is naturally the affective condition on both sides; the psychosexuality of the parents on one side and that of the child on the other. It is a kind of psychical infection; we know that it is not logical truth, but effects and their psychical expressions[1] which are here the effective forces. It is these that, with the power of the herd-instinct, press into the mind of the child, there fashioning and moulding it. In the plastic years between one and five there have to be worked out all the essential formative lines which fit exactly into the parental mould. Psychoanalytic experience teaches us that, as a rule, the first signs of the later conflict between the parental constellation and individual independence, of the struggle between repression and libido (Freud), occur before the fifth year.
The few following histories will show how this parental constellation obstructs the adaptation of the offspring. It must suffice to present only the chief events of these, that is the events of sexuality.
Case 1.—A well-preserved woman of 55; dressed poorly but carefully in black with a certain elegance, the hair carefully dressed; a polite, obviously affected manner, precise in speech, also a devotee. The patient might be the wife of a minor official or shopkeeper. She informs me, blushing and dropping her eyes, that she is the divorced wife of a common peasant. She has come to the hospital on account of depression, night terrors, palpitations, slight nervous twitchings in the arms; thus presenting the typical features of a slight climacteric neurosis. To complete the picture she adds that she suffers from severe anxiety dreams; in her dreams some man seems to be pursuing her, wild animals attack her, and so on.
Her anamnesis begins with the family history. (So far as possible I give her own words.) Her father was a fine, stately, rather corpulent man of imposing appearance. He was very happy in his marriage, for her mother worshipped him. He was a clever man, a master-mechanic, and held
- ↑ Cf. Vigouroux et Jaqueliers, “La contagion mentale,” Chapitre VI. Doin, Paris, 1905.
