Retardation of the Emotional Development
But let us return to our own case. The following question arises: If the old trauma is not of etiological significance, then the cause of the manifest neurosis is probably to be found in the retardation of the emotional development. We must therefore disregard the patient's assertion that her hysterical crises date from the fright from the shying horses, although this fright was in fact the beginning of her evident illness. This event only seems to be important, although it is not so in reality. This same formula is valid for all the so-called shocks. They only seem to be important because they are the starting-point of the external expression of an abnormal condition. As explained in detail, this abnormal condition is an anachronistic continuation of an infantile stage of libido-development. These patients still retain forms of the libido which they ought to have renounced long ago. It is impossible to give a list, as it were, of these forms, for they are of an extraordinary variety. The most common, which is scarcely ever absent, is the excessive activity of phantasies, characterized by an unconcerned exaggeration of subjective wishes. This exaggerated activity is always a sign of want of proper employment of the libido. The libido sticks fast to its use in phantasies, instead of being employed in a more rigorous adaptation to the real conditions of life.
Introversion
This state is called the state of introversion, the libido is used for the psychical inner world instead of being applied to the external world. A regular attendant symptom of this retardation in the emotional development is the so-called parent-complex. If the libido is not used entirely for the adaptation to reality, it is always more or less introverted. The material content of the psychic world is composed of reminiscences, giving it a vividness of activity which in reality long since ceased to pertain thereto. The consequence is, that these patients still live more or less in a world which in truth belongs to the past. They fight with difficulties which once played a part in their life, but which ought to have been obliterated long ago. They still grieve over matters, or rather they are still concerned with matters, which should have
