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The well known psychoanalytical theory that the delusions of persecution in paranoia have their origin in unsuccessfully repressed homosexual tendencies is as old as psychoanalysis itself, being intimated in the classic by Freud (1) and Breuer in . Again in Freud (2) stated:
“The transformation of love into hatred, of tenderness into hostility, which is characteristic of a large number of neurotic cases and apparently of all cases of paranoia takes place by means of the union of cruelty with the libido.”
This now well formulated theory is given clearly by Rickman in the following passages (3) (p. 9):
“The exciting cause of the illness may be put down to an outburst of homosexual libido, and his (Schreber's) struggles against this produced a conflict which gave rise to the pathological phenomena.”
“The cause of the conflict, then, in the case of a male is the homosexual wish—phantasy of loving a man—at any rate the supposition seems to be valid for one type of paranoia. It is, however, a remarkable fact that the most familiar forms of pananoia can all be represented as contradicting a single proposition; I (a man) love him (a man).' … In persecution mania the proposition is contradicted by the assertion, ‘I do not love him.’ But we remember that in the unconscious negative propositions do not exist, the only form possible is: “I hate him,” but this, on the other hand, cannot become conscious to the paranoias in this form. The mechanism of symptom formation requires that internal perceptions or feelings should be replaced by external ones, consequently the formula is changed from ‘I hate him’ to ‘He hates (persecutes) me, which will justify my hating him.’ Observation leaves no room for doubt that the persecutor is someone who was once loved.”
P. 9. “The person who is now hated and feared as a persecutor was at one time loved and honored. The purpose of the delusional persecution is to serve as a justification for the change in emotional attitude.”
Returning to the contrib