He had a housekeeper whose husband, a man of thirty-eight, also busied himself about the house in his spare time. He was constantly cleaning Ferenczi's rooms, putting fresh polish on the doors and floors, pottering around, evidently anxious to show his good will and his devotion to his wife's employer.
This man was very intemperate and beat his wife on several occasions. Altho she was most unattractive, he constantly accused her of infidelity with Ferenczi and every male patient treated by him.
When the woman revealed those facts to Ferenczi, he gave the couple notice but decided to have a serious talk with her husband.
The man denied having beaten his wife, altho this had been confirmed by witnesses. He maintained that his wife was a real vampire, whose lust was sapping his life strength. During this explanation, he impulsively took Ferenczi's hand and kissed it, saying that he had never met anyone dearer or kinder than the doctor.
A talk with the woman revealed to Ferenczi that the man had always been very distant in his attitude to his wife. He would often push her away brutally, calling her all sorts of opprobrious names.
When he learnt that Ferenczi had given her notice, the insane man abused and hit his wife, and threatened to throw her out on the street and to stab "her darling." Ferenczi at first paid no attention to those threats for the man remained very devoted, respectful and well behaved. When he learnt, however, that the man was sleeping with a sharp kitchen knife under his pillow and when he woke up one night to find him standing in his bedroom, he notified the authorities and the maniac was committed to an insane asylum.
"There is no doubt," Ferenczi writes, "that this was a case of alcoholic delusion of jealousy. The conspicuous feature of his homosexual attachment to me, however, allows the interpretation that the jealousy he felt of every man, was only the projection of his own desires for the male sex. Also, his lack of desire for his wife was not simply impotence but was determined by his unconscious homosexuality.
"To him alcohol played the part of an inhibition-poison and brought to the surface his crude homosexual erotism, which, as it was intolerable to his consciousness, he imputed to his wife.