At this point Ilse begins to relate her past experiences. She was seven years of age when she visited an uncle. He showed her his big membrum virile and asked her to hold it in her hand. She did this as well as other things he requested her usque et ejaculationem. “How shall I have any respect for men when they don’t hesitate thus to poison the innocent soul of a child?” The uncle is still living.... She has since thought that it must be some morbid tendency and has forgiven him. “It happened only a few times and the uncle believes I have forgotten it....”
Another traumatic incident impressed her more seriously; it was, in fact, a series of traumas. Her mother was a light-minded person and is so to this day, despite her 50 years. But she knows enough to dress herself so attractively and with such a display of refinement that she is still capable of achieving conquests. There follow a number of serious complaints against the mother, which must have been true, for I have had opportunity to convince myself of the truth of some of the statements. The mother always kept on the string a number of lovers who gratified her extravagant requirements. As a child she had been taken along to a number of rendezvous and has repeatedly witnessed the display of tendernesses between the lovers. She also recalled various household scenes from her early childhood. As a child she was already very sensuous and masturbated jointly with the sister and the brother. She was precocious as well as prematurely spoiled and every one thought she would early turn out to be like her mother. Then her sister underwent a great change in character. She became religious and wanted to join a nunnery. She made fun of her religious-minded sister but secretly admired her for her chastity. She was 14 years of age at the time. She now knows that she was in love with the family physician and that she was interested in men, but at the same time she was in love at different times with various teachers and girl friends. When her sister was 16 years of age she had a love affair with an army lieutenant and had to go to a sanitarium to be curetted, fever set in after the operation, and for several weeks the girl was seriously ill.
Her sister’s experience shook her to pieces. Inwardly she had been proud that there was such a pure, innocent girl in the family. Now that her sister followed the example of her mother it seemed to her that she, too, was fated to follow in the same path and that there could be no escape for her. During that period her character underwent a change and she acquired a tremendous dislike for all small children. She could not suffer to see a small child. She thought to herself, if she were its mother she would strangle it. The feeling was so horrible that she could not sleep. In time she improved somewhat, but the dislike of children or, rather, the fear of them, that is, the fear that she might do some harm to them, never left her.
I suspected that back of this feeling-attitude towards the children might be found the solution of her problem. I reverted back to her sixteenth year, for it was at that period that she turned definitely against all men.
“Why do you hate children?”
“Not that, exactly.... In fact, I was at one time foolish over them. I have always wanted children. When I told you that I always played boyish games it was not exactly the truth. I remember now that I played nurse to my doll and that we often played the game of childbirth. Brother was the doctor and I was the pregnant lady in bed.”
“Did you happen to witness childbirth as a little girl?”
“Yes, everything.... Our aunt gave birth to a child in our home,—a romantic story. An illegitimate child; her parents were not to know anything about the birth, or they would have disowned her. But we children knew everything. Afterwards she married the man but was very unhappy with him. The little baby was with us for a time. I was very fond of it and carried it around....”
“Have you other such aunts in the family?”
“Between us: mother’s family has a poor reputation. There were six sisters, each more flighty than the next. None was a virgin at marriage. Things were always happening and there was never any peace. That is why I was so shocked over sister’s experience. I was getting to think it was my fate also to become ... merely a prostitute. You will pardon me for speaking so harshly about my own mother. But unfortunately it is the truth....”