Thus Pitres and Régis (Transactions of the International Medical Congress, Moscow, vol. iv, p. 19) record the case of a young girl whose life was for some years tormented by a groundless fear of experiencing an irresistible desire to urinate. This obsession arose from once seeing at a theater a man whom she liked, and being overcome by sexual feeling accompanied by so strong a desire to urinate that she had to leave the theater. An exactly similar case in a young woman of erotic temperament, but prudish, has been recorded by Freud (Zur Neurosenlehre, Bd. i, p. 54). Morbid obsessions of modesty involving the urinary sphere and appearing at puberty are evidently based on transformed sexual emotion. Such a case has been recorded by Marandon de Montyel (Archives de Neurologie, vol. xii, 1901, p. 36); this lady, who was of somewhat neuropathic temperament, from puberty onward, in order to be able to urinate found it necessary not only to be absolutely alone, but to feel assured that no one even knew what was taking place.
H. Ellis, "The Bladder as a Dynamometer," American Journal of Dermatology, May, 1902.
Sir W. Gowers, "Minor Epilepsy," British Medical Journal, January 6, 1900; ib., Epilepsy, 2d ed., 1901, p. 106; see also H. Ellis, art. "Urinary Bladder, Influence of the Mind on the," in Tuke's Dictionary of Psychological Medicine.