Still a third version is the growth of the child in the intestinal canal. The child tried several times to provoke nausea and vomiting, in accordance with her phantasy that the child is born through vomiting. In the closet she had arranged also pressure-exercises, in order to press out the child. Under these circumstances, we cannot be astonished that the first and principal symptoms of the manifest neurosis were nausea-symptoms.
We have come so far with our analysis that we are now able to throw a glance over the case as a whole.
We found, behind the neurotic symptoms, complicated emotional processes, which were undoubtedly connected with the symptoms. If it may be allowed to draw some general conclusions from this limited material, we could construct the course of the neurosis in the following way.
At the gradual approach of puberty, the libido of the child assumed rather an emotional than a practical attitude towards reality. She began to be very much taken with her teacher, but the sentimental self-indulgence, evinced in her riotous phantasies, played a greater part than the thought of the increased endeavors which such love ought really to have demanded of her. For this reason, her attention and her work left much to be desired. The former pleasant relationship with her favorite teacher was troubled. The teacher was annoyed, and the little girl, who had been made somewhat conceited by her home-conditions, was resentful, instead of trying to improve in her work. In consequence her libido withdrew from her teacher, as well as from her work, and fell into the characteristic forced dependence on the little boy, who on his side made the most of the situation. Then the resistances against school seized the first opportunity, which was suggested by the case of the little girl who had to be sent home on account of sickness. Our little patient followed this child’s example. Once away from school, the way was open to her phantasies. By the regression of the libido, these symptom-making phantasies became awakened to a real activity, and were given an importance they had never had before, for they had never previously played such an important part. Now they become apparently of much importance and seemed to be the very reason why the libido regressed to them. It might be said that the child, in consequence of its essentially phantasy-building nature, saw her father too much in her teacher, and thus developed incestuous resistances towards the latter. As I have already stated, I hold that it is simpler and more probable to accept the view that, during a certain period, it was convenient for her to see the teacher as the father. As she preferred to follow the hidden presentiments of puberty rather than her duties towards the school and her teacher, she allowed her libido to fall on the little boy, from whom, as we saw, she awaited some mysterious advantages. Even if analysis had demonstrated it as a fact that she had had incestuous resistances against her teacher on account of the transference of the father-image, those resistances would only have been secondary phantasies, that had become inflated. At any rate, indolence would still have been the primum movens. In the analysis she learned about the two ways of life, the way of phantasy, of regression, and the way of reality, wherein lay her present child’s duties. In her the two were dissociated, and consequently she was at strife with herself. As the analysis was adapted to the regressive tendency of the libido, the existence of an extreme sexual curiosity, connected with certain very definite problems, was discovered. The libido, imprisoned in this phantastical labyrinth, was brought back into useful application by means of the psychological explanation of the incorrect infantile phantasies. The child thus got an insight into her own attitude towards reality with all its possibilities. The result was that she was able to take an objective-critical attitude towards her immature puberty-desires, and was able to give up these and all other impossibilities in favor of the use of her libido in possible directions, in her work and in obtaining the good-will of her teacher. In this case, analysis brought great peace of mind, as well as a pronounced intellectual improvement. After a short time her teacher himself stated that the little girl was one of the best pupils in her class.
I hope that by the exposition of this brief instance of the course of an analysis, I have succeeded in giving you an insight not only into the concrete procedure of treatment, and into the technical difficulties, but no less into the beauty of the human mind and its endless problems. I intentionally brought into prominence the parallelism with mythology, to indicate the universally possible applications of psychoanalysis. At the same time, I should like to refer to the further importance of this position. We may see in the predominance of the mythological in the mind of a child, a distinct hint of the gradual development of the individual mind out of the collective knowledge or the collective feeling of earliest childhood, which gave rise to the old theory of a condition of perfect knowledge before and after individual existence.
In the same way we might see, in the marvellous analogy between the phantasies of dementia præcox and mythological symbolisms, a reason for the widespread superstition that an insane person is possessed of a demon, and has some divine knowledge.
With these hints, I have reached the present standpoint of investigation, and I have at least sketched those facts and working hypotheses which are characteristic for my present and future work.
INDEX
- Abreagieren, [5]
- Actual conflict, [92], [93]
- Actual present, [81]
- Adaptation, failure of, [83]
- Amnesia, infantile, [78]
- Analysis of dreams, [60], [109]
- Analysis of transference, [105]
- Association-experiment, [66]
- Breuer, [5]
- Cathartic method, [6]
- Change in the theory of psychoanalysis, [5]
- Charcot, [5]
- Child, neurosis in, [113]
- Childhood, sexual trauma in, [10]
- Complex, Electra, [69]
- Complex, Oedipus, [67]
- Complex, incest, [70]
- Complex of the parents, [50]
- Conception of libido, [27]
- Conception of sensitiveness, [89]
- Conception of sexuality, [19]
- Conception of transference, [102]
- Confession and psychoanalysis, [103]
- Conflict, actual, [92], [93]
- Content of the unconscious, [67]
- Criticism, [1]
- Criticized, infantile sexual etiology, [46]
- Dementia præcox, [111]
- Dementia præcox, libido in, [35]
- Dream analysis, [60], [109]
- Dream, the, [60]
- Dreams, teleological meaning of, [109]
- Early hypothesis, [4]
- Electra-complex, [69]
- Energic theory of libido, [28]
- Environment and predisposition, [9]
- Etiology of the neuroses, [72], [80]
- Failure of adaptation, [83]
- Finger, sucking of, [22]
- Freud, [5]
- Genetic conception of libido, [38]
- Hypothesis, early, [4]
- Incest-complex, [70]
- Infancy, the polymorphic sexuality of, [24]
- Infantile amnesia, [78]
- Infantile mental attitude, [53]
- Infantile perversity, [43]
- Infantile reaction, [84]
- Infantile sexuality, [17]
- Infantile sexual etiology criticized, [46]
- Infantile sexual phantasy, [15]
- Introversion, [49]
- Latent sexual period, [79]
- Libido, [26], [27]
- Libido in dementia præcox, [35]
- Libido, energic theory of, [28]
- Libido, genetic conception of, [38]
- Libido, regression of, [76]
- Libido, the sexual definition, [34]
- Life, three phases of, [33]
- Little Red-Ridinghood, [119]
- Masturbation, [22]
- Method, cathartic, [6]
- Naughtiness, [121]
- Neurosis in a child, [113]
- Neuroses, etiology of, [72], [80]
- Nucleus-complex, [50]
- Objections to the sexual hypothesis, [18]
- Oedipus-complex, [67]
- Perversity, infantile, [43]
- Phantasy criticized, [94]
- Phantasy, infantile sexual, [17]
- Phantasy, unconscious, [29], [53]
- Polymorphic perverse sexuality of infancy, [24]
- Pragmatic rule, [2]
- Predisposition and environment, [9]
- Predisposition for the trauma, [12]
- Present, actual, [81]
- Problem of self-analysis, [108]
- Psychoanalysis and confession, [103]
- Psychoanalysis, remarks on, [111]
- Psychoanalysis, therapeutic principles of, [96]
- Psychopathology of everyday life, [65]
- Regression of the libido, [76]
- Regression and sensitiveness, [90]
- Remarks on psychoanalysis, [111]
- Repression, [8]
- Robert Mayer, [28]
- Romulus and Remus, [120]
- Schopenhauer’s will, [39]
- Self-analysis, problem of, [108]
- Sensitiveness, conception of, [89]
- Sensitiveness and regression, [90]
- Sexual definition of libido, [34]
- Sexual element in the trauma, [14]
- Sexual period, latent, [79]
- Sexual hypothesis, objections to, [18]
- Sexual trauma in childhood, [10]
- Sexuality, the conception of, [19]
- Sexuality, infantile, [17]
- Sexuality of the suckling, [21]
- Sexual terminology, [30]
- Sleeping Beauty, [124]
- Snow-White, [125]
- Spring-Sun, [124]
- Stork, [129]
- Sucking the finger, [22]
- Suckling, sexuality of, [21]
- Symbolism, [112]
- Teleological meaning of dreams, [109]
- Terminology, sexual, [30]
- The dream, [60]
- Theory, change in, [5]
- Theory criticized, traumatic, [7]
- Theory, traumatic, [5], [48]
- Therapeutic principles of psychoanalysis, [96]
- Three contributions to the sexual theory, [17]
- Three phases of life, [33]
- Thunderstorm, [129]
- Transference, analysis of, [105]
- Transference, conception of, [102]
- Trauma, predisposition for, [12]
- Trauma, sexual element in, [14]
- Traumatic theory, [5], [48]
- Traumatic theory criticized, [7]
- Unconscious, [55]
- Unconscious, content of, [67]
- Unconscious phantasy, [29], [53]
Footnotes