=In Delusional Jealousy=, the patient suffering repressed homosexual
cravings, projects his own desires into the personality of his life
mate. An unconsciously homosexual husband, attracted sexually by every
man in his environment, assumes that his wife is also subject to the
same attraction and suspects her of having sexual relations with every
man who arouses him. An unconsciously homosexual wife imagines that
her husband has a liaison with every woman who appeals to her perverse
fancies.
The paranoiac being at times very clever and convincing, that form
of jealousy, insane as it may appear to the man or the woman who is
the victim of it, may deceive the outsiders. In certain cases, the
delusional character of it is obvious to everybody, including the
jealous person.
A paranoiac told me that every night he "saw" a man entering his wife's
bedroom thru a window protected by solid iron bars so close to one
another that a cat could have squeezed thru them only with difficulty.
This was, of course, a case of hallucination, pure and simple.
=Homosexualism.= Other cases are more complicated. Dr. S.
Ferenczi, of Budapest, reports two of them which illustrate well the
mechanism of insane jealousy due to unconscious homosexualism.
He had a housekeeper whose husband, a man of thirty-eight, also busied
himself about the house in his spare time. He was constantly cleaning
Ferenczi's rooms, putting fresh polish on the doors and floors,
pottering around, evidently anxious to show his good will and his
devotion to his wife's employer.
This man was very intemperate and beat his wife on several occasions.
Altho she was most unattractive, he constantly accused her of
infidelity with Ferenczi and every male patient treated by him.
When the woman revealed those facts to Ferenczi, he gave the couple
notice but decided to have a serious talk with her husband.
The man denied having beaten his wife, altho this had been confirmed by
witnesses. He maintained that his wife was a real vampire, whose lust
was sapping his life strength. During this explanation, he impulsively
took Ferenczi's hand and kissed it, saying that he had never met anyone
dearer or kinder than the doctor.
A talk with the woman revealed to Ferenczi that the man had always been
very distant in his attitude to his wife. He would often push her away
brutally, calling her all sorts of opprobrious names.
When he learnt that Ferenczi had given her notice, the insane man
abused and hit his wife, and threatened to throw her out on the street
and to stab "her darling." Ferenczi at first paid no attention to those
threats for the man remained very devoted, respectful and well behaved.
When he learnt, however, that the man was sleeping with a sharp kitchen
knife under his pillow and when he woke up one night to find him
standing in his bedroom, he notified the authorities and the maniac was
committed to an insane asylum.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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