Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/24

 16 S. FERENCZI

part of the body heavily charged with libido (erotogenic zone) or by other still unknown situations, a dépôt of instinctive stimulus forms in the "ego-memory system" (or in a special urgan-memory system) from which unplcasurable excitation will flow to the internal perception even after the disappearance of all results of the external injuries. A particular method of relieving this ex- citation is by a direct outflow into motility. Which muscles are put into motion, and the particular actions that are carried out, is naturally not a matter of chance. If one takes the very instructive cases of pathoneurotic tic as prototypes of all other kinds, one may assume that the Tiqueur will invariably carry out such actions, (or their symbolic rudiments) which were for him the most suitable in warding off or easing the suffering at the time when the external disturbance was an actual fact. We see therefore in this form of tic a new instinct as it were in statu nascendi that furnishes us with a complete confirmation of all that which Freud teaches in general on the origin of instincts. According to Freud every instinct is an inherited organised adaptation-reaction to an external stimulus which later without external cause or upon an insignilicant ex- ternal signal is set in motion from within.

There is a variety of methods by which an individual can ward off suffering. The simplest is to withdraw oneself from the stimulus; this corresponds to a series ol tics -which merit the designation of flight-reflexes. One recognises the general negadvism of Catatonia as the climax of this form of reaction. A more complicated tic repeats an active defence against a disturbing exterior stimulus ; a third form is directed against the person ol the patient. As example of this latter form I mention the wide- spread scratching tic and the tic when the patient inflicts pain on himself which reaches its climax in the tendency to self-mutilation in Schizophrenia.

A very instructive case is reported in the monograph by Meige and Feindel: "The patient could not keep a pencil or a wooden penholder longer than twenty-four hours without gnawing it from one end to the other. The same thing happened with the handles of sticks and umbrellas; he destroyed an extraordinary amount oi; them. To help him out of this predicament he was seized with the idea of having metal penholders and sticks with silver knobs. The result was most disastrous; he bit at them all the more and as he could not destroy the iron and silver he very soon broke