34
MICHAEL JOSEF EISLER
m^c charm has another meaning. The patient betrayed what
significance the oral region possessed for her by her tendency to
keep her mouth covered as far as possible.
The analysis first showed that the initiation of her malady was determined by a remarkable circumstance ; the neurosis followed on a prophecy. When the patient was a little girl her aunt, who later on played a part in her life, caught her doing a forbidden act— onanism— and censured her for it. Her aunt told her, 'If you do it again you will become ill when you are a big girl.' This date (a big girl) coincided with the age at which her elder sister married. Her aunt had therefore been right, she could not become a bride and wife like her sister. When in the further course of the analytic treatment a strongly repressed 'masculine- complex' — the'renounced longing to be formed like a boy— came to light, that ominous prophecy appeared in a new light as a correlate of a threat of castration, the threat which gives us so much trouble in many neuroses. These two factors, the repressed masculine complex * and the threat, led to a serious interruption of her genital sexuality. It is true that onanism was continued after puberty, and even developed into homo- erotic acts with the co-operation of a governess. However, it remained rather a kind of mechanical gratification, and appeared in connection with the repressed psychic material only so far as it became a poor substitute for the heterosexual object choice which was inhibited, though firmly adhered to in the unconscious. The tenacity of her neurosis aided this substitution, and added to its temporary significance as a possible form of relief of definite libidinal tension. At the same time it offered a guarantee that after such strongly repressed quant- ities of energy became free the original attraction to the male would finally be strengthened.
Besides this infantile cause of her illness a recent one was the marriage of a cousin. Circumstances had enabled her to share in the intimacies of a long betrothal, and she had experienced unsatisfied excitations which she would never seriously acknowledge to herself. Her former tendency to repress sexual feelings, and a mental innocence that was artificially guarded in the family circle, now came into action ; but this time the measure was full and the
' One event among those of childhood was very painful to her; in a sexual game her person was spumed with derision.
' A
