Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 3-4.djvu/29

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A MAN'S UNCONSCIOUS PHANTASY OF PREGNANCY 283

anal-erotic as penultimate stage of development, intermediate ji I ' between narcissistic and genital stages, i It all tends to show how

significant anal erotism is in the general development of the mind.

Every neurosis — or hysteria — may be regarded in a sense

J as an attempt to cope auto-erotically with ideas that have become inaccessible to consciousness because of their dissociation from reality; 2 in our patient they took the form of homosexual wish- phantasies, and we may infer therefore from their consequences,

, namely the group of symptoms of the disease, that tlie anal-erotic component too, which might have contributed to the assimilation of such wishes, remained under the sway of narcissism. The ant- agonism, which at bottom is the antagonism between libido and Ego, has achieved consequence in another direction, namely that of the castration-complex. It may be assumed, a priori, that a passive-homosexual wish in a neurosis only realises itself when the individual's narcissism is adapted to it. In what way then does renunciation of penis and masculinity come about? It has long been supposed to have to do with co-operation of con- stitutionally determined anal erotism. In a very important paper * Freud has indicated the fundamental features of the mechanism, jt is primarily the interest in faeces (faeces = the first 'part of the

' body' which has to be renounced) which later becomes transferred to the penis. If the former was very potent, it is able by itself, by working up various impressions, including the castration-threat, to lead to the idea that the penis is similarly something detachable from the body. This idea approaches certainty directly the child's sexual investigations lead to the discovery that women lack a penis. Our patient could have discovered this when he was six years old, when his eldest sister was born. If we take into account his pre-occupation with anal-erotic phantasies current at that time, we may take it that the absolutely typical thoughts described above exercised his mind. I should like to call attention to two facts which I have noticed in the analytical treatment of this subject. It is surely not chance that most faeces-symbols are also castration-symbols — such as, nails, hair, teeth, etc. — and this

> Freud : loc. cit. ' 2 Freud: Vorlesungen zur Eiiifiihrung in die Psychoanalyse, 1917. S. 424.

» ' LTber Triebumsetzungen, insbesondere der Analerotik ', Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, 4. Folge, 1918. ' ; *

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