Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/261

 with a happy marriage. Despite that the marriage was an unhappy one merely because the wife was neurotic and therefore prevented all congenial companionship.

The important heuristic axiom of every psychanalysis reads as follows: If a neurosis springs up in a person this neurosis contains [sic] the counter-argument against the relationship of the patient [sic] to the personality with which he is most intimately connected. If the husband has a neurosis the neurosis thus loudly proclaims that he has intensive resistances and contrary tendencies against his wife, and if the wife has a neurosis the wife has a tendency which diverges from her husband. If the person is unmarried the neurosis is then directed against the lover or the sweetheart or against the parents. Every neurotic naturally strives against this relentless formulation of the content of his neurosis, and he often refuses to recognize it at any cost, but still it is always justified. To be sure the conflict is not on the surface but must generally be revealed through a painstaking psychanalysis.

The history of our patient reads as follows:

The father had a powerful personality. She was his favorite daughter and entertained for him a boundless veneration. At the age of 17 she for the first time fell in love with a young man. At that time she had twice the same dream, the impression of which never left her in all her later years; she even imputed to it a mystic significance and often recalled it with religious dread. In the dream she saw a tall, masculine figure with a very beautiful white beard; at this sight she was permeated with a feeling of awe and delight as if she experienced the presence of God himself. This dream made the deepest impression on her, and she was constrained to think of it again and again. The love affair of that period proved to be one of little warmth and was soon given up. Later the patient married her present husband. Though she loved her husband she was led continually to compare him with her deceased father; this comparison always proved unfavorable to her husband. Whatever the husband said, intended, or did, was subjected to this standard and always with the same result: “My father would have done all this better and differently.” Our patient’s life with her husband was not happy, she could neither respect nor love him sufficiently; she was inwardly dissatisfied and unsatiated. She gradually evinced a fervent piety, and at the same time there appeared a violent hysterical affection. She began by going into raptures now over this and now over that clergyman, she was looking everywhere for a spiritual friend, and estranged herself more and more from her husband. The mental trouble made itself manifest after about a decade. In her diseased state she refused to have