We now turn our attention to the next case. It shows clearly that heterosexual tendencies arise in the homosexual under the influence of alcohol and it also proves that under the pressure of danger the homosexual craving by drawing on the greater libido turns into the heterosexual channel:
D. S., a clerk, 35 years of age, has been homosexual for the past fifteen years. His father died when he was 7 years of age. He hardly remembers his father. His mother was always very severe, and very energetic as well as exceedingly nervous,—she had to go frequently to sanitaria to recuperate. He admits having had feelings predominatingly homosexual ever since childhood. He interested himself only in boys and his mother brought him up in girlish ways. He began masturbating at an early age and already at the age of 12 he carried on mutual pederasty with his comrades. At 17 years of age he attempted intercourse with girls. That was not easy, his potentia had to be roused by them first through manual stimulation, then he felt some pleasure, which was curbed partly because he could not help thinking of the possible danger of venereal disease, of which he had seen some illustrations in a museum of wax figures. He was also thinking about his mother reflecting, what would she say if she knew what he was doing! From that time on and until he was about 21 years of age he had intercourse with women regularly about every month. Then he fell in love with his office chief, who was an extraordinarily attractive man. (He gives a romantic description of his first ideal. This account, of course, is not trustworthy. In fact the photo of his latest ideal, also praised by him as an Adonis, shows the stolid, expressionless, rather common face of a very ordinary man, a soldier in the artillery branch of the army).
His chief was a homosexual who easily seduced him and brought him into the homosexual circle. Then he became aware of his condition and maintained relations only with adult and well educated men. He had a delicate taste and not every man could please him (here he shows me the photo of the soldier, mentioned above). Unfortunately he had the misfortune to be caught in a park in the act of taking hold of the membrum virile of a driver. His case is now pending in the court. He would be happy if he could return to his former mode of gratification. When asked if he had had no intercourse with women during the whole period from the 22nd to the 35th year he becomes uneasy and confesses that this has happened a few times but when he did so he was always under the influence of drink. While he kept sober it never happened. And every time after intercourse with a woman he had such a terrible after-effect that his own mother to whom he always confessed everything had advised him to seek intercourse with men, because she noticed that he was always feeling fresh after doing so, while if he went with women he was always depressed for days. Experienced psychoanalysts need not be reminded that the mother used this means to keep her son from contact with other women because she was jealous of them and therefore she drove him to men. She was never jealous of men. That was something else.
This occurrence is far from rare. The mother of a homosexual once told me: “I am never jealous when O. finds a new friend, although he falls romantically in love with them. But the thought of his giving himself up to a woman is something I cannot bear....”
D. S. listened to his mother’s advice. He says: “I gave up drink after that and became a fanatic homosexual.”
As the subject, a high governmental employee, could easily lose his position, I advised him to have intercourse only with women and in view of his desire to free himself of the trouble through psychoanalysis I was able to wrestle him out of the clutches of the law. He attempted contact with women, always after partaking of small quantities of drink, and he gradually improved so that he finally married, his wife being, in fact, a woman 20 years older than he. That woman was a locum tenens for his mother! Further observations on the psychology of similar cases will be recorded in subsequent pages. Here I propose to draw attention merely to the influence of alcohol. Drink enabled him to adopt the heterosexual path.
In the last case the heterosexual act was possible only after neutralizing the inhibitions. Similar influences are responsible for the well-known morning erections of those who are psychically impotent. Homosexuals, too, have heterosexual dreams before awakening in the morning but they cannot—or will not—remember those dreams. I need mention here merely that every night the dream operates in the sense of lifting the inhibitions and that the inhibitions are fully suspended only towards morning. During the first sleep hours the dreams are full of inhibitions appearing as “warnings,” but towards morning the dreams are relatively free of these inhibitions. That is why we often hear that “genuine” homosexuals are able to have intercourse with women, if at all, only towards morning. At that time most inhibitions which stand between them and woman have been overcome in the dream! This obvious fact is given a different interpretation by Hirschfeld who states:
“The erection of the membrum with which many men wake up during the early morning hours has nothing to do with the sexual instinct, but is due solely to the mechanical effect of pressure by the full bladder. Some time ago I was consulted by a homosexual, married, father of six children and expecting the arrival of a seventh. I asked him how that was possible. ‘That is very simple,’ he answered, not without a certain feeling of self-consciousness, ‘I always took advantage of my morning erections.’ Thus the children owe their existence not to the father’s sexual instinct, but to the operation of his full bladder. The much-praised aphrodisiacs, are probably also nothing more than diuretics; in other words it may well be that the renown which certain remedies and articles of diet have acquired as stimulants of the potentia coeundi may well be due to their stimulating effect upon the bladder function and its genital reflex.
“Alcoholic drinks, when taken in small quantities have a similar effect and rouse the sexual function. Excesses in Baccho and venereal excesses have always been looked upon as belonging together. This is so because alcohol has the effect of lowering the inhibitions and at the same time it appears to weaken the mental acuity. We may thus see why occasionally heterosexuals confess that they have taken up with some man under the influence of drink, and homosexuals that, when intoxicated, they can have intercourse with women.” (Hirschfeld, l.c., p. 189.)
But the fact that homosexuals are capable of heterosexual activity under the influence of drink is for me a proof of their bisexuality, a proof that that they have repressed the heterosexual component of their sexual instinct.