V

HOMOSEXUALITY AND SADISM—THE ANALYSIS OF A HOMOSEXUAL—EARLIEST MEMORIES—FIRST ACCOUNT OF HIS ATTITUDE—FEAR OF TUBERCULOSIS—HIS ATTITUDE TOWARDS HIS PARENTS—FIRST DREAM—DREAMS OF URINALS—ANAL EROTICISM—COPROPHAGIA—THE MOTHER AS A TYRANT—TRANSVESTITISM—AN IMPORTANT DREAM—VOYEUR AND EXHIBITIONIST—OTHER DREAMS—POEMS TO THE MOTHER—MATERNAL BODY DREAMS—SADISTIC PHANTASIES—A SPERMATOZOAN DREAM—THE DREAM ABOUT WILD BEARS—SUMMARIZATION OF THE ANALYTIC DATA IN THE CASE—THE FORMULA OF HOMOSEXUALITY.

Man missversteht das Raubtier und den Raubmenschen (z. b. Cesare Borgia) gründlich, man missversteht die “Natur,” so lange man noch nach einer “Krankhaftigkeit” in Grunde dieser gesundesten aller tropischen Untiere und Gewächse sucht, oder gar nach einer ihnen eingeborenen “Hölle” wie es bis her fast alle Moralisten gethan haben.

—Nietzsche.

The nature of the wild beast and of predatory man,—Cesare Borgia, for instance,—is misunderstood, “Nature” herself is misunderstood, so long as we look for “morbidity” back of these healthiest of all monstrosities and excrescences, or for some “inner depravity” peculiar to them,—as most moralists have done thus far.

—Nietzsche.

Our investigation of the problem of jealousy has led us repeatedly to the relationship between homosexuality and sadism, a subject we have already considered briefly in connection with the repression-symptoms of the homosexuals. We have succeeded in proving the sadistic trend of homosexuals in most of the cases which we have examined. This relationship is so typical that I am surprised previous investigators have not been impressed by the regularity of its occurrence. The frequency of abnormal sexual cravings among homosexuals has been pointed out by many physicians and has been interpreted by them as indicative of a degenerative trend. But since the physicians were satisfied with their patients’ account and they were unfamiliar with thetechnique of psychoanalysis, this constant relationship escaped their observation. The next chapter will be devoted to a complete history of such cases and in that connection we shall see more clearly how unsatisfactory the patients’ first account of their own trouble must be. I have already mentioned that many investigators suspect that the homosexuals decidedly lack veracity. Moreover all neurotics drive their sadistic tendencies back into the unconscious. Their repressed tendencies are among the persistently overlooked features,—the unconsidered inventory,—of the homosexual’s psyche.

The sadistic tendency breaks to the foreground of consciousness only occasionally and then it lends its characteristic coloring to the paraphilic disorder. In such cases the sadistic trend is not directed only against the opposite sex. Sexual lust and cruelty are inextricably interwoven; the antisocial cravings cannot be sublimated;[23]the ailing individual becomes a danger to the community, he gets into conflict with the law, and lands in jail or in the asylum. For such cases show us a morbidly enlarged and distorted picture of the average homosexual.

The following observation byFleischmann[24]may serve as an illustration of this fact:

82. “Physically the patient shows the early signs ofBasedow’sdisease. His temperament is very uneven, he shifts from one extreme to another. He is suspicious, very mendacious and very irritable—for instance, he struck his father in his rage. He is not particularly religious. His whole conduct shows a very weak will and lack of energy. Since his 17th year the patient has been addicted to excessive drink. His sexual history reveals the following facts: As a boy, 10 years of age, he came across a book containing an illustration of a scene of violence (beating) which gave him great pleasure. Ever since he thinks of that picture placing himself in the position of the one being beaten. The mere word ‘Peitschen,’ cuffing, has something appealing, something exciting about it to his mind. From the very beginning the patient thought this was an unhealthy trait and was uncomfortably self-conscious over it. At that time he took a journey into the country with his mother. They passed over a river and he saw standing on the shore a naked man who was bathing. That scene stuck in his mind for months. At 11 years of age the patient asked his father to punish him because he had an impure conscience, but did not attain his aim. His fancies were growing. He liked to put himself in Captain Dreyfus’ place, wanted to experience the latter’s degradation and suffering. So constantly was his mind preoccupied with his fanciesthat the boy neglected his school studies; he became distraught, and suffered headaches. At 15 years of age the boy began to enact his phantasies; he undressed in a room, tied his hands with a rope and suspended himself. He also tied weights to his lower limbs. This produced orgasm and ejaculation. An illustration of tortures which he found in an illustrated work on world history suggested to him new methods. He was specially fond of staging scenes of crucifixion. In all these scenes the boy fancied that he was the victim of all the imaginary tortures. He never connected these fancies of torture with one sex or the other. He had sexual gratification without reflecting particularly about sex. The gratifications led to orgasm and ejaculation. Then the craving for self-torture quieted down somewhat, his imagination cooled off and the patient began to seek sexual gratification through masturbation. He drew his penis downwards and backwards between his limbs and rocked his pelvis sideways. During these acts there arose the first homosexual fancies. While masturbating, which he did at first regularly once every four weeks, later daily and afterwards, five to ten times in succession,[25]he pictured to himself the hips of a young boy. Atfirst that fancy, without any further details, was enough. Later he fancied carrying outcoitus intra femora. His contrary sexual feelings showed themselves also in other ways. For instance, he took such a strong fancy to a younger comrade that he resolved to stay voluntarily back one year so as to sit in the same classroom with that boy. On account of his lack of veracity his father put him in a training institution; there his comrades initiated him into sex matters and he learned mutual masturbation. He was not aware of being untruthful because he had lost the faculty of discerning between phantasy and fact. At 17 years of age the patient picked up a peasant girl and induced her to sleep with him; but she did not allow coitus; the patient thinks that at that time he would have found coitus pleasurable.[26]During that period he was in the habit of abusing daily one of his best friends,—in his phantasy. He had the latter stand naked before his eyes and played with his private parts. In his phantasy he felt all over the fellow’s body, finally advancing to a complete homosexual act, always fancying a one-sided activeimmissio penis in anum; at the same time he masturbated in the manner described above. After one year he wasno longer able to control himself. He prevailed on his friend to undress before him and lie, face down, on the sofa. Then the patient crawled on top and attemptedimmissio; he did not succeed on account of a sudden feeling of nausea. He desisted, but ejaculatedante portas; afterwards he was ashamed of it. The patient parted from this friend later as the result of a quarrel. Then the sadistic tendencies again came to surface. He imagined all sorts of tortures, reserving to himself merely the rôle of devising the punishment to be applied. The actual carrying out of the deeds he left to other imaginary persons conjured up for the purpose. He chose his victims preferably from among his younger comrades. Patient had devised 36 different kinds of torture assigning to each a written symbol. He selected by lot (drawing numbers) the intended victim, as well as the torture to be applied and the instruments therefor. The patient played this game for hours.

“He kept this up a couple of years. Suddenly the whole thing lost its charm for him. His phantasy cooled down. Finally he gave up the game altogether. At 18, the patient attempted for the second time normal coitus. He had an erection but premature ejaculationante portas. A third attempt failed on account of drunkenness. Again he reverted to his masturbation habit, his thoughts during the act once more centered on the hips of ayoung boy; this was a fetich to him. Masochistic fancies he entertained no longer; but he dwelt profusely on homosexual phantasies. Later the patient thought ofcoitus inter femorawith boys. He became very friendly with a 14-year-old boy, kissed him, and allowed the boy to touch his own genitals. But when he found that the boy had hairy hips his passion for the boy cooled off at once. During that time the patient (20 years old) entertained thoughts of suicide because he felt that his life was a failure. An attempt at analysis only excited him worse instead of quieting him. Again the patient linked himself in intimate friendship with a 14-year-old boy; as that boy resented any physical display of affection, his attachment remained purely platonic. Every now and then patient masturbated fancying he was carrying outcoitus inter femorawith his friend. His sadistic fancies again broke to the surface. He became more and more restless, enticed a boy (under a slight pretext) to visit him and devised most refined ways of abusing him; for instance, hanging over the boy’s back with the hands clasped around his neck, or beating him over hips and buttocks with a reed cane; for every stroke the boy was to receive a sum of money. As a consequence of this action the patient was brought to the clinic.”[27]

Fleischmann, in his psychologic examination of this case, lays stress particularly on the significance of trauma and ascribes to the masturbation a predominant rôle in the psychogenesis of the paraphilia: “This case proves clearly that the various sexual anomalies differ only in their sexual objective and aim,—their developmental interrelationship—but that the mechanism of their development must be looked upon as identical.”

But of particular significance in this case is the constant association of sadism and masochism, a condition with which but few sexologists thus far have been impressed as a bipolar expression of the same underlying tendency; next, the tremendoussense of guilt which no masochist lacks; further, the defense reaction against the homosexual tendencies: disgust of theimmissio penis in anum, and the unpleasant feelings roused by the sight of the boy’s hairy thighs.

This patient also illustrates the overwhelming rôle of the father in the psychogenesis of homosexuality and the recurrence of the “specific scene.” At 11 years of age he requested his father to beat him because he felt guilty. At 25 years he carried out that very act on a boy under a very refined form. One must be a victim of psychic blindness not to see that he there played the rôle of the father who punishes the child. The development of this attitude may be surmised to have taken place approximately as follows: His primary phantasy was undoubtedly generated by the wish that his father be tender with him. He wanted to replace the mother in his father’s affection (coitus inter femora). Probably jealousy thoughts against the mother, revenge fancies against the father on account of unrequited love; these mental sins gave rise to his feeling of guilt, as displayed in his masochism. For as I shall prove in another work[28]in this Series, sadism is always the primary attitude and is transposed into masochism in consequence of the feeling of guilt, or else the two appear side by side.

I must comment onFleischmann’sremark that psychoanalysis only disturbed the patient and did not cure him. It is not proper to ascribe all failures of psychoanalysis to the method. Psychoanalysis is a difficult art and will always be conducted expertly only by a relatively small number of specialists. Not everything that goes under the name of psychoanalysis is genuine. Often the patient submits for a few days to psychoanalysis then drops it (when a successful psychoanalysis may require several months) and claims it did him no good.[29]A thorough psychoanalysis of the above case would have certainly led to a deeper understanding of the mental mechanism involved and would have revealed much new light.

Undoubtedly various sexual repressed tendencies may become manifest during psychoanalytic treatment. That is even necessary,—they must be met and overcome with the consultant’s aid. The next case below is an illustration that latent homosexuality may become manifest after a few seances in the course of psychoanalysis.

83. Mr. Delta, medical student, 24 years of age, hereditary history negative, physically healthy in every respect, suffers of depressions and inability to concentrate on his work. The most important facts bearing on his anamnesis and his later history he relates in the following letter:

“From my earliest childhood I have been extraordinarily sensuous. It was the custom (an evil one) in our family for the children to crawl into the parents’ bed in the morning. I naturally always went to mother’s bed, while my sisters preferred to go to father’s bed. We children also went to one another’s bed and on such occasions I was in the habit of trying to crawl with my head under the covers with the intention, frankly, of carrying outcunnilingusespecially on my sister N., who was already married. Why I preferred N., at the time I do not understand clearly, possibly because she was receptive towards me and such practices are possible only if the female partner is at least unconsciously agreeable to it. I was 5 years of age at the time. I have also carried oncunnilinguson my sister B., at 15 years of age, while she was asleep. These fancies later played a tremendous rôle in my mental life, causing also a profuse sweating of the palms of my hands which disappeared in part when I became consciously aware of them. The killing of the chickens by our cook produced an extraordinarilyexciting effect upon me. When the cook gripped the chicken between her limbs near her genital region to kill it she excited me to the point of a true orgasm. I tried to imitate her by catching flies and squeezing them to death between my limbs, near my genitals, or by drowning them in urine. My attitude towards friends, colleagues, etc., was also extremely peculiar. I cultivated preferably the friendship of children of the proletarian class, while children of my own set never attracted me in particular, although I was friendly with them. Children of that class also submitted more willingly to various homosexual acts, something which I did not quite dare carry on with children of my own set. I remember one boy in particular, with whom I attemptedcoitus in os. I recall also a dream of my childhood years: An awful butchery is going on in our court yard and my sister W., and a certain man are in it. I am pursued by both, they throw me on the ground, and I am killed with a single blow on the forehead. I may add that killing invoked in my mind the picture of the aggressor sitting astride over the victim’s face and mouth, rider-fashion. That at any rate was the manner in which we boys killed one another. Girls of my age were a torture to me but to older girls and adult women I extended my greatest admiration,—a sentiment which was purely platonic with me at the time. At the public school I fell in love with every strict teacher, onceI was in love with two of them at the same time. I wanted the two to punish me and that, in a very strange way. I wanted to be taken to bed and to be squeezed to death by them,[30]—naturally between their genitalia. Theimmictio in osby a woman was also a favorite form of torture in my day dreaming.

“Now comes puberty. I consider the starting point of my later neurosis the fact that I cared for contact only with persons who could offer me some sexual satisfaction and that even as a child. During puberty this peculiarity showed even more markedly. For a time I preserved my platonic admiration of women older than myself. Young girls were still repulsive to me until I fell passionately in love with one. I followed that little one for years like a shadow, but in spite of the encouragement she gave me I could not bring myself to speak to her. When I finally did so, I saw in a flash the reason for my remarkable hesitation, I did not say what I started to say, the whole charm was gone in an instant,—she seemed to me common and inferior,—although my objective judgment at other times told me precisely the reverse. In short, my affection reawakened in its earlier intensity only some time after I recovered from the shock of my personal acquaintance with her. At that time I became very friendly with a certain colleague, Joseph Z. The tie thatlinked us was that very bewitching dark girl. He also was in love with her (one would have thought that this would have broken our friendship). We never tired admiring her charms between us and our friendship came to an end only when I discovered that he was not true to our idol. At the same time nothing disgusted me during that period so much as the sight of a pair of lovers.I had the feeling that a man loses something of his manliness and dignity through intimacy with a woman.

“My next friend was Herbert. I had few sexual points of contact with him, except that we visited together the red light resorts for the first time and jointly made love to the various inmates. Herbert was so witty a fellow that I almost loved him, especially as he was slavishly devoted to me. But my neurosis made tremendous leaps for the worse even at that time and I became more and more timid and awkward in my ways and when finally he turned on me with his wit our friendship came to an end.

“Next came Friedrich. He clung to me with fanatic love, this went on for about three years, until he married, and then I felt lonely in the world. My beloved mother to whom I was extremely devoted as a child could only try to console me, but I was hopelessly disconsolate. As a child I had been inseparable from her for years;Mendelssohn’swell-known Spring song brought tears to my eyes because the thought of a mother losing her childseemed atrocious to me. Although I felt a great measure of that affection for mother which is common in every one’s childhood experience, a certain craving remained ungratified. I became acquainted with psychoanalysis and it brought to my mind the youthful perversities of my youth. I decided to give expression to my conscious instincts and I have come to the following conclusion:

“My attitude towards the other sex will never be satisfactory, I must stand either above or below woman, must be either hammer or anvil, an unprejudiced relationship I find impossible, because as soon as I see a pretty woman I lose my senses, and would like preferably to be at her feet and obey her like a slave. But women do not wish that, they want to be submissive themselves, they want to feel the man above them.Intercourse on the level of equality I find tiresome, so there remains only sadism for me, through which, I may confess frankly, I have already enjoyed pleasant times. True friendship on the basis of mutual love and respect I am capable of maintaining only with men, as in my childhood.”

This sounds like the history of a typical bisexual strongly on the way to become a genuine homosexual. Let us turn to his psychoanalytic treatment before we examine his sexual attitude. He went to a psychoanalyst who had been recommended to himbyFreud. He was wholly unable to work, impotent with women at the time, and had recourse to masturbation. During the first sitting he learned that he had been in love with his mother. The knowledge of this fact acted as a “relief,” according to his testimony. (He even told it to his mother.) Shortly afterwards he had his first successful coitus with a woman. But the neurosis did not change and in a short time he came to me for analysis. I found a tremendous resistance against the discovery of the true attitude. He employed all sorts of subterfuges to take up the time during the consultation hours and to disclose only what he wanted. He soon exhausted the account of his pronounced sadism and of his masochistic tendencies. But concerning his relations to his father he was very hazy. He became able to go to work, attended the lectures and turned once more diligently to his studies. I saw the hopelessness of my endeavors and broke the analysis under some pretext or other.... There are patients, whom I have described as the psychoanalyticAhasverus-type[31]who are among the most thankless of subjects for our professional endeavors. They rush from one analyst to another, imploring the new consultant to remove the last of their troublous symptoms, and stay all the time very much as they have been from the beginning. They look upon the analysis, too, as a test ofpower, they want to triumph over their consultant, they want to come out stronger than he and—what is most important—they do not want to recognize the real background of their attitude. They stubbornly overlook the real foundation of their neurotic trouble and their ‘unwillingness to see’ is made worse by their superficial acquaintance with psychoanalysis and their fragmentary introspection. They thus run from one physician to another, criticize the first to the second, the second to a third, the third to a fourth. This conduct stands partly in relation to their attitude towards the father,—a subject to which we shall have occasion to revert more fully later.

It happened precisely as I had surmised. He went back toFreud, who recommended a third analyst, because he refused stubbornly to return to the first. After a few months he gave up the treatment and considered himself well. One half year later he came back to me and told me that since adopting exclusively homosexual relations he was entirely well, able to work, and as lively “as a fish in the brook.” But something still seemed to be lacking. At my request he wrote the account which I have given above, stating that he had no objection to its publication. He added orally a few statements which I shall use later.

The characteristic feature of his attitude towards woman is emphasized in his own written statement.Either he must torture or he must be tortured—he can either love or must hate, and only to excess. He is afraid of his terrific love passion. Therefore he feels impelled to humble himself before woman, to serve her as a slave, which is his symbolic expression for the longing aftercunnilingusand for his willingness to submit tomictio in os. He wants to serve woman as a means for the attainment of gratification, as a vessel for her excreta, to be a submissive slave to all her whims. His submissiveness goes so far that he is willing to be killed by woman. This sadistic transposition of this attitude signifies: only through doing away with the sexual partner one achieves complete mastery and may claim complete possession.

In his feeling-attitude towards woman he vacillates between two extremes: hatred to the point of annihilation and a love so great as to include the willingness to be sacrificed. Clearly, he must protect himself so as not to give way to his hatred and become a murderer. A deeper insight into the parallelogram of the psychic forces involved in such situations leads plainly to the conviction that the instinct to live and the will to power prevent him from subjecting himself to woman actually to the point of self-annihilation. His feeling-attitude towards woman is too affective for him to be able to reduce it to a proper emotional level. How plain is the significance of his boyhood experience,—hisgreat passion for the girl whom he followed like a shadow. But he did not dare to bring that love affair down to reality. He was afraid of himself, afraid of the subjection. The girl gave him to understand that he need not belittle himself at all. In his eyes that was enough for her to lose her charm after he became acquainted with her; she attracted him again only after all danger of his trying himself out with her was over. He considered himself plain-looking and thought he could not attract any one. He hated the women on account of their charm, because he himself would have liked to have been a pretty woman.

He also cleverly covered that wish by beginning to overstress the value of manliness. “I had a feeling,” he states, “that a man loses something of his manliness and dignity through his intimacy with a female person.” One must bear in mind that this man esteemed his mother very highly, holding her above all others as a person and as a woman. The normal person forms the image of his ideal woman after his mother. But he looks upon his mother as an exception and, like many other homosexuals, excepts his mother alone from the scorn with which he looks down upon the whole female sex. Now he tolerates woman but only with a sadistic feeling-attitude. For hatred vanquishes woman easier than love.

The question, what is he seeking in man and whydoes he prefer men to women?, he answers as follows: “I seek the penis in man. I think chiefly of his penis. With men I find no resistance at all. Woman I consider ugly while man is beautiful. I look chiefly for womanly men who to me stand for the girl with the penis.I was attracted only once to an elderly man with a very energetic face.And what particularly attracts me to man: there is no question of any submissiveness with him. Man does not humble himself,—only woman does that.”

But he does not seek the submissive woman. He needs a strong woman who shall domineer over him. He confesses that intercourse with a woman sadist would gratify him. But, as he states in his written account: women do not care to domineer, they want to be overpowered themselves.

We note that the polar sexual tension between male and female is most extreme in his case. He could kill the woman who humiliates him, belittles him, as Judith killed Holofernes, because he had conquered her sexually.[32]

His peculiar manner of masturbating (squeezing flies to death against the penis) discloses his specific onanistic fancy. He squeezes a woman to death, he strangles her, while cohabiting with her. A shorttime after the first analysis he had sexual intercourse with a servant girl. He described her to me: “a gigantic girl, and so powerful that she could have overpowered me with one hand!” With such a girl he felt safe. But he never dared to have sexual intercourse with weak persons, even though they exerted a stronger sexual attraction on him. He had every reason to flee from woman, because he feared the transposition of his excessive love passion into a deadly aggressive hatred. He claims he could have intercourse now only with a woman addicted to all sorts of perversities. Only such a woman could rouse his passion and could offer him something. He has never tried this out. It looks as if he feared the involvement of his heart, but that could use woman merely as a vehicle for his lust. A perverse woman would drown the urgings of his strongest paraphilia: the impulse to kill a woman.

Now we may understand through his family history how this attitude must have arisen.

He belonged to a family where both parents had very pronounced individualities of their own. The father was a self-made man, who rose through his own efforts and became a millionaire. He was strict, energetic, always preoccupied with his business, and never had any spare time for his family. With the children he was tender while they were small and pretty playthings. Later he changed completely his attitude and the patient was requiredand expected to show a good record of his conduct at school. He continued to be tender with the girls, so that the boy must have unconsciously envied his sisters. This change from tenderness to severity on the part of parents is very common and is responsible for many instances of stubborn contrariness on the part of children, especially towards the father. The child always longs for the early childhood when the father was so loving and tender. Perhaps this longing for early childhood is the reason why so many homosexuals are of a decidedly infantile type.[33]The kindly old gentleman sought by so many homosexuals is perhaps merely the affectionate father of their youth, who never punished severely....

Our patient’s mother was a remarkably intelligent and very beautiful woman, who all her life contended with her husband for rulership over the house. I had an opportunity to obtain a deep insight into that marriage situation. I know of noother marriage where the struggle for supremacy was so bitter between the two personalities. There were constantly quarrels in the house, often on the point of breaking out in violence. Each one avoided showing any affection for the other. To do so would have meant acknowledging the other’s superiority. They did everything they could to each other. They bore themselves with aloofness and appeared indifferent towards one another, though keeping up a continuous quarrel. If the husband noticed some other man courting his handsome wife, he smiled indulgently and accorded his rival a free field, as if to prove to his wife that he was not jealous in the least, and was willing to accord her every freedom. She also seemed to overlook the seamy side, in her husband’s conduct. Nevertheless they were ready to jump at each other on the slightest provocation. Once the situation reached a crisis and the woman pointed a revolver at her husband threatening to end everything in a terrible tragedy.

The children divided between the contesting parents, taking sides. The son was entirely with his mother. He was unhappy because she had to put up with so much and he goaded her on all the time, urging her to carry the fight to a successful issue and even advising her to seek separation from her husband. He had nothing good to say about his father, outside the latter’s business ability. He described the father as a cold-blooded fellow withouta heart, a mere adding machine, etc.... On a superficial examination it looked as if he loved his mother and hated his father. But back of that hatred there stood the carefully preserved love of his earlier years. That love, however, he was unwilling to acknowledge. That was the critical point in the analysis. He always recoiled whenever the analysis led to his fondness of the father, or various signs pointed out his aboriginal attitude towards the father. Any analysis leads sooner or later to a similar experience. Nothing is more difficult than to dissolve the father hatred and reduce it back to its infantile components,—love.

But in his homosexual acts he played the rôle of the father who is tender with the child. We also perceive now why he felt himself suddenly attracted to that elderly gentleman with the energetic face. He was an image of his own strict father.

Having witnessed in his childhood a terrific struggle between man and woman, and having himself taken a part in that merciless struggle for supremacy, he was bound to conceive the problem of love as a struggle for supremacy, a competitive struggle in the will to power. His supreme question always was: “Who is the stronger one?” This case shows us with remarkable clearness the mechanisms on whichAlfred Adlerlays such great stress. But it also shows the incestuous love for the sister, a tendency of which he was aware. In the youngmen he sought the reproductions of his sister’s picture. He also showed a fixation upon the mother, with whom he was seldom on agreeable pleasant terms. Nevertheless he has not forgotten the early tendernesses of his father. In the wish to be squeezed to death, his masochistic fancies revolve around the masked image of his severe father standing like a shadow. To be master, to be slave—his whole system of thinking revolved around these two notions. He has social intercourse only with men towards whom he feels himself superior. Already as a child he chose his comrades among the children of the poor, because he could domineer them. He abandoned one friendship because his friend made jokes at his expense. He was not a handsome child. That drove him into the path of hatred and envy. He hated all women because they were his rivals with the father. He thought he would have been liked better if he had been a handsomer fellow.

He was a slave to his family and unable to wean himself away. He moved to another city in order to free himself of the family ties. That made him homesick. His mother had to visit him. He was proud when they went on walks together and were taken for a pair of lovers. But secretly he really yearned for his father, and never forgives himself that he did not interrupt that vacation journey to go to his father.

In reality he continued the struggle between hisparents. Within him struggled man and wife. Possibly also the child, though acting more in the rôle of a bystander, and ready to give the stereotypic answer “both” to the question, “whom do you like better?” He thinks he has overcome the man in him. I consider his homosexuality a passing phase. He will achieve health only after complete emotional detachment from the family circle.

We often note that the neurotic gets well only after the death of one of the parents or of both. But in many cases, the parents even after they are dead continue to hold their sway over the infantile soul and their dominion ends only with the death of their child who, in that devotion to them, loved but himself and loved himself unto death....

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