Naturally, Hirschfeld adopts a safe method of excluding all cases which do present a history of heterosexuality. He calls such cases “pseudohomosexuality” thus placing them in a category apart from the genuine urning. Bloch also calls the heterosexual inclination of typical homosexuals a sort of “pseudoheterosexuality.”[[1]] This method of dealing with the subject admits of no proofs. Bloch suggests the test that a genuine theory of homosexuality must be capable of embracing all cases. The Hirschfeld theory of “the third sex” cannot do so. It is neither founded nor proven either on organic or on psychologic grounds.
But why is it that the homosexual shifts so completely away from the sexual partner? A. Adler has conceived in these cases the hypothesis of a “fear of the sexual partner.” This observation certainly holds true in the case of many homosexuals, but is not true of all cases. Nature does not operate in such simple ways and a single key does not unlock the riddle of homosexuality.
In accordance with the results of our investigation thus far we may conclude: the homosexual finds closed for him the path which leads to the other sex, and the barrier is psychical. Anxiety, disgust and scorn support the forces of homosexual love. These feelings do not exhaust the range of inhibitory factors and we shall presently turn our attention to others. But we must take up the psychogenesis of these inhibitions in a thorough and systematic manner.
May fear of the sexual partner drive a person into homosexuality? We must answer this question in the affirmative inasmuch as we are able to trace that fear in a number of cases.
First, let us take up the case of Krafft-Ebing (Obs. 159) since it is so simple and obvious:
54. Mrs. X., 26 years of age, married 7 years, confesses herself attracted for some time to persons of her own sex; she respects and even feels a certain sympathy for her husband but marital relations with him she finds repulsive. She has made him abstain from sexual relations with her since the birth of their youngest child. Already at the boarding school she felt a keen interest in other young women, which she can only describe as love attraction. But occasionally she had also felt herself attracted to particular men and lately a certain man had put her resistance to test. She was often afraid she might forget herself with him and therefore avoided being alone with the man. But these are merely passing episodes in contrast with her passionate inclination towards persons of her own sex. Her true love is expressed in kisses, caresses and intimate contact with the latter. Failure to gratify that yearning is painfully uncomfortable and is largely responsible for her present nervous state. The subject does not assume a particular sexual rôle in relation to persons of her own sex, and she did no more than indulge with them in kisses, petting and embracing. The subject considers herself of a passionate nature. Quite likely that she masturbates. Her sexual perversion she looks upon as “unnaturally morbid.” Nothing in the woman’s ordinary conduct or external appearance betrays such an anomaly. About her childhood she is unable to report anything of significance. She was quick to learn, had poetic and æsthetic inclinations, was considered somewhat nervous, loved reading of novels and sentimental romances, was of a neuropathic constitution, and extremely sensitive to changes in temperature. It is noteworthy also that at ten years of age, because she thought that her mother did not love her, the patient dissolved matches in coffee and drank the solution so as to make herself very ill and to draw her mother’s affection to her.
Here we see an inclination to heterosexual relations which is not cultivated on account of fear. This young woman, with a tremendous homosexual leaning as shown already by her attachment to her mother, marries a man, in whose embrace she remains frigid, but fears to be alone with a man who rouses her, because he may prove dangerous to her. We see that her pronounced bisexuality leads her to fall in love with a man, to be his sweetheart, in her fancy, but she hesitates to turn her fancy into a reality, the “fear of sinning” preventing her from carrying out the step. Then she looks upon the heterosexual inclinations as passing whims and turns to her homosexual fancies. She is running away from the male. She fears the man she loves because a strong love implies submission to the male. She gravitates away from him, not because the male is unable to yield her gratification but because she fears him. But we must understand how this flight from the male, which manifests itself also in her dyspareunia, originated. How little such life histories bear on this point, without psychoanalysis! In my study of dyspareunia[[2]] I describe similar cases and show how aversion towards the male originates in the first place.
Through Freud we have learned that fear, like disgust, is a repressed form of libido. Though this view is correct, it is not always adequate. My own researches have shown that every fear represents in the first place fear of self.
But why should the homosexual entertain any fear of himself during intercourse with woman? What he fears is his excessive sexuality when it is commingled with criminal tendencies.
The frequency with which fear of one’s own criminal aggressiveness stands back of impotence and homosexuality can hardly be overestimated. Krafft-Ebing describes a typical bisexual who had experienced orgasm but once in contact with woman. But that happened during the commission of a delict (Obs. 142, p. 273) on his part.