Very convincing are the cases in which the homosexual outbreak occurs first after some powerful trauma! It is not always gonorrhea. Often various other experiences furnish the inciting moment as I can easily prove on the basis of my own observations. But first I must quote a case reported by Krafft-Ebing which is illuminating on this score:
Miss X., 22 years of age, is considered a beauty, men flock around her whenever she appears in society; she is decidedly of a sensuous nature, seems born to be an Aspasia, but rejects all advances. One of her admirers, however, a young scientist, she looks upon with some favor, becomes intimate with him, allows herself to be kissed by him, but not like a loving woman; and when the young man believes himself close to the consummation of his supreme desire she begs him with tears in her eyes to desist because she is utterly unable to yield to him, not on account of moral grounds so much as for deeper psychic reasons. In the course of the exchange of written confidences which followed that unsuccessful meeting between the two the homosexual character of her inclination was clearly revealed to her.
Miss X. had a father who was addicted to drink and a hysteropathic mother. She herself is of a neuropathic constitution; has full breasts, and generally the outward appearance of an unusually attractive woman but reveals boyish ways about her and various male peculiarities,—she fences, rides horseback, smokes and has a decidedly mannish way of standing and walking. Lately her romantic attachment to young women has become quite noticeable. She has a young woman with her sharing her apartment.
Miss X. claims that up to the time of puberty she was sexually indifferent. At 17 years of age she became acquainted at a summer resort with a young foreigner whose “majestic” figure made a tremendous impression upon her. The privilege of dancing a whole evening with him made her happy. The following evening, at twilight, she witnessed a horrible scene—from her window she saw that wonderful man in the bushes futuare more bestiarum mulierem quandam inter menstruationem.
Adspectu sanguinis currentis et libidinis quasi bestialis viri Miss X. felt shocked, she seemed powerless and crushed, could hardly recover her psychic equilibrium and for some time after that could neither sleep nor eat; from that time on man stood in her mind for the quintessence of bestiality.
Two years later a young woman approached her in a public garden, smiled and glanced at her with a very peculiar look which penetrated deeply into her soul. The following day Miss X. felt impelled to visit again that public garden. The woman was there, in fact, she seemed to have been expecting her. They greeted one another like old acquaintances; they talked and joked pleasantly and thereafter met by appointment daily, first in the garden, and later, when the weather became unpleasant, in the woman’s living apartment. “One day,” Miss X. relates confidentially “the woman led me up to her divan and allowed me to glide to the floor while she seated herself. She lifted her shy eyes at me, stroked the hair off my forehead softly with her hand, saying: ‘Oh, if I could once love you the real way, may I?’ I consented, and as we sat close by gazing into each other’s eyes, before we knew it we passed to that love from which there is no drawing back.... She was bewitchingly beautiful. For me the whole experience was something new and intoxicating.... I do not believe that man is ever able to feel such delicate, bewitching, exquisite intoxication.... Man is not sufficiently sensitive, he is not delicate enough for that.... Our foolish abandon lasted until I fell back exhausted, helpless, intoxicated. In this exhausted state I was lying on her bed when suddenly an exquisite feeling thrilled through me and awoke me from my half dreamy state, something unspeakably sweet and unlike anything I had ever experienced before; I found J. on top of me, cunnilingus perficiens—that was her highest pleasure, tandem mihi non licebat altrum quam osculos dare ad mammas—and with every motion she shook convulsively.”
Miss X. acknowledged further that during her homosexual relations she always assumed the male attitude towards her womanly companion and that once, faute de mieux, she allowed one of her male admirers to perform cunnilingus on her. (Krafft-Ebing, l.c., Obs. 165.)
Let us consider closely the case of an exalted nature like that girl. She goes through her first graceful love fever, she is about to become a true woman, she thinks “him” a princely man, a “majestic” personality when unexpectedly she undergoes the experience of witnessing that very God-like man behave like a common beast.... Jealousy and a revulsion of feeling unite in her at the terrible sight rousing such a tremendous affect that forever after she feels an unspeakable horror of all men.
Many women must have become urlinds as a result of just such experiences. One must also take into account that among many women homosexual love shows itself merely in kisses and embraces and that it seems to them something nobler and much more esthetic than the manifestations of heterosexual love. Fear of the phallus is something that may be roused by a relatively slight infantile occurrence. In her homosexual indulgences Miss X. is not particularly esthetic by any means, nevertheless even she remarks: “man is not delicate enough!”
This highly interesting case illustrates the development of homosexuality following a trauma which must have had a tremendous effect upon so sensitive and romantic a nature as this young woman and which could not but strengthen the existing predisposition to homosexuality. But in spite of all she is still bisexual and I do not think it impossible that she should yet overcome her tremendous horror of man. We must consider that the father was a drinker and that she had probably witnessed in the parental home scenes like the one she has described. What a pity that the case has not been analyzed. Traumatic incidents during later life are particularly powerful in their effect if they resemble and therefore re-echo infantile memories of similar childhood experiences. It may even be possible that the woman did not actually witness the scene at the time she states but that she experienced merely a hallucination, repeating in her mind a scene which she may have witnessed only during her childhood.