Letter from Sándor Ferenczi to Sigmund Freud, April 21, 1909

Budapest, April 21, 1909
VII., Erzsébet-körút 54

Dear Professor,

I hope you have returned to Vienna in good shape and renewed yourself in Italy.

I am eagerly anticipating the news from America. Should Stanley Hall place a value on arriving punctually, we will, I think, have to renounce plans for the Mediterranean trip. A somewhat longer stay in America and perhaps an excursion to some of America's large cities will compensate us for giving up the blue Mediterranean sky.

I now have in my practice some very interesting cases, which capture my attention completely.

One is of a young, very intelligent “homosexual,” who has almost been cured in twenty analytical hours. Cured at least quoad libidinem sexualem.1

Communicating the existence of his colossally strong mother complex produced a terrific reaction in him, which lasted three days. It was a reaction like in a test tube. I drilled a hole into the partition between cs. and ucs., whereby I ignited a fireworks display of motor and psychical affective discharges. After the “reaction” had run its course, I saw before me a changed man.—He had been homosexual for four years (at that time he had “discovered” himself); was minimally potent with women, and lately he could perform coitus only when he thought of men. Along with this, colossal remorse over every homosexual act.

According to what he has communicated to me up to now (and what is not suited for a brief letter), he became homosexual

1. because he wanted to do something very forbidden (substitute for the Oedipus complex),

2. and in so doing he looked for what was forbidden on the opposite pole. (He preferred tall, thin men; his mother is a rather small, plump woman.)