Berg also points out that the homosexuals transfer to the intellectual sphere their reproductive and creative urge.
The case mentioned by Berg shows nothing in itself more than a complete identification with the mother. But I have observed long ago that this love of the like bears some relations to purposive sterility. The homosexual renounces the immortality implied in procreation. (Many homosexual artists achieve immortality in the realm of spiritual endeavor.) Such an attitude discloses a revolt against natural law and order. The homosexual, in fact, always conceives himself as unique. The world contains not his equal and that feeling is the hidden source of his pride. The “bearing of aloofness,” already pointed out by Freimark,[[12]] the pride of being “different,” determine also his opposition to the procreative instinct. He does not care to be like others. Against the notion that God had ordained man to have offspring he wants to oppose all teleology and, in spite of God, maintain a purposeless, meaningless love, contrary to nature, a love for its own sake. Conceivably women manifest even more clearly the corresponding revulsion against the motherly instinct.
Who will deny that fear of children, of motherhood, is an important social manifestation? Can it be that this fear is characteristic only of women and is not shared also by men? May it not manifest itself as a form of flight from sexual determinism? We need only look around us. There are any number of married couples who want no children and others who want no more than a child or two. Undoubtedly this state of things is partly due to homosexuality, to a deviation from the biblical injunction concerning the duty of increasing offspring. But let us also glance over our professional experience. The relationship between children and their parents carries within itself the beginnings of a new phase. The everlasting conflict between the new and the old generation, between fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, children and parents, requires, fosters new forms. Not without reason has our age been called “the century of the child” with its slogan raised about the Rights of Children. The greater the (unconsciously motivated) antagonism of the child against his parents, the stronger will be the fear of its own children, who loom up as potential enemies and rivals.[[13]] It seems that our own image attracts and repels us at the same time, that there is a fear of the like as strong as the fear of the unlike. The aboriginal conflict between the old and the new goes on forever within us. Hungry for the new though we be, yet we cling to the old. Having acquired the new we turn longingly to the old.
This bipolarity shows itself nowhere so distinctly as upon the sexual sphere. It means that contraries have the power of sexual attraction. That is an observation substantiated by everyday experience. But there is an extreme point at which the opposite touches upon the like. Les extrêmes se touchent, extremes meet. In each of us there lives also another who is the precise counterpart of ourselves. In the other sex we love our counterpart and through the love for our own sex we endeavor to run away from that counterpart.
The mother instinct and hatred of motherhood are not split in the human soul. The homosexual woman always shows the hatred of motherhood and her alleged love of children, when such a sentiment is claimed at all, proves but a self-deception and lip-service at best. In our study of female dyspareunia we propose fully to prove that conclusion in connection with the histories of several homosexual women. We do find many instances of alleged affection for children but in reality these are only caricatures of the true sentiment and only rarely the affection as it is characteristic of normal woman. Our school teacher in love with the boy pupil, whose case we gave in full in the preceding pages, did not love children as such and did not care to have children of his own. Through his love for the boy the repressed father instinct also found outlet.
The life histories of homosexual women differ from those of males only in the fact that occasionally there seems present a certain yearning for children, as if the child could bring about release from the passion and a new state of bliss. Beyond that the urlind shows the same psychogenesis as the urning. There is a strong fixation on the family, though not always on the father, as Hirschfeld claims. In addition to that, rather commonly there is found affection for the mother which is fairly open, and tenderness for some sister which persists through life and assumes remarkable masks.
I want to conclude this chapter with the histories of some cases of female homosexuality which may serve to illustrate clearly the points I have just made:
69. Miss Ilse—we shall call her by that name—after a series of various exciting episodes has fallen a victim to depression, during which she lost a great deal of weight, but in spite of a successful fattening régime her stay at a sanitarium did not effect a complete cure. She is an impressively attractive girl, 24 years of age, voluptuous, feminine in every way up to her angular, somewhat energetic nose and prominent, curved eyebrows. Her mother, of whom the girl speaks with much feeling, believes that the girl’s breakdown dates from the death of the father. Ilse irritatedly contradicts the mother several times, breaking into a quarrelsome attitude towards her mother over trifles. Reprimanded by her mother, she falls into her depression and speaks no word. I take her under treatment and for a week I have in her a heavy burden on my hands. She hardly says anything, is very negativistic in her attitude, only muttering from time to time: “Don’t trouble yourself. It will never be any different. Better give me something that will put me quickly out of the way.” She livens up somewhat only when referring to her father,—thinks he should have not passed away. The mother should have called in a specialist. In fact, it was as much her fault as anybody’s, for she had failed to insist on calling the best aid while there was time.
Gradually she extends me her confidence and one day she appears,—like a changed person. She must tell me the truth. She is not a normal person. Since childhood she has been homosexual and had never cared for men. Her mother had implied as much when she said to me: “I cannot understand the girl. She always fled from the room when young men called on Alfred (her brother). The girl is a man hater.” This fact the girl had denied during the first visit, but now she herself admitted. She had never cared for men. On the other hand, at 11 years of age she had already fallen passionately in love with a woman school teacher. She was a frolicsome girl, often wore her brother’s clothes, and played with all the young boys of the neighborhood. At 14 years of age she again fell in love with a girl friend.
Her current depression is due to a terrible disappointment. She had maintained a love affair with a French woman and was happy. She said nothing about the character of the relations, but admitted that they were very intimate. Suddenly she found out that the French woman was not true to her, but was keeping up intimate relations more often with other girls than with her. She suffered tremendously on account of her jealousy. She began to feel a disgust against all women not unlike her former aversion to men. Asked why she was so antagonistic to men, she answered: “Because they are, all, without exception, disgusting brutes....”