When we look for
sadistic
inclinations in Weininger, we
must bear in mind that some traces of sadism are to be found in
his family.
must bear in mind that some traces of sadism are to be found in
his family.
Weininger - 1946 - Mind and Death of a Genius
?
Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-08-19 08:38 GMT / http://hdl.
handle.
net/2027/wu.
89038364857 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www.
hathitrust.
org/access_use#pd-google
? Genius and Insanity 169
autumn, taking shape in the chapter "Animal Psychology" in
Vber die letzten Dinge, which was a collection of symbols. In
the summer of 1903 his interest in symbolization rose to a
climax. Taschenbuch indicates this clearly. His ideas at the
time were, for the most part, then cast in the form of aphorisms.
"The stars no longer laugh, they no longer have relationship to
light, but only to decency and happiness. They lack physical
properties. All animals are criminals, even the horse and the
swan (beauty without purpose, it flies no more). One should
be afraid of the swan. . . . For a river the danger is becoming
a swamp, for the ocean the danger is whirling water. One possi-
bility in the ocean corresponds to insanity. . . . The plant is a
disease; here is singularity (no walls between the cells) but no
unity, because sense organs and motion are lost (intellect,
will). The plant is characterized as immobile, that is, it re-
mains fixed in its place, has become unfree in space" (Taschen-
buch, pp. 51-55).
Examples like these are numerous. His symbolization grew
and became more and more a delirium of symbols. Finally the
process reached its final, peculiar, and monstrous phase in
Taschenbuch and the "Letzte Aphorismen," in which all
material things appear as symbols. Rappaport says: "Every
single animal, every plant, every mineral, mountain and valley,
water and fire, light and heat, became symbols. Light became
his symbol of decency, fire a symbol of destruction, the well a
symbol of birth; the river is the Apollonian principle, the ocean
the Dionysian. Dogs, swine, and snakes are symbols of crime"
(U. L. D. , p. viii).
This sort of symbolism is characteristic of archaic thinking.
The symbol, unconsciously adopted, is a manifestation of re-
gression to an earlier stage of thinking. When, for instance,
Otto Weininger says that snakes are symbols of crime, he is
using the snake as a symbol to hide an unconscious idea which
he could not bear. Since the snake is a phallic symbol, it is
easy to see why it symbolized crime for Weininger. The male
sexual organ is the means for expressing the sexual drive--an
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-08-19 08:38 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89038364857 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? lyo Genius and Insanity
idea rejected by him--and it was therefore for him a symbol
of crime.
To Weininger universal symbolism seemed a means for
broadening knowledge of life: symbolism was an expansion of
existing life, a prolongation. In the symbol he felt that he
traced some of his own experiences, and thus symbolizing be-
came a projection. He often upheld the statement that was the
starting point of his symbolism, "The world is my idea. "
"This," he said, "is the ideal of all philosophy, and it reveals in
the clearest fashion how things are reflected through the ego of
the philosopher" (U. L. D. , p. 61). Symbolism widened his
horizons, enlarged and broadened his world, while unifying and
explaining it. His constructive symbolism resulted in the fusion
of all phenomena, which were thus bound together in a uni-
versal idea, and it finally took on a religious tinge, as did all
Weininger's conceptions. He believed that his ego and the
world were interpenetrated, and he thus ended with a specula-
tive, metaphysical, religious philosophy; all his statements took
on the tone of religious dedication.
His universal symbolism expressed the restitutional symp-
toms of schizophrenia. He seems to have felt compelled to
bring order into the world, which he considered varied and
rich. His meanings were partly hidden, partly clear, but they
always had something of a symbolic or prophetic tone. He was
with his symbols trying to rebuild what he had lost through
his morbid narcissism--seeking a salvation that would take
shape in an almost passive manner as his reunion with the uni-
verse, a union of oral character. 13
The strong religious coloring and religious connotations in
his symbols are of interest. Since religion is largely a matter
of tradition carried over from the father, Otto's words and tone
may express his conflict with his father. It should not be for-
gotten that one point of departure for Otto's psychosis was to
18 Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (New York, 1945),
p. 425-
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-08-19 08:38 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89038364857 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Genius and Insanity 171
be found in his defense against his homosexual feelings toward
his father.
The development of universal symbolism to the point of
delirium may be seen as a beginning of the disintegration of
Weininger's personality. Just as his basic personality had two
poles, good and evil, so his symbolism was also dual. Man con-
sists of two parts--"everything," which results from the cos-
mos, and "nothing," which originates in chaos. At the highest
point in his scale stood "everything," goodness, beauty, and
truth; at the lowest point stood crime and insanity. These two,
crime and insanity, were of the greatest interest to Weininger.
He considered as tending toward insanity all disturbances of
the logical equilibrium, including persecution mania, hypo-
chondria, melancholia, megalomania, and all forms of obses-
sional ideas and phobias. He said: "When a man is in danger
of becoming insane, all that is logical becomes senseless to him.
Instinctive certainty of judgment deserts him. If he is not to
lose his grip altogether, he must seek the help of the highest, the
most fundamental, principles of the intellect. That is why such
people take particular interest in the problems of logic and the
science of cognition" (U. L. D. , p. x).
Such thoughts arose from introspection; they give us some
idea of what Weininger thought of himself. He said emphati-
cally that "all that is evil in man is the result of a lack of con-
sciousness. " Since consciousness was to Weininger synonymous
with decency, introspection became moral, because it sought
out the criminal forces in man and was the means of freeing
himself from criminal urges. This thesis he expounded in
sentences like the following: "Every true, eternal problem is an
equally true, eternal guilt; every answer is an atonement, every
recognition an improvement" (U. L. D. , p. xi; cf. Taschenbuch,
p. 66).
He used introspection to search out the "evil forces" that he
believed to be within him. These were related to his dual
symbolism. Thus he wrote: "The animal whose meaning has
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-08-19 08:38 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89038364857 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 172 Genius and Insanity
become most clear to me is the dog. I do not know whether the
dog is in the least a symbol of crime, but the dog is a symbol of
the criminal" (U. L. D. , p. 115). The implications in this state-
ment lead us back to his thwarted suicide plan in November,
1902. Then he had talked of a barking dog presaging death;
then he had called himself a born criminal. The dog as the
symbol of the criminal is linked with those ideas. For it never
ceased to be true that, as Rappaport said, "Weininger firmly
believed that he was a criminal" (U. L. D. , p. xiv).
His conviction that there was evil in himself can be under-
stood only in the light of his personality make-up, in which
constructive and destructive impulses collided and strong
moral ambitions warred with his sex cravings. Continued
mental dissatisfaction bred self-criticism, which grew stronger
and stronger until it became at times a delirium, a morbid
hatred of himself.
A certain delire dinterpretation arose, and morbid conclu-
sions, based on supposed observations and pure speculation,
led to more and more mistaken ideas. In Sex and Character we
can see how the basic idea that man is everything and woman
nothing gradually developed into a series of absurd conclusions.
It is hard to avoid the impression that, despite all the excellent
observations in it, the book as a whole is a tissue of erroneous
ideas. These errors, beyond correction, were constructed into
what may be called a system of delusions.
The value of an idea, of course, is not dependent on whether
it came from a normal or from a morbid mind. Disease may
often promote great thoughts. The decisive criterion is the re-
lationship between disease and thought, that is, the question
whether the thoughts are closely related to the man's mental
make-up or the disease is incidental to them. In diagnosing
Weininger's state of mind it is not necessary to prove that all
his theoretical statements were morbid. Ths aim must be to
examine the morbid elements. Even if a thought, when consid-
ered by itself, seems sound, it may yet be an expression of a
disease. The fact is that Weininger's intellectual activity was
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-08-19 08:38 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89038364857 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Genius and Insanity 173
thoroughly tied up with his psychic make-up and with his dis-
eased state of mind.
When we look into Vber die letzten Dinge we can find ex-
pressions that seem to be clearly those of a schizophrenic per-
son. He says, "AH words which are to some extent a part of life
contain the letter I," and proceeds to give a long list of words,
mostly in German and Latin, including those for live, love, lust,
voluptuous, laughter, light, lily, flute, lenient, slender, lamb, etc.
This passage was written in the summer of 1903 and was typical
of his mental condition at the time. The repetition of words
here has an obsessional quality, which is found in patients suf-
fering from any of various abnormal mental conditions.
The quotation has, however, an aspect of more importance
than the alliteration or the compulsory motives. Through the
letter I Weininger has constructed a whole system of words
which are related more or less clearly to voluptuousness. His use
of alliteration shows him keeping in place associations which
move in a definite scheme. It seems that in him a sexualizing
of the external world was taking place. The conclusion is
strengthened when we remember that Weininger wrote this
passage at a time when he thought his sexual feelings were ex-
tinguished. To substitute for them he created a highly sexual-
ized system; thus, a pathological compensation took place. He
sexualized the universe, transferring his libido not only to ani-
mate, but also to inanimate objects. With everything in his
environment he had a personal relationship that originated in
his sexuality. And sexualizing in this manner is typical of a
schizophrenic person.
In this connection some of his words concerning individuality
are of interest. "One needs," he wrote, "the pose, the audience, J
the theater. That is why the criminal is homosexual. " Again he
is referring to himself. Does it not seem likely that he is by a
compensatory process trying to maintain contact with his sur-
roundings, trying to keep the connection which he is gradually
losing? Here, too, it is not too far-fetched to consider the process
of his thought as sort of sexualizing.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-08-19 08:38 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89038364857 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 174 Genius and Insanity
Freud has shown that in certain types of schizophrenia, the
sufferer manifests a verbal behavior that is an attempt to re-
cover the real world. So it is here with Weininger. 14 The at-
tempt failed, for he recaptured nothing but word representa-
tions, shadows. When a normal person thinks of an object he
thinks of all its qualities, but the schizophrenic centers his
feelings only upon the word or the term, not upon the object
itself. This was the case with Weininger.
We may better understand his state of mind if we look at the
aphorisms that appeared in the first edition of Vber die letzten
Dinge and were in the later editions to a great extent suppressed
by Rappaport. The reason given for suppressing them was that
a "number of them were written in a kind of secret language,
intelligible only to those who knew it from long personal expe-
rience with Weininger. " Yet despite the statement, Rappaport,
amazingly enough, said of the aphorisms (pp. xviii-xix), "They
contain far-reaching thoughts which are not darkened by the
slightest touch of insanity, there is not one word which is not
well considered. " He contradicts himself by writing elsewhere
(p. xv), "The danger for Weininger at this time was perhaps
not so much crime as--in the broader sense of the word--
insanity. "
His correspondence and notes during the summer showed
the growing split between his emotional and intellectual life
and actuality. As Biro wrote, "His notes were the shadow of
approaching disintegration. " Weininger's self-accusation grew
stronger, his sexual abstinence continued, and life became
sacred to him. Some lines from a letter to Gerber (August 23,
1903) are characteristic: "Two flowers of a papyrus branch, a
little piece of bark from the same tree--you must ascribe it to
circumstance that the captain who rowed my boat cut the plant
against my specifically expressed will and without my knowl-
edge. "
One aspect of Weininger's sexual life remains to be discussed
--the sadistic and masochistic inclinations which, because of
"Sigmund Freud, Collected Papers, IV (London, 1925), 129, 133.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-08-19 08:38 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89038364857 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Genius and Insanity 175
his own make-up and because of social resistance, he had to
restrain. His sadistic impulses were not approved by his per-
sonality (or, more accurately, were not determined by his su-
perego) but, coming indirectly to the fore through a projection
mechanism, appeared in tabu-like behavior and strong ideas of
atonement. They were related to his anal-sadistic traits. His
statement that the crater at Etna "reminds me of the behind
of a monkey" showed his tendency to anal eroticism, which is
one of the physiological causes of ambivalence and bisexuality.
When we look for sadistic inclinations in Weininger, we
must bear in mind that some traces of sadism are to be found in
his family. What Otto himself thought of sadism is expressed
in the chapter "Aphoristisches" in Vber die letzten Dinge (p.
69): "A man who commits suicide is practically always a sadist,
because he wants to get out of a situation and can act; a maso-
chist must for all eternity beg permission to take his own life.
. . . The sadist goes to others (against their will, their constant
disposition) to help them obtain (immediate) happiness or
pain; he is grateful or revengeful. " These words, written months
before he took his own life, were certainly to be applied to
himself.
Weininger saw the connection between the sexual urge and
sadism. In Sex and Character he wrote (pp. 333-34): "Accord-
ing to Novalis, it has often been said that all sexual urge is re-
lated to cruelty. There is a deep reason for this association. All
that is born of woman must die. Reproduction, birth, and death
are indissolubly connected; by a premature death the sexual
urge expresses itself as a desire to reproduce oneself. Held so,
sexual intercourse is--when regarded as an act not only from
the psychological standpoint but also from the moral and nat-
ural philosophical point of view--related to murder. . . . The
real psychology of the beloved woman will always be disre-
garded. The moment a man loves a woman he cannot recognize
her as she is. In love the man does not understand the woman,
and understanding should be the only decent relationship be-
tween human beings. A human can never love another whom
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-08-19 08:38 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89038364857 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 1y6 Genius and Insanity
he understands through and through, since one could not then
help seeing the imperfections which are sure to be found in any
human being, and love deals only with the perfect. Love for a
woman is, therefore, possible only when the real qualities, de-
sires, and interests of the woman are described in so far as they
are in opposition to the localization of superior qualities in her
person. The attempt to find oneself in a woman instead of
looking for herself necessarily involves disregarding her real
personality. This effort is always cruel to the woman, and in it
lies the reason for all the egotism in love as well as the cause of
jealousy, which regards the woman as private property without
attention to her individual mental life. We have thus drawn
the parallel between the cruelty of eroticism and the cruelty of
sexuality. Love is murder. The sexual drive is a negation of the
physical and psychic woman, always erotic to the last. "
Cruelty--or, as it should be more properly called, sadism--
thus here acquired its true meaning for Weininger. He early
became familiar with the problem of sadism-masochism. He
was demonstrating the presence of sadistic tendencies in him-
self when he sought to prove that Ibsen was a sadist and a
masochist. He wrote in his essay on Ibsen (U. L. D. , p. 22):
"While Ibsen at the peak of his production was a thorough
masochist (as proved by The Master Builder), he was not
without certain sadistic traits in his youth. There are traces of
sadism in several of the poems he long withheld from publica-
tion and in Gildet pa Solhaug. . . . In the second act of Peer
Gynt (the stolen bride) and in the first act (the threat against
Solveig) there are positive sadistic qualities; it is possible that
Ibsen here wanted to discipline himself. "
These remarks on self-discipline apply better to himself than
to Ibsen. In composing Sex and Character he was attempting
to gain complete self-control, and that aim was one reason for
his rejection of women and all concerned with them. His orig-
inal sexual desire for women and his love for his fellow humans
were transformed by his own violent sexual urge and appeared
as sadism and masochism, as pain and torment.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-08-19 08:38 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89038364857 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Genius and Insanity 177
This explanation is supported by his severe behavior in the
face of the world, which reflected only weakly the violent strug-
gle within him. He had good reason not to smile or make jokes.
He disciplined himself, never relaxing his soldierlike man-
ner. Thus when he hated, he certainly did not suffer from his
hate.
His sexual feelings were deranged and caused him painful
experiences--a fact he probably realized fully after Sex and
Character had been published. In the summer of 1903 we find
him writing notes such as these: "All cruel people have pecul-
iarly strained faces, signifying exactly the pain they feel. Like-
wise the ascetic. . . . Cruelty means the desire to inflict real
pain (upon someone as a reality) instead of allowing desire to
mean the aim and value of liberty" (Taschenbuch, p. 38).
These words confirm the suspicion that Weininger himself
suffered mental pain, pain closely related to his entire personal-
ity, including his sexual life. From this grew self-torment that
was especially apparent toward the end of his life. His self-
discipline, however, became voluptuous. He seemed to enjoy
using the ugliest self-hatred to destroy his own life through
ascetic practices.
The torment and hatred he expressed were closely allied
with disgust, which he equated with fear. He said, "Fear and
disgust are identical; they are coordinated so that the criminal
is not only always afraid of himself but also disgusted"
(U. L. D. , p. 118).
Feelings of disgust in general originate in the sublimation
of homosexual components, and Weininger was showing this
process. But there was more to it. The criminalistic impulses,
of which he spoke so much, had their roots in his repressed
sadistic tendencies. Even as he tried to repress them they
emerged into his consciousness as wishes and symptomatic
acts. These acts, which often stem from desires for revenge or
criminalistic impulses, are not usually apparent because they
are not usually acted out. Weininger himself attributed his
desires for revenge and his wish to commit acts of violence to
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-08-19 08:38 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89038364857 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 178 Genius and Insanity
his torturing conscience rather than to his partly repressed
sadistic traits.
His sadistic and masochistic tendencies became more
marked. He himself said (U. L. D. , p. 68): "The masochist
takes everything as destiny. The sadist loves to play destiny. "
More and more he himself wanted to play at being master of
destiny. And he succeeded. In his Weltanshauung the prob-
lem of sex and of woman became a central point; pain and the
infliction of pain, ruling and being ruled, were seen in close
connection with his own sexual drive. His hatred of woman,
to be compared only to that of Strindberg, was closely related
to the wish to play the martyr. His self-torture reached its
climax in the last period of his life, when there was nothing at
all that could win the approval of his extreme asceticism.
"The sadist," he said, "believes in, hopes for, happiness on
earth; he is the man of Tusculum, of San Souci; the masochist
needs a heaven. " Thus it was with Weininger. He, the maso-
chist, needed a heaven.
These sadistic and masochistic strivings were a stage in the
development of his psychosis. He did not suffer physically,
but he did suffer mentally. His was a moral masochism.
What was at the root of these strivings? A feeling of being
basically alone in the world and lonely. We have already seen
Weininger as a fundamentally shut-in person, with feelings of
hostility toward the outer world. He felt impotent--in a
psychological sense, castrated. Like many other masochistic
individuals, he tried to alleviate and overcome the intolerable
fear of his own solitude and powerlessness. This fear, which is
frequently not conscious in such men, is covered over by com-
pensatory feelings of superiority and perfection. If we pene-
trate Weininger's psychodynamics, we find this process go-
ing on.
His masochism was one means of losing himself. In order
to remedy his feelings of insignificance and lack of power, he
made his fear worse. To lessen the conflict between his desire
to be strong and his conviction of his own weakness, he tried
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-08-19 08:38 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89038364857 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Genius and Insanity 179
to reduce self to nothingness. He wished to cease being an
individual and by doing so to save himself from the conflict.
The road led him to fantasies of suicide, which he finally
acted out.
A good deal has already been said about the symbols and
the meaning of the "Letzte Aphorismen. " These are written in
Weininger's very heart's blood. In them we can see the emo-
tional expression of his psychological structure. At the same
time they show his complete abandonment of two of his most
important principles: his belief in the individual and his
hatred of women.
"Ego does not exist," he wrote (U. L. D. , p. 175), "soul does
not exist; goodness is the only absolute perfect reality, and it
includes all separate things: Individuality is the result of van-
ity: we need an audience, we wish to be seen. A vain person
also takes an interest in others and understands them. " Else-
where we find this passage: "Man's first fall was caused by his
individuality, and the symbol of individuality is the shooting
star. " And in Taschenbuch (p. 42), we read: "The mirror is
the surrogate for creating one's self. The mirror has a relation-
ship to vanity and to individuality as well. . . . The problem
of individuality is the problem of vanity. The reproduction of
life is the consequence of vanity. The criminal is vain because
he wants loneliness. "
Such words are directly opposed to what he had written a
few months earlier in Sex and Character. They disrupt a fun-
damental principle on which he had built his life and his
theory--individualistic intellectualism.
In abandoning his belief in the ego and the soul he gave up
two concepts that had been deeply significant to him, and his
belated disbelief in individuality also disturbed his deep-rooted
faith in immortality. These changes were alarming symptoms.
His moral masochism led him to attempt the annihilation of
the individual self, in order to overcome his loneliness. At the
same time he tried to become part of a larger, more powerful
whole outside himself. When he said, "goodness is the only
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-08-19 08:38 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89038364857 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 180 Genius and Insanity
absolute perfect reality," he was seeking to make himself part
of a larger pattern in which, as participant in a glorious un-
dertaking, he could feel strong and eternal. He submerged
himself in a greater unity that would shelter him and give him
new security. He sought to become a living part of the phe-
nomena about him. His masochistic strivings opened for him
an escape, a means of leaving his conflicts behind him. And
his trend to a faith in a larger whole even went so far as mys-
tical interpretation of time. "In Syracuse I can only be born
or die, but not live," he wrote, and his declaration showed that
for him time and space were fused.
On the problem of woman his views also underwent radical
alteration. In Taschenbuch (p. 24) he wrote: "How can I re-
proach woman for doing nothing but wait for the man? The
man wants nothing else. There is no man who would not be
happy in knowing that he had sexual attraction for a woman.
The hatred of women is nothing but the hatred of sexuality
which he has not yet conquered. "
The personal application is clear; he had on his mind his
own hatred of women, which resulted from hatred of his own
sexual drive. He showed insight into the problem even if his
words expressed resignation. The man who wrote these words
was not unwilling; more probably he was willing but resigned
because he felt that the game was lost. And the spirit behind
the words indicated how chaotic his psychological condition
was.
The abandonment of his earlier beliefs concerning individ-
uality and women were signs of a new development of his
personality. A masochist in need of heaven, he now believed
only in the eternity of the idea of the good. It is not surprising
that on the day before his death he made to Lucka remarks
that implied a connection between his abandonment of his
ideas of individuality and his opinion of suicide (Lucka, p.
The theory that his behavior revealed a disintegrated per-
sonality seemed to be contradicted by his actions. Though his
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-08-19 08:38 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89038364857 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Genius and Insanity 181
mood was dark and sinister, his behavior was not, to all ap-
pearances, very different from his earlier conduct. The conflict
and division within him is illumined by the story of his part-
ing with his father. He asked the elder Weininger to go with
him to the street-car stop, then stood letting one car after an-
other go by until he finally managed to tear himself away.
This was his final, painful, but concealed parting from his
father, to whom he had felt very close. Although hard pressed,
he finally reacted adequately.
? Genius and Insanity 169
autumn, taking shape in the chapter "Animal Psychology" in
Vber die letzten Dinge, which was a collection of symbols. In
the summer of 1903 his interest in symbolization rose to a
climax. Taschenbuch indicates this clearly. His ideas at the
time were, for the most part, then cast in the form of aphorisms.
"The stars no longer laugh, they no longer have relationship to
light, but only to decency and happiness. They lack physical
properties. All animals are criminals, even the horse and the
swan (beauty without purpose, it flies no more). One should
be afraid of the swan. . . . For a river the danger is becoming
a swamp, for the ocean the danger is whirling water. One possi-
bility in the ocean corresponds to insanity. . . . The plant is a
disease; here is singularity (no walls between the cells) but no
unity, because sense organs and motion are lost (intellect,
will). The plant is characterized as immobile, that is, it re-
mains fixed in its place, has become unfree in space" (Taschen-
buch, pp. 51-55).
Examples like these are numerous. His symbolization grew
and became more and more a delirium of symbols. Finally the
process reached its final, peculiar, and monstrous phase in
Taschenbuch and the "Letzte Aphorismen," in which all
material things appear as symbols. Rappaport says: "Every
single animal, every plant, every mineral, mountain and valley,
water and fire, light and heat, became symbols. Light became
his symbol of decency, fire a symbol of destruction, the well a
symbol of birth; the river is the Apollonian principle, the ocean
the Dionysian. Dogs, swine, and snakes are symbols of crime"
(U. L. D. , p. viii).
This sort of symbolism is characteristic of archaic thinking.
The symbol, unconsciously adopted, is a manifestation of re-
gression to an earlier stage of thinking. When, for instance,
Otto Weininger says that snakes are symbols of crime, he is
using the snake as a symbol to hide an unconscious idea which
he could not bear. Since the snake is a phallic symbol, it is
easy to see why it symbolized crime for Weininger. The male
sexual organ is the means for expressing the sexual drive--an
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-08-19 08:38 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89038364857 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? lyo Genius and Insanity
idea rejected by him--and it was therefore for him a symbol
of crime.
To Weininger universal symbolism seemed a means for
broadening knowledge of life: symbolism was an expansion of
existing life, a prolongation. In the symbol he felt that he
traced some of his own experiences, and thus symbolizing be-
came a projection. He often upheld the statement that was the
starting point of his symbolism, "The world is my idea. "
"This," he said, "is the ideal of all philosophy, and it reveals in
the clearest fashion how things are reflected through the ego of
the philosopher" (U. L. D. , p. 61). Symbolism widened his
horizons, enlarged and broadened his world, while unifying and
explaining it. His constructive symbolism resulted in the fusion
of all phenomena, which were thus bound together in a uni-
versal idea, and it finally took on a religious tinge, as did all
Weininger's conceptions. He believed that his ego and the
world were interpenetrated, and he thus ended with a specula-
tive, metaphysical, religious philosophy; all his statements took
on the tone of religious dedication.
His universal symbolism expressed the restitutional symp-
toms of schizophrenia. He seems to have felt compelled to
bring order into the world, which he considered varied and
rich. His meanings were partly hidden, partly clear, but they
always had something of a symbolic or prophetic tone. He was
with his symbols trying to rebuild what he had lost through
his morbid narcissism--seeking a salvation that would take
shape in an almost passive manner as his reunion with the uni-
verse, a union of oral character. 13
The strong religious coloring and religious connotations in
his symbols are of interest. Since religion is largely a matter
of tradition carried over from the father, Otto's words and tone
may express his conflict with his father. It should not be for-
gotten that one point of departure for Otto's psychosis was to
18 Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (New York, 1945),
p. 425-
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-08-19 08:38 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89038364857 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Genius and Insanity 171
be found in his defense against his homosexual feelings toward
his father.
The development of universal symbolism to the point of
delirium may be seen as a beginning of the disintegration of
Weininger's personality. Just as his basic personality had two
poles, good and evil, so his symbolism was also dual. Man con-
sists of two parts--"everything," which results from the cos-
mos, and "nothing," which originates in chaos. At the highest
point in his scale stood "everything," goodness, beauty, and
truth; at the lowest point stood crime and insanity. These two,
crime and insanity, were of the greatest interest to Weininger.
He considered as tending toward insanity all disturbances of
the logical equilibrium, including persecution mania, hypo-
chondria, melancholia, megalomania, and all forms of obses-
sional ideas and phobias. He said: "When a man is in danger
of becoming insane, all that is logical becomes senseless to him.
Instinctive certainty of judgment deserts him. If he is not to
lose his grip altogether, he must seek the help of the highest, the
most fundamental, principles of the intellect. That is why such
people take particular interest in the problems of logic and the
science of cognition" (U. L. D. , p. x).
Such thoughts arose from introspection; they give us some
idea of what Weininger thought of himself. He said emphati-
cally that "all that is evil in man is the result of a lack of con-
sciousness. " Since consciousness was to Weininger synonymous
with decency, introspection became moral, because it sought
out the criminal forces in man and was the means of freeing
himself from criminal urges. This thesis he expounded in
sentences like the following: "Every true, eternal problem is an
equally true, eternal guilt; every answer is an atonement, every
recognition an improvement" (U. L. D. , p. xi; cf. Taschenbuch,
p. 66).
He used introspection to search out the "evil forces" that he
believed to be within him. These were related to his dual
symbolism. Thus he wrote: "The animal whose meaning has
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-08-19 08:38 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89038364857 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 172 Genius and Insanity
become most clear to me is the dog. I do not know whether the
dog is in the least a symbol of crime, but the dog is a symbol of
the criminal" (U. L. D. , p. 115). The implications in this state-
ment lead us back to his thwarted suicide plan in November,
1902. Then he had talked of a barking dog presaging death;
then he had called himself a born criminal. The dog as the
symbol of the criminal is linked with those ideas. For it never
ceased to be true that, as Rappaport said, "Weininger firmly
believed that he was a criminal" (U. L. D. , p. xiv).
His conviction that there was evil in himself can be under-
stood only in the light of his personality make-up, in which
constructive and destructive impulses collided and strong
moral ambitions warred with his sex cravings. Continued
mental dissatisfaction bred self-criticism, which grew stronger
and stronger until it became at times a delirium, a morbid
hatred of himself.
A certain delire dinterpretation arose, and morbid conclu-
sions, based on supposed observations and pure speculation,
led to more and more mistaken ideas. In Sex and Character we
can see how the basic idea that man is everything and woman
nothing gradually developed into a series of absurd conclusions.
It is hard to avoid the impression that, despite all the excellent
observations in it, the book as a whole is a tissue of erroneous
ideas. These errors, beyond correction, were constructed into
what may be called a system of delusions.
The value of an idea, of course, is not dependent on whether
it came from a normal or from a morbid mind. Disease may
often promote great thoughts. The decisive criterion is the re-
lationship between disease and thought, that is, the question
whether the thoughts are closely related to the man's mental
make-up or the disease is incidental to them. In diagnosing
Weininger's state of mind it is not necessary to prove that all
his theoretical statements were morbid. Ths aim must be to
examine the morbid elements. Even if a thought, when consid-
ered by itself, seems sound, it may yet be an expression of a
disease. The fact is that Weininger's intellectual activity was
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-08-19 08:38 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89038364857 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Genius and Insanity 173
thoroughly tied up with his psychic make-up and with his dis-
eased state of mind.
When we look into Vber die letzten Dinge we can find ex-
pressions that seem to be clearly those of a schizophrenic per-
son. He says, "AH words which are to some extent a part of life
contain the letter I," and proceeds to give a long list of words,
mostly in German and Latin, including those for live, love, lust,
voluptuous, laughter, light, lily, flute, lenient, slender, lamb, etc.
This passage was written in the summer of 1903 and was typical
of his mental condition at the time. The repetition of words
here has an obsessional quality, which is found in patients suf-
fering from any of various abnormal mental conditions.
The quotation has, however, an aspect of more importance
than the alliteration or the compulsory motives. Through the
letter I Weininger has constructed a whole system of words
which are related more or less clearly to voluptuousness. His use
of alliteration shows him keeping in place associations which
move in a definite scheme. It seems that in him a sexualizing
of the external world was taking place. The conclusion is
strengthened when we remember that Weininger wrote this
passage at a time when he thought his sexual feelings were ex-
tinguished. To substitute for them he created a highly sexual-
ized system; thus, a pathological compensation took place. He
sexualized the universe, transferring his libido not only to ani-
mate, but also to inanimate objects. With everything in his
environment he had a personal relationship that originated in
his sexuality. And sexualizing in this manner is typical of a
schizophrenic person.
In this connection some of his words concerning individuality
are of interest. "One needs," he wrote, "the pose, the audience, J
the theater. That is why the criminal is homosexual. " Again he
is referring to himself. Does it not seem likely that he is by a
compensatory process trying to maintain contact with his sur-
roundings, trying to keep the connection which he is gradually
losing? Here, too, it is not too far-fetched to consider the process
of his thought as sort of sexualizing.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-08-19 08:38 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89038364857 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 174 Genius and Insanity
Freud has shown that in certain types of schizophrenia, the
sufferer manifests a verbal behavior that is an attempt to re-
cover the real world. So it is here with Weininger. 14 The at-
tempt failed, for he recaptured nothing but word representa-
tions, shadows. When a normal person thinks of an object he
thinks of all its qualities, but the schizophrenic centers his
feelings only upon the word or the term, not upon the object
itself. This was the case with Weininger.
We may better understand his state of mind if we look at the
aphorisms that appeared in the first edition of Vber die letzten
Dinge and were in the later editions to a great extent suppressed
by Rappaport. The reason given for suppressing them was that
a "number of them were written in a kind of secret language,
intelligible only to those who knew it from long personal expe-
rience with Weininger. " Yet despite the statement, Rappaport,
amazingly enough, said of the aphorisms (pp. xviii-xix), "They
contain far-reaching thoughts which are not darkened by the
slightest touch of insanity, there is not one word which is not
well considered. " He contradicts himself by writing elsewhere
(p. xv), "The danger for Weininger at this time was perhaps
not so much crime as--in the broader sense of the word--
insanity. "
His correspondence and notes during the summer showed
the growing split between his emotional and intellectual life
and actuality. As Biro wrote, "His notes were the shadow of
approaching disintegration. " Weininger's self-accusation grew
stronger, his sexual abstinence continued, and life became
sacred to him. Some lines from a letter to Gerber (August 23,
1903) are characteristic: "Two flowers of a papyrus branch, a
little piece of bark from the same tree--you must ascribe it to
circumstance that the captain who rowed my boat cut the plant
against my specifically expressed will and without my knowl-
edge. "
One aspect of Weininger's sexual life remains to be discussed
--the sadistic and masochistic inclinations which, because of
"Sigmund Freud, Collected Papers, IV (London, 1925), 129, 133.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-08-19 08:38 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89038364857 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Genius and Insanity 175
his own make-up and because of social resistance, he had to
restrain. His sadistic impulses were not approved by his per-
sonality (or, more accurately, were not determined by his su-
perego) but, coming indirectly to the fore through a projection
mechanism, appeared in tabu-like behavior and strong ideas of
atonement. They were related to his anal-sadistic traits. His
statement that the crater at Etna "reminds me of the behind
of a monkey" showed his tendency to anal eroticism, which is
one of the physiological causes of ambivalence and bisexuality.
When we look for sadistic inclinations in Weininger, we
must bear in mind that some traces of sadism are to be found in
his family. What Otto himself thought of sadism is expressed
in the chapter "Aphoristisches" in Vber die letzten Dinge (p.
69): "A man who commits suicide is practically always a sadist,
because he wants to get out of a situation and can act; a maso-
chist must for all eternity beg permission to take his own life.
. . . The sadist goes to others (against their will, their constant
disposition) to help them obtain (immediate) happiness or
pain; he is grateful or revengeful. " These words, written months
before he took his own life, were certainly to be applied to
himself.
Weininger saw the connection between the sexual urge and
sadism. In Sex and Character he wrote (pp. 333-34): "Accord-
ing to Novalis, it has often been said that all sexual urge is re-
lated to cruelty. There is a deep reason for this association. All
that is born of woman must die. Reproduction, birth, and death
are indissolubly connected; by a premature death the sexual
urge expresses itself as a desire to reproduce oneself. Held so,
sexual intercourse is--when regarded as an act not only from
the psychological standpoint but also from the moral and nat-
ural philosophical point of view--related to murder. . . . The
real psychology of the beloved woman will always be disre-
garded. The moment a man loves a woman he cannot recognize
her as she is. In love the man does not understand the woman,
and understanding should be the only decent relationship be-
tween human beings. A human can never love another whom
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-08-19 08:38 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89038364857 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 1y6 Genius and Insanity
he understands through and through, since one could not then
help seeing the imperfections which are sure to be found in any
human being, and love deals only with the perfect. Love for a
woman is, therefore, possible only when the real qualities, de-
sires, and interests of the woman are described in so far as they
are in opposition to the localization of superior qualities in her
person. The attempt to find oneself in a woman instead of
looking for herself necessarily involves disregarding her real
personality. This effort is always cruel to the woman, and in it
lies the reason for all the egotism in love as well as the cause of
jealousy, which regards the woman as private property without
attention to her individual mental life. We have thus drawn
the parallel between the cruelty of eroticism and the cruelty of
sexuality. Love is murder. The sexual drive is a negation of the
physical and psychic woman, always erotic to the last. "
Cruelty--or, as it should be more properly called, sadism--
thus here acquired its true meaning for Weininger. He early
became familiar with the problem of sadism-masochism. He
was demonstrating the presence of sadistic tendencies in him-
self when he sought to prove that Ibsen was a sadist and a
masochist. He wrote in his essay on Ibsen (U. L. D. , p. 22):
"While Ibsen at the peak of his production was a thorough
masochist (as proved by The Master Builder), he was not
without certain sadistic traits in his youth. There are traces of
sadism in several of the poems he long withheld from publica-
tion and in Gildet pa Solhaug. . . . In the second act of Peer
Gynt (the stolen bride) and in the first act (the threat against
Solveig) there are positive sadistic qualities; it is possible that
Ibsen here wanted to discipline himself. "
These remarks on self-discipline apply better to himself than
to Ibsen. In composing Sex and Character he was attempting
to gain complete self-control, and that aim was one reason for
his rejection of women and all concerned with them. His orig-
inal sexual desire for women and his love for his fellow humans
were transformed by his own violent sexual urge and appeared
as sadism and masochism, as pain and torment.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-08-19 08:38 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89038364857 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Genius and Insanity 177
This explanation is supported by his severe behavior in the
face of the world, which reflected only weakly the violent strug-
gle within him. He had good reason not to smile or make jokes.
He disciplined himself, never relaxing his soldierlike man-
ner. Thus when he hated, he certainly did not suffer from his
hate.
His sexual feelings were deranged and caused him painful
experiences--a fact he probably realized fully after Sex and
Character had been published. In the summer of 1903 we find
him writing notes such as these: "All cruel people have pecul-
iarly strained faces, signifying exactly the pain they feel. Like-
wise the ascetic. . . . Cruelty means the desire to inflict real
pain (upon someone as a reality) instead of allowing desire to
mean the aim and value of liberty" (Taschenbuch, p. 38).
These words confirm the suspicion that Weininger himself
suffered mental pain, pain closely related to his entire personal-
ity, including his sexual life. From this grew self-torment that
was especially apparent toward the end of his life. His self-
discipline, however, became voluptuous. He seemed to enjoy
using the ugliest self-hatred to destroy his own life through
ascetic practices.
The torment and hatred he expressed were closely allied
with disgust, which he equated with fear. He said, "Fear and
disgust are identical; they are coordinated so that the criminal
is not only always afraid of himself but also disgusted"
(U. L. D. , p. 118).
Feelings of disgust in general originate in the sublimation
of homosexual components, and Weininger was showing this
process. But there was more to it. The criminalistic impulses,
of which he spoke so much, had their roots in his repressed
sadistic tendencies. Even as he tried to repress them they
emerged into his consciousness as wishes and symptomatic
acts. These acts, which often stem from desires for revenge or
criminalistic impulses, are not usually apparent because they
are not usually acted out. Weininger himself attributed his
desires for revenge and his wish to commit acts of violence to
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-08-19 08:38 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89038364857 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 178 Genius and Insanity
his torturing conscience rather than to his partly repressed
sadistic traits.
His sadistic and masochistic tendencies became more
marked. He himself said (U. L. D. , p. 68): "The masochist
takes everything as destiny. The sadist loves to play destiny. "
More and more he himself wanted to play at being master of
destiny. And he succeeded. In his Weltanshauung the prob-
lem of sex and of woman became a central point; pain and the
infliction of pain, ruling and being ruled, were seen in close
connection with his own sexual drive. His hatred of woman,
to be compared only to that of Strindberg, was closely related
to the wish to play the martyr. His self-torture reached its
climax in the last period of his life, when there was nothing at
all that could win the approval of his extreme asceticism.
"The sadist," he said, "believes in, hopes for, happiness on
earth; he is the man of Tusculum, of San Souci; the masochist
needs a heaven. " Thus it was with Weininger. He, the maso-
chist, needed a heaven.
These sadistic and masochistic strivings were a stage in the
development of his psychosis. He did not suffer physically,
but he did suffer mentally. His was a moral masochism.
What was at the root of these strivings? A feeling of being
basically alone in the world and lonely. We have already seen
Weininger as a fundamentally shut-in person, with feelings of
hostility toward the outer world. He felt impotent--in a
psychological sense, castrated. Like many other masochistic
individuals, he tried to alleviate and overcome the intolerable
fear of his own solitude and powerlessness. This fear, which is
frequently not conscious in such men, is covered over by com-
pensatory feelings of superiority and perfection. If we pene-
trate Weininger's psychodynamics, we find this process go-
ing on.
His masochism was one means of losing himself. In order
to remedy his feelings of insignificance and lack of power, he
made his fear worse. To lessen the conflict between his desire
to be strong and his conviction of his own weakness, he tried
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-08-19 08:38 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89038364857 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Genius and Insanity 179
to reduce self to nothingness. He wished to cease being an
individual and by doing so to save himself from the conflict.
The road led him to fantasies of suicide, which he finally
acted out.
A good deal has already been said about the symbols and
the meaning of the "Letzte Aphorismen. " These are written in
Weininger's very heart's blood. In them we can see the emo-
tional expression of his psychological structure. At the same
time they show his complete abandonment of two of his most
important principles: his belief in the individual and his
hatred of women.
"Ego does not exist," he wrote (U. L. D. , p. 175), "soul does
not exist; goodness is the only absolute perfect reality, and it
includes all separate things: Individuality is the result of van-
ity: we need an audience, we wish to be seen. A vain person
also takes an interest in others and understands them. " Else-
where we find this passage: "Man's first fall was caused by his
individuality, and the symbol of individuality is the shooting
star. " And in Taschenbuch (p. 42), we read: "The mirror is
the surrogate for creating one's self. The mirror has a relation-
ship to vanity and to individuality as well. . . . The problem
of individuality is the problem of vanity. The reproduction of
life is the consequence of vanity. The criminal is vain because
he wants loneliness. "
Such words are directly opposed to what he had written a
few months earlier in Sex and Character. They disrupt a fun-
damental principle on which he had built his life and his
theory--individualistic intellectualism.
In abandoning his belief in the ego and the soul he gave up
two concepts that had been deeply significant to him, and his
belated disbelief in individuality also disturbed his deep-rooted
faith in immortality. These changes were alarming symptoms.
His moral masochism led him to attempt the annihilation of
the individual self, in order to overcome his loneliness. At the
same time he tried to become part of a larger, more powerful
whole outside himself. When he said, "goodness is the only
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-08-19 08:38 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89038364857 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 180 Genius and Insanity
absolute perfect reality," he was seeking to make himself part
of a larger pattern in which, as participant in a glorious un-
dertaking, he could feel strong and eternal. He submerged
himself in a greater unity that would shelter him and give him
new security. He sought to become a living part of the phe-
nomena about him. His masochistic strivings opened for him
an escape, a means of leaving his conflicts behind him. And
his trend to a faith in a larger whole even went so far as mys-
tical interpretation of time. "In Syracuse I can only be born
or die, but not live," he wrote, and his declaration showed that
for him time and space were fused.
On the problem of woman his views also underwent radical
alteration. In Taschenbuch (p. 24) he wrote: "How can I re-
proach woman for doing nothing but wait for the man? The
man wants nothing else. There is no man who would not be
happy in knowing that he had sexual attraction for a woman.
The hatred of women is nothing but the hatred of sexuality
which he has not yet conquered. "
The personal application is clear; he had on his mind his
own hatred of women, which resulted from hatred of his own
sexual drive. He showed insight into the problem even if his
words expressed resignation. The man who wrote these words
was not unwilling; more probably he was willing but resigned
because he felt that the game was lost. And the spirit behind
the words indicated how chaotic his psychological condition
was.
The abandonment of his earlier beliefs concerning individ-
uality and women were signs of a new development of his
personality. A masochist in need of heaven, he now believed
only in the eternity of the idea of the good. It is not surprising
that on the day before his death he made to Lucka remarks
that implied a connection between his abandonment of his
ideas of individuality and his opinion of suicide (Lucka, p.
The theory that his behavior revealed a disintegrated per-
sonality seemed to be contradicted by his actions. Though his
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-08-19 08:38 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89038364857 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Genius and Insanity 181
mood was dark and sinister, his behavior was not, to all ap-
pearances, very different from his earlier conduct. The conflict
and division within him is illumined by the story of his part-
ing with his father. He asked the elder Weininger to go with
him to the street-car stop, then stood letting one car after an-
other go by until he finally managed to tear himself away.
This was his final, painful, but concealed parting from his
father, to whom he had felt very close. Although hard pressed,
he finally reacted adequately.
