Bi-sexual love; the homosexual neurosisStekel, Wilhelm
Science
Bi-sexual love; the homosexual neurosis
Stekel, Wilhelm
Homosexuality; Neuroses
Our subject has had a number of chances to get married but she
withdraws coyly from every man the moment one comes close to her.
She feels a certain inclination towards older married men and she
understands in consequence how a woman might become interested in a
friend’s husband. “When I did find a man whom I liked, I was unlucky,”
she declares, “for I discovered that he was already engaged to a
friend of mine.” Truly she fell in love only with girls and women. Her
first romantic attachment was to a woman school teacher, whom she also
visited at her home. That teacher wanted this wealthy girl to marry
her brother and brought the two into contact as often as possible.
She liked the brother because he looked so very much like her beloved
friend. But if the sister was not in the room their conversation lagged
and she could talk only in monosyllables. She sent flowers and costly
gifts to her teacher. Her supreme desire was to sleep once in the same
bed with that teacher and she often dreamed of it. She even proposed
to take her on a journey. The teacher could not go and hesitated also
because she found her pupil’s attentions too oppressive. The teacher
actually suffered on account of her admirer’s deep jealousy, for the
girl turned ill if she so much as found other girls visiting her. At
any rate, quite a circle of girls in the class admired the teacher.
Later she fell in love with a girl friend whom she embraced and kissed
warmly numberless times because it gave her a wonderful warm feeling to
do so. On the other hand the kisses of an uncle made no impression on
her whatever. No man interested her in the least. For a long time she
did not know that she was homosexual, but she was well aware since her
childhood that she was unlike other children. She was always as wild
as a boy and her mother frequently said to her: “there are ten rough
boys in you!” She climbed trees, ran around wildly and always preferred
to play with boys, did not care for dolls, coaxed to be given a saddle
horse and a gun until her father was driven to despair over her and
exclaimed sometimes: “you are really a spoiled boy!”
During the analysis she recalled a number of homosexual and
heterosexual experiences. Already at 12 years of age she had an
experience with an uncle who came to her in bed and played with her.
She could not recall whether they indulged in coitus that time. With
girl friends she also had various adventures. She confesses in fact
that she has been in the habit of masturbating since her 12th year,
when she was taught by a girl, and that at one time she often indulged
in the phantasy that a man was having coitus with her. In fact, as late
as her 16th year she fell “heels-over-head” in love with a friend of
her father’s. He was much younger than her father but belonged to the
same circle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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