The Homosexual Neurosis

by Wilhelm Stekel

“I had a very pretty woman friend who was taking treatment from my husband. What I endured during her visits is beyond my powers to describe. I said to myself: ‘She is now taking off her blouse and now her petticoat. He is now examining, looking at her bosom, and now she lifts herself upon the examination table, she stretches her limbs apart....’ I suffered hellish torments. I was convinced that my husband could not withstand this woman’s charms and would kiss her. I had a serious quarrel with him; I quarreled with my friend, who turned from me with indignation. Our marriage relations grew worse on that account. I tortured my husband so that he had to allow me to watch through a carefully hidden peep-hole what was going on in the consultation room. In that manner I convinced myself that my husband was physically true to me. But even though he swore a thousand times that the women did not excite him in the least I could not believe him. I stuck to one thing which I harped on daily: ‘Give up your specialty.’ Years thus passed in quarrels and dispute. I have now a married daughter of my own and I thought to myself that with advancing age my condition would change. But not at all! It grows worse and I transfer now my jealousy also to my son-in-law, I am jealous for my daughter. Fortunately, she has no real reason to feel jealous and laughs at me....

“I am also jealous of my daughter. I would like to preserve her love for myself only and I begrudge her husband. Although she made an excellent match, I was not satisfied and treated my son-in-law very unfairly. I was unhappy over it but could not help it. I have consulted already the most famous specialists, have been for six weeks under hypnotic treatment by Prof. X. I have already kept away from my husband for three months at a stretch,—nothing has helped.”

That is the sufferer’s history. What is the meaning of this jealousy?

The root of this jealousy is a non-conscious homosexuality. She is jealous of her woman friend because she herself is in love with the friend. She puts herself in the rôle of the man, the physician, and concludes that in his position she could not resist the temptation. She imagines herself in the man’s place; she scrutinizes every woman with hungry looks. The peep-hole in the consultation room serves on the one hand the purpose of calming down her jealousy and of giving the poor husband a few quiet hours; on the other hand it enables her to participate in everything that is taking place and to gratify her craving as voyeuse. This control is her daily homosexual excitant, the means through which she rouses the flames of her passion only to still them afterwards upon her husband.

After the explanation was reached there was a marked improvement in her condition. The woman saw that her love for the daughter was homosexual and that this was the reason why she was so jealous of her son-in-law.

The occurrence is far from rare, and many a marriage has been wrecked on account of it. The angry mother-in-law is always the mother who cannot live without her daughter and who wants to show her daughter that the husband is untrue and does not appreciate her and how much more she truly loves the daughter.... I have also often seen the daughter, after a timorous attempt at married life, return penitently back to the mother. I have seen mothers who fight for their daughters with a lover’s passion and with their tremendous jealousy putting all sorts of difficulties in the way of any pretenders to the daughter’s hand. I have found that kind of jealousy frequently as the root of melancholia. I refer in this connection to Case 132 in my “Nervöse Angstzustände” (2nd ed., p. 363).

72. The next case of jealousy shows the same roots. A married woman, 30 years of age, consults me on account of an unexplainable jealousy which has been torturing her for about four weeks. She tells the story of her jealousy: She engaged a new servant, a very young girl, somewhat coquettish, but who at first glance seemed to her very sympathetic. After one week she felt jealous and found that her husband, who usually did not so much as look at the servants in the house, was extremely friendly and courteous towards that girl. It seemed to her even that he was bestowing longing glances on the girl. At first she kept silent because she hesitated to speak of the matter to her husband. But after a time she reproached him about it: he must be more strict. She requested him to assume a more severe tone in his relations with the girl. Her husband laughed at her. He said he talked to the girl in his usual manner and nothing more. It was all imagination on her part. The girl was very good; he had no reason to call her down or to assume a more severe tone towards her. That reassured her somewhat but only for a short while. She watched her husband more carefully than ever and thought he was much charmed by the girl. She arose several times during the night to go into the servant’s room and investigate. Once her husband had some gastric trouble and he had to leave the room several times that night. She was convinced that it was but an excuse to go to the girl and several times she followed him along the chilly passage into the hall, so that her husband asked: “What is the matter with you this time?” She said she was worried over his condition and wanted to watch and see that he was all right. Finally her jealousy broke to surface a number of times and she reproached her husband very bitterly with her suspicions. She was absolutely certain that he was intimate with the girl. Her husband was indignant and asked her to dismiss the girl at once so that there might be an end to that “foolish notion.” The remarkable thing was that she felt unable or unwilling to dismiss the girl. The girl was so good and so faithful, it is so hard nowadays to find an efficient girl servant, she insisted only that her husband must show himself more strict with her. He had to declare on his oath again that there was no intimacy between them. Towards the girl she felt a peculiar anger which she could not understand. At times she could have flown at the girl to strike her, which was very baffling as she had never been in the habit of striking a servant. But it would have been a great satisfaction to her to have pummelled this girl who caused her so much anguish. She had to restrain herself forcefully so as not to give vent to her rage. She was very “touchy” with the girl and tolerated not the least contradiction on her part.

Nevertheless she could not make up her mind to dismiss the girl, and yet she was afraid to be alone with her.

All her troubles arose on account of her homosexual attitude towards the girl who was in fact a charming blonde type of beauty. She herself was in love with the girl; that is why she could not conceive that her husband might be indifferent towards her. She figured: If I were a man I would love this girl! Interesting, and at the same time typical, is her rage and desire to strike the girl. The love feeling is converted into its opposite and the longing to touch the girl (that is, to come into contact with her body) manifests itself in the inclination to strike her. How often love contacts disguise themselves as angry blows under the mask of anger!

I explain to the woman that she must dismiss the girl when she saw clearly the meaning of her jealousy. After the girl left all the unpleasant symptoms mentioned above vanished.