Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/28

 20. S. FERENCZI

reality to do with an exaggerated muscular tension, an enhanced muscle tone. If one asks these patients suddenly to relax a muscle, they often only succeed in doing so after rather a long while. Further one often notices that tic patients have a tendency to repeat passive movements of their limbs in an exaggerated manner. For instance if one moves their arms several times in succession one can observe that the movement will be persisted in for a longer period. Besides the symptom of Catatonia these patients give evidence also of Echopraxia to a decidedly greater degree than normal persons." (Meige and Feinde!, p. 386.)

We here have the opportunity to refer to the fourth kind of motor reaction which occurs in a similar way in Tic and Catatonia, namely, Flexibilitas cerea. "Waxen flexibility" consists in the patient passively allowing his limbs to be placed in every sort of position without the smallest muscular resistance and this position is retained for some time. This symptom, as is well-known, also occurs in deep hypnosis.

In another paper^ in which I dealt with the explanation of psycho-analytical pliability in hypnosis, I traced the weak-willed pliability to the motives of anxiety and love. In "Father-hypnosis" the subject performs all that one asks him to do, as by that means he hopes to escape from the danger threatened by the dreaded hypnotist; in "Mother-hypnosis" he docs everything to ensure to himself the love of the hypnotist. If one looks to the animal world for analogies to these methods of adaptation, the pretence of death in certain animals on threatened danger strikes one at once and also that method of adaptation called Mimicry. The "waxen pliability", the catalepsy of catatonia (and the hint of this in tic patients) may be interpreted as bearing a similar meaning. To the man suffering from catatonia everything is of equal value ; his interest and libido are concentrated on his own ego; he only desires that the outside world shall leave him in peace. In spite of complete automatic subordination to every opposing will, in- wardly he is actually independent of his disturbers; it matters not to him whether his body adopts one position or another, therefore why should he not continue in the physical attitude he has passively accepted? Flight, opposition, and turning against oneself are methods of reaction which nevertheless bear witness of a fairly strong emotional relation to the exterior world. Only in • "Introjection and Transference", Contributions to Psycho-Analysis.

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