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Impressions87-71
87. The month of November 1895 marks an important time in the history of my life and in particular in my own ideas of the possible shaping of my future. I remember the period distinctly; it coincided with a number of beautiful autumn days when there was a heavy morning mist on the Elbe. During that time the signs of a transformation into a woman became so marked on my body, that I could no longer ignore the imminent goal at which the whole development was aiming. In the immediately preceding nights my male sexual organ might actually have been retracted had I not resolutely set my will against it, still following the stirring of my sense of manly honour, so near completion was the miracle. Soul-voluptuousness had become so strong that I myself received the impression of a female body, first on my arms and hands, later on my legs, bosom, buttocks and other parts of my body. I will discuss details in the next chapter. [ Daniel Paul Schreber, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, WM Dawson & Sons Ltd., London, 1955, pp. 147-148 * Translated, Edited, with Introduction, Notes and Discussion by Ida Macalpine, M.D., and Richard A. Hunter, M.D., M.R.C.P, D.P.M. ]
86. I am currently seeking psychiatric help for a borderline/narcissistic type issue. Although I am not yet diagnosed I am beginning to believe that sexual/gender identity issues may play a huge role in my narcissistic detachment from the world and my emotional dysregulation. I have not yet had any full-blown psychotic episodes but have experienced stress-related micro-episodes of detachment from reality. I currently live a schizoid and/or avoidant style life and recognise myself as incredibly emotionally stunted and immature underneath my mask of relative normality. I consciously identify as heterosexual but have found issues and writing regarding sexual/gender identity issues to be almost compulsive interest and feel that they resonate with me. Has the possibility of a link between narcissism and these issues been considered? Amongst the writings that are compiled on your website I keep seeing things such as: "*thus leaving their children with the terrible unconscious choice of either becoming homosexual or else schizophrenic - the schizophrenia invariably occurring as the direct result of the repression and denial by these castrated children of their inevitable homosexuality."* *Is this to say that the child has literally NO choice between homosexuality and psychosis? Despite feeling that the writing on your website resonates with me and that I feel it may well be a large factor in my own issues, I am still sexually attracted to women. Despite also being aware of repressed homosexual tendencies. I remember reading elsewhere on the website something along the lines of "homosexuality being between narcissism and heterosexuality" - forgive me if I've misquoted; and that after accepting the repressed homosexual psychic content the person may choose to be homosexual or to emotionally mature into heterosexuality. Is it possible that this could be elaborated on? Thank you. Anonymous
85. Exhaustion was the toughest enemy of all in this struggle of epic marches. Prussia's best commander, the elderly [Field Marshal Gebhart von] Blücher, was under such strain that at one point he started hallucinating about [his] giving birth to an elephant. But the imperial military machine could cope even with this, and with victory in the air Blücher himself recovered sufficiently to be carried on toward Paris in full view of his troops, wearing a lady's green silk hat to shade his eyes. [ Mark Mazower, New York Times Book Review, June 20, 2010, p. 17, in a review of the book: Russia Against Napoleon - The True Story of the Campaigns of "War and Peace." By Dominic Lieven. Illustrated. 618 pp. Viking. ]
84. The notion of the Oedipus complex is therefore not at all difficult to maintain if one works with this type of material. As another manifestation of that, one finds more open revolt against the certainly prescribed role in life -- that is, the sexual role -- in the hysteric than in any other group. In other words, the hysteric woman can be a man in a homosexual relation with an abandon which is scarcely conceivable in any other type of human organization, and the hysterically predisposed man can act the woman with incomparable thoroughness and lack of cynicism. [ Clinical Studies in Psychiatry, by Harry Stack Sullivan, M.D., Edited by Helen Swick Perry, Mary Ladd Gawel, and Martha Gibbon, with a Foreword by Dexter M. Bullard, M.D., W. W. Norton & Company. Inc. New York, 1973, pp. 115-16. ]
83. Subject: Re: CONFLICT AND "SEXUAL" IDENTITY CAUSING SCHIZOPHRENIA? Well...I'll tell you what? Being as I AM A Schizophrenic? I think I would know in a way more personal way than you..And I do NOT suffer from some deep seated perverted homosexual desires.. "What joy for the nation whose God is the Lord, whose people he has chosen as his inheritance."(--Psalm 33:12--) Subject: Re: cONFLICT AND "SEXUAL" IDENTIY CAUSING SCHIZOPHRENIA?? YOU ARE OUT OF YOUR COTTON-PICKING MIND!!! "Therefore, put on every piece of God's armor so you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then after the battle you will still be standing firm".-(-Ephesians 6:13-) [ Note: The name of the woman who wrote the above two
82. It has long been known and often pointed out that at the age of puberty boys and girls show clear signs, even in normal cases, of the existence of an affection for people of their own sex. A romantic and sentimental friendship with one of her school friends, accompanied by vows, kisses, promises of eternal correspondence, and all the sensibility of jealousy, is the common precursor of a girl's first serious passion for a man. Thenceforward, in favorable circumstances, the homosexual current of feeling often runs completely dry. But if a girl is not happy in her love for a man, the current is often set flowing again by the libido in later years and is increased up to a greater or lesser degree of intensity. If this much can be established without difficulty of healthy persons, and if we take into account what has already been said [p.50] about the fuller development in neurotics of the normal germ of perversion, we shall expect to find in these latter too a fairly strong homosexual disposition. It must, indeed, be so; for I have never yet come through a single psycho-analysis of a man or a woman without having to take into account a very considerable current of homosexuality. When, in a hysterical woman or girl, the sexual libido which is directed towards men has been energetically suppressed, it will regularly be found that the libido which is directed towards women has become vicariously reinforced and even to some extent conscious. [likewise in men and boys - jmm] [ Sigmund Freud, Vol. VII, The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (A Case of Hysteria), The Hogarth Press, London, 1953, p. 60. ]
81. Another child wished so intensely to be a boy that for periods of time she delusionally believed she was one. She also resented her brother's luck in belonging to the envied sex. So she went about correcting it; whenever she encountered the words boy or man in her reading, she read girl and lady; if the printed page read girl or woman, she read it boy or man. Similarly, she read all he's for she's and the other way around. [ SURVIVING -- and Other Essays, by Bruno Bettelheim, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1979, p. 159. ]
80. (First email) To: Venusemail@aol.com Hey, I've been half-heartedly researching schizophrenia for about 3 hours, I just read your memoirs and it all sounds so similar to how my boyfriend described it. He was diagnosed with it a few days ago, he also suffers from paranoia and OCD but they aren't very strong cases. I'm scared... I hate saying that because I'm a pretty strong person, but I am scared, scared of what he might do, scared of losing him. Not breaking up with him, although I obviously don't really want that to happen, but I'm scared that he might kill himself or the schizophrenia will drive him to do something awful. He's tried to kill himself quite a few times before we got together, he hurts himself occasionally... We live far apart and he gets depression and he says he can't help hurting himself which I guess I understand now he's been diagnosed with schizophrenia. I don't know why I'm writing this to you, but I'm not sure who else to tell. I'm fourteen... And I don't know what to do. I'm sorry if I've wasted your time. Yours Faithfully, (This email was sent to "Venus," author of the link on this website: A Personal Account of a Journey Through Madness.) -------------------------------------------------------------- To: venusemail@aol.com Hello, Thank you for the reply (This email was sent to "Venus," author of the link on this website: A Personal Account of a Journey Through Madness.)
79. On other occasions, the therapist experiences a resolution of the symbiosis, or at least a step in this resolution process, not in this quiet and subjectively inscrutable way, but rather with a sudden sense of OUTRAGE. The very word OUTrage is significant, and the feeling it designates is qualitatively different from annoyance, anger, or even rage. He feels outrage at this or that chronic regressive symptom in the patient, or outrage at the latter's whole regressive symptomatology, and always outrage at the unreasonableness of the demands which the patient has been making upon him these many months or years. He see the enormity of these demands which the patient has been placing, through his illness, upon him and other persons, and sees clearly the folly of acquiescing further in these regressive demands. He is suddenly and vigorously determined to give no more of his long-time dedication, now seen as misplaced dedication, to the gratification of these demands, which he formerly saw as infant needs which it would be unthinkable to brush aside. [ Harold F. Searles, M.D., Collected Papers on Schizophrenia and Related Subjects, International Universities Press, New York, 1965, pp. 544-46. ]
78. Without going further into all the details of the course of his [Daniel Paul Schreber's] illness, attention is drawn to the way in which from the early more acute psychosis which influenced all psychic processes and which could be called hallucinatory insanity, the paranoid form of the illness became more and more marked, crystallized out so to speak, into its present picture. [ Dr. G. Weber, Superintendent of the Sonnenstein Asylum, in Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, by Daniel Paul Shreber, WM Dawson & Sons Ltd., London, 1955, pp. 271-2 * Translated, Edited, with Introduction, Notes and Discussion by Ida Macalpine, M.D., and Richard A. Hunter, M.D., M.R.C.P., D.P.M. ]
77. The division of mental diseases into neuroses and psychoses has resulted in new names such as ambulatory or latent schizophrenia, or prepsychosis for the multitude of patients who appear to fall between the two stools. [ Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, by Daniel Paul Schreber, WM Dawson & Sons Ltd., London, 1955, p. 15. * Translated, Edited, with Introduction, Notes and Discussion by Ida Macalpine, M.D. and Richard A. Hunter, M.D., M.R.C.P., D.P.M. ]
76.
Hello Michael,
75. [A] We should be inclined to say that what was characteristically paranoiac about the illness was the fact that the patient, as a means of warding off a homosexual wishful phantasy, reacted precisely with delusions of persecution of this kind. [ Notes on a Case of Paranoia, in The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XII (1911-1913), London, The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1958, pp. 59-60. ]
[B] Since then I have wholeheartedly inscribed the cultivation of femininity on my banner, and I will continue to do so as far as consideration of my environment allows, whatever other people who are ignorant of the supernatural reasons may think of me. I would like to meet the man who, faced with the choice of either becoming a demented human being in male habitus or a spirited woman, would not prefer the latter. Such and only such, is the issue for me. [ Daniel Paul Schreber, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, WM. Dawson & Sons Ltd., London, 1955, p. 149. ]
[C] And if tormented and in anguish man is mute, God granted me to tell me of what I suffer. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832: The above words from a poem by Goethe were used by Daniel Paul Schreber as the epigraph for his Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. ]
74. [A] It would seem that the schizophrenic patient is often of the third generation of abnormal persons of whom we can gain some information. The preceding two generations of mothers appear to have been obsessive, schizoid women who did not adjust well to men. There is some evidence that they were, in a sense, immature and that within the obsessive character structure could be found hysterical difficulties. [ Lewis B. Hill, M.D., Psychotherapeutic Intervention in Schizophrenia, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1955, pp. 134-135. ]
[B] We must recognize that the sexual affections are still the greatest constructive forces of the personality if properly conditioned and adjusted, but also that they may become the most insidiously, irresistibly destructive if perverted or unconditionally repressed. [ Edward J. Kempf, M.D., Psychopathology, C. V. Mosby Company, St. Louis, MO, 1920. ]
[C] The mother's attitude was so subtly ingratiating and yet domineering that she would almost have to be destroyed as a mother if the patient were to free herself from its terrible influence and win her own womanhood and independence. [Likewise for a son - his own manhood and independence/jmm] [ Edward J. Kempf, M.D., Psychopathology, C. V. Mosby Company, St. Louis, 1920. ]
[D] I am indebted to Dr. Will Elgin, of the Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital, for another repeated observation which, because it is characteristic, needs reporting. For many years Dr. Elgin, in the process of admitting patients, observed the enactment of a scene which assumed diagnostic significance. His office arrangement permitted relatives a choice of three seats, one opposite his desk, one at the end of it quite near him, and one several feet away. He observed that when the mother and father of the patient appeared together to arrange admission, there occurred something of significance. If mother sat in one of the two chairs at his desk, and father sat off in a corner, it usually followed that mother took over the discussion, did the talking, made the arrangements, and even read the fine print on the contract. Father, meanwhile, looked unhappy and was silent save for an occasional abortive effort to modify certain of the mother's statememts. When this was the course of the admission interview, he came to know that the odds were that the patient [male or female/jmm] would be schizophrenic. There is an interesting addendum. In a later interview father, appearing alone, was often very aggressive in his criticism and his demands and accusations. However, it could often be demonstrated that his belligerence was that of a very unwilling agent of his wife. [ Lewis B. Hill, M.D., Psychotherapeutic Intervention in Schizophrenia, University of Chicago Press, 1955, pp. 106-107. ]
[E] Sexual identity guarantees our psychic unity. [ Julia Kristeva, Psycho-Analyst ]
[F] I had to pay heavily for this bit of good luck. People did not want to believe my facts and thought my theories unsavory. Resistance was unrelenting. [ Sigmund Freud ]
73. [A] In any case, the appearance within awareness of the homoerotic interest stirs such violent self-reproach that a dissociation or a vigorous defensive process results. If the self is able to dissociate the abhorrent system, the personality continues to be in grave danger of panic with succeeding schizophrenia, unless the sexual tensions are being drained off by some collateral procedure such as frequent masturbation or more or less definitely auto-sexual intercourse with women [with men in the case of females/jmm]. Moreover, under cover of the dissociation, experience in any case continues to be integrated into the dissociated system and its partition in the personality to grow. [ Harry Stack Sullivan, M.D., Personal Psychopathology, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1972, 1965, p. 212. ]
[B] Among those who prove incapable of achieving the biologically ordained heterosexual goal are a great many to whom the mother has continued to be of excessive significance, overshadowing or coloring strongly all pretensions of other women. This handicap is perhaps most vividly illustrated in the case of the woman who has married for spite a man whom she soon comes to loathe, yet with whom the peculiarities of her personality, or economic factors, or other cause, force her to live. When a son is born of such a union, he is generally sacrificed to the mother's unsatisfied erotic tendencies, and he becomes tied to her by the sort of intimacy so remarkably symbolized by Von Stuck in his painting, Die Sphinx. Whether he comes finally to rebel, hates her, and goes through life destroying as much as he can of that which arouses the mother stereotype, or instead goes on being her child-lover, the result is most unfortunate as to his growth in personality. It is almost certain that he will not proceed in erotic development past interest in his own sex. [ Harry Stack Sullivan, M.D., ibid, p. 169. ]
[C] Sexual asceticism was the greatest good, and both organized and informal opportunities for its achievement were provided. Once one had turned from the lure of the flesh, one could live quietly in a considerable measure of sanctified intimacy with a group of kindred souls. Or one could take to a dignified paranoid state and go about a slow "psychical castration." If schizophrenic phenomena appeared, this did not necessarily disable one: quite a few opportunities for utilizing this eccentricity were provided in the business of evangelism. Moreover, one might, if needs be, found an eccentric religion and often secure the necessary disciples. [ Harry Stack Sullivan, M.D., ibid, p. 225. ]
[D] ...in them [schizophrenics] the early childhood tie to the parent has never been outgrown. [ Harry Stack Sullivan, M.D., Personal Psychopathology, ibid, p. 262. ]
[E] These sudden reintegrations of tendencies opposed to homosexual activity in turn set up the situation of homosexual cravings, with consequences similar to those above indicated. That the outcome in these individuals who have had earlier experience is somewhat less ominous than is the case in its absence is not only theoretically to be expected, but actually the case in the paranoid developments. [ Harry Stack Sullivan, M.D., ibid, p. 214. ]
[F] In the case, however, of another boy, one for example who has been seriously warped by the continued or augmented importance of a more or less primitive attachment to his mother, and who therefore is not susceptible to any marked heterosexual drives because of attachment to the mother - with rationalizations generally contributed by her in the shape, perhaps, of advice to keep away from "bad girls," examples of misfortune resulting from dealings with crafty females, and the like - the outcome is quite otherwise. [Likewise in the case of a daughter/jmm] [ Harry Stack Sullivan, M.D., ibid, p. 199. ]
[G] From my material, in which negative instances are conspicuously absent, I am forced to the conclusion that schizophrenic illnesses in the male [or female/jmm] are intimately related as a sequel to unfortunate prolongation of the attachment of the son [or daughter/jmm] and the mother. That schizophrenic disorders are but one of the possible outcomes of the persisting immature attitudes subtending the mother and son [or daughter/jmm] relationship must be evident. The failure of growth of heterosexual interests, with persistence of autoerotic or homosexual interests in adolescence, is the general formula. The factors that determine a schizophrenic outcome may be clarified by a discussion on the one hand of the situations to which I shall refer as homosexual cravings and acute masturbation conflict - often immediate precursors of grave psychosis - and of the various homo-erotic and auto-erotic procedures, on the other. [See further, New Quotation/Comment # 757 - this website/jmm.] [ Harry Stack Sullivan, M.D., ibid, p. 211. ]
72. [A] How fatal it has been that all the women have ruled the men right out of their masculinity, independence, courage, will and at last, brains even. [ Walker Evans, photographer (and homosexual), reflecting on a visit to a reunion of his mother's relatives, in the biography Walker Evans, by James R. Mellow. ]
[B] An auto-erotically motivated bisexuality might then be said to be universal among the young of these several species and certainly, as by Stekel, to characterize civilized man. [ Harry Stack Sullivan, M.D., Personal Psychopathology, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 1972, 1965, p. 235. ]
[C] The weaker the ego, the more likely it is that the lust will be experienced as a function not of the self but of the introject - as something alienly lustful and further contradictory of the person's own sexual identity, such that the boy may sense a lustful female within him, or the girl, a lustful male. [ Harold F. Searles, M.D., Collected Papers on Schizophrenia and Related Subjects, International Universities Press, New York, 1965, p. 435. ]
[D] It may be that he [or she] apprehends the hostility of the woman [or man] and finds himself [herself] utterly impotent. [ Harry Stack Sullivan, M.D., Personal Psychopathology, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. New York, 1972, 1965, p. 192. ]
[E] In schizophrenia, on the other hand, attempts to solve the bisexual problem and still remain in contact with reality fail. Therefore, in its deepest nature, schizophrenia arises from a bisexual conflict, and this conflict eventually leads to a state where the heterosexual factor is relinquished. [ The Importance of the Non-Psychotic Part of the Personality in Schizophrenia, Maurits Katan, M.D., International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, No. 35, p. 121. ]
[F] More than thirty years of intensive investigation of these problems permits me to make the general statement that in man every case of emotional neurosis or psychosis is the result of more or less conflict and confusion involving bisexual differentiation... Dementing schizophrenia is essentially a regression to the cloacal level of hermaphrodism. [ Edward J. Kempf, M.D., Bisexual Factors in Curable Schizophrenia, (presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, May 18, 1948), Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Vol. 44, 1949. ]
71. These observations illuminate one meaning of the futility of the dependence-independence struggle of the schizophrenic [male or female]. It is his belief, based upon his observations, that if he should improve and become well in the normal sense, his mother would become psychotic. He is aware that, so long as he stays in the hospital and is treated as an infant, mother is somehow secure in that he does not belong to someone else or really get away from her. Were he to become fantastically well, as required in fantasies and expectations, he is aware he would actually be a paranoid psychotic himself. It seems that these patients prefer to carry the illness, which, as they see it, legitimately emanates from, and, were they to drop it, would return to their mothers. [ Psychotherapeutic Intervention in Schizophrenia, Lewis B. Hill, M.D., The University of Chicago Press (Chicago and London), 1955, 1973, pp. 127-128. ] |
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