“As is shown by my latest investigations these cases are frequently neuroses. Some time homosexuality improves or may disappear under psychoanalysis. Homosexuality represents merely the complete revulsion of infantile incestuous thoughts. Homosexual males never experience any erotic feeling in contact with a strange woman; they confess that they can feel towards these women only as towards a sister or the mother. That discloses to us the roots of homosexuality. The concept ‘woman’ is unalterably fused with the concepts ‘mother’ and ‘sister.’ The Abwehr of incestuous fancies determines the flight into homosexuality. That transposition naturally is facilitated through corresponding somatic changes. The homosexual, too, is a victim of infantile reminiscences. Thus homosexuality turns out to be but a special form of the neurotic repression.”
With youthful impetuosity I formulated the results of my investigations somewhat hastily at the time and expressed the therapeutic results in too optimistic a tone. In the course of time I learned to know better. Many patients who considered themselves cured were only improved and stuck to their uranism. We shall have to speak of that with full particulars.
For the present I must consider more fully the theme “mother and homosexuality.” The relationship between the two I had originally conceived according to the Freudian formula. I did not see at the time the influence of other forces, such as I have already pointed out here. The earliest dream of my first homosexual, for instance, was about a murder, the victim being a woman; I did not understand that dream. I did not know that the fear of woman stood for the fear of criminal tendencies, that the subject was a sadist who had saved himself through homosexuality from committing some regrettable deed. These impulses accompanied the incest phantasies which were unusually strong and of which he was fully aware long before analysis. The latter were merely pushed out of consciousness as unbearable. A short time later Sadger published his first analysis of a homosexual and in that contribution he formulated the thesis that like every other neurosis homosexuality arises during the fourth year and that the task of analysis, therefore, must be to reach back to the fourth year.[[7]]
Sadger emphasized: “From the very first I assumed that the homosexual tendencies may be acquired only if they are formed during the first four years, precisely as in the case of hysteria and compulsive neurosis and that psychoanalysis ought to uncover the fact. What stood beyond psychoanalysis must be innate and corresponds to the sexual constitution proper.”
That work, extremely one-sided and full of contradictions, still attempts to reduce homosexuality to the love of the father. The mother plays a limited rôle. It is mentioned passingly that the subject of the analysis had never loved a being so dearly as the mother; but even before the mother’s death an aunt had attracted to herself the boy’s love.
But what are the conclusions drawn by Sadger from the case? None whatever! He is pleased that he has been able to bring to light such interesting material but knows not what to do with it. Among the various questions and answers there is a very significant passage suggesting an important conclusion. Concerning his attachment to the mother the subject states: “And my love arose chiefly through compassion, because father drank a great deal lately and paid attention to other women and mother often wept and that made me feel badly.”
That is a fact which I have had occasion frequently to corroborate. The children of drinkers and “woman-chasers” turn easily homosexual, in the endeavor to be unlike the father. They then hate woman and scorn everything that the father liked in particular. They become abstinent and try to behave contrary to the father in every respect.
Sadger’s patient actually points out this tendency. He states: “Father clearly had no homosexual inclination as he was a great admirer of women. From the time he began telling me about the school—he was particularly fond of French women—he also advised me to marry only a French woman and showed me French pictures and the photos of various French women. It was thus instilled in me that I ought to marry a French woman.” And what did the father accomplish thereby? Was it jealousy or pity and love for the mother? The father accomplished the contrary of what he set out to do. Instead of obedience he was met with spite. The subject relates: “Later when I became aware of my homosexual inclinations, everything French-like was particularly hateful to me, especially the French women, I no longer liked the French language or anything whatever related to French....”
The subject had a pronounced fear of marriage, having seen a sad example of it in his own home. He dreams of getting married, a minister is about to perform the ceremony, and he is so unhappy in the midst of it that upon awakening his happiness knows no bounds. He fears every great passion. “I am afraid of a really tremendous love, because such a passion always makes me unhappy.” The analysis discloses other relations to the father which are of greatest significance.
The feeling-attitude in question dates in fact from the earliest childhood. As yet we are ignorant of child nature and we do not fully appreciate that the fundamental traits of life show themselves very definitely during early childhood. This boy must have conceived early the thought: I must not be like the father! and so he turned away from women because the father was an admirer of that sex. Whether this choice of attitude was also influenced directly by love for the father I am unable to assert in that particular case. It seems to play a contributory rôle and greatly denied love may enhance the child’s attachment to the mother. But does not the example of a drinking “woman-chaser” contrasted to the picture of a quiet suffering mother seem to be enough to induce the differentiation and to maintain it as its underlying determining motive? Back of the homosexuality of the first case of the kind analyzed by Sadger stands the subject’s fear of becoming like his father. The violent fancies disclosed in the course of the analysis show that there are also other reasons for the subject’s fear of woman. He is so constituted that he cannot see blood. This peculiarity denotes the conversion of a craving for violence and signifies a repressed sadism.