III
Jealousy involves self-love rather than love.
—Rochefoucauld.
—Rochefoucauld.
—Rochefoucauld.
—Rochefoucauld.
Jealousy is the projection of one’s own insufficiencies to the surroundings.[14]It is an atavistic awakening of the brutal sense of self such as was common to the primordial man protecting his possessions. All children are jealous. Jealousy leads us back to the sources of man’s instinctive life.
It is not my intention to take up the whole subject of jealousy. But morbid jealousy shows certain definite, almost regular, relations to homosexuality which we must consider. We have seen that homosexuality may be hidden from consciousness. That is also true of jealousy. I have seen many neurotics who have suffered tremendously on account of their jealousy, without being aware of it. In the masking of neurosis jealousy assumes most remarkable forms.
The next case illustrates the masking of jealousy,its fusion with homosexuality, and contains various points of psychologic interest:
70. A highly intelligent subject, H. J., writes me: “Have you already reflected on how we discern certain similarities on certain days and fail to do so at other times? You are undoubtedly aware that neurotics and normal persons are fond of finding resemblances when they formulate identifications. The lover finds that the beloved walks like mother, or that she talks like the latter, and if physically no resemblance can be established he finds the same mental characteristics, the same soul, perhaps the same shortcomings. But I want to speak of an entirely different peculiarity. One forenoon I see a man, who looked enough like my friend, X, the painter, to be taken for the latter. I walk up to him and say: Hello, X,—still under the impression of that mistake. A strange face wearing a beard of familiar form is staring at me. I offer the usual apologetic explanation and go my way. After a while I see again my friend X, this time somewhat dimly, not quite so certain of it as before. I recover from this illusion quickly enough.
“By that time my psychologic curiosity is roused and it occurs to me that my wife told me that morning she was going to visit the painter, X, during the forenoon. I listened indifferently to the statement, merely asking her to give him my greetings. Buta certain unrest must have risen in the unconscious: your wife goes to the painter who likes her and makes love to her. Nothing of that in consciousness at all. Painters are a light-minded class who do not take such things seriously. Who knows whether your wife will be strong enough to resist?
“These secret fears led to a symptomatic act. I accosted a stranger as X, the painter. In other words,—a wish fulfilment. For if I meet X on the street he cannot possibly be in his studio at this time. My wish is that he shall not be at home. My wife shall go to the studio and find: Mr. X is not in.... That wish came up on three different occasions that morning. For I thought I saw Mr. X in the street three different times. Moreover, I project X upon strange faces. Because I think constantly of X, because my mind is wholly preoccupied with him, because I am innerly preoccupied with the uncountenanced thought: what does X now do with your wife?—I see X everywhere.Ringstrasseis filled with men looking like him; every man is a Mr. X.
“The illusion at this juncture denotes also another suspicion. An additional thought renders the first one pregnant with significance. Yesterday I heard the opinion expressed at a gathering, ‘Any woman may be had and there is no such thing as a virtuous woman!’ I opposed vehemently that cynical thought (Pauschalverdächtigung) and I tried to thebest of my ability to point out the ridiculous and unfair implications of this notion. And today I am surprised to find myself entertaining the thought. These men who look like X, the great unknown, are alike attractive and powerful men, just like X. You are reflecting: Who knows whether this or that man is not actually your wife’s lover? Why do the words from Faust come into my mind: ‘The whole town has her’?... In justice to my wife’s honor I must now state that she is in fact an exemplary woman and that I entertain no trace of suspicion about her conduct. But I am deliberately looking for excuses to vindicate myself. I mean to believe that every woman is guilty, including therefore my own wife, so as to justify in my eyes my new love affairs.... I am envious of X, of his free ways with women, and would like to be in his place, receiving ladies in the studio. I would like to be X. In my phantasy I am X, and see myself as X in every stranger.
“A lady of my acquaintance always saw her deceased husband on the street in the person of some stranger who seemed closely to resemble him. This peculiar resemblance to strangers was noticeable particularly when her mind turned to light and frivolous thoughts. As if the image of the husband came forward to warn and protect her: ‘It is only three years since I have passed away and already you begin to turn your mind to trivial joys? Beware.I watch you from Heaven and I see everything you do.’”
We admit freely that our subject is a keen-minded psychologist possessing an extraordinary capacity for introspection, yet this excellent piece of self-analysis seemed to me to overlook something important. I therefore write Mr. H. J. that I should like to talk this interesting episode over with him and I invite him to call on me. He accepts the invitation. From our conversation I report only some of the more important points:
“Has it not struck you that the men who impressed you as bearing resemblance were exclusively attractive and powerful men?”
“No, because my friend, X, the painter, is also an attractive and well built man. Others would not look like him....”
“Are you also otherwise jealous?”
“No; not in the least; only about X,—and even that I did not know or was perhaps too proud to admit to myself.”
“What is your attitude towards X? Do you care for him also as you do...?”
“... For my wife, you mean? I do. I love him. He is a charming fellow.”
“Is it not strange that you should be jealous precisely of the one man whom you also like so well?”
He reflects a while and finds no answer. I explain to him that it shows a repressed homosexual dispositiontowards his friend. The trend of his unconscious thought is: “If I were a woman I could not withstand him.” Perhaps the thought goes even further than that: “Too bad I am not a woman for then I would enjoy that beautiful man....”
He sees at once the relationship between his jealousy and the unrecognized inner homosexual disposition. He relates that this man is the only friend whom he greets with a kiss after a prolonged absence, that he likes to take him by the arm and to hold his hand.
In short, he himself is in love with his friend. He sees his friend everywhere and the slightest resemblances impress themselves strongly on his mind. They are emanations from his one thought:I like him and I wish I were a woman to yield to him.
It is very tempting to try to trace the various paths of unconscious jealousy. But that would lead us too far off our present theme. As we are confronted with a very complicated condition which may have the most varied roots I propose to give a few clinical illustrations from my own practice and to discuss the various forms of jealousy on the basis of these data.
71. The first case of jealousy which I had occasion to observe was that of a physician’s wife. The woman, 45 years of age, relates: “Perhaps you can free me from a painful condition which embitters mywhole life and turns my marriage into a veritable hell. I have been married already 22 years and can assert that I have not yet had a happy day except when my husband is all day alone with me and we have no occasion to come into contact with another female person. He is a physician and already during our engagement I was jealous of all his women patients. I did not know this awful trait in myself before. At any rate it was not so pronounced or I should have not married my husband. At first I was jealous of my immediate acquaintances and friends, particularly of the very pretty women among them. After marriage my condition grew worse and worse. During the consultation hours I watched behind the door and shivered with actual nervous chills in my excitement. My husband was a woman specialist and a very popular woman specialist at that. I implored him to abandon that specialty and to take up any other. I admit that the fact of his being a woman specialist had at first excited my interest in him and had a great deal to do with my choice of the man. I thought to myself: the man sees so many beautiful women, he sees them naked, and yet has chosen you,—the thought flattered me immensely. That was well enough at first, but later the feeling of jealousy grew in its stead.
“I had a very pretty woman friend who was taking treatment from my husband. What I endured during her visits is beyond my powers to describe. Isaid to myself: ‘She is now taking off her blouse and now her petticoat. He is now examining, looking at her bosom, and now she lifts herself upon the examination table, she stretches her limbs apart....’ I suffered hellish torments. I was convinced that my husband could not withstand this woman’s charms and would kiss her. I had a serious quarrel with him; I quarreled with my friend, who turned from me with indignation. Our marriage relations grew worse on that account. I tortured my husband so that he had to allow me to watch through a carefully hidden peep-hole what was going on in the consultation room. In that manner I convinced myself that my husband was physically true to me. But even though he swore a thousand times that the women did not excite him in the least I could not believe him. I stuck to one thing which I harped on daily: ‘Give up your specialty.’ Years thus passed in quarrels and dispute. I have now a married daughter of my own and I thought to myself that with advancing age my condition would change. But not at all! It grows worse and I transfer now my jealousy also to my son-in-law, I am jealous for my daughter. Fortunately, she has no real reason to feel jealous and laughs at me....
“I am also jealous of my daughter. I would like to preserve her love for myself only and I begrudge her husband. Although she made an excellentmatch, I was not satisfied and treated my son-in-law very unfairly. I was unhappy over it but could not help it. I have consulted already the most famous specialists, have been for six weeks under hypnotic treatment by Prof. X. I have already kept away from my husband for three months at a stretch,—nothing has helped.”
That is the sufferer’s history. What is the meaning of this jealousy?
The root of this jealousy is a non-conscious homosexuality. She is jealous of her woman friend because she herself is in love with the friend. She puts herself in the rôle of the man, the physician, and concludes that in his position she could not resist the temptation. She imagines herself in the man’s place; she scrutinizes every woman with hungry looks. The peep-hole in the consultation room serves on the one hand the purpose of calming down her jealousy and of giving the poor husband a few quiet hours; on the other hand it enables her to participate in everything that is taking place and to gratify her craving asvoyeuse. This control is her daily homosexual excitant, the means through which she rouses the flames of her passion only to still them afterwards upon her husband.
After the explanation was reached there was a marked improvement in her condition. The womansaw that her love for the daughter was homosexual and that this was the reason why she was so jealous of her son-in-law.
The occurrence is far from rare, and many a marriage has been wrecked on account of it. The angry mother-in-law is always the mother who cannot live without her daughter and who wants to show her daughter that the husband is untrue and does not appreciate her and how much more she truly loves the daughter.... I have also often seen the daughter, after a timorous attempt at married life, return penitently back to the mother. I have seen mothers who fight for their daughters with a lover’s passion and with their tremendous jealousy putting all sorts of difficulties in the way of any pretenders to the daughter’s hand. I have found that kind of jealousy frequently as the root of melancholia. I refer in this connection to Case 132 in my “Nervöse Angstzustände” (2nd ed., p. 363).
72. The next case of jealousy shows the same roots. A married woman, 30 years of age, consults me on account of an unexplainable jealousy which has been torturing her for about four weeks. She tells the story of her jealousy: She engaged a new servant, a very young girl, somewhat coquettish, but who at first glance seemed to her very sympathetic. After one week she felt jealous and found that her husband, who usually did not so much as look at theservants in the house, was extremely friendly and courteous towards that girl. It seemed to her even that he was bestowing longing glances on the girl. At first she kept silent because she hesitated to speak of the matter to her husband. But after a time she reproached him about it: he must be more strict. She requested him to assume a more severe tone in his relations with the girl. Her husband laughed at her. He said he talked to the girl in his usual manner and nothing more. It was all imagination on her part. The girl was very good; he had no reason to call her down or to assume a more severe tone towards her. That reassured her somewhat but only for a short while. She watched her husband more carefully than ever and thought he was much charmed by the girl. She arose several times during the night to go into the servant’s room and investigate. Once her husband had some gastric trouble and he had to leave the room several times that night. She was convinced that it was but an excuse to go to the girl and several times she followed him along the chilly passage into the hall, so that her husband asked: “What is the matter with you this time?” She said she was worried over his condition and wanted to watch and see that he was all right. Finally her jealousy broke to surface a number of times and she reproached her husband very bitterly with her suspicions. She was absolutely certain that he was intimate with the girl.Her husband was indignant and asked her to dismiss the girl at once so that there might be an end to that “foolish notion.” The remarkable thing was that she felt unable or unwilling to dismiss the girl. The girl was so good and so faithful, it is so hard nowadays to find an efficient girl servant, she insisted only that her husband must show himself more strict with her. He had to declare on his oath again that there was no intimacy between them.Towards the girl she felt a peculiar anger which she could not understand. At times she could have flown at the girl to strike her, which was very baffling as she had never been in the habit of striking a servant. But it would have been a great satisfaction to her to have pummelled this girl who caused her so much anguish. She had to restrain herself forcefully so as not to give vent to her rage. She was very “touchy” with the girl and tolerated not the least contradiction on her part.
Nevertheless she could not make up her mind to dismiss the girl, and yet she was afraid to be alone with her.
All her troubles arose on account of her homosexual attitude towards the girl who was in fact a charming blonde type of beauty. She herself was in love with the girl; that is why she could not conceive that her husband might be indifferent towards her. She figured:If I were a man I would love this girl!Interesting, and at the same time typical, is her rageand desire to strike the girl. The love feeling is converted into its opposite and the longing to touch the girl (that is, to come into contact with her body) manifests itself in the inclination to strike her. How often love contacts disguise themselves as angry blows under the mask of anger!
I explain to the woman that she must dismiss the girl when she saw clearly the meaning of her jealousy. After the girl left all the unpleasant symptoms mentioned above vanished.
Another form of jealousy transfers itself from one object to another, or to the whole surroundings. Such transference of jealousy serves the purpose of masking from self and from others the real object of the original jealousy.
73. Mrs. H. G. is a woman, 38 years of age, who has been living happily with her husband. At present she is unhappy on account of jealousy. Here is her statement: “I have called on you to ask you to relieve me of a condition which I find simply unbearable. I have a good, fine husband against whom I cannot complain of anything. He is a splendid and model man in every way. I am the more distressed therefore to be so jealous of him. I felt that way, first, while my husband was ill with typhus which left him with heart trouble. He has to be more careful of himself because of the illness he has been through, and whereas formerly he had intercoursewith me two and three times a week, now it happens only about once a month. My husband is not well,—I know it; his physician has expressly told me that he must keep very quiet and avoid all excitement. Nevertheless I cannot help feeling that he is untrue to me. I am so ashamed of it that I have not yet breathed a word about my jealousy to my husband. In fact, we are nearly always together. I know all his affairs and I often go along wherever he goes. But I cannot hang on to him every minute. So I hold the watch in hand and count the minutes, even the seconds, for him to return. Always the one thought:He is untrue to you this very minute!If he goes to another office, I think he does it because there is a pretty office girl there with whom he is in love. If he takes a meal at a restaurant, it is because he has arendezvous. If he is a few minutes late coming home from the office, he was with a street woman. In short, I am tormented all the time by these evil thoughts, I struggle against them but cannot put them out of my mind.”
“How long have you been in that state?”
“It began when he went to Franzensbad on account of his heart trouble. There he became acquainted with a spinster, a girl 46 years of age, who was also alone. They two got together and kept each other company. I know the girl; she is very honorable, and when my judgment is uppermost, Isay to myself:Nothing has happened; the two have merely felt a temporary intellectual interest in one another.But in my evil hours my mind conjures up the worst thoughts. I have once read a letter which that woman had written my husband. She thanked him for his interesting company during the cure. A few weeks after the Franzensbad cure, there came a box of flowers and a letter for my husband. The woman wrote thanking him for his pleasant company during the cure,—she was very glad to have made the acquaintance of so prominent and intellectual a gentleman and hoped their friendship would endure beyond the time of the cure. At that I reproached my husband and tortured him with my jealousy. He gave me his word of honor that his relations with the woman were strictly of a friendly and formal character; aside of his own considerations, he was a sick man and satisfied to be left alone. But I asked him to give up all further correspondence with the woman and he readily consented. He is really a fine fellow who grants me everything I want, a man who reads in my eyes every wish of mine, and I am ashamed to think ill of him all the time.”
Here we see one source of her jealousy. The woman was married to a man who gratified her in every respect; suddenly she had to restrict herself to an abstinent life. The enforced abstinence suggested the thought:You are still young and attractive,so many men are after you! Take a lover.She was filled with fancies of longing and projected them unto her husband. If he were unfaithful it would furnish an excuse for her. She needed it; she wanted him to be unfaithful, for that would have served her as a defense. Her compulsive thinking is the masking of the thought:Oh, that my husband were unfaithful so that I, too, might take a lover!
The thought was suggested to her by the fact that the wife of one of her husband’s colleagues, a very light-minded person, was able, nevertheless, to keep up a very handsome social position. She spoke with great feeling about that woman.
“Does that woman not take loyalty so seriously as you do?”
“That woman? She does not have one lover; she has six at a time, and even more! She certainly enjoys life. And the lovers pay for everything. She has the finest wardrobe, the prettiest hats, takes wonderful journeys and her husband knows everything.”
“Isn’t her husband jealous?”
“Oh, no! He knows everything, and consoles himself in his own way. But, do you know the curious part of it all? That flighty woman is jealous of her husband! She quarrels bitterly with him when she hears of his escapades, although she has no right. The two have taken reciprocal freedom....”
This is also a common occurrence and very interesting. Married couples living apart, each carrying on all sorts of adventures and love affairs, yet jealous of each other, though usually they do not show it.[15]There are persons who love each other very warmly, but in the struggle between the sexes they regard loyalty as submissiveness, as a humbling before the partner, and they would perish rather than submit to such a love.[16]
Her calculating friend is a sophisticated woman possessing wonderful tact, she tastes all forms of pleasure, plays a certain social rôle, and enjoys every phase of life. Moreover she is a very attractive woman appealing strongly to our jealous subject.
Back of her jealous thoughts, again, there stand homosexual fancies. At the time when her husband began to restrict his marital indulgences her homosexual longing began to assert itself. She did not want to be unfaithful. She was thus inhibited against taking up a man. Therefore her thoughts could only turn to woman. Her inner reflectionwas:If I were a man, I would enjoy a pretty woman every little while and more particularly that flighty friend whom I like so well.
The flighty woman had roused every feeling in her. Not only her homosexuality, but also all those prostituting tendencies which either slumber deeply hidden in every woman’s soul or break to surface before self and before the whole world. To be paid for the service of love, to receive actual coin in recognition of her sexual charm—that is a fancy looming up under various cover-symptoms among the neurotics.
That polygamic friend of hers achieved everything that a woman may wish, and in spite of that she maintained her good social standing. She moved in a select circle, folks merely shutting one eye so long as she was so clever in covering her tracks.
That example is constantly before her eyes. She herself is sexually ungratified, financially she can hardly make both ends meet, and she sees the other woman getting everything she needs: money and love. The question, Does it pay to be honest? continually recurs to her mind.
She unburdens herself of a mass of similar reflections but does not think that the real cause of her jealousy depends on herself. She is jealous also of the servant girl, the man-servant, and the children. She is even jealous of her male friends. She has acertain good friend whom she put in touch, so to speak, with a woman friend because he did not mean anything to her. Since that time he has been keeping up a close acquaintance with that woman and she is very jealous; she would like to get him away from her and to have him entirely to herself. She cannot bear to see a child familiar with other persons and is wild even when the servant girl receives a letter or a show post card through the mail.It is the perseverance of the instinct of possession on account of diminished sexual gratification.She is reduced, so to speak, to small rations and therefore wants to accumulate and reserve for herself everything the environment yields in the form of love. The little she has she wants to preserve for herself only and to protect as her own exclusive possession. The same attitude is seen on the part of children who have a favorite older brother or sister. They are extremely jealous of their trifling possessions and are enraged when the other children in the house attempt to touch their toys. The others may have more, but what little they possess they want to preserve exclusively for themselves.
The subject thus tells about her jealousy of everything and everybody. But she displays but little understanding of psychic relationships, she is afraid to come to me because while at my office she cannot watch her husband, and stays away a few days. It seems as if she had something importantto tell me but does not quite find the courage to do so.
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 myanguish 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. Iknew 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 oncemore 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. Shedreamed 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 changeeven 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 anurlind, 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 fromturning 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 herlimited 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 theold 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 themorning 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 repulsiveto 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,” saidJean 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, accordingto 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 herselfto 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. Besidesthe 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 lookedfor 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....
The motives of his conduct are clear. We have here a pronounced case of homosexuality manifesting itself as jealousy of other men. The thought that this or that other man had possessed her is precisely what constituted the woman’s highest charm in his eyes. When the man declares that he would have been happy if he could have met this woman in her virgin purity, he is mistaken. He will always seek the street walker, the disreputable woman. She is the more charming because she is older than he. For he is longing for the motherImagoand therefore he is most happy, too, when she mothers him. Like most homosexuals he is strongly attached to the mother. But unlike the overt homosexuals he has not carried out his flight all the way to the male, but has fled, instead, to thepuella publica, the dishonored woman....
He would like to get rid of this woman. But he has become more deeply enmeshed with her through his feeling of guilt on account of the wound he had caused her and which had left an ugly scar on her face. Since he wishes she were dead in order to be free of her, his conscience indissolubly binds him tenfold to his victim. His criminal fancies centercontinually on the poor tortured woman and her former lovers. Under the mask of his jealousy he gives free rein to his criminal fancies. In addition, like most artists he is very superstitious and believes that the woman had brought him good luck. Since he has her, he has created his best work and under the inspiration of the strong excitement, he has achieved his best results. It thus seems that the relationship is fixed for life and he may never be able to give it up....
Naturally there are also other forms of jealousy. But when it appears in this pathologic form, it is never difficult to trace the homosexual factor and with it the criminal tendencies back of it. The last case given above is particularly convincing and the friend’s behavior very characteristic.
Our subject feels impelled to think of the woman’s lovers driven thereto by his homosexual longing. He thinks of them in a roundabout way, so to speak, through and around the woman. Jealousy enables him to dwell on the picture of the naked man; he thinks of thephallusof his rival, compares it with his own; he drinks in the bliss which his beloved must have tasted through another man; he places himself entirely in the woman’s rôle, so that, in his fancy, he is the woman. He hates the woman in himself and transfers that hatred upon his second self, his beloved. He hates the woman also because she cannot successfully substitute the man for him.Before that liaison he spent his nights in cafès and wine rooms in the exclusive company of men. He no longer does that. He does not leave his beloved alone any more, thus lacking the excitation of manly company. He tortures his mother as he does his beloved whenever he goes home for a few days. He loves her so dearly that he cannot live through a day without calling her up from Vienna all the way to Berlin, where she lives, to talk to her. If he is somewhere where he cannot be reached by telephone his mother must wire him daily. It is very interesting how this love of the mother covers the deeper love of the father. He plays the love of his mother as his trump card against the father. He flees from the sexual love of the father, while yet he has been repeatedly conscious of his incest phantasies towards the mother. He always adds to his motherImagosome kind of a father. He was most jealous of an attorney, already grey haired and a married man, who therefore stood as a symbol of the father. He has even gone so far as to look up that man to demand an explanation from him, thereby making himself ridiculous. His jealousy was particularly suitable as a means for his latent sadism to become manifest. It enabled him to dwell on bloodcurdling phantasies, it made it reasonable for him to injure his beloved sweetheart, and to justify that insane deed as due to excess of love. The analysis brought about a distinct improvement in the situation.He joined again his comrades at the public houses and peace was seldom disturbed after that.
How difficult it is at times to ferret out the homosexual root of jealousy in such situations is shown by the next case, in which jealousy is again masked before the subject’s consciousness.
76. Miss K. N. consults me for a peculiar trouble about her sleep. She is extremely sensitive to noise. She lives with her sister who keeps a very small apartment where one little room is rented to a gentleman. Her nervousness consists of uncontrollable reflections, as soon as evening begins, about the lodger’s return home. If he returns and goes to sleep early, she herself is soon quiet and sleeps well through the night. But if he is away, she cannot sleep. She may fall into slumber but sleeps so lightly that she is awake at the least noise until she hears the lodger return at last to his room. Then a terrible feeling of dread comes over her and her heart begins to beat fast. Other noises also seem to disturb her. The house in which she lives is near a railroad track. But the trains do not disturb her, nor the electric cars. But voices in the next room, and the sound of steps on the floor above, keep her awake.
One would suppose that she wishes the lodger would come to her and is afraid of that. But she insists that the gentleman is indifferent to her, shewould not kiss him if he gave her millions in money for it. She is an unlucky person. She will undoubtedly have to give up her sister’s lodging. She has already had a similar experience. She was the mother’s favorite, petted and fondled in every way. Her mother had a stroke of paralysis and lost consciousness. After she came to herself, she clung to the delusion that her favorite child had turned untrue to her and began terribly to torture the poor child.[17]She reproached her with occurrences wholly imaginary, scolded her as being cold, selfish and indifferent.The girl could do nothing and finally had to leave the house and go to live with strangers. She returned home only after the death of the mother. Meanwhile the father had also passed away. The two girls remained alone in the world and now only had each other. But things were at sixes and sevens between them and they seldom had a quiet hour between themselves.
At last the sister became actually abusive. She begged her sister “with uplifted hands” to dismiss the lodger. She was willing to cover the room rent out of her own pocket. She could not stand it any longer. She could not sleep nights and was going physically and mentally to pieces. But the sister became wild and started to scold her, using the same terrible terms which she had heard her mother hurl at her. They rushed at each other’s hair. She was so enraged she could have strangled her sister at the time.
After that scene she came again to me in despair. I advised her to move out. She cannot have everything her way and she must have quiet. But what was her answer.
“That I cannot do. I cannot.”
“Why not? Does not your sister let you?”
“Oh no, it isn’t that ... only yesterday sister said to me: ‘Move out. I will cherish the day when I will get rid of you.’”
“And you stand for that?”
“I cannot move out because....”
“You are in love with your sister and cannot live without her.”
“That’s it. I cannot live without sister and even her scoldings and her angry words I will put up with rather than stand a day without seeing her.”
“Still you will have to do it.... The conditions are unhealthy.”
“Yes.... Only yesterday I said to sister: ‘I am going to move out and you can keep your rooms and do with your lodger whatever you want. I won’t protect you any more.’”
Thus it came out clearly that she was watching every night, whether the lodger was going to the sister and that she dreaded moving out because she knew that the sister would then be alone with the lodger in the house and he could go to her every night. I made this clear to her but she did not seem to see it at first. She admitted her homosexual love for the sister....
She moved to other quarters. It was a quiet little room over a garden in the home of an elderly woman living alone. But here also she could not sleep. The old woman snored and she could not stand that. Then the ticking of a clock disturbed her continually and kept her from falling asleep, the striking of the hours even waking her up. She thus continually sought everywhere for the reasons of her unrest which were only in herself. The palpitationof her heart (symbolic substitute for it: the clock) gave her no peace. She looked for other quarters, kept looking and looking but found no place so satisfactory and quiet as the sister’s lodging. She went there every evening returning to her outside lodgings late in the night. She took advantage of a light illness of her sister’s as an excuse and returned to her little room, again shivering with dread whenever the lodger was late coming home. Even after she chose for herself a lover who gave her complete sexual gratification her quiet was temporary. The heterosexual component of her instincts drove her more and more to her lover trying to forget her sister in his arms. But she succeeded only intermittently and her thoughts kept revolving again and again between her sister and that lodger. Finally her sister gave in and the lodger had to move. An elderly young woman became the new lodger. Then she quieted down and was able to sleep once more.
It is interesting that nearly all narcotic drugs not only proved useless but made her worse. She did not want to sleep so as to keep watch over her sister’s virtue.
As in all the cases previously mentioned, here, too, developments led to overt attitudes, the subject stood on the brink of criminal passional deeds. Hatred and love showed intimate relationships. She was also afraid of murderers, barricaded the doorsand shivered at every little noise. That was the fear of her own criminal thoughts. Her infantile criminal tendencies arose with her infantile love for the sister.
This case, like the former, illustrates the inner relations between jealousy, homosexuality and sadism. For during her fits of anger she entertained terrible thoughts of revenge. She thought of burning down the home; of killing her sister, as well as herself, by turning on the gas in the room; she tried to secure a revolver, supposedly as a protection against thieves. Her dreams show a criminal personality in sharp contrast to her customary mild character. Emotionally the criminal in her was much more powerful than her cultural self, she could have assaulted her sister and once actually drew a knife. After such emotional outbreaks she crumpled and became again the quiet, soft girl, beloved of everybody on account of her good nature.