Part 6
The case mentioned by _Berg_ shows nothing in itself more than a complete identification with the mother. But I have observed long ago that this love of the like bears some relations to purposive sterility. The homosexual renounces the immortality implied in procreation. (Many homosexual artists achieve immortality in the realm of spiritual endeavor.) Such an attitude discloses a revolt against natural law and order. The homosexual, in fact, always conceives himself as unique. The world contains not his equal and that feeling is the hidden source of his pride. The “bearing of aloofness,” already pointed out by _Freimark_,[12] the pride of being “different,” determine also his opposition to the procreative instinct. He does not care to be like others. Against the notion that God had ordained man to have offspring he wants to oppose all teleology and, in spite of God, maintain a purposeless, meaningless love, contrary to nature, a love for its own sake. Conceivably women manifest even more clearly the corresponding revulsion against the motherly instinct.
Who will deny that fear of children, of motherhood, is an important social manifestation? Can it be that this fear is characteristic only of women and is not shared also by men? May it not manifest itself as a form of flight from sexual determinism? We need only look around us. There are any number of married couples who want no children and others who want no more than a child or two. Undoubtedly this state of things is partly due to homosexuality, to a deviation from the biblical injunction concerning the duty of increasing offspring. But let us also glance over our professional experience. The relationship between children and their parents carries within itself the beginnings of a new phase. The everlasting conflict between the new and the old generation, between fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, children and parents, requires, fosters new forms. Not without reason has our age been called “the century of the child” with its slogan raised about the Rights of Children. The greater the (unconsciously motivated) antagonism of the child against his parents, the stronger will be the fear of its own children, who loom up as potential enemies and rivals.[13] It seems that our own image attracts and repels us at the same time, that there is a fear of the like as strong as the fear of the unlike. The aboriginal conflict between the old and the new goes on forever within us. Hungry for the new though we be, yet we cling to the old. Having acquired the new we turn longingly to the old.
This bipolarity shows itself nowhere so distinctly as upon the sexual sphere. It means that contraries have the power of sexual attraction. That is an observation substantiated by everyday experience. But there is an extreme point at which the opposite touches upon the like. _Les extrêmes se touchent_, extremes meet. In each of us there lives also another who is the precise counterpart of ourselves. In the other sex we love our counterpart and through the love for our own sex we endeavor to run away from that counterpart.
The mother instinct and hatred of motherhood are not split in the human soul. The homosexual woman always shows the hatred of motherhood and her alleged love of children, when such a sentiment is claimed at all, proves but a self-deception and lip-service at best. In our study of _female dyspareunia_ we propose fully to prove that conclusion in connection with the histories of several homosexual women. We do find many instances of alleged affection for children but in reality these are only caricatures of the true sentiment and only rarely the affection as it is characteristic of normal woman. Our school teacher in love with the boy pupil, whose case we gave in full in the preceding pages, did not love children as such and did not care to have children of his own. Through his love for the boy the repressed father instinct also found outlet.
The life histories of homosexual women differ from those of males only in the fact that occasionally there seems present a certain yearning for children, as if the child could bring about release from the passion and a new state of bliss. Beyond that the _urlind_ shows the same psychogenesis as the _urning_. There is a strong fixation on the family, though not always on the father, as _Hirschfeld_ claims. In addition to that, rather commonly there is found affection for the mother which is fairly open, and tenderness for some sister which persists through life and assumes remarkable masks.
I want to conclude this chapter with the histories of some cases of female homosexuality which may serve to illustrate clearly the points I have just made:
69. Miss Ilse—we shall call her by that name—after a series of various exciting episodes has fallen a victim to depression, during which she lost a great deal of weight, but in spite of a successful fattening régime her stay at a sanitarium did not effect a complete cure. She is an impressively attractive girl, 24 years of age, voluptuous, feminine in every way up to her angular, somewhat energetic nose and prominent, curved eyebrows. Her mother, of whom the girl speaks with much feeling, believes that the girl’s breakdown dates from the death of the father. Ilse irritatedly contradicts the mother several times, breaking into a quarrelsome attitude towards her mother over trifles. Reprimanded by her mother, she falls into her depression and speaks no word. I take her under treatment and for a week I have in her a heavy burden on my hands. She hardly says anything, is very negativistic in her attitude, only muttering from time to time: “Don’t trouble yourself. It will never be any different. Better give me something that will put me quickly out of the way.” She livens up somewhat only when referring to her father,—thinks he should have not passed away. The mother should have called in a specialist. In fact, it was as much her fault as anybody’s, for she had failed to insist on calling the best aid while there was time.
Gradually she extends me her confidence and one day she appears,—like a changed person. She must tell me the truth. She is not a normal person. Since childhood she has been homosexual and had never cared for men. Her mother had implied as much when she said to me: “I cannot understand the girl. She always fled from the room when young men called on Alfred (her brother). The girl is a man hater.” This fact the girl had denied during the first visit, but now she herself admitted. She had never cared for men. On the other hand, at 11 years of age she had already fallen passionately in love with a woman school teacher. She was a frolicsome girl, often wore her brother’s clothes, and played with all the young boys of the neighborhood. At 14 years of age she again fell in love with a girl friend.
Her current depression is due to a terrible disappointment. She had maintained a love affair with a French woman and was happy. She said nothing about the character of the relations, but admitted that they were very intimate. Suddenly she found out that the French woman was not true to her, but was keeping up intimate relations more often with other girls than with her. She suffered tremendously on account of her jealousy. She began to feel a disgust against all women not unlike her former aversion to men. Asked why she was so antagonistic to men, she answered: “Because they are, all, without exception, disgusting brutes....”
At this point Ilse begins to relate her past experiences. She was seven years of age when she visited an uncle. He showed her his big _membrum virile_ and asked her to hold it in her hand. She did this as well as other things he requested her _usque et ejaculationem_. “How shall I have any respect for men when they don’t hesitate thus to poison the innocent soul of a child?” The uncle is still living.... She has since thought that it must be some morbid tendency and has forgiven him. “It happened only a few times and the uncle believes I have forgotten it....”
Another traumatic incident impressed her more seriously; it was, in fact, a series of traumas. Her mother was a light-minded person and is so to this day, despite her 50 years. But she knows enough to dress herself so attractively and with such a display of refinement that she is still capable of achieving conquests. There follow a number of serious complaints against the mother, which must have been true, for I have had opportunity to convince myself of the truth of some of the statements. The mother always kept on the string a number of lovers who gratified her extravagant requirements. As a child she had been taken along to a number of rendezvous and has repeatedly witnessed the display of tendernesses between the lovers. She also recalled various household scenes from her early childhood. As a child she was already very sensuous and masturbated jointly with the sister and the brother. She was precocious as well as prematurely spoiled and every one thought she would early turn out to be like her mother. Then her sister underwent a great change in character. She became religious and wanted to join a nunnery. She made fun of her religious-minded sister but secretly admired her for her chastity. She was 14 years of age at the time. She now knows that she was in love with the family physician and that she was interested in men, but at the same time she was in love at different times with various teachers and girl friends. When her sister was 16 years of age she had a love affair with an army lieutenant and had to go to a sanitarium to be curetted, fever set in after the operation, and for several weeks the girl was seriously ill.
Her sister’s experience shook her to pieces. Inwardly she had been proud that there was such a pure, innocent girl in the family. Now that her sister followed the example of her mother it seemed to her that she, too, was fated to follow in the same path and that there could be no escape for her. During that period her character underwent a change and she acquired a tremendous dislike for all small children. She could not suffer to see a small child. She thought to herself, if she were its mother she would strangle it. The feeling was so horrible that she could not sleep. In time she improved somewhat, but the dislike of children or, rather, the fear of them, that is, the fear that she might do some harm to them, never left her.
I suspected that back of this feeling-attitude towards the children might be found the solution of her problem. I reverted back to her sixteenth year, for it was at that period that she turned definitely against all men.
“Why do you hate children?”
“Not that, exactly.... In fact, I was at one time foolish over them. I have always wanted children. When I told you that I always played boyish games it was not exactly the truth. I remember now that I played nurse to my doll and that we often played the game of childbirth. Brother was the doctor and I was the pregnant lady in bed.”
“Did you happen to witness childbirth as a little girl?”
“Yes, everything.... Our aunt gave birth to a child in our home,—a romantic story. An illegitimate child; her parents were not to know anything about the birth, or they would have disowned her. But we children knew everything. Afterwards she married the man but was very unhappy with him. The little baby was with us for a time. I was very fond of it and carried it around....”
“Have you other such aunts in the family?”
“Between us: mother’s family has a poor reputation. There were six sisters, each more flighty than the next. None was a virgin at marriage. Things were always happening and there was never any peace. That is why I was so shocked over sister’s experience. I was getting to think it was my fate also to become ... merely a prostitute. You will pardon me for speaking so harshly about my own mother. But unfortunately it is the truth....”
“A prostitute is purchasable.... There is some difference whether one is light-minded through passion or for gain.”
(After a lengthy pause.) “Just what I did find out at the time. Mother was to be had for money. Father was a humble employee, an unsuccessful jurist, who eked out a living doing secretarial service for an attorney. He could not keep up with the large household expenses even though he occasionally transacted a business deal on the side which netted him a considerable sum. Mother always had a friend who took care of our needs. Thus we were brought up rather well educated, my brother could afford to study, we did everything.”
“Did you know all that already as a child?”
“I knew it at a very early age....”
“You think, then, that your sister was also paid and that she sold herself?”
“No, nothing like that. In addition to the paying lover mother always had one, a purely heart affair, on the side. It was funny! The men always brought us candies and all sorts of presents. When we grew older mother became a little more careful. Still, there was enough going on to bring shame as I look back. And so there came into our house also a young lieutenant whom mother had picked up—God knows where. This fellow was mother’s avowed lover and could do as he pleased. The terrible thing was that he began to pursue also sister and after a few jealousy quarrels mother had to put up with it,—she perhaps even encouraged the affair. For I overheard once a talk between them and heard mother reproach ‘Shikki,’—that was the lieutenant’s nickname,—that he had used sister. She could have obtained a large sum of money for the girl because she was a virgin and the girl would have been provided for. Then there followed bitter quarrels between mother and sister.”
I interrupt the conversation at this point. It turns out that she, too, was in love with the lieutenant, and so were the others of the household, including the father and the brother; she was also jealous of her mother. Her jealousy opened her eyes. That is how it happened that she heard the unpleasant rumors about her mother circulating among the neighbors. She began hating her mother, but that continued only for a short time. Then her hatred turned to children. She hated first herself, the child who bore no respect for the mother. She did not want to be like her mother and her sister. She knew that she would have to submit to similar experiences; that her fate was sealed. She strove against her feminine and motherly instincts. But the analysis disclosed that she really entertained one supreme wish which she was unwilling to countenance openly: she wanted to be a mother and to bear many, many children. But the neurotic reaction thwarted her powerful motherly instinct. To be a mother meant identification with the despised mother. Her better feelings prompted her to draw herself far apart from the mother.
She did not want to be a woman. She did not want to be so easy-going as her mother. At that time her brother also showed a temperamental change. He became serious-minded, began to write verses, and to take an interest in all sorts of idealistic endeavors. She linked herself to him and before long she differentiated herself completely from the rest of the household, and particularly from the mother. She sought earnest-minded girl friends and came into frequent contact with her brother’s companions, but was unapproachable, even though she expressed herself freely and frankly about all subjects. Her strongly sensuous temperament threw her next into the arms of the Frenchwoman and she preferred that to a love affair with a man as she was afraid of children. After the Frenchwoman’s breach of loyalty she fell into her depression.
This circumstance also disclosed an interesting sidelight. She confessed to me that the Frenchwoman was also her brother’s sweetheart. It had never been mentioned by the woman but she knew it even before she entered into intimate relations with her. Nevertheless it was her happiest period.
The depression is thus traceable to a second source. The brother had abandoned the Frenchwoman, having chosen another sweetheart, of whom he was very fond and whom he intended to marry. The Frenchwoman was only a sensuous play affair with him, the brother belonged wholly to her. They were always together and she knew all his secrets. She was never jealous when she knew that he kept up relations with some girl or woman so long as he did not love soulfully. But now the brother became acquainted with a wealthy, beautiful girl, with whom he fell in love and whom he was going actually to marry. This, for the brother, lucky event,—came to nothing in the end on account of the opposition of the girl’s family,—left her cool. All she saw was that she was losing her brother, and that he no longer belonged to her. He could not marry the girl because her parents required that he should first prove his ability to support her. But the two lovers agreed to wait for one another and the brother had gone already pretty far and he may yet succeed to marry the girl, despite the mother’s deplorable reputation. He lives no longer with his family and avoids the old home. He only sees her from time to time and they are still good old pals, whenever they meet....
This interesting analysis illustrates all the chief points to be found in the psychogenesis of male homosexuality. In fact the girl was on the point of becoming as fond of men as her mother, perhaps of indulging in bisexual activities. Her sister’s experience opened her eyes and acted as a terrible warning. The yearning for purity which animates every soul and is the polar counterpart of the desire for tasting every sort of experience, became uppermost in her case, the fear of becoming like the sister, or like the mother, and her hatred of the mother, jointly, had the effect of shaping her into a different being. She probably would have not yielded to the homosexual love of the Frenchwoman had she not been overcome by the fact that the woman was her brother’s sweetheart. It was a case of incest through a third person.... She hated her mother and had to protect herself against the danger of having children who grow up to be one’s enemies. Thus children became her enemies. The father played a negligible rôle in her life and had no influence on the development of her homosexuality.
I do not know well her subsequent history. Her depression was soon relieved and her hatred of children disappeared entirely. But she left Vienna and went to another country, obviously to get away from her family and to forget her whole past. I had advised her to do so and the fact that she had followed my advice permits us to hope that, after the tempestuous course of her past life, she may have succeeded, at last, in finding a friendlier harbor.
III
HOMOSEXUALITY AND JEALOUSY—MASKED JEALOUSY—THE JEALOUS WIFE OF A PHYSICIAN—WHY WOMEN ABUSE SERVANT GIRLS—TRANSFERENCE OF JEALOUSY TO THE SURROUNDINGS—JEALOUSY OF THE FATHER—JEALOUSY OF THE RESIDENCE—JEALOUSY OF THE PAST—A YOUNG WOMAN OVERSENSITIVE TO ANY NOISES.
_In der Eifersucht liegt mehr Eigenliebe als Liebe._
—_Rochefoucauld._
III
_Jealousy involves self-love rather than love._
—_Rochefoucauld._
Jealousy is the projection of one’s own insufficiencies to the surroundings.[14] It is an atavistic awakening of the brutal sense of self such as was common to the primordial man protecting his possessions. All children are jealous. Jealousy leads us back to the sources of man’s instinctive life.
It is not my intention to take up the whole subject of jealousy. But morbid jealousy shows certain definite, almost regular, relations to homosexuality which we must consider. We have seen that homosexuality may be hidden from consciousness. That is also true of jealousy. I have seen many neurotics who have suffered tremendously on account of their jealousy, without being aware of it. In the masking of neurosis jealousy assumes most remarkable forms.
The next case illustrates the masking of jealousy, its fusion with homosexuality, and contains various points of psychologic interest:
70. A highly intelligent subject, H. J., writes me: “Have you already reflected on how we discern certain similarities on certain days and fail to do so at other times? You are undoubtedly aware that neurotics and normal persons are fond of finding resemblances when they formulate identifications. The lover finds that the beloved walks like mother, or that she talks like the latter, and if physically no resemblance can be established he finds the same mental characteristics, the same soul, perhaps the same shortcomings. But I want to speak of an entirely different peculiarity. One forenoon I see a man, who looked enough like my friend, X, the painter, to be taken for the latter. I walk up to him and say: Hello, X,—still under the impression of that mistake. A strange face wearing a beard of familiar form is staring at me. I offer the usual apologetic explanation and go my way. After a while I see again my friend X, this time somewhat dimly, not quite so certain of it as before. I recover from this illusion quickly enough.
“By that time my psychologic curiosity is roused and it occurs to me that my wife told me that morning she was going to visit the painter, X, during the forenoon. I listened indifferently to the statement, merely asking her to give him my greetings. But a certain unrest must have risen in the unconscious: your wife goes to the painter who likes her and makes love to her. Nothing of that in consciousness at all. Painters are a light-minded class who do not take such things seriously. Who knows whether your wife will be strong enough to resist?
“These secret fears led to a symptomatic act. I accosted a stranger as X, the painter. In other words,—a wish fulfilment. For if I meet X on the street he cannot possibly be in his studio at this time. My wish is that he shall not be at home. My wife shall go to the studio and find: Mr. X is not in.... That wish came up on three different occasions that morning. For I thought I saw Mr. X in the street three different times. Moreover, I project X upon strange faces. Because I think constantly of X, because my mind is wholly preoccupied with him, because I am innerly preoccupied with the uncountenanced thought: what does X now do with your wife?—I see X everywhere. _Ringstrasse_ is filled with men looking like him; every man is a Mr. X.