Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis III 1922 1.djvu/24

 l5 KARL ABRAHAM

The symptoms we have described up to the present bear the character of positive wish-fulfilment in the sense of the infantile j

desire to be physically equal to the man. The last-mentioned j

forms of reaction, however, already begin to approximate to the J

revenge type. For in the refusal to acknowledge the significance \

of the male organ there is expressed, although in a very mitigated ,j

form, an emasculation of the man. We therefore arrive quite ^

easily at the phenomena of the second group. ;

We regularly meet two tendencies in repressed form in these j

patients: the longing for revenge on the man, and the desire to «

take by force the longed-for organ, i.e. to rob the man of it ;

One of my patients dreamed that she in common with other *

women carried round a gigantic penis which they had robbed J

from an animal. This reminds us of the neurotic impulse to steal. The so-called kleptomania is often traceable to the fact that a j

child feels injured or neglected in respect of proofs of love— |-

which we have equated with gifts— or in some way feels disturb- T

ed in the gratificadon of its libido. It procures a substitute |.

pleasure for the lost pleasure, and at the same time takes revenge |

on those who have caused it the supposed injury. Psycho-analysis shows that in the unconscious of our patients there exist the same unpulses to take forcible possession of the 'gift' which has not been received.

Vaginismus is from a practical point of view the most impor- tant of the neurotic symptom serving the repressed phantasies of per- forming castration on the man. The tendency of vaginismus is not only to prevent intromission of the penis, but also in case of its intromission not to let it escape again, i. e. to retain it and thereby carry out castration on the man. The phantasy therefore culminates in robbing the man of his penis and appropriating it to oneself.

The patient who had produced the previously-mentioned dream of the morphia syringe showed a rare and complicated form of refusal of her husband at the commencement of their marriage. She suffered from an hysterical adduction of her thighs whenever her husband approached her. After this had been overcome in the course of a few weeks a high degree of vaginimus developed as a fresh symptom of refusal; the vaginismus only completely disappeared under psycho-analytic treatment

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