Page:Freud - Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses.djvu/186

172 thoughts which in the last analysis really signified reproaches on the occasion of an experience analogous to the infantile trauma; they were accordingly symptoms of the return of the repression, but at the same time they were results of a comparison between the resistance of the ego and the force of the returning repression which in this case produce a distortion beyond recognition. On other occasions when analyzing voices in Mrs. P. the distortion was less marked, still the words heard always showed a character of diplomatic uncertainty. The annoying allusion was generally deeply hidden, the connection of the individual sentences was masked by a strange expression, unusual forms of speech, etc., characteristics generally common to the auditory hallucinations of paranoiacs, and in which I noticed the remnant of the compromise distortion. The expression, "There goes Mrs. P., she is looking for apartments in the street," signified, for example, the threat that she will never recover, for I promised her that after the treatment she would be able to return to the little city where her husband was employed. She rented temporary quarters in Vienna for a few months.

On some occasions Mrs. P. also perceived more distinct threats, for example, concerning the relatives of her husband, the restrained expression of which still continued to contrast with the grief which such voices caused her. Considering all that we otherwise know of paranoiacs I am inclined to assume a gradual relaxation of that resistance which weakens the reproaches so that finally the defense fails completely and the original reproach, the insulting word, which one wanted to save himself returns in unchanged form. I do not, however, know whether this is a constant course, whether the censor of the expressions of reproach can not from the beginning stay away, or persist to the end.

It is left for me to utilize the explanations gained in this case of paranoia for the comparison of paranoia with compulsion neurosis. Here, as there, the repression was shown to be the nucleus of the psychic mechanism, and in both cases the repression is a sexual experience of childhood. The origin of every compulsion in this paranoia is in the repression, and the symptoms of paranoia allow a similar classification as the one found justified in compulsion neurosis. Some symptoms also originate from the primary defense among which are all delusions of distrust,