Page:Freud - Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses.djvu/213

Rh I therefore content myself in formulating the axiom and in elucidating its significance:

9. An hysterical symptom is the expression, on the one hand, of a masculine, and on the other hand of a feminine unconscious sexual fancy.

I expressly observe that I am unable to adjudge to this axiom the similar general validity that I claimed for the other formulae. As far as I can see it is met neither in all symptoms of a single case, nor in all cases. On the contrary it is not difficult to find cases in which the contrary sexual emotions have found separate symptomatic expression, so that the symptoms of hetero- and homosexuality can be as sharply distinguished from each other as the fancies hidden behind them. Nevertheless, the relation claimed in the ninth formula occurs frequently enough, and wherever it is found it is of sufficient significance to merit a special formulation. It seems to me to signify the highest stage of complexity to which the determination of hysterical symptoms can reach, and can only be expected in a long standing neurosis and where a great amount of organization has occurred.

The demonstrable bisexual significance of hysterical symptoms occurring in many cases is indeed an interesting proof for the assertion formulated by me that the supposed bisexual predisposition of man can be especially recognized in psychoneurotics by means of psychoanalysis. Quite an analogous process from the same sphere is that in which the masturbator in his conscious fancies attempts to live through in his imagination the fancied situations of both the man and the woman. Other counterparts are found in certain hysterical crises in which the patients play both roles lying at the basis of sexual fancies; thus, for example, one of the cases under my observation presses his garments to his body with one arm (as woman), and with the other arm he attempts to tear them off (as man). This contradictory simultaneity determines most of the incomprehensibility of the situation otherwise so plastically represented in the attack, and is