Part 8

Soon she calls at my office again complaining that her jealousy grows worse; she suffered terribly that day, and all through the previous night she had hardly closed her eyes. And presently she confesses that the jealousy actually began after the death of her mother.

“Do you know—dear doctor—my mother was the model of a noble woman. She was virtuous, diligent, well educated, sweet tempered, a veritable angel in human form. In spite of it all—I don’t know why—I was more strongly attached to father. Possibly because he played more with us and paid more attention to our games and excursions while mother was more strict in her training and careful to inculcate in us a sense of orderliness. Mother died of a painful growth. I said to myself: ‘Now you must take mother’s place with father. You must take care of him.’ Father was already 62 years of age, and suffered occasionally of gouty attacks. I was tremendously shocked to see my father put aside mourning after a few weeks and change into an elegant man-about-town,—he the respectable town official, who had never before gone a step without mother.... He started to frequent nightly disreputable dives and I soon heard that he was having relations with various disreputable women of the town. I was so disconsolate, in my anguish I visited daily mother’s grave. There I threw myself to the ground and out of the bitterness of my heart I implored mother and prayed to her. ‘Mother,’ I cried, ‘you must not let this go on, you must not allow your good name and honor to be dragged down that way. Mother, put an end to these shameful doings. Make father so ill that he shall be unable to sin any more and besmirch your memory.’ Thus I implored and prayed. But it did not do any good. Soon I observed that father was intimate with our young servant girl and that she was trying to get hold of his money. I drove her out of the house with the aid of the police because I discovered that she was stealing money from father. O, I was like a fury and irreconcilable because the honor of my mother was at stake, and I had ceased to respect my father who had been the dearest person in the world to me! After that I had peace for a few weeks because father suffered one of his gout attacks. I prayed to God and to the virgin mother to keep father confined to his bed so that he should be able no longer to add to his sins. But father got well soon and resumed his former care-free nocturnal rounds of amusement places. Chorus girls, dancers, street women and others of that ilk gathered at our house and were lavishly entertained. Then one day I heard that father intended to marry again. He had become engaged to a 42-year-old widow. I knew at once that the woman had her eye on father’s money. _I bought a revolver and, I tell you frankly: I should have killed either the woman or my father if there had been any marriage. Perhaps I would have done away with both, for I was determined to protect mother’s memory against this insult and shame. I went to that woman’s house and gave her such a warning that the engagement was soon given up._ I told that shameless adventuress: ‘_You will never reach the altar alive; that I swear solemnly on mother’s memory!_’ I was fully determined to shoot them both. You can appreciate how excited I was.

“After that father avoided me and my sisters. But the proposed marriage did not take place,—I had accomplished that much. I went no longer to his house when he had suddenly a light stroke and was forced to appeal to us children. Then we had a complete family reconciliation and since that time I have again my father. Now I see him daily, we children take turns in looking after him.”

“Have you no feeling of guilt and did you never think that your father fell ill because you wished it? Did you not want him to be so crippled and reduced to your care that he should be able no longer to carry on?”

“I don’t feel guilty and I have no regrets. Only satisfaction.... I wished it to be that way and it has come out as I wished. For now I have once more a father of whom I need not be ashamed. But you must not think that I was jealous on my own account. I only felt myself the representative of my mother.”

“You are not jealous of your sister?”

“Yes ... when father is very demonstrative with her, I feel the same wild jealousy come over me, but I control myself....”

Here we see jealousy rising out of an incestuous wish first directed upon a man, then transferred to the whole environment. This transference of jealousy to every one serves more effectively to cover the genuine jealousy of the father. The death of the mother left this young woman in a critical position. Obviously her wish as a child was: “_When mother dies I will marry father._” A wish which so many girls entertain and even openly express. With the death of the mother the new situation presented itself. A place close to father was vacated and now other women filled it. The old father’s behavior showed that he was still a man. But one thing stood against this fancy: her husband. So long as he lived she could not go to live with her father. Her husband’s illness brought matters prospectively nearer to an issue. The physician had declared that he could not live long, his heart trouble was serious. She might yet be free! Her agitation explains a number of peculiar dreams she had. She dreamed repeatedly of quarreling with her husband and of striking him. _Several times already she has beaten him up and she has even shot him in her dreams. She is also unfair to the child, turning against it with hatred on slightest provocation._

We see that the jealousy of the husband also has the rôle of legitimizing a hatred which has its roots in other causes. For she confesses that during her fits of jealousy, when she thinks that her husband is unfaithful, she feels a bitter hatred against him and could murder him.... The husband is in the way, her hatred corresponds to the idea that he is a hindrance. During the night the hatred breaks forth but during the waking hours it is rationalized as due to jealousy. For she admits that she has really never fully loved her husband. Her affection goes to her father. She imagines that she is fighting for the preservation of her mother’s pure memory; that furnishes an ethical cover and masks the true motives.

The relationship of this jealousy to homosexuality is interesting. It furnishes an excellent proof of our findings concerning homosexuality. One must bear in mind, first of all, that many factors contribute in this instance to bring about the regression to the infantile level: her husband’s serious illness, his relative impotence and abstinence, her mother’s illness, the father’s change to a devil-may-care attitude, showing her that one may change even in late years, and that it is never too late fully to enjoy the fruits of love. Her homosexuality was always ready to break forth in her. She identified herself with her father looking at women through his eyes. She had protected herself at first by a passionate love for her husband and minor various trivial homosexual traits of her childhood were thus readily overcome. Her swing to heterosexuality was very successful with the aid of her husband. Her homosexuality was repressed, only to reappear at the beginning of the menopause,—woman’s critical age. The involutive processes taking place in the genital glands, and the general physical changes in woman at the time play a certain rôle in that connection. Her husband’s impotence and the friend’s exciting example of her attractive friend, with whom she herself was secretly in love, again roused her homosexual feelings, though the attitude showed itself only under the guise of jealousy. But the father’s conduct, since her father was the deepest cause of her aversion against man, was what really made her lose her balance. She might have become an _urlind_, had her father remained the old, kindly, bland and quiet gentleman. But since he abandoned the mask after the death of the mother, he roused all the daughter’s evil instincts. Not only the infantile erotic predisposition but the infantile criminal tendencies as well. In her dreams she murdered her husband who prevented her from turning entirely to her father and fulfill an infantile wish to become her father’s wife. She also repeatedly killed the children and her beloved friends. This woman during her critical period displayed not only the craving for love but also the aboriginal emotion, the primordial stuff, out of which everything beautiful and great has evolved: hatred.

Hatred against the other sex and against her rivals, hatred against the children whom she could have killed when anger seized her soul....

74. This is the case of a 30-year-old woman, victim of a remarkable form of jealousy. She is jealous of her home, watching over it like one might watch and protect a beloved. She has an older sister who has been married for five years past and lives outside Vienna. That sister was more to her than her mother or any other friend. She looked upon her as a second mother, confided all her secrets in her and allowed herself to be guided and advised by her at every step. She was supremely happy in her companionship and desired nothing better. She loved only that one sister,—towards the other members of the family she was more or less indifferent. Suddenly the family decided to marry off that sister and an aunt brought a suitor to the house. She found that suitor ridiculous, unsuitable for the sister, and fought with all her limited powers against the match. But the mother showed the greatest eagerness for an early marriage. Then it happened that the girl awoke suddenly in the night. Like a thunder a terrible thought flashed through her mind: “_You must do away with your mother!_” (It was the last desperate soul cry in the attempt to hold on forever to her sister. The mother was the original cause of her misfortune. She could not live without the sister.) The thought so shocked her, the subsequent regrets over it kept her in a very depressed mood. She developed a severe neurosis, consisting chiefly of a series of punishments and expiations to which she deliberately subjected herself. And shortly after that she developed her jealousy of the home. Her sister lived outside Vienna at a small place in Hungary and occasionally came to Vienna. It was natural that she should find a place in the comfortable old home of seven rooms which the family occupied alone. But the girl could not tolerate the sister’s presence in the house. She became depressed, began to cry, found that the furniture was being abused and ruined, could not sleep nights, and daily asked her sister: “How long are you going to stay in town?” so that the sister cut her visit as short as possible.

This went on for several years. Year after year the sister brought a new baby into the world and she could not tolerate her sister’s children in the old home. Every time a visit with the children made her so seriously ill that finally the mother begged the sister to find some other rooming place. The children were hardly tolerated in the house; they had to be kept in one certain room. The girl was always afraid that something in the house would be ruined. That this was not jealousy of her mother is shown by the fact that it did not affect her to have the mother visit the sister. In fact she joined the mother readily on such visits and behaved very pleasantly and quietly at her sister’s. Only when it was a question of the old home she became a storming avenging angel. Naturally she also wanted to have her mother to herself. Her boundless jealousy of the sister had apparently disappeared altogether and had switched over to the old home where the two had been once so supremely happy. Thoughts of hatred against the sister’s children and phantasies about doing away with them, also occurred. She thought of a subtle poison that could be given with the food in her home. Perhaps she feared the presence of her sister and sister’s children in the house for that very reason and the fear may have been a protection against her criminal tendencies.

She had loved truly but one person: her sister. The latter was everything in the world to her. She called her the second mother, her friend, her beloved. Her first thought when she awoke in the morning was of her sister, the endeavor to please her filled her life, and the last thing she did before going to bed was to offer a prayer for her sister. She was good and upright because she loved her sister and because she felt happy that her sister gave all her spare time up to her. She was trained by her, they went on walks together, her sister trained her heart. She was supremely happy and wished nothing more than always so to live beside her sister.

Then came the engagement and her sister’s marriage. Her heart bled at that terrible act of treason and her feelings hardened. She hated everything, she was against the whole world: against the mother who instigated the match, against the other sisters, who had also favored it, against the brothers who did not oppose it. Only an old nurse woman who had always stood by her and was her staff of support, exceptionally escaped her hatred remaining a sort of solitary ray of affection. But the house was filled with memories of the beloved sister. The pieces of furniture were mute but eloquent witnesses of her former happy love state. They should not be profaned by the presence of the unfaithful, changed sister! She hated the children, wishing they were dead and at the same time she was afraid she might hurt them. Two souls struggled in her breast: one a criminal, the other ethical. The sight of the children was repulsive to her. They bore the traits of the sister and of the man who had stolen her away.

Her whole possessions consisted now of her memory and the household goods, the old rooms furnished the necessary real background for her phantasies. “Memory is the only paradise from which we cannot be driven out,” said _Jean Paul_. Her residence became to her a temple of memory, a sanctuary where every piece of furniture recalled the past happiness in which she still projected herself. For her days passed in dreaming and weaving of fancies. She idled away sweet hours and days continually dreaming only of her sister. Criminal fancies of poisoning all the others finally led her, by way of punishment, to fear poisoning. She quit eating anything at the table, as she formerly did. She suspected poison in every food. She began to vomit after her meals. She kept away from everybody except one woman friend who stuck to her faithfully and who shared her revulsion of feeling against the sister. She lived continually in fear she might kill her mother because the imperative (kill her!) kept cropping up all the time. She avoided men. All attempts to interest her in some man eventually to get her married off proved fruitless....

The home was her temple which must not be soiled. All her devotion and her affection were centered daily on that spot.

The case approaches closely the realm of psychosis.

After a course of psychoanalysis lasting about one half year she improved a great deal. She was able to tolerate her sister’s visits, was free of the obsessive thought of killing her mother, was again able to eat any food and her “nervous” vomiting ceased altogether. A very favorable offer of marriage she rejected. She still avoided men as resolutely as ever.

We turn to the next case.

75. Mr. R. T., a well-known poet, only 31 years of age, is also a victim of morbid jealousy and has already experienced very serious conflicts on that account. He was always fixed on his family and lived exclusively for his parents and other members of the immediate family circle. He clung particularly to the mother, with worshipful affection. At 18 years of age he began to fall in love with all his friends’ “girls.” He even fell in love with a street woman whom his best friend often visited. Already at that time he showed a strong jealous streak and he asked that woman to give up her unfortunate way of living. (That is a typical experience with young fellows who are fixed on the mother. They seek out a polar obverse to their mother’s character and associate with that person a fancy of being the savior. The savior phantasy covers, according to my investigation, merely the wish to save one’s self....) He was soon through with this love affair, although it had broken out with great passion, and had to leave Berlin because he could not get along with his parents. He always quarreled with his mother and that interfered with his creative work.

Meanwhile he became very famous and was earning a very comfortable income. He fell into the habit of spending his nights at restaurants and other amusement places in the company of friends and of returning home in the early morning hours. He woke up at noon and wrote a few hours during the afternoon,—that was his only work.

At a certain cabaret he became acquainted with a girl who was in charge of the bar. She was 35 years of age at the time, but gave her age as 28, and in fact looked much younger than she was. He began having relations with that girl, looking upon the affair as a trivial adventure, at first. He knew that she was being supported by a Count but this did not prevent him from allowing her to choose him for her “heart love.” He was tremendously flattered that this girl, or perhaps we would better say, this woman, preferred him to all others and loved him so disinterestedly. His affection grew daily, also her love for him. She finally gave up her Count and told our young man that she loved him only, and would never again give herself to any other man. It made him very happy; they rented lodgings together. But soon he requested her to give up her position at the bar, because there she came into too close contact with men. She did that very willingly. Before they had taken up lodgings together he had asked her to give him a complete history of her past life. She told him a very romantic life history and mentioned four men who had had sexual relations with her. (As a matter of fact dozens of men had cohabited with her.)

He was madly jealous of these men. She had to repeat to him the story of her past over and over, then he became angry, also sexually very excited, figured how he would revenge himself on his rivals, how he would beat them, box their ears or shoot them down in a duel or cut them up with his sword; his rage against the unfortunate woman grew all the time, he scolded her, called her every bad name, threatened to leave her at once, struck her, and in the end had intercourse with her, experiencing powerful orgasm.

Before long he began to be troubled with the uncertainty whether she had told the whole truth. He investigated her past, looking up questionable episodes. A detective was engaged to watch her during his absence and to look up her past. The fellow quickly picked up the gossip of the neighborhood and reported the talk as true. Besides the adventures frankly confessed to him a number of other liaisons were traced, which the woman had failed to mention. She also had to admit that she was older than she had held herself out to be.

There followed years of terrible torture and continual torture. First thing in the morning he began to wonder who else among his acquaintances or among strangers may have possessed the woman. He questioned her persistently, his rage growing, he made her take a solemn oath, then he struck her and tried to extract from her a forced confession. In vain she implored him, begging him to realize that she was not responsible for her past, that she did not know him at the time, that she was but a child when she already had to support the whole household and a sick mother; nothing helped, he was implacable.

When his investigations led accidentally to the discovery of another man who had not previously figured in the list of her adventures he threw a glass at her head and hurt her so seriously that she was ill several weeks. He sought quarrels with her former sweethearts and challenged them on the least provocation, wounding several in duel, as he was an excellent duellist.

Finally the lovers separated. The woman could stand it no longer and threatened to take her life. But, in a few weeks she fell ill and had him called to her sick bed. Another time the reverse occurred. In short—the pair could not keep away from each other. It was the last love of this woman who had lost her early first charms. Through this love she hoped to save herself and either marry or attain the quasi-respectability of a similar state. But he had entered this relationship lightly as he had done in similar cases and he now suddenly found himself entangled in a tight net which isolated him from the world. For he did not dare to go out with her. He always had the unpleasant thought he might meet one of her former lovers,—he even watched the faces of all passers-by to see whether they did not laugh at him.

He had a friend who was very devoted to him. That friend hated his partner, because she had robbed him of his best friend. That friend was his complete slave. He became the poor woman’s guardian. But the friend had a peculiar passion. He desired to possess all women who belonged to his friends. (This is a transparent homosexual mask as I have already pointed out in the present work.) Therefore he made love also to this woman, who planned her revenge by apparently accepting his advances and when she had in her hands proofs of the fellow’s intention, she turned the proofs over to her beloved. A terrible scene ensued, including revolver shots, but fortunately no one was hurt.

Next he began to torment the woman regarding her relations with that friend. He obviously looked for an excuse to break with her, and solemnly resolved to leave her for good if he should discover the least thing out of the way in her conduct. But she was so cowed by his snares that she did not dare to go out on the street alone....