“Next came Friedrich. He clung to me with fanatic love, this went on for about three years, until he married, and then I felt lonely in the world. My beloved mother to whom I was extremely devoted as a child could only try to console me, but I was hopelessly disconsolate. As a child I had been inseparable from her for years; Mendelssohn’s well-known Spring song brought tears to my eyes because the thought of a mother losing her child seemed atrocious to me. Although I felt a great measure of that affection for mother which is common in every one’s childhood experience, a certain craving remained ungratified. I became acquainted with psychoanalysis and it brought to my mind the youthful perversities of my youth. I decided to give expression to my conscious instincts and I have come to the following conclusion:
“My attitude towards the other sex will never be satisfactory, I must stand either above or below woman, must be either hammer or anvil, an unprejudiced relationship I find impossible, because as soon as I see a pretty woman I lose my senses, and would like preferably to be at her feet and obey her like a slave. But women do not wish that, they want to be submissive themselves, they want to feel the man above them. Intercourse on the level of equality I find tiresome, so there remains only sadism for me, through which, I may confess frankly, I have already enjoyed pleasant times. True friendship on the basis of mutual love and respect I am capable of maintaining only with men, as in my childhood.”
This sounds like the history of a typical bisexual strongly on the way to become a genuine homosexual. Let us turn to his psychoanalytic treatment before we examine his sexual attitude. He went to a psychoanalyst who had been recommended to him by Freud. He was wholly unable to work, impotent with women at the time, and had recourse to masturbation. During the first sitting he learned that he had been in love with his mother. The knowledge of this fact acted as a “relief,” according to his testimony. (He even told it to his mother.) Shortly afterwards he had his first successful coitus with a woman. But the neurosis did not change and in a short time he came to me for analysis. I found a tremendous resistance against the discovery of the true attitude. He employed all sorts of subterfuges to take up the time during the consultation hours and to disclose only what he wanted. He soon exhausted the account of his pronounced sadism and of his masochistic tendencies. But concerning his relations to his father he was very hazy. He became able to go to work, attended the lectures and turned once more diligently to his studies. I saw the hopelessness of my endeavors and broke the analysis under some pretext or other.... There are patients, whom I have described as the psychoanalytic Ahasverus-type[[31]] who are among the most thankless of subjects for our professional endeavors. They rush from one analyst to another, imploring the new consultant to remove the last of their troublous symptoms, and stay all the time very much as they have been from the beginning. They look upon the analysis, too, as a test of power, they want to triumph over their consultant, they want to come out stronger than he and—what is most important—they do not want to recognize the real background of their attitude. They stubbornly overlook the real foundation of their neurotic trouble and their ‘unwillingness to see’ is made worse by their superficial acquaintance with psychoanalysis and their fragmentary introspection. They thus run from one physician to another, criticize the first to the second, the second to a third, the third to a fourth. This conduct stands partly in relation to their attitude towards the father,—a subject to which we shall have occasion to revert more fully later.
It happened precisely as I had surmised. He went back to Freud, who recommended a third analyst, because he refused stubbornly to return to the first. After a few months he gave up the treatment and considered himself well. One half year later he came back to me and told me that since adopting exclusively homosexual relations he was entirely well, able to work, and as lively “as a fish in the brook.” But something still seemed to be lacking. At my request he wrote the account which I have given above, stating that he had no objection to its publication. He added orally a few statements which I shall use later.
The characteristic feature of his attitude towards woman is emphasized in his own written statement. Either he must torture or he must be tortured—he can either love or must hate, and only to excess. He is afraid of his terrific love passion. Therefore he feels impelled to humble himself before woman, to serve her as a slave, which is his symbolic expression for the longing after cunnilingus and for his willingness to submit to mictio in os. He wants to serve woman as a means for the attainment of gratification, as a vessel for her excreta, to be a submissive slave to all her whims. His submissiveness goes so far that he is willing to be killed by woman. This sadistic transposition of this attitude signifies: only through doing away with the sexual partner one achieves complete mastery and may claim complete possession.
In his feeling-attitude towards woman he vacillates between two extremes: hatred to the point of annihilation and a love so great as to include the willingness to be sacrificed. Clearly, he must protect himself so as not to give way to his hatred and become a murderer. A deeper insight into the parallelogram of the psychic forces involved in such situations leads plainly to the conviction that the instinct to live and the will to power prevent him from subjecting himself to woman actually to the point of self-annihilation. His feeling-attitude towards woman is too affective for him to be able to reduce it to a proper emotional level. How plain is the significance of his boyhood experience,—his great passion for the girl whom he followed like a shadow. But he did not dare to bring that love affair down to reality. He was afraid of himself, afraid of the subjection. The girl gave him to understand that he need not belittle himself at all. In his eyes that was enough for her to lose her charm after he became acquainted with her; she attracted him again only after all danger of his trying himself out with her was over. He considered himself plain-looking and thought he could not attract any one. He hated the women on account of their charm, because he himself would have liked to have been a pretty woman.
He also cleverly covered that wish by beginning to overstress the value of manliness. “I had a feeling,” he states, “that a man loses something of his manliness and dignity through his intimacy with a female person.” One must bear in mind that this man esteemed his mother very highly, holding her above all others as a person and as a woman. The normal person forms the image of his ideal woman after his mother. But he looks upon his mother as an exception and, like many other homosexuals, excepts his mother alone from the scorn with which he looks down upon the whole female sex. Now he tolerates woman but only with a sadistic feeling-attitude. For hatred vanquishes woman easier than love.
The question, what is he seeking in man and why does he prefer men to women?, he answers as follows: “I seek the penis in man. I think chiefly of his penis. With men I find no resistance at all. Woman I consider ugly while man is beautiful. I look chiefly for womanly men who to me stand for the girl with the penis. I was attracted only once to an elderly man with a very energetic face. And what particularly attracts me to man: there is no question of any submissiveness with him. Man does not humble himself,—only woman does that.”
But he does not seek the submissive woman. He needs a strong woman who shall domineer over him. He confesses that intercourse with a woman sadist would gratify him. But, as he states in his written account: women do not care to domineer, they want to be overpowered themselves.
We note that the polar sexual tension between male and female is most extreme in his case. He could kill the woman who humiliates him, belittles him, as Judith killed Holofernes, because he had conquered her sexually.[[32]]