Queer Theory and the Jewish Question (19 page)

role of homoeroticism in male groups; he would soon add philosopher, psy- chiatrist, and author of a series of anti-Jewish (and antifeminist) tracts, such as
Secessio Judaica
, which argued for the severing of the Jews and their corruptive and carnal modes of thinking from Germans, Germany, and German cul- ture,
32
to his list of credits. During their exchange Blüher moved from effusive paeans to Freud in public article as well as private letter, to contributions to several Freud-aligned—and nonaligned—psychoanalytic journals, to the pub- lication of an open letter detailing his dissent from Freud’s understanding of homosexuality, and, finally after contact between the two men had been sev- ered, to the denunciation of the “decadent,” “Jewish-liberal conception” (
Kul- turanschauung
)
33
of inversion that psychoanalysis came to exemplify.
34

In his initial contact with the father of psychoanalysis, Blüher notes that his recent encounter with Freud’s writings was for him a “true illumina- tion.”
35
He was particularly moved by “‘Civilized’ Sexual Morality and Mod- ern Nervous Illness,” in which Freud first speculates on the relationship be- tween sexual life and stage of cultural development, specifically on “progressive [instinctual] renunciation in the course of the evolution of civi- lization.”
36
Both Blüher and Freud would continue to examine this relation- ship, but what most struck Blüher about Freud’s essay was how he determined and then distinguished between two forms of “developmental” displacement of the reproductive function, two nondegenerate deviations from the cultur- al norm: perversion and inversion (or homosexuality). As he had in the first of his
Three Essays on Sexuality
, Freud argued in “Civilized Sexual Morality” that neither perverts nor inverts form a degenerate group of individuals sepa- rated from the rest of humanity but rather represent a variant of sexual aim or object that all human beings at some point in their development, con- sciously or unconsciously, desire.
37
Just as significant for Blüher, by distin- guishing inversion from perversion Freud relieved homosexuality from the medico-moral onus that still clung to the term
perversion.
Moreover while Freud argues that psychoneurosis is the negative form of perversion, he makes—at this juncture—no corresponding neurotic determination of inver- sion. Rather than a degeneration from the evolutionary pinnacle that is mod- ern civilization, homosexuals are “often distinguished by their . . . special ap- titude for cultural sublimation.”
38
Not only do they creatively contribute to the progressive development of society but homosexual behavior may itself be a consequence of the development of “civilized” sexual morality. Modern Eu- ropean society supports the suppression of all forms of the sexual instinct ex- cept for the purpose of reproduction and then only permitted within the con- fines of a legal marriage; consequently, “a blocking of the main stream of libido has caused a widening in the side-channel of homosexuality.”
39

Blüher commends Freud’s refusal to classify inversion as either a perver- sion or a sign of degeneration and adds, moreover, that he understands why Freud’s writing on inversion vacillates between pathological and nonpatho- logical, negative and positive, categories—Freud speaks of “people suffering from inversion” and of inversion as a developmental stage that is overcome: as a physician Freud was more concerned with disturbed individuals, more con- cerned with discerning causes of the disturbance and viewing manifest be- haviors as symptoms of something else. Nonetheless, Blüher’s own experience of nonsublimated inversion in its culture-promoting role suggested that Freud’s theory could no doubt think through that too. To that end he also sought to enlist Freud in helping him secure the publication of the third vol- ume of his history of the Wandervogel,
The German Youth Movement as an Erotic Phenomenon
, which specifically addressed the sexual structure of this “clearly inverted social complex.”
40

In response, Freud was rather guarded regarding Blüher’s judgment of homosexuality. He notes that the negative side is more worthy of attention. Freud defines that negative aspect as impotence with women. Blüher makes the point in his subsequent letter to Freud that for nonneurotic inverts im- potence with women is unimportant since their psychosexual orientation is exclusively toward men. It is only when they despise and attempt to suppress their orientation that neurosis arises. More significant, although Freud did recommend Blüher’s work to another psychoanalysis-friendly publisher, he informed Blüher that any word from him (i.e., Freud) to his publisher Deuticke about printing a volume addressing the theme of homosexuality would meet without success.
41
The sexual inquisition unleashed by the Harden-Eulenburg-Moltke affair rippled throughout German and German- speaking society.
42

Freud became the first outside Blüher’s immediate circle to receive the work. In the letter accompanying the manuscript, Blüher expresses the hope that it will overcome the differences in judgment between himself and Freud and Freud realize that Blüher’s work would fill a gap in his theory of sexuali- ty. And, as in his first letter, Blüher decorates his supplements to Freud’s the- ory with the most effusive praise of the “honored master” whom Blüher cred- its with crystalizing his work.
43

Freud returns the compliment, by extending his respect for Blüher’s work on the youth movement.
44
Blüher’s contention that the German male youth movement entailed a revolution against the rule of the fathers (
Väterkultur
) appeared to comport with Freud’s own working out of the once-and-future social conflict between generations in the writing in which he was then en- gaged:
Totem and Taboo
. However, Freud strenuously disagreed with aspects

of the second component of Blüher’s analysis of the youth movement: his par- ticular characterization of the movement as an “erotic phenomenon.” While Freud described what he had read as “much more intelligent than most of all the literature from the homosexual community and more correct than most of the medical literature”—outside of Freud himself—he takes issue with Blüher’s argument that the persecutors of homosexuals in the German youth movement are neurotic, repressed homosexuals who project their own strug- gles with their sexual inclinations by attacking the openly homosexual mem- bers of the movement. Repressed they may be, but they are not neurotics, re- turns Freud, who reserves this honor for those who are among the persecuted. He sends Blüher a copy of the Schreber case study to demonstrate his point.
45
Regardless whether in that same letter Freud’s expressed relief when Blüher confides to him that that he (i.e., Blüher) doesn’t consider himself an invert— “By the way it pleases me to hear that you no longer count yourself among the inverts, because I have seen little good from them”
46
—reveals bourgeois homophobia or, echoing “‘Civilized’ Sexual Morality,” his pragmatic recogni- tion that prospects for an open homosexual in 1912 were very limited and life extremely difficult,
47
Blüher’s evangel of inversion was ground for debate and neither dismissal nor derision. Freud was usually willing to admit into his circle an initially errant acolyte representative of fields and groups previ- ously indifferent or resistant to psychoanalysis, confident that he could guide them to adopt the true line and thereby allow psychoanalysis to colonize these new regions.
48

Versions of Inversion

While homosexuality at this point in Freud’s theorization was held to be con- ditioned by fixation at an earlier stage of development,
49
for Blüher inversion was inborn. Unlike the
Zwischenstufentheorie
, or theory of intermediate (sex- ual) types (i.e, the third sex), propounded by Magnus Hirschfeld and his sup- porters—whose Jewishness Blüher would in later writings readily note as if to imply some connection between effeminacy, decadence, and Jewishness
50
— the authentic invert was not the often physiologically hermaphroditic effem- inate male (
der invertierte Weibling
)—in Blüher’s terms the
homosexual
—de- picted by Hirschfeld,
51
but the manly man (
der Männerheld
, hero of men).
52
These heroic men are socially and sexually oriented toward other men; con- currently, these charismatic inverts are the idealized object of male desire. In this characterization Blüher was following the lead of Benedict Friedlaender and, before him, Gustav Jaeger and his notion of the “supervirile man.”
53

Blüher also posited a third type, the latent homosexual, who unconscious- ly struggled against this tendency with the consequential neurotic reaction of becoming a persecutor of inverts—or, conversely, as in the case of Judge Schre- ber, of becoming a paranoiac. Blüher would designate both latent and feminine homosexuality as pathological conditions; “normal [homosexuality] in the an- cient sense” is by contrast “thoroughly healthy.”
54
By 1913 in the conclusion to his “Three Fundamental Forms of Homosexuality” (a copy of which he had sent to Freud)
55
effeminacy is ultimately delineated as less an inborn possibility than an effect of decadence. Blüher would
56
argue that effeminacy—as the characteristic form of inversion in the Roman Empire—is a form of decadent homosexuality that grows out of racial mixing (
Rassenmischung
), inbreeding (
Engzucht
), and misery (
Verelendung
). Magnus Hirschfeld, the editor of the
Yearbook for Sexual Intermediate Types
(
Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen
) in which Blüher’s long essay was slated to appear, insisted that this passage be ex- punged. Later this characteristic sexual life of a society in decline would come to be qualifi as Jewish—“the ‘decadent portion’ of the Jewish race.”
57

Unlike the third sex theorists Blüher does not propose a multitude of gen- ders but instead a spectrum of sexual practices and relationships from friend- ship to genital sex engaged by manly men. More to the point, inversion is not about genitality but about love and respect, “the affirmation of a man based upon his worth.”
58
Inversion is about the relations between authentic, re- sponsible, idealistic men. It is a universal (male) disposition, not an extrava- gance of nature. For Blüher inversion (as opposed to homosexuality) is not a sign of degeneration, rather it is a manifestation of men’s sexual-social talent for socializing and state building. Erotic relationships (as opposed to either carnal or mechanical—e.g., economic, political—ties) determine male al- liances. Inversion is not effeminization; it is neither an identification with the mother nor an assumption of a passive attitude, as Freud sometimes theo- rized.
59
The invert is a virile agent. The space of his activity is the only “pro- ductive social form”: masculine society (
männliche Gesellschaft
) or the male band (Männerbund). According to Blüher, all previous theoreticians of the state who derive the monarchy and hence the state from the institution of the family are making superficial analogies.
60
The sole purpose of the family, that product of the heterosexual drive component of men’s
61
fundamental bisexu- al nature, is the reproduction of the species.
62

While Freud, for his part, recognized that homosexual desire—which he modeled after heterosexual desire—is a component of human bisexuality, ho- mosexuality remained a stage to be worked through, overcome, or sublimat- ed. Homosexuality is derivative and not original, but not to be ignored. Fur- ther, where Freud located the reproduction both of the species and of

individual identity in the family, Blüher separated these two processes: male identity forms in masculine society largely through identification with the nonpaternal Männerheld.
63
In sum, Blüher biologizes gender and sexual dif- ference rather than, according to Freud, effecting it as either a developmental process or a product of the economy of desire: male libido turned toward men in the absence of women. Rather than a force for individual development, ho- mosexuality for Freud disrupts or closes off advancement—unless sublimat- ed. These disagreements between Freud and Blüher were irreconcilable.
64
To accept Blüher’s theory would have forced Freud to abandon (or at least seri- ously modify) his construction of both homosexuality and the dynamics of the primal horde/brother band: Oedipus would be dethroned and perhaps re- placed by his father Laius.
65

So, against Blüher’s implicit alternative narrative of homosexual social de- velopment, Freud endeavors to isolate any necessary role for homosexuality— it becomes epiphenomenal, not generative. Although in his initial discussion of the primal horde in
Totem and Taboo
Freud suggests that the band of
ex- pelled
brothers may have been held together by homosexual feelings and acts, ultimately he distinguishes their homosocial bonds from homosexual attrac- tion when he reminds the reader not to forget that it was hate of the father rather than affection that led to the parricide; they share a fraternal tie based on not treating one another as the father. Homosexual desires are not as pow- erful as potentially fratricidal heterosexual ones; Freud posits the institution of the law of incest to prevent heterosexual rivalry and preserve the brother band after the murder of the father because “[hetero]sexual desires do not unite men but divide them.” Then, as his genealogy of religious development progresses, the formation of the family in patriarchal society restores the fun- damental structure of the primal horde.
66

Freud next discusses the primal horde in the once lost metapsychological paper “The Overview of the Transference Neuroses.” In the surviving draft Freud attempted to tie the development of particular neuroses phylogeneti- cally with stages in the historical development of humanity. He elaborated further on the homosexual relationship among the excluded sons. Unlike
Totem and Taboo
the later work explicitly connects social feelings with subli- mated homosexuality: living together had to bring the brothers’ social feelings to the fore and could have been built upon homosexual sexual satisfaction. Further, Freud contends that “it is very possible that the long-sought heredi- tary disposition for homosexuality can be glimpsed in the inheritance of this phase of the human condition. The social feelings that originated here, subli- mated from homosexuality, became mankind’s lasting possession, however, and the basis for every later society.”