His asceticism is back of the rudimentary Don Juan role which he plays but cannot carry out in accordance with his instinctive promptings on account of his inhibitions. One step nearer and we have the Don Juan of day-dreams and ascetic in fact,—if the adventures with women are not even begun. A step further advanced is represented by the complete repression of all sexual inclinations. We may define the ascete as a person who remains in the narcissistic stage of fixation because both paths of allerotism (that is, homo-, and heterosexuality) are equally closed to him. An exclusive monosexual goal is incapable of rousing the instinctive excitation necessary for carrying out a sexual act, because the religious scruples are oppressive. His perennially unattainable ideal is a bisexual being, he longs for a passion so strong that it should be capable of overcoming all obstacles. His asceticism is not voluntary, but a state induced by his sexual constellation.

Our subject has found his sexual ideal in the dream world. That is a sister who has a phallus. He, the valiant warrior, struggles against his instinctive promptings and masturbates. This act acquires in his conscious mind, as pollution, the character of an involuntary act, an accidental occurrence which cannot be helped, thus being robbed of its significance.

Freud points out rightly that the psychologist is particularly interested in cases showing a late development of homosexuality,—a condition which Krafft-Ebing has described as “tardive” or Late Homosexuality. In such cases homosexuality develops after a period of hetero-, or bisexuality. We will describe a number of cases of late homosexuality elsewhere and then we shall also attempt to trace the reasons for the occurrence.

The next case also represents a transitional stage showing us a woman in the throes of a struggle between the two tendencies. We have here a rudimentary, a would-be Messalina, an interesting female counterpart to the case described above.

Miss Wanda K. complains of an unfortunate split in her mental make-up which prevents her from enjoying life as she should. She suffers of strong and uncontrollable vomiting but the trouble arises only when she is about to keep an appointment. She holds the most liberal views that “a modern girl can and should have.” She meets gladly men who interest her and even those who rouse her sexually. She knows she will never marry. She is 29 years old and although still very pretty and attractive,—how long will this last? She wants to enjoy life, she would not care to die without having tasted the supreme gift and prize of life, love. But she has a “delicate” stomach which interferes at the most critical moment. Here is an example:

“Last Sunday I was to take an excursion with a gentleman whom I met in an unconventional way. I am not at all prudish and do not mind being spoken to on the street. As I walk downtown often I think to myself: will someone talk to me this time? I try to attract attention, just a little, and return home disappointed if no one notices me. A few weeks ago a very elegant elderly gentleman addressed me on such an occasion. He is a very intellectual man, which is the chief consideration with me. I like intercourse only with intellectual persons. Persons lacking culture are a trial to me. We entertained ourselves very pleasantly and since then we meet daily. When the store where I am employed closes at the end of the day, I find him already waiting for me at the street corner. Then we go for a walk and we talk about all sorts of things. He has never dared yet mention anything erotic in our conversation. I have no reason, therefore, to fear him. Nevertheless I am watching and waiting eagerly for the opportunity to show him that I am a modern girl, unafraid of anything when she finds a man sympathetic and to her liking, if he should ever begin. I do not expect anything more. One cannot fall in love all of a sudden! Now, we promise ourselves an excursion around Vienna for Sunday. Saturday I feel very excited, and I picture to myself how he is going to bring up sexual matters, how he will kiss me in the woods, I already plan what I shall say to him, how I will resist him, just a little, and finally give in. You will excuse me. It is high time that I quit being an old maid. Is that not a pity, at twenty-nine? At the office where I am employed all the girls have a sweetheart and some have several at once. That keeps going through my mind. I am very excited and I even whistle a tune. But at the evening meal I am unable to swallow a morsel of foods. My stomach seems shut tight. Nothing will go down. I hope it will be over in the morning. I get up early, put on my excursion suit and want to have my breakfast. I struggle with nausea, try to eat some breakfast, only to vomit promptly every particle of the food. Then the terrible nausea continues and keeps up so that I must stay home while the gentleman waits in vain for me at the appointed spot. Naturally when this happens a second time he drops me ... unfortunately it ends just that way every time.”

She relates numberless occurrences of this character which always end in uncontrollable nausea and vomiting. She has a long list of admirers, young and old, rich and poor, educated and some less so, every one thinking he can conquer her as she is very free and open in her talk and does not avoid sexual topics in her conversations with them. She is a member of various women’s organizations, like Mutterschutz, which is devoted to the protection of the unmarried mother, she is a champion for women’s sexual freedom and also a Shannaist. But every one of the men she dangles on her string who tries to pass from theory to cold fact discovers, much to his astonishment, that there is quite a difference between this woman’s views and her practical conduct. She circumvents all occasions which might prove embarrassing to her. An office colleague invites her to his home. He is an art collector, she is interested in painting, and he would like to show her his collection. She finds all sorts of excuses to postpone accepting his invitation and finally appears at his house ... accompanied by a girl friend.... She had dwelt so much on all the possible consequences of a visit of this kind that at the last moment she lost her courage.

It is interesting that her mental state developed first after an engagement. Until the age of 23 she was fairly normal, very much like any other girl. At that age she made the acquaintance of a man of good standing in whom she became much interested. She became engaged to him and this made her happy for she was in love as much as any girl could be who thought she had found her ideal.

The man had but one serious fault. He was tremendously jealous. He tortured her with questions about her whole past life and she had to relate to him with particularity everything that she had experienced as a girl. She frankly told him that once she was in love with her piano teacher and also with her school teacher, a girl, but that there was nothing else of any significance in her life. Nevertheless he kept torturing her with further questionings insisting that she must tell everything before marriage and he will forgive her absolutely everything, but he did not want to be deceived, he wanted perfect candor and truth between them.

One night she woke from a dream in which her brother and she had figured in a rather intimate role. This brought to her mind an occurrence she had entirely forgotten. She was visiting her married brother in the country. His wife had gone to some relatives and he suggested that she should sleep in his wife’s bed. She did so without having any particular erotic notions, since this was her brother with whom she had always been frank, not as she was with her other brothers, for she had four others. During the night she felt her brother’s hand touching her. He crawled in to her bed and kissed her. She was sleepy and thought she was dreaming. He kissed her again and sleepy as she was, she responded. They embraced warmly. She knows that she took hold of his membrum. She thinks her brother must have exercised wonderful control over himself after that and that he crawled back in his own bed. The whole experience of that night is rather unclear. That much she is certain, no coitus took place.

This remembrance awed her for she knew then that she had lied to her man. It happened only once for next day she left the place and her own brother advised her to do it. She went to visit a friend of hers in the neighborhood and returned only after her sister-in-law was back home. But since her young man had such complete faith in her, she felt that she must tell him the whole truth. She told him of the occurrence relating how it took place as in a dream. He began to investigate and to question until it drove her to distraction and there were times when she herself wavered in her recollection as to what really occurred. But she could only repeat the one thing: she knew positively that they kissed and touched each other that night, but could not say that between her brother and herself matters had gone beyond that.

Her bridegroom stayed away a few days. Then she received from him a note stating that he does not feel that he can take her to the altar after her confession and he considers himself therefore a free man. He sent her back the engagement ring and demanded the return of all his gifts and letters.

This was like a physical blow to her. That was the thanks she received for her complete candor! She had taken at his word the man whom she dearly loved. How could she help thinking that he merely sought an excuse in her eyes, and in his own, a pretext to declare himself free?

For a time after that she hated all men. She made no exception, including in her hatred even that brother who was responsible for her misfortune, in the first place.

Then she arrived at a second deduction: “it is not worth while to be honorable! Better be easy going, like all your women friends!”

Shortly after that she apparently ceased hating all men and her great yearning began causing her to think continually of nothing but men. At the same time there began also her uncontrollable vomiting.

It seemed that her tremendous inclination to love was struggling with an equally powerful antagonism. During that difficult period her only consolation was a woman friend and her sister to whom she felt herself very closely attached.

But her dreams show that back of her running after men there was something else: the homosexual instinct which was struggling powerfully to come to surface and which she tried to hold back by her love affairs with men. She showed a number of unmistakable signs. She dressed simply and rather mannishly; she cut her hair short, and began smoking cigarettes; her appearance and gait assumed more and more a mannish form; she lost her mildness and soft nature becoming hardened and strong. Her whole nature expressed one supreme wish: I want to be a man, he has a better life! And, strange enough! Now she does attract men and they dangle after her by the dozen. But she only played and when it came to a serious issue in the course of any of her adventures,—for some of the men had earnest intentions,—she deliberately turned the whole thing into a huge joke.

She was no longer lured by men alone. She was on the point of becoming overtly homosexual passing through the last phase of the struggle. The nausea stood more and more clearly as a protection and defence against the homosexual inclination. Her dreams were filled with homosexual episodes. She herself was astonished when she began to observe her dreams. The very first dream she related concerned her sister and her friend:

Other dreams represent endless variants of this theme. Men figure in them but seldom. Occasionally she is pursued by them and flees to her sister or her friend. Thus her conflict is also shown in her dreams as a flight away from men, an escape through homosexuality.

This young woman also imagined herself to be a radical although inwardly she was pious. Sundays she visited the church, to hear the music, she was not a believer, but occasionally she prayed, because it was an old habit, she was fond of reading the Bible and she had to suppress a small inner voice which impelled her to go to confession. One day she said to me: “Do you know, yesterday it occurred to me that if I were again a believer and could go to confession, everything would be all right....”

Here we see a young woman who was at first on the proper path to become a normal, heterosexual woman. She experiences a serious trauma and begins to despise all men. She turns away from them. This aversion is favored by the fact that all men remind her of the love for her brother, which was repressed and forgotten but which flared up again on the occasion of her unfortunate experience. That was the reason why she was able to entertain herself best with elderly gentlemen and go on excursions with them, etc., without being overcome with nausea. The danger was not so great and these men were less typical of her brother.... She turns away from men and her sexuality flows into another channel. We have therefore a regression back to a childhood phase, apparently past and gone, in Freud’s sense. She also becomes more agreeable at home, where during the past years she had been accustomed to pay no attention to her mother. She again becomes fixed upon her family and turns once more to her childhood piety. The period of her nausea represents the last stage in her struggle against homosexuality.

As we glance over the three cases just analyzed we are impressed in the first place by the powerful rôle of the inner religiosity, which often passes unrecognized. Both men stood upon that emotional level which leads to polygamy as a defence against homosexuality. But they were unable to overcome their religious scruples. Too weak openly to embrace asceticism, they wandered through complicated neurotic by-paths in the attempt to circumvent all the dangers that threatened them. One of them played very cleverly the rôle of ‘Pechvogel,’—a man who would gladly be a libertine but who was not lucky enough to succeed,—the other was prevented by his stomach trouble from abandoning the path of virtue.

The counterpart is the “modern girl” who dreams about free love and mother-rights and at the same time generates a nervous nausea as a defence against any danger to her virtue. Here again we must admire the subtlety of the neurotic who finds such clever means to assume a certain rôle in the eyes of the world no less than before himself, in order to cover up his true nature. All men who really lack inner freedom are overanxious to act as if they were free. They apparently adopt some modern liberal principle while as a matter of fact secretly they adhere to the religious scruples of their ancestors.

As a great sin and “unnatural” act, it is plain that homosexuality was out of question in these cases. Religion acts here as protection and outlet at the same time. But it is also clear that under an other educational régime these men would have found open to them two paths neither of which they were able to choose under the existing inhibitions.

The woman may become overtly homosexual and some late episodes indicate that her resistance to the homosexual longings may yet be overcome. In this case the traumatic incident which turned her against all men did not occur during early childhood. It is a great error to assume that traumas of late occurrence lose their pathogenic rôle.

There are periods in our life when we are impervious to traumas. But there are also times during which we are hypersensitive to any influences which play upon us. Every decennium of our life has its crises and morbid periods during which we show a peculiar sensitiveness.