“And you stand for that?”
“I cannot move out because....”
“You are in love with your sister and cannot live without her.”
“That’s it. I cannot live without sister and even her scoldings and her angry words I will put up with rather than stand a day without seeing her.”
“Still you will have to do it.... The conditions are unhealthy.”
“Yes.... Only yesterday I said to sister: ‘I am going to move out and you can keep your rooms and do with your lodger whatever you want. I won’t protect you any more.’”
Thus it came out clearly that she was watching every night, whether the lodger was going to the sister and that she dreaded moving out because she knew that the sister would then be alone with the lodger in the house and he could go to her every night. I made this clear to her but she did not seem to see it at first. She admitted her homosexual love for the sister....
She moved to other quarters. It was a quiet little room over a garden in the home of an elderly woman living alone. But here also she could not sleep. The old woman snored and she could not stand that. Then the ticking of a clock disturbed her continually and kept her from falling asleep, the striking of the hours even waking her up. She thus continually sought everywhere for the reasons of her unrest which were only in herself. The palpitation of her heart (symbolic substitute for it: the clock) gave her no peace. She looked for other quarters, kept looking and looking but found no place so satisfactory and quiet as the sister’s lodging. She went there every evening returning to her outside lodgings late in the night. She took advantage of a light illness of her sister’s as an excuse and returned to her little room, again shivering with dread whenever the lodger was late coming home. Even after she chose for herself a lover who gave her complete sexual gratification her quiet was temporary. The heterosexual component of her instincts drove her more and more to her lover trying to forget her sister in his arms. But she succeeded only intermittently and her thoughts kept revolving again and again between her sister and that lodger. Finally her sister gave in and the lodger had to move. An elderly young woman became the new lodger. Then she quieted down and was able to sleep once more.
It is interesting that nearly all narcotic drugs not only proved useless but made her worse. She did not want to sleep so as to keep watch over her sister’s virtue.
As in all the cases previously mentioned, here, too, developments led to overt attitudes, the subject stood on the brink of criminal passional deeds. Hatred and love showed intimate relationships. She was also afraid of murderers, barricaded the doors and shivered at every little noise. That was the fear of her own criminal thoughts. Her infantile criminal tendencies arose with her infantile love for the sister.