Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/26

 18 S. FERENCZI

self-mutilation in Catatonia and in the like tendencies symbolically represented in the automatic actions of many tic patients, only tiiat in the last mentioned the struggle is not in opposition to an actual disturbing stimulus, but against a detached instinctire stimulus in the "ego-M-system" (organ-M-system). As I have mentioned in my introduction and laid stress on in previous writings,¹ I believe that at least a portion of this enhanced stimulus can be traced back to the local increase of libido accompanying the injury (or connected to the corresponding spheres of sensation). (The psycho-analyst will without hesitation connect the active defence reaction with Sadism and the self-injury with Masochism; in Autotomia we see an archaic prototype of the components ot the masochistic instinct.) As is well known, when the intensification of Libido increases beyond the power of the Ego-nucleus to control it, pain is produced; unbearable libido is converted into fear. Meige and Feindel describe as a cardinal symptom of tic-like convulsions that their active or passive suppression calls up reactions of fear and that after the cessation of any prevention or hindering the actions are spasmodically carried out with every sign of pleasure.

The inclination to shake off a stimulus by means of a muscular convulsion or the incapacity to brook any hindering of a motor (or affective) discharge one can, for descriptive purposes, compare with a certain temperament that is known in scientific circles as the "motor type".²

The tic patient reacts with over-emphasis for the reason that he is already burdened with an inner instinctive stimulus. It is not impossible that something similar is also the case in one sense or another with the above-mentioned "temperament". At any rate we must reckon the tics as belonging to those cases, whose motility and affectivity are governed, not as is normal by the preconscious, but by undesired and partly unconscious (and as we suggest "organ-erotic") instinctive forces, and that to a degree otherwise only known to occur in psychoses. We have thus one more factor making probable the common (narcissistic) basis of tics and the majority of the psychoses.

¹ Hysteric und Pathoneurosen, S. 7.

² The uncontrollable urge to dance at the sound of rhythmical music (Magic Flute!) presents an intuitive picture of the manner in which a sen- sory, in this case an acoustic, increase of stimulus is relieved by an imme- diate motor discharge.