The Homosexual Neurosis

by Wilhelm Stekel

That affected the man so depressingly that, after a three months’ stay at a sanitarium, he returned penitently, a changed man, and prevailed upon the wife to return and live with him again. But in a few weeks his old demoniac jealousy set in once more. This time he accused her of the most horrible crimes. He reproached her that she allowed herself to be licked by the dog and shot the animal. He watched her carefully and denied her the least social intercourse. Finally he accused her of intimacy with her 15-year-old brother. He found a small spot on the bed linen and he cut that out to preserve as proof of her infidelity. He pounced on her one night, choked her, and tried to force her to confess her doings with the brother. Again she fled to her parents but hesitated to turn her husband over to the lunacy board. She did not want to be the cause of his commitment to a sanitarium.

Meanwhile the patient’s insanity grew rapidly. He drank to great excess and raised a big row in front of her parents’ home. He complained to the police that his wife and her younger brother, with whom she maintains criminal relations, had set a number of desperate-looking characters on his trail. He served notice that he would give those fellows something to remember him by and that the first one who would dare come too close to him would be shot down. Commitment. Delirium tremens. Exitus in consequence of an intercurrent malady.

It is noteworthy that the suspected little brother-in-law had been a great favorite of his; he had been fond of taking the boy along on his hunting trips. When completely under the influence of drink he always wanted to embrace him and pet him.

A connection between paranoia and alcoholism is shown also by the last of this series of observations, which follows:

81. This is a woman no longer in her prime of life. She is the grandmother of several children, 54 years of age, and, up to a few years ago, she was not jealous. As soon as her husband ceased to have intercourse with her she was seized with the idea that he must have intercourse with a certain pretty girl who had been formerly in their employ and had left. She had seen that girl often in the neighborhood and wondered that the girl looked so well and was so well dressed. She had always liked the girl very much. In fact, she wept when the girl left the house. Now she tortured her husband with the accusation that he was intimate with that girl,—she was sure of it. The man denied it, but—grilled by her—he had to admit that he had met the girl on the street a few times and had spoken to her. That led to such terrible quarrels,—he had to leave the house and was gone for weeks on a journey. He wanted to have peace and was energetic enough to bring it about. In fact, he threatened to sue for separation.

The woman began to drink, specially liqueurs, but also ordinary whiskey. When intoxicated she behaved very vulgarly and cursed the girl; called her a whore, and shouted that she ought to have the clothes torn off her. She threatened her youngest daughter’s husband and entertained the notion of throwing acid at him. While intoxicated she also felt an impulse to seek out her youngest daughter (obviously to find her son-in-law) and ran to the railroad station, entered the wrong train, and committed all sorts of nuisances so that she had to be committed. At the asylum she had to give up drink but showed no ill effects from the enforced abstinence, only she figured daily what her husband was up to with the girl. Like most paranoiacs she claimed that she had telepathic powers and felt at a distance that her husband was with the girl. That was an absolute fact and no physician could convince her it was not so.

That contention embodied an inner truth: the man in her was with the girl, that is, the man in her was continually preoccupied with the girl. In fact, she had no other thought than the girl. It was as if she was saying to herself: If I were a man I would fall in love with this girl and would not leave her alone a minute. She would have to be mine only.

After the marriage of her youngest daughter she fell into a depression during which she first began the habit of indulging in alcoholic drinks.

Obviously the woman had two homosexual objectives which she fused: the servant girl and the youngest daughter. In fact, she began early to think that her husband was intimate with the daughter in question. She even lodged with the authorities a complaint to that effect and asked to be allowed to bring proofs of the assertion. Now her husband wanted to poison her. She had been given coffee which had an arsenical smell.

She transfers to the surroundings her subjective criminal ideas. We see that she had to drink in order to deafen in her the wild beast which endeavored to break forth in all its primordial crudity. Her commitment to an asylum did not change her leanings. She swore at her man who conspired with the hateful son-in-law to have her put out of the way so as to prevent her from exposing their evil doings before the whole world.