Very exaggerated feelings should always be viewed suspiciously as
blinds for the opposite feelings. An extravagant display of affection
is generally a desperate attempt on the person indulging in that
display at repressing loathing and hatred. On the other hand, morbid
hostility toward one person is generally an attempt at repressing a
love which would be unjustifiable or detrimental for the personality.
A few illustrations from life will make my meaning clear.
=A Worried Wife.= One woman I analysed was thrown into hysterical
anxiety whenever her husband reached home a little late. She pictured
him dead, dismembered by a train or knocked down by robbers. When she
first called on me, she stressed the struggle going on in her heart.
She loved two men and her nobility of soul, her delicacy of feelings,
and many other qualities she bestowed on herself very liberally, were
making that double life unbearable for her. "I have wronged my dear,
dear, hubby," she kept repeating. "And he is so good, so kind, so
considerate."
The wife who never tires of singing her husband's praise is always
somebody else's mistress. It is generally her way of settling accounts
with her conscience.
In this case, the anxiety she felt over her husband's whereabouts and
health when he was late in reaching home, supplied the expiation which
neurotics seem to crave for their misdeeds.
But there was more in that anxiety than one of the manifestations of
her sense of sin. I asked her whether she had ever experienced the same
anxiety when her lover was late in coming to their trysting place.
"No," she said, "and this is what leads me to think that I don't love
him nearly as much as I do my husband." Her reaction to her lover's
lateness was simply one of anger. She felt herself slighted and she
suspected him of stopping somewhere to flirt with some woman. Even
once, when a wreck on a suburban line leading to his home town, had
prevented him from meeting her, she never imagined him the victim of
any accident.
Further questioning elicited the information that death wishes had
crossed her mind on several occasions in relation to her husband. She
finally came to see that those repressed wishes were simply finding an
outlet in her wish fulfilment fears. She was constantly visualizing the
tragedy which would have given her her freedom.
=The Test of Love.= In other words, her unconscious wished her husband
dead. The repression of that wish compelled it to masquerade as a
hysterical concern for his health. The thought of her lover, however,
never suggested to her any death scenes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account