Read Ebook: Bi-sexual love; the homosexual neurosis by Stekel Wilhelm Van Teslaar James S James Samuel Translator

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d a bastard she transferred towards all men.

Another case: Former officer, 38 years of age, mother said to have been a very nervous woman. Very shy and bashful as a child in the presence of older persons or strangers. At high school had to repeat the same class twice, was coached and succeeded at last to pass the army examination for officer. After a few years was dismissed from the army because he had mishandled his man-servant, went to South-West Africa, there settled as a farmer, and as a volunteer participated in several small riots.

His first sexual feelings arose around the 12th year; he contends that till that time he knew absolutely nothing about sexual matters. At that age an experience brought his attention to the subject of sex for the first time; he played circus with a younger sister and with his 10-year old uncle and sat on the latter's back. While imitating a rider's movements he noticed that his penis became stiff and he had a pleasurable sensation wetting himself in front. He did not know the meaning of this occurrence but was too shy to tell anyone about it. Shortly after that he tried deliberately to reproduce similar situations; whenever he succeeded he also tried to attain ejaculation. He insists that he was not attracted particularly to his uncle, whom alone he had used for this form of gratification, nor to any other boy or man, his only desire at the time was to achieve ejaculation. Later during his high school years, when he had opportunity to gratify himself in the same way, he met a young colleague of his own age, a strong and beautiful boy, who appealed to him very strongly and with that boy playing the passive role he indulged more and more frequently in sexual deeds. In fact as soon as he met that particular boy the thought occurred to him that he would like to have him for the gratification of his sexual feelings in the manner peculiar to himself. During play he used all manner of excuses to climb upon his friend's back and to imitate a rider's galloping movements until he had ejaculation. Subsequently he found frequent occasion to use other colleagues in the same way. After drinking it was particularly difficult for him to restrain himself; that is why he frequently had to do with soldiers while intoxicated and one day he was caught and this led to his dismissal from the army. In order to get rid of his unnatural inclination he took up a girl, had normal intercourse with her a few times but without any pleasurable feeling on his part, although in order to accomplish this he had to suppose himself riding a man in the manner customary with him, and eventually he acquired a gonorrheal infection. Then he migrated to South-West Africa, but even there was unable to master his inclination, felt himself impelled to maintain relations with young Hottentots, was caught at it, sentenced to jail, and finally banished from the Country.

In this case the gonorrheal infection seems to have put an end to his heterosexual period.

In this case the gonorrheal infection and the trivial incident during the journey through the Orient furnished the occasion for the outbreak of homosexuality. But is not the subject in error regarding the strength of his homosexual predisposition? It is interesting to note that his homosexual attitude is promptly beatified and idealized through the addition of psychic factors. Indeed, the homosexuals display a greater love intoxication than the heterosexuals. Such a degree of love frenzy as is displayed by the homosexuals is hardly ever seen among the heterosexuals. Homosexuality represents a harbor of refuge, an attempt to lose one's self exclusively in one direction, which must be conceived as an attempt on the part of the psyche to neutralize all other tendencies by the overemphasis of that supreme passion.

We find frequently that the homosexuals contend that their previous heterosexual leanings were exclusively physical. Psychically their love relations must be exclusively homosexual. In fact it is common to find men sublimating into friendship their craving for psychic love while woman remains with them merely an instrument for sin .

Homosexuality often develops also in women following an infection:

Let us consider closely the case of an exalted nature like that girl. She goes through her first graceful love fever, she is about to become a true woman, she thinks "him" a princely man, a "majestic" personality when unexpectedly she undergoes the experience of witnessing that very God-like man behave like a common beast.... Jealousy and a revulsion of feeling unite in her at the terrible sight rousing such a tremendous affect that forever after she feels an unspeakable horror of all men.

A remarkable parallel is furnished by the next case which I record from among my own observations:

Our subject has had a number of chances to get married but she withdraws coyly from every man the moment one comes close to her. She feels a certain inclination towards older married men and she understands in consequence how a woman might become interested in a friend's husband. "When I did find a man whom I liked, I was unlucky," she declares, "for I discovered that he was already engaged to a friend of mine." Truly she fell in love only with girls and women. Her first romantic attachment was to a woman school teacher, whom she also visited at her home. That teacher wanted this wealthy girl to marry her brother and brought the two into contact as often as possible. She liked the brother because he looked so very much like her beloved friend. But if the sister was not in the room their conversation lagged and she could talk only in monosyllables. She sent flowers and costly gifts to her teacher. Her supreme desire was to sleep once in the same bed with that teacher and she often dreamed of it. She even proposed to take her on a journey. The teacher could not go and hesitated also because she found her pupil's attentions too oppressive. The teacher actually suffered on account of her admirer's deep jealousy, for the girl turned ill if she so much as found other girls visiting her. At any rate, quite a circle of girls in the class admired the teacher.

Later she fell in love with a girl friend whom she embraced and kissed warmly numberless times because it gave her a wonderful warm feeling to do so. On the other hand the kisses of an uncle made no impression on her whatever. No man interested her in the least. For a long time she did not know that she was homosexual, but she was well aware since her childhood that she was unlike other children. She was always as wild as a boy and her mother frequently said to her: "there are ten rough boys in you!" She climbed trees, ran around wildly and always preferred to play with boys, did not care for dolls, coaxed to be given a saddle horse and a gun until her father was driven to despair over her and exclaimed sometimes: "you are really a spoiled boy!"

During the analysis she recalled a number of homosexual and heterosexual experiences. Already at 12 years of age she had an experience with an uncle who came to her in bed and played with her. She could not recall whether they indulged in coitus that time. With girl friends she also had various adventures. She confesses in fact that she has been in the habit of masturbating since her 12th year, when she was taught by a girl, and that at one time she often indulged in the phantasy that a man was having coitus with her. In fact, as late as her 16th year she fell "heels-over-head" in love with a friend of her father's. He was much younger than her father but belonged to the same circle.

While she talks at first only in favorable terms about her father and dwells mostly on his lovely qualities, his mild character, his imposing appearance, etc., at the same time she begins to show underneath a growing hatred. The father had in fact left her in critical circumstances. Every one considered them millionaires, because her father had kept up a very big house. After his death it turned out that he had been spending his capital and that there had been left practically only her share which was, however, large enough to permit her and her mother to live in comfort. Her mother had always endured the life of a martyr. The father had maintained relations with the cook in the house during the last ten years. She was a fat, shapeless vulgar person. In fact, mother and daughter were just tolerated in their home. Once her mother endeavored to dismiss the cook and the father was mad and grew almost violent showing her mother the door threatening that she might leave and take along her daughter if she did not like it in the house. After that the cook was naturally more arrogant and unbearable than ever so that the poor mother passed her days weeping until finally she reconciled herself to that state of things. It was possible to throw that cook out of the house only after her father was lying ill in bed. That daring woman started a law suit claiming that the father had promised to settle on her a home and an income.... She lost that suit because the father testified upon his death-bed that the woman's contentions were false. The subject relates a number of other relevant incidents but does not recall having ever witnessed any intimacies between her father and the cook.

However, her dreams seem to point in that sense. Thus, for instance, among others she had the following dream:

She recalls that that particular driver was in their service when the cook was a younger woman and that her father had dismissed him. He watched for her father once, as he was coming out of a restaurant to waylay him. But her father was stronger and threw the servant to the ground with such force that the fellow fractured a bone. But she thinks that the neighborhood did not know the true reason for the battle, every one naturally thinking that the servant planned the attack out of revenge.

Whenever a man tried to get closer to her it reminded her of the painful incident she had witnessed, which summed up in her mind all the misery in her home, the whole outrageous situation, the humiliation of her mother, and her father's morbid passion. For her father who did have some splendid qualities and who enjoyed an enviable position in society she once had as great a love and as deep a respect as for her noble mother. Then she had to go through the disastrous situation in the house. That experience could but serve her as a warning against men, a warning and a lesson! It could not but implant deeply in her soul a lasting dread of man and of man's terrible passion. She naturally shrank back from any close contact with man for there was always a picture before her mind which plainly carried the message: "do not trust any man lest you should go through what your mother did!"

"I was about five years of age when during a walk accompanied by the nursemaid I saw at some distance a man in the act of masturbating; without knowing what it was, the picture persisted in my mind for years. In my dreams until my fourteenth year a playmate occupied the chief role. At thirteen years of age I fell in love with a school comrade who took but little interest in me; what roused my interest in him in particular was probably the fact that he was the one who brought to the class information about sexual matters. We removed to another City and I lost sight of the boy. Although I knew nothing specific about sex at the time I sought contact with those who roused my feelings.

"A stranger, a man of about 35 years of age, enticed me and as soon as he had me he carried on pederasty with me. I felt that there was something repulsive in what he was doing, but I was too weak to oppose myself against his influence. In about three months he disappeared. Now I knew what masturbation was especially as there had occurred a number of orgies at school.

"At eighteen years of age I left school, and while the others among my comrades began showing an inclination towards the female sex I found myself attracted in every way exclusively to man. Often at the insistence of some of my friends I tried to come into contact with women of the half world but every time the attempt filled me only with disgust and aversion. When I see a woman taking an interest in me I am filled with a horrible feeling. That was one more reason why I felt attracted to the male sex. When I love a man I do not think of sexual attraction, but I seek to find in him precisely what I, in turn, feel myself ready to give; exclusive devotion, loyalty, tenderness; when I love a man, everything else pales into insignificance for me."

It would seem that in this instance the memory of the masturbating man, an incident which the boy had witnessed during childhood, determined for him the actual course of his sexual development. In the previous case the trauma acted as a warning. In this case it seems to have acted like a perpetual stimulus, since a child does not possess the usual moral scruples, and the first excitation must have been tremendous. That picture stayed in his memory for years, it fixed itself and persisted permanently in that young man's memory. In the K. S. case, mentioned above, the trauma was associated with disgust; it served as a revulsion against heterosexuality.

In this particular case the memory of the incident was associated with desire. It was utilized in positive form as an inciter to homosexuality. Thus we find that the problem is rather complicated. I confess that for some time I was unable to see my way clear in the midst of these facts so long as I was one-sided in my views and thought that the condition arises exclusively in one way. But I know now that a number of paths may lead equally to homosexuality and that this is a subject which requires a much more thorough study. We must find out whether psychic factors are invariably at work behind every case of homosexuality or whether there is an exclusively psychic and a specially organic homosexuality. Such cases could be called pseudo-homosexuality.

As a contribution to this question I find of interest the following case, reported by Bloch, as the history reveals the trauma and the bearing of the trauma upon the development of the condition. It is a case of male homosexuality:

Does not this case illustrate clearly the influence of first impressions and the significance of the bisexual foundation in the homosexual attitude? The man is seduced by an elderly man and after that he longs continually to be seduced by an elderly man, in a manner recalling that unforgettable scene. Although capable of heterosexual acts, this side of his nature persists as a sort of compulsory tendency and drives him again into the arms of elderly men to seek that form gratification which was the first he had ever experienced in his life. His heterosexual leanings are repressed. He himself admits that he always saw to it that all such love affairs were nipped in the bud. In other words he is deliberately fighting off all heterosexual stimuli and encouraging the homosexual excitations. Then he arrives at the realisation that he is not like others.... In fact he is bisexual and has the capacity to act as a bisexual being. A careful analysis would have disclosed many interesting features. We wanted only to show how this young man was continually seeking to find his teacher , and what a great deal of neurotic overgrowth stood back of this desire.

A merchant, 34 years of age, mother neuropathic; at 9 years of age was taught masturbation by a schoolmate; also, homosexual relations with a brother; fellatio; urolagnia; at 14 years of age first love for a school colleague.

"I am at the present time 31 years of age, lean yet well built, devoted to male love, therefore unmarried. My relatives were in good health, mentally normal, there were two suicides in our family, on mother's side. My sexual feelings arose when I was about seven years of age, the sight of the naked abdomen being particularly exciting. I gratified my instinct by allowing my sputum to trickle down the abdomen. When I was eight years old we had in our house a little nurse maid of about thirteen years. I found it very pleasurable to rub my genitals against hers, but there could be no coitus on my part at that time. During the ninth year I went to live among strangers and went to the gymnasium. A colleague showed me his genitals and that filled me with disgust. But in the family where my parents arranged for me to board there was a very beautiful girl who prevailed upon me--I was but little over nine years old at the time--to sleep with her. I found the experience most pleasurable. My penis, though small, was already capable of erection and I had intercourse with her almost daily. This continued for several months. Then my parents transferred me to another gymnasium; I missed the girl very much and during my tenth year I began to masturbate. But the act inspired me only with disgust. I masturbated but moderately, always felt deeply remorseful afterwards, although I could discover no bad consequences."

Whether late homosexuality is determined every time through definite traumatic incidents, I am unable to state, because I have not had the opportunity thoroughly to analyze such a case. The next case seems to me to show that strong emotionally toned episodes may turn a latent into manifest homosexuality:

An army officer, 46 years of age, consults me for complete impotence with women. The impotence is of four years' duration. He has become acquainted with a lady of whom he is very fond and who enjoys an excellent financial status. He could now be a happy man, if he only were a complete man. Asked about his morning erections he blushes. The trouble is not with erections, they do not fail him on other occasions. He is impotent only in contact with women. Finally he admits that since his 38th year he has been carrying on homosexual relations. Since that time his interest in women gradually vanished and he has become impotent. His anamnesis reveals some significant facts. He recalls no homosexual deeds or excitations during childhood and before puberty. He was sexually precocious, masturbated already during the primary school period and was attracted by girls. First coitus at seventeen in a house of prostitution. After that he felt he wanted women very badly but had no homosexual inclination. Then a tremendous experience came into his life which agitated him and after that he was depressed for some time. That was just before his first homosexual act.

"Can you tell me something about the nature of that agitation?"

"I find it painful to speak of it."

"But you expect help in a rather difficult situation. How should I appraise the situation in its true light if you won't furnish me the necessary information?"

"You are right. But there are things of which it is almost impossible to speak. It is about my mother. But I suppose I cannot help myself otherwise. I must tell you all.

"I have always honored and respected my mother. I was 38 years of age when I received a telegram calling me to her sick bed. She passed away shortly after my arrival. As the only son it was my duty to put everything in order after her. I went through her old correspondence and in a box I came across a mass of love letters. First I was not going to read them. But curiosity got the best of me. I said to myself: 'every married person loves once in his or in her life some one else, why should not that be permitted to my mother when father died while she was still very young.' If I only had not done that! I found not one letter, I found hundreds of letters and ... they were not all from one man. The letters were so vulgar, so plain, so cynical, so revolting that I wished myself dead. I lost the holiest thing in my life. Before then I always dreamed of finding a woman like mother, and her type of womanhood always stood before me as the ideal. Now I found that she could be bought and she was to be had for ordinary degrading purposes. The tone which her lovers assumed in those letters was so revolting that I imagined the worst. Since then I feel a deep scorn for all womanhood. Shortly after that I yielded to the temptations of a homosexual friend....

"Do you believe that my impotence has some relation to that occurrence? I have often thought of it. Whenever I go to a woman I cannot help thinking of the box in which I found mother's letters. After such an experience how is it possible for one still to consider marriage?"

A late homosexuality induced by a very tragic experience. Naturally the man was always latently homosexual. But it was that experience which turned him into a manifest homosexual. Unfortunately I am unable to state whether he married the woman and became heterosexual again or not, because I never saw him after that.

A 28-year-old woman, member of an educational institution, of high moral repute, is in despair because she fears she is no longer able to control her homosexual longings. If she meets a young girl she is nearly overpowered with the impulse to kiss her then and there. The unknown girl's face haunts her for weeks afterwards and she can not sleep tortured with regret because she did not gratify her impulse to kiss the girl as she does with her acquaintances. She is particularly distracted at the thought that with her tendernesses and attentions, she may mislead into homosexual counter-affection a fourteen-year-old girl who is close to her, although nothing out of the way has happened between them. But the little friend already trembles with excitement when she is embraced and her great affection leads her to tears if she does not see her beloved often enough.

At the boarding school her one-sided erotic inclination was further developed in the course of passionate friendships. At the age of nineteen she made a couple of heterosexual erotic attempts but they proved unsuccessful. The first affair was with a hot-blooded artist of womanly appearance. Her love was deep, the young girl floated in ideal conversations and gladly exchanged kisses with the young man. After his departure they maintained a warm correspondence full of tenderness but without giving one another any formal promise.

Five or six weeks after parting from the beloved friend she became engaged to a smart young man because she was in despair and she had given up the plan of a higher education for herself as she was not getting along at all well with a relative at home. She thought she loved her young man but soon after the engagement she began fearing that she had perhaps undertaken more than she intended to carry out. The soft, shy young man apparently resembled her father. For seven months she played at being in love, vomitted every morning and wished she were dead. Finally she gave up her engagement and concentrated all her feelings upon members of her own sex. She maintained however her delicate womanly sensitiveness throughout and always gave the impression of a girlish creature. So long as she found homosexual gratification, she took little interests in a career, or in nature, art and religion; but as soon as her inclinations were thwarted, her ideal interests came strongly to the foreground. She herself compared these vacillations with the movements of a pair of scales.

The first dream is as follows:

Just before the dream the girl in her despair had offered a fervent prayer which made her feel a little easier. Before the analysis the girl was extremely restless and longed for her beloved, but she said to herself that she would only bring misfortune upon that poor girl's head.

The housekeeper, that false cat who played a dependent r?le towards my parents, made me ill with her long-continued tendernesses . The trouble grew worse, something valuable tore in me and the homosexual form of love established itself permanently . Now I am incapable of loving a man, I cannot be a mother or raise a family of my own,--a wish that has already cost me so many tears .

Perhaps this interpretation will be doubted as something artificial and rather forced. But the subject recalls further details of the dream and relates them subsequently. Such additions are of extraordinary significance because usually they contain the censured, the repressed material. She recalls that the cat was going to bite her at first on the foot . Further on she relates a continuation of the dream:

In fact homosexuality does resemble ankylosis. The free operation of sexuality appears to be restricted, a single point is fixed and every movement takes place thereafter only within the range of that point of fixation.

Is it possible for psychoanalysis to loosen up such psychic ankyloses and to free once more the bound-down energies? In this particular case can psychoanalysis remove the fear of man and the woman's doubt whether she can fill a woman's r?le? How far reaching are the possibilities of psychic orthopedics in the case of homosexuals?

I must ask the reader to follow me patiently through the complex inquiries which follow before attempting to answer these questions.

Erotism and Sexuality--The Motive Power of Unfulfilled Wishes--The Male Protest--The Relations of the Homosexual to his Mother--Hirschfeld's Schematic Outline--Infantile Impressions--Influence of the Stronger Parent--Letter of an Expert.

Investigators interested in the problem of homosexuality point out that the condition occurs in families and see therein a support for the contention that this condition is inborn. Homosexuals usually have a homosexual brother or sister, or one or the other of their parents is similarly afflicted, in spite of marriage. But if we think of neurosis and of homosexuality as a retrogression, if we bear in mind that all neurotics show a marked overemphasis of sexual traits, the reason for these facts is plain. What is inherited is not the homosexuality but the powerful bisexual disposition which leads to morbid tendencies. Furthermore we must bear in mind that the influence of family life is practically the same for all children. Yet one child escapes lasting injury while another is tremendously handicapped.

Before looking more closely into the influence of family life upon the development of homosexuality we must point out two very significant considerations.

One of these is the division of all love into spiritual and physical; the next point is the double attitude of every homosexual as male and female. For the present I need only emphasize the fact that persons readily adjust themselves so that one sexual component is expressed on the spiritual, the other upon the physical plane. Let us call spiritual love, "erotism," and physical love, "sexuality." The average homosexual applies his erotism to male friendships and his sexuality he places in the service of heterosexual love; the progress of culture consists therein that heterosexual love is also gradually sublimated, that is, turned more and more into erotism. The homosexual, for instance, turns his erotism towards women, and applies his sexuality in his relation with men. But at times he may turn his whole erotism into the homosexual channel and suppress his whole sexuality. Or he may endeavor to find certain spiritual qualities in his sexual ideal, trying to turn also part of his erotism into the homosexual path. Thus we meet most remarkable variations. For an example we may mention the homosexual who is interested only in coachmen, soldiers, servants and peasants. His sexual ideal he finds only among the lower orders. Such a man has turned his whole erotism towards women. He seeks the friendship of mature women, sometimes also the company of fine men, but sexually he can be active only in contact with men of low order.

This peculiarity already indicates a judgment-attitude in sexual matters. Sexuality is perceived as degrading, as compelling a return to the first aspects of "natural" life. The attitude is further complicated by the homosexual's overemphasis of one or the other sex during his acts. If he is an active homosexual he preserves his individuality, identifying his selfhood with some male ideal, the father, the brother, the teacher, etc. On the other hand, if he plays a passive r?le, he identifies himself with a woman, the mother, or her polar obverse, the prostitute. Occasionally he carries on both r?les and the relations between sexuality and erotism become reversed and transposed. That is what complicates the problem so tremendously. The urning transfers his erotism to men and his sexuality is roused in relation with women only, but the latter is soon turned into disgust. Or the urlind loves spiritually only women and finds all men repulsive, unbearable and disgusting.

In order to acquire a psychologic insight into every case as it presents itself, and to judge of its significance, it is necessary to answer the question: what does the homosexual aim to accomplish with his actions? What does the homosexual act represent in the subject's fancy. In most cases of this character reality does not enter into consideration.

The formation of man's character traits begins during the first years of life. He tests his powers upon the surroundings and his environment furnish him the picture of life. In the eyes of children who are not self-reliant the father must be a giant because he overawes them with his genial appearance and his image generates in their soul a feeling of inferiority which marks them for life. Every child has an ambition: to excel his father. This wish may express itself first in the desire to attain father's size, to be as strong and big as he. But later the wish shows itself in that quiet but determined competitive struggle which has always existed between father and son, or mother and daughter. The strong son takes after the powerful father. But suppose the father is weak and the mother is the one who dominates the house? What sort of picture of life becomes imprinted upon the child's mind under the circumstances? Can it help believing that women dominate the world, can he escape taking the attitude either of wishing to be a woman and rule, or of fleeing from woman when she clashes with his "will to power" as man?

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