Towards the end of the school years I came into closer contact with a girl who had already previously attracted my attention. We became deeply interested in one another, but we could meet only occasionally and that under very strict conditions. We had to part in the end; as I really loved the girl it made me suffer a great deal. During the occasions when we did steal away to our secret trysting place I felt a peculiar excitation which settled on my stomach; if I ate it caused me nausea.
After completing my course of study I entered the employ of a local business house. I became acquainted with another girl, and strange enough, we two also had to overcome considerable difficulties when we tried to meet. After about a year we could meet freely and shortly after there were no more difficulties in our way. But I lost interest in her by that time, and decided that I would have nothing to do with any such foolish love affairs.
Whereas formerly I was kept back from any thought of coitus with a decent girl because I considered it an unworthy and dishonorable act, now whenever I was about to meet a girl I was seized with a gastric discomfort and even vomiting. Once in the girl’s company that would disappear.
I gave up all affairs of heart, but my condition became gradually worse. I vomited several times daily, I could not even tolerate a mouthful of bread on my stomach, even clear soup was hard for me to take. Every time I swallowed I felt like vomiting and I could not even drink. Besides that I suffered of sleeplessness and of strong neurasthenic pains.
Finally I had to give up work for a year and I spent four months of that time in the country but my condition did not improve very much.
It caused me a great deal of tension to suppress my strong sexual impulses. Contact with a public woman seemed shameful to me, and with a good girl I could not enter into any intimate relations partly for moral reasons and partly on account of lack of favorable opportunity.
I felt inhibited from the moment my illness began. I decided to resort to public women upon the express advice of a physician.
This remarkable case is as clear as a school problem and richly illustrates the various factors which determine a person’s attitude regarding sexual matters. The subject is a simple man who has not yet mastered completely the German language and he has repressed but little. His youth and his sexual struggles apparently stretch before his memory like an open book. He has had many dreams and remembers them well. We note the genuine religious background. He is no longer pious and does not care to go to church service. Nevertheless it ought not to be difficult to perceive that back of his fear of immoral acts stands the fear of divine punishment,—a consequence of his early moral training. This man has been brought up with fear in his heart. This breeding of the germ of fear in his soul was responsible for his anxiety neurosis. Witches appeared to admonish him, in the school he was spurred on by dire threats to do his best. Then there was his powerful sexual craving which he, nevertheless, found possible to withstand. Whence did he acquire the strength to keep away from his girl cousin, although she so warmly attracted him and even encouraged him? Was it the proximity of his sister who occupied the same room? Some occurrences between him and that sister he had overlooked in his voluntary account of his life, otherwise fairly accurate. He avoided incest, but besides the moral and religious inhibitions, there must have been something more to keep him so effectively away from women. His trouble which asserts itself before keeping a secret appointment is nausea. Dislike and fear are protective defences against sinning. We recognize readily this disgust for woman, so strongly emphasized by most genuine homosexuals. We know that this aversion covers a repressed craving, a craving which is unbearable to consciousness for one reason or another and therefore breaks out in the negative form as disgust. The latter serves as defence and protection against the very tendencies which generate the powerful cravings.
The disturbance is a cover for the incest motive. He cannot approach a woman because he sees in her the grandmother, the mother, or the sister, a fact of which he was often fully aware. Quo me vertam? There is open before him the homosexual path, since the road to woman is closed. The episode with the teacher, the “vile doings” with his school companions were a sort of initiation.... Here repression sets in. He knows nothing about his homosexuality. But the dream betrays and tells more than the subject is prepared to see as yet. We shall therefore begin the analysis with an analysis of the dream.