Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/23

 PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL OBSERVATIONS ON TIC 15

portant business" and before "occupation with things of profound interest". ¹

That tics cease entirely during sleep is intelligible from the absolute supremacy of the narcissistic sleep wish and the complete emptying of all other systems of the charge, but it is inessential for the resolution of the question of whether tics are psychogenic or somatogenic. The fact that concurrent illnesses, pregnancy and parturition, increase tics is evidently no argument against their narcissistic genesis.

III

I should now like to subject the chief phenomena of tics — the motor symptom and the dyspraxias (echolalia, coprolalia, imitation mania) — to a somewhat more searching inquiry, relying on the few observations of my own and the wider information of Meige and Feindel. These authors desire to confine the designation "Tic" to those conditions which show two essentia! elements : the psychic and the motor (that is the psycho-motor). There is no objection to this restriction of the conception of "Tic", but we consider it would promote the better understanding of the matter if one did not restrict oneself solely to the typical conditions, but also reckoned the purely psychical and even sensory disturbances as of this illness when they correspond essentially to typical cases. We have already mentioned that sensory disturbances are of importance as motives for tic-like twitchings and actions. We must now provide ourselves with a clear understanding of the nature of this operation. I will here refer to an important work by Freud on "Repression" (Samml. kl. Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, Bd. IV., S. 28) where he states as follows : "When an external stimulus becomes internal, for instance, through harassing and destroying an organ, so that there results a fresh source of continuous excitement and increase of tension, ... it acquires.... a far- reaching similarity to an instinct. We know that this condition is experienced in pain."

What is here mentioned of actual pain, must be extended in the case of Tic to the memory of pain. That is to say, in over- sensitive persons (of narcissistic constitution) on the injury of a

¹ Idem., Op. cit., p. 12.