Wilhelm Stekel

“ At home it must happen now and then that the walls which separate the inmates from one another fall, the wrappings that encase our inmost being burst, and soul speaks to soul. At home it is possible to devote the time to the nobler delights that life has to offer. At one time there can be—as there was in your own parents’ home—a reading, on another occasion singing or music. And would it be such a terrible misfortune to spend one’s holiday with one’s family, to be one with them, reviewing the week that is past or playing with the children and being a child again? ”

“ It is, for all the world, as if after this reaction we had suppressed all our relations to our home and freed all our inhibitions. Only then can we enjoy the pleasure of travelling, but, alas, it lasts only a short time. For soon there rises before our eyes, like a threatening monster, the time when we must again resume our obligations. The sense of duty gets stronger and stronger, the desire for travelling gets weaker and weaker, and after a short but decisive conflict, the fever for travelling abates, leaving behind it a little heap of ashes in which the feeble coals of memory gradually die. ”

“ But later the wish shows itself in that quiet but determined competitive struggle which has always existed between father and son, or mother and daughter. The strong son takes after the powerful father. But suppose the father is weak and the mother is the one who dominates the house? What sort of picture of life becomes imprinted upon the child’s mind under the circumstances? Can it help believing that women dominate the world, can he escape taking the attitude either of wishing to be a woman and rule, or of fleeing from woman when she clashes with his “will to power” as man? ”

“ His father is a writer, a genial but impractical man who stuck to journalism. He clings to his father with every fiber of his heart, protecting him against the attacks of the mother who is tired of her husband’s continual love affairs and cannot stand them any longer. The father lives in a dreamy state continuously, passing from one ecstasy, lasting from several days to a week, into another. He is not finicky in his love adventures, drawing the line neither at servant girls nor at prostitutes; daily he has some new rendezvous and in that way squanders a great portion of his income. ”

“ In our thoughts we build a small skiff that will take us out of the narrow channel of our homes into the vast sea; we battle on the prairie with the brave and crafty Indians; we seek out the sun-burned gold-fields in the new world; we put a hurried girdle round about the earth, and—when at top speed—we would even attempt a flight to the moon.
Nothing that makes an impression on the human mind is ever lost. Our youth with its fantasies and childish desires exerts an important influence on us all our life. Henceforth all our excursions are journeys into the realm of youth. ”

“ My attitude towards the other sex will never be satisfactory, I must stand either above or below woman, must be either hammer or anvil, an unprejudiced relationship I find impossible, because as soon as I see a pretty woman I lose my senses, and would like preferably to be at her feet and obey her like a slave. But women do not wish that, they want to be submissive themselves, they want to feel the man above them. Intercourse on the level of equality I find tiresome, so there remains only sadism for me, through which, I may confess frankly, I have already enjoyed pleasant times. ”

“ I believe I am like a man who is the victim of an insatiable hunger. I have often thought of poor Prometheus, condemned always to linger in hunger and thirst. In the same way I feel within me an unquenchable thirst for love and its pleasures and I have no other thought than to satisfy this thirst in some way. I feel like a mechanism destined only to serve the penis in its demand for gratification. ”

“ How few of the things we have been dreaming of does life fulfil! Wish after wish, stripped of its purple mantle, sinks to the ground in a state of “looped and windowed raggedness,” till the last wish of all—the longing for peace, eternal peace—puts an end to the play.
Our childhood wishes determine our destiny. They die only with our bodies. They go whirling through our dreams, are the masters of our unconscious emotions, and determine the resonance of the most delicate oscillations of our souls. ”

“ Are there not queens in the world of arts? Do they not rule like real queens their willingly humble subjects? Haven’t they everything that a queen has: Gold, fame, honour, recognition, admiration, envy? Almost every girl goes through this stage. She wants to become a great artist. A prima donna such as the world has never yet known; a danseuse, who shall have the tumultuous applause of houses filled to the last seat; a celebrated actress whose finger-tips princes shall be permitted to kiss; a violinist whose bow shall sway the hearts of men more than the golden sceptre of a queen ever could. ”

“ Perhaps that fusion of homosexuality with criminality, of pathologic self-love and repressed hatred, that incapacity for true love, is the reason why men struggle against monosexuality and why innumerable victims fall in that struggle, their refined souls crushed by the conflict. Just as we no longer have the gods of antiquity—men with female bosoms and women with a tremendous phallus—just as we have accepted the division of God into three components (man, woman, and child) which unitedly represent but one force, so we must choose, in our day, our ideal. ”

“ Just at present darkness surrounds us. The mysteries of the soul are barred to us. Its depths are unfathomable. Even if we have illumined some hidden corner and brought something that was long concealed to the light of consciousness, it is only like a drop snatched from the infinity of the ocean. The real reason why we travel can be told us only by our “other self,” that “other one” whom we buried in our remote youth. Whither we travel is quite clear. Large and small, young and old, fools and wise men—all journey to the realm of youth. ”