Page:Freud - Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses.djvu/165

Rh accustomed to afford a discharge, to be sure an incorrect one, for every little quantity of somatic excitement. Finally the last case, the origin of anxiety neurosis through a severe illness, overwork, exhaustive nursing, etc., in addition to the efficacy of coitus interruptus readily permits a free interpretation. Through deviation the psyche becomes here insufficient for the subjugation of the somatic sexual excitement, a task which continuously devolves upon it. We know how deeply the libido can sink under the same conditions, and we have here a nice example of a neurosis which although not of a sexual etiology still evinces a sexual mechanism.

The conception here developed represents the symptoms of anxiety neurosis in a measure as a substitute for the omitted specific action to the sexual excitement. As a further corroboration of this I recall that also in normal coitus the excitement extends itself in respiratory acceleration, palpitation, perspiration, congestion, etc. In the corresponding attack of anxiety of our neurosis we have before us the dyspnoea, the palpitation, etc., of the coitus in an isolated and aggravated manner.

It can still be asked why the nervous system merges into a peculiar affective state of anxiety under the circumstances of psychic inadequacy for the subjugation of the sexual excitement? A hint to the answer is as follows: The psyche merges into the affect of fear when it perceives itself unable to adjust an externally approaching task (danger) by corresponding reaction; it merges into the neurosis of anxiety when it fmds itself unable to equalize the endogenously originated (sexual) excitement. The psyche, therefore, behaves as if projecting this excitement externally. The affect and the neurosis corresponding to it stand in close relationship to each other; the first is the reaction to an exogenous, the latter the reaction to an analogous endogenous excitement. The affect is a rapidly passing state, the neurosis is chronic because the exogenous excitement acts like a stroke happening but once, while the endogenous acts like a constant force. The nervous system reacts in the neurosis against an inner source of excitement just as it does in the corresponding affect against an analogous external one.