Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/12

 4                                                                S. FERENCZI

head or else he made a series of those movements usual with Tiqueurs as though he would free his body from the irksomeness of his clothing. In fact he never ceased, although unconsciously, to devote the greater part of his attention to his own body or to his clothes, even while he was consciously occupied in quite other directions, such as eating, or reading the paper, I took him for a man possessed of pronounced hypersensibility and unable to endure a physical stimulus without a dejence reaction. This con- iecture was confirmed when I saw to my surprise this young man, who in otlier respects was well brought up and accustomed to ^rnove in good social circles, draw out a small hand-mirror imme- diately after the meal and in front ot those present proceed to clear the remains of food from his teeth with a toothpick and this all the time with the aid of the little glass; he never paused until he had cleaned all his well-kept teeth and he was then visibly satisfied.

Now we all know that remains ot food sticking between the teeth can at times be very disturbing, but such a thorough, un- postponable cleansing of all the thirty-two teeth demands a more precise explanation. I recalled to mind a similar view 1 expressed on a previous occasion^ on the conditions of genesis of Patho- neuroses, that is to say of "narcissistic disease". The three conditions there put forward under which the fixation of libido on single organs can occur are: (1) Danger to life or menace of a trauma; (2) Injury of a part of the body already heavily charged with libido (an erotogenic zone); (3) Constitutional narcissism when the smallest injury to a part of the body strikes the whole ego. This latter even- tuality fitted in very well with the idea that the over-sensitiveness of tic patients, their incapacity to endure an ordinary stimulus without defence, may also be the motive of their motor expressions, i.e. of the tics and the stereotypies themselves; while the hyperastliesia, which can be either local or general, might be only the expression of narcissism, the strong attachment of the libido to the subject himself, hisbody or to a part of his body, i.e. "the damming-up of organ libido". In this sense Freud's view of the "organic" nature of tic comes to its own, even if it must be left an open question whether the hbido is bound to the organ itself or to its psychical representative. After attention had been drawn to the narcissistic-organic nature of the tics I recalled several severe cases of tic that, follow-

¹Hysteric und Pathoneurosen, S. 9.