Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneurosesFreud, Sigmund
Science
Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Hysteria; Neuroses; Psychoanalysis
(_b_) As fear in the newly married. Young women who remain anesthetic
during the first cohabitation not seldom merge into an anxiety neurosis
which disappears after the anesthesia is displaced by the normal
sensation. As most young women remain undisturbed through such a
beginning anesthesia, the production of this fear requires determinants
which I will mention;
(_c_) As fear in women whose husbands suffer from ejaculatio precox or
from diminished potency; and,
(_d_) In those whose husbands practice coitus interruptus or reservatus.
These cases go together, for on analyzing a large number of examples one
can easily be convinced that they only depend on whether the woman
attained gratification during coitus or not. In the latter case one
finds the determinant for the origin of anxiety neurosis. On the other
hand the woman is spared from the neurosis if the husband afflicted by
ejaculatio precox can repeat the congress with better results
immediately thereafter. The congressus reservatus by means of the condom
is not injurious to the woman if she is quickly excited and the husband
is very potent; in other cases the noxiousness of this kind of
preventive measure is not inferior to the others. Coitus interruptus is
almost regularly injurious; but for the woman it is injurious only if
the husband practices it regardlessly, that is, if he interrupt coitus
as soon as he comes near ejaculating without concerning himself about
the determination of the excitement of his wife. On the other hand if
the husband waits until his wife is gratified, the coitus has the same
significance for the latter as a normal one; but then the husband
becomes afflicted with an anxiety neurosis. I have collected and
analyzed a number of cases which furnished the material for the above
statements.
(_e_) As fear in widows and intentional abstainers, not seldom in
typical combination with obsessions; and,
(_f_) As fear in the climacterium during the last marked enhancement of
the sexual desire.
The cases (_c_), (_d_), and (_e_), contain the determinants under which
the anxiety neurosis originates in the female sex, most frequently and
most independently, of hereditary predisposition. I will endeavor to
demonstrate in these—curable, acquired—cases of anxiety neurosis that
the discovered sexual injuries really represent the etiological moments
of the neurosis. But before proceeding I will mention the sexual
determinants of anxiety neurosis in men. I would like to formulate the
following groups, every one of which finds its analogy in women:
(_a_) Fear of the intentional abstainers; this is frequently combined
with symptoms of defense (obsessions, hysteria). The motives which are
decisive for intentional abstinence carry along with them the fact that
a number of hereditarily burdened eccentrics, etc., belong to this
category.
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