VI
HISTORY AND ANALYSIS OF A HOMOSEXUAL—CHILDHOOD REMINISCENCES—ANAL EROTISM—ATTACHMENT TO THE MOTHER—INTERPRETATION OF DREAM SYMBOLISMS—LOVE OF THE FATHER—REGRESSION THEORY OF HOMOSEXUALITY.
Was ist das Siegel der erreichten Freiheit?—Sich nicht mehr von sich selber schämen.
—Nietzsche.
VI
What is the stamp of achieved freedom?—To be no longer ashamed of one’s self.
—Nietzsche.
The complete analysis of a homosexual would require a whole volume. Before concluding the present work I propose to give a portion of such an analysis. The treatment lasted six weeks, when it was interrupted by the war. This analysis, too, only led as far as the father complex. But even so it yields important data and enables us to draw together the observations made in connection with the various briefer illustrations already discussed.
84. Mr. Sigma, a student from Denmark, 28 years of age, consults me on account of various nervous difficulties. For a number of months past he has felt very depressed, is always fatigued, generally unable to sleep and unable to concentrate on his work. He is facing his final examinations but is unable to study. He complains of a lack of any sense of joy in living. He admits having entertained also ideas of suicide which he has rejected chiefly on account of his mother. He is very much afraid that he may yield some day to just such a temptation.
Sigma is consciously homosexual. He emphasizes: He has never felt any interest in the female sex and already as a child he fell in love only with boys. He is the only son of a very hard-working, brave, mother in comfortable circumstances who is wholly wrapped up in him. His father died a few years ago. He lives a wholly retired existence, he has no friends,—for his mother prevents that. Once—he was 17 years of age at the time—he had a close friend to whom he felt very attached, but his mother interfered and broke up their friendship. Now he is completely isolated. All his spare time he devotes to his mother, when he is not gone to the theater or to a concert. He also visits no families; his mother prevents it.