this is the poetical way in which many newspaper editors have been introducing to their readers accounts of two recent incidents which, at the time of writing (this chapter), keep headline writers busy. one of the news items is the idyll of an heiress, still in her teens, who has made up her mind to marry a man of fifty or thereabout. the other is the heartbreak of a seventy year old husband, deserted by his twenty year old wife.
the mating of winter and spring is a daily occurrence, both seasons being divided up about equally between the two sexes. the two unnatural matches which i mentioned above, however, stand in a class by themselves.
many a young idler, gifted with good looks, has managed to play on the erotic feelings of some woman in her dotage and to annex a goodly portion of her wealth. many an attractive girl, seeking the line of least effort, has been known to prefer[pg 252] a union with a silly old man to the daily struggle for existence.
disinterested brides. in the two cases under discussion, on the other hand, no suspicion of sordidness could be cast on the bride-that-was or on the bride-to-be.
both are wealthy, one of them immensely so. the bridegroom to be is, if not a poor man, at least in very modest circumstances.
a genuine love match in both cases. but the genuineness of love did not prevent a catastrophe in one case and will probably bring about a catastrophe in the other case as well.
in both cases, the men are probably normal and yielding to the very natural attraction of youth combined with beauty and refinement.
both women, however, are abnormal, altho one of them, the runaway wife, may have regained her normality and awakened from her absurd dream.
both are, or were, the victims of a fixation of the most acute type, on the father image indicating a morbid neurotic disposition.
such unions can hardly ever hold out any promise of lasting happiness.
the case of wagner. there is, of course, the famous example of wagner who, at fifty-seven[pg 253] carried off the beautiful wife of hans von bülow, almost thirty years his junior, and lived happily with her until his death. but wagner was at the time a marvelous example of physical and mental activity, energy and creative power. in no way, barring his facial appearance, could he suggest age or decay to his young wife. he remained to the last a romantic figure.
the glamor, however, which may surround a successful composer with a picturesque past, is not likely to dazzle in any way the bride of a riding master or of a new england manufacturer.
a parent fixation, as i explained in the chapters on the family romance and on incest, is the more acute as it drives its victim to seek a closer duplicate of the parent type.
the man who seeks a woman for his mate because his mother was a woman is influenced by the most normal and biologically valuable of mother fixations. the race would come to an end but for that form of fixation.
the son of a blonde mother who cannot love a woman unless she is also a blonde, is less normal and less free in his choice of a mate than the preceding type. he is inhibited by childhood memories, but then, education and civilisation are little[pg 254] more than inhibitions caused by childhood memories. that type simply marries in "his set" and can lead an otherwise very normal life.
he, however, who is irresistibly attracted by a woman exactly like his mother, not only as far as appearance, but also as far as age goes, is a childish, regressive neurotic, seeking the safety of childhood conditions and obsessed at times by unconscious incestuous cravings.
the rock of physical incompatibility is often one on which such adventures are shipwrecked. a very young woman, ignorant of the sex life and its problems, unable to realise its meaning before marriage, may develop immediately after her union to an elderly man a very passionate temperament.
either she will repress her cravings for physical love, which her too mature mate is unable to gratify, and she will develop anxiety states or hysteria.
or she will be too healthy to repress her desires, and her disappointment may change her love into scorn, especially when conversation with other women or a clever suitor opens her eyes to what is lacking in her life.
a separation, sometimes complicated by the usual triangle situation, may become unavoidable.
[pg 255]
there are cases in which both mates are frankly neurotic and were drawn together as invalids and weak-minded often are, by the similarity of their predicament.
the plight of two neurotics. both of them may, as i observed it once, seek safety in a mock-incestuous relationship, the older mate, seeking safety in a union with an immature human being, the younger mate in a union with the parent image. in one case which i have in mind, the husband, fifty-five years old, had been several times on the verge of exposure for unlawful "liberties" he took with very young girls. the wife, a few days after her father's death, married the old man who had been her father's associate and who had tried to seduce her when she was barely ten.
she visited me when a new scandal in which her husband became implicated caused her to leave him. she was considerably "mixed up" for, while young men had begun to attract her, she felt extremely self-conscious in their presence and could only enjoy herself in the company of elderly men who, in turn, reminded her too much of the nightmare thru which she had lived for two years.
a pious catholic, she solved the conflict prema[pg 256]turely, before i had time to bring insight into her mind, by fleeing from all sorts of men and into a convent.
other cases have a less tragic history: a young woman of twenty-eight who had never been happy with her husband, (thirty), took advantage of the numberless opportunities war work and war drives gave to women, to become faithless to her husband. she had four short-lived affairs with men twice her age, then "broke down" when her husband secured a divorce for adultery. analysis gave her insight into her father fixation which was not very deep and might never have driven her into overt acts but for the unusual conditions in which she found herself.
she is now happily remarried to a man of her age.
what the community says. mates whose ages are out of proportion, are often thrown into deep discord by the pressure of the community's criticism. they might thrive on a desert island or on a farm or, as in the case of an explorer i knew, when surrounded almost continuously by an "inferior" race whose opinion they can easily disregard.
the community's smiles or open disapproval, on the other hand, are a heavy burden, especially for[pg 257] the more neurotic mate, who is likely to feel very self-conscious in everything he or she does.
the too young wife and the too young husband may at first smile when hotel clerks, shopkeepers, chauffeurs, etc., allude to their aged mate as "your father" or "your mother." after a while, a feeling of embarrassment will get the best of their sense of humor. shame and humiliation will soon set in when those mistakes are repeated frequently. when the ego is wounded by love complications, unless the individual is a pronounced masochist, love fares very badly.
it turns into hatred for the mate causing the humiliating remarks, as unconscious incest ideas gradually break into consciousness and provoke protective measures, critical attitudes, disgust, etc.
in one case which came under my observation, the community's criticisms worked as effectively as psychoanalytic treatment would have.
having her fixation-fling. a young woman married to a man of her age, but discontented and frigid, had a passing liaison with an elderly man, which exposed her to many jeers on the part of her associates who suspected it.
she was very intelligent and well acquainted with psychoanalytical literature and only consulted me to[pg 258] make sure of her correct diagnosis of her own case.
she did the proper thing under the circumstances, confessed a part of the truth to her husband, went away with him for a while and has been happy with him ever since. she had had her "fixation fling" as she called it, had sown her neurotic wild oats and ridden herself of a morbid element which may never bother her again.
this sort of solution, however, is one which is neither scientific nor safe, for the person affected by a fixation of that morbid sort is at the mercy of a recurrence of it, should life's problems compel him to seek once more the line of exaggerated safety and regression to the childish level of conduct.
physical results. if matches between the young and old were successful physically and otherwise, they would be extremely beneficial to the older mate. normal sexual stimulation, far from driving the aged to an early grave, as old time puritans have taught us, is probably the most potent factor of rejuvenation.
the steinach operation which enables the hormone-producing cells of the gonads to overdevelop at the expense of the seminiferous cells, seems, when successful, to confer new youth upon the entire organism.
[pg 259]
lorand, stekel, hufeland and others hold that sexual activity in the old, when it is possible, is conducive to longevity.
lorand mentions many interesting cases in which remarriage at incredibly advanced ages seemed in no way to curtail one's life span. thomas parré, who died at 162, was arrested for assault at 102 and married again at 120. the dane drackenberg, who died at 150, married at 111 a woman of 60, became a widower at 130, and tried to woo a young peasant girl who, however, refused to accept him.
peter albrecht, who died at 123, married again at 80 and had seven children. gurgon duglas, who died at 120, married at 85 and had 8 children, the youngest one being born when the father was 103. baron baravicion dès capelles died at 104, having had four wives, the last one whom he married when 80.
lorand adds that, according to his observations, old people with an erotic temperament have a better chance of survival than "cold blooded" ones.
hufeland says that married people live much longer than the unmarried and that no bachelor was ever known to reach a ripe age.
the sudden bloom and general appearance of rejuvenation of old maids finally finding a mate, of[pg 260] widows who remarry and of neglected wives who give themselves to a potent lover, is a good physiological argument why winter should try to seek the violent stimulation of a union with spring.
the fate of the younger mate. the younger mate, however, can hardly hope to escape unscathed when going thru such an experience.
the old are benefited because their muscles, nerves, glands, etc., imitate the attitudes and behavior of the younger mate's organs and become accordingly younger.
the same process of imitation is at work in the younger mate and the damage done to him or her is naturally great, altho not always obvious at first.
his or her younger organism, less experience-laden, and hence more elastic and more responsive, adapts itself more quickly to the ways of old age than old age adapts itself to the ways of youth.
even in cases when the gratification seems to be mutual, the damage done to the younger mate reveals itself thru neurotic disturbances.
a man of thirty-five consulted for anxiety states, nightmares, "nervous" gastric troubles, etc.
he had been living since his twentieth year with a woman twenty years his senior, in fact, a friend and schoolmate of his mother's.
[pg 261]
he called her mama and she called him sonny. while, according to his statements, their sexual life was absolutely normal and satisfying, the repressed incest-fear lurking in his unconscious betrayed itself thru a nightmare which disturbed his sleep with alarming frequency:
"i am at the foot of marble stairs. a female figure is standing at the top, a relative, perhaps my mother. she extends her hand to me to help me up the stairs, but that hand is so weak that it cannot hold me and then i am frightened by a powerful male figure, a man in authority, perhaps my father, coming toward me from the side."
altho the man was physically satisfied, the split in his unconscious made him very irritable, restless and an unpleasant companion for his "mama" to whom he made endless scenes for trifling reasons.
king david. in biblical days when king david grew old, [2] his ministers besought themselves of the following remedy: they found a young virgin and "let her lie in his bosom" in the hope that the dying man might be revived by her contact. even that availed nothing.
[pg 262]
in our days, however, we have come to prize human life and happiness more highly and young virgins shall not be sacrificed, being the new generation and the future, to the welfare of some modern king david who is the past.
the young women in our midst, virgins or others, whom a morbid obsession draws to the bosom of some king david must be saved from the winter chill that awaits them. modern psychology holds the key opening for them the door to freedom and normal love.
