Bi-sexual love; the homosexual neurosis

by Wilhelm Stekel

But we recognize the bipolar attitude towards his father. His trouble must be intimately linked with an unconquered homosexuality. The account of his illness now brings up a childhood occurrence which had made a strong impression on him. There was a teacher in that home town who had a most peculiar and extraordinary way of recompensing his worthy pupils. If one did something praiseworthy and the teacher was pleased, he said: “very well, my boy! You shall be honored for this,”—and gave the boy his erect penis to hold until ejaculation followed. This was done openly before the whole class. The teacher carried on this sort of thing until five years ago without any trouble and then left the place suddenly, to avoid court trouble as the result of a complaint. Christoph, who was a special pet of that teacher, was probably chosen for that honor more often than any other boy. He was also the prettiest boy in the class.

Beginning with that experience various episodes of homosexual character are disclosed extending up to the time when he was seventeen years of age, when they suddenly ceased. But he does not know that these were homosexual acts and still insists that he always felt only the most terrible aversion towards “all these homosexual things.” The subject maintains unconsciously the wish to do with his father what he had done with his teacher.

He is pursued by homosexual thoughts (the left horse). We are now turning our attention to the functional significance of the dream. It represents a pursuit. The attitude displayed towards the physician is clear. The physician pursues him through all his memories (the flight through the rooms). This flight through rooms has been interpreted by Freud as a flight from women (brothel). I have repeatedly pointed out that rooms represent the compartments of the soul, that the pursuit is really through all the parts of the brain (the upper story stands for brain; compare the colloquialism, there is something the matter with some one’s “upper story”). We see that a certain thought pursues him past all obstacles and hindrances, and he is unable to elude that searching thought. His sister is the one who comes to his aid. She hands him a miniature stove with which to defend himself against the horse. The stove and the lids represent the sister’s sex.... The dream means: only your sister, only a woman can save you from your homosexual inclination towards your father. The dream also indicates a prospective tendency: he throws the sister upon the father and saves himself through another door. He means to overcome his complexes. The attitude towards the physician is also clear: he expects to put me off his trail by confessing to me his incest fancies about his sister, when I had not asked him about it. The dream indicates his intention of telling me about his fancies and episodes in which his sister figures. But he expects to escape thereby any further inquiry into his wish phantasies and to avoid telling me about his attitude towards his parents.

Then the patient falls asleep again and repeats the dream so as to be able to tell it. We may presume that the dream was distorted and changed somewhat in the course of its first rendition. We really get but an extract, the chief parts omitted.... In the next dream he tells me the first dream. Such dreams are seldom remembered. When a woman dreams that she has told her physician the dream, it means that she is through with the unpleasant task and the dream vanishes from memory as in the cases when the patients declare: Today I dreamed something important; I said to myself in my half slumber: “This is something I must tell the doctor! I don’t remember what it was. But it was something really significant.” Thus is the physician thwarted; the resistance is vicariously overcome in the dream, the wish to tell the dream is fulfilled but the wish to keep it from the physician is stronger; during his dream experience both tendencies are given expression by the subject.

The next dream: Again, an exposition of analysis. I am upstairs busy with a closet, which represents the brain or his shut-up soul. But the analysis will not last long. The wild hunting after his secrets and treasures will cease soon. The physician has to leave (die?). Here the physician substitutes the father. The dream shows plainly the transference from the father to the physician. The first dream dramatizes the pursuit of the father, in the second and third the father no longer figures. His name is not mentioned at all in the dream, he is the secret, the unspeakable theme.... The physician laces his shoes; that is commonly known as a death symbol and shows the clear wish to be through with the analysis.

An engine has to be started. He is a machinist and has daily to do with machines. Engine is symbol for his soul which functions so poorly, a symbol for himself, for all the impulses and energies within him. He accomplishes through his own powers what his physician and his mother are unable to bring about. First I try to put the engine in motion. I take the mysterious paper package and throw it on; the mother attends to the other side of the fire. But he gets up and takes care of the fire from above.[24] He is above, he triumphs over me and surpasses me in the ability to cure him. He recalls a pupil of his who had to commute to Brünn. It brings to his mind an occasion when he was the teacher. Thus I am his pupil, I am learning from him how to start an engine. Though I may know something about sick souls, I don’t understand a thing about his specialty (he is a machinist), there he is the master and I am ignorant. This consoling thought serves to strengthen his feeling of self-regard and prevents a feeling of inferiority from developing in his relations to me. There are a number of scornful references to the impotent father and to the equally unskilful physician. He is with me one half hour daily. He had noticed that I looked at the watch, to see whether his time was up. The half hour and the looking at the watch appear in the dream. The day before he showed his father how a technical problem was solved. In this dream he also shows me that something must be done a particular way.

We observe that this attitude towards the physician, as representative of the father, pervades the whole dream. But this does not exhaust the meaning of the dream. It is a pollution dream (gratification without responsibility). It is interesting to see how the onanistic act, represented as pollution, is dramatized in the dreams. In the first dream he flees from homosexuality and there the relationship between homosexuality and the hidden mother complex is clearly shown. In the second dream the mechanism of sexuality is represented in action. Neither the father (the engineer working around the engine), the mother nor the physician can do it. He alone is able to accomplish it. This shows the secret pride of the masturbator, the self-sufficiency of the autoerotic personality. (The engine’s flame covered running board, a phallic symbol; later note.) Onanism is shown as a protection against all sexual perils. The safety valve hisses and relieves itself—an intimation of the subsequent pollution.

But the fear of onanism, the strong effects, the dread of homosexuality and incest wake him from his sleep. Consciousness (the engine conductor) attempts to control the thoughts and to banish the nocturnal ghosts. The thoughts about a man and about his sister are interrupted and he falls asleep once more. Three times he dreams of various situations before the anxiety in him is transformed into wish. First he fled from the horse and from his sister, then he fled from his mother and the physician and finally there came his release. He was strong enough to withstand his homosexuality, strong to overcome the heterosexual longings. Now the instinct throws forward its highest and strongest card to overcome the last inhibitions: bisexuality. The girl with the phallus, his sister, appears ... and pursues him. He is frankly preoccupied with the thought: give in and masturbate. The thought itself he avoids, he tries to push out of his mind. He sees himself in the dream. He sees the womanly side of himself, the woman with the phallus, and this thought troubles him during the nightly hours when he should be resting. He jumps at the female person to strangle her: that is how he fights with his instinct, how he tries to thwart his autoerotism. The instinct recognizes the weakness of his defence and suggests that it seeks only his welfare. With the right hand he seizes his genitals while with the left he carries out an embrace. He has an orgasm (the sister smiles at him) but it does not last long; for an old woman appears upon the scene. The door opens, that is, the door of conscience (the threshold symbolism of Silberer), and remorse seizes his soul. He rouses from his sleep and the pollution worries him. The old woman may also be a symbol for his mother (further significance of the old woman as symbol will be shown later). But I have no proof of that inasmuch as the subject describes her otherwise.

What is the sense of the dream with reference to its central theme? Is it a wish-fulfillment, a warning, or a prophecy? Undoubtedly many wishes are fulfilled in this dream. The subject resists many temptations, he embraces his sister, he triumphs over his father and over his physician as well. But the most important feature that the dream portrays is the pollution as a defence against all sexual dangers and as successful cover for all inner inhibitions.

Another meaning of the dream should be pointed out. His neurosis must be represented by some person or object in the dream. Asked what the engine suggests to his mind the subject answers: my illness. The glass-covered porch: the transparency of his trouble; the engine: his neurosis. The subject habitually compares his body to a steam engine, especially his stomach. He shows various effects of starvation: unable to eat, he loses weight, and looks like a skeleton because he wants to starve out his sexual longing and punish himself for his sinful passions. This man had built for himself a marvelous safety valve in his neurosis. When he thinks of going to meet a girl, he gets such a severe attack of gastric pain that he must give up the appointment. The gastric discomfort is induced beforehand through excitement and inability to eat. The clever staging of his gastric trouble is noteworthy. Nausea and vomiting are first induced to prevent the taking of food. Then hunger supervenes and that gnawing sense of hunger, spoken of as gastric cramps, becoming so strong as to overshadow the heart affair. The craving for food becomes more obsessive than the desire for woman. These episodes are followed by a ravenous appetite.