Here already I must point out the first contradiction. It is not a fact that the inversion is traceable back to the fourth year. I have analyzed a number of cases in which the inversion arose after puberty and much later. The beginnings of the homosexual disposition reach into childhood with all persons. This turning away from the other sex may break forth early in some cases and in others much later. But it is a fact that every analysis discloses the heterosexual trait which the homosexuals forget, or speaking more correctly, repress, because it does not appear to fit into their system. Analytically this case of Sadger’s seems to me to be an instance of fixation upon the sister. The boys are substitutes for the sister. We will give the histories of several such cases. He who understands the neurotic’s art of metamorphosing his ideals, he who has learned through their dreams to appreciate this trick of substitution, will readily appreciate that a girl may be loved through falling in love with a boy. It is related of Platen that he possessed a marvelous phantasy. For a long time a colleague was changed for him into an owl whom he avoided on the way. In Neapel he kept for days a cat on his lap pretending it was an enchanted princess. Genuine fetichism shows to what unbelievable metamorphoses the sexual ideal is subjected. With the homosexuals to find a boy who stands as symbol for self or for a sister is a common experience. Like all neurotics they do not possess the capacity to distinguish between the world of fancy and that of reality. I have called neurosis the tyranny of symbolisms. This is particularly true of the neurotic who becomes homosexual. All values are transformed, the object becomes subject and vice versa. In the midst of this transformation of all facts one thing remains fast and true: the infantile ideal which is yearned for with the persistence generated by the eternally ungratified craving.
In his next contribution Sadger reports the results of the analysis of an invert during a period of six months (Zur Ætiologie der konträren Sexualempfindung, Med. Klinik, 1909, No. 2). The special preference of his patient for passive pederasty he traces to the frequent use of enemas during childhood. (In fact it seems to me that the many unnecessary enemas administered during early childhood may contribute towards the fixation of the anus as an erogenous zone.) He also traces out in this case the repressed heterosexuality. “The vacillations of the libido between male and female are like the facial innervation which, as is well known, is based on the equilibrium between the muscles innervated simultaneously by the pair of facialis nerves. Paralysis of the facialis nerve on one side causes not only weakness of the muscles on the affected side but induces also contractures of the muscles on the opposite side.” The patient referred to was attached exclusively to his father, who, himself somewhat homosexually inclined, won the child’s heart through his excessive tenderness, in contrast to the rather severe mother. During his fourth year, on account of the mother’s pregnant state, he slept with his father, an occurrence to which Sadger attaches great significance. The objects of the boy’s homosexual attachments bore some resemblance to the beloved sister. He weaned himself away from his attachment to his mother during his fifteenth year, when he saw his mother deformed with a tremendous ascites on account of which she had to be tapped a number of times. Her appearance at the time filled him with disgust for all women. As over-determination of this feeling-attitude of aversion he recalls the following: after the puerperium referred to above his mother had a profuse leucorrheal discharge which the boy, already sensitive to all scents—he was four years of age at the time—found very repulsive whenever he approached his mother. The subject also recalls vividly how his mother repulsed his aggressive ways with her, between his 3rd and 6th year. (“He always wanted to grab her by the breasts and tried to go to her room and to the bathroom as soon as she went in.”)
Much as physicians unacquainted with infantile sexuality may ignore such aggressions they do take place and some mothers have verified them for me. On the other hand it is hardly likely that a child four years of age should be repelled from the mother on account of scent. At that early age scent is rather a stimulant and is never accompanied by disgust.
I turn now to the last and most comprehensive deductions formulated by Sadger in his study entitled: Ein Fall von multipler perversion mit hysterischen Absenzen (‘A case of multiple perversions with hysterical amnesias’).[[9]]
This work contains a chapter entitled “New Contributions to the Theory of Homosexuality.” Here Sadger abandons entirely his former notion about the significance of the fourth year and states: “Permanent inclination towards one’s own sex usually comes to surface and is certainly increased during puberty, or during the prepubescent period at the earliest, in our latitude around the tenth or eleventh year. Occasionally an earlier onset is recorded and every case of that kind is due to some special factors.” Permanent homosexuality is established through some significant incident which leads to the repression of the mother in her rôle as helper and teacher. Such incidents are death, sudden financial reverse, and consequent serious neurosis, making sanatorium treatment necessary, inconsiderate persecution of the boy on account of masturbation and similar traumata. The love feeling is turned from the mother to the father, or to older comrades, or to comrades of about the same age, who stand as substitutes for the mother and initiate the boy into the facts of love....
The path to homosexuality leads over love of self, through narcissism. “The state of being in love with one’s own person, which shows itself also in the admiration of one’s own genitalia (sic), is never absent as a developmental phase.” Every person has two aboriginal sexual objectives to which he clings throughout life: the mother and self. The father replaces self only for a short period because as the primary rival in his relationship to the mother the child early assumes an antagonistic attitude towards him. The urning hates woman for an obvious reason: “when the best of women, my own mother, amounts to no more than that, what can there be to any other woman?”
Here follows a convincing proof that the urning identifies himself with his mother. The urning always plans to instruct his beloved, for the mother does it. (Does not the father, rather, do it?) The patient has instructed a waiter in geology and history of art, subjects which did not interest the latter. But the mother had done the same....
Most urnings are said to be “only” children. (This statement like many another of Sadger’s, is positively false. Among 500 homosexuals Hirschfeld found only 67 “only” children and among them only 54 were sons. My own statistical figures are even smaller. But the percentage among my neurotics is practically the same.)
Sadger summarizes his findings in five fundamental statements:
“1. The urning is a victim of withdrawal from the mother (the first caretaker or nurse, respectively) in whom he is himself seriously disappointed. He represses the mother by identifying himself completely with her.