Here we found a complete fixation on the father, which had to be overcome first in order to free the path to woman which had become obstructed by all sorts of infantile imperatives. Neither the mother nor the persons who trained him during his earlier years play any rôle in the psychogenesis of his homosexuality; on the other hand there was his strong sadistic attitude towards women which showed itself in a personally baffling fear of women.
This case shows how one-sided Sadger’s explanation is of homosexuality, when he traces its psychogenesis solely to the relations with the mother and overlooks entirely the rôle of the father.
We must also bear in mind that many children gravitate to the mother only because they feel themselves neglected by the father, because they hate the father, and are unable to attain a proper feeling-attitude towards him. Precisely that overstressed love of the mother and the obvious antagonism against the father adroitly covers the fixation on the father.
I will now report three similar cases from my own practice, relating only the important details:
64. Mr. S. L. has not worked as bank employee for the past three years or more. Three years ago he began to complain of various nervous ailments and was granted a leave of absence to recover his health. That leave proved his undoing. He did not improve; instead, he became totally unable to work and is now no longer able to return to his duties. His father always maintained that the whole trouble was imaginary, and wanted to hear nothing of a prolongation of the leave. But the man’s suffering became gradually worse. Out of spite for his father’s attitude he at first simulated the aggravation of his trouble and his condition in the end actually grew so much worse that it shattered him to pieces and he lost control over himself. He experienced attacks of dyspnea so severe that he could not talk. The dyspnea occurred in paroxysms. After one year he lost his position with the bank and, reduced to want, he appealed to his well-to-do father for aid. The father denied him any assistance because he did not consider the son unable to work; he thought the son was simulating so as to impose on him. S. L. sued his father for sustenance and won, aided by the testimony of a number of physicians who certified that his case was one of severe neurasthenia, so that his father had to give him a monthly allowance. Father and son broke all personal relations so that the payment was made through an attorney. Thereafter S. L. was inspired by no other thought than revenge on his father. He was very clever in thinking out new legal issues and additional suits against him. Finally he came to the conclusion he was not the rightful son of his father and threatened a law suit which only his love for his mother prevented him from actually starting. She was revolted at the son’s terrible accusation but so strongly under his influence that she did not have the will power to break with him. She met him clandestinely, placing money into his hands. He loved his mother above all else and urged her to leave the father. He put detectives on his father’s trail, hoping to be able to fasten against him the accusation of being untrue to the mother. He always spoke of his father as “the old rascal,” “the old scamp,” “that miserable, quarrelsome rake.” “Should I see him today writhe in agony it would be the best and most pleasant day I ever had.” I had never seen before so bitter a hatred of the father.
He was a confirmed homosexual, hating all women with the exception of his mother, whom he held in divine veneration. The alleged breach of faithfulness which he alleged her to have committed with a person of high position (the well-known family romance of the neurotic) he excused as natural for it would have been a miracle for that noble soul to have remained true to so terrible a man. The father compelled her to coitus with brute force. He was the offspring of such a coercion, etc.... He loved only younger men, even boys, and he was fairly brutal towards them. Occasionally he carried on deeds with older men towards whom he then preserved an attitude of submissiveness and passivity, trying to please them in every way. He permitted pederasty on his person and did not shrink from fellatio.
The analysis showed a passionate love of the father, a feeling which on account of its unattainable aspect turned into bitter hatred. He thought the father was partial to the other sons and fled to the mother to whom he often complained about the father’s severity and lack of affection. In his homosexual acts he played actively the rôle of the father, becoming at such times very severe and almost cruel, passively he carried out the act as if he were with the father, being then very submissive, and thus allowing his whole repressed love to outflow as if bent on showing him: that is how loving I would be with you always if you only were agreeable! Cruel phantasies revolving around revenge upon the father as the central theme were confessed under strong resistances. Several times he came near shooting his father. He often fancied himself in situations in which his father depended altogether on his compassion and magnanimity. For instance, he would imagine his father had committed some great fraud. He himself had become a millionaire through an ingenious invention of his own. His father comes begging at his feet and is refused any aid. His favorite reading is books describing cruel punishments, the inquisition tortures, etc. The well-known work of Octave Mirbeau, “Le jardin des supplices,” threw him into ecstasy.
The other roots of this subject’s homosexuality I do not dwell upon because I am concerned here only with the rôle of the father....
The next case shows a very similar situation:
65. Mr. G. Z. for some years has had intimate relations with an elderly man, an artist, whose studio is the meeting place of a number of young men exclusively. He is not a musician like the others, but a jurist, and had met incidentally Mr. X, his fatherly friend, as he calls the man. Before that time he had been entirely abstinent. He became Mr. X’s friend only at the age of 21. The friendship was wholly platonic until they undertook a journey together. At Salzburg they occupied together the same room, because the hotel was filled. They carried on intercourse (coitus inter femora), he playing the female rôle on that occasion as well as subsequently. G. Z.’s relations with his father are very stressed. They hardly speak to each other. He is employed in his father’s office, but has only business relations with him. His whole spare time he devotes to his mother. One day he surprised his mother with the information that he had had his father watched and found out that the father maintained clandestine relations with a number of women. He requested his mother to break with the father. He raised a terrible row with his father, ordering the father to withdraw from the office and leave the business entirely to him, and at that the father showed him the door. A letter from the mother convinces him that he is not the son of his father; thereupon he locks himself in the room and commits suicide by shooting himself.