It is plain that this woman has repressed her homosexual love for her mother and is satisfied with the symbol of masculinity, the wearing of trousers. The man whom she meets in embrace, becomes for her a woman, through the wearing of feminine articles. Thus the two partners carry on a comedy in which the heterosexual act replaces the longed-for homosexual embrace.
I am familiar with a number of instances in which a man dressing like a woman, or the reverse, was the means of rousing sexual passion, or, at least, of increasing it enormously. Whenever this happens it is plainly a manifestation of latent homosexuality,—a condition of which Blueher appears to have a very poor opinion. Although he seems to agree with my views otherwise (“today it is no longer possible,” he says, “to hold that homosexuality or heterosexuality is inborn; instead we must recognize that bisexuality is inborn in every individual, with a special predilection in one direction or the other,”), he makes a distinction between “healthful inversion” and an outbreak of latent homosexuality; one condition he considers aboriginal and in keeping with cultural development, while the other “arises out of the depths of the unconscious, through the removal of the inhibitions....” This view is also contrary to facts. Blueher, like Hirschfeld, is inclined to consider latent homosexuality as ‘pseudo,’ as something unnatural, and accordingly passes judgment upon it. The practical observations gathered in the course of my practice do not coincide with these theoretical assumptions. I know only one kind of homosexuality, and that is always inborn. Also, I find it always linked intimately with heterosexuality. Awareness of one’s own homosexual tendency or lack of it is not a reliable guide. If the number of consciously homosexual persons be estimated at 2 per cent., we may confidently assert that there are 98 per cent. of persons who know nothing of their homosexual traits, or rather that they do not want to know anything about them.
As we become familiar with the various masks of homosexuality, we learn to appreciate surprising homosexual and heterosexual trends. I shall draw attention merely to the manifold significance of “trousers” in human love affairs. How often men fall in love with women only when and because they are seen in tights! I remember a number of classmates in high school, who had fallen in love with a singer, when they saw her in a role which she played wearing tights. Grillparzer apparently fell in love once in his life and very passionately. It was with the singer to whom he absent-mindedly sent his famous poem. She had appeared upon the stage as a Cherub in tights. The woman wearing the trousers is a by-word,—a typical compromise. Through the medium of such compromises it becomes possible for the homosexual suddenly to act like a heterosexual person. Hirschfeld, who was the first to point out this fact, relates that a lieutenant of cavalry well known in the circle of Berlin urnings one day surprised his acquaintances with the announcement of his engagement and even more with the statement he had become fully heterosexual. Previous to that time he had loved only boys in girls’ clothes but apparently he had found a woman of very youthful type, one who was able to satisfy both components of his libido. Symbols at times disclose tremendous power. The trousers figure as a symbol of masculinity. I remember the storm of popular indignation which arose once when some change in women’s fashions threatened man’s exclusive prerogative. The skirt and long hair are symbols of feminity. The symbol often furnishes the bridge across which traits, otherwise antagonistic, become fused.
The following case is an illustration:
Mr. E. W. has practiced onanism since he was five years of age and during the act was in the habit of thinking he was touching girls. Later he masturbated jointly with other school boys. They attempted pederastic acts, in the course of which he felt neither aversion nor pleasure. At 14 years of age he was seduced by a servant girl, and he went to her bed every night for a year. A poor scholar up till that time, he became subsequently one of the best in the class. After a time he became tired of her and he sought other opportunities which were easy to find. He maintains that up to his 20th year he has had intercourse with every one of the girls who served in his parents’ house, and he estimates them to have been about twenty in number. It struck him that he could not always achieve orgasm. But he was always potent, so much so, sometimes the girls wondered. But he would become indifferent before reaching ejaculation. This happened to him with fat women who excited him tremendously and at the same time failed to satisfy him.
He began early to be interested in painting and made special efforts to experience the feeling of love; for the petty adventures with the servant girls did not involve the heart in the least. As he grew all women only appeared to him to be merely objects for the gratification of lust. He had all sort of love affairs but could be true to none for any length of time and did not always reach orgasm with them. He happened to try once the situs inversus and after that he found it always possible to bring about the orgasm. Coitus a posteriori was also a method which enabled him to attain this aim more easily than the normal position. He was already thirty years of age when he saw at a social affair a girl who appeared as a boy in a “living picture.” He felt at once the greatest attraction for her. During the whole evening he kept her in his company, and he felt animated and inspired with the thought that he had found, at last, his soul affinity. A few weeks later he became engaged to her. The picture of her as a boy always floated before his mind. He married soon, experienced tremendous orgasm during coitus and felt himself very happily married. After a few years his potentia began to fail him and this worried him a great deal because he loved his wife tremendously and was ashamed to confess to her the true state of things. He became more frigid and finally his potentia failed him completely.
He came into his wife’s room (they had separate rooms) while she was undressing. She was in her tights, the kind in which he had seen her in the role of a boy. At once this roused his passion and he threw himself upon his wife, covering her with kisses, against her protests, for she was very bashful. This happened in day time. His wife had never consented to coitus in day time before. But this time she was taken by surprise and as he pressed her for it, she called out, over and over: “What is the matter with you today!” He did not tell her the reason for his excitement; he was ashamed to request her to dress herself next time in tights.
He called to have this remarkable occurrence explained and to be cured of the peculiarity. Later he achieved potentia again but always he had to think of his wife as dressed in trousers. The man was an out-of-town resident and had come to Vienna only for the day. I was unable to find out much about the psychic roots of this condition. He recalled no infantile memories, but thought that the sight of his little sister in bloomers had already roused him. He was much interested in women’s underwear and could have easily turned into a fetichist, one gathering a large assortment of women’s underclothes. I advised him to confide in his wife and ask her for his sake to dress herself in the kind of apparel which appealed to him. That was, after all, a harmless desire which he shared with many other men.