturally there are exceptions, as some persons retain their bisexual character traits without trouble throughout life.) I have not examined a person thus far in whom I failed to recognise clearly the signs of juvenile homosexuality.

It is proper to hold that the neurotics show themselves functionally bisexual. Among the neurotics the males often have little or no beard growth, plump and roundish bodily figure, high voice and soft facial features, especially nose and lips; they have small hands, small feet, their penis is remarkably small, scant hairy growth upon their mons veneris, cryptorchism (undescended testicle), hernias. On the other hand neurotic women show hairy growth on face, flat chest, strong, male figure—more angular than is characteristic of women,—large, full hands, large feet, disorders of menstruation including amenorrhea (complete suppression), infantile uterus, male larynx and deep voice. I do not maintain that this is invariably the case. Now and then I have met with exceptions; but I believe that a thorough investigation would support this contention.

The tendency to neurosis is due to the strong instinctive cravings which manifest themselves bisexually.

There is a process at work which I am inclined to designate as the fundamental law of sex. According to this law every individual tends to sum up all his instinctive sexual cravings in one image. Every person seeks the sexual ideal capable of satisfying all his sexual longings.

The sexual ideal of the ancients was, clearly, a bisexual being. Divinity is the ideal erotic goal magnified. The first divinities were always bisexual. They were either women with a penis or men with a female breast. The longing for the bisexual ideal may be traced throughout humanity. In his Banquet, Plato has excellently expressed this longing in the well-known words of Aristophanes.

We feel that we are utilizing but a portion of our sexual energy and that the remainder is allowed to remain fallow. The various sexual trends are sometimes so split up in life that no part of them is sufficient alone to furnish the whole driving power for the proper sexual activity. This is the case with those who apparently manifest a diminished sexual craving, as Freud and Havelock Ellis have observed with reference to certain homosexuals. This condition is only apparent, however, and analysis discloses that it is not real. Persons of this type, apparently asexual, really vacillate back and forth between various possible sexual goals never reaching the stage of aggression, because they are incapable of attaining a sufficient summation of sexual libido. Their libido splits up into a number of autoerotic acts, through which the fore-pleasure instead of centering on a focus is expended in small instalments, as I have pointed out when I described the various forms of cryptic onanism.

I repeat: the ideal of every person is to be able to concentrate all libido upon a single goal. That explains why the homosexual does not seek the typical male, except in the rarest instances. Freud has drawn our attention to this apparent contrast. Many homosexuals, particularly those who, themselves, possess strong virility, do not seek out the complete male for their ideal, but the womanly male. They prefer the female type of man, men in female clothes, or of female habitus,—a fact which has shaped a great deal the course of male prostitution. The male prostitute endeavors always to imitate the female through the use of trinkets, corset, the adoption of articles of female apparel, close shaving, peculiar gait and speech.

What the homosexual seeks consciously the latent homosexual, as we designate the neurotic and, in smaller measure, every individual who acts exclusively as a heterosexual, endeavors to attain through vague yearnings which he fails to understand but which are strong enough to break through.

Let us now turn our attention to these hidden forms of sexuality, before attempting to explain the rise of the manifest and of the overt forms of homosexuality. Among the latent homosexuals who struggle with all the problems of bisexuality which to them appear unsolvable and inscrutable, and who have recourse to various compromises which bring them some temporary relief, we may find the various transitional stages leading all the way up to the overt forms of homosexuality.

Latent homosexuality is a fact, not uncovered by analysis, but analysis has tremendously enlarged our understanding of the mental processes involved. The deeper we penetrate into the psychic mechanism of the neuroses and psychoses, the more vital appears to us the role of homosexuality. The difference between my method of analysis and the customary anamnesis is shown nowhere so clearly, as in connection with the disclosures of the neurotics regarding their hidden homosexuality. No other component of the sexual instinct undergoes repression to such an extent or shifts so far from the sphere of ordinary consciousness. I know persons who have frankly adopted a great many forms of paraphilia but have completely repressed the homosexual component of their condition. I have analysed, for instance, a young woman who had quite an eventful life history. She became neurotic because she could neither master nor suppress her homosexuality. Like all other neurotics she skilfully covered her homosexuality and this trait of hers remained unknown to her consciousness.