Part 14

“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._

The analysis of this dream would lead us into endless bypaths. The most important feature is the affective character of the dream which in simplest terms may be formulated as follows: “I am facing problems in life for which I do not feel prepared. I am an actor and I am wearing a theatrical costume. I am playing the homosexual, I have transposed one aboriginal trend into another. The English play, _The Merchant of Venice_, comes to his mind. The teacher who examined him in mathematics was also _Kaufmann_ (merchant) by name. This _Kaufmann_ is the center of a rather tragic episode in his life. He was studying “exact” branches (_Realschule_) but was interested in the classical (_Gymnasium_) course; he was always weak in mathematics; he failed in his last examination for engineering. His attitude towards money matters has always been morbid. His mother continually reproaches him for not appreciating the value of money and for being unable to handle money wisely. He is different from his parents, both of whom are merchants.”

The _Merchant of Venice_ portrays the tragedy of the relations of a Jew to his only daughter. She runs off with her beloved and abandons the greedy father, who, however, never begrudged her anything. He wants to do likewise. He would like to flee with his friend and abandon the mother. His basic problem is: how to get around his mother, how to free himself of her.

He places great weight on the jewel box scene, which has always impressed him. He, too, is confronted by the difficult problem of a choosing among the boxes. There are three paths open before him: man, woman and child. He is a child, would like to be a woman and is afraid to be a man. His inner conflicts are locked up like the valuables in the box. We shall see whether analysis is capable of disclosing them....

There are some vague relations to Shylock’s coldbloodedness. He emphasizes the pound of flesh. The associations lead to certain sadistic trends which are wholly unconscious. At any rate, the first dream in the analysis is of greatest significance. Its complete solution and interpretation becomes possible much later....

He dwells for a long time on his attitude towards money. One familiar with dream analysis at once suspects that this money complex has its bearing on anal eroticism. He keeps to his theme. Requests to leave early.

Again comes very late and asks whether he may leave early. He is hungry. (One notices his extremely resistant attitude. He is afraid he might disclose something.) He has dreamed wild and profuse dreams, he can no longer remember what. He must have spoiled his stomach for he vomited in the morning.

This vomiting in the morning, a symptom which appears in many neurotics and also in the case of many neurotic children is a reaction of the ethical, moral self against the dreams of the previous night. Plainly, one is disgusted with one’s self. Hence the vomiting which is subsequently ascribed to something inoffensive that may have been eaten on the previous evening. But the subject believes that the beer he drank did not agree with the dessert....

He is asked whether he can recall at all the dream.

“No, not a trace.”

“Better try and see.”

“I only remember scraps; nothing worth mentioning.”

“Please tell me these scraps.”

“I have dreamed only about various water closets and urinals. There was a urinal here and one in the office ... the rest is gone. I cannot recall.”

“The vomiting in the morning seems to me to point at something going on in the urinal which strikes you as disgusting.”

“May I not have simply spoiled my stomach?”

“Indeed. That is a possibility not to be excluded. But the other is also a possibility to be thought of. Do you often vomit in the morning?”

“Yes, but only as I did today. Only fluid. It is more a nausea than real vomiting. May I leave now?”

“You know that I never compel you to stay. Only I want to draw your attention that I am fully aware you want to hide something from me. How do you imagine you can get well if you do not have the courage to confide in your consultant? Or perhaps you are afraid that you will lose something of my respect if you should disclose the peculiarities of your sexual life? You are anxious to run off and keep your secret. Very well. You are free to do as you wish. But do not expect, under the circumstances, that a consultant should spend his time on your case. One who wants really to get well must first be willing to face his problems clearly.”

“You are right, doctor. I have kept from you the most important thing: I do indulge in a form of sexual excitation which is perhaps the most unpleasant possible. You will appreciate at once why I have kept the knowledge of this from you so long. I thought I have told you already too much and I wanted to keep to myself this particular morbid turn. But you will surely despise me.”

“I despise no sufferer.”

“Already as a small boy I had felt the greatest interest in the water closet. My wish was always: to see another man in the act of defecating. In my school fancies I always thought of the teacher being compelled to defecate in my presence. I was always trying to watch other men in the act. If I succeeded in witnessing the act I became very excited and masturbated. My whole mind and thought to this day revolves around the water closet and the feces. Think of it! I, a person with certain æsthetic tastes, an artist, poet, enthusiastic musician, a man aspiring to all that is beautiful and noble,—to be fettered down to so horrible a perversion! Think of this abyss between my body and my soul! If I become acquainted with a new man and I like him, my first thought is: I should like to see him empty his bowels.”[37]

“Have you perhaps, as a child, witnessed such a scene which may have made a deep impression on you?”

“I do not remember. I only know that already in the primary grades I was interested in watching my schoolmates. In Denmark there is a greater freedom about these matters than elsewhere. Sexual freedom, too, seems to me to be greater in our country. In later years I found sufficient opportunity to satisfy my craving. Finally I had recourse to a tiny augur which I keep always with me as an aid to secure the opportunities for observation which have now become indispensable to me. But usually I find boring holes unnecessary. Little appropriate convenient holes may be found when one looks for them. I must have many colleagues for I have found that most closets show these observation spots. Here in Vienna, too, I have seldom come across a water closet, where it was not possible to watch the act. I fight with all my powers against this unfortunate trend. But I give in each time again. I think of it all forenoon. By noontime I am wholly out of patience. I am impelled to seek a public lavatory. There I wait till a man comes along. When I see him defecate, I masturbate....”

“Have you watched women, too?”

“No, I find women disgusting when I think of them in this situation.”

We are here confronted with a form of anal erotism of a pronounced infantile character. All children without exception show a great interest in the lavatory and in the processes of micturition and defecation. These processes form the theme of a whole group of infantile sexual theories. The children come through the anus, they are generated through the urine, etc. It is quite likely that we have here an instance of the fixation of certain infantile impressions. The fact that the first phantasies which he is able to recall revolve around his teacher, proves that someone who was an authority played a rôle as the intermediary for these early infantile impressions. Who can that authority be? We can only surmise. We must await patiently the further development of the analysis.

He complain that he has an ugly appearance, because everything about him is so unprepossessing; his whole physiognomy seems to him womanly, soft, and the obverse of striking. He often turns to the looking-glass and examines himself. As in the picture of Dorian Grey he finds the traces of his paraphilia expressed in his features. He symbolizes his mental processes and localizes them in his face. He fights, a relentless fight against his scatologic phantasies and trends, he seems to himself weak, womanly, repulsive. Vice, low thoughts, animal cravings, low passion—all that he sees expressed in his face.

His first recollection of his paraphilia is noteworthy. He is playing with a little friend, an uncle, who wants to defecate near the street. He points out that people may pass and prevents the deed.... This recollection already indicates the two tendencies: the coprophiliac trend and the struggle against it.

Moreover, his coprophilia reaches farther than he has confessed thus far. We discover today that there is present a predisposition to coprophagia, that the condition is really a mixture of homosexuality and stark infantilism. He would like to allow the partner to defecate on him. Identifications with lavatory come to surface. The place chosen for the deposition of the feces is the abdomen, occasionally the mouth. There are also frequent phantasies of _fellatio_, active and passive. The reading of various medical and popular books excites his phantasy and feeds his paraphilia.

He relates two dreams. In the first he was running after an electric car which he could not reach. He tried to jump on but in vain, the car just passed before his nose. In the second dream he led his dog for a walk, the dog met another and copulated while he himself ran off. The first dream represents an unattainable ideal. The second illustrates the endeavor to get rid of the animal-like trends (within himself). He avoids similarly coitus with a woman.

He relates that for a long time he has been in the habit of writing up phantastic homosexual orgies and that he carries around these erotic stories for months. The last story he wrote some 14 days ago. He is much interested in these doings, because the writing and the reading excite him tremendously. He tells me the content of the last phantasy which he has written up: A round table of sixteen soldiers. One of them holds a naked woman on his knees. She must urinate in a glass. The soldier pours beer in that glass. Then all those present partake of the beer.[38]

He confesses next that he has already carried out a number of times various urolagnic acts and felt great pleasure doing so. In fact these cravings did not bother him only so long as the friend visited him daily and he was keeping up his spiritual love for the fellow. That is why he was so broken up when his mother deprived him of that friend.

He relates a number of episodes illustrating his activity as _voyeur_. At first it was chiefly men of advanced age who roused him. They had to have very clean and attractive linen. Ejaculation ensued when he had an opportunity to see the man naked and the phallus interested him more than the podex.

He also admits having entertained phantasies about his father. But he found these phantasies unbearable and they proved at last so discomforting that he had to abandon them. On the other hand he was able to state emphatically that his mother never figured as an erotic object in his fancies.

As a genuine homosexual he was very much surprised that a “naked woman” should figure in his last phantasy or story and he could not explain the intrusion. But he is telling me everything without reserve....

He fears that perhaps his mother is having some understanding with me. She is in the habit of tracing all his secrets.... I point out to him the fact that the mothers of homosexuals always show the strongest opposition against the analysis when they find out that their sons free themselves and turn their affection (temporarily, of course) to the analyst. Sigma’s mother, who has accompanied him to Vienna, also tolerates no intimate friendship on her son’s part, as we know. Thus he tells me that she had reproached him yesterday for leaving her alone on Sunday. She wants to be everything to him. She also tries to be tender with him, to coddle him, a habit which he strongly resents. He believes that this resentment is due to his aversion against all womanhood. This sort of protection against all tendernesses on mother’s part is typical of all sons who are incestuously fixed on their mother.

He relates how his mother once confessed to him that she found no support in his father and actually felt lonely. On that occasion he wept over his mother’s plight and passed a sleepless night.... His further associations lead him to his father’s fatal illness: it was a slow breaking down due to cancer. He could not take care of his father, and was but of little service to the latter. It was shortly after his father had dismissed his friend. He was still too absorbed in his own troubles. He witnessed with detachment the terrible phases of the dying man’s last struggle. A few days before the end he dreamed that he saw his father’s body lying peacefully on the bier. It was plainly a dream of impatience. He could hardly await his father’s passing away. He declares that he hated his father heartily at the time, because the latter had allowed himself to be induced by the mother to write that letter to his friend. Strangely, he was never so angry with his determined mother as he was with his weak-willed father. During the father’s funeral and upon returning home he was unable to weep. This occurrence is typical of those men for whom a death is the fulfillment of an old wish. In point of fact the father was a burden and drag in the house. The mother sacrificed herself and his death was a release for everybody. Moreover his attitude towards his father had always been rather peculiar. They had never had much in common....

He reports a number of small details illustrating how tirelessly his mother endeavors to bind him to herself. Yesterday afternoon he was at the theater and later went to the _Prater_. In the evening he found his mother morose and pouting. She looked at him reproachfully saying: “Did it not occur to you during your rounds of pleasure that you are leaving your poor mother alone?”

He must think only of his mother and always feel that he is bound to her forever. Aunts and neighbors always come to him to tell him how much suffering he causes his poor mother by neglecting her. While he was still suffering acutely the distress caused by his mother’s breaking up his friendship with Ernst, he met the latter once secretly and they went to a theater together. The mother knew it in some way and when he returned home he found her in bed, her head wrapped in towels. Her disappointment made her ill and she had to keep to her bed for a week. Finally an aunt accused him of behaving like a murderer towards his mother. She cannot understand that passion of his for that friend! Was he perhaps in love with the young man’s sister? Happy to have a way out of his difficulty suggested to him he answered the question in the affirmative. That roused his mother’s jealousy to the highest pitch. But she soon convinced herself that she had been fooled by him and that he had no interest whatever in the girl.

He found the household ties so unbearable that at one time he entertained the notion of shooting his parents and running off. There were frequent quarrels during which he displayed unexpectedly a terrible venom against his mother and an unexplainable tendency to violence. But these episodes soon blew over, and he again felt himself helpless under the tyrannic sway of her love. Perhaps not as unwillingly as he makes out ... for there were opportunities available for freeing himself and he did not take advantage of them. He remained inactively at home, to be taken care of and to allow his mother to worry over him....

He dreamed of visiting numerous urinals running from one to the other. This dream portrays him as searching for something. It appears that he is trying to trace down a particular infantile scene. He relates how obsessed he becomes with the desire to go from lavatory to lavatory until he finally sees the longed-for scene. He is seldom satisfied. Often there follows a feeling of disappointment and disgust. Occasionally an uncommon sense of peace during which he is able to gather his thoughts.

“I did not tell you the truth when I denied transvestitism (_Verkleidungstrieb_). I often entertain such fancies. I am particularly fond of Salome and I often portrayed myself in that rôle with keenest interest. My teachers were the prophets whose cold, severed head I kissed.”

This trend distinctly sadistic is fortified by numerous small details. He is jealous. He saw once his friend entertaining himself in friendly and lengthy conversation with a lady and the thought occurred to him that perhaps his friend was in love with her. He figured that he would be justified to take his friend’s life for he loved him more than any one else in the world. He pictured to himself that deed and what he would do to his friend. The chief motive he confessed reluctantly: “I should abuse sexually his body.” With that fancy there is linked also the portrayal of immense sadness.

The two features he mentions today are represented in the _Merchant of Venice_. A scene which always excited him, representing transvestitism. Portia as judge and the Jew bent on carving out a pound of flesh. Shylock and Salome. The bloody head of John is obvious enough.

Today, too, he is in a hurry and must get through quickly. He is always relieved when the hour is over. This raises the suspicion that he is trying to cover up further revelations....

He relates particulars regarding his homicidal fancies against his friends. His favored phantasy is the thought of pushing his favored friend into an abyss. They often take walks on the seashore. At a certain spot the coast is very steep and rocky and a fall there would mean certain death. He is also obsessed with the reflection: what would he do afterwards? Run away? No ... he would jump after his friend to be united with the latter in death....

The next dream carries us deeply into the structure of his homosexuality. First he relates the dream as he had written it down and then he adds reluctantly the portion indicated as “additional.” The addition usually contains the most important features.

The dream just before falling asleep:

_Place_: _the grotto across the_ Schönbrunn _Castle. I was descending the rocky incline and reached the lowermost declivity. I was very much afraid of falling into the water basin. I was wondering what to do, and I had the feeling that back of me, instead of rocks there were high stairs which I could never climb up. Suddenly I found myself on level ground, beyond the water. An automobile passed me by noiselessly and with lightning rapidity disappearing specter-like in the bushes. I saw no driver and nobody else in the machine. It seemed very uncanny but presently I knew that I was at home and in my bed. I should have liked to keep on dreaming but the wish to hold on to what I had dreamed thus far prevailed over all other desires. I was afraid I should forget my phantasy so far as it had unfolded and that I should have nothing to report to my consultant._

_Shortly afterwards I fell actually asleep and i dreamed a great deal. I have tried to recall some of the things in the morning. It seems noteworthy that the dreams were but lightly intimated rather than carried out; there was always still something more about to take place but the next dream picture intruded before the previous one was all done._