The behavior of those persons who do not care to acknowledge their homosexuality is characteristic. So passionately do they fall in love, their impulsion to loving is so tremendous that every new passion surpasses all previous experiences.
This peculiarity gives us an insight into the mentality of the Don Juan type, the desolute adventurer, and the Messalina type....
The flight away from homosexuality leads the individual to overstress his heterosexuality (with the formulation of compromises and the adoption of homosexual masks) but that seldom yields the satisfaction craved by the individual. The sexual adventurer is always a person who has failed to find proper gratification. He who has found complete gratification becomes thereby master of his libido and knows the meaning of satiety. When the gratification is only apparent the craving leads soon again to new adventures. Just as the compulsory acts of neurotics cannot be permanently removed, because such acts are only symptomatic and stand for hidden cravings, the unsatisfied homosexual longing which stands masked under an apparently excessive heterosexuality cannot be completely gratified on that path. The sexual instinct,—as Freud has pointed out—is of complex character and is seldom brought into play in its full form. Man’s unattainable ideal is the whole instinct, undivided and unhampered in any of its component parts; falling in love manifests the expectation of a gratification previously unattained.
During man’s critical period—as well as woman’s—a number of troublesome compulsion neuroses are likely to break forth and these have been erroneously attributed to excitement, overwork, and other secondary factors. Every compulsion neurosis appearing at this period is a complicated riddle through which the subject aims to hide before his own consciousness no less than before the world at large the true significance of the psychic impulses which reassert their supremacy at the time. Frequently back of the various symptomatic acts it is possible to discern the clear mechanism of defence against homosexuality.
The next case shows an interesting array of symbolisms and of symbolic acts, which are easily understood if one has the key to the psychology of such mental processes.
Mr. B. experiences the outbreak of an acute neurosis at 60 years of age. Suddenly he becomes obsessed with the fear of tuberculosis. He is firmly convinced that he is a victim of the disease and the reassurance of famous specialists quiets him only for a few days. He reads all popular works on tuberculosis as well as the scientific works of Cornet, Koch, and other investigators. He has worked out for himself a systematic method for the cure of tuberculosis. He holds, in the first place, that cold air is the best, and takes long walks out of doors, sleeps with all windows wide open, goes to Davos and generally prefers winter sporting places. He is a confirmed believer in the theory of infection through particles of sputum and therefore avoids the proximity of ... men.
“Why be afraid specially of men? May not women also carry the infection?”
“No; women do not expectorate so vigorously. Men spit all over, women only close by!”
“How do you know these things?”