Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/260

 that she must have had a certain predilection for loving mentally abnormal persons. This she denied, stating that she had once before been engaged to be married to a normal man. He, too, deserted her; and on further investigation it was found that he, too, had been in an insane asylum shortly before,—another lunatic! This seemed to me to confirm with sufficient certainty my belief that she had an unconscious tendency to choose insane persons. Whence originated this strange taste? Her father was an eccentric character, and in later years entirely estranged from his family. Her whole love had therefore been turned away from her father to a brother 8 years her senior; him she loved and honored as a father, and this brother became hopelessly insane at the age of 14. That was apparently the model from which the patient could never free herself, after which she chose her lovers, and through which she had to become unhappy. Her neurosis which gave the impression of insanity probably originated from this infantile model. We must take into consideration that we are dealing in this case with a highly educated and intelligent lady who did not pass carelessly over her mental experiences, who indeed reflected much over her unhappiness without, however, having any idea whence her misfortune originated.

These are things which inwardly appeal to us as matter of course, and it is for this reason that we do not see them but attribute everything to the so-called congenital character. I could cite any number of examples of this kind. Every patient furnishes contributions to this subject of the determination of destiny through the influence of the familiar milieus. In every neurotic we see how the constellation of the infantile milieu influences not only the character of the neurosis but also life’s destiny, in its very details. Numberless unhappy choices of profession and matrimonial failures can be traced to this constellation. There are, however, cases where the profession has been happily chosen, where the husband or wife leaves nothing to be desired, and where still the person does not feel well but works and lives under constant difficulties. Such cases often appear in the guise of chronic neurasthenia. Here the difficulty is due to the fact that the mind is unconsciously split into two parts of divergent tendencies which are impeding each other; one part lives with the husband or with the profession, while the other lives unconsciously in the past with the father or mother. I have treated a lady who, after suffering many years from a severe neurosis, merged into a dementia praecox. The neurotic affection began with her marriage. This lady’s husband was kind, educated, well to do, and in every respect suitable for her; his character showed nothing that would in any way