the psychological processes responsible for the symptoms which the patient exhibited. The sudden termination of the engagement caused a distressing conflict, which was finally solved by a process of repression. The affections and desires which had played so important a part in the patient’s mind were repressed on account of their incompatibility with the world of fact, and were only allowed to appear in an indirect and distorted form. This indirect expression was provided by the stereotyped action which symbolised for the patient the whole syatem of ideas and emotions connected with her lost lover. The entire detachment from the real world, the failure to react in any way to her environment, and the other symptoms present in this case will be better understood at a later stage of our inquiry, and will be fully dealt with in a subsequent chapter (p. 157).
A frequent method by which a repressed complex obtains an indirect expression is afforded by the mechanism known as “projection.” This method is so important, and appears in such protean forms, that it will be necessary to study if in some detail, and the whole of the next chapter will therefore be devoted to its consideration.
