[47]. Neurologisches Centralblatt, 1896, Nr. 10.
[48]. I myself surmise that the so frequently fabricated assaults of hysterical persons are obsessional confabulations emanating from the memory traces of infantile traumas.
[49]. In an article on the anxiety neurosis (Neurologisches Centralblatt, 1895, Nr. 2) I stated that “an anxiety neurosis which can almost typically be combined with hysteria can be evoked in maturing girls at the first encounter with the sexual problem.” I know today that the occasion in which such virginal anxiety breaks out does not really correspond to the first encounter with sexuality, but that in such persons there was in childhood a precedent experience of sexual passivity which memory was awakened at the “first encounter.”
[50]. A psychological theory of the repression ought also to inform us why only ideas of a sexual content can be repressed. It may be formulated as follows: It is known that ideas of a sexual content produce exciting processes in the genitals resembling the actual sexual experience. It may be assumed that this somatic excitement becomes transformed into psychic. As a rule the activity referred to is much stronger at the time of the occurrence than at the recollection of the same. But if the sexual experience takes place during the time of sexual immaturity and the recollection of the same is awakened during or after maturity, the recollection then acts disproportionately more exciting than the previous experience, for puberty has in the mean time incomparably increased the reactive capacity of the sexual apparatus. But such an inverse proportion seems to contain the psychological determination of repression. Through the retardation of the pubescent maturity in comparison with the psychic function, the sexual life offers the only existing possibility for that inversion of the relative efficacy. The infantile traumas subsequently act like fresh experiences, but they are then unconscious. Deeper psychological discussions I will have to postpone for another time. I moreover call attention to the fact that the here considered time of “sexual maturity” does not coincide with puberty, but occurs before the same (eight to ten years).
[51]. One example instead of many: An eleven-year-old boy has obsessively arranged for himself the following ceremonial before going to bed: He could not fall asleep unless he related to his mother most minutely all experiences of the day; not the smallest scrap of paper or any other rubbish was allowed in the evening on the carpet of his bedroom. The bed had to be moved close to the wall, three chairs had to stand in front of it, and the pillows had to lie in just such a position. In order to fall asleep he had to kick with both legs a number of times, and then had to lie on the side. This was explained as follows: Years before while putting this pretty boy to sleep, the servant girl made use of this opportunity to lay over him and assault him sexually. When this reminiscence was later awakened by a recent experience it made itself known to consciousness by the compulsion in the above mentioned ceremonial which sense could really be surmised and the details verified by psychoanalysis. The chairs before the bed which was close to the wall—so that no one could have access to it; the arrangement of the pillows in a definite manner—so that they should be differently arranged than they were on that evening; the motion with the legs—to kick away the person lying on him; sleeping on the side—because during that scene he lay on his back; the detailed confession to his mother—because in consequence of the prohibition of his seductress he concealed from his mother this and other sexual experiences; finally, keeping the floor of his bedroom clean—because this was the main reproach which he had to hear from his mother up to that time.
[52]. When the meagre success of this treatment was later removed by an exacerbation, she did not again see the offensive pictures of strange genitals, but she had the idea that strangers saw her genitals as soon as they were behind her.
[53]. Lecture delivered before the Vienna Medic. Doktorenkollegium, on December 12, 1904.
[54]. From Löwenfeld, “Sexualleben und Nervenleiden,” IV ed., 1906.
[55]. See Chapter VII, and Zur Aetiologie der Hysterie, Wiener, Klinische Rundschau, 1896.
[56]. An English translation in preparation.