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The Analysis of a Homosexual Man under

Jung’s Supervision in the 1930s
Joseph B. Wheelwright
Published online: 01 Feb 2013.

To cite this article: Joseph B. Wheelwright (2010) The Analysis of a Homosexual Man under Jung’s Supervision
in the 1930s, Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche, 4:3, 17-28, DOI: 10.1525/jung.2010.4.3.17

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 The Analysis of a Homosexual Man under
Jung’s Supervision in the 1930s
joseph b. wheelwright (1940)
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My patient came to me protesting, but in an impasse from which he saw no way out.
He was thirty-four years old and was officially the private secretary to a rich English-
man, living near Vevey [Switzerland]. He was being badly “infected” by his employer:
“My handwriting is even becoming like his,” he said, and furthermore he felt the need
to find himself and establish himself independently.
His family had originally come from a village in the Bavarian Alps, but his father
had built up a prosperous lace factory in Florence, where my patient had been born
and brought up. His father died while he was quite young, and from then on, the bane
of his existence was a brother, twenty years older, who domineered and thwarted him.
His austere mother adored him, and he was deeply bound to her. His three sisters mar-
ried young, and he saw little of them.
He went through two years of college in Vienna, but was forced to leave when
the family business, mismanaged by inept uncles, began to totter. At this time, several
important things happened. In an effort to revolt against the negative authority of his
elder brother, my patient identified himself with the Communist Party. His emanci-
pation attempt was abortive, but his liaison with an Austrian prince, notorious in the
middle 1920s, deeply affected his future course. For the first time homosexuality—
long latent—became overt. From then on it became his way of life. Also, he was put
on the Nazi blacklist, for this and political reasons, so that return to the greater Reich
became dangerous after Hitler’s advent. This was especially awkward because, in spite
of his Italian birth, his nationality was German.
After a few years in Vienna, he was forced to return to Florence to liquidate the
family business, which had failed utterly. A description my patient produced of his last

Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche, Volume 4, Number 3, pp. 17–28, ISSN 1934-2039, e-ISSN 1934-2047.
© 2010 Virginia Allan Detloff Library, C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. All rights reserved. Please
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10.1525/jung.2010.4.3.17.

JUNG4003_04(B).indd 17 6/17/10 10:02:41 AM

 18 jung journal: culture & psyche 4:3 / summer 2010

days in the family house gives a picture of the precariousness of his existence and casts
some light on his personality:
When the family had gone, I lived alone in the big house. It was a transition period, with
everything breaking up. Here was my father’s house, where I had been born, where I had
played as a child and ruled as a young man, the familiar surroundings yet no more mine,
crumbling away, belonging to something inhuman, a “juridical person”—a limited com-
pany. A company of my own making, only brought into life for the purpose of facilitat-
ing the sale of the property—yet this inanimate thing had the power of making me feel a
stranger in my own home. Somewhere sat a liquidator, whom I had myself engaged and
who owned all the estate now on behalf of the company. It depended on his good grace if
I could go on living in my own house. All this seemed very strange, and I felt very much
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alone: a new life had to be started and one did not know how.
When coming home, I hesitated before the front door and then generally used the
factory entrance. I had the feeling that I had no more the right to live there and that
I must be seen as little as possible. I did not pay any rent to the liquidator, which fun-
nily enough I ought to have done, but in return, I had pledged myself to clear out at a
moment’s notice should the house be sold. I thought that this would go on for quite
some time, as it was not easy to sell. But at all moments prospective buyers might come,
even murdering sleep at a very early hour in the morning, and then like a hunted ani-
mal I had to withdraw hurriedly from one room to the other so as not to be seen. I
could hear stupid, bloated people moving about in my room, expressing their aston-
ished dislike of it. This was annoying, as I was rather proud of it; it was the last corner,
which gave some temporary shelter.
I had installed myself in what had been the big dining room, once upon a time the
scene of solemn meals such as Easter or Christmas, when one had to sit at table for hours,
consuming more food than was good for one. A very high room, with a ceiling painted
in such a way that it should give the illusion of twisted columns supporting an open roof,
with rosy clouds and blue sky overhead, in the center a painted swan holding in its claws
the cord, draped round with red velvet, which supported the brass chandelier, at one time
made for gas light, “recently” changed into electric. Dawdling in bed in the morning—
there was no point in getting up with nothing to do—I dreamed into that sky, originally
representing dawn, turned into a sunset by old age. Bits of plaster had come off, produc-
ing incongruous white specks.
There used to be enormously high-carved oak sideboards, in keeping with the
carved doors. It was a room that gave in all directions, three doors plus one that opened
out to the balcony in the street. The windows were the very tall windows of old Floren-
tine houses. After everybody had gone and most of the furniture with them, I installed
myself in this room, which was the strategic center of the house, changing it into some-
thing quite unrecognizable. The door to the drawing room was blocked with a wardrobe,
to prevent drafts in the unheated house. I tore out the sham oak paneling round the walls
and replaced it with some red damask. I brought the piano in from next door and pushed
it between the two windows. A low and very big couch was put against the wall next to
the tiled stove, in which I burned all the loose bits from all over the house to keep warm
during the winter. When one felt cold, a hunt was started for wood (the boards that had
kept the curtains in place being particularly prized, but old crates from the loft, small

JUNG4003_04(B).indd 18 6/17/10 10:02:41 AM

 Wheelwright and Beebe, Jungian Views of Homosexuality: Then and Now 19

spindles from the factory, or the wine-boards from the cellar did equally well). This was
collected in the kitchen, put against the wall at an angle, and trampled upon to reduce it
to the necessary size. Eventual guests used to enjoy this. One, who thought himself par-
ticularly lucky in finding small-sized bits of wood, produced some very old and petrified
rubber rings out of a disused hat press—the nature of the stuff was only discovered when
acrid smoke filled the room.
Some Persian rugs, some bits of old brocade thrown haphazardly over chairs, any
sort of receptacles filled with lots of flowers, relieved the feeling of poverty produced by
the shabby furniture, collected from what mother had left behind. And, she had not left
anything very good, to be sure. On the bed, “Cleopatra,” the cover with broad orange
and blue stripes, its name owing to the idea that Cleopatra must have worn something
like it to ensnare the Roman soldiers. On the piano, a row of fiascoes [typical Italian wine
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bottles] with candles in them produced a magnificent lighting effect in the evening.
Sometimes chamber music would be given there, with violinist friends. A high-legged
and solemn but rickety table had its legs chopped off halfway, never to regain a straight
position since, so it was completely hidden under some cloth, giving it the appearance of
a bier in the middle of the room. No curtains at the windows except small white ones,
which prevented people opposite from looking in during the day. In the evening the shut-
ters had to be closed.
Yet with all this far-from-rich furniture, the room had acquired a cachet that it
had never had before. All round it, the dead, empty, and deserted big house; flights of
corridors, stairs, storehouses, factory. During the day, one had to keep quiet, as hated
relations not on speaking terms carried on some sort of business of their own in the
offices downstairs. In the evening, they went off to their house next door and I came
to life.
In the garage there was a car, a Graham Paige, left behind by some German friend
who could not pay for the petrol to take it back to Germany. This was used rarely—
I had no money for petrol either—but on certain occasions it reinforced credit with local
tradespeople. There was a constant search for people who could pay their share of the
petrol, to go to the mountains for skiing. When this came off eventually, we broke down
with engine trouble half way. This car played a part in a short and hectic social activ-
ity started by a young Dutch lady, who wanted to create a “foreigners” club in Florence
and who made me take her to “influential people,” trying to persuade them to put up the
money. I soon refused to go on using what was left of my social standing for this purpose.
Anyway it was only just enough to prevent people from showing us the door. She never
paid for the petrol, as she had said she would.
For several months, mother’s maid, who had stayed behind, cooked for me. She
lived in what had been my nursery long ago, with just a bed and chest of drawers and a big
crate filled with evil smelling hay, where the longhaired dachshund slept. He had been my
brother’s dog, whom I had tried to take over at the time. But I could not bring myself to
like him on that account. It was then that I started [feeling] the longing to have a dog of
my own, which I realized for a short time after, only to be more miserable when I found
I could not keep him on. He had been made over to my mother’s maid, who loved him
and lived for him. She could not find another place, nobody wanted to take her with the
dog, and she would not go without him. Then she did go; I was left quite alone and did my
own cooking, but every now and then she came to look after me, usually after midnight,

JUNG4003_04(B).indd 19 6/17/10 10:02:41 AM

 20 jung journal: culture & psyche 4:3 / summer 2010

as she could not get off before. All out of old affection and because I understood about
her and the dog.
On weekdays in the morning a very old woman who had been working in the fac-
tory for some forty years came and cleaned up for me—that is, she waved the dust up into
clouds which would settle down more solidly after she had gone.
I would disappear for a few weeks and stay with friends in Austria in their very cold
and drafty castle; then I would be back again. Some work would come in from nowhere
in particular, translations, lessons, the insufferable N— . N— would rent my piano to
practice on, and I would throw her out again. There was some little money of mother’s
with which I would buy shares, wait until they had gone up a few points, resell, and live
on the profit for a week or so. Strangely enough they never went down. An American col-
lege in Austria wanted somebody to give Italian lessons. I went to the Oetzthal and found
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after two lessons (delivered in an unorthodox way under a chestnut tree, which impressed
my students) that they rather wanted me to lead a party of irresponsible and irrepressible
youngsters of both sexes on a ten-days trip through the Oetzthal mountains. I accepted
and thought myself lucky when I brought them all back—they had only just arrived,
never seen mountains before, and thought that the quickest way up was the way the crow
flies. As a result, they landed on inaccessible rocks, unable to go on either up or down. It
was lucky that in those parts the edelweiss grows in fields; otherwise, they would surely
have crashed trying to pluck some. They had a curious way of insisting on tomato cock-
tails in remote Alpine huts.
A lady, whose son was to go to the seaside but would not do so alone, paid my fare
to a hotel in Riccione to keep him company. We evolved a plan of how to get rich on dol-
phins, whose heads were at a premium of 100 lire apiece because they would eat the fish-
ermen’s nets, started a romantic friendship with a butcher’s daughter from Imola, finally
gave up the hope of getting a deeper tan than anybody else, and pooled some money to
play the numbers of our combined and separate ages in the state Lotto, then left in dif-
ferent directions. I went up to Austria, stopped on the way in Verona, fell asleep over
a performance of Meyerbeer’s L’africana in the amphitheater, and worked out, while
contemplating St. Zeno,1 and what my share in the Lotto ticket would amount to. The
essential thing seemed to be to get a smart and fast car at once, without having to wait
for delivery and then leave on a trip round the world, or at any rate to Paris. There was an
enticing Alfa Romeo in the piazza, and I wondered whether the owner would part with
it if I walked up with the cash. However, the outcome of the lottery the next day brought
disillusionment, and it seemed monstrously unfair to be left without anything, when
I had already decided that even the winnings would not be sufficient.
Some friends pushed me on to a very short job as a cicerone [private sightseeing
guide]. The Royal Dutch Automobile Club traveled through Italy to see Art. Their
leader, a young and highly cultured Dutch Jew, received me in the Grand Hotel and
greeted me as a fellow M.A. He had evidently been told I was, and I could not undeceive
him. It became awkward when he wanted to know where and what I had studied. I mum-
bled something about a lesser-known university in Austria and the development of the
Roman Basilica into early Christian churches and the paintings in the catacombs (I had
never even been in Rome then). He did not know about this subject, and I came out well.
I led a troupe of fat and wealthy brewery owners with wives through the Uffizi and the
Bargello. Every one of them drove up in some gaudy car. I struck the right note by asking

JUNG4003_04(B).indd 20 6/17/10 10:02:41 AM

 Wheelwright and Beebe, Jungian Views of Homosexuality: Then and Now 21

them to picture in their minds the streams of blood that had flowed into the well in the
Bargello courtyard, when they had their frequent executions there. (I really think they
did.) The old ladies were pleasurably shocked and went to look whether there were not
some bloodstains left on the stones inside. I showed them the wax images of the Neapol-
itan pest [plague] and told them that mothers who looked at them at a critical moment
had been known to bring into the world livid green babies.
This success made me bold and I gave lectures on Dante to an old lady who said she
had the blood of Javanese princes in her veins. Well, I could not check that but she cer-
tainly had the face of a mummy.
Then the old house was sold. A frantic search for a room somewhere else ended
in my taking a picturesque flat in an old palazzo, which I managed to keep going for
a couple of years. Before leaving the house I gave a big dinner party, the ladies invited
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having to cook (I was forced to eat Russian salad for days after, so much did they make),
and enjoying it tremendously. A Russian girl made some vodka; everybody got very
drunk.
Very soon after the builders came, everything was changed, the garden built over
with three houses, the storehouse made into a garage, the factory into flats. In one of
these, a young idiot lives who stands all day long at the window, drawing pictures on the
pane with his wet forefinger and smiling to himself. I have never entered the house any-
more, but one can see him from the house opposite . . .

After this, my patient’s life had followed the pattern of many of the English and
continental homosexuals. He liked luxury in dress and milieu, and by plotting and cap-
italizing on his charms and talents, he threw himself on the largesse of patrons and
patronesses. In this way, he was able to postpone indefinitely the necessity for earning
his own living and accepting responsibility for himself.
In all the capitals and watering places of Europe, there are to be found rich and repul-
sive women, with thrice-born faces, looking for a young and personable gigolo. Cluster-
ing around them are young homosexuals, looking for a soft berth. Often the women can
be satisfied by flattery, conversation, and a good escort, but occasionally they press their
claims to the ultimate. One of my patient’s friends, caught in such a predicament, jumped
out of a second story window, in a panic at having his bluff called.
Wherever money and extravagance are found, the homosexuals gather behind
the scenes, stealing what time they can for their liaisons and parties. My patient told
me that London and New York were their meccas, and that Zürich was one of the
worst places in Europe for such a life. These underground groups, spread throughout
the world, form an international society functioning for its kind as powerfully as the
Masons. They help each other through hard times, and the young ones are always sure
of help and attention. But they fear growing old, as a woman would in an analogous
position. With advancing age goes their stock in trade.
After several years of this life, my patient met an elderly rich Englishman. He
saw money, luxury, and a degree of security, and by judicious flirting landed the
job of private secretary. His employer had renounced homosexuality, but my patient

JUNG4003_04(B).indd 21 6/17/10 10:02:42 AM

 22 jung journal: culture & psyche 4:3 / summer 2010

said its suppression made him a particularly easy mark and furthermore required no
unpleasant payment.
This Englishman was a sinister character, with a tremendous power drive. He had
several elaborate ménages in Italy, France, England, and Switzerland. Gathered around
him were a shifting group of satellites, from all of whom he exacted abject subjection to
his moral and spiritual system. Needless to say, most of them were fakers and cadgers,
and came and went according to the way they played their hands. He was an occult-
ist, fanatically engaged in what he described as “white magic.” He had an extraordinary
ability to disseminate poison, getting at his victims through their blind spots. A friend
of my patient’s, who had freed herself from this man after a desperate struggle, said that
he always appeared in fantasy as the white cobra from whom [Kipling’s young hero]
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Mowgli stole the jeweled ankus.2

In appearance, my patient was of medium height, fair, well-built. He wore tor-
toiseshell glasses for nearsightedness. He spoke English fluently and idiomatically and
was equally at home in French, German, and Italian. He had read widely and intelli-
gently in all four languages. His knowledge of painting and music was better than aver-
age for a cultivated European. He had some aspirations to write in English and Italian.
His piano playing was facile and competent, though it lacked depth. He composed for
the piano with charm and occasional brilliance.
There were several factors that brought him to analysis. In the first place, he had
become increasingly aware of the extent to which he was “infected” by his employer.
The latter had used, among other things, the money lever, and brought my patient
from what he thought to be the controlling hand to a position not far above slavery.
Secondly, there was his fear of old age. With his looks and youth—and he was
already thirty-four—went his chances of survival on his present basis.
Lastly—and this was the last to come to consciousness, but perhaps the most
compelling—was the urge to grow up and break away from his infantile adaptation.
This was reinforced by his need to square accounts with his ancestors. His feelings on
this subject are best expressed by his own words:
My ancestors represent an overpowering element, which I have tried to break away from
in what I realize was the wrong way. The story of all those people is that of a very strong
race which followed the call of the town, spread from a little mountain valley to a power-
ful trust, because the mountains would not feed them all, and in the third generation the
whole force is spent, and a very strong desire to go back to the mountains is made impos-
sible by the development the young ones have taken—they are all sophisticated, overbred
townspeople who can only live in town but do not belong there all the same. As a logi-
cal consequence of the drying up of the live force behind the family, the complete crash
of its financial position came at the same time. What remains is only flotsam, miserable
products of repeated intermarriages—only their own blood was really good enough, the
family pride putting up a wall against all outsiders. Somehow I must have realized this
situation while quite young, and the urge to break away from it all, to start something

JUNG4003_04(B).indd 22 6/17/10 10:02:42 AM

 Wheelwright and Beebe, Jungian Views of Homosexuality: Then and Now 23

fresh, came from the feeling that unless this was achieved, the family spirit would drag
me down with it. But the rise and fall of this family was something quite fascinating in
its own way—during the period described in my last essay, I came to the conviction that
before I could be myself I would have to make my peace with the old ones, that I would
have to write them off my chest; otherwise they would never set me free. Only at that
time I had the idea of making a business proposition out of it. I have come to think now
that I may have to go a much longer way—that it may be necessary to do my reckoning
with the old ones without being able to put it into a publishable book, but to write it all
down while knowing beforehand that the resulting thing would be quite unpublishable
altogether. This opens up a prospect of long years of work with no outward result. But the
reckoning has to be done and the only other alternative is something much taller still—
starting something of my own, being something bigger than the older ones. And this is
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not easy, because they were very strong and in their own way big; they all knew who they
were. You have seen my mother, even after years of poverty and straightened circum-
stances she can give you an idea what the family was, and she is only a woman, who never
counted for anything at all in the family.

It was not until he had been working with me for a month that he brought me
the following dream, though it occurred after our first hour of analysis. He had a deep
resistance to bringing it, because he said he felt it said too much. Finally, he mailed it
to me:

Onboard a transatlantic liner. In the bar, a tall, dark, and handsome Italian (from the
south, Sicilian) makes friends over drinks with a blond Anglo-Saxon (American) news-
paper reporter (or journalist), who complains about the lack onboard of persons worth
mentioning.
The Promenade Deck. The Sicilian confides in his new acquaintance and tells him
how it is that he, quite penniless, finds himself on this luxury liner bound for New York.
He produces a letter that he received in answer to an advertisement or to some sort of
call he had sent out. It is from an elderly, rich American widow, who wants him to come
over and marry her. In the letter she gives detailed instructions of how he is to find her:
on the evening of his arrival in N.Y., she will give a big party, the surprise of which is to
be her engagement. He is to walk straight into the room and up to her, recognizing her
at once by the string of harlequin pearls she will wear. The reporter congratulates his new
friend on his luck and the exceptional circumstances, and wonders whether this is not a
good stunt for himself, but the other one says, wait, it is not as simple as all that. In spite
of money and all that, he is not going to marry the woman, unless she is the woman of his
heart. The reporter gets angry at such nonsense and so the Sicilian proceeds to explain
his secret: he is a medical phenomenon and his heart beats to a special rhythm, stopping
for a full minute at every tenth minute. He cannot marry anybody unless the other per-
son’s heart pulsates to the same rhythm. This peculiarity goes back to a distant ancestress
of his, a certain Nell, an Irishwoman. Only her descendants have this rhythm in their
blood. (I believe that at the time some reason was given for this, but already when tak-
ing notes I was unable to recall it. There was something tragico-romantic about it, and it
seems inspired by something read in a book.) It is unknown whether great-great-grand-
children of this Nell are still living. The Sicilian rather thinks that some day he might

JUNG4003_04(B).indd 23 6/17/10 10:02:42 AM

 24 jung journal: culture & psyche 4:3 / summer 2010

stumble on one, but it is quite certain that unless he does so his line will die with him.
The reporter raises the point whether it is not acting under false pretences to answer the
call of the American woman when it seems quite certain that the encounter will be quite
useless. To this, the Italian opposes an Italian way of reasoning: to start with, everybody
is his own best friend and . . . he does not know for certain she does not fulfill the con-
ditions; anyhow he need not think about that before he has checked up for himself, so
there is no conscious deception.
The journalist is by now frankly enthusiastic; he has seen the possibilities of a big
stunt, and he promises his friend that no matter how this particular marriage project is
going to work out, he will see to it that the Sicilian is worked up to such a journalistic
attraction that he will be amply provided for materially. The scene fades with the motto:
“Hearts must beat in unison.”
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The first evening in New York. Rooms crowded with people in full evening dress,
dance music, potted palms, chatter, the hostess surrounded by a crowd of female friends
in one corner. The reporter is already there and excited about being the only one to know
what is coming. Enters the Sicilian, at first unnoticed, looks round, sees the harlequin
pearls on the parchment-like throat of the hostess, an awful faded blonde, sex-starved,
covered with ermine and white ostrich feathers and jewels. He walks up to her, and she
at once presents him to the crowd, before he finds time to say anything, as her fiancé. He
takes her arm, puts one of his palms against one of hers (this gesture will come back fre-
quently from now on), drops her arm, and says he is sorry the thing is off. She does not
fulfill the conditions. Great excitement among the guests. The delighted reporter rushes
away to telephone his paper.
Next morning big headlines, the Sicilian is front-page stuff; wherever he goes
he is followed by hordes of flappers and women of all descriptions who are crazy to
marry him.
There is a scene on a highway, a girl having stopped his car and made him get out,
with no success.
Another scene in church, at his wedding—one girl felt so confident that she would
bring the thing off, that she ordered the wedding without his knowing her. He is to meet
her at the altar, and she thinks that it will not be possible for him to say no there and then.
As she knows the condition, he accepts; they meet at the altar steps (priest, girls in white,
orange blossoms, society guests, newspaper reporters, etc.), he reaches for her hand with
the by now well-known gesture, drops her hand, walks out. Tableau.
The gesture of feeling a pulse becomes something like eating and drinking for him.
There is a picture of a succession of palms pressed against each other, hands dropped, and
rejected, etc. All this is accompanied by a frenzied newspaper campaign, as well-known
society women are involved in it. This notoriety has the effect of making the boy be con-
ceited, but there is something sincere in the background; he is genuinely sorry and long-
ing to find the right subject.
From now on, the action centers round a restaurant, very smart, subdued light, lots
of elegant waiters. It is, as a matter of fact, the most exclusive restaurant in New York, the
proprietor having humbly begged the Sicilian to have all his meals free there, and bring as
many guests as he likes, charge free. As the mere appearance of the Sicilian fills any place,
this is quite a good speculation, and he is treated like royalty. The reporter is mostly with
the boy. It is in this restaurant that some friend (it is not clear whether it is the reporter or

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 Wheelwright and Beebe, Jungian Views of Homosexuality: Then and Now 25

not) one day tells the boy that he had heard of another descendant of the legendary Nell.
Nobody knows about it yet—but it is a boy. The Sicilian at once says this does not mat-
ter; he is going to meet him, as he must be with his own blood.
(By this time I am identified both with the journalist and the Sicilian, but I also follow
the story with considerable interest from outside, and at this point, I am thinking that it is
a pity it seems to have become unprintable after all, when it had seemed at the beginning a
completely “impartial” story, that is not connected with myself. Although I am living the
story in a very intense way, I seem to feel that it is a dream, as I am anxious for it not to break
off, because I think it would make a very good story to write down. I have a sensation that
I can only express like this: the story is a living product of myself; it kind of emanates from
myself like the thread a silkworm is ejecting, projecting from his body, and it takes an effort
to go with it, to prevent the thread from tearing, which would stop the story. It is the same
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sensation I have sometimes had in dreams, when I was composing something. If, as in this
case, the purpose is achieved and a thing complete in itself is produced right up to the logi-
cal ending, it feels like a glittering soap bubble, which bursts with waking up.)
The Sicilian determines to leave, to fetch his “better half.” There seems to be no
question about the States being the country where they will settle down. His blood rela-
tion apparently lives in a lonely Bavarian mountain village. Bavaria to the Sicilian seems
something very far off, remote, almost unheard of, but it is in a certain, very distant way
familiar to him. He confides in the journalist about his plans, and his friend is horrified.
The news leaks out that the famous breaker of hearts is going to meet a man. Hell
breaks loose, and the united press joins in one short torrent of virtuous indignation,
to stop by common consent writing about the boy altogether, killing him off through
silence. So the Sicilian stops being News and remains completely alone.
A closing scene in the Restaurant, before he leaves America. He is cold-shouldered;
the proprietor will not even see him; he cannot get a table though willing to pay and
leaves the place in a hot wave of anger and lust for revenge.
High up in the mountains—snow, storm, cold, a steep road, which leads up to a
pass. The boy is alone, but feels free, elated, although it is hard going. Anyhow there was
never any question of being stopped by outside influences. Suddenly the reporter is there
too. He is still the shadow of the Sicilian, but this is in a way his last mission in connec-
tion with him; he is detailed by his paper to witness the meeting, and somehow he hopes
that he need not give up his friend.
They arrive together at the house on the pass, the appointed meeting place. The Sicil-
ian is met by a very good-looking boy with a very high voice (there is something wrong or
awkward about his feet, but I cannot remember what). They kiss and the reporter faints,
not to enter the story anymore.
After this, and only after the Sicilian has been quite prepared to face all the conse-
quences, that other boy turns out to be a girl, and they return together to New York, but
the image of this boy-girl is not clear; she is not really seen on the ship or after in N.Y.
There is just the knowledge that she is present somewhere in the background.
The Restaurant again. Only a very short time has passed since the Sicilian has been
here last. He enters the familiar place; people know him and are painfully astonished to
see him there, as they do not know how to react. He is cold-shouldered, just as last time.
But the boy is so quietly sure of himself that the proprietor begins to wonder what is on.
There is a kind of apotheosis; the boy flinging the words: “I am still news, always news.

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 26 jung journal: culture & psyche 4:3 / summer 2010

It was a girl,” into the proprietor’s face, then leaving the Restaurant, never to come back.
He is News for ever after, but does not want the newspapers anymore. The two settle
down in the States; there is some passing glimpse of a house or villa and the sensation of
“Und wenn sie nicht gestorben sind, so leben sie noch heute.”3
The urge to wake up, the feeling of the paramount importance of this dream.
I wake up and decide [I should be] taking it down.
Then I wake up really and take notes.

Jung has said that sometimes a patient’s first dream states the potential of his whole
analysis, or even of his life. In this case, it is his life —past, present, and future.
The reporter seems to represent the publicity stunt, exploitation side. This reporter
side is revealed in his description of the old ones. It is interesting here that his phraseol-
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ogy suggests archetypes, though he knew nothing of them. And from the background,
it is easy to recognize the Sicilian boy in the patient—looking for an unreal existence,
cut away from all roots. But with all his plotting, the Sicilian is essentially sincere. He
wants to get out of his scheming head and back to his heart—a heart with its own spe-
cial rhythm. Like all men, he wants to find the one whose heart beats in unison with
his. And that takes him back first to the earth from which he came. It is blut und boden
[blood and soil], but in a very serious and necessary sense—the real, earthy, simple ori-
gin. It suggests that he must get back to his real, perhaps peasant, self to find his way.
Here—at the source—comes the transformation of his sexuality and the begin-
ning of a real anima figure. But it became clear, during the short course of his analysis,
that homosexuality was not the immediate problem. He wrote,
As for the girl in the man, that is a problem which cannot be solved by theorizing about
it. For the moment my attitude toward women is the same as Hitler’s—whether I could
fall in love with a girl is a question that has to be left open until the subject should turn
up. The prospect does not elate me in any way, but one has to be broadminded, hasn’t
one? Anyhow, to consider that a salvation or in any way a sort of come back of the lost
son seems ridiculous to me, as I consider the other side has exactly the same reason for
existence, and there is much more of it than the average little man imagined. But, I rec-
ognize that it is always the product of something amiss, only that one has to accept it
instead of repressing it.

At first I had hoped to break his mother tie and release his infantile sexuality. Jung
laughed at my naiveté and said, that even when they came wanting to achieve hetero-
sexuality, he had only rarely been able to help them, but that, of course, I might suc-
ceed. But in this case, the patient had no desire to overcome it. As a problem for him,
it lay in the future.
A[nother] rather Joycean dream is interesting in connection with the role his
mother had played:
Now there is her house and we have to find some way to get into it and I shall have to
manage to make her like you so that she will take you on, and we won’t have any more

JUNG4003_04(B).indd 26 6/17/10 10:02:42 AM

 Wheelwright and Beebe, Jungian Views of Homosexuality: Then and Now 27

worries because she is very well off. Remember that her doctor in town told me that she
has to have somebody to help her, because her eyesight is failing and she is very lonely,
in spite of her celebrity. Don’t dirty your dress on this lawn, she may already see us from
the windows, and behave like a well-brought-up young girl. But mother, wait a moment,
what are you going to do about it, you can’t just simply ask for her without knowing her
and what will you say to the people who open the door? Never mind, let me just do my
stunt, once I have got inside that house it will be all right. Don’t be silly. Ah, there we are,
a brass knocker, is your mistress at home, my man? Just say, well what am I to tell him, oh
she will know me, I am a very good friend of the—’s, yes that’s it, she cannot find me out
at once about that, there she is, how do you do so nice I just thought I would, my daugh-
ter, isn’t she rather pathetic looking but quite the lady in that black frock and white lace
blouse, she does not quite know what to make of me, but I think she is catching on to
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the girl (this really is a most embarrassing situation, how is mother ever going to bring
it off but she seems to manage alright, thank you yes mother was not sure whether you
could see us, oh you never go out . . .) yes I must go on rambling, quite nice and cool in
this corridor, does that landscape outside remind me a little of Carinthia—those moun-
tains at the background?—she does not know whether to ask me inside, rather blocks
the door to the drawing-room standing on those steps which lead up to it, now dear
come on we had better move, we’ll come back another time, must not overdo things, I
will just have a few words outside with the butler, he is with us, she will have to have you
anyhow, remember what the doctor told us. Now whatever did that woman want, with
her girl, what could she be up to, there she is outside talking to the butler, are they plot-
ting something, I can hear them very well from where I am standing, through that open
window, no they don’t give anything away and the butler is gone but now she speaks to
the girl, giving her some instructions I can hear every word and she is sure to tell her
something which will throw light on her plans and why she has come here. Oh so that’s
it, they are out after my money, how astonishing nobody really has thought of that, all
sorts of people come to see me but rather because I am a famous old woman and I have
other things to give, not as old as all that though, now I rather liked the girl how abomi-
nable and how sad, I am quite staggered by this plot. Not that I need really bother about
it, but there is something else, oh this letter, more of them, quite a bunch I am holding, I
had them while this woman was here, pretending to read them when I know so well that
I cannot really, my eyes, my eyes, and it is getting evening too and dark, I must be able
to read them, just this one, such comforting words, if I hold it up against the window, I
must strain myself, strain (I will not break down I hope) if I squint a little, that’s it, yes
now I am reading, another word before I cannot go on anymore, there that was a whole
sentence, but I am really reading it without seeing the written words, intuition is it, how
lonely I am and now this dreadful darkness coming on and spreading over my eyes, I shall
have to take that girl whether I want to or not, I wish she were here now, what is he say-
ing in this letter, yes he always knows just the right thing to say, I shall go and call on him
(some people think it curious to see an astrologer, but never mind about them), he will
give the right advice, he’ll charge me eighty francs but never mind about that and yet he is
in with that woman, I can see them talking together, my eyes, oh I am carrying on, I have
been able to read this, perhaps I can go on this curious way, seeing things without look-
ing at them, something must be done.

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 28 jung journal: culture & psyche 4:3 / summer 2010

The outcome of his analysis was uncertain. His publicity-seeking, self-dramatiza-

tion, and plotting were well on the wane when I had to return to America. He wanted
to come over too, as, on account of his Nazi blacklisting, his homeland was closed
to him. My last letter from him, shortly after the war started, told of a series of frus-
trations, owing to passport and immigration difficulties. But he had broken with his
employer, and if the American venture fell through, was planning to launch a book-
shop with a friend in Rome.

endnotes
1. St. Zeno, a fourth-century Bishop who may have been martyred, is the patron saint of Verona,
where there is a statue of him in the Basilica of San Zeno.
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2. The reference is to a story in The Jungle Book (1894).

3. And if they haven’t died, they’re still alive today.

bibliography
Kipling, Rudyard. 1894. The Jungle Book. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/236 (accessed April
16, 2010).

joseph (“jo”) b. wheelwright (1906–1999) was a founding member of the C. G. Jung

Institute of San Francisco and became a President of the International Association for
Analytical Psychology.

abstract
This 1940 paper by a pioneering American Jungian analyst documents a control analytic case
supervised by C. G. Jung. The author describes the brief analysis of a young homosexual man
who had come to therapy to wrest his psyche from the influence of a manipulative employer.
The patient’s own written anamnesis comprises much of the report, which also includes his
initial dream in his own words, followed by a second dream of the patient, which is allowed
to speak largely for itself. This paper provides the basis for the commentary by a contemporary
Jungian analyst, John Beebe, which follows.

key words
analytical psychology, anima, dreams, homosexuality, Jung, puer aeternus

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