THE HOMOSEXUAL PROBLEM.
By
DR. ALFRED ADLER, Vienna, Austria.
Like a spectre the condition of homosexuality rises up in society. In defiance of everything the number of perverts is on the increase. Law and religion exert very little influence aganst it. Homosexuality is as prevalent in country districts as in large cities. (This statement surely cannot apply to rural districts in America. Ed.) Children, adults, the aged, men and women participate in the evil. It provides work for the pedagogist, the sociologist, the neurologist and the jurist. All means of conquest have been applied to it without any results worthy of the name being derived therefrom. The severest penalties, the most considerate indulgence, the most propitiating conduct—finally, concealment—every means is without influence upon the spread of this anomaly.
And yet its advocates are not absent. And the many points of view, the innumerable theories all testify to the significant impression of one fact, that a large part of the population are untrue to their sexual rôle Is this a sign of retrogression? Of atavism? Competent observers of animals state that only domesticated animals practice or permit homosexual advances.
Studies in degeneration do not bring to light any useful data for the elucidation of this question, for its important point cannot thus be solved, whether it be through the information afforded by Hirschfeld, Fliess, Freud and others. Who has proved degeneration in homosexuality? Which of the more or less different sex-containing germinal substances belong to homosexuality? Krafft-Ebing's "constitutional disposition" with its clever deluge of words and Freud's "sexual constitution" are nothing more than theoretical postulates of a biased system. But definite occurrences which purport to indicate the sexual direction of the child—taken as a standard according to Binet, Janet, Schrenck-Notzing, Bloch, Moll and others—always show previously existing perversive tendencies so that antagonistic theorists and the patients themselves always begin the history with the words: "In early childhood the following events already indicated traces of hereditary perversion." . . .
Our respect for the investigations alluded to is by no means lessened when we recall that the knowledge of the nature of the perversion is incomplete, and therefore it is not yet possible to lay down a definite point of view in regard to its social significance. And it is because of this fact that we find both among the adversaries and the advocates plenty of clever argument. To overlook this incomplete state of knowledge seems quite an error. Such far-reaching works of preparation and valuable collective material as those of Krafft-Ebing, Moll, Hirschfeld and others will always maintain their high rank even though they may not have been in a position to influence public opinion or legislation.
There is one important point in the teachings about perversion and that is the attitude of public opinion in relation to it. It may be asserted with certainty that no theory is able to exert any favorable influence upon society or upon the social morale in regard to homosexuality. The greatest concession that can be obtained is concealment and non-interference. That is as far as the guardians of the law ever went and the many quashed prosecutions on the part of the police show a tendency to indulgence. The barriers of society against the toleration of the perversion remain unshaken by every theory for they are formed of the safeguards and social disinclinations of normal feelings. It may, of course, easily be conceived that in these "safeguards" there is a necessary social forbearance, but it must be emphasized that this may easily rise to the point of a refusal of homosexuality to admit the conflict against its own homosexual tendencies. In fact, from an adverse standpoint, the attempt has been made to further increase the number of homosexualists in order to compel the toleration of the perversion.
Just as devoid of reason is the opinion which tries to justify the existence of the perversion and in fact to ascribe a high value to it. Those critics who point to a gradual dying out of homosexual perverts as a result of their perversion still make themselves heard. But the presumption of an inborn quality—which may be regarded as a fable—and the proof which is offered of a possible heredity, prejudice the weight of the argument inasmuch as in mixed cases the heterosexual element may hinder the removal of the homosexuality through natural selection.
The reference to the Greek Eros as compatible with a high state of culture is by no means applicable to the present time. So far as we have gained an insight into the question, it would seem that the Greek "Knabenliebe" (pederasty) originated at a time when Woman had won value and influence. The mockery of Aristophanes on "Knabenliebe" and the parliament of women belong together. When the emancipation of Woman and the awakening of her self-consciousness are increasing, Man is forced to doubt his pre-eminence. From his feeling of uncertainty and insecurity the conquest of Woman seems to him a venturesome undertaking. In such cases he possesses many artifices for the restoration of his security and superiority. He either depreciates or idealizes! Man's reply of protest to the growing self-consciousness of Woman leads, in the first instance, to a depreciation in the value of Woman. This "depreciation" explains the Greek "Knabenliebe" and its spiritual expression which was directed against Woman. A strengthening of this sexual purpose occurred when adult man was permitted to play the rôle of Mentor and protector and the spiritual promoter of Ephebus. In this way the masculine privileges for the boy could continue unhindered. The "fear of Woman,"1 inflamed through her endeavors for position, forced Man to a stronger preparation in the sense of his expansion-tendency. If "Knabenliebe" was an attempt on the part of Man to place a greater "distance" between himself and Woman it was for youth—socially—a preparation for heterosexual love and companionship.
The homosexuality of our times shows the same fundamental psychologic causes and becomes evident as a symptom of the "flight from Woman." But in contrast
with the Greek Eros the limiting regulations are absent. The Greek people were a united body, perhaps like another political structure. The Greek idea of state overreached all other endeavors of the people to such an extent that excesses and errors, as they make themselves apparent during the difficulties of development, were ruled with the kindness of familiarity. Hence, through the might of the idea of mutual association the pernicious current of homosexuality progressed in a national direction.
That these side-lights are absent and must be absent from modern homosexuality is unquestionable. At best, a similar relationship is imitated in improper protection or else the youth submits to the tyranny of older friends, or those of equal age waste themselves away with jealous and ridiculous altercations. In short, Greek "Knabenliebe" found a time full of reciprocal kindness and the sense of mutual association demanded the showing of what could be given of greatest value by each. The homosexuality of today shows itself as an unfruitful and insoluble product of necessity which further injures the weakly developed common feeling of mutual association. The psychologic factors of homosexuality have been referred to. It shows with these a too little appreciated property: that it is ambiguous and that its significance can only be grasped temporarily and individually.
* * *
The symptoms common to all sexual perversions (homosexuality, sadism, masochism, masturbation, fetishism, etc.) can be found to agree, in accordance with the knowledge of the school of individual psychology, in the following points:
Every perversion is an enlarged spiritual distance between Man and Woman.
It denotes a more or less deep-reaching revolt against participation in the normal sexual act and becomes evident as a systematized or unconscious artifice for the exaltation of one's own feelings of personality.
The "depreciation" of the normally anticipated partner is always present. Therefore, odiousness and conquest are feelings necessary to the pervert.
Perversive tendencies in men show themselves as compensatory efforts for the exaltation of a feeling of inferiority against over-estimated power of the woman.
Similarly perversion in women is also compensatory in order to overcome the feeling of inferiority against the greater power of the man.
The perversion usually grows out of a spiritual life exhibiting supersensitiveness and over-reached ambition. Lack of deeper companionship and reciprocal kindness are present to a greater degree than is usually supposed. Egocentric emotions, distrust and lust of power prevail. The tendency "mitzuspielen," as well among men as among women, is slight as a result of which there are strong limitations of social interests.
* * *
Whoever is in the position, like the physician, to appreciate the vibrations of the social organism must admit that sexual conduct is influenced by various considerations. Judging from statistics this is expressed in the decreasing number of marriages, in delayed marriage, in the increasing number of divorces. The complaints in regard to these conditions are well-known. When they are examined a multitude of causes are found but they all suffer from the same mistake in that a final cause, a more difficult conduct of life, is blamed.
We cannot overlook the importance of this condition, but as always whenever
the individual psychology of a question is mastered, there arises the more generally important question: What individuals are most surely affected in this respect? Are they not exactly those persons of an over-cautious, doubting nature, deficient in self-confidence in regard to their every action and their preparation in life, individuals who, at the sign of the least trouble, are ready to "desert" and "give up the fight?" These are the people who, from childhood on, suffer from a feeling of inferiority, of self-depreciation (Minderwertigkeitsgefuehl). They believe themselves lost and remain the "nervously disposed people."
On this view there are two objections to be raised: 1. That every person exercises and needs precaution. 2. That often among the nervous—i. e., for us also the homosexual—we find a great feeling of self-consciousness. The first objection is counteracted by the circumstances that the result of our investigation is not drawn in forcibly, but merely corresponds to a general human attitude which, in cases of nervousness, is obstinate, one-sided and exaggerated. The second objection rests upon a deficient insight into the nature of the neurosis—taking the semblance and the effect for the original nature itself and mistaking one of the fundamental points of the neurotic dynamic: the heroism of the feeling of weakness. The sexual "distance" has a tendency to grow. We add nothing new when we state that this symptom occurs in the life of each individual, above all in the nervous individual.
The neurotic who shows what I call an "attitude of hesitation" with every change in his situation cannot maintain steady activity under varying conditions. Every hardship, be it apparent or real, calls forth new anxiety in him—hesitation—and he makes attempts at evasion and procrastination. And psychologically there is no difference whether the neurotic, confronted with the problem of love and marriage, the difficulty of making a livelihood or the responsibility incident to posterity, seeks excuse in the unsuitability of the other sex or in his own self-depreciation, or whether he interposes a state of illness, an hysteria, a compulsion neurosis, a phobia, an impotence, a psychosis, a compulsive masturbation or a perversion between his partner and himself. Whether from his unconscious Lebensplan he can or cannot make resistance, in a conditional way—for instance, against love and marriage—he is obliged to imagine a "distance" which he hopes will safeguard him from the dreaded decision he must arrive at. Just as the wanderer overcome with vertigo seeks "rest" or the one afraid of water seeks "rest" before leaping into the water, so must the neurotic "distance" to protect him from the step he is about to take—from supposed defeat. Or, if he seems to gradually approach his goal his feeling of inferiority or self-depreciation breaks through ahead and cries Halt! causing him to beat a retreat or go through a circuitous route.
It follows, therefore, that in difficult situations the neurotic disposition furnishes the greatest number of those who are forced to work in roundabout ways in order to save their ambitious ideal of personality. In this roundabout path, moving at a constant spiritual "distance" about the normal but dreaded goal, there comes about an unconscious impulse to complete an arrangement by which this "distance" would be made secure. But for our theme roundabout path and arrangement signify the structure of a perversion built for the purpose of fixing the "distance" from the sexual partner.
* * *
The theories of homosexuality are based either upon an hereditary factor or upon acquired precocious perversion through an accentuated sexual occurrence in early life which in some way influences the Lebensplan of the child.
With the growth of the child its spirit develops efforts towards power and worth. As a rule the environments of the parents serve the child as the strongest figure in its guiding-picture. Upon this it bases its own understanding and expectations of the future. It then seeks room for its own development not without the natural "distance," however, heightening its feeling of self-depreciation. The child's compensatory Lebensplan tries in various ways to overcome this distance and thereby remove the feeling of weakness. With the means of childish experience at disposal, in which the natural traces of the bodily and spiritual weakness of the child are never absent, it seeks the road to future ascendency.
The continual probing of this individual road is enforced through the expansion-tendency of the child. If, at some future time, hate, benevolence and love appear, this is cultivated in the evolution of the child's spiritual life. All the preparations for the hardships of future life—as the child understands them—are created at this time; so also the attitudes towards life and society and the perspective towards the world. Thus different characters are developed—aggression, ingratiation, mistrust, evasiveness, treacherousness, irresoluteness, self-confidence or lack of self-confidence.
From his own limited experience and in imitation of other persons, the child draws to himself all the artifices of the conduct of life and joins them as permanent forms to his own character. Every answer that a person can give on the question of life is essentially influenced by the schema of his childhood. And it goes without saying that all the questions and people he encounters in later life are depicted to him according to the schematic figures of his childhood.
Through the researches of individual psychology it has been shown with indisputable proof that the more one-sided the child's development is and the more abnormal his attitude towards the demands of society, the more strongly developed is his feeling of self-depreciation. Mostly the bodily and spiritual, but compensatory, depreciations afford the most significant motive.2 Ill breeding and errors in education work just as deleteriously when the child's "distance" from the adult is made to appear as if it cannot be spanned. Here also belongs the mistake of excessive authority practiced by some parents.3 For instance, a father by bringing up the child too harshly can destroy its spirit towards progress so that the child never attains the self-confidence of initiative. The same result may occur under various other conditions from paternal superiority.
Thus in later life the child is fearsome, lacking the courage to face life's problems. He does not trust himself to advance a solution of these problems except insofar as he can fall back upon his father or until he begins to exhibit a tendency to defy his father's superiority. Hence he finally tries to triumph over paternal "tyranny." It must be admitted that this paternal type is found among those men who, unable to exercise their authority upon the outside world, try to impress their superiority upon their own family circle.
Similarly, where the mother is a strong-willed, unyielding woman. The boy
develops no trust in himself especially in relation to women. Like the boy described previously, he lacks courage and shuns the competition of Man. Towards women he is hostile in feeling (symptoms of "moral insanity" are also quite frequent). This hostility may be so intense that he shows a tendency to evade the problem of love and marriage, inventing as safeguards to this end severe conditions, stipulations or neurotic tricks (such as signs of disease).
The female sex is also similarly influenced by the struggle for life, by the stronger competition and so we find that the tyrannical mother who holds her husband and children "pressed against the wall" is most often the individual product of just such a hardened bringing up. As a general rule such women seek their harmonious expression in "masculine equality," in an "exaggerated masculine protest against feminine character," all of which serves to increase their lust of power and to distort and disfigure their affectionate relationships. Even upon superficial consideration we usually find among such women such symptoms as dysmenorrhea, vaginismus, frigidity, late marriage, a small number of children and nervous diseases that are frequently interwoven with menstruation, pregnancy, labor or the menopause.
* * *
An indelible impression of the "attitude of distance" towards Woman is obtained from a consideration of three quite different types of feelings and thoughts of the homosexualist which, however, coincide in their innermost points. The first group, which also embraces his most important spiritual phenomena, concerns his present attitudes. This, however, always bears some relation to the future.
It requires no closer analysis to make the fact clear that the pervert is as little adapted to our social life—in all conditions of life—as he is deprived of the qualifications that his sexual character demands of him. The formation of our social structure is of wide latitude. It underlies the internal conflicts, the contradictions and struggles of human society in the same way as its sexual manifestations. On this account the question of homosexuality comes into prominence if measured according to popular will. It is precisely a denial of this popular will and, indeed, in a most decisive point.
Popular will always bears within itself the ideal of perpetuation and from this fact homosexuality and every other perversion is at once stamped as a crime and a sin. And what happens? The unity of a cultural ideal defends itself against such endangering opposition by legal and other means—by laws, penalties and moral condemnation.
Of course, it must also be remembered how easily general condemnation may overreach itself just as soon as an advantageous position of conquest is obtained—or when the sword of righteousness is swung by one who feels himself free from guilt and error—an impeccability which he wants to show off. The question of punishment is somewhat vexed. As further grounds reminding one of care when the punishment of homosexuality is concerned it is emphasized that the perversion is a collective disease of the individuality and the danger of punishment lies in the further excitation of it—rarely in its discouragement.
The full-fledged homosexualist always appeals to his historically developed individuality. All his recollections of childhood seem to him to justify his point of view. It is this uniformity in development which has suggested to various authors the false thesis of an hereditary homosexuality. Schrecker and I have pointed out the
false and misleading tendencies in the recollections of childhood. The main point of argument for "hereditary homosexuality" falls entirely out of discussion.
In short, wherever we look we see an effort on the part of the homosexualist to dig up proof to establish the irresponsibility of his conduct. To pursue this matter further, this shows an active hostility towards society which may be comprehended in the following formula: the aim of the homosexualist is contrary to the requirements of social life. He shows very little of the public spirit and none of the good-will towards others by means of which the bond of unity between people is tied. He does not seek peaceful adaptability and harmony; but his cautious, though over-impulsive, expansion-tendency leads him to seek continually hostile measures in the service of which he also places his sexual impulse. In other words, he has not developed as a partner in society.
The second group which claims our interest because it discloses the active phase of homosexuality becomes outwardly manifest, from the stereotyped stimulus, as a person's temperament, attitude and activity. The homosexual principle is that of distance towards the woman. Any contrary excitation encounters so much rigidness and resistance that it acts as an automatic brake—instinctively, unconsciously and so taking every actuality into consideration. The tendency and purpose of such a mechanism is to serve as an attacking and defensive organ, an artificial blocking activity which at all times renders assistance in the direction of "nichtmitspielen."
The third group also shows an unconscious, but distinct, despotism which underlies the homosexualist. It is his low self-esteem which robs him of all unconstraint. This feeling of self-depreciation is often quite unknown to him; but his attitude in life and all his actions make it appear that he supposes its existence and make him ready for desertion at all times. The physician can only gain an opinion as to the range of this feeling when he has appreciated the tragic fate of the homosexualist and his cowardice against normal life, what difficulties he has to contend with which the patient himself often does not realize.
In conclusion I wish to mention that in the mixed cases of homosexuality and heterosexuality, which are not rare, and furthermore the homosexuality of youth, the senile form of homosexuality and that form occurring in boarding schools, prisons and on long sea voyages agree with our conception in placing in a correct light the despotism of the act through the appearance of a seemingly modified irresponsibility. And in these cases also we find the explanation of the heightened expansion-tendency which is aided by the always ready sexual impulse.
* * *
II. CASUISTICS AND SPECIAL PART.
I wish to present, in the following, the outline of the case-histories of three patients which, I hope, will afford an understanding of the homosexual Psyche and show the correctness of the mechanism indicated above. But first of all, a word on the chances of treatment. They are today as unfavorable as could be. This would seem to be in contradiction with the certainty with which the causes of homosexuality were discussed. But the difficulties of a cure are at once appreciable when we try to lighten our problem and reach this question: What chances of success have we when we try to change a grown-up coward into a courageous man? Upon this hangs, essentially, the therapy of homosexuality. In our case the cowardice is sometimes well concealed
or it predominantly extends into conditions of love and marriage. As I do not wish to enter extensively into the question of therapy I just want to emphasize that the treatment,
must eradicate the deeply-rooted imaginations of childhood.
The patient's distance from his sexual partner must be clearly demonstrated.
His antisocial attitude must be brought out prominently.
His aim towards superiority must be unmasked and destroyed as a fixed Utopia.
This entire bringing-up process requires the greatest pedagogic delicacy of feeling and the most cultivated methods. I believe I will find concurrence in my conclusion that the eradication of homosexuality is a question of the bringing up of the child. The nursery is the important place where the child's courage should not be taken away, where the questions pertaining to his future life should not be befogged and establish securely and unalterably his sexual character. Especially in this latter point is there much to be desired. It is probably no accident that in all my cases I have been able to reveal in the history a striking insecurity in the sexual character. This childish uncertainty seems to me to be the principal condition in the previous history of the homosexual.
Case I.
In this biography the fundamental schema indicated by me comes into distinct evidence: the superiority of the female portion of the family, the inconvenience of the sexual organs, the uncertainty of the child in relation to his sexual rôle, the hope of a modification of the same and the line of direction of his avarice and despotism, causing him to seek triumph in roundabout ways.
". . . . . . . . . . . . I grew up with my older sister who used to use me as a plaything in her games. One of the games especially is painfully in my memory. I was the cow and she would milk me from my sexual organ. On my complaining to the governess an end was put to this game. As children we would enjoy riding on the knees of our governess or even so on the knees of some gentlemen friends of the family, and would give vent to our good feelings with shrieks of delight. But contrary to my sister my sexual organ was always in my way. I then found a more convenient make-believe horse: I would stick a cushion between my legs and gallop round around the room for hours long. My sister eagerly joined me in this play and we were quite in love with our cushion. Later on we made believe that it was an infant which we would place to the breast to nurse. We also would suck the corners of the cushion which finally turned into a perpetual competition with the household belongings.
"As, for purposes of health, my see-saw was taken away from me. I pondered over this and concluded that there was a connection between this measure and my sexual organ and I made the peculiar observation that I could make the testicles disappear into the belly. I then tried to do likewise with my penis, which I succeeded by strong compression.
"As a youth I wanted nothing more ardently than to be of a double-sexed nature, so that as a man I could have striking intercourse with men and as a girl I could rule over them.
"As a 12-year-old boy I used to like to play around in the stable with the coachman and the stable-boy. There I often had the opportunity to see their sexual organs and in proportion to mine they seemed to me of giant's size. One day I witnessed the stable-boy insert his arm into the sexual organs of a mare. All these big dimensions confused me so that I became anxious about my future. I felt that I was not disposed to be satisfied to play a subordinate rôle. I was very avaricious for honor and stubborn. When my sister and I used to drive I always gave the directions, and in fact compelled her to look only in the direction that I pointed out to her. One day—I must have been about 12 years old then—I was seduced by the stable-boy, and so my first homosexual act came about
which filled me with exceptional pride. And it remained so until the present day. The power that I exercise over men fills me with tremors of delight. Shortly afterwards I had homosexual intercourse with an older staff officer who always had been heterosexual. I experienced great satisfaction when I saw him before me afterwards entirely exhausted."
Case II.
A 26-year-old, strong, somewhat dreamy and bashful appearing man presented himself before me as a homosexualist with the question whether I would advise him to marry. Questions of that kind are usually pretexts, when addressed to a neurologist. Further inquiries brought out the fact that he regarded homosexuality as unalterable and he amplified his views with a whole series of citations from various known authors. I do not want to say that the dessemination of false conceptions in this respect does palpable harm. But with a perversion built on a desert of mistakes so that the patient is imprisoned in superstition, such authoritative assertions—as of the incurability of the homosexuality—serve to sustain the patient in his misconception. With this statement it is recommended accordingly to hold back somewhat the expression of our point of view.
When questioned as to his life's history the patient stated he is the son of a peasant woman and that his father is unknown to him. His mother gave birth to another illegitimate child and later, in honorable wedlock, to two other girls whom, as a little boy, he had to mind day and night. This task he found unbearable and it filled him with a great deal of displeasure. He recalls that not alone these two little girls but girls and women in general aroused in him a feeling of animosity, and they, he argued, were to be blamed for his ill-fortune. To this aspect of the world certain remarks of his grandmother contributed in which she branded his mother's character. Simultaneously with this attack and with his own sorrowful experiences to which his mother herself conducted in placing him in service to the two girls, he heard it expounded, particularly by his grandmother, how reprehensible love-relationships are. He understood all this to mean, not any differently than other boys or men, how much one must guard himself from women! Thus, together with his own fate, he had implanted within him the necessary preparation towards perversion.
We can best understand his method of reaction to the feeling of depreciation when we hear that he, the despised boy, determined to become a clergyman, which signified nothing less in that village than being the first man in the village in which he lived. Furthermore, this childish phantasie of profession shows us that already at this early stage his goal (as a Catholic) sought to withdraw him from Woman and Love.
In the public school he was the most diligent and gifted scholar and with slight effort he was prepared to enter the gymnasium (grammar school of the first grade). But after the second class which he also completed very successfully, his guardian took him out of school and set him to work taking care of geese. This boy's destiny, as we see, was by all means unsuited to make him a proper partner (Mitspieler) in society.
For two years long he took care of geese. Finally, strangers interested in him, prevailed upon his guardian to teach the gifted boy some trade. He wanted to become a mechanic. His guardian forced him to become a weaver's apprentice. After a three-year apprenticeship—he was now 17 years old—he forsook the weaver's trade, a determination that he had decided upon long before, and entered as an apprentice in a technical factory. At the same time he studied industriously at a technical school and succeeded, with his efforts, to obtain a favorable position.
While he was still a weaver's apprentice he found a friend in whom he placed greater trust than in all other people. At the same time his feeling of personality became so broadened that he found it possible to exert his influence upon any person. It's no wonder also that his adult impulse assumed that direction corresponding to his previously unfavorable attitude towards life: distance and a tendency towards women. He felt a special attraction towards his friend because he was the first person to greet him with love and at the same time, under the lash of his sexual impulse he tried to win a dominating control over some person. So he was "the despised" person, set back everywhere, but with a lust for triumph, the seducer of his friend and an active homosexualist.
Later on he occasionally had normal intercourse. But he always looked upon it all as a failure. For example, after normal sexual intercourse with a prostitute he found the act odious. However, we find this feeling not only among the homosexual. Our patient, however, regarded his disgust as a sign of "inborn perversive tendency," and felt himself so much the more bound to it.
For some time he has been approached on the question of marriage. He became engaged to the girl introduced, but he felt repulsive and awkward about it so that the option was given him to break the engagement if he chose. Just as soon as he became engaged he came to me with his "hereditary homosexuality," not so much for purposes of cure as for a substantiation of the disease in order that he be justified in withdrawing from his betrothal. In the meantime he felt in love with a 14-year-old girl—perhaps just to gain time—and broke his engagement. His old fear of and disinclination towards women which had grown upon him through his peculiar destiny remained unovercome but not unalterable through treatment.
* * *
In these two cases I am quite far removed from a desire to speak of a cure for homosexuality, but in both cases the treatment was successful in diminishing the distance between the patient and the female sex. In the second case the outlook seems favorable that in a short time an essential transformation to the normal will occur. But I want to warn against an underestimation of the difficulties relative to the prophylaxis of homosexuality and the uncommonly difficult therapy. On the other hand it is certainly to be emphasized that the presence of the difficulties should not act as a deterrent to therapy.
In the above cases the first one inclined more towards a feminine character; the second, towards a masculine character and the apparent fixation of the homosexuality was shaken at once. Both patients became heterosexual, although, to be sure, incompletely. We must not forget, however, what a spacious time the normal youth requires in preparation in order to make his sexual function sufficient. The improved patient must also be given sufficient time.
With many of the homosexual, treatment becomes absolutely necessary for another reason. Those are the cases in which, accompanying the homosexuality, there are other such conspicuous neuroses that a cure is vitally demanded. In the two cases described above there were numerous symptoms of a nervous nature which had their existence in the fear of society, such as hypochondria in the first case, and insomnia, blushing and bashfulness in the second case. These facts are particularly distinct in the following case which also shows the manifoldness of the perversion emphasized by many authors.
* * *
The most important view that I have arrived at from a study of the neurotic and psychic significance of the perversion lies in the growing comprehension of the sinister, often well concealed obstinacy of the patient. This becomes evident during childhood as a stronger, in later life as an overpowering, sensitive social demand. We will have the opportunity to study the childhood form of this obstinacy as a deplorable result of improper bringing up. The remarkable thing will sometimes happen that the worthiest boy will fall into obstinacy and negativism in order to get rid of his feeling of self-depreciation and outgrow his father. This may all happen from the false conception and the wish to become a full-fledged man. The child's entire will and behavior may point predominantly in the direction "dem Vater das Spiel verderben" (literally, to spoil the father's play, i. e., to spite the father).
There are now two possibilities of further development. The first is, if the father is lovable the child will conceal his spitefulness although in his behavior he will operate against the expectations of his father, by showing a persistent ineptitude and incapacity. In the second possibility, where the father is severe, this severity favors a period of
open defiance until the child loses his belief and confidence in himself. In the latter case, however, there is developed a strong line of precaution, the psychological reason for which is that the child tries not to lose his feeling of personality in comparison with his father.
This line of precaution always leads to the important social problem, the attitude towards Woman, in a decisive way. The road is free to neuroses and under favorable circumstances to perversions.
To recapitulate we can say that in the previous histories of the homosexual besides the described tendencies (uncertainty of sexual character, weakness of decision, the construction of a future life without Woman, consuming search after triumphs), a conscious or unconscious attitude of hostility towards the father is never missing.
I want to mention another slight symptom that we frequently encounter in the homosexual as well as in other neurotics which is explained by a secret ambition and at times may lead to the well known forms of false benevolence and sympathetic sensibility. It is the tendency of bestowing continual favors and patronage, such as giving advice, small obligations and help, charity, warnings and other favors. For instance, the patient, out of solicitude for the passer-by, removes a stone out of the road, or he calls attention to a nail or a bit of broken glass. Or he will brush another's clothes or straighten his cravat, etc—all out of pure solicitude for the other's welfare and appearance. Such an individual gives the impression of a very careful personality whose obtrusive altruistic enterprises may become a burden and an intrusion. This extreme carefulness and benevolence becomes suspicious because it is so overdone and exaggerated. The patient takes everybody's troubles on his own shoulders. He acts for everybody and desires to relegate everyone else to passivity. He is the manager of all. This impression is extraordinarily strengthened by psychologic investigation—how there is intermingled in all this a spying, secretive, grumbling, fault-finding attitude in the conduct of the patient. This greedy, predominating, aggressive, softening attitude seems snake-like and I have very often, in homosexualists, been able to find this serpentine quality as a compulsive-activity moving in a devious, roundabout path when confronted with a problem that appears difficult. In the following case this compulsive-activity is present.
Case III.
Case III. This patient introduced himself to me with the information that he is homosexual and suffers from terribly compulsive thoughts. These have interfered with his work—he is a private officeholder—to an uncommon degree. In fact, his professional accomplishments, his studies of business have been upset by them. He took up the study of the mercantile line shortly after the death of his father so that he could progress more rapidly in his career. He has to support his mother and himself.
For his age (25) he seems rather weakly, delicate, pale and he has Hutchinson's teeth. Questioned as to his father he stated that he had died, in the course of a paralysis, from an accident. The patient is the only child, and was born late in marriage. His mother was about five years older than the father.
Syphilis as a cause of numerous injuries in development, which may affect all organs, is substantiated in the works of pathologists and pediatrists (see, for example, Hochsinger's works). It is therefore perfectly comprehensible that in children of luetic parents in the course of a sickly childhood a feeling of self-depreciation may appear. The anxiety of the parents over the sickly child aggravates the situation. In other cases, again, the father, from his feeling of degradation over his lues, establishes a state of fear or cultivates an hypochondria. But this feeling of weakness and uncertainty always takes the upper hand in the soul of the child.
In our patient's home there prevailed an ideal family life. The parents were intelligent, lovable people and the mother, who hardly permitted her only son away from her side, understood by friendly acquiescence how to cause her husband's occasional moods and ill humor to disappear quickly. One fact stands out prominently in the recollection of our patient, namely, that he was weakly and always guarded attentively and was affected with some defect of speech, over which his relations would sometimes make fun.
He narrated his development by which we were able slowly to obtain a guide on his Lebenslinie. There were some markedly great purposes therein. His mother was given over to his rearing and attendance and he himself, when three or four years old, counted so much upon this devotion and tried to foster it so, that later he felt sadly injured when his mother was not with him. We see here that error of bringing up which most often tends to undermine the child's self-reliance and makes him a coward towards life. With this attitude of his mother another fact is in accord, namely, that his mother always openly distrusted the servant girl and never gave our patient the opportunity to be alone with any girls, in fact would frighten him from them with words. And so it happened that he, who exercised a control over his mother, was early and definitely denied a forward social direction not because he believed that he had to win a great deal of control, but because of distrust.
On the other hand, another remembrance will serve us as a guide to his spitefulness and rivalry towards his father and which shows us, at the same time, that the mastery over his mother was insufficient. He slept in a room which was adjacent to his parents' room—he was then perhaps six years old—and as his parents retired he sprang out of bed in a fit of anger, such as he had never had before, and grabbing a stick he pounded so long on the stove until his mother came to quiet him. He also recalls that often before falling asleep he would call his mother and ask her to do all sorts of things for him.
This tendency, to master his mother and place her in his service, thus securing for him a cheap feeling of despotism, occurred shockingly often. Freud could easily disclose an incestuous tendency and change all the patient's outward manifestations into sexual language and thereby obtain what he calls "the sexual etiology of homosexuality." Our patient, however, states that until he was twelve years of age, probably as a result of his mother's close guardianship, he lacked all knowledge of sex, every interest and every motion. His father's incitements he endured incomprehensibly, helplessly and perhaps also spitefully. Moreover, we can easily understand that this child sought a support for his feeling of inferiority, which he found in his mother, and that he did not grasp onto his father because his father was less qualified to respond to him. I shall leave the judgment of the fact to the more experienced judge of the soul of children as to why this boy had to lean against his mother, as the arbitrariness of the Freudian school deduces the spiritual development of the boy, in all its ramifications, from a sexual impulsive incestuous tendency.
* * *
In this current, in which the soul of the boy should develop, there lay not only the motive to extend his tyranny over his mother always further but by means of love, and at times of anger, to bring himself to appear of value to her. The antithesis of the father is also sharply outlined, but as he avoided exercising any impression on the boy, open defiance or open hostility was dispelled. To avoid doing so altogether was out of the question, for the father's superiority, from the very nature of the thing, oppressed the boy in reserve so that when he would ask his father's help in mathematical problems he would always, perhaps unconsciously, through an affected incomprehensibility, stir up his father's anger and excitement.
The circumstances already mentioned of the patient's bodily weakness also tended to aggravate the situation insofar as the father was exceptionally big and strong. The antithesis was further increased when the father would urge the boy not to behave like a girl, always hanging on to his mother, but that he should act like a boy and play with boys. We can understand that because of the father's deep-rooted antagonism he was unsuited to be the proper leader because he always had to contend against the
boy's resistance. But for another reason as well the father was bound to be frustrated. This is the same reason that the treatment may be liable to frustration because the patient, as an insecure child, so built up his compensatory ambition that he is only able to follow such paths as bring out his own superiority and not that of his father, or later, of the physician.
Thus we see, just as generally with nervous children, that the boy is liable to fall into a condition of compensatory negativism, into an openly defiant, distressed, sadistic character. But through the lovable and friendly conduct of the father this possibility was closed to him, who, as a matter of fact, by his persuasion and tenderness tried to bring out his talent. Against this behavior there remained with the boy but a single counter-move: to increase and receive, in similar by-paths, his father's love in order to make secure his control over him also but at the same time with the quickly learned stenciled passive attitude and inaptitude to destroy his father's demands of him for manliness.
In this mental condition, the single proof of which is his despotism over his mother and her subordination to him, signs of ascendency over his father must also appear, every action and every disposition being conditioned through his fictive or imaginary goal, namely, his lust for power, notwithstanding his bodily and childish weakness, by evasive, indirect and stealthy means—never by direct aggression or challenge. Some fighting disposition may perhaps be reconstructed which show facts and preparatory actions that could later be converted into realities or which help to comprehend early the course of his phantasie. So, for instance, as a child he would first disarrange his pillow, then his coverlet in order to find a reason to call his mother and thereby draw her away from his father's side; in later life, as an adult, the same propensity is evident when he tried to persuade his mother to separate from his father upon whose faithfulness he attempted to cast suspicion.
His measures were, as we see, cunning and secretive. He never trusted himself to open action. Hence he necessarily had to manifest manifold, often double-cleft relations and apparently very contradictory characteristics (the misunderstood "splitting of personality" of some authors) which, in a similar way, were based on the demonstration of his superiority. For instance, he had to show so much love, diligence and effort that he would not lose standing in the eyes of his father and mother. Afterwards he demolished it all. And on the other hand he persevered in so much underhand spite-work against both of them that they both continually had their hands full with him. Subsequently he also possessed his spitefulness, as well as some incapacity. He showed other evidences of the neurotic, such as enuresis, stuttering or masturbation.
Phenomena of this sort the physician must expect and explain in the treatment; for in the psyche of the neurotic there are certainly found the most contrary emotions: love and hate, defiance and submission, tyranny and resignation, sadism and masochism, activity and passivity, homosexuality and heterosexuality. All these are only means through which to attain superiority. Once this imaginary end result is reached all the contrariness disappears!
If we wish to convince ourselves again whether we have found the right path we must seek aid in further recollections of childhood and see if in them we again find the same, and only the same, path. For example, in the "never-to-be-forgotten dreams" of childhood, in the expectation there to find the basis of the patient's tactics. One
such dream when our patient was six years of age was thus: "I was climbing a mountain upon the summit of which my mother was waiting for me. I mounted it serpentinely. Behind me a man was following the same route. He was dressed as a guardsman and I had the feeling that he wanted to do something to me." If we interpret this dream disinterestedly we find that it denotes (1) an upward endeavor, (2) the struggle to the mother, (3) the secrecy and slyness of the by-path, (4) the hostile position of the father.
A second dream, when he was seven years of age, was thus: "I was walking with my father in the street. Behind us a person was coming who acted as if insane. He struck off the heads of all the people." This dream, which cannot be well understood without some presumptions, is at least surely evident in one respect, how full of danger our patient regarded life outside the house ("in the street").
If we further take into consideration the preparations of this boy which pursue so distinctly the line of "security" and the soaring to superiority above all others, we must expect to find it again in all other fields of his activity. Above all it must occur in his play and in his favorite occupations because these are grasped prominently by the child as "preparatory acts" towards life. As a matter of fact the patient states that he never, or only under compulsion, would play with other children and that from his earliest childhood would play, almost exclusively, with railroad train games and that the mechanism of the train interested him especially.
From previous material (see my work "Heilen und Bilden") I must admite that this inquisitiveness of the child based on mechanisms gives rise to a great uncertainty in regard to his understanding which demands a seeking and feeling ease of mind. At the same time we understand that such application would not evince a combative nature in the way numerous other applications would establish. Is not this the same impression that the father complained of, that our patient behaved more like a girl than a boy? If we recall the patient's tender exterior, the curls that he wore, the girlish dresses he wore until his fifth year and that almost until puberty he had no clear understanding of the distinction of sex or even of his own sexual character, the impression becomes stronger that the uncertainty in his understanding, also in relation to his sexual character, acted as an aggravating factor.
In regard to girls I can make the analogous assertion that fighting and scuffling, climbing and running, excessive sport and dreams of such performances, as Smith and Stanley Hall have emphasized, point to a discontent with the female character and to a "male protest" against it. In the picture of our patient a new, aggravating note comes into view, which again convinces us, that he, uncertain in his understanding as to his future sexual rôle, renounces the masculine striving for power.
In his uninfluenced communication the patient states that when he was about ten years old he got the notion that when a child is born the mother's belly bursts open. At the same time he suffered from a phobia that the boiler in his toy railroad train might burst. Here we find, in the form of a phobia, a concealed train of thought and emotions which necessarily carry within them a protest against the female character. From still another circumstance was it possible for him to have to play a female rôle. All his childhood days were taken up in association with a six-year-old girl cousin who influenced him by her exceptional energy, courage and attention. Most often they used to play marriage. Our patient had to play the character of the "bride" and would
wear a long train, whereas the girl would take the part of the "bridegroom." That is as much as to say that the boy's organ-inferiority found him girlish and that as a boy he was uninfluenced. In consequence he quietly accepted the tacit view that he could decide to assume either a masculine or a feminine character, i. e., he was uncertain as to his sexual character.
If we take into consideration this uncertainty as to his sexual character (a result of his seclusion through his neurotic mother who herself turned to her feminine character at a late date and feared a second child, perhaps from the excessive anxiety occasioned by the first child)4—a result, moreover, of the luetic father's anxiety for the future, and who decided too late to allow the boy to run around freely—we have before us the development of an organically inferior child whose feeling of deficient manliness was supported by nervous family tradition until it found the way to accumulate and heighten the feelings of inferiority in order to discharge them afterwards towards a goal of the most ambitious endeavor: to evade the test (of masculinity) through femininity and yet gain ascendancy over men by the female attitude and feminine means! When the patient was sixteen years old he often played a female part in a school dramatic performance. He was admired by his school comrades and he flirted with a stranger, a visitor, who took him to be a girl.
Previously, when he was twelve years old, an event occurred which decidedly strengthened his unconscious renunciation of woman. Since eight years old he had tendencies to masturbation—thigh masturbation—without any seduction in play, a thing which in this form of masturbation is perhaps always found. Four years later he discovered, while having sexual contact (mutual onanism) in a bath house with a school comrade, that he had a phimosis. To an ambitious boy such an affection seems like an awful defect. This incident shows what was first described by me as contemporary sexual self-depreciation or inferiority, the phimosis appearing to the patients as a sign of peripheral degeneration because of an inferiority somewhere else.4 The patient therefore brings together all his natural resources to forsake the pursuit of woman because the means of sexual force appears prejudicial to him. From this time on woman ceases to play any influence or importance with him because he believes that he is incompetent to make a decision.5 He is now led closer to the side of man at some future day to enjoy plain homosexuality.
Upon this decision he did not come suddenly, much less was he surprised by it. A whole series of preliminaries in which his active participation was indispensable show his active tendency towards perversion—to be sure, in a manner in which he can renounce any responsibility, in a manner of selfdeception. Of his preliminaries I wish to emphasize the most significant: neurotic, prejudicial grouping and valuation of facts, depreciation of woman and "hardening measures."
When our patient was sixteen years old he had his first homosexual experience. At this stage he was already initiated into all the secrets of sexuality but towards girls in general he was cold. Upon closer inspection this statement seems incorrect. He had rambling tendencies towards girls but never did the patient grasp the possibility
of anything more than purely companionable approximation. In consequence of his Lebensplan he needed distance towards girls and he made it. By exaggerating the difficulties, by prejudicially emphasizing the girl's faults, by incorrect confirmation, as it was shown later, of her indifference towards him, by self-misrepresentation as to female artfulness and cunning he always succeeded in frightening himself away and of deadening every germinating interest. At the same time he learned the air, the manner which had to frighten girls and it governed him instinctively. And so much the stronger did he place the degree of attraction that boys exercised upon him either during excursions or bathing. For a long time he did not overstep platonic wanderings, usually kissing and embracing. Twice, he recalls, he practiced contact of the genitals. These, which he managed after searching reflection and diplomatic preparation, he looked upon as a sign of Heaven and confirmed his belief in his hereditary homosexuality.
His excitations led him mostly to thigh masturbation which his father sought to restrain by veiled suggestions. At puberty when he was fully homosexual he bound up his sexual excitations always with homosexual phantasies, which concerned more especially delicate boys whom he could lick without any effort, or strong, giant men who, overcome by his charm, were compelled by him to place themselves in his possession. The imaginary act displayed a situation in which—fully realizing the incongruousness of it—he would exhibit a change to a female nature or else (this phantasie becomes established more interestingly later on) he would practice reciprocal fellatio.
This developmental condition requires closer consideration. If we accept as solved our task in tracing back the homosexuality to a feeling of insufficiency, or if we regard as established the attempt to more easily attain the imaginary ideal of superiority through a renunciation of woman we become as much confused by the pervert's occasional inclinations towards pretty girls as are the adherents of hereditary sexuality. If we inspect it more closely we find that the patient systematically depreciated the real natural emotions of his masculine character so long, until he was no longer conscious of them. And he intentionally ligated every inclination to bring the female sex closer to him because it was dangerous to his neurotic Lebensplan ("plan of life"). The principal weakening of his activity lay so closely to him that he furthered it until he was hindered in every initiative against men. He came into homosexual relations with three men but never was he aggressive; his conduct was nothing more than timid coquetishness. In his childhood, as we have seen him, instead of leading an open struggle he always remained, even until treatment, the object of conquest. He never had the opportunity to learn aggression and in relation to love he had lost complete confidence in his power. The last possibility came about through the phimosis which appeared to him as unmanly. Hence he returned to the impulse of his childhood, to feel himself the stronger by eliminating woman and conquering man through ways of slyness and the application of feminine means.
In the wish to rule his mother this result could not occur, for his father had stronger reason and greater influence, and so the childish scene when he furiously pounded on the stove shows us the feeling of his defeat against his father. If he now had any tendency towards girls it was only to exercise himself in resignation in order to build more securely his distance towards the female sex and to learn how to drop quickly loosely bound connections. This artfulness in "hardening," an ingredient of the preparatory safeguarding tendency, is of the greatest significance in the mechanism
of the neurosis and teaches us impressively how the once established individual Lebenslinie of the neurotic and its goal become decisive. They group the reminiscences, lift up experiences to rank and dignity or plunge them into oblivion, crumble their significance, heighten sensibilities or extinguish them, utilize weakness and defects for feints and artifices, whip up impulsive life or mould it otherwise, give rise to licentious emotions, perversions, fetishistic characteristics, or let them disappear again after a bare existence and signification, and are at all times in a position to make something out of nothing or nothing out of something.
It is a well established fact that the spiritual life of the neurotic—and hence also the neurosis itself, without necessarily any knowledge of its mechanism—lies so clearly before one's eyes that it is more likely to be overlooked.
It is also found in the voluptuous masturbation of our patient and we can well assert that his homosexuality was first made possible through the arranged homosexual preparations in his phantasie which also served for his masturbation. The whole attitude of his later homosexuality can be found and demonstrated as preparations in his masturbatory phantasies, in fact also, in his former dreams. It therefore follows that the neurotic symptom of homosexuality, just as all other symptoms of the neurosis, is worked out and arranged, and that it is joined together with the manifold proofs of the patients unconscious Lebensplan.
As to the significance of masturbation in the neurosis (I shall take up a more conclusive consideration of this perversion in another paper) we see the following throughout:
Occasioned by real irritative conditions it is made at once utilizable for the neurotic schema.
The accompanying feelings of guilt help to set masturbation in its right light or to safeguard against an excess; they are also proof of the "overtowering sexuality" of the patient.
The accompanying phantasies are to be regarded as preparations betraying the goal of the neurotic from which he is frightened away.
There is a feeling of inferiority or fear of defeat, both culminating in a fear of the sexual partner and an attempt by the patient to postpone his decision.
In regard to the latter point, the fear of decision, we find in our patient a great deal of restraint towards aggression as in his life in other respects. His restraint towards his equal sexual partner is exactly as great as his distance towards life otherwise—an agreement which shows us that we have correctly determined the patient's Lebenslinie. Was not his previously described attitude towards his father, mother and Man unconsciously and invariably determined by his feeling of inferiority, by his fear of decision and by his highbridled goal to govern his surroundings? Also, his superfluous artifices, the ingratiation—in a snake-like way—his secretive spitefulness, his partial, assumed incapacity when questions of any sort confronted him, his change to unmanly or what is the same thing, "feminine" ways, especially his well prepared grasping of a homosexual direction with all the successive complete individual characteristics belonging to it—all these give evidence that the patient so managed his real thoughts, feeling and desires until he met his "correct" choice of neurosis. In view of the heretofore unsuccessful attempts to understand the choice of neurosis I wish to point
out from my investigations that: the patient finally acquires that neurosis which corresponds best with his fictive goal and the Lebensplan belonging to it.
As our patient had gone so far as to have mutual onanism with a school comrade in a bath house he had to make a further arrangement by which to secure and hold fast his homosexual development. Hence he bestowed upon homosexuality the most enchanting allurement, prized it as the highest form of love and depreciated the normal which he tried to regard as low, common and bestial. In this he also obtained force from his Lebensplan.
In my work Ueber den nervösen Charakter I have described extensively these allurements, falsities, depreciations and overestimations in the mental life of the neurotic as preparations and arrangements for the purpose of heightening his own feelings of personality. The "hardening measures" prepared our patient for other degenerations of the homosexual, namely, for mutual fellatio, to extinguish the last trace of aversion and resistance and through this perversion to give to homosexuality, so to say, a higher sanctification. The following event occurred which puzzled the patient: he awoke one morning with a dim recollection that he had drunk urine from a tumbler. Remains of the urine still were in the glass. This happened at a time when he resisted the efforts of a friend to induce him to practice fellatio. Soon afterwards he became yielding.
Between these two homosexual experiences two others slide in from one of which I wish to point out the proof of his lasting passive rôle. One day our patient pushed against a man in a public lavatory who had first struck his attention by his worn out coat. (The outwardly minutely exact and stylish clothes of many homosexualists, also shown in our patient, shows us the underlying feeling of weakness which seeks to become compensated by outward show and at the same time act as a bribe). The eyes of both met and they understood each other. This condition of mutual recognition between homosexuals is rather puzzling. They very seldom mistake each other. To my questions in relation to this I always receive general answers. "Der Blick bleibht hängen!" ("The glance remains steadfast") is the way most of the patients express it which, however, expresses the fact rather than the cause. And yet in view of the numberless preparations of the homosexual this positiveness of judgment is not hard to understand. The act of recognition is evidently unconscious but under the constant feeling and testing of the glance it becomes a sort of easily understood question and answer. The eye takes over the task of expressing mutual comprehension and preparation. Notwithstanding that our patient was sure of his man he drew away from the pursuit of the pursuing homosexualist, abandoned the plan to get better acquainted with him as foolish and went away with admonishing thoughts for greater precaution. In his subsequent relations he was never the seeker and always exercised the greatest precaution. Shortly afterwards he fell a victim to an extortioner who accused him unjustly of having made unlawful advances. That this experience strengthened him in his passiveness we can well understand.
He hardly had entered the high school, when his father died. This forced him to seek a position. We will not be surprised to learn that the patient, who wanted to evade every aggression and every uncertainty decided to enter upon a public career.
But with his tendency to passivity and with his ambition this comes into contradiction. The picture of his father who had attained more in life than he, always came
before him. So he imperceptibly reached the conclusion to follow a judicial career. But his habitual attitude required that he remain unresponsible for his entire future. Subsequently it becomes evident that his employment tired him, his thoughts digressed and finally compulsive thoughts appeared which hindered him in his work but which, however, contained his latent but powerful ideas of greatness. In his phantasie he constructed the idea of "a higher power" with which he would hold dialogues and which he could place in his service. That is to say, he cultivated the motion of being stronger than any known power and this by means of some secret charm. The triumph and excitability because of which he made himself happy could come, to be sure, only from an extraordinary condition of over-valuation. This play would occur somewhat in the following way: if he had to conclude a calculation the thought would enter his mind that perhaps his mother would die if he were not finished by a certain time. Accordingly he would call upon the "higher power" to which he would offer half of the smoked cigarette as a bribe and then he could continue his work in peace. In this way he came to regard the continued life of his mother as due to his own will and deed. By this compulsion neurosis a great deal of time was idled away; that is certain. But was not "time" the greatest danger for this young man who felt himself, as a result of his life's capacity, bound down to passivity? And is not this the exact line which lead to homosexuality only that he did not have to be on guard against woman?
Considered psychologically his homosexuality and his compulsion neurosis were of equal value; both were artifices, enchantments. The patient was seeking after triumph but he could not trust himself to go about it in a normally aggressive way. It is self-understood that his beginning studies have had something to do with his compulsion neurosis but he beheld the imagery of a godly superiority over everyone which could not be expressed or favored by an "hereditary" or diseased trifle.
The symptom-complex gives us the impression of paranoia and of dementia praecox with which homosexuality in many points borders. We distinctly see the impulsive factor in the tendency to evade by his own uncertainty the expectations and demands of society and by the legitimation of the disease or by emphasizing its hereditary side to strike off his responsibility, in the event that the self-demanded superiority is not attained.6
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The time of the appearance of his compulsion-neurosis gives us new confirmation of the correctness of our comprehension. One year before our patient had had homosexual relations with a friend and later he had connection with a girl. He found this condition so humiliating that he abandoned it entirely. Soon afterwards his ambition found compensation in the imagination of "a higher power" which was subjected to him. In this state of helplessness he came under my treatment unshaken in his belief that his homosexuality was unalterable. It could be easily seen that his visit to me did not spring from a desire to rid himself of the homosexuality but as an attempt to become convinced of the fruitlessness of treatment so that he could justify a relapse to his perversive relations. We can understand what new and increased difficulties towards treatment grow out of this not unusual grouping.
But not alone was the inclination to forgive his friend soon revealed. We came upon a condition which in the highest degree warranted him to be forgiving. For some time there lived in the same house with him a distant female relation who looked upon his homosexuality as dangerous, or liable to become so. The fact that she was a relation and thereby stood closer to him and because of her sympathy for him, he was forced to draw away from her all the more. In order to bring her conduct into harmony with his Lebensplan, i. e., in order to frustrate her he had to fall back upon his trustworthy method of "hardening measures." He often would apply all sorts of tests to himself to determine if he could counteract and stay the girl's charm. And he always succeeded in thus safeguarding himself. All this proof does not influence us at all; he was a corrupted manager. And we find a strikingly powerful indication in the following curious phenomenon: if a suitor appeared and began courting the girl then our patient overcame his feeling which he described as being similar to jealousy. And he did not rest until, by means of sharp criticism or all sorts of small intrigues, he succeeded in discouraging the suitor stark cold. If, on the other hand, the girl remained without a suitor for any length of time he would think out various plans how to marry her off quickest. We see his old play that he always arranged even in his employment. For every step forwards brought him nearer to a decision but his whole plan of life was, however, to avoid every test because he had lost confidence in himself.
As his relative again remained for a longer time without a suitor and fastened herself somewhat closer to him he went a step further to safeguard himself and confessed to her that he was homosexual. This confession, however, did not make the desired impression upon the girl. In fact, she tried to draw him even closer in order to save him—a frequently encountered girlish phantasie.
He now began to see the unfaithfulness of his friend in a mild light but he tried to draw him closer in order to escape from the intimacy of the girl.
He came to me in the full expectation that I would confirm his own opinion of the unalterability of the perversion about which he had read in the works of well-known authors. After some time I was able to state a contrary view. I subsequently succeeded in breaking him off from his homosexuality, but for two years I waited in vain for any change to the normal in his relations to women. The whole progress that I was able to obtain in this patient, although he interrupted the treatment often against my will, consisted, as the patient told me purposely two years later, that he entered into masturbation and occasional masochistic practices with prostitutes. He wanted to prove that he was still unsuited to woman. With his studies also he is very much behind. His compulsive thoughts, however, have disappeared, but in their place he seeks his distance to life by a paroxysmal somnolency just as soon as he begins to study.
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I do not believe that I could be accused of embellishments. In future I hope to obtain better results. It is always a great satisfaction to me to have advanced the view of specialists on the nature of the perversion as an artifice, as a badly selected but ingeniously prepared method of life, expended in ambition but which power does not restore and which has to reckon with the demands of society. With this assertion I wish to say at the same time that homosexuality is to be added to the neuroses and considered in the same category.
Fuente: Alfred Adler, «The Homosexual Problem», The Alienist and Neurologist (St. Louis), vol. 38, n.º 3, agosto de 1917, págs. 268-287 (paginación en letra: «Page Two Hundred Sixty-Eight» … «Eighty-Seven»). Transcripción hecha sobre las imágenes del número digitalizado en archive.org (copia local materiales/1917/1917-08_Alienist-and-Neurologist-38-3_Adler-The-Homosexual-Problem__archive.pdf, págs. 3-22 del PDF), con un OCR propio (Tesseract) corregido página a página contra la imagen, porque el de la plataforma desordena las líneas. El texto está completo. No se nombra al traductor. Los historiales de los casos II y III y la autobiografía del caso I van en el impreso en cuerpo menor. Se conservan las cursivas, los asteriscos de separación y la ortografía y las erratas del impreso («aganst», «dessemination», «admite», «bleibht», «Rheinhardt», «Minderwertigkeit der Organen», «Psychanalyse», «motion» por notion, «lead» por led, «3 The» sin punto en la lista, que se normaliza); en algunas palabras en cursiva la a del tipo se confunde con una o («exceptionol», «polpoble»), y se transcribe la letra correcta. Las notas al pie del impreso van con asterisco; aquí se numeran correlativamente, y el asterisco repetido de la p. 282 remite dos veces a la misma nota. Los comentarios p. n marcan el comienzo de cada página impresa. Relación con las versiones alemanas: es la traducción de un texto alemán de Adler emparentado con el folleto Das Problem der Homosexualität (Múnich, Ernst Reinhardt, 1917; 52 págs.), del que no hay facsímil en el archivo. Coincide, a menudo frase por frase, con la primera parte de la segunda edición, Das Problem der Homosexualität. Erotisches Training und erotischer Rückzug (Leipzig, Hirzel, 1930), pero es más breve: trae solo tres casos (los tres primeros de 1930, de los siete que da esa edición), sin el dictamen pericial de 1917 ni el apartado final de conclusiones, y el caso III termina con la interrupción del tratamiento, sin la continuación de 1914 que añade la edición de 1930. Las obras que cita no pasan de 1914, y el propio Adler, en «Die individuelle Psychologie der Prostitution» (1920), remite a un «The Homosexual Problem» publicado en The Urologic and Cutaneous Review, Technical Supplement (St. Louis), en octubre de 1914, no cotejado: es probable que el texto de 1917 reproduzca esa traducción de 1914 y refleje, por tanto, una redacción alemana anterior al folleto. La conferencia «Über die Homosexualität» (Zúrich, 1918) es un texto distinto. La traducción inglesa es a menudo torpe y en varios lugares contradice el sentido del alemán de 1930; esas divergencias se señalan en notas de la versión española.
Adler. Ueber den nervösen Charakter. Bergmann, Wiesbaden, 1912. Adler. Heilen und Bilden. Rheinhardt, München, 1914; further, "Zeitschrift für Individual Psychologie," 1914. ↩
Adler. Studie über Minderwertigkeit von Organen. ↩
Schmidt. Väterliche Autorität und Homosexualität der Kinder. Zeitschr. für Psychanalyse, 1913. ↩
I have been able to demonstrate a similar psychic mechanism in fetischism, masturbation and other perversions; even in cases where the choice of a partner is absent it lies deep under the social rank of the patient. ↩
Adler. "Das Problem der Distanz" und "Verantwortlichkeit in der Neurose und Psychose," Zeitschrift f. Individualpsychologie, Heft I and II, 1914. ↩