“I feel much better. Last evening I worked fairly well, for the first time in a long period. I am beginning to like Vienna. I was out in the woods (Wienerwald) and I was pleased with the sight of the first violet. I am again beginning to feel pleasure in nature’s beauties. It was my first excursion.”
“Don’t you go out of doors otherwise?”
“Yes, every Sunday. Always in mother’s company. We start in the morning, have our lunch out of doors and spend the day together.”
“Do you not go on excursions with your friend?”
“Unfortunately, I do not. But hold on! I did, just once. I was going to tell you about it anyway, today. He invited me to join him with a number of his colleagues on an excursion to a distant island. I was enthusiastic over the plan at once for I hoped that it would prove an opportunity for greater intimacy between us. But I was disillusioned. We were happy the whole day. I was thinking all the time of the night. I hoped we would have a room with double bed.... Unfortunately all the rooms in the hotel were taken and we had to be content with occupying quarters in common. Here, too, luck failed to serve me. My friend slept next to another member of the party. Next day, under the pretext of fatigue, I started back. I felt unhappy and was all day long on the point of tears. I reached the next village alone. It was on a holiday. I did not know what to do. So I went into the church....”
“To pray?”
“Not at all. I was no longer religious at the time. I went to be among people. It did no good. The many dressed up folks, the holiday atmosphere, the music, the songs, the organ. I calmed down a little. Next I went to a restaurant because I felt a great craving for something sweet. Thus the majestic and the trivial stand close in my case.[[36]] Then I returned home, after first driving around through the streets and was happy when it was so late that I had to go back to the house....”
There follow various accounts of his passion for his friend Ernst. He always dreams of physical union with the friend and has no other thought. Only once he attempted aggression on his friend. In a urinal he suddenly reached for his friend’s penis. The latter good-naturedly avoided him and never afterwards referred to the incident. But he saw clearly that he would never achieve his aim. Meanwhile his friend fell in love with an actress. He was jealous only so long as his friend did not confide in him. Thereafter he was happy because the actress preferred another man and paid no attention to Ernst. He was in a position to console his friend like a mother. He emphasizes that his feelings are distinctly maternal towards men who are ill or unhappy and that he makes an excellent nurse,—thus bringing out his pronounced identification with the mother. But he was unable to nurse his father when the latter was taken with gastric cancer; the disease was terribly repulsive to him....
He has dreamed the following dream:
I am called up in school. I had to solve a mathematical problem but could not arrive at the right result. Next it was an English translation from Shakespeare. I did not know the vowels. It seemed that the various persons of the play were represented by some of the colleagues in theatrical costumes.