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not only her homosexual tendency, but also that part of her hetero-
sexual libido still attached to her brother.

III.

Consecutive presentation is not a very adequate means of
describing complicated mental processes going on in different
layers of the mind. I am therefore obliged to pause in the dis-
cussion of the case and treat more fully and deeply some of the
points brought forward above.

I mentioned the fact that the girl’s relation to her adored lady
resembled that characteristic of the masculine type of love. Her
humility and her tender lack of pretension “che poco spera e
nulla chiede”, her bliss when she was allowed to accompany the
lady a little way and to kiss her hand on parting, her joy when
she heard her praised as beautiful – anyone else’s recognition
of her own beauty meaning nothing at all to her –, her pilgrimages
to places once visited by the loved one, the oblivion of all more
sensual wishes: all these little traits in her resembled the first
enthusiastic passion of a youth for a celebrated actress whom he
regards as far above him, to whom he scarcely dares lift his
bashful eyes. The correspondence with the “type of masculine
object-choice” I have previously described¹⁾, held good even in the
details. It may seem remarkable that she was not in the least re-
pelled by the evil reputation of her beloved one, although her
own observations sufficiently confirmed the truth of such rumours.
She was after all a well brought-up and modest girl, who had
avoided sexual adventures herself, and who regarded coarsely
sensual gratification as unaesthetic. But already her first passions
had been for women who were not celebrated for specially strict
propriety. The first protest her father made against her love-choice
had been evoked by the pertinacity with which she sought the
company of a cinematograph actress at a summer resort. In all
these affairs it had never been a question of women who had
any reputation for homosexuality, and who might, therefore, have
offered her some prospect of homosexual gratification; on the
contrary, she illogically courted women who were coquettes in the

¹⁾Sammlung kl. Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, 4. Folge, 1918.

139

ordinary sense of the word, and she rejected without hesitation
the willing advances made by a homosexual friend of her own
age. The “lady’s” bad reputation, however, was positively a “love-
condition” for her, and all that is enigmatical in this
vanishes when we remember that in the case also of the masculine
type of object-choice derived from the mother it is an essential
condition that the loved object should be somehow or other “in
bad repute sexually”, one who really may be called a cocotte.
When the girl learnt later on how far the evil reputation of her
adored lady was justified and that she lived simply from the
giving of bodily favours, her reaction consisted in great com-
passion and in the development of phantasies and plans for
“rescuing” her beloved from these ignoble circumstances. We have
been struck by the same “rescuing” endeavours in the men of the
type referred to above, and in my description of it I have tried
to give the analytical derivation of this tendency.

We are led to quite another realm of explanation by the
analysis of the attempt at suicide, which I must regard as seriously
intended, and which, by the way, considerably improved her
position both with her parents and with the beloved lady. She
went for a walk with her one day in a neighbourhood and at an
hour at which she was not unlikely to meet her father on his
way from his office. So it turned out. Her father passed them
in the street and cast a furious look at her and her companion,
who was known to him. A few moments later she flung herself
on to the railway cutting. The explanation she gave of the more
intimate factors determining her resolution sounded quite plausible.
She had confessed to the lady that the gentleman who had given
them such an irate glance was her father, and that he had ab-
solutely forbidden their friendship. The lady flared up at this and
ordered the girl to leave her then and there, and never again to
wait for her or to address her, as the affair must now come to
a close. In despair that she had now lost her loved one for ever,
the girl wanted to put an end to herself. The analysis, however,
was able to disclose another, and deeper, interpretation behind the
one she gave, and to confirm it by investigation of her dreams.
The attempted suicide was, as might have been expected, deter-
mined by two other factors: a “punishment-fulfilment” (self-punish-
ment), and a wish-fulfilment. The latter signified the attainment
of the same wish the disappointment of which had driven her

140

into homosexuality – namely, the wish to have a child by her
father, for now she “fell”¹ through her father’s fault².

The fact that at this moment the lady had spoken to the
same effect as the father had, and had uttered the same prohibition,
forms the connecting link between this deeper interpretation and
the superficial one of which the girl herself was conscious. From
the point of view of self-punishment the girl’s action proves that
she had developed in her unconscious strong death-wishes against
one or other of her parents: perhaps against her father, out of
revenge for his impeding her love; or, more likely, against her
mother also when she was pregnant with the little brother. For
analysis has thrown the following light on the enigma of suicide:
probably no one finds enough psychical energy to kill himself
unless, in the first place, he in doing so is at the same time killing
an object with whom he has identified himself, and, in the second
place, is turning against himself a death-wish which had been
directed against someone else. Nor need the regular discovery
of these unconscious death-wishes in would-be suicides surprise us
as strange (any more than it need make an impression as confirming
our deductions), since the unconscious of all human beings is full
enough of such death-wishes, even against those we love³⁾. In the
girl’s identification with her mother who ought to have died at the
birth of the child denied to herself, this “punishment-fulfilment” itself
is again a “wish-fulfilment”. Lastly, the fact that the most manifold
strong motives must have cooperated to make possible such a
deed is quite in keeping with what we would expect.

In the girl’s account of her conscious motives the father did
not figure at all; even her fear of his anger was not mentioned.
In the motivation laid bare by the analysis he played the principal
part. Her relation to her father had the same decisive importance
for the course and outcome of the analytic treatment, or rather
exploration. Behind the pretended consideration for her parents,
for whose sake she had been willing to make the attempt to be

¹⁾[In the text there is a play on the word “niederkommen”, which means
both “to fall” and “to be delivered of a child”. Transl.]

²⁾That the various means of suicide can represent sexual wish-fulfil-
ments has long been known to all analysts. (To poison = to be pregnant;
to drown = to bear a child; to throw oneself from a height = to be delivered
of a child.) I do not know where they were first published.

³⁾Cp. “Zeitgemäßes über Krieg und Tod”, Imago.

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THE PSYCHOGENESIS OF A CASE OF FEMALE HOMOSEXUALITY

transformed, was concealed the attitude of defiance and revenge
against the father which bound her to homosexuality. Secure under
this cover, the resistance left a considerable sphere free for ana-
lytic investigation. The analysis went forward almost without any
signs of resistance, the patient actively participating intellectually,
though absolutely tranquil emotionally. Once when I expounded
to her a specially important part of the theory, one touching her
nearly, she replied in an inimitable tone, “Oh, how interesting”,
as though she were a grande dame being taken over a museum
and glancing through her lorgnon at objects to which she was
completely indifferent. The impression one had of her analysis
was not unlike that of an hypnotic treatment, where the resistance
has in the same way withdrawn to a certain limit beyond which
it then proves to be unconquerable. The resistance very often
pursues similar tactics – Russian tactics, as they might be called
– in cases of the obsessional neurosis, which for this reason yield
the clearest results for a time and permit of a penetrating glimpse
into the causation of the symptoms. One begins to wonder how
it is that such marked progress in understanding of the analytic
procedure can be unaccompanied by even the slightest change in the
patient’s compulsions and inhibitions, until at last one perceives
that everything accomplished had been admitted only under the
mental reservation of doubt¹⁾, and behind this protective barrier
the neurosis may feel secure. “It would be all very fine”, thinks
the patient, often quite consciously, “if I were obliged to believe
what the man says, but there is no question of that, and so long
as that is not so I need change nothing”. Then, when one comes
to close quarters with the motivation of this doubt, the fight with
the resistances breaks forth in earnest.

In the case of our patient, it was not doubt, but the affective
factor of revenge on her father that made her cool reserve possible,
divided the analysis into two distinct stages, and rendered the
results of the first stage so complete and perspicuous. It seemed,
further, as though nothing resembling a transference to the doctor
had been brought about. That, however, is of course absurd, or,
at least, a loose way of expressing it; for some kind of relation
 

142

ment she had experienced through her father. Bitterness against
men is as a rule easy to gratify with the doctor; it need not
evoke any violent emotional manifestations, it simply expresses
itself in rendering futile all his endeavours and in clinging to the
neurosis. I know from experience how difficult it is to get the
patient to understand just this mute kind of symptom and to make
her aware of this latent, and often excessively strong, hostility without
endangering the treatment. So I broke it off as soon as I recognized
the girl’s attitude to her father, and gave the advice that, if it
was thought worth while to continue the therapeutic efforts, they
should be carried out by a woman doctor. The girl had in the
meanwhile promised her father that at any rate she would not
communicate with the “lady”, and I do not know whether my
advice, the motive for which is evident, will be followed.
Only once in the course of this analysis did anything appear
which I could regard as a positive transference, as a greatly
weakened revival of the original passionate love for the father.
Even this manifestation was not quite free from other motives,
but I mention it because it brings up, in another direction, an in-
teresting problem of analytic technique. At a certain period, not
long after the treatment had begun, the girl brought a series of
dreams which, distorted as is customary, and couched in the usual
dream language, could nevertheless be easily translated with
certainty. Their content, when interpreted, was, however, striking.
They anticipated the cure of the inversion through the treatment,
expressed her joy over the prospects in life then opened to her,
confessed her longing for a man’s love and for children, and so
might be welcomed as a gratifying preparation for the desired
change. The contradiction between them and the girl’s utterances
in waking life at the same time was very great. She did
not conceal from me that she meant to marry, but only in order
to escape from her father’s tyranny and to follow her true
inclinations undisturbed. As for the husband, she remarked rather
contemptuously, she would easily deal with him, and besides, one
could have sexual relations with a man and a woman at one and
the same time, as the example of the adored lady showed. Warned
through some slight impression or other, I told her one day that
I did not believe these dreams, that I regarded them as false or
hypocritical, and that she intended to deceive me just as she used
to deceive her father. I was right: after this exposition this kind

143

of dream ceased. But I still believe that, besides the intention
to mislead me, the dreams partly expressed the wish to win
my favour; it was also an attempt to gain my interest and my
good opinion – perhaps in order to disappoint me all the more
thoroughly later on.

I can imagine that to indicate the existence of lying dreams
of this kind, destined to please the analyst, will arouse in some
readers who call themselves analysts a real storm of helpless in-
dignation. “What”, they will exclaim, “so the unconscious, the real
centre of our mental life, the part of us that is so much nearer
the divine than our poor consciousness, so that too can lie! Then
how can we still build on the interpretations of analysis and the
accuracy of our ‘findings?’ ” To which one must reply that the
recognition of these lying dreams, a staggering surprise, signifies
nothing. I know, indeed, that the craving of mankind for mysticism
is ineradicable, and that it makes ceaseless efforts to win back for
mysticism the sphere lost to it through the “Traumdeutung”, but in the
case under consideration surely everything is simple enough. The dream
is not the unconscious itself; it is the form into which a thought
from the preconscious, or even from waking conscious life, can,
thanks to the favouring conditions of sleep, be recast. During sleep
this thought has been reinforced by unconscious wish-excitatio-
ns and thus experienced distortion through the “dream-work”, which
is determined by the mechanisms valid for the unconscious. With
our dreamer, the intention to mislead me, just as she used to her
father, certainly emanated from the preconscious, or perhaps even
from consciousness; it could come to expression by entering into
connection with the unconscious wish-impulse to please the father
(or father-substitute), and in this way created a lying dream. The
two intentions, to betray and to please the father, originated in the
same complex; the former resulted from the repression of the
latter, and the later one was reduced by the dream-work to the
earlier one. There can therefore be no question of any devaluation
of the unconscious, nor of a shaking of our confidence in the
results of our analysis.

I will not miss this opportunity of expressing for once my
astonishment that human beings can go through such great and
momentous phases of their love-life without heeding them; or
– even, indeed, without having the faintest notion of them: or
else that, when they do become aware of these phases, they

144

deceive themselves so thoroughly in their judgement of them.
This happens not only with neurotics, where we are familiar with
the phenomena, but seems also to be common enough elsewhere.
In the present case, for example, a girl develops a devotion for
women, which her parents at first find merely vexatious and hardly
take seriously. She herself knows quite well that her feelings are
greatly engaged, but still she is only slightly aware of the sensations
of intense love until a certain disappointment is followed by an
absolutely excessive reaction, which shows everyone concerned
that they have to do with a consuming passion of elemental
strength. Even the girl herself had never perceived anything of
the conditions necessary for the outbreak of such a mental up-
heaval. In other cases we come across girls or women in a state
of severe depression, who on being asked for a possible cause of
their condition tell us that they have, it is true, had a little
feeling for a certain person, but that it was nothing deep and
that they soon got over it when they had to give up hope. And
yet it was this renunciation, apparently so easily borne, that be-
came the cause of serious mental disturbance. Again, we have to
do with men who have passed through casual love-affairs and
then realize only from the sequelae that they had been passionately
in love with someone whom they had apparently regarded lightly.
One is also astonished at the unsuspected results that may follow
on an artificial abortion which had been decided upon remorse-
lessly and without scruple. One must agree that poets are right
when they are fond of portraying people who love without
knowing it, or are uncertain whether they do love, or think that
they hate when in reality they love. It would seem that the in-
formation our consciousness receives of our love-life is especially
incomplete, full of gaps, or falsified. Needless to say,
in this discussion I have not omitted to allow for the part played
by subsequent forgetting.

IV.

I now come back, after this digression, to the consideration
of my patient’s case. We have made a survey of the forces which
led the girl’s libido from the normal Oedipus attitude into that
of homosexuality, and of the psychical paths thus traversed. Most
important in this respect was the impression made by the birth