Part 7

“The illusion at this juncture denotes also another suspicion. An additional thought renders the first one pregnant with significance. Yesterday I heard the opinion expressed at a gathering, ‘Any woman may be had and there is no such thing as a virtuous woman!’ I opposed vehemently that cynical thought (_Pauschalverdächtigung_) and I tried to the best of my ability to point out the ridiculous and unfair implications of this notion. And today I am surprised to find myself entertaining the thought. These men who look like X, the great unknown, are alike attractive and powerful men, just like X. You are reflecting: Who knows whether this or that man is not actually your wife’s lover? Why do the words from Faust come into my mind: ‘_The whole town has her’?_... In justice to my wife’s honor I must now state that she is in fact an exemplary woman and that I entertain no trace of suspicion about her conduct. But I am deliberately looking for excuses to vindicate myself. I mean to believe that every woman is guilty, including therefore my own wife, so as to justify in my eyes my new love affairs.... I am envious of X, of his free ways with women, and would like to be in his place, receiving ladies in the studio. I would like to be X. In my phantasy I am X, and see myself as X in every stranger.

“A lady of my acquaintance always saw her deceased husband on the street in the person of some stranger who seemed closely to resemble him. This peculiar resemblance to strangers was noticeable particularly when her mind turned to light and frivolous thoughts. As if the image of the husband came forward to warn and protect her: ‘It is only three years since I have passed away and already you begin to turn your mind to trivial joys? Beware. I watch you from Heaven and I see everything you do.’”

We admit freely that our subject is a keen-minded psychologist possessing an extraordinary capacity for introspection, yet this excellent piece of self-analysis seemed to me to overlook something important. I therefore write Mr. H. J. that I should like to talk this interesting episode over with him and I invite him to call on me. He accepts the invitation. From our conversation I report only some of the more important points:

“Has it not struck you that the men who impressed you as bearing resemblance were exclusively attractive and powerful men?”

“No, because my friend, X, the painter, is also an attractive and well built man. Others would not look like him....”

“Are you also otherwise jealous?”

“No; not in the least; only about X,—and even that I did not know or was perhaps too proud to admit to myself.”

“What is your attitude towards X? Do you care for him also as you do...?”

“... For my wife, you mean? I do. I love him. He is a charming fellow.”

“Is it not strange that you should be jealous precisely of the one man whom you also like so well?”

He reflects a while and finds no answer. I explain to him that it shows a repressed homosexual disposition towards his friend. The trend of his unconscious thought is: “_If I were a woman I could not withstand him._” Perhaps the thought goes even further than that: “_Too bad I am not a woman for then I would enjoy that beautiful man_....”

He sees at once the relationship between his jealousy and the unrecognized inner homosexual disposition. He relates that this man is the only friend whom he greets with a kiss after a prolonged absence, that he likes to take him by the arm and to hold his hand.

In short, he himself is in love with his friend. He sees his friend everywhere and the slightest resemblances impress themselves strongly on his mind. They are emanations from his one thought: _I like him and I wish I were a woman to yield to him._

It is very tempting to try to trace the various paths of unconscious jealousy. But that would lead us too far off our present theme. As we are confronted with a very complicated condition which may have the most varied roots I propose to give a few clinical illustrations from my own practice and to discuss the various forms of jealousy on the basis of these data.

71. The first case of jealousy which I had occasion to observe was that of a physician’s wife. The woman, 45 years of age, relates: “Perhaps you can free me from a painful condition which embitters my whole life and turns my marriage into a veritable hell. I have been married already 22 years and can assert that I have not yet had a happy day except when my husband is all day alone with me and we have no occasion to come into contact with another female person. He is a physician and already during our engagement I was jealous of all his women patients. I did not know this awful trait in myself before. At any rate it was not so pronounced or I should have not married my husband. At first I was jealous of my immediate acquaintances and friends, particularly of the very pretty women among them. After marriage my condition grew worse and worse. During the consultation hours I watched behind the door and shivered with actual nervous chills in my excitement. My husband was a woman specialist and a very popular woman specialist at that. I implored him to abandon that specialty and to take up any other. I admit that the fact of his being a woman specialist had at first excited my interest in him and had a great deal to do with my choice of the man. I thought to myself: the man sees so many beautiful women, he sees them naked, and yet has chosen you,—the thought flattered me immensely. That was well enough at first, but later the feeling of jealousy grew in its stead.

“I had a very pretty woman friend who was taking treatment from my husband. What I endured during her visits is beyond my powers to describe. I said to myself: ‘She is now taking off her blouse and now her petticoat. He is now examining, looking at her bosom, and now she lifts herself upon the examination table, she stretches her limbs apart....’ I suffered hellish torments. I was convinced that my husband could not withstand this woman’s charms and would kiss her. I had a serious quarrel with him; I quarreled with my friend, who turned from me with indignation. Our marriage relations grew worse on that account. I tortured my husband so that he had to allow me to watch through a carefully hidden peep-hole what was going on in the consultation room. In that manner I convinced myself that my husband was physically true to me. But even though he swore a thousand times that the women did not excite him in the least I could not believe him. I stuck to one thing which I harped on daily: ‘_Give up your specialty._’ Years thus passed in quarrels and dispute. I have now a married daughter of my own and I thought to myself that with advancing age my condition would change. But not at all! It grows worse and I transfer now my jealousy also to my son-in-law, I am jealous for my daughter. Fortunately, she has no real reason to feel jealous and laughs at me....

“I am also jealous of my daughter. I would like to preserve her love for myself only and I begrudge her husband. Although she made an excellent match, I was not satisfied and treated my son-in-law very unfairly. I was unhappy over it but could not help it. I have consulted already the most famous specialists, have been for six weeks under hypnotic treatment by Prof. X. I have already kept away from my husband for three months at a stretch,—nothing has helped.”

That is the sufferer’s history. What is the meaning of this jealousy?

The root of this jealousy is a non-conscious homosexuality. She is jealous of her woman friend because she herself is in love with the friend. She puts herself in the rôle of the man, the physician, and concludes that in his position she could not resist the temptation. She imagines herself in the man’s place; she scrutinizes every woman with hungry looks. The peep-hole in the consultation room serves on the one hand the purpose of calming down her jealousy and of giving the poor husband a few quiet hours; on the other hand it enables her to

## participate in everything that is taking place and to gratify her

craving as _voyeuse_. This control is her daily homosexual excitant, the means through which she rouses the flames of her passion only to still them afterwards upon her husband.

After the explanation was reached there was a marked improvement in her condition. The woman saw that her love for the daughter was homosexual and that this was the reason why she was so jealous of her son-in-law.

The occurrence is far from rare, and many a marriage has been wrecked on account of it. The angry mother-in-law is always the mother who cannot live without her daughter and who wants to show her daughter that the husband is untrue and does not appreciate her and how much more she truly loves the daughter.... I have also often seen the daughter, after a timorous attempt at married life, return penitently back to the mother. I have seen mothers who fight for their daughters with a lover’s passion and with their tremendous jealousy putting all sorts of difficulties in the way of any pretenders to the daughter’s hand. I have found that kind of jealousy frequently as the root of melancholia. I refer in this connection to Case 132 in my “_Nervöse Angstzustände_” (2nd ed., p. 363).

72. The next case of jealousy shows the same roots. A married woman, 30 years of age, consults me on account of an unexplainable jealousy which has been torturing her for about four weeks. She tells the story of her jealousy: She engaged a new servant, a very young girl, somewhat coquettish, but who at first glance seemed to her very sympathetic. After one week she felt jealous and found that her husband, who usually did not so much as look at the servants in the house, was extremely friendly and courteous towards that girl. It seemed to her even that he was bestowing longing glances on the girl. At first she kept silent because she hesitated to speak of the matter to her husband. But after a time she reproached him about it: he must be more strict. She requested him to assume a more severe tone in his relations with the girl. Her husband laughed at her. He said he talked to the girl in his usual manner and nothing more. It was all imagination on her part. The girl was very good; he had no reason to call her down or to assume a more severe tone towards her. That reassured her somewhat but only for a short while. She watched her husband more carefully than ever and thought he was much charmed by the girl. She arose several times during the night to go into the servant’s room and investigate. Once her husband had some gastric trouble and he had to leave the room several times that night. She was convinced that it was but an excuse to go to the girl and several times she followed him along the chilly passage into the hall, so that her husband asked: “What is the matter with you this time?” She said she was worried over his condition and wanted to watch and see that he was all right. Finally her jealousy broke to surface a number of times and she reproached her husband very bitterly with her suspicions. She was absolutely certain that he was intimate with the girl. Her husband was indignant and asked her to dismiss the girl at once so that there might be an end to that “foolish notion.” The remarkable thing was that she felt unable or unwilling to dismiss the girl. The girl was so good and so faithful, it is so hard nowadays to find an efficient girl servant, she insisted only that her husband must show himself more strict with her. He had to declare on his oath again that there was no intimacy between them. _Towards the girl she felt a peculiar anger which she could not understand. At times she could have flown at the girl to strike her, which was very baffling as she had never been in the habit of striking a servant. But it would have been a great satisfaction to her to have pummelled this girl who caused her so much anguish. She had to restrain herself forcefully so as not to give vent to her rage. She was very “touchy” with the girl and tolerated not the least contradiction on her part._

Nevertheless she could not make up her mind to dismiss the girl, and yet she was afraid to be alone with her.

All her troubles arose on account of her homosexual attitude towards the girl who was in fact a charming blonde type of beauty. She herself was in love with the girl; that is why she could not conceive that her husband might be indifferent towards her. She figured: _If I were a man I would love this girl!_ Interesting, and at the same time typical, is her rage and desire to strike the girl. The love feeling is converted into its opposite and the longing to touch the girl (that is, to come into contact with her body) manifests itself in the inclination to strike her. How often love contacts disguise themselves as angry blows under the mask of anger!

I explain to the woman that she must dismiss the girl when she saw clearly the meaning of her jealousy. After the girl left all the unpleasant symptoms mentioned above vanished.

Another form of jealousy transfers itself from one object to another, or to the whole surroundings. Such transference of jealousy serves the purpose of masking from self and from others the real object of the original jealousy.

73. Mrs. H. G. is a woman, 38 years of age, who has been living happily with her husband. At present she is unhappy on account of jealousy. Here is her statement: “I have called on you to ask you to relieve me of a condition which I find simply unbearable. I have a good, fine husband against whom I cannot complain of anything. He is a splendid and model man in every way. I am the more distressed therefore to be so jealous of him. I felt that way, first, while my husband was ill with typhus which left him with heart trouble. He has to be more careful of himself because of the illness he has been through, and whereas formerly he had intercourse with me two and three times a week, now it happens only about once a month. My husband is not well,—I know it; his physician has expressly told me that he must keep very quiet and avoid all excitement. Nevertheless I cannot help feeling that he is untrue to me. I am so ashamed of it that I have not yet breathed a word about my jealousy to my husband. In fact, we are nearly always together. I know all his affairs and I often go along wherever he goes. But I cannot hang on to him every minute. So I hold the watch in hand and count the minutes, even the seconds, for him to return. Always the one thought: _He is untrue to you this very minute!_ If he goes to another office, I think he does it because there is a pretty office girl there with whom he is in love. If he takes a meal at a restaurant, it is because he has a _rendezvous_. If he is a few minutes late coming home from the office, he was with a street woman. In short, I am tormented all the time by these evil thoughts, I struggle against them but cannot put them out of my mind.”

“How long have you been in that state?”

“It began when he went to Franzensbad on account of his heart trouble. There he became acquainted with a spinster, a girl 46 years of age, who was also alone. They two got together and kept each other company. I know the girl; she is very honorable, and when my judgment is uppermost, I say to myself: _Nothing has happened; the two have merely felt a temporary intellectual interest in one another._ But in my evil hours my mind conjures up the worst thoughts. I have once read a letter which that woman had written my husband. She thanked him for his interesting company during the cure. A few weeks after the Franzensbad cure, there came a box of flowers and a letter for my husband. The woman wrote thanking him for his pleasant company during the cure,—she was very glad to have made the acquaintance of so prominent and intellectual a gentleman and hoped their friendship would endure beyond the time of the cure. At that I reproached my husband and tortured him with my jealousy. He gave me his word of honor that his relations with the woman were strictly of a friendly and formal character; aside of his own considerations, he was a sick man and satisfied to be left alone. But I asked him to give up all further correspondence with the woman and he readily consented. He is really a fine fellow who grants me everything I want, a man who reads in my eyes every wish of mine, and I am ashamed to think ill of him all the time.”

Here we see one source of her jealousy. The woman was married to a man who gratified her in every respect; suddenly she had to restrict herself to an abstinent life. The enforced abstinence suggested the thought: _You are still young and attractive, so many men are after you! Take a lover._ She was filled with fancies of longing and projected them unto her husband. If he were unfaithful it would furnish an excuse for her. She needed it; she wanted him to be unfaithful, for that would have served her as a defense. Her compulsive thinking is the masking of the thought: _Oh, that my husband were unfaithful so that I, too, might take a lover!_

The thought was suggested to her by the fact that the wife of one of her husband’s colleagues, a very light-minded person, was able, nevertheless, to keep up a very handsome social position. She spoke with great feeling about that woman.

“Does that woman not take loyalty so seriously as you do?”

“That woman? She does not have one lover; she has six at a time, and even more! She certainly enjoys life. And the lovers pay for everything. She has the finest wardrobe, the prettiest hats, takes wonderful journeys and her husband knows everything.”

“Isn’t her husband jealous?”

“Oh, no! He knows everything, and consoles himself in his own way. But, do you know the curious part of it all? That flighty woman is jealous of her husband! She quarrels bitterly with him when she hears of his escapades, although she has no right. The two have taken reciprocal freedom....”

This is also a common occurrence and very interesting. Married couples living apart, each carrying on all sorts of adventures and love affairs, yet jealous of each other, though usually they do not show it.[15] There are persons who love each other very warmly, but in the struggle between the sexes they regard loyalty as submissiveness, as a humbling before the partner, and they would perish rather than submit to such a love.[16]

Her calculating friend is a sophisticated woman possessing wonderful tact, she tastes all forms of pleasure, plays a certain social rôle, and enjoys every phase of life. Moreover she is a very attractive woman appealing strongly to our jealous subject.

Back of her jealous thoughts, again, there stand homosexual fancies. At the time when her husband began to restrict his marital indulgences her homosexual longing began to assert itself. She did not want to be unfaithful. She was thus inhibited against taking up a man. Therefore her thoughts could only turn to woman. Her inner reflection was: _If I were a man, I would enjoy a pretty woman every little while and more

## particularly that flighty friend whom I like so well._

The flighty woman had roused every feeling in her. Not only her homosexuality, but also all those prostituting tendencies which either slumber deeply hidden in every woman’s soul or break to surface before self and before the whole world. To be paid for the service of love, to receive actual coin in recognition of her sexual charm—that is a fancy looming up under various cover-symptoms among the neurotics.

That polygamic friend of hers achieved everything that a woman may wish, and in spite of that she maintained her good social standing. She moved in a select circle, folks merely shutting one eye so long as she was so clever in covering her tracks.

That example is constantly before her eyes. She herself is sexually ungratified, financially she can hardly make both ends meet, and she sees the other woman getting everything she needs: money and love. The question, Does it pay to be honest? continually recurs to her mind.

She unburdens herself of a mass of similar reflections but does not think that the real cause of her jealousy depends on herself. She is jealous also of the servant girl, the man-servant, and the children. She is even jealous of her male friends. She has a certain good friend whom she put in touch, so to speak, with a woman friend because he did not mean anything to her. Since that time he has been keeping up a close acquaintance with that woman and she is very jealous; she would like to get him away from her and to have him entirely to herself. She cannot bear to see a child familiar with other persons and is wild even when the servant girl receives a letter or a show post card through the mail. _It is the perseverance of the instinct of possession on account of diminished sexual gratification._ She is reduced, so to speak, to small rations and therefore wants to accumulate and reserve for herself everything the environment yields in the form of love. The little she has she wants to preserve for herself only and to protect as her own exclusive possession. The same attitude is seen on the part of children who have a favorite older brother or sister. They are extremely jealous of their trifling possessions and are enraged when the other children in the house attempt to touch their toys. The others may have more, but what little they possess they want to preserve exclusively for themselves.

The subject thus tells about her jealousy of everything and everybody. But she displays but little understanding of psychic relationships, she is afraid to come to me because while at my office she cannot watch her husband, and stays away a few days. It seems as if she had something important to tell me but does not quite find the courage to do so.