The water flowed down the steps. I ran to a friendly woman physician for aid to my wound. On the way I met her unexpectedly in the neighborhood of a merry-go-round. Then my sister speaks up saying: “She will fix your finger in good shape right away.” The woman physician retorts: “I am sorry, but I do not operate.” She sends me instead to a surgeon (male).
The interpretation is not difficult. There is a great deal of weeping. Her tears inundate her whole soul (House as symbol of soul). At first she is looking for a woman healer. A woman shall cure her trouble. Life is a merry-go-round, everything in life revolves, she may yet be happy. But the woman physician gave her the correct answer. You need a surgeon. Only a man can heal thee. I do not operate. I am not the one to awaken your femininity (defloration?).
A further supplementary account shows that the finger became the muzzle of a repeating revolver. Pfister’s interpretation that this is a phallic symbol and that it shows the dreamer’s phantasy that she was a male with a phallus, may be correct. Every homosexual woman has the wish to transpose the psychic state into an actual physical condition. But another possible meaning of the repeating fire arm seems to me more plausible. The subject’s traumatic incident had the effect of facilitating subsequently other homosexual experiences. The traumatic experience required repetition.
I pass over for the present the other meanings of the dream (over-determination), which Pfister discloses with keen insight. I am concerned here merely with pointing out the determining influence of a trauma. Naturally there are other factors at work along with the traumatic incident, it would be necessary to find out why the incident influenced her in that particular manner, the precise constellation of her family circle ought to be taken into consideration, etc. But the dream points so clearly to the cause of the psychic trauma that the cross section it furnishes enables us to reconstruct the whole picture of her trouble.
The case is convincing also from another standpoint. The subject gave up early her psychoanalysis because she felt in a short time that she was well. These apparent cures which serve to circumvent the danger of a thorough psychoanalysis, are well known occurrences. The subject is unwilling to acknowledge that she is also heterosexually predisposed, that her whole longing, in fact, is directed towards the fulfilment of motherhood. The dream says plainly: “I want to be a woman, like all other women, I want to bear children! Save me from the danger of homosexuality!”
But her consciousness is unprepared to acknowledge this desire. She meets difficulties upon the heterosexual path. Pfister believes that she identified herself with her father. In that sense the kissing episodes (with girls) signify: I let father (who was a very handsome and well appearing man) kiss me! But her mother was also in the habit of kissing her with great show of affection. It appears thus that the most varied forces were at work to determine the fixation (stiffening) of her emotional attitude.
In fact homosexuality does resemble ankylosis. The free operation of sexuality appears to be restricted, a single point is fixed and every movement takes place thereafter only within the range of that point of fixation.
Is it possible for psychoanalysis to loosen up such psychic ankyloses and to free once more the bound-down energies? In this particular case can psychoanalysis remove the fear of man and the woman’s doubt whether she can fill a woman’s rôle? How far reaching are the possibilities of psychic orthopedics in the case of homosexuals?
I must ask the reader to follow me patiently through the complex inquiries which follow before attempting to answer these questions.