=A Negro Hater.= A hysterical patient of mine who had always been a terrific negro hater and advocate of lynching, was disturbed at night by symbolic sexual dreams in which negroes took an active part. She could not help feeling uneasy in the presence of a colored man. "Those beasts" was her favorite designation for colored people.
What drove her into my office was that on one occasion she had behaved in a, to her, inconceivable way to a colored janitor's helper who had come to her apartment to inspect the radiator.
The presence of that man had aroused her so powerfully that for a few minutes she had been on the point of making advances to him. She fortunately came to her senses and fled from what had always been to her an unconscious temptation.
Such incidents as that make one wonder how many lynchings have been precipitated by the hysterical actions of neurotic women.
It may be stated broadly that every exaggerated attempt at protecting ourselves against a danger or a temptation is a confession on our part that the danger or the temptation is very fascinating to us.
=Reformers.= Many "bold" reformers are merely very weak individuals struggling against sexual temptation and hating some vice which holds them in its power. The biography of Anthony Comstock which I have reviewed in detail in "Psychoanalysis and Behavior" proves that the obscenity he was so stubbornly ferreting held a strange fascination for him.
I must not create the absurd impression, however, that all reformers are abnormal and moved by neurotic impulses. But between the scientist who warns people of venereal disease and combats it whenever possible and the so called "syphilophobiac" who sees everywhere chances for infection and would jail every prostitute, there is a great difference.
=The Syphilophobiac= is always a weak, oversexed individual, whose only protection against his promiscuous cravings is the fear of disease and the absurd assumption that every woman is infected.
The syphilophobiac hates prostitutes because he would love them too well but for the protection he erects between their body and his desire. The feverish energy displayed by many prohibition enthusiasts is at bottom the hurrying away from a temptation to which they know they would have to yield. The great prohibitionists crave alcohol and could not, without a terrible struggle, protect themselves against the lure of drunkenness if strong beverages were available.