In Russia he once witnessed how a man split his wife’s head open with a stone.... The occurrence so impressed him that he could never get it out of his mind, and he also likes to dwell on wars and other bloody scenes.
There can be no doubt the man is a sadist and that with reference to women in particular. He has full reason to fear woman. His fear is fear of himself. He must turn to man, towards whom he does not feel the instinctive sexual hatred which makes heterosexual excitations impossible for him. When he has intercourse with a woman, he feels subsequently a tremendous disgust and revulsion, the whole thing seems to him unnatural. In the end he gives up all such attempts.
Obviously he is all the time seeking a kindly preeminent father for he falls in love with an elderly philosopher, out of respect for philosophy, as he paralogizes, because he looks to philosophy to redeem him from his suffering. The differentiation is an attempt at gaining freedom, a tendency to overcome the nature of the father. The love of the philosopher is a substitution for the love of the father.
Thus we see the importance of the early life history of every subject for the understanding of homosexuality. The constellation of childhood permits the reading of the horoscope for the future. Perhaps this uncontrovertible truth contains the root of all astrologic art, “the planetary laws governing the facts of life.” The father as the sun, the mother as the milder moon and the children, the stars. Our fate arranges itself in accordance with the constellation of these planets. Blind accident and innate forces cooperate to create man as he is.
But let us look further into the investigations of Sadger to whom the credit must not be denied of having applied himself earnestly to the attempt of solving the problem of homosexuality.
His next publication appeared also in 1908.[[8]] Here we find clearly taken into account the infantile heterosexual attitude which all homosexuals usually forget but which always precedes genuine homosexuality.
“The young student, 21 years of age at the time, was sent to me, because he was tormented by various homosexual inclinations, especially directed towards young boys 14–20 years of age, associated with all sorts of masochistic feelings. In contact with woman (a prostitute with whom he sought intercourse three times till then, the first two times spontaneously, to see whether he is at all potent, the third time, on medical advice as well as upon his father’s insistence) he found himself entirely impotent. Questioned whether he ever felt any inclination towards the opposite sex, he only recalls that when he was two or three years of age he once opened the garden gate for a girl of about his own age, with a flourish of extreme gallantry. Concerning any hereditary factors he can only relate that a brother of his mother’s had some mental trouble. The mother herself seemed to have something boy-like and manly about her, on the other hand the father showed very little sensuousness and rather pronounced inverted traits, while a sister, who died early, had a very boy-like facial expression. She preferred boyish games and at 4 or 5 years of age she chose a boy’s hobby horse for her Christmas present. Some female cousins—on mother’s as well as on father’s side—were clearly amphigenously inverted. The subject himself had unusually broad hips and the growth of his facial hair was noticeably scant. As a child he is supposed to have played only with dolls, never with soldiers, he never took part in boys’ games and he also learned embroidery.
“Plainly a clear case of inversion with masochistic traits. What was revealed through the analysis of this particularly intelligent subject? In the first place, a remarkable peculiarity: his earliest inclinations were directed towards women,—not some one in particular, but a number of them. His first beloved was the mother and, of course, after a time he turned away from her. After that he felt himself tremendously attracted to an elderly mother of children, proposed marriage to her and that woman later figured in many of his pubertal coitus dreams. Next he displayed such an extreme gallantry towards a girl of his own age that it became very noticeable and his mother spoke to him about it and he felt very ashamed and uneasy.
“During his childhood a servant maid also had made a deep impression on his feelings and she reappears in various male types. Among the homosexual inclinations traceable to the first years I look upon his attachment to a couple of uncles as the strongest and most significant, next the love of a 9-year-old boy belonging to the nobility (baron). In his fourth year the attachment to a boy who taught him masturbation, in his sixth and seventh years the influence of a private teacher. During his fourth year, on account of his mother’s condition, following childbirth, he slept for a time with his father in one bed and this suggested various homosexual wishes and fancies. When a little sister came into the world he promptly fell in love with her. Even more striking is the subject’s normal sexual calf-love affairs in his seventh and eighth years with three or four schoolgirl mates of about his age. It turned out that each one of these girls contributed some traits to the types, both male and female, which later were alone capable of rousing his emotional interest.
“These facts, of which the subject was entirely unconscious and which had to be brought to surface after months of diligent analysis, yield an entirely new picture. First of all they show us how little even the most intelligent person knows himself, and, consequently, how careful we must be in accepting even the most candid statements. Secondly,—that even pure cases of inversion do not exclude the presence of normal sexual inclinations, indeed, that the latter may actually be present, though the subject be unaware of the fact. Thirdly,—and finally,—that the inversion is traceable as far back as the fourth year although it may reach consciousness only during puberty.”