Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneurosesFreud, Sigmund
Science
Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Hysteria; Neuroses; Psychoanalysis
Between the patient’s exertion of the will which succeeds in repressing
the unacceptable sexual idea and the appearance of the obsession, which
though in itself of little intensity, is here furnished with
inconceivably strong affect, there is a yawning gap which the theory
here developed will fill. The separation of the sexual idea from its
affect and the connection of the latter with another suitable but not
unbearable idea—these are processes which take place unconsciously which
we can only presume but not prove by any clinico-psychological analysis.
Perhaps it would be more correct to say that these are not really
processes of a psychic nature but physical processes of which the
psychic result so presents itself that the expressions “separation of
the idea from its affect and false connection of the latter,” seem
actual occurrences.
Besides the cases evincing in turn the sexual unbearable idea and the
obsession we find a series of others in which there are simultaneously
obsessions and painfully accentuated sexual ideas. It will not do very
well to call the latter “sexual obsessions”; they lack the essential
character of obsessions in proving themselves fully justified, whereas
the painfulness of the ordinary obsession is a problem for the doctor as
well as the patient. From the amount of insight that could be obtained
in such cases, it seems that we deal here with a continued defense
against sexual ideas which are constantly renewed, a work heretofore not
accomplished.
As long as the patients are aware of the sexual origin of their
obsessions they often conceal them. If they complain they generally
express surprise that this affect underlies the symptoms, at being
afraid, and at having certain impulses, etc. To the experienced
physician, however, the affect appears justified and intelligible; he
finds the striking part only in the connection of such an affect with an
idea unworthy of it. In other words the affect of the obsession appears
to him as one dislocated or transposed, and if he has accepted the
observations here laid down he can in a great many cases of obsessions
attempt a retranslation into the sexual.
Any idea which either through its character may be combinable with an
affect of such quality or which bears a certain relation to the
unbearable by virtue of which it seems fit as a substitute for the same,
may be used for the secondary connection of the freed affect. Thus, for
example, freed anxiety, the sexual origin of which can not be recalled,
attaches itself to the common primary phobias of man for animals,
thunderstorms, darkness, etc., or to things which are unmistakably in
some way associated with the sexual, such as urination, defecation,
pollutions and infections.
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