sons in whom this experience can bring into activity the memory remnants of an infantile trauma.[1]
The prerequisite of obsessions is also a sexual infantile experience, but of a different nature than that of hysteria. The etiology of both defense neuropsychoses now shows the following relation to the etiology of both simple neuroses, neurasthenia and anxiety neurosis. As I have shown above, both the latter neuroses are the direct results of the sexual noxas alone, while both defense neuroses are the direct results of sexual noxas which acted before the appearance of sexual maturity that is, they are the results of the psychic memory remnants of these noxas. The actual causes producing neurasthenia and anxiety neurosis simultaneously play the rôle of inciting causes of the defense neuroses, and on the other hand, the specific causes of the defense neuroses, the infantile traumas, may simultaneously prepare the soil for the later developing neurasthenia. Finally it not seldom happens that the existence of a neurasthenia or anxiety neurosis is only preserved by continued recollection of an infantile trauma rather than by actual sexual injuries.
- ↑ A psychological theory of the repression ought also to inform us why only ideas of a sexual content can be repressed. It may be formulated as follows: It is known that ideas of a sexual content produce exciting processes in the genitals resembling the actual sexual experience. It may be assumed that this somatic excitement becomes transformed into psychic. As a rule the activity referred to is much stronger at the time of the occurrence than at the recollection of the same. But if the sexual experience takes place during the time of sexual immaturity and the recollection of the same is awakened during or after maturity, the recollection then acts disproportionately more exciting than the previous experience, for puberty has in the mean time incomparably increased the reactive capacity of the sexual apparatus. But such an inverse proportion seems to contain the psychological determination of repression. Through the retardation of the pubescent maturity in comparison with the psychic function, the sexual life offers the only existing possibility for that inversion of the relative efficacy. The infantile traumas subsequently act like fresh experiences, but they are then unconscious. Deeper psychological discussions I will have to postpone for another time. I moreover call attention to the fact that the here considered time of "sexual maturity" does not coincide with puberty, but occurs before the same (eight to ten years).
