“Are you also otherwise jealous?”
“No; not in the least; only about X,—and even that I did not know or was perhaps too proud to admit to myself.”
“What is your attitude towards X? Do you care for him also as you do...?”
“... For my wife, you mean? I do. I love him. He is a charming fellow.”
“Is it not strange that you should be jealous precisely of the one man whom you also like so well?”
He reflects a while and finds no answer. I explain to him that it shows a repressed homosexual disposition towards his friend. The trend of his unconscious thought is: “If I were a woman I could not withstand him.” Perhaps the thought goes even further than that: “Too bad I am not a woman for then I would enjoy that beautiful man....”
He sees at once the relationship between his jealousy and the unrecognized inner homosexual disposition. He relates that this man is the only friend whom he greets with a kiss after a prolonged absence, that he likes to take him by the arm and to hold his hand.
In short, he himself is in love with his friend. He sees his friend everywhere and the slightest resemblances impress themselves strongly on his mind. They are emanations from his one thought: I like him and I wish I were a woman to yield to him.
It is very tempting to try to trace the various paths of unconscious jealousy. But that would lead us too far off our present theme. As we are confronted with a very complicated condition which may have the most varied roots I propose to give a few clinical illustrations from my own practice and to discuss the various forms of jealousy on the basis of these data.
71. The first case of jealousy which I had occasion to observe was that of a physician’s wife. The woman, 45 years of age, relates: “Perhaps you can free me from a painful condition which embitters my whole life and turns my marriage into a veritable hell. I have been married already 22 years and can assert that I have not yet had a happy day except when my husband is all day alone with me and we have no occasion to come into contact with another female person. He is a physician and already during our engagement I was jealous of all his women patients. I did not know this awful trait in myself before. At any rate it was not so pronounced or I should have not married my husband. At first I was jealous of my immediate acquaintances and friends, particularly of the very pretty women among them. After marriage my condition grew worse and worse. During the consultation hours I watched behind the door and shivered with actual nervous chills in my excitement. My husband was a woman specialist and a very popular woman specialist at that. I implored him to abandon that specialty and to take up any other. I admit that the fact of his being a woman specialist had at first excited my interest in him and had a great deal to do with my choice of the man. I thought to myself: the man sees so many beautiful women, he sees them naked, and yet has chosen you,—the thought flattered me immensely. That was well enough at first, but later the feeling of jealousy grew in its stead.