A remarkable parallel is furnished by the next case which I record from among my own observations:
Miss K. S. is 32 years of age and calls to consult me about her various compulsions. She confesses that she is an urlind and that she had never felt herself attracted to men. Her father, a heavy drinker, died three years ago; her mother lives quietly and is not neurotic.
Our subject has had a number of chances to get married but she withdraws coyly from every man the moment one comes close to her. She feels a certain inclination towards older married men and she understands in consequence how a woman might become interested in a friend’s husband. “When I did find a man whom I liked, I was unlucky,” she declares, “for I discovered that he was already engaged to a friend of mine.” Truly she fell in love only with girls and women. Her first romantic attachment was to a woman school teacher, whom she also visited at her home. That teacher wanted this wealthy girl to marry her brother and brought the two into contact as often as possible. She liked the brother because he looked so very much like her beloved friend. But if the sister was not in the room their conversation lagged and she could talk only in monosyllables. She sent flowers and costly gifts to her teacher. Her supreme desire was to sleep once in the same bed with that teacher and she often dreamed of it. She even proposed to take her on a journey. The teacher could not go and hesitated also because she found her pupil’s attentions too oppressive. The teacher actually suffered on account of her admirer’s deep jealousy, for the girl turned ill if she so much as found other girls visiting her. At any rate, quite a circle of girls in the class admired the teacher.
Later she fell in love with a girl friend whom she embraced and kissed warmly numberless times because it gave her a wonderful warm feeling to do so. On the other hand the kisses of an uncle made no impression on her whatever. No man interested her in the least. For a long time she did not know that she was homosexual, but she was well aware since her childhood that she was unlike other children. She was always as wild as a boy and her mother frequently said to her: “there are ten rough boys in you!” She climbed trees, ran around wildly and always preferred to play with boys, did not care for dolls, coaxed to be given a saddle horse and a gun until her father was driven to despair over her and exclaimed sometimes: “you are really a spoiled boy!”
During the analysis she recalled a number of homosexual and heterosexual experiences. Already at 12 years of age she had an experience with an uncle who came to her in bed and played with her. She could not recall whether they indulged in coitus that time. With girl friends she also had various adventures. She confesses in fact that she has been in the habit of masturbating since her 12th year, when she was taught by a girl, and that at one time she often indulged in the phantasy that a man was having coitus with her. In fact, as late as her 16th year she fell “heels-over-head” in love with a friend of her father’s. He was much younger than her father but belonged to the same circle.
While she talks at first only in favorable terms about her father (his drinking habit was not so very excessive) and dwells mostly on his lovely qualities, his mild character, his imposing appearance, etc., at the same time she begins to show underneath a growing hatred. The father had in fact left her in critical circumstances. Every one considered them millionaires, because her father had kept up a very big house. After his death it turned out that he had been spending his capital and that there had been left practically only her share which was, however, large enough to permit her and her mother to live in comfort. Her mother had always endured the life of a martyr. The father had maintained relations with the cook in the house during the last ten years. She was a fat, shapeless vulgar person. In fact, mother and daughter were just tolerated in their home. Once her mother endeavored to dismiss the cook and the father was mad and grew almost violent showing her mother the door threatening that she might leave and take along her daughter if she did not like it in the house. After that the cook was naturally more arrogant and unbearable than ever so that the poor mother passed her days weeping until finally she reconciled herself to that state of things. It was possible to throw that cook out of the house only after her father was lying ill in bed. That daring woman started a law suit claiming that the father had promised to settle on her a home and an income.... She lost that suit because the father testified upon his death-bed that the woman’s contentions were false. The subject relates a number of other relevant incidents but does not recall having ever witnessed any intimacies between her father and the cook.
However, her dreams seem to point in that sense. Thus, for instance, among others she had the following dream:
I go carefully into the kitchen and do not find the cook there. Then I tiptoe slowly up the back stairs to the garret and through the key hole I see the cook lying in bed with the driver.