Whether late homosexuality is determined every time through definite traumatic incidents, I am unable to state, because I have not had the opportunity thoroughly to analyze such a case. The next case seems to me to show that strong emotionally toned episodes may turn a latent into manifest homosexuality:
An army officer, 46 years of age, consults me for complete impotence with women. The impotence is of four years’ duration. He has become acquainted with a lady of whom he is very fond and who enjoys an excellent financial status. He could now be a happy man, if he only were a complete man. Asked about his morning erections he blushes. The trouble is not with erections, they do not fail him on other occasions. He is impotent only in contact with women. Finally he admits that since his 38th year he has been carrying on homosexual relations. Since that time his interest in women gradually vanished and he has become impotent. His anamnesis reveals some significant facts. He recalls no homosexual deeds or excitations during childhood and before puberty. He was sexually precocious, masturbated already during the primary school period and was attracted by girls. First coitus at seventeen in a house of prostitution. After that he felt he wanted women very badly but had no homosexual inclination. Then a tremendous experience came into his life which agitated him and after that he was depressed for some time. That was just before his first homosexual act.
“Can you tell me something about the nature of that agitation?”
“I find it painful to speak of it.”
“But you expect help in a rather difficult situation. How should I appraise the situation in its true light if you won’t furnish me the necessary information?”
“You are right. But there are things of which it is almost impossible to speak. It is about my mother. But I suppose I cannot help myself otherwise. I must tell you all.
“I have always honored and respected my mother. I was 38 years of age when I received a telegram calling me to her sick bed. She passed away shortly after my arrival. As the only son it was my duty to put everything in order after her. I went through her old correspondence and in a box I came across a mass of love letters. First I was not going to read them. But curiosity got the best of me. I said to myself: ‘every married person loves once in his or in her life some one else, why should not that be permitted to my mother when father died while she was still very young.’ If I only had not done that! I found not one letter, I found hundreds of letters and ... they were not all from one man. The letters were so vulgar, so plain, so cynical, so revolting that I wished myself dead. I lost the holiest thing in my life. Before then I always dreamed of finding a woman like mother, and her type of womanhood always stood before me as the ideal. Now I found that she could be bought and she was to be had for ordinary degrading purposes. The tone which her lovers assumed in those letters was so revolting that I imagined the worst. Since then I feel a deep scorn for all womanhood. Shortly after that I yielded to the temptations of a homosexual friend....
“Do you believe that my impotence has some relation to that occurrence? I have often thought of it. Whenever I go to a woman I cannot help thinking of the box in which I found mother’s letters. After such an experience how is it possible for one still to consider marriage?”