In many cases the barrier between jealousy and insanity, between neurosis and psychosis, is hardly to be distinguished. Often jealousy is the first symptom of paranoia.
The next two cases have also pronounced paranoiac features. We are indebted to Freud for his significant contributions to our understanding of the nature of paranoia, or paraphrenia, as Freud terms the condition. In his fundamental contribution, Psychoanalytische Bemerkungen über einen autobiographisch beschriebenen Fall von Paranoia (Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, 3rd ed., Franz Deuticke, Leipzig and Vienna, 1913), he has shown that paranoiac insanity is traceable back to the repressed homosexual components of the sexual instinct. The persecution ideas of paranoiacs (by men) is the projection outward of their own thoughts. The subject is pursued by his own homosexual phantasies and out of those fancies he constructs his notion of a pursuer. Love is transmuted by the subject into its bipolar opposite, hatred. Freud states on this point:
“‘I do not love him, in fact I hate him.’ This contrary attitude, which cannot mean anything else in the unconscious does not assume that form in the paranoiac’s consciousness. The mechanism governing the formation of symptoms in paranoia requires that the inner apperception,—the feeling of subjection,—should be replaced by some perception from without. The proposition: ‘in fact I hate him,’ is thus changed through projection into another: ‘he hates (pursues) me which consequently justifies me in hating him.’ The unconscious feeling-motive thus appears as though it were an objective perception, a deduction:
“‘I do not love him, in fact I hate him, because he pursues me.’”
Observation leaves no doubt that the pursuer is none other than the formerly beloved person.
Freud here overlooks entirely the relations of paranoia to criminality. Having persistently overlooked thus far the tremendous significance of latent criminality in the psychogenesis of neurosis and having emphasized only the sexual factors underlying all psychotic and nervous manifestations, he neglects here also the important rôle of criminality in the dynamics of paranoia. That is the reason why his explanation does not fit all cases. For there is also a paranoia which stands for a flight from criminality, even representing a rationalization of criminal tendencies without any homosexuality. Such cases are exceptional but they do occur. The fear of insanity which oppresses so many neurotics, involves as a polar component the wish to lose one’s mind. For the insane is responsible neither to himself nor before the law. “He cannot help it.” That is why paranoiac conditions break out so often with the commission of some crime. On the other hand the paranoiac turns insane as a defence against committing a crime. We shall yet find that isolation in an asylum for the insane corresponds with many a victim’s hidden wish, because there they find peace of mind and security.
The jealousy of paranoia like every other form of jealousy is an expression of rage. But it serves to rationalize the anger and lends force as well as a measure of emotional justification to the criminal impulse. Many crimes of passion, so-called, are caused by the passion for crime. We have as yet penetrated but little through the mask which covers the inner criminal. We are still too anxiously concerned with the superficial motivations which bring about sadism to find the path leading towards the fundamental fact. The best measure of culture is the manner in which the man’s primordial character manifests itself in us, our conscious conduct. That is why the advancement of culture is bound to lead to an increase of insanity in the proportion that the jails are emptied.
I must again point out that Juliusburger was the first to recognize and describe clearly these relations. In fact the credit of having discovered the relations between homosexuality and paranoia belongs to him. In his work entitled, “Die Homosexualität im Vorentwurf zu einem deutschen Strafgesetzbuch” (Allgemeine Zeitschrift f. Psychiatrie, 1911), he already stated:
“Furthermore we find in the insane the well-known delusion of persecution and its motive is often derived from homosexuality inasmuch as the patients complain that they are pursued with homosexual intent, of which they themselves disclaim any guilt. Or, in their morbid state of mind, they believe themselves victims of persecution because it is proposed that they should be driven into the alleged ranks of homosexuals, something they resent most scornfully. In both cases we see a peculiar psychic process which must be conceived as a projection to the surroundings, to the world of external reality, of unconscious subjective notions. When an individual breaks down mentally complaining to be a victim of watchfulness and persecution for alleged homosexual purposes, the condition may be explained only in the sense that the individual in question actually harbors within himself a powerful homosexual tendency and the latter is projected unto the world of external reality through a peculiar mental mechanism. The old proposition: ex nihilo nihil fit holds true also of the mental sphere and it would be utterly unscientific to fail to recognize in this sphere as well the law of strict causality or motivation. A careful examination of the mental life of our insane man’s unconscious shows that homosexuality is a powerful motive force much more frequently than is ordinarily recognized and this attempt to turn the unconscious subjective feeling of homosexuality into an objective reality, constitutes a pathway for the release of inner psychic tension, so a means for the individual to escape the feeling of guilt roused by his erroneous perception of facts and to pass the responsibility onto other shoulders. Many of the insane notions of our patients become intelligible and we grasp their meaning only when we recognize the powerful rôle which homosexuality plays in man’s unconscious.”
Juliusburger also recognizes the significance of sadism and its tremendous rôle in the psychogenesis of the delusion of jealousy. In his contribution referred to previously, “Zur Psychologie des Alkoholismus” (Zentralblatt f. Psychoanalyse, Vol. III, 1913), he makes the following relevant observations: