Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis III 1922 1.djvu/32

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KARL ABRAHAM

beings and their propagation, but only stones, ice and snow. She had the idea that in marriage the woman was quite of secondary importance, and an expression of hers clearly showed that this idea was based on the castration complex. She said that the ring — which was to her a hated female symbol — was not fit to be a symbol of marriage, and she suggested a nail as a substitute. The over-emphasis of masculinity here evidently developed from the penis envy of the little girl which appeared strikingly undis- guised in the patient's adult age.

In many women the incapability of reconciling themselves to the lack of the male organ is expressed in neurotic horror at the sight of wounds. Every wound re-awakens in their unconscious the idea of the 'wound' received in childhood. Sometimes a de- finite feeling of anxiety occurs at the sight of wounds, and some- times this sight or the mere idea of it causes a 'painful feeUng in the lower part of the body'. The patient whom I mentioned above as having a complicated form of vaginismus spoke of her horror of wounds at the commencement of the psycho-analysis and before there had been any mention of the castration complex. She said that she could look at large and irregular wounds without being particularly affected. On the other hand, she could not bear to see a very small and somewhat open cut in her skin or on another person if the red colour of the flesh was visible in the depth of the cut; this gave her an intense pain in the genital region coupled with marked anxiety, 'as though something had been cut away there'. Similar sensations accompanied by anxiety are found in men with marked fear of castration. In many women it does not need the sight of a wound to cause phenomena of the kind described, but they also have an aversion, associated with marked affects, to the idea of surgical operations, even to knives. Some time ago a lady who was a stranger to me and who would not give her name rang me up on the telephone and asked me if I could prevent an operation that had been arranged for the next day. On my request for more information she told me she was to be operated on for a severe uterine haemorrhage due to myomata. When I told her it was not part of my work to prevent a necessary and perhaps life-saving operation she did not reply, but explained with affective volubility that she had always been 'hostile to all operations', adding, 'whoever is once operated on is for ever afterwards a cripple for life'. The senselessness of this

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