tary moments. I even hoped to solve thereby the problem of the selection of the neurosis, that is, to decide by the details of the sexual infantile experience, the form of the psychoneurosis into which the patient may merge. Though with reserve I thought at that time that passive behavior during these scenes results in the specific predisposition for hysteria, while active behavior results in compulsion neurosis. This conception I was later obliged to disclaim completely though some facts of the supposed connection between passivity and hysteria, and activity and compulsion neurosis, can be maintained to some extent. With the disappearance of the accidental influences of experiences, the elements of constitution and heredity had to regain the upper hand, but differing from the view generally in vogue I placed the "sexual constitution" in place of the general neuropathic predisposition. In my recent work, " Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory,"[1] I have attempted to discuss the varieties of this sexual constitution, the components of the sexual impulse in general, and its origin from the contributory sources of the organism.
Still in connection with the changed conception of the "sexual infantile traumas," the theory continued to develop in a course which was already indicated in the publications of 1894-1896. Even before sexuality was installed in its proper place in the etiology, I had already stated as a condition for the pathogenic efficaciousness of an experience that the latter must appear to the ego as unbearable and thus evoke an exertion for defense. To this defense I have traced the psychic splitting—or as it was then called the splitting of consciousness—of hysteria. If the defense succeeded, the unbearable experience with its resulting affect was expelled from consciousness and memory; but under certain conditions the thing expelled which was now unconscious, developed its activity, and with the aid of the symptoms and their adhering affect it returned into consciousness, so that the disease corresponded to a failure of the defense. This conception had the merit of entering into the play of the psychic forces, and hence approximate the psychic processes of hysteria to the normal instead of shifting the characteristic of the neurosis into an enigmatic and no further analyzable disturbance.
Further inquiries among persons who remained normal furnished
- ↑ Trans, by A. A. Brill, Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease Monograph Series.
