He naturally pretended once to go on a journey only to return unexpectedly to the girl. He thought he smelled cigar smoke, dragged her by the hair, and wanted to force a confession from her. He also accused her of intimacy with her 70-year-old guardian.
Such cases are not favorable for analysis and rather hopeless. I am not as lucky as Bjerre[[19]] to be able to report a complete cure of a case of paranoia. Usually these patients abandon the psychoanalysis, finding some pretext to turn from the consultant. It is useless to explain to them the mechanism of transference. From the moment when they perceive a leaning towards their consultant that sympathetic feeling is changed into anxiety and distrust. They are unwilling to recognize their homosexuality. Their psychic disturbance is too deep and a correction is no longer possible. Often the subjects stay away after only a few visits. This sudden abandonment stands in sharp contrast to their initial enthusiasm for the new method of treatment. Others stay on with the analysis for a few weeks but make little or no progress. So long as their homosexual tendencies are not touched upon, it is possible to keep up the psychoanalysis a little longer but the psychoanalysis is superficial under the circumstances, as they cannot be induced to apply candor, always keep secrets from the consultant, and cover under silence whatever comes into their mind bearing on their attitude towards their physician.
He carried his revolver whenever he called at my office, always ready to shoot down the alleged enemy. I tried to make him understand that he was tortured by his own homosexual and criminal thoughts. He listened incredulously but was not so averse as I have seen most paranoiacs.
This patient also stayed away after three weeks of analysis because the analysis produced in him a tremendous excitement. He thought I was in league with his father[[20]] to part him from his girl. The real object of his love was the father who seems to me to play an important rôle in the psychogenesis of male paranoia.
I saw him two years later during the war. He had joined the army as volunteer, had made an excellent record for himself and had been slightly wounded. Since the war he felt better. He had given up the engagement shortly after the treatment. His ideas of persecution had subsided to a great extent, he claimed.
The next case shows us a paranoiac jealousy with insane notions based on proofs ferreted out and scrutinized with remarkable ingenuity. Such cases form the borderline towards the class of querrulants who clamor always for their “rights,” precisely because an inner voice clamoring for “injustice” must be drowned.
78. Mr. S. D. is referred to me by his family physician from a distance. I am asked to determine whether his jealousy is justified or the result of a morbid state of mind.
He is a very energetic, active 30-year-old merchant, who conducts the local inn in connection with his larger business in a small village. In eight years he made a great success and attained affluence. He has acquired all the retail business of the place, carries on also a wholesale business with the neighboring retail dealers, and was on the way to become a very wealthy man when he began to quarrel with his wife on account of his jealousy. His wife was of a frigid temperament who always remained cool during his embrace and it always worried him. After the birth of a couple of children she grew somewhat more responsive. When she had her first strong orgasm during his embrace he became suspicious and concluded at once that she must have had some other instructor in the art of love. How was it possible for a cool woman, suddenly, over night, as it were, to turn into a passionate mate? He began watching his wife and came to the conclusion that she must have had intercourse with a certain man possessing a very long phallus. There lived in that village a farmer who was no longer young, but wealthy, and known for his long penis and his virility. That fellow was his regular guest at the inn. What more natural than that the innkeeper should conclude that he must be the guilty man. We note that his mind must have been preoccupied for a long time with the size of that man’s penis. That phantasy he projected to his wife. His curiosity and longing to see that phallus he ascribed to his wife. That is how thought processes originate. Such autism (Bleuler) renders us uncritical and permits us to see the whole world through the subjective coloring of our own emotions. How could his wife, a woman, fail to be interested in the size of the peasant’s phallus, which was openly the talk of the tavern, when he, a man, could not help being interested? Such, approximately, is the logic of this thinking. He began to watch that peasant and his wife. He pretended to go on a journey telling his wife he would not be back before the following day. But he returned that very evening. He tiptoed up the steps to the bedroom. He heard a dull thud. Naturally it was the peasant, escaping through the window. It was—as the woman explained—the cat who had been scared off. He insisted a man had been in the room. His wife felt so indignant that she wanted to leave him at once and refused to say another word. He became humble and begged her imploringly for forgiveness telling her the reason for his jealousy. The wife declared that she had always been passionate but was ashamed to show it. Finally it came to her all of a sudden that it was foolish on her part, also, she had learned to love him more than ever. She cannot help it if she is now more responsive. There followed an interval of peace but only for a few months. Soldiers were quartered in the place and a physically impressive captain secured a room. From the moment of his appearance at the place that captain roused the man’s suspicions. He found that his wife gave the fellow the best cup of coffee, that she was altogether too friendly with him, and that she showered upon him all sorts of pleasant little courtesies. His wife explained to him that this captain bought of them all the supplies for his company and was the means of bringing them important business, and that she was friendly only for business reasons, but that their relations had never trespassed the limits of propriety. But he kept collecting indications of her unfaithfulness. Among the proofs he found the butt of a cigarette in his wife’s room. He questioned her closely and asked the officer’s orderly to bring him a cigarette from his master’s case, claiming those cigarettes had such a pleasant aroma he wanted to try one. He thus secured a cigarette and found that it bore an identical mark. The fact was he smoked the same brand of cigarettes, but he thought he discovered a certain stripe which the other cigarettes did not have (I could not detect the stripe in question). His other proofs were of a like character. This time he had a terrible quarrel with his wife,—much more serious than the previous ordeal. Trouble upon trouble followed after that. He suspected his clerks and dismissed them one after another about every two weeks. Every one was his wife’s lover. Finally he rushed at his wife, in a fit of anger, to beat her, and began choking her. The following day the woman left him, went to live with her sister, and started proceedings for divorce. She claimed her husband was not normal and he voluntarily came to Vienna to place himself under my observation.
First I turned my attention to his jealousy and I tried carefully to correct that. He acknowledged some points, here and there, showed some insight into his condition, and was not shocked when I refused to give him a certificate of good health. Meanwhile he had removed his beard to give himself a younger appearance. That change was not necessary as he was young-looking enough, but it was part of the outbreak of his feminine tendencies. He also had a string of dreams in which he was a woman. Usually he rehearsed the old jealousy scenes and he repeatedly killed his wife in his dreams.
Thus he dreamed: