“I mean, sleeping in the same room with my nephew. If I had at least put up a Japanese screen. But, unfortunately, one does foolish things without reflecting upon the consequences....”
B. also displays various compulsory mannerisms, the meaning of which becomes obvious once we appreciate that, in his case, ‘tuberculosis’ really means ‘homosexuality.’ As he walks upon the City streets he meets a man coming his way. While still at a distance he steps aside or crosses on the other side; he no longer shakes hands with any man, not even with his friends; one may become infected with tubercle bacilli in that way. All places where men are seen naked or in partial undress, such as gymnasia or bathing resorts, are breeding spots for tubercular infection.
Moreover, B. shows some female traits in his nature. He has shaved his beard because hairs may be nests for tubercle bacilli; he has become emotional, whining and he is unable to arrive at decisions promptly. He finds the fashion of wearing short coats not “dressy” and wears a long coat that has almost the appearance of a jacket. (Similar mannerisms are found in Jean-Jacques Rousseau; vid. his Confessions.)
This case is one of almost complete outbreak of femininity, closely allied to the paranoiac forms, which will be considered more fully in another chapter. He is also jealous of his wife and thinks he is slighted,—that he is not given the proper degree of attention. He is excitable, sleepless, dissatisfied with life. After a few hours the analysis is given up.
Such persons are tremendously afraid of the truth; they wander from physician to physician and really want but one thing: to preserve their secret and to devote themselves more and more to their hidden homosexuality. If the condition were once disclosed before their eyes they could not continue their indulgence so easily. They always break up the treatment after a few hours under some pretext or other and this justifies the suspicion that, sooner or later, they come to regard the physician also as a man and, transferring their homosexual attachment to the physician they flee from the danger of being together with the object of their love.
This case illustrates, I believe, what remarkable masks the outbreak of the homosexual trait is capable of assuming. Similar masks are the fear of syphilis, the fear of “blood poisoning,” and the dread of physical contact with other persons or objects. The fear of syphilis covers also other dreads. Formerly I thought that syphilidophobia was only a mask for incest craving. I am now convinced that it stands for “forbidden love” generally. Syphilis stands as a symbol either for incest or for homosexuality. ‘Becoming infected’ means: ‘being oppressed’ by homosexual or incestuous tendencies. These figures of speech are suggested by the every day use of language. One hears, for instance, that the whole city of Berlin is infected with homosexuality; the opponents of homosexuality fight against the plague which threatens the whole German nation; young men are warned against being infected with homosexuality. It is not surprising, therefore, that the morbid expressions of neuroses assume similar figurative forms.
The rise of such morbid fear during advanced age is always suspicious of an outbreak of homosexuality, against which various protective devices are thus raised. If I should attempt to describe all these forms of outbreak and all the protective devices I would have to write a special treatise on anxiety states. We well know already that all neuroses have a bisexual basis. But, what is more, I maintain that homosexuality plays a far greater role in the development of neurotic traits than any other suppressed instincts.
I am now turning my attention to a character in whom homosexuality would hardly be suspected as a motive power. I refer to the Don Juan type of personality. The Messalina type I shall describe in connection with my study of sexual anesthesia in woman. But the Don Juan character deserves special attention in this connection.
One would think that a man who devotes his whole life to women, who dreams day and night only of new conquests, who considers every woman worth while when opportunity favors him, a man for whom no woman is too old, or too ugly, if he desires her,—that such a man would be far removed from any homosexual trend. Yet the contrary is the fact and the greater my opportunity to study the ‘woman chaser’ the stronger my conviction becomes that, back of the ceaseless hunt, stands the longing after the male. Though many explanations have been offered for the Don Juan type,—that prototype of Faust’s—none has solved satisfactorily the riddle of his psyche. Only the recognition of latent homosexuality promises to clear for us the meaning of this character.
What are the typical character traits attributed to the Don Juan type? His easily stirred passion; secondly, his indiscriminate taste; thirdly, his sudden cooling off. Of course, there are any number of transitional forms and mixed stages.