Many paths lead to homosexuality. It would be impossible to describe all. We can only get at a few typical examples.
We turn our attention now to the important question: what is the attitude of the neurotic towards his mother? We have seen that psychoanalysts correlate homosexuality to the repressed love for the mother. Let us give a glimpse at my few statistical data. The question: “Are you specially fond of your mother or your father? Or are you partial to some brother or sister?” was answered by my 20 homosexuals as follows:
“Only of mother—mother—no particular preference—both alike—mother—father—no preference—on the whole, more fond of mother—love the whole family passionately—father—mother—my father mother—mother—mother—mother—specially fond of a brother (indifferent to all the others)—father—mother.”
Approximately one-half confess a greater fondness for the mother. I have mentioned the preferences in these cases because in one of them, at least, I am able positively to prove that back of love for the mother is hidden really a powerful aversion against the father; another subject had failed to mention his fondness for his sister which played a tremendous rôle in the development of his homosexuality. Such a statistical inquiry really requires documentation through psychoanalysis. But even on the face of the statistical figures we find a certain percentage of cases showing a greater fondness for the mother. This is also true of some of the cases in which the predominant love had been declared in favor of the father.
Hirschfeld holds that the attachment of the urning to his mother is a common occurrence. He states:
“The homosexual is attracted to one woman with particular tenderness; this is his mother; and here we also find the analogy of a particularly intimate relationship between the urning daughter and her father. The homosexual’s attachment to his mother is so typical, that the Freudian school has described this mother-complex as the cause of homosexuality. I hold this deduction for a false one. The homosexual does not become an urning because he was so passionately attached to his mother as a child; on the contrary, he leans towards the mother instinctively rather than knowingly, at first, this being the direction of his weakness and peculiarity and often his mother, also instinctively, makes him her favorite child....”
This conclusion of Hirschfeld’s I find myself unable to accept. The urning is often the mother’s favorite child before his birth. The child responds with the most tender love for his mother with whom he identifies himself in the end. Sometimes the mother wishes a girl and brings up her boy as one. I know one urning who was never dressed in pantelets by his mother, who was always kept by her side and whose mother was in the habit of folding his external genital over with his skin, saying: you are a girl! Even as a grown up boy he was frequently put in girl’s clothes and he preserved for some time a tendency to transvestism.
Undoubtedly there are many cases, in which direct love for the mother has absorbed all love for the female sex.
One urning, for instance, as quoted by Hirschfeld, states:
“My mother was everything to me, she was my one best friend, the alpha and omega of my existence. I had built many pretty plans for her, desiring to make her comfortable in her old age.... Then, there came the terrible catastrophe, which nearly wiped out my whole existence, death robbed me of my much-beloved mother. The report of her illness, which made me fear the worst, found me in the North of Ireland and the tortures which I endured during the two days and two nights that it took me to reach home, could not be described in mere words. On the train folks avoided me suspecting that I was insane.... For three weary weeks I took care of my mother day and night, then God took her from me, and I remained a lonely wanderer, broken in mind and body. It was a blow from which I could never recover. In the endeavor to forget I returned to my England to take up my former work but it was useless. Forget I could not, day and night I was a prey to mental and physical suffering. I could not stand it any longer. So I returned to the old home where my people had lived for 100 years. Sometimes I was nearly insane and felt a little more quiet only when visiting the cemetery and hovering around my parents’ resting place. Unable to find peace I decided to travel. In the churches and cathedrals of every City and in the chapels of every village through which I passed I prayed to God for the soul of my beloved mother. The gnawing anguish in my heart over the death of my beloved mother had shattered my nerves all to pieces.... I felt myself paralyzed on account of my deep depression, I could no longer think, I fell into melancholy although I sometimes tried to rouse myself. I abandoned all correspondence because no one could write me a consoling word. When the world which existed between mother and myself shattered, life ceased to have any interest for me.”