Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 3-4.djvu/20

 274 MICHAEL JOSEPH EISLER

Psycho-analytic literature in particular includes a description of a typical case which can be cited as an example for comparison. I refer to the case that has been so critical in determing the etiology of paranoia, namely that of the President of the Senate, Schreber. 1 Here we find told straight out, with little inhibition, and called by name, those repulsive phantasies, foreign to con- sciousness, which called forth the patient's neurosis, and could only be disinterred with so much labour. Such are the inversion into woman, and fertilisation by divine rays. I would emphasise with Freud that analysis contributed nothing to these phantasies, which must be considered a psychic constellation sui generis, and which are contained in Schreber's own account of his illness. The distinction is to be found in the mechanisms of the types of dis- ease ; whereas in hysteria symptoms are formed exclusive of consciousness, in paranoia the diseased processes invade conscious- ness in the form of delusions. In Schreber's case a firm adhesion of feeling to the father, and the childlessness of his marriage called to life the psychotic process of inversion of his own sex ; in this case too, therefore, the most important section of uncon- scious content is concealed. Further I would just call attention to the far-reaching analogy which obtains between the infantile circumstances in either case (particularly anal erotism), but cannot develop this here. Anyhow the strangeness of the case in hand has thus been placed in its proper perspective, by which means it has surely become more readily credible.^

The patient's narcissism took a peculiar part in the structure of his dreams, and in this way was divulged a constant preoccupa- tion with his own person and certain internal processes. Fundamentally his hypochondriac fears must be reckoned as be- longing here. Nevertheless I would emphasise that none of the narcissistic traits brought forward formed very prominent features, although its strengthened basis could be established by obser- vation. We shall yet discover why these hypothetical derivatives suffered later deviation.

schriebenen Fall von Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides) ', Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlchre, 3. Folge, 1913.
 * Freud, ' Psychoanalytische Bemerkungen (Ibereinen autobiographisch be-

' Such phantasies seem at times to be conscious also in obsessional neuroses. Cf. Ernest Jones: 'EinigeFSlle von Zwangsneurosc '. Jakrbuck der Pta., Bd. IV, S. 574.