Fleischmann[35] also records a few cases showing homosexual seduction carried out during a state of intoxication. He relates also the case of a homosexual who when intoxicated was able to have intercourse with women. “At 28 years of age,” relates the author about this subject, “he visited a house of prostitution for the first time and, animated by drink, he was able to carry out coitus once with a woman; when sober a twenty-horse team could not drag him into such a place,” according to the urning. But after drinking he was always able to have coitus.
We see that the incentive to drink is obviously due to an ungratified craving. Psychoanalytic experience reiterates again and again that almost every craving to become drunk or otherwise to lose one’s senses betrays an ungratified sexuality. Among the inebriates, the morphine and cocaine addicts, we always find pronounced paraphiliacs and bisexuals who have repressed a portion of their sexual instinct. In the same way every unprejudiced investigator will find a similar condition true of homosexuals who, according to my experience, are bisexuals who have repressed the heterosexual component of their instinct. I cannot agree with Naecke,[36] who contends that urning as such is a moderate drinker and seldom inebriate. Nor do I believe that in homosexual circles moderation in drink is the rule. Of course, I do know a number of temperate homosexuals, but the data under my observation as a whole and the material supplied through the objective accounts of physicians, reveal an entirely different situation.
A great deal of what takes place during states of intoxication never comes to the attention of those not immediately concerned. Possibly infantile experiences with drunken parents may have a greater role in the psychogenesis of homosexuality than we are aware of at the present time.
Now and then it happens that parents, drunken or otherwise debauched, attack their own children. I have had occasion to observe that some very curious habits are still prevalent in the nursery, here and there. One subject related to me that his mother had the habit of playing with his penis until he was six years of age. His wife also found this a convenient way to lull their child to sleep. He thought it was as harmless a practice as it seemed efficacious in quieting the child.
H. T., a homosexual chemist by profession, who has a theoretic interest in psychoanalysis, writes me: “The contribution that I am able to make may be of some use to you. I have often tried to think whether dreams have had any influence upon the development of my sexual life. But I could recall no experience which I could correlate to my condition. I have felt early an interest in the membrum virile and this interest abides with me to this day. The sight of the penis in a state of erection is enough to rouse in me the strongest feelings of pleasure. While walking on the street I always try to observe the respective region in passers-by and I try to estimate the size of the organ by outward appearances,—my fancies are full of such reflections. I have always masturbated in front of the mirror watching my penis during the act. But it took a very long time for me to overcome my shyness enough to find companions for these acts.
A few days ago I had a dream in which I saw my father who has been dead for ten years. He was the best man in the world, but unfortunately a periodic drinker. When in the inebriate state he treated mother very roughly. I dreamed a scene which scared me so that I awoke. I saw my father give me in hand his membrum erectum. And suddenly there flashed through my mind the recollection that he had done repeatedly this very thing when he was drunk. But with every fibre of my being I cling to my mother who is for me the ideal of womanhood such as I shall never again find the equal of in all this world! Beyond that my love is directed only to the male and specifically I am attracted to common men. Can you explain my riddle? I feel myself attracted to ordinary drivers, men of vulgar tastes such as one finds in the dram shops. Only once was I able to have intercourse with a girl. I was so “soused” at the time that I then did something which I could never carry out while in my ordinary senses....”
I emphasize once more: The outbreak of heterosexual excitations after indulgence in alcohol proves the presence of that tendency and shows that under ordinary conditions the heterosexual tendency, though continually present, is subjected to suppression. The tendency is preserved in some closed-in compartment of the soul, the door to which may gape open under certain circumstances. Occasionally alcohol acts as a master key which opens up every enclosure.
It is interesting also to observe the sublimation which the heterosexual love undergoes among homosexuals. They endeavor to de-sexualize the other sex, at the same time have recourse to heterosexual friendships by preference. I know quite a number of homosexuals of this class, men who maintain motherly, sisterly, or even grandmotherly friendships and to whom these friendships are positively indispensable. We psychoanalysts are in a position to appreciate the source of these sexual attachments. They are due to repression and are also the result of an inhibition which extends merely over sexuality but allows the sublimated eroticism to manifest itself. Among the homosexuals there are many women haters (misogynists).