Analysis reveals that she is love with her son-in-law, a situation more
frequent than the layman imagines. This infatuation which she cannot
accept as a fact is repressed savagely. To protect herself against
overt acts which would make her sinful or ridiculous, she exaggerates
every defect of the man she loves. She pursues him with a stubbornness
which cannot deceive a psychologist. His name is constantly on her
lips, coupled, of course, with abusive remarks, but the fact remains
that she is constantly speaking, if not dreaming of him.
Her peace of mind is only restored to her when she accepts as a fact
a situation which need not be translated into a transgression of the
ethical laws.
For, in spite of what puritanical critics of psychoanalysis repeat,
a conscious sex craving is more easily controlled and less likely to
overthrow our willpower than an unconscious one.
=Brothers and Sisters.= A similar complication is frequently found, as
I stated in Chapter V, in the history of neurotic brothers and sisters.
A brother and sister may to all appearance be irreconcilable enemies.
Investigate their childhood and you will find memories of actual or
attempted incestuous indiscretions which, after a while, were repressed
either by punishment or voluntary restraint. In later years, fear
of a possible recurrence of tabooed incidents may express itself in
the shape of hatred leading at times to acute family conflicts, the
brother or sister running away, the sister becoming a prostitute, etc.
When hatred is unmasked and revealed as one of the avatars of
inacceptable love, it dies off and is replaced by protective measures
of a less objectionable nature, reserve or distance.
=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.
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