On Homosexuality*: (A Lecture)

I want to report here some cases of homosexuality which I have observed. They will afford us a psychological approach to this important problem. This is, of course, only an initial approach and I do not here intend to “solve” that problem. I shall begin with the report of a case I had the opportunity of analyzing for 7 months. The patient came to me with the complaint that he felt attracted only by men and in no way by women and girls. When he was fifteen years old he once had relations with a servant girl but since then he had never succeeded in any sexual contact. Just before he came for treatment he was in a brothel but could not get an erection and felt very much dejected about it. In none of his relations with men has he ever had real sexual intercourse. All of his relations with men have been of the psychic type and are connected with many phantasies.

At the time when he began treatment he had a friend who was of a very virile and masculine type as were all his friends. He is not fond of the so-called typical homosexuals, of homosexuals who make a rather more feminine impression. He prefers friends of the distinctly masculine type and he wants to be superior to them. This superior attitude he achieves by being very amiable, by being necessary to them, by showing them some intellectual superiority. In his relations with these friends he displays a double attitude. On the one hand he wants to take the place their girl friends play in their lives and he sometimes imagines that he has intercourse with his friend and thus takes the place of the latter's girl. He, therefore, never has friends who are really homosexuals. He is attracted only by men who are typical heterosexuals. On the other hand, he wants to make his friend inferior and himself to achieve superiority over this friend. In short, he wants to bring his friend into the feminine position and this is his double attitude.