VII
The Neurotic’s Inability to Love—the Narcissism of the Homosexual—progressive Sexual Differentiation With the Growth of Culture—the Position of the Homosexual in the Struggle Between Sexes—the Social Causes of Homosexuality—homosexuality Among Greeks—increase of Polar Sexual Tension—various Therapeutic Measures—hypnosis—moll’s Association Therapy—psychoanalysis—the Path Towards Cure and the Conditions for Recovery.
Im Hass ist Furcht, ein grosser, guter Teil Furcht. Wir Furchtlosen aber, wir geistigeren Menschen dieses Zeitalters, wir kennen unseren Vorteil gut genug, um gerade als die Geistigeren in Hinsicht auf dieser Zeit ohne Furcht zu Leben. Man wird uns schwerlich köpfen, einsperren, verbrennen; man wird nicht einmal unsere Bücher verbieten und verbrennen. Man ist seines Faches um den Preis, auch das Opfer seines Faches zu sein.
—Nietzsche.
VII
Hatred means fear, it contains a great, big part of fear. But we the Fearless ones, we the more intellectual men of our age, precisely as the more emancipated ones, with reference to our age, are well aware of our advantage of living without fear. We shall be bitterly pursued, jailed, burned at the stake; our books will more than once fall under the ban and be burned. One is a man after one’s own kind only at the risk of paying the price demanded of one’s kind.
—Nietzsche.
We have seen with what powerful hatred the homosexual encounters his environment. Whether he turns his hatred towards the other sex, his own, or, under certain circumstances, against himself, he remains the inveterate hater vainly trying to reconcile the feeling of man’s aboriginal nature with the ethical requirements of later culture. The question rises whether he is at all capable of loving. One may point out that in a certain sense he does love his mother, father, some friend or that perhaps he even has a “sweetheart.” But it only seems that he loves them! The truth is that he is unable to love. That peculiarity he shares with all artists who, in fact, are also incapable of loving. I repeat myself and reproduce below my statements on this point as incorporated in my work “Die Träume der Dichter.”45
All my inquiries into the psychogenesis of these disorders have led me back to the manifestations of hatred. Already in my work, Die Sprache Des Traumes (the Language of Dreams), I have pointed out that antagonism (or hatred) is man’s primary feeling responsible for the development of neuroses in those ethical-minded persons who still preserve strongly their aboriginal instinctive cravings. “The neurosis is the endopsychic perception of hatred in terms of a guilty conscience” (The Language of Dreams, page 563 of the 1st German edition; English version of the latter edition is now in preparation by the translator of the present volume.)
I believe I have proven successfully that the homosexual is a neurotic, that he represents a type of regression to man’s primordial instincts; and that homosexuality is a sort of compromise healing process in the mental conflict between the abnormal, raw cravings, and the cultural need for their suppression.
But we must not think that, like the average neurotic, the homosexual is incapable of love. Only, all his love is a love centered exclusively on self. Yet all cultural progress consists of the sublimation of self-love into social love. That is the meaning of the majestic injunction: love thy neighbor as thyself!
Since the homosexual loves only himself he seeks only himself in others. That, however, is a feature of all love. What appears to be the most extreme manifestation of altruistic feeling is at bottom but the outcome of egoistic cravings. Love is but egoism potentialized. Every neurotic suffers of narcissism. He is a slave to self and cannot escape that bondage. The homosexual loves, or appears to love, his own sex, but even superficial examination shows this to be but part of his narcissism. In truth he loves neither man nor woman. He has to overcome a hatred stronger than the corresponding feeling in the normal. That hatred is the theme of his childhood. As perpetual infant, he fails to sublimate sufficiently that hatred, or to fix it upon objectives considered proper in our current cultural development.
All who investigate homosexuality find an early awakening of the sexual instinct. It is perhaps the greatest social function of sexual instinct, next to reproduction, to provide for the conquest of hatred. Though the selfish child becomes a loving person, the child’s love is still entirely self-centered. The child loves the persons who serve it. In vain one tries to point out that it ought to love also the teachers who are severe but mean well, that parents must punish in order to teach! This view belongs to the adult mind and is what enables the adult to forget the childish notions of revenge which he entertained as a child whenever he suffered punishment which he looked upon as unjust before his higher sense of responsibility had asserted itself. But in the neurotics, including homosexuals, sexual precocity brings early to surface cravings which involve the love of others; they are therefore inclined to renounce or modify their hatred. The proportionate share of hatred against some beloved person is withdrawn and turned against the others. These infantile feeling-attitudes may undergo a second transformation in later years. A boy may love the father and hate the mother, because she is his rival in the father’s affection. At the same time the sisters may be hated because they draw to themselves a certain quantum of the father’s love, which the self-centered jealous boy wishes to secure exclusively for himself. Later the mother and sisters are loved, and the father recedes to the background.
Jealousy is an infantile feeling. Its appearance in later years always signifies a regression to infantile attitudes. The homosexual spreads his hatred from one persons to the whole sex under the form of jealousy. Let us assume that he loves the father insofar as he is at all capable of loving. The mother is looked upon as a rival. With the formulation of that attitude, all other women become likewise potential rivals, capable of robbing him of his father’s affection. Therefore he hates all women,—the subject is on the road to homosexual neurosis. At the onset of homosexuality stands jealousy and the latter, therefore, preserves its infantile value throughout life.
I have already mentioned that it is the function of sexuality to conquer hatred. But that task is never completely carried out. An eternal rivalry persists between the two sexes giving rise to the so-called “struggle between the sexes.” I have no doubt that man’s capacity for loving has increased in the course of our racial evolution. What subtle refinements our erotism has undergone! How complicated the psychic processes displayed by the man and the woman in love! But the antagonism or hatred which divides the two sexes has grown apace. Modern love owes its profuse affectivity to this conquest of hatred, this periodic regression back to the feeling-attitude of hatred and its renewed subdual.
The question arises: Have we in fact any proof that the polar tension between man and woman has diminished? He who fails to see a proof of this in the improvement of woman’s social position and her acquisition of equal rights may turn to biologic facts. These biologic data prove that the sexual differentiation between man and woman has increased with growth of culture. In primitive times woman was not so womanly, the man less manly, than the man and woman of civilization. Fehlinger46 compares the primitive peoples with the Europeans and shows that the secondary sexual characters are much more pronounced among the civilized peoples than among the savages. Subtler stimuli are required to excite the domesticated sexual instinct.
That sexual differentiation is more pronounced among Europeans is shown also by the fact that the period from the onset of sexual adolescence to the attainment of complete physical growth is more prolonged among civilized peoples than among the colored races. The primitive races show a great similarity between male and female types and that is most pronounced among the various pygmean races. The latter are characterized by an infantile physique, which, as is well known, is sexually but little differentiated.
Since the homosexual represents retrogressively a stage of racial development during which the bisexual character of the organism was more pronounced, he carries ab ovo the inclination to project himself unto both sexes. He passes into the world of sexual differentiation as into some strange, inimical, and, to his mind, incomprehensible realm of existence. He belongs to the primordial period in which a man, if necessary, could have replaced the woman. His engrams perceive the homosexual feeling as something as natural as if he had come a few hundreds of thousands of years sooner into the world. But into the cultural age in which love plays such a tremendous rôle he brings with him also the antagonism of bygone ages. That feeling of hatred becomes a powerful lever in the struggle between the sexes. Physically he stands between man and woman but he is not suited for the rôle of mediator because he has not learned to subdue the eternal struggle between male and female within his breast. The love-attitude which is a mixture of love and hatred, he splits into its two components directing one separately towards each of the two sexes. Towards woman he turns his primordial hatred, while man he loves as a representative of culture. When he is grown up that deadly hatred is repressed and stands a hidden stumblingblock between himself and woman. Unable to be a complete man, unable to extricate himself from that infantile feeling-attitude, he also hates the woman in him. He overvalues manliness and in his excessive appraisal of it turns to it with his whole love. The hatred of all women corresponds to his scorn of the woman in himself,—a reaction due to his personal inability to overcome the woman in his own make up and to become a complete man. Finally in the course of the continuous struggle between the man and the woman within his breast he reaches the curious compromise of accepting the feeling that he is a woman. That is: he excepts a single woman from his hatred... himself. In that manner he becomes a transvestite. He may be active heterosexually, he may, apparently, have overcome his homosexuality, yet, as penance for his hatred, he puts on the clothes which had seemed once so hateful to him. The latent homosexual becomes a transvestite only on account of his guilty conscience.
Our investigations have proven that homosexuality has no uniform psychogenesis. But all cases showed an archaic emphasis on bisexuality. Although I speak of regressive manifestations I should not care to see that conception confused with the notion of “hereditary taint” or of “degeneration.” For my investigations of artists have convinced me that they present the same tendencies as the homosexuals. They, too, are neurotics. In fact, the number of homosexual artists, even of homosexual persons of rare genius, as given by Hirschfeld, is impressive. I hold the view that every great creative work has been and is being achieved through these regressions. It is as if nature attempted to rejuvenate herself and once more to absorb creative energy by dipping down into the primordial source of all energy. It might be more proper, perhaps, to speak of them as dégénérés supérieurs, in the sense of Magnan. It seems to me that true degeneration, as seen in the stigmata of physical decay, and which manifests itself in an insufficient adjustment to the ethical requirements of society, represents rather the terminal point of an exhausted stem, gravitating downwards, while the neurotic represents a progression. Degeneration and regressions certainly have a great deal in common. But similar causes often bring on varying results. I need refer only to the well-known laws of inbreeding, for instance. The summation of good qualities through the intermarriage of relatives may lead to the birth of a true genius, but the same step causes more or less degeneration by reinforcing morbid tendencies.
I see in such an atavistic tendency the predisposition to homosexuality, common to all neurotics. Perhaps organic changes, such as I have found in more or less pronounced form in most homosexuals also play a certain rôle. Persons of pronounced bisexual type do not necessarily become homosexual, but this does not disprove that the organic condition may be a factor. Here is where I agree with Hirschfeld’s “intermediate sex” theory. But beyond this point our standpoints diverge. The organic factors remain yet to be investigated. We are but at the beginning of our studies of organic bisexuality. The ascertainment of unilateral hermaphroditism, it seems to me, will play a particularly important rôle in future investigations. Already the data obtained through the examination of large groups of persons, for which the World War furnished me an opportunity, impressed me with the fact, that contrary sexual Anlage is to be found particularly often on the left side of the body. (In men this shows itself in the form of unilateral gynecomasty, scant hair growth, asymmetry of the face, the left side being more pronouncedly of feminine type.) The finding of infantile features must also be considered of significance in the diagnosis of an organic predisposition to homosexuality.
These interesting facts do not relieve us of the need of establishing the psychogenesis of homosexuality on a sound basis. But the multitude of conditions which may lead to homosexuality admit no hard-and-fast line. Every case is a problem of its own; these are the very cases where we must carefully individualize and guard ourselves against hindering future research by laying down any hard-and-fast rules.
A question which no investigator of sexual problems has thus far satisfactorily answered, now suggests itself: Why is it that homosexuality and particularly male homosexuality has become the object of such terrific social abhorrence? Why is our penal code so backward in that respect?
We can understand the reasons for that only in the light of the historic aspect of the problem. It is a striking fact that although female homosexuality always appears along with the male, it is not nearly so abhorred but is rather tolerated under the cover of silence. Austria is the only European country in which sexual intimacy between women is a penal offence. Probably the difference in this attitude bears some relation to the problem of reproduction, since man, as the fertilizing agent, plays a more active rôle than the woman.47 The seed, that most precious possession with which a man may fructify several women, must not be squandered.
The decided struggle against homosexuality began energetically with Judaism. Monosexualism developed with monotheism. The Bible hardly refers to homosexuality. The blessings of children, of reproduction, the advantage of numbers were the needs to which the sexual cravings had to be subordinated. There is, therefore, justification for the contention that Judaism has fought against homosexuality,—impelled by social motives. On the other hand it was also an account of another set of social motives that, in Greece, homosexuality was not only tolerated but permitted and even expressly introduced. Aristotle is of the opinion that in accordance with their customs and beliefs the Dorians expressly intended to limit the increase in population through the encouragement of boy love and the separation of women from society.48 But that in itself would not explain the high regard in which homosexuality was held in ancient Greece.
I refer those interested in the subject to the interesting work of a philologist, Prof. E. Bethe.49
Like many other philosophers and investigators of history, Bethe falls into the error of pointing to the Christian church as the agent responsible for the newer orientation in sexual matters. In the first place these writers overlook the fact that the new attitude had set in already with Judaism. Secondly, they fail to see that religions are, themselves, but the result of social conditions. Religious teachings always adjust themselves to the social needs of their day and even fulfill them. Religious formulæ prove meaningless only to the progressive, emancipated, free and forward-striving persons, the imperatives of religion are superfluous only for those above the average. The crowds must cling to religious formulæ and will always need sexual inhibitions of a religious character.
Sexuality is changing all the time, it undergoes progressive refinement. No careful observer can deny that fact. More and more of our instinctive cravings are gradually throttled. But when the process of repression becomes too severe there are regressions such as we have witnessed in the agitation for free love of the last decades and in the current more frank discussion of sexual matters. But if all signs do not fail the high tide of the agitation for sexual freedom has passed and the wave of that agitation is receding. Pioneers in the movement for sexual freedom are beginning to uphold monogamy; and the problem of population made pressing by the World War does not favor the abandonment of the current social and legal proscriptions against homosexuality. On the contrary. There is likely to be in the near future a stronger revulsion against homosexuality inasmuch as society finds itself compelled to revert at all costs back to the Old Testament attitude of fostering reproduction.
I have already pointed out that the secondary sexual characters are becoming more strongly accentuated through culture. The prehistoric stage was probably characterized by an undifferentiated sexual feeling, such as Max Dessoir ascribes to the pre-adolescent stage. The polar tension between male and female has increased! That explains the difference between the old Greek and the modern attitude towards homosexuality. The Greek was a bisexual being. He was capable of loving his friend and wife and woman slave alongside the boy. The modern homosexual, carrying within him the bisexual instincts of the most archaic developmental stage, finds himself confronted with another sex-attitude. He is confronted, so to speak, with the need of making a new choice, and therefore he seeks always the type to which he himself belongs, the man who is a woman, or the woman who is a man. Exceptions do not disprove this rule. But in proportion as the polar tension between the sexes increases, the basic antagonism between man and woman also grows. As we have seen—the last case was particularly instructive in that regard—the homosexual, who apparently stands above that struggle, is inspired from within by a feeling-attitude of extreme hatred. He hates woman with such deadly antagonism that the fear of his own passion makes him avoid woman. His hatred is a will of annihilation. But that feeling involves its polar alternative: love to the point of self-annihilation, a willingness to be utterly humbled. Subject No. 83 gives us a history clearly illustrating this interplay of forces.
But it is plain that the number of homosexuals will not decrease. On the contrary. I am of the opinion that under certain conditions the extreme polar tension between man and woman will always drive to homosexuality certain individuals possessing the requisite bisexual predisposition and that the number of homosexuals will increase. Since I look upon homosexuality as a neurosis, a morbid condition, if one insists on the term, I am decidedly opposed to the policy of penalizing the homosexual, and against those legal proscriptions which have been and are the cause of much misery. It is a striking fact that in France and Italy homosexuality plays a lesser rôle than in Germany, for instance, although in those countries the offence is not so severely penalized. Dangers and prohibitory laws often excite the strongest attraction and the neurotic is the very person who likes to become a martyr. Homosexual relations or acts, carried on under mutual understanding and with the consent of the parties thereto, should not come under the province of penal law, as provided in the Codex Napoleonis. The latter penalizes only public nuisances (outrage à la pudeur) that is, acts committed in public or carried on in the presence of witnesses; the Code Napoléon penalizes coercion and protects the minors and the feeble-minded.
With these provisions the requirements of our current ethical standards are fully met. I cannot conceive the State compelling the homosexuals to reproduce. Although I do not accept Tarnowsky’s viewpoint that their offspring is degenerate,—because personal observation has often convinced me of the contrary—I look upon the rise of the homosexual neurosis as a sort of social instinct. The homosexual possesses an endopsychic perception of his asocial tendencies. He feels himself beyond the pale of society and does not care to adjust himself into the social order with regard to his sexuality. His struggle against reproduction is perhaps best for society. Considering the strength of his sadistic inclinations we can appreciate that through his voluntary sterilization in certain cases he renders society a genuine service.
The question rises whether it is advisable to clear the homosexual’s path towards woman through psychoanalysis. That brings up the chief question whether homosexuality is at all amenable to therapy.
My personal experience has convinced me that here and there psychoanalysis is successful in effecting a cure. But only under certain conditions. The homosexual must be genuinely willing to be cured. He must actively desire a change in his leaning.
But experience shows also that this will to health is found only in the lighter forms of homosexuality in which latent sadism does not dominate the condition.50 That in a certain sense the homosexual of this type is curable I am in a position to affirm on the basis of my personal experience. The cure proceeds spontaneously but it may be hastened through psychotherapeutic endeavor.
The proper psychotherapeutic method can never be hypnosis. What may we expect hypnosis to accomplish so long as the homosexual himself remains in the dark regarding his false attitude, so long as he has not learned to acknowledge openly the repressions against which he has fought so long? Contrary to Krafft-Ebing, Schrenk-Notzing, and Alfred Fuchs, I have never met with a lasting cure through hypnotic treatment. We must accept with greatest caution the statements of homosexuals claiming to have been cured by us.51 Case 62 recorded in this work, illustrates that there are some homosexuals who in order to please the physician and conclude the treatment with flying colors, claim they are well without having changed in the least their deeply rooted feeling-attitude. Moll’s association therapy I am also unable to accept. That method of treatment consists of the systematic development of normal and the equally deliberate destruction of the perverse, associations. Moll, who has proposed this therapy and given it that designation, has the homosexual cultivate deliberately feminine company so as to come strongly under the specific female influences, he regulates the subject’s reading and helps him overcome the homosexual phantasies. The subject must think of “normal pictures” only, before going to sleep and thus influence his dreams in the proper direction.52 But one must not think, as Moll concludes, that the heterosexual dream pictures which follow are due to the association therapy. The pictures thereby are merely rendered bewusstseinsfähig, tolerable to consciousness. They were always present. But the patient lacked the courage to acknowledge them.
I do not mean to deny a certain relative value to the association method. It is certainly not an advantage for the homosexual who earnestly strives to get cured to continue to frequent homosexual circles and to have constantly dinned into his ears the assertion that his condition is inborn and hopeless. I have quoted some cases showing that latent homosexuality may become manifest through contact with and the example of homosexuals while the heterosexual leaning may be disturbed thereby. But I did not intend to suggest the advisability of any compulsory measures for restricting the homosexual’s freedom of action or social intercourse. I have already expressed myself clearly against compulsions and punishments. It is advisable to urge the homosexual anxious to get cured to give up contact with homosexual circles.
But that the association therapy alone is capable of effecting a complete cure I cannot but doubt. The subject must first learn to see himself clearly and to recognize the source of the evil against which he is fighting. We must bear in mind the many subjects with whom repressed sadism is the true cause of the fear of woman. Such subjects must first consciously overcome their sadism, they must recognize that the fear is a ridiculous attempt at protecting themselves against leanings which under normal conditions never break through.
The first condition for the successful cure of homosexuality is adequate self-knowledge. That can be accomplished only through persistent psychoanalysis. The physician must devote himself to the subject for some months until the side-tracked leanings which the patient has stubbornly overlooked are brought into the field of consciousness and clearly acknowledged. The subject is like a person with torticollis looking constantly in one direction and avoiding a turn of his head on account of the pain. This mental torticollis must be overcome. The homosexual—if he is to get well—must be able to turn his gaze unrestrictedly over his whole mental horizon.
That is by no means a simple task. It is an achievement challenging the whole medical art, requiring insight, diplomacy, sympathy, friendliness, and patience. But few physicians are fitted for the task. Perhaps the opposition to psychoanalysis would not be so sharp if it were practiced only by competent psychotherapeutists and experienced professional men possessing the requisite tact. The physician is like the sculptor engaged in the task of bringing forth a certain form out of raw material.
Unfortunately I must point out in this connection that the psychoanalytic method inaugurated by Freud is in danger of falling into discredit through careless application. On the one hand the exaggerations of the master and his pupils have repelled many practitioners; on the other many of the patients have themselves become psychoanalysts, without being completely cured of their own trouble. What would one think of a hydrotherapeutist, expert though he be in his own specialty, who undertook a laparotomy? Analysis is comparable to a serious operation requiring a steady, experienced and skilful hand. Psychoanalysis does not permit dilettantism like hypnosis. Only from an experienced master may one learn the difficult art of psychoanalysis and in turn become a master of the art.
It is quite likely that the analysis of today will be ridiculed in the future as a raw beginning. Various subtleties and gradations remain to be uncovered by the future generations.
The psychoanalytic realm is not yet completely laid out.
How firmly I held to all the Freudian mechanisms so long as the deceptive proximity of the great founder confused my own understanding! How much I had to unlearn, correct, tone down, or underscore, overcome or forget, or see with a different eye, before I realized that we are as yet but at the beginnings of our knowledge and that we must use our present findings as but so many spring boards to enable us to reach a little farther out! Finally, each psychotherapeutist formulates in the end his own technique. The most important prerequisite for psychoanalysis—as for every scientific investigator—is to approach the subject without any preconceptions, to look upon every patient as a new problem and not to be surprised if one’s case does not fit in with one’s ready-made systems or if it disproves one’s favorite notion. For even the physician with years of experience is startled to meet so many new forms under which neurosis manifests itself.
But in spite of the variegated pictures, this bewildering variety of causes leading to the trouble, one thing remains true and unalterable: the neurotic’s unwillingness to see, that peculiarity which Freud has called repression, and the consequent psychic conflict. We must first appreciate that the patient’s mind is shattered over the hopeless character of his conflict, that for him the neurosis is a necessity,—something that enables him in one way or another to put up with his hardships,—something with which softly to hide his wounds on the one hand and on the other, show his suffering to the world; when we appreciate all that, we may gradually acquire the subtle skill of dissolving the ties and bringing the wound to light. We see the wound but the patient will not, cannot, see it. He may go so far as to claim that he has no wound and is well; that he was born with the ties that bind him; or else, that he came with that wound into the world.
These difficulties are in no psychoneurosis so great as in homosexuality. As I have already stated: the homosexual neurosis is a flight to one’s own sex induced by the sadistic feeling-attitude towards the opposite sex. It is the task of analysis to uncover the mental conflict which finds expression in this onesidedness and to enable the patient to see the cruelty trend which he has derived from the childhood of the race and has carried through his own childhood into his adult life. When the homosexual becomes aware of his bisexuality and sees the causes of his monosexual leaning we have accomplished the requisite educational task. Beyond that point the patient must help himself. If he is truly earnest about his desire to get well he will accomplish it without being pushed to it. If he lacks the inner will the situation is hopeless in spite of the analysis.
For that reason I am not in favor of the practical management of homosexuality as carried out by many physicians and particularly by some psychoanalysts. They urge the homosexual to adopt heterosexual ways, and consider the subject cured when he is able to have normal coitus a few times. Unfortunately unpleasant reactions often follow alleged cures such as are often claimed for persuasion-therapy and hypnosis. The homosexual abandons all further attempts and prefers his original monosexual attitude.
We may claim a cure only after the subject under treatment falls in love with a suitable person of the other sex. Potentia cœundi is not enough. He must be able to give up dividing the feeling-complex hatred—love between the two sexes—and to achieve the bipolar attitude “hatred and love” towards the opposite sex. Such a miracle only love can perform. Experience proves that the homosexual flees from the heterosexual love to save himself. The latter looms up in his mind as a test of power, in which he is anxious to come out the winner, even at the cost of doing away with his heterosexual partner. He must accept the subjection to woman implied in love and recognize that in true love both lovers rule and both obey. He must also learn to recognize the essential unity of erotism and sexuality. Only when the homosexual finds it possible to fix his erotism and sexuality upon the same goal, in a person of the opposite sex,—in other words, when he learns to love in adult manner,—have we the right to claim a cure. It is only then, at any rate, that the greatest healer of all ages, love, achieves its easy victory and the former patient, like all neurotics, thinks that mere chance has brought him face to face with his ideal. With that end in view the fixation on the family—through which the homosexual loses his erotic freedom, occasionally also the sexual—must be severed. I have brought strong proofs to show that we must transform the homosexual into a bisexual being, in order to cure him. Practical experience does not favor bisexuality. We must reckon with the fact that we live in a monosexual age. The homosexual must transpose his whole sexuality and must try to overcome or sublimate his one-sided leanings.
The necessary educational discipline takes a long time. The treatment of homosexuality therefore is a formidable task, both for the analyst and for the patient. The end-result of the treatment may not be known definitely for some years.
I have tried to describe the technique of the analysis in the individual cases. From those various indications the reader may form a picture of the difficulties. A systematic account of the technique of the analysis would require a volume in itself. Perhaps after finishing my Disorders of the Instincts and Emotions Series I may write such a work in order to acquaint with my experience the practitioners who want to grapple with the same problems.
A new generation of physicians, not brought up in the midst of the prejudices of the older, will further the psychologic investigation of the neuroses.
Naturally the high school must change its attitude towards the problem of sex. Departments of Sexology and Psychotherapy are necessary to instruct the young physicians in the essentials of sexual life and its morbid changes, in order to prepare the future practitioner to deal effectively with these troubles, heretofore erroneously looked upon as hopeless. The next volumes in this Series will prove how little the paraphilias are inborn and how much they are the result of training and environment. But what is formulated through faulty training may be corrected by proper reëducation, even though the hold of infantilism appears unconquerable.
I have called the paraphilias the struggle between spinal cord and brain. They are, even more truly, the Struggle of Child against Adult. For at bottom these neuroses are but infantilisms struggling for survival. The adult fights against the child; the adult race, ripe for monosexuality, fights against its childhood manifesting itself in bisexuality and sadism. The physician can see to it that the warfare is carried on in humane fashion and with means worthy of civilization. He can turn the hidden into an open warfare. It means overcoming the evil—or that which the moralists call evil—by meeting it face to face.
He who looks for more than a few words on the subject of the prophylaxis of homosexuality and onanism will be disappointed. I believe it is best that we turn our attention to these themes only when we are called upon to do so in our professional capacity. I advise all parents and educators not to watch whether a child masturbates or not. The child quits the habit when it finds other ways for releasing the tension. And our analyses have abundantly shown us that it is almost impossible to prevent masturbation. The evil effects produced upon the child witnessing marital bickerings, the household inspiration it receives with regard to judgment-feelings about women and men, the decisive manner in which parents affect it when they transfer their conflicts on the child,—these capital facts the life histories of homosexuals given above illustrate very clearly for any one willing to look squarely at the truth. We do not as yet appreciate how careful we must be in our relations with the children. Our educators are still guilty of a serious blunder when they conceive their duty to be to instill goodness in the child through the instrumentality of fear. There are only two educational levers: one’s own example and—love. The healthiest children come from happy marriages. It is love that determines whether a marriage shall be a happy one and whether the offspring will be healthy or weak. The unconscious sexual instinct, manifesting itself in love is the guide for the regeneration of the human race.53 Social conditions favoring early love marriages are the only social reform to which I look for results....
Notes
1. “Homosexuals who display their inclination clearly only after puberty show an interest in the other sex before and during the period of puberty. For instance, I have been told by a 23-year-old typical homosexual, today a victim of horror feminae, that at 16 and 17 years of age he entertained strong fancies about girls and ran after them, although without any particular sexual feeling desire. This transitory and undefined preoccupation of homosexuals with the opposite sex is a sort of ‘pseudoheterosexuality.’” (Bloch, loc. cit., p. 597.)
2. In vol. III of Disorders of Instincts and Emotions: The Sexual Frigidity of Woman; Psychopathology of Woman’s Love Life. English translation by Dr. James S. Van Teslaar.
3. Nervöse Angstzustände, 2nd ed., p. 336.
4. Vol. V. in: Disorders of Instincts and Emotions. English version by Dr. Van Teslaar.
5. B. Tarnowsky, Die krankhaften Erscheinungen des Geschlechtssinnes (The Morbid Manifestations of the Sexual Instinct). Eine forensisch-psychiatrische Studie. Berlin, 1886, p. 51 ff.
6. Jahrbuch f. sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. IX, 1908, p. 504.
7. Fragment der Psychoanalyse eines Homosexuellen (Jahrb. f. sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. IX, 1908). [A typical illustration of the wrong way of carrying on a psychoanalysis, the kind of painful ordeal during which the subject calls out in distress: “But, pardon me, what must I tell you? You just torture me, nothing less!” The most important relations are overlooked, the patient is tortured to admit that he is in love with Sadger, so that after fourteen hours of this sort of torment he runs off.]
8. J. Sadger: Ist die konträre Sexualempfindung heilbar? Zeitschr. f. Sexualwissenschaft, 1908, p. 712.
9. Jahrb. f. psychoanalytische u. psychopathol. Forschungen, vol. II, 1910.
10. Ibsen, the great psychologist, has described in masterly fashion the transposition of sister love into boy love. In “Little Eyolf,” Almers, the writer, suddenly loses the love for his wife and turns his affection exclusively to his child. That child is called ‘little Eyolf,’ like his sister, who had once put on boy’s clothes and called herself ‘little Eyolf.’ The parents had expected a boy. Almers turns his affection for the sister, which pervades the whole drama, into the love for the boy. He has discovered for himself the law of substitution which corresponds to the changes spoken of in these pages. Little Eyolf in fact is the dramatisation of the latent homosexual fixation on the sister. Almers cannot split his personality, he cannot be both homo- and heterosexual. This inability to split his self, the root of all homosexuality, forms the background of the whole drama. Rita cannot divide her personality any more than Almers can do it; he must give his whole personality self. Almers cannot divide wife and sister. He embraces his wife and thinks of the sister (That sister, whom he calls his little and his big Eyolf. The sister in trousers, who embodied his ideal, a woman in male clothes, a bisexual being which need not be split up at all). “Love of brothers and sisters is the only relationship not subject to the law of transformation.” Rank (Das Inzestmotiv in Dichtung und Sage, 1919, p. 654) and Pfister (Anwendung der Psychoanalyse in der Pädagogik und Seelsorge, p. 72) find the incest motive easily but overlook the fact that the situation involves the outbreak of homosexuality and its psychogenesis. It represents a flight from the sister to man, a wavering homosexuality sublimated into love for the boy. The drama contains numerous other familiar points well worth careful analysis. For Almers, his wife, and his child, are the representatives of the male, female, and infantile components which we endeavor to synthetize in our character (trinity). Regression to the infantile level sets in with flight from the world (flight to the solitude of the mountain top). The solitary Ibsen, as road builder, undertakes to construct a new highway which shall lead up to solitary heights and does not observe that the road leads really straight back to the realm of his youth. Somewhere in the vast expanse of his soul the ‘dead child’ is floating around and staring with wide open eyes into infinity. A child is killed in this drama. It stands for the miscarried regression back to infantilism. Childhood is finally subdued and forgetfulness once more drowns in the soul’s vast expanse all gnawing and biting reproaches. The memories are all dead... and the next drama has for its theme: When the dead awaken. But in little Eyolf they are already awake.... The dead, whom Ibsen carried in his breast, the corpse to which Rita refers so often.... The child in him is dead and now the man in him also threatens to die. It recalls the admission of impotence, described with such tremendous realism in the great Rita-Almers scene. The man in him dies and the woman in him persists with yearnings. A more detailed treatment of these endopsychic processes will be found in my book on Masochism (Translation by Van Teslaar, in preparation).
11. The following passage, from an observation by Hirschfeld, shows how early such fixation on the brother may take place, only to disappear, apparently, and to be mistaken for inborn homosexuality: “I hated boys and boyish games; my sister was my alter ego, while my brother, who was 13 years older and a very beautiful man, had powerfully charmed my childish, pure and innocent heart. I worshipped him for his physical beauty even more than on account of his sterling qualities. At the same time I grew continuously more sensitive in my overt attitude towards him. I remember clearly that during the 6th or 7th year my brother’s physical beauty caused me to shake before him with every fiber of my body in admiration as before some mystery revealed. At 10 years of age I wept through a whole night intoxicated with joy because it fell to my lot to lie down near his intoxicatingly sweet presence for rest. I had a feeling of shame such as I did not experience in the presence of my mother or sister. Clearly and deliberately, although unbeknown, of course, to him, I deified my brother from the 10th to the 15th year, and this worshipful attitude reached its highest from my 10th to the 12th year, when he married. I was disconsolately unhappy over it because that event removed him from our midst and I felt it was dreadful that he should lose his virgin beauty, as I thought.” (Hirschfeld, loc. cit., p. 46.)
12. Zuchtbarkeit der Homosexualität. Sexualprobleme, 6 Jahrg., 1910, No. 12.
13. This thought is very wonderfully expressed in Gerhart Hauptmann’s Griseldis. The father is jealous of the son because he, in turn, had been his father’s enemy and rival....
14. Cf. chapter on Jealousy in my collection of essays, “Was am Grunde der Seele ruht...,” Wien, 1909, Hofbuchhandlung Paul Knepler. English Version, The Depths of the Soul, translated by Dr. S. A. Tannenbaum, Moffat, Yard & Co., N. Y.
15. With his wonderful psychologic mastery Arthur Schnitzler has described such a pair in his best piece entitled, “Das weite Land.” Hofrichter, the manufacturer, who flutters from one love affair to another, and his wife, who consoles herself in the arms of a young Cadet, are the kind of a pair who love each other but go down in ruin rather than openly acknowledge their love.
16. Cf. chapter entitled, “Der Kampf der Geschlechter,” in my work, The Beloved Ego, translated by Dr. S. A. Tannenbaum, Moffat, Yard & Co., N. Y.
17. The flaring up of jealousy in old age during exhaustive conditions, an extraordinarily common occurrence, seems to be determined partly by endocrinic disorders and partly by the awakening of infantile predispositions. We also find frequent mention of the fact that morbid jealousy manifests itself after a prolonged convalescence in bed. Some physicians are inclined to trace the condition back to an intoxication. It seems to me more likely that the unusual opportunity of mulling things over in the mind is more likely the cause. We must also take into consideration that facing closely the possibility of death all ungratified wishes, including the homosexual, once more flare up, urgently pressing for gratification. This alone may lead to the flaring up also of paraphilias and homosexual tendencies during old age, when it must also be considered that on account of organic changes in the brain cortex the inhibitions are also weakened. I have repeatedly noticed that nursing care by a person of the same sex as the patient also plays a certain rôle. I have even seen directly as a consequence of prolonged invalidism the development of a homosexual feeling-attitude towards the nursing person, for instance, the flaring up of a passion for mother or sister. Regressions back into childhood frequently occur after infectious diseases. All the various infantile attitudes manifest themselves. Psychosexual infantilism, a subject which will be fully treated in a forthcoming volume of our “Disorders of the Emotions and the Instincts,” is most likely to break out particularly after a period of illness when one feels one’s self again a child.
18. Cf. Willy Schmidt, Inzestuöser Eifersuchtswahn, Gross’ Archiv, vol. LVII, 1914, p. 257.
19. Zur Radikalbehandlung der chronischen Paranoia. Jahrbuch f. psychoanalytische Forsch., Vol. III, 1912.
20. A symbolic representation of the identification of myself with the father.
21. A form of sexual disorder not infrequent among neurotics, suggesting a different sexual objective.
22. Hirschfeld naturally traces this morbid tendency back to the social ostracism of the homosexual. In my opinion that is a forced explanation. The very proneness of the homosexuals to affective disorders, their heightened sensibility, their morbid irritability, their endogenous depression prove that all homosexuals are severe neurotics. Hirschfeld may be able to trace the homosexual’s acute outbreaks of affective psychoses back to the actual conflicts. But it is impossible to link this heightened affectivity to the feminine attitude of the urnings. For if it were so, how could we explain the equally distressing analogous disorders among the urlinds? Hirschfeld refers to the anxiety states of the homosexuals (p. 916) and expressly states:
“This very condition is found frequently also among homosexuals who are psychically normal so far as their home relations are concerned.”
No—they are not normal with regard to home relations, they are severe neurotics on account of the repression of their heterosexuality. Superficial appearances are deceptive and many a person who appears outwardly to be the picture of health, a well balanced temperament, is inwardly the victim of a serious neurosis.... Hirschfeld refers further to the homosexual’s proneness to persecution manias and to delusions of reference. Concerning homosexual women he states:
“Compelled against their inclination to fulfill their marital duties the homosexual women become very nervous and, in addition to anxiety attacks, they suffer severe depressions.”...
How does Hirschfeld know that the depressions are due to the enforced fulfillment of marital duties? I know homosexual women who are divorced and suffer even more; I know homosexual unmarried women, who are as neurotic as the married women, and, like the latter, suffer of serious depressions. All these facts prove that the homosexual pays for his monosexuality just as dearly as the neurotic monosexual who is heterosexual.
23. Cf. Stekel, Berufswahl und Neurose, Gross’ Archiv, vol. XIX.
24. Beiträge zur Lehre von der konträrer Sexualempfindung Zeitschr. f. Psychol. u. Neurol., vol. VII, 1911.
25. I have at the present time under observation a soldier who for about three weeks masturbated 15 times (!) daily. Advanced hypochondriac. The motive seems to have been the development of a neurosis so he would be freed of military service.
26. The history of the same patient, as given by Ziemcke, refers to the same episode as follows: “At 17 years of age the first coitus with a peasant girl, pleasurable, no disorder.” A proof that the heterosexual episodes are always corrected in memory and modified in favor of a homosexual predisposition.
27. Regarding this occurrence Ziemcke relates: “Towards the last of his studies at Kiel he brought to his room a 12-year-old boy from the street under the pretext of carrying some books for him. When the boy returned he suggested making some experiments on him, tapped him first on the knee cap, then had him take off his stockings and kneel on the edge of the lowermost cabinet drawer; next he forced the boy to stand up stripped to the waist while he pricked him with a pen in the armpit and under the fingernails. After that he hung him by a rope tied around his hands, but the rope broke. Then he had the boy lie down on the sofa, lowered his trousers so as to expose the hips and gluteal region and proposed to pay the boy 5 pfennig for every one of 50 cane strokes. After the 43rd stroke the boy could not endure the pain any longer, so he increased the pay to 10 pfennig and gave him 5 additional strokes. It has been ascertained that the man had been drinking hard the night before carousing until daylight and according to his own testimony he was very nervous next day and had palpitation of the heart. He also stated that he had acted impulsively; he remembered well all the details of the occurrence but everything took place as in a haze. After the deed he had a feeling of relief, his usual excitement and unrest promptly subsided. Examination showed nothing physically abnormal and absence of any serious intellectual defect as well.”
28. The volume on Sadism and Masochism, in my Series on the Disorders of the Instincts and of the Emotions. English version by Van Teslaar.
29. At a meeting of the medical society in Odessa, a colleague was presented as one who had been treated unsuccessfully by me. He suffered compulsions of a most serious character and was one week under my care. I had proposed three months. Nevertheless he was brought forth as proof of the inefficacy of psychoanalysis. It happened that colleague Dr. W. was present, and he knew that the alleged analysis was of one week’s duration. He was able to apprise the meeting of the fact. In a few weeks that honorable sick physician placed himself under the professional care of Dr. W....
30. An “infantile sexual theory,” in which coitus is conceived sadistically as a squeezing.
31. Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, Vol. IV.
32. Cf. also my essay, Der Kampf der Geschlechter, the Struggle between the Sexes, in my work, The Beloved Ego, Moffat, Yard & Co., N. Y. I have now under treatment a very sick woman who has gone to pieces over a similar problem. She was anesthetic with all men. The one man who had just once roused her during sexual intercourse she hated and could kill.
33. Havelock Ellis and Moll (Handbuch der Sexualwissenschaften, Leipzig, F. C. W. Vogel, 1912) draw attention to this fact: “Both sexes often show a remarkable youthfulness in appearance which is preserved late into the adult state. The love of green, which is chiefly, normally, a favorite color with children, and especially with girls, is often observed. A certain degree of histrionic talent is not uncommon as well as an inclination towards tenderness, occasionally also a feminine love of adornments and jewels. It may be said of many of these physical and psychic characteristics that they denote a certain degree of infantilism, and this fits in with the view that homosexuality is traceable to aboriginal bisexuality; for the deeper we penetrate into the life history of the individual, the nearer we approach the bisexual stage.”
34. Dr. Paul Schrecker, Die Individualpsychologische Bedeutung der Kindheitserrinnerungen, Zentralbl. f. Psychoanalyse, Vol. IV.
35. Cp. the novel by Kafka, Die Verwandlung (Verlag von Kurt Wolff). It portrays the transformation of a man into a bedbug. It is obviously a sadistic fancy (the bedbug sucks blood). This meaning is not imparted to the patient so as not to influence the course of his associations.
36. The mouth as an erogenous zone. He expected kisses and meanwhile was satisfied with other sweets as a substitute. He is a confirmed lover of dainties and still relies on sweets which he is in the habit of carrying in his pockets.
37. This is a thought which troubles many neurotics. It is their way of belittling the persons who impress them and who thus make them realize their own inferiority.
38. Later will be shown the sadistic meaning of this phantasy. Urine is often a substitute for blood in the dream....
39. Cp. the boxes in the first dream (Merchant of Venice).
40. Cp. Sex and Dreams: The Language of Dreams, vol. I. Translation by James S. Van Teslaar.
41. Cp. Chapter on Maternal Body Dreams, in work mentioned above, Vol. II.
42. In the Tristan phantasy these reminiscences return. The father is the betrayed King. The episode of the father’s departure in that dream becomes clear only now. He died in time to avoid the experience of a second deception in love.
43. Cp. my laws of symbolic equivalents in Language of Dreams: All secretions and excreta are equal to one another as symbols.
44. Raffalovich, author of a small monograph on Die Entwickelung der Homosexualität (The Development of H.), Berlin, 1895, states in a few pages more truths than many authors disclose in heavy volumes of writing. He states, for instance, that “there are no distinct barriers between heterosexuals and homosexuals.” He also emphasizes the strong self-love of homosexuals: “They have die Leidenschaft der Æhnlichkeit.”
45. Page 248, of the German edition. “The neurotic’s attachment to the family is an overcorrection of former lack of love and is induced by a feeling of remorse.” “Poets formulate a longing for love because of their inability to love and that drives them to their continuous chase after love adventure. Love becomes the overstressed idea and the unattainable ideal of poets.” “The poet differs from the criminal because he is aware of his incapacity to love as a handicap, and from hatred and scorn of humanity he turns to love his fellow men.”
46. Domestikation und die secundären Geschlechtsmerkmale. Zeitschrift f. Sexualwissenschaft, Vol. III, No. 6–7, 1916.
47. An excellent account of the history of homosexuality may be found in the work of Hirschfeld (loc. cit.).
48. Politics, II. Quoted after Havelock Ellis and I. A. Symonds, Das konträre Geschlechtsgefühl, Leipzig, George H. Wiegands Verlag, 1896.
49. Die dorische Knabenliebe (Ihre Ethik and ihre Idee), Rheinisches Museum f. Philologie (Neue Folge), vol. 69, 1907.
The authors prove that boy love in Hellas was introduced by the Dorians. Although traces of the custom are found also among the Ionians, boy love, like knighthood, became fashionable in Greece through the Dorians. “It was permitted only to the free citizen, the knight, while slaves were forbidden to indulge in the practice often under penalty of death. The practice was regulated by strict rules and became a state institution. In Sparta, Crete, Thebes the training for (arety) ἀρεθή, among the dominant class was based on pederasty. The lovers in Sparta were held to a strict accountability for their ‘companions’ who became attached to them from their 12th year; so that they and not their youthful companions were punished for any shameful act on the part of the latter.” “The battlefield at Chaironeia was covered with the lovers... lying in pairs.” In Crete the choice of boy lovers assumed the form of bridal theft. The lover advised the boy’s family of his intention of stealing the boy. If the family did not like the “match” it tried to avoid the capture of the boy. The higher the lover’s social position the greater was the honor felt by the boy and his family. The chosen one was afterwards sent home carrying gifts....
In fact, at Thebes, Thera and in Crete such unions even enjoyed religious sanction. “The engagement of the lovers or rather their physical union certainty occurred under the protection of some god or hero at Thera and at Thebes. At Thebes we find the language unmistakably clear in the high archaic field inscriptions of the Seventh Century, chiselled in large letters upon the holy promontory near the City, at a distance of 50–70 meters from the temple of Apollo Karneios and on the holy site dedicated to Zeus. They read as follows: “On this holy place, under protection of Zeus, Kerion has consummated his union with the son of Bathykles and proclaiming it proudly to the world dedicates to it this imperishable memorial. And many Thereans with him, and after him, have united themselves with their boys on this same holy spot.””
At Crete it was considered a shame for a boy to possess no knightly lover. On the other hand it was a great honor for a boy to be wanted by many lovers.
For the lovers and for the boys these relations had an excellent effect. Each was inspired to do his best in order to prove his mettle and be ἀγαθός ανήρ (agathoi anyr). The heroic tales even took note of this love. The wondrous deeds of a Herakles were carried out in honor of the male lover Eurystheus. Repelling a wooing knight was considered ignominious,—a blot on one’s honor. Plutarch relates the story how Aristodamus struck down with his sword an obstinate boy: “Man gerät unwilkürlich in die Sprache unseres ritterlichen Ehrenkomments,”—states Bethe.
With that act the knight transferred his ἀρετή (arety), knighthood, upon the boy. It had a symbolic meaning. Among the Spartans the pæderast was called εἰοπνήλας (eiopnylas), from εἰοπνειν (eiopnein), meaning, the one who blows something in (the inblower). But what was it that the pederast blew into the boy? Clearly the πνευμα (pneuma), the soul, a belief which has come down from the oldest period (Bible) surviving to this day in Christianity. According to primitive conceptions the soul of man resided in his various secreta and excreta. Urine, fæces, blood and semen were magical substances inasmuch as they contained the life principle. With his male seed the Dorian endowed his boy with knightly prowess. (Similarly the savages in New Guinea drink the urine of the chieftain in order to acquire his skill and strength. Bethe mentions numerous similar instances.) The semen was regarded as the seat of the soul.
Bethe points out also that the liver, the heart and more particularly the phallus were similarly identified with the soul. The reader is referred to the original study for further details.
The remarkable notion of blowing one’s soul into another a posteriori, is traced by the author to primitive beliefs. Animals showed no objection to these love-offerings; and men who ascribed magical properties to urine and fæces undoubtedly lacked any feeling of revulsion against these excreta.... Since the anus was looked upon as the portal for angry demons, why should not the benevolent magical power of heroes be introduced the same way?
“The notion which led to the development of pæderasty as a State Institution among the Dorians, could not long endure. It had to give way finally.... But boy love persisted as a widespread custom and stood throughout antiquity and throughout the whole extent of Greek culture as a necessary feature of decent superior Greek citizenship. The Christian church fought the heathen custom from the beginning and was the first to drive pæderasty from Christian society; unable to root it out by spiritual means, it adopted criminal punishment in the year 342.”
That is, briefly, the philologist’s account, who also states that during the pre-Doric period (Homer, for instance) the custom of boy love had as yet no roots as an Institution.
50. Zur Psychologie der Vita Sexualis, Allg. Zeitschr. f. Psychol., 1894.
51. I am unable to corroborate the contention of Ferenczi in his Zur Nosologie der männlichen Homosexualität (Homoerotik), published in Zeitschrift f. ärztl. Psychoanalyse, Vol. II, 189, 1914. He assumes two forms of homosexuality: 1. the passive subject-homoerotic, who represents an inborn state and stands for an intermediary type in Hirschfeld’s sense and is incurable and 2. the active object-homoerotic, a type he describes as a special form of compulsion neurosis. The passive type never consults the physician for his trouble,—he is a genuine homosexual; the active type is unhappy over his condition, he shows the typical symptoms. Both share in common the peculiarity that their own sex is an essential condition for the attainment of their love-object and remains so throughout life.
I have seen many homosexuals who are interchangeably active or passive. On the other hand I have seen active homosexuals who were very much troubled over their condition and passive homosexuals who have been cured. Incidentally I may mention that Ferenczi borrows thoughts from my essay on Masken der Homosexualität, without indicating the source. Since Freud has decreed against me his anathema, the narrower Freudian school looks upon my work as common property to be appropriated at will by any one.
52. Handbuch der Sexualwissenschaften, p. 664.
53. A new orientation in matters of sexual morality is on the way in spite of tremendous opposition. I refer those interested to Eulenburg’s excellent work, Moral und Sexualität (Verlag, Marcus & Webster, Bonn, 1916).