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 BCKCCB UB 
 
 CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF MEDICINE
 
 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION
 
 THE t NEUROTIC 
 CONSTITUTION : 
 
 Outlines of a Comparative Individualistic 
 Psychology and Psychotherapy ~1 
 
 BY 
 
 DR ALFRED ADLER 
 
 (Vienna) 
 
 AUTHORIZED ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY 
 
 BERNARD GLUECK, M.D. 
 
 Director of the Psychiatric Clinic, Sing Sing Prison 
 AND 
 
 JOHN E. LIND, M.D. 
 
 Senior Assistant Physician, Saint Elizabeth's Hospital ; 
 
 Associate Psychiatrist, Washington Asylum 
 
 Hospital ; and Instructor in Psychiatry, 
 
 Georgetown Medical College 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 
 1921
 
 ?0 
 
 11 
 
 Reprinted (by arrangement) from 
 the American Edition of 1917
 
 PREFACE 
 
 After I had made the attempt to investigate in the Studie 
 uber Minderwertigkeit -von Organen the structure and tectonic 
 of organs in association with their genetic basis, their functional 
 capability and destiny, I proceeded, supporting myself upon 
 already available data as well as upon my own experience, to 
 apply the same method in the study of psychopathology. In 
 the book before us are embraced the most important results of 
 my comparative, individual-psychologic studies of the neuroses. 
 
 As was the case in the theory of somatic inferiority, an 
 empiric basis is made use of in comparative individual- 
 psychology for the purpose of establishing a fictive standard of 
 normality in order to enable one to measure and compare with 
 it grades of deviation from it. In both of these scientific 
 endeavors, the comparative method of study reckons with the 
 origin of phenomena, dismisses from consideration the present 
 and seeks to outline from them the future. This method of 
 approach leads us to view the compulsion of evolution and the 
 pathological elaboration as the result of a conflict which breaks 
 forth in the organic sphere for the purpose of attaining equi- 
 poise, functional capability and adaptation ; the same struggle 
 in the psychic sphere is under the command of a fictitious idea 
 of personality whose influence dominates the development of the 
 neurotic character and symptoms. If in the organic sphere, 
 " the individual develops into a unit mass in which all of the 
 individual parts co-operate toward a common goal" (Virchow), 
 if the various abilities and tendencies of the individual tend 
 toward a purposefully directed, unit-personality, then we may 
 look upon every single manifestation of life as if in its past, 
 present and future there are contained traces of a dominating, 
 guiding idea.
 
 vi PREFACE 
 
 In this way it has appeared to the author of this book, that 
 the most minute trait of psychic life is permeated by a purpose- 
 force., Comparative, individualistic psychology sees in every 
 psychic event the impress, so to speak, or symbol of a uniformly 
 directed plan of life which only comes more clearly to light in 
 the neuroses and psychoses. 
 
 The result of such an investigation of the neurotic character 
 should furnish proof of the value and utility of our method of 
 comparative, individualistic psychology in the problems of 
 
 mental life. 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 Vienna, 1912.
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 " Omnia ex opinione suspensa sunt : non ambitio tantum ad 
 illam respicit et luxuria et avaricia. Ad opinionem dolemus. 
 Tam miser est quisque quam credidit." 
 
 SENECA, Epist., 78, 13. 
 
 X 
 
 The study of the neurotic character is an essential part of 
 neuro-psychology. Like all other psychic phenomena it can 
 only be understood when taken in connection with the entire 
 psychic life. A cursory knowledge of the neuroses suffices to 
 enable one to discover that which is peculiarly characteristic in 
 them and all writers who have studied the problem of nervous- 
 ness have laid particular stress upon certain peculiar traits of 
 character. The opinion was a general one that the neurotic 
 shows a series of sharply emphasized traits of character which 
 exceed the normal standard. The marked sensitiveness, the 
 irritable debility, the suggestibility, the egotism, the penchant 
 for the fantastic, the estrangement from reality, but also more 
 special traits such as tyranny, malevolence, a self-sacrificing 
 virtue, coquetry, anxiety and absent-mindedness are met with in 
 the majority of case histories and it would be necessary to detail 
 all writers who have thoroughly studied the subject in order to 
 endorse their contributions. Of the more recent ones, Janet, 
 who has carried on the traditions of the famous French school 
 and who has brought to light some very important and ingenious 
 analyses, must be especially mentioned. His emphasis of the 
 neurotic's "sentiment d'incompletude " particularly, is so 
 wholly in harmony with the results offered by me that I am 
 justified in seeing in my work an extension of this most 
 important fundamental fact of the mental life of the neurotic. 
 
 No matter where one begins with ihe analysis of psychogenic 
 disorders, one and the same phenomenon forces itself upon 
 
 vii
 
 viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 one's attention after the briefest observation, namely, that the 
 entire picture of the neurosis as well as all its symptoms are 
 influenced by, nay, even wholly provoked by an imaginary 
 fictitious goal. This final purpose has a creative, directive 
 and adjustive power. The potency of this "goal idea" is 
 revealed to us by the trend and evaluation of the pathological 
 phenomena and should one attempt to dispense with this 
 assumption there remains nothing but a confusing mass of 
 impulses, trends, components, debilities and anomalies which 
 has made the obscurity of the neurosis impenetrable to some, 
 while others have undertaken bold exploratory journeys into 
 this field. 
 
 Pierre Janet has certainly recognized this relationship as is 
 shown in his classical descriptions of the Hysterical Psyche ; 
 1894 (transl. by Dr Max Kahane), but he avoided a detailed 
 description. He expressly maintains, " I have until now only 
 described general and simple traits of character which by means 
 of their association and under the influence of definite extran- 
 eous circumstances may produce all kinds of curious behavior 
 and conduct." It is entirely out of place here to enter into a 
 detailed discussion of Janet's description for this treatise would 
 then resemble more a moral romance than a clinical study. 
 Having adhered to this attitude even up to his latest contri- 
 butions on the subject, Janet, notwithstanding his keen insight 
 into the relationship between the psychology of the neuroses 
 and moral philosophy, never entered the road to synthesis. 
 
 It remained for Joseph Breuer, a man well versed in current 
 German philosophy, to discover the gem which lay in his path. 
 He directed his attention to the meaning of the symptoms and 
 undertook to ascertain the source and purpose of the same from 
 the only one who could give them from the patient. In so 
 doing the author founded a method which seeks to explain 
 individual psychological phenomena historically and genetically 
 with the assistance of a preliminary hypothesis, i.e., that of the 
 determinism of psychic phenomena. The manner in which this
 
 INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 method has been extended and improved upon by Sigmund 
 Freud with the host of problems and attempted solutions there- 
 with connected belongs to contemporaneous history and has 
 met with both recognition and contradiction. Less for the 
 purpose of following a critical bent than for the purpose of 
 making clear my own position I beg leave to separate from the 
 fruitful and valuable contributions of Freud three of his funda- 
 mental views as erroneous inasmuch as they threaten to impede 
 progress in the understanding of the neuroses. The first 
 objection is directed against the view that the libido is the 
 motive force behind the phenomena of the neurosis. On the 
 contrary it is the neurosis which shows more clearly than does 
 normal psychic conduct how by means of this neurotic positing 
 of a " final purpose," the apperception of pleasure, its selection 
 and power are all driven in the direction of this final purpose 
 so that the neurotic can really only follow the allurement of 
 the acquisition of pleasure with his healthy psychic force, so to 
 speak, while for the neurotic portion only "higher" goals are 
 of value. 
 
 The neurotic goal (Zwecksetzung) has revealed itself to us in 
 the heightened ego-consciousness (Personlichkeitsgefuhl) whose 
 simplest formula is to be recognized in an exaggerated " mas- 
 culine protest" (Mannlicher Protest). This formula: "I wish 
 to be a complete man" is the guiding fiction in every neurosis, 
 claiming higher reality values than even the normal psyche. 
 The libido, the sex-impulses and the tendencies to sexual per- 
 versions arrange themselves in accordance with this guiding 
 principle, no matter whence they originate. Nietzsche's "Will 
 to power " and " Will to seem " embrace many of our views, 
 which again resemble in some respects the views of Fere and 
 the older writers, according to whom the sensation of pleasure 
 originates in a feeling of power, that of pain in a feeling of 
 feebleness (Ohnmacht). 
 
 A second objection is directed agSinst Freud's fundamental 
 view of the sexual etiology of the neuroses, a view which Pierre
 
 x INTRODUCTION 
 
 Janet approached very closely when he asked, "Is sexual feel- 
 ing then the center around which all other psychological 
 syntheses are built up?" The applicability of the sexual 
 picture deceives the normal person and especially the neurotic. 
 But it must not deceive the psychologist. The sexual content 
 in the neurotic phenomenon originates primarily in the 
 imaginary antithesis : " Masculine-feminine" and is evolved 
 through a change of form of the "masculine protest." The 
 sexual trend in the fantasy and life of the neurotic follows the 
 direction of the " masculine goal," and is really not a trend, 
 but a compulsion. The whole picture of the sexual neurosis is 
 nothing more than a portrait depicting the distance which the 
 patient is removed from the imaginary masculine goal and the 
 manner in which he seeks to bridge it. It is strange that 
 Freud, a skillful connoisseur of the symbolic in life, was not able 
 to discover the symbolic in " sexual apperception," to recognize 
 the sexual as a jargon, a modus dicendi. But we can under- 
 stand this when we take into consideration the more extensive 
 basic error, i.e., the assumption that the neurotic is under the 
 influence of infantile wishes, which come to life nightly (Dream 
 theory) as well as in connection with certain occasions in life. 
 In reality these infantile wishes already stand under the com- 
 pulsion of the imaginary goal and themselves usually bear the 
 character of a guiding thought suitably arrayed, and adapt 
 themselves to symbolic expression purely for reasons of thought 
 economy. A sickly girl who during her entire childhood in her 
 consciousness of an unusual insecurity leans upon her father and 
 in so doing strives to become superior to her mother, may 
 comprehend this psychic constellation in the form of an incest, 
 as if she wished to be the wife of her father. Thereby the goal 
 is both attained and effective ; her insecurity is only abolished 
 when she is with her father. Her developed psycho-motor 
 intelligence, her unconsciously active memory combats all feel- 
 ings of uncertainty with the same aggression, with the adequate 
 expedient, to take refuge in the father as if she were his wife.
 
 INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 There she finds that heightened ego-consciousness which she 
 has set for her goal, which she has borrowed from the masculine 
 ideal of childhood, from the over-compensation of her feeling 
 of inferiority. If she recoils from a proffer of love or marriage, 
 threatening her as they do with a fresh lowering of her ego- 
 consciousness, she acts symbolically, ancl all her defensive 
 resources and her predispositions become arrayed against a 
 female destiny and make her seek security where she has always 
 found it, with her father. She utilizes an expedient, behaves 
 in accordance with a senseless fiction, but is nevertheless certain 
 of attaining her goal. The greater her feeling of uncertainty, 
 the more firmly this girl clings to her fiction, endeavors to take 
 it quite literally and since human thinking favors symbolic 
 abstraction the patient with a little effort (and also the analyst) 
 is successful in the longing of neurotics, namely, to find 
 security, to gain a foothold in the symbolic picture of incestuous 
 emotion. 
 
 Freud was obliged to see in this purposeful manifestation a 
 reanimation of infantile wishes because according to him the 
 latter are to be looked upon as motive forces. We recognize 
 in this infantile mode of procedure, in the extensive use of 
 safety-devices (Hilfsconstructionen), in which light the neurotic 
 fiction is to be regarded, in the many-sided motor preparedness 
 which reaches into the remote past, in the strong tendency to 
 abstraction and symbolization, the most useful expedient of the 
 neurotic, who strives toward security, toward a maximation of 
 his ego, toward the masculine protest. 
 
 If we attach to these critical remarks the question of how the 
 neurotic phenomena come into being, why the patient wills to 
 be a man and constantly seeks to adduce proof thereof, whence 
 he has the stronger necessity for ego-consciousness, why he 
 makes such strong endeavors to gain security, in short, if we 
 inquire into the final reasons for these devices of the neurotic 
 psyche, we may conjecture that which is revealed by every 
 analysis, namely, that at the onset of the development of a
 
 xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 neurosis there stands threateningly the feeling of uncertainty 
 and inferiority and demands insistently a guiding, assuring and 
 tranquilizing positing of a goal in order to render life bearable. 
 Among these are especially prominent safety devices and 
 fictions in thought, action and volition. 
 
 It is clear that this sort of psyche, directed as it is with 
 especial force toward a heightening of the ego, will, aside from 
 specific neurotic symptoms, make itself conspicuous in society 
 because of its evident inability to adapt itself. The conscious- 
 ness of the weak point dominates the neurotic to such a degree 
 that often without knowing it he begins to construct with all 
 his might the protecting superstructure. Along with this his 
 sensitiveness becomes more acute, he learns to pay attention to 
 relationships which still escape others, he exaggerates his 
 cautiousness, begins to anticipate all sorts of disagreeable con- 
 sequences in starting out to do something or in experiencing 
 an injury, he endeavors to hear further and to see further, 
 belittles himself, becomes insatiable, economical, constantly 
 strives to extend the boundaries of his influence and power over 
 space and time and at the same time loses that peace of mind 
 and freedom from prejudice which above all guarantee mental 
 health. His mistrust of himself and others, his envy and 
 maliciousness, become gradually more pronounced, aggressive 
 and cruel tendencies which are to secure for him supremacy 
 over his environment, gain the upper hand, or he endeavors to 
 captivate and conquer others by means of greater obedience, 
 submission and humility which not infrequently degenerate into 
 masochistic traits ; thus both heightened activity as well as 
 increased passivity are expedients ushered in by the fictitious 
 goal of an increased power, of a desire to be above, of the 
 masculine protest. 
 
 Thus we have arrived at those psychic phenomena, at the 
 neurotic character, the discussion of which forms the content 
 of this book. None of the neurotic's traits of character are 
 essentially new. He shows no single trait which cannot like-
 
 INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 wise be demonstrated in the healthy individual, although at 
 times it becomes understandable for the physician as well as 
 the patient only through analysis. It is uninterruptedly 
 "sensitized," thrust forward like an outpost, and represents 
 the sounding of the environment and the future. The know- 
 ledge of these psychic dexterities, which protrude far and wide, 
 like sensitive antennae, first makes possible the understanding 
 of the neurotic's struggle with his fate, of his stimulated 
 aggressive tendency, his unrest and impatience. For these 
 antennae test all the phenomena of the environment and examine 
 them constantly for their advantages and disadvantages with 
 regard to the assumed goal. They create the keen sense for 
 estimate and comparison, awaken, by means of the attention 
 active in them, fear, hope, doubt, expectations of all sorts and 
 seek to ensure the psyche against surprise and against a lower- 
 ing of the ego-consciousness. They put forth the most acces- 
 sible motor dexterities, ever mobile, ever ready to prevent a 
 degradation of the person. The forces of internal and external 
 experience are active in them, they are filled with memory-rests 
 of fear inspiring as well as consoling experiences, the reminis- 
 cences of which they have changed into dexterities. Cate- 
 gorical imperatives of the second rank, they do not serve to 
 bring about their own existence, but in the last analysis cause 
 an elevation of the ego-consciousness and they attempt this by 
 making possible the discovery in the unrest and uncertainty of 
 life, of guiding principles, by facilitating the differentiation 
 between right and wrong, up and down, right and left. The 
 accentuated traits of character are to be found already in the 
 neurotic disposition where they give rise to peculiarities and 
 perversions of conduct. These become still more pronounced 
 when after a more severe attack or after the emergence of a 
 contradiction in the masculine protest, the craving for security 
 (Sicherungstendenz) asserts itself and simultaneously calls forth 
 symptoms as new, effective expedients.* They are largely con- 
 structed after models and patterns and have for their object
 
 xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 the initiation in every new situation of the struggle for the 
 preservation of the ego and victory for it. In their influence 
 lies the reason for the exaggerated affectivity and lowered 
 threshold of stimulation in contrast with normal individuals. 
 It goes without saying that the neurotic character, too, develops 
 out of material already at hand, out of psychic impulses and 
 metamorphosing experiences of the somatic functions. 
 
 All these psychic dexterities, standing as they do in close 
 contact with the outside world, become neurotic only when an 
 inner want accentuates the craving for security which in turn 
 more effectively constructs and mobilizes the traits of character 
 only when the fictitious object of life operates more dogmatically 
 and strengthens those secondary guiding principles which are 
 in accord with the traits of character. It is then that the 
 hypostatization of the character sets in, its transformation from 
 a means to a goal leads to an independence of existence and a 
 sort of deification lends to it unchangeability and eternal worth. 
 The neurotic character is thus incapable of adjusting itself to 
 reality because it is always striving toward an impossible ideal. 
 It is a product and instrument of a cautious psyche which 
 strengthens its guiding principle for the purpose of ridding 
 itself of a feeling of inferiority, an attempt which is destined 
 to be wrecked as a consequence of inner contradiction, on the 
 barriers of civilization or on the rights of others. Analogous 
 to the groping gestures, pose in facing the rear, to the bodily 
 attitude in the act of aggression, like mimicry as a form of 
 expression and instrument of motility, so the traits of character, 
 especially the neurotic ones, serve as a psychic means and form 
 of expression for the purpose of entering into an account with 
 life, for the purpose of assuming an attitude, of gaining a. fixed 
 point in the vicissitudes of life, for the purpose of reaching that 
 security-giving goal, the feeling of superiority. 
 
 Thus we have unmasked the neurotic character as the servant 
 of an imaginary goal and have established its dependence upon 
 a final purpose. It has not sprung up independently out of any
 
 INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 sort of biological or constitutional primitive force, but has 
 received direction and motivation from the compensatory super- 
 structure and the schematic guiding principle. Its emergence 
 took place under the pressure of uncertainty, its tendency to 
 personify itself is the doubtful success of the craving for 
 security. This course of the neurotic character has received 
 through the positing of a final purpose its destination which is 
 the masculine main principle and thus every neurotic tendency 
 betrays to us by its direction that it is impregnated with the 
 masculine protest which seeks to make of it an unfailing 
 instrument for the purpose of excluding from experience every 
 permanent degradation. 
 
 In the practical part of this book will be shown by means 
 of a series of cases how the ' ' neurotic scheme ' ' calls forth 
 special psycho-pathological constellations, namely, through the 
 apperception of experiences by means of the neurotic character.
 
 Since the inception of the psychoanalytic movement its 
 students have shown a remarkable activity in applying the 
 principles of interpretation originally enunciated by Freud over 
 a wide field of human endeavor, and thus not only have the 
 neurotic and the psychotic come under the critical survey of 
 the analyst, but the whole course of cultural development has 
 been subjected to inquiry along these lines. In addition to 
 this growth in the extent of the movement it has manifested 
 what seems to me to be a very healthy tendency, namely, it 
 has shown an inclination to put forth suggestions as to new 
 methods of approach to the problems, represented here and 
 there by groups of workers who have tended to depart more or 
 less from the original formulations as laid down by Freud. One 
 of the most stimulating and valuable points of view which have 
 been developed in this way is t^at of Alfred Adler, of Vienna, 
 a translation of whose work on the characteristics of the neurotic 
 character is offered in the following pages. 
 
 The distinctive feature of Adler's approach to the problem 
 of the neurotic character traits is that it approaches from the 
 organic rather than from the functional side and in this way, I 
 think, affords a very valuable viewpoint because it tends to 
 bring together the organicist and the functionalist, who have 
 been too long separated by the misconception of irreconcilable 
 differences between mind and body. No small part of the 
 opposition to the whole psychological movement, as repre- 
 sented in psychoanalysis, has come frotn the" inability of the 
 man who has been brought up to look at things from the point 
 of view of the internist to be able to accept many of the clinical 
 observations which were offered and which tended to show the 
 
 zvii
 
 xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 development of clearly organic disorders as a result of a dis- 
 turbance in the psyche. Adler's approach to the psychoanalytic 
 problems is admirably calculated to break down such prejudices. 
 
 In this book, however, the working out of the significance 
 of the various neurotic character traits has been by ringing the 
 changes on the basic formulation of what Adler calls the 
 masculine protest. It is as if the neurotic said to himself, "I 
 wish to be a complete man." This protest arises on the basis 
 of a feeling of inferiority and an effort upon the part of the 
 neurotic to correct this feeling, which he does by so ordering 
 his life, so regulating his every act that he may find that security 
 of which the feeling of inferiority has robbed him. This is the 
 fictitious goal of the neurotic and the fundamental and ultimate 
 cause of his symptoms when he is no longer able to succeed, 
 when failure threatens in his efforts to deal with reality. 
 
 For Adler the neurosis or the psychosis is comparable to the 
 work of art, but has been built up in response to a fictitious 
 goal which collects and unites into a group those psychic 
 elements of which it can make use, collecting only those which 
 promise results in the effort at the attainment of security. The 
 attempt to attain to the maximation of his ego fails because 
 directed along a false path. The neurosis or psychosis is there- 
 fore a constructive creation, a compensation product, which, 
 however, fails because of its false direction. 
 
 All this is very psychological and does not bear out what I 
 have said about it to the effect that Adler's approach is from 
 the organic side. This particular book, however, stresses the 
 psychological formula. In his earlier work on organ inferiority 
 the organic basis of this psychological formulation is founded. 
 The feeling of inferiority, which underlies the masculine pro- 
 test, has its raison d'etre in an inferior organ. 
 
 In this work he has gone to considerable extent in working 
 over the psychological characteristics of persons who have had 
 demonstrably inferior organs, either clinically evident or 
 showing up at autopsy. From this work he believes he has
 
 INTRODUCTION xix 
 
 been able to show that the predominant traits of character are 
 the result of an effort on the part of the individual to overcome 
 a feeling of inferiority resulting from an inferior organ. Many 
 examples might be given, and in fact they come within the ken 
 of every one, which demonstrate the validity of this point of 
 view. A classical example is that of Demosthenes, a stam- 
 merer, who became the greatest orator of Greece. Adler 
 believes that defects of this sort nucleate, so to say, the feeling 
 of inferiority and force the individual to make supreme efforts 
 to overcome his particular defect and in this way, as a result 
 of these efforts, the inferior organ, by the development of a 
 highly differentiated nervous superstructure, may actually 
 become super-normal, a result which we are familiar with, for 
 example, in the remarkable facility with which blind people 
 gain information through their supersensitized touch organs. 
 In other words, to use the language of current psychoanalysis, 
 the organ inferiority is the basic factor of what the Freudians 
 refer to as the conflict. 
 
 These two works of Adler' s, therefore, give che organic basis 
 and the psychological elaboration of his opinions. The neurotic 
 constitution founds in an inferior organ, the inferior organ pro- 
 duces a feeling of inferiority, the feeling of inferiority the 
 masculine protest becomes the fictitious goal of the neurotic, 
 whose symptoms result from an effort to mould reality along 
 this fal^e pathway. 
 
 To those who follow Adler through the various ramifications 
 of his hypothesis, who read sympathetically his numerous case 
 reports which he offers to substantiate his views, there can be 
 no doubt but that the angle from which he looks at the problem 
 of the neuroses and the psychoses lets us see new aspects of 
 these phenomena which are exceedingly helpful to us in our 
 effort to grasp their meanings. It will also be perfectly evident 
 that the helpfulness of the Adler theories is in the orientation 
 which the physician gets towards the problem presented by the 
 patient, whether he approach it from the point of view of the
 
 xx INTRODUCTION 
 
 internist or of the psychologist. Adler's theories are admirably 
 calculated to help the internist to grasp the possibilities of 
 organ inferiority as they may affect the psyche and to help the 
 psychoanalyst to grasp the origin and meanings of the neurosis 
 as he sees it at the psychological level and perhaps to see more 
 clearly upon what his limitations are based. In any event the 
 two groups of physicians, heretofore separated all too far, both 
 in theory and practice, may find in Adler's views a common 
 ground upon which to meet. 
 
 WILLIAM A. WHITE. 
 
 SAINT ELIZABETH'S HOSPITAL, 
 WASHINGTON, D.C.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTKR PiCH 
 
 PREFACE T 
 
 THEORETICAL PART 
 INTRODUCTION . . vii 
 
 I The Origin and Development of the Feeling of 
 
 Inferiority and the Consequences Thereof . i 
 
 II Psychic Compensation and its Synthesis . . . 18 
 
 III The Accentuated Fiction as the Guiding Idea in the 
 
 Neurosis ... 26 
 
 PRACTICAL PART 
 
 I Avarice, Suspiciousness, Envy, Cruelty, The dero- 
 gatory critique of the neurotic, neurotic apper- 
 ception, senile neuroses, changes in the form and 
 intensity of the fiction. Somatic jargon (organ- 
 jargon) 61 
 
 II The neurotic extension of limits through asceticism, 
 love, desire to travel, crime. Simulation and 
 neurosis. Feeling of inferiority of the female 
 sex. Purpose of an ideal. Doubt as an 
 expression of psychic hermaphroditism. Mas- 
 turbation and neurosis. The incest-complex as 
 a symbol of craving for domi nancy. The nature 
 of the delirium. (Delirium use^d in the sense of 
 the French une delire). 100 
 
 HI Neurotic principles : sympathy, coquetry, narcis- 
 cism, Psychic hermaphroditism, Hallucinatory 
 security, Virtue, conscience, pedantry, fanatic 
 
 attachment to truth 118 
 
 xxi
 
 xxii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTBR PAGI 
 
 IV The derogatory tendency to disparage others ; 
 Obstinacy and wildness ; The sexual relations of 
 neurotics as a means of comparison ; Symbolic 
 emasculation ; Feeling of being belittled ; 
 Equality to man as a life-plan ; Simulation and 
 neurosis ; Substitute for masculinity ; Impatience ; 
 Discontent ; Inaccessibility 134 
 
 V Cruelty. Conscience. Perversion and neurosis 155 
 
 VI The antithesis above-beneath, Choice of a pro- 
 fession, Somnambulism, Antithesis in thought, 
 Elevation of the personality through the dis- 
 paragement of others, Jealousy, Neurotic auxili- 
 aries, Authoritativeness, Thinking in antithesis 
 and the masculine protest, Dilatory attitude and 
 marriage, The tendency upward as a symbol of 
 life, Compulsion to masturbation, The neurotic 
 striving for knowledge 160 
 
 VII Punctuality, The will to be first, Homosexuality 
 and perversion as a symbol, Modesty and 
 exhibitionism, Constancy t and inconstancy, 
 Jealousy 173 
 
 VIII Fear of the partner ; The ideal in the neurosis ; 
 Insomnia and compulsion to sleep ; Neurotic 
 comparison of man and woman ; Forms of the 
 fear of the wife 184 
 
 IX Self-reproaches, self-torture, Contrition and 
 asceticism, Flagellation, Neuroses in children ; 
 Suicide and suicidal ideas 198 
 
 X The neurotic's esprit de famille, Refractoriness 
 and obedience, Silence and loquaciousness, The 
 tendency to contrariness 210 
 
 Conclusion . . 214 
 
 Author's Contributions referred to in this book 216
 
 THE 
 NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE FEELING OF INFERIORITY 
 AND THE CONSEQUENCES THEREOF 
 
 THE facts established through my study of somatic inferiority 
 (vide Studie, I.e.) concerned themselves with the causes, the 
 behaviour, the manifestations and altered mode of activity of 
 inferiorily developed organs and has led me to assume the idea 
 of " compensation through the central nervous system " with 
 which were linked certain discussions of the subject of 
 psychogenesis. 
 
 There came to light a remarkable relationship between somatic 
 inferiority and psychic overcompensation, so that I gained a 
 fundamental viewpoint, namely, that the realization of somatic 
 inferiority by the individual becomes for him a permanent 
 impelling force for the development of his psyche. 
 
 Physiologically there results from this a reenforcement of the 
 nerve tracts, both quantitatively and qualitatively, whereby a 
 concomitant original inferiority of these tracts is enabled to reveal 
 in a composite picture its tectonic and functional peculiarities. 
 
 'the psychic phase of this compensation and overcompensation 
 can only be disclosed by means of psychologic investigation and 
 analysis. 
 
 As I have given a detailed description of organ-inferiority as 
 the etiology of the neuroses in my former contributions, 
 especially in the " Studie," in the " Aggressionstrieb," in 
 ' Psychischen Hermaphroditismus," in the "' Neurotischen 
 Disposition " and in the ' Psychischen Behandlung der 
 Trigeminusneuralgie," I may in the present description confine 
 myself to those points which promise a further elucidation of the 
 relationship between somatic-inferiSrity and psychic 
 compensation and which are of importance in the study of the 
 neurotic character. 
 
 Summarizing, I lay stress on the fact that organ-inferiority, as 
 described by me, includes the incompleteness in such organs, the 
 frequently demonstrable arrests of development or functional 
 maturity, the functional failure in the postfetal period and the
 
 2 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 fetal character of organs and systems of organs ; on the other 
 hand the accentuation of their developmental tendency in the 
 presence of compensatory and coordinating forces and the 
 frequent bringing about of increased functional activity. One 
 may easily detect in every instance from observation of the child 
 and from the anamneses of the adult that the possession of 
 definitely inferior organs is reflected upon the psyche and in 
 such a way as to lower the self-esteem, to raise the child's psycho- 
 logical uncertainty ; but it is just out of this lowered self-esteem 
 that there arises the struggle for self-assertion which assumes 
 forms much more intense than one would expect. As the 
 compensated inferior organ gains in the scope of activity both 
 qualitatively and quantitatively and acquires protective means 
 from itself as well as from the entire organism, the predispo'sed 
 child in his sense of inferiority selects out of his psychic resources 
 expedients for the raising of his own value whch are frequently 
 striking in nature and among which may be noted as occupying 
 the most prominent places those of a neurotic and psychotic 
 character. 
 
 Ideas concerning innate inferiority, predisposition, and 
 constitutional weakness may be found even in the very beginnings 
 of scientific medicine. In leaving out of discussion here many 
 noteworthy contributions, although they frequently contained 
 fundamental viewpoints, we do so solely because the relationship 
 between organic and psychic disease states, albeit dwelt upon, 
 was never explained. In this class belong all viewpoints of 
 pathology which are founded upon a general assumption of 
 degeneracy. Stiller's theory of the asthenic habitus goes 
 considerably further and almost attempts to establish etiological 
 relationships. Anton's compensation theory confines itself all 
 too closely to correlation systems within tne eternal nervous 
 system ; nevertheless, he, as well as his talented pupil, Otto 
 Gross, have made noteworthy attempts to bring about on this 
 basis a clearer understanding of certain psychotic states. 
 Bouchard's bradytrophy, the exudative diathesis described by 
 Ponflick, Escherich, Czerny, Moro and Striimpel, and interpreted 
 by them as a disease-producing diathesis, Comby's infantile 
 arthritism. Kreibich's angio-neurotic diathesis, Heubner's 
 lymphatism, Poltauf's status thymico-lymphaticus, Escherich's 
 spasmophilia and Hess-Eppinger's vagotonia are successful 
 attempts of recent decades to describe disease states associated 
 with congenital inferiority. 
 
 All of them refer to heredity and infantile characteristics. But, 
 although the vague and inconstant limits of the predispositions 
 in question are emphasized by the authors themselves, the 
 impression is not to be ignored that certain conspicuous types
 
 THE FEELING OF INFERIORITY 3 
 
 have been isolated which in the course of time will be brought 
 within one large group, namely, that of the minus-variants. Of 
 extreme importance for the understanding of congenital inferiority 
 and predisposition to disease are the researches into the glands 
 of internal secretion in which morphologic as well as functional 
 deviations have been discovered, e.g., the thyroids, the para- 
 thyroids, the sex glands, the chromaffin system and the 
 hypophysis. Considered from the standpoint of their organ- 
 inferiorities the orientation of the composite picture becomes 
 easier and the relationship to compensation and correlation in 
 the economy of the entire body becomes clearer. Among the 
 remaining investigators who took as the basis for their views 
 not a primum-movens,but a combined influence of various organ- 
 inferiorities and mutual interaction of the same, Martius, above 
 all, must be mentioned. In my contribution on " The Inferiority 
 of Organs " (1907), the idea of the coordination of the coexisting 
 inferiorities likewise appears prominently. The fact is not to 
 be lightly evaluated that the simultaneously existing organ-in- 
 feriorities stand in relation to one another as if united by a secret 
 bond. 
 
 Bartel likewise has extended his theories concerning the 
 status thymico-lymphaticus, which represents a considerable 
 advance in science, to such limits as to invade the boundaries of 
 the systems of other authors. Kyrle, too, supporting himself by 
 the newly discovered pathological findings, reached quite 
 independently conclusions identical with mine, namely, that the 
 coordination of the inferiority of the sexual apparatus with other 
 organ-inferiorities, though frequently only slightly developed, is 
 nevertheless so often found to exist that I must maintain that 
 there exist no organ-inferiorities without an accompanying defect 
 in the sexual apparatus. 
 
 Because of some future considerations I must also mention 
 certain of the views of Freud who assumes a sexual constitution 
 as the basis of the neuroses and psychoses, under which term he 
 understands a qualitatively and quantitatively varying arrange- 
 ment of partial sex impulses. This assumption simply corresponds 
 to a postulate advanced by him for his other views. The 
 development of perverse inclinations and their unsuccessful 
 repression into the unconscious furnishes, according to him, the 
 picture of the neurosis, and in itself forms the primary cause for 
 the neurotic psyche. We shall see from our considerations that 
 perversion so far as it reaches development in the neurosis and 
 psychosis is not dependent upon a connate impulse, but that it 
 arises from the striving towards a fictitious goal in connection 
 with which the repression takes place as a by-product under the 
 pressure of the self-consciousness.
 
 That which, however, is to be taken cognizance of biologically 
 in an originally abnormal sexual conduct, namely, the greater or 
 lesser sensitiveness, the heightened or lowered reflex activity, 
 the functional valency as well as the compensatory psychic super- 
 structure indicates directly as I have shown in my " Studie " a 
 congenital defect of the sexual organ. 
 
 Concerning the nature of the predisposition to disease 
 dependent upon organ-inferiority there exists a unanimity of 
 opinion. The standpoint assumed by me ("Studie," I.e.) 
 emphasizes more strongly than does that of other authors, the 
 assurance of an adjustment through compensation. With the 
 release from the maternal organism there begins for these inferior 
 organs or systems of organs the struggle with the outside world, 
 which must of necessity ensue and which is initiated with greater 
 vehemence than in the more normally developed apparatus. 
 This struggle is accompanied by greater mortality and morbidity 
 rates. This fetal character, however, at the same time furnishes 
 the increased possibility for compensation and over- 
 compensation, increases the adaptability to ordinary and extra- 
 ordinary resistances and assures the attainment of new and 
 higher forms, new and higher accomplishments. 
 
 Thus the inferior organs furnish the inexhaustible material 
 by means of which the organism continuously seeks to reach a 
 better accord with the altered conditions of life through 
 adaptation, repudiation, and improvement. Its hypervalency is 
 deeply rooted in the compulsion of a constant training, in the 
 variability and greater tendency to growth, frequently associated 
 with inferior organs, and in the more facile evolution of the 
 appertaining nervous and psychic complexes, on account of the 
 introspection and concentration bestowed on them. The evils of 
 constitutional inferiority manifest themselves in the most varied 
 diseases and predispositions to disease. 
 
 At times various somatic or mental disabilities develop, at 
 other times an over-irritability of the nerve tracts, then again 
 clumsiness of manner, ungainliness, precocity. A host of child- 
 hood defects cooperate with the predisposition to disease and 
 form a close union, as I have shown, with the organic or 
 functional inferiority. Strabismus, anomalies of refraction of 
 the visual apparatus or photophobia with its train of symptoms, 
 deaf mutism, stuttering and other defects of speech, difficulty of 
 hearing, the organic and psychic defects which go with adenoid 
 vegetations, the complete aprosexia, the frequent affections of 
 the sensory organs, of the respiratory and digestive tracts, 
 striking ugliness and deformities, peripheral stigmata of 
 degeneration and naevi which may indicate more profound organ- 
 inferiorities (Adler, Schmidt). Hydrocephalus, rickets,
 
 THE FEELING OF INFERIORITY 5 
 
 anomalies of stature as scoliosis, round shoulders, genu varus 
 or valgus, pes varus or valgus, a protracted incontinence of 
 faeces and urine, malformations of the genitals, results of small 
 arteries (Virchow) and the numerous consequences of defects of 
 the internal secretory glands as described by Wagner v. 
 Yauregg, Frankl v. Hochwert, Chvostek, Bartel, Escherich, 
 Pineles and others, all of which reveal in their great abundance, 
 in the variety of their combinations, the large sphere of disease 
 manifestations as disclosed to the physician through an under- 
 standing of organ-inferiority. It was especially pediatrists and 
 pathologists who first noted these relationships. But the concept 
 of degeneracy has likewise become of increasing importance to 
 neurology and psychiatry. The line of advance stretches all the 
 way from Morel's theory of the stigmata of degeneration to the 
 consideration of nervous diseases from the standpoint of an 
 inferior constitution. We need only consider the statistical study 
 of Thiemich-Birks and Potpeschnigg's contributions (cited by 
 Gott) concerning the fate of children who were treated in the 
 first and second years of their lives for tetanoid convulsions. Of 
 these children only a small number became entirely well. In most 
 instances there were found later definite signs of somatic and 
 psychic inferiority, psychopathic and neuropathic characteristics. 
 As such, these authors mention infantilism, squints, difficulty of 
 hearing, speech defects, feeble-mindedness, disturbances of 
 sleep, pavor nocturnus, somnambulism, enuresis, exaggerated 
 reflexes, tics, paroxysms of rage, truancy, timidity, pathological 
 lying and habitual fugues. 
 
 Gott as well as other authors reached the conclusion that in 
 spasmophilic children there exists a predisposition to severe 
 neurotic and psychopathic states. Czerny and others maintain 
 that a similar relationship may be found in children suffering 
 from gastro-intestinal disorders. 
 
 Bartel was able to discover among suicides a considerable 
 preponderance of the status thymicolymphaticus, especially a 
 hypoplasia of the sexual organs. The existence of somatic 
 inferiority among juvenile suicides was shown by me, Netslitzky 
 and others. Frankl v. Hochwert described states of excitement, 
 irritability and hallucinatory confusion, in tetany. French writers 
 (cited from Pfaundler) ascribe to the torpid habitus of children, 
 moroseness, indolence, sleepiness, distractibility, stupidity and 
 phlegmatism, to the erotistic type, restlessness, liveliness, 
 irritability, precocity, moodiness, affectivity, unsociability, 
 peculiarity of disposition and one-sided development. Pfaundler 
 emphasizes the harassing, tormenting and painful influences to 
 which defective children are subject as a result of skin eruptions, 
 colic, disturbances of sleep and functional anomalies. Czerny,
 
 6 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 who called attention to the relationship between intestinal 
 disturbances of children and neuroses, emphasizes especially the 
 importance of psychotherapy in children who became neurotic in 
 the course of constitutional diseases. Only recently Hamburger 
 has thrown light upon the nature of the ambitions in neurotic 
 children, while Stransky showed the relation between myopathy 
 and psychic manifestations. 
 
 These brief references give us an insight into the attempts of 
 the present day scientific trends to emphasize and maintain the 
 relation between psychic anomalies in childhood and 
 constitutional inferiority. The first comprehensive fundamental 
 views concerning this relation were published by me in the 
 
 Studie," wherein I showed how the inferior organ constantly 
 endeavors to make a very special demand upon the interest and 
 attention. I was able to prove in this and other contributions to 
 what extent inferiority of an organ constantly shows its influence 
 on the psyche in action, in thought, in dreams, in the choice of 
 a vocation and in artistic inclinations and capabilities. 1 
 
 The existence of an inferior organ demands a kind of training 
 on the part of the appertaining nerve tracts and on the part 01 
 the psychic superstructure which would render the latter active 
 in a compensatory manner when a possibility for compensation 
 exists. In such an event, however, we must likewise find a 
 reenforcement in the psychic superstructure of certain allied 
 points of contact which the inferior organ has with the outside 
 world. 
 
 To the originally inferior organ of vision corresponds a 
 reenforced visual psyche ; a defective digestive apparatus will 
 be accompanied by a greater psychic capability in all nutritional 
 directions, as gourmondism, acquisitiveness, and where it 
 concerns money equivalents, stinginess and greed, will be 
 manifested to an extraordinary degree. 
 
 The ability of the compensating nervous system will manifest 
 itself through qualified reflexes (Adler) and conditioned reflexes 
 (Bickel) by means of sensitive reactions and exaggerated 
 sensitiveness. The compensating psychic superstructure will 
 bring about an accentuated manifestation of the psychic 
 phenomena of presentiments and forethoughts and their effective 
 factors such as memory, intuition, introspection, analysis, 
 attention, hypersensitiveness, in brief, of all the fortifying 
 psychic forces. To these reassuring forces belong also the 
 fixation and accentuation of those traits which form useful 
 
 1 See also Adler. " The Theory of Organ-inferiority and Its Significance fot 
 Philosophy and Psychology." Address in the Philosophic Society of the Vienna 
 University, 1908, and J. Keich, "Art and the Eye,*' Oeaterreichische Kundschau, 
 1908.
 
 THE FEELING OF INFERIORITY 7 
 
 guiding principles in the chaos of life, thus diminishing the 
 feeling of uncertainty. 
 
 The neurotic individual is derived from this sphere of 
 uncertainty and in his childhood is under the pressure of his 
 constitutional inferiority. In most cases this may be easily 
 detected. In other cases the patient behaves as if he were 
 inferior. In all cases, however, his striving and thinking are 
 built upon the foundation of the feeling of inferiority. This feeling 
 must always be understood in a relative sense, as the outgrowth 
 of the individual's relation to his environment or to his strivings. 
 He has constantly been drawing comparisons between himself 
 and others, at first with his father, as the strongest in the family, 
 sometimes with his mother, his brothers and sisters, later with 
 every person with whom he comes into contact. Upon closer 
 analysis, one finds that every child, especially the one less 
 favored by nature, has made a careful estimate of his own value. 
 The constitutionally inferior child, the unattractive child, the 
 child too strictly reared, the pampered child, all of whom we 
 may align as being predisposed to the development of a neurosis, 
 seek more diligently than does the normal child to avoid the evils 
 of their existence. They soon long to banish into a distant 
 future the fate which confronts them. In order to bring this 
 about, he, the defective child, requires an expedient which 
 enables him to keep before his eyes a fixed picture in the 
 vicissitudes of life and the uncertainty of his existence. He turns 
 fo the construction of this expedient. He sums up in his self- 
 estimation all evils, considers himself incompetent, inferior, 
 degraded, insecure. And in order to find a guiding principle he 
 takes as a second fixed point his father or mother who endowed 
 him with all the attributes of life. 
 
 And in adjusting this guiding principle to his thinking and 
 acting, in his endeavors to raise himself to the level of his (all- 
 powerful) father, even to the point of surpassing the latter, he 
 has quite removed himself with one mighty bound from reality 
 and is suspended in the meshes of a fiction. 
 
 Similar observations may also be made in a lesser degree 
 among normal children. They too desire to be great, to be 
 strong, to rule as the father, and are guided by this objective. 
 Their conduct, their psychical and physical attitude is constantly 
 directed towards this goal, so that one may almost detect a true 
 imitation, an identical psychic gesture. 
 
 Example becomes the guide to the " masculine " goal, so long 
 as the masculinity is not doubted. Should the idea of " the 
 masculine goal " become unacceptable to girls, then there takes 
 place a change of form of this " masculine " guiding principle. 
 One can scarcely evaluate this phenomenon in a more correct
 
 8 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 way than by assuming that the necessary denial of the 
 gratification of certain organic functions forces the child from the 
 first hour of his extrauterine life into assuming a combative 
 attitude towards his environment. From this result tensions and 
 accentuations of certain organically acquired abilities c'est la 
 guerre ! as I have described them in my " Studie " and the 
 " Aggressionstrieb." 
 
 In the temporary denials and discomforts which the first years 
 of childhood bring with them, one must seek the impulse for the 
 development of a host of common traits of character. Above all 
 the child learns, in his weakness and helplessness, in his anxiety 
 and manifold shortcomings to value an expedient which assures 
 him of the help and support of his relatives and guarantees their 
 concern. In his negativistic behavior, in his obstinacy and 
 refractoriness, he often finds a gratification of his consciousness 
 of his own powers, thus ridding himself of the painful realization 
 of his inferiority. Both mainsprings of the child's behavior, 
 obstinacy and obedience (Adler, ' Trotz and Gehorsam ") 
 guarantee to him an accentuation of his feeling of ego-conscious- 
 ness and assist him in groping his way towards the masculine 
 goal or, as we wished to adduce before, towards the equivalent of 
 this. The awakening self-consciousness is always being 
 suppressed in constitutionally inferior children, their self-esteem 
 is lowered because their capacity for gratification is much more 
 limited. 
 
 Let us consider the numerous restrictions, the courses of 
 treatment and the sufferings of children ill with gastro-intestinal 
 derangements ; the effeminacy and fastidiousness seen in the 
 anaemic, weakly children suffering from respiratory disorders ; 
 the itching and tortures of those afflicted with prurigo and other 
 exanthemata ; the many degrading defects of childhood ; the fear 
 of contamination on the part of the parents of such children 
 which often leads, as do the frequent difficulties in their bringing 
 up in their school progress as well as the stubbornness of these 
 children to an isolation and misunderstanding on the part of 
 their comrades and within the family circle. In the same manner 
 the self-consciousness is injured by rachitic clumsiness, 
 congenital obesity and the lesser grades of mental backwardness. 
 The child usually explains his difficulty by the assumption of a 
 neglect, a slight by the parents, especially as it occurs in later 
 children or in the youngest, occasionally even in the first born. 
 This hostile aggression, reenforced and accentuated in 
 constitutionally inferior children, becomes confluent with his 
 effort to become as great and strong as the strongest and thrusts 
 forward activities which lie at the bottom of the infantile 
 
 * Adler, " Der Aggressionstrieb im Lichen und in der Neurose," 1. c.
 
 ambition. All later trains of thought and activities of the neurotic 
 are constructed similarly with his childhood wish phantasy. The 
 " recurrence of the identical " (Nietzsche) is nowhere so well 
 illustrated as in the neurotic. His feeling of inferiority in the 
 presence of men and things, his uncertainty in the world force 
 him to an accentuation of his guiding principles. To these he 
 clings throughout life in order to orient himself in existence by 
 means of his beliefs and superstitions, in order to overcome his 
 feeling of inferiority, in order to rescue his sense of ego- 
 consciousness, in order to possess a subterfuge to avoid a much- 
 dreaded degradation. Never has he succeeded so well in this as 
 during his childhood. His guiding fiction which makes him 
 behave as if he surpassed all others may therefore also bring 
 about a form of conduci: identical with that of the child. 
 
 In such manner then the infantile gratifications become criteria 
 and thus strengthen the guiding principle. It would be amiss to 
 assume that only the neurotic exhibits such "guiding principles." 
 The healthy individual would also have to do without orientation 
 in the world if he did not arrange the cosmic picture and his 
 experience according to some imaginary fiction. Tn hours of 
 uncertainty these fictions come to the fore more distinctly and 
 become the imperative influences dominating beliefs, ideals and 
 free will ; moreover they also act secretly in the unconscious like 
 all other psychic mechanisms whose verbal image they represent 
 in conscious thought. Logically considered they are to be 
 regarded as abstractions, as simplifications, which have for their 
 object the solution of life's difficulties in a manner analogous to 
 that required for the simplest experiences. The original type 
 of these simplest experiences, the mesh work of apperceptive 
 memory, we found in studying the child's efforts to solve his 
 difficulties. In dreams this form of apperception is still more 
 obvious ; we shall consider this subject later. 
 
 The neurotic carries his feeling of inferiority constantly with 
 him. Hence his method of thinking by analogy is more strongly 
 and clearly developed. 
 
 His " misoneism " (Lombroso), his fear of the new, of 
 decisions and tests, which is usually present, originates from the 
 lack of analogy for these new conditions. He has chained himself 
 so strongly to guiding principles, taken them so literally and 
 sought to realize them only, that unconsciously he has become 
 incapable of proceeding freely and without prejudice to the 
 solution of real problems. Even the necessary limitations 
 imposed by reality, where matters clash for want of room, do 
 not impel him to reject his fiction because he is forced to suspend 
 it, but only to alter it. Still more consequentially the psychotic 
 patient strives to bring about a realization of his fiction. The
 
 io THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 neurotic in real life flounders in his self-created guiding principle 
 and thus arrives at a splitting of the personality in seeking to do 
 justice to both the real and the imaginary requirements. The 
 form and content of the neurotic " guiding principle " originate 
 from the impressions of the child who feels himself neglected. 
 These impressions, which of necessity develop out of an original 
 sense of inferiority, call forth an aggressive attitude in life, the 
 object of which is the overcoming of the uncertainty. In this 
 attitude of aggression all those efforts of the child which tend 
 toward an elevation of his feeling of ego-consciousness find their 
 place, successful efforts which prompt a repetition, unsuccessful 
 ones which serve as mementoes for those goal-preparing 
 tendencies developed out of a conspicuous organic disease and 
 which express themselves in a mass of psychic predispositions, 
 as well as those observed in others. All the phenomena of the 
 neuroses originate from these predisposing means which tend 
 toward the attainment of the final object, masculinity. They are 
 mental predispositions always ready to initiate the struggle for 
 ego-consciousness, they obey the command of the guiding 
 principle which seeks to realize itself through the channels of 
 reactions lying ready at hand in childhood. In the developed 
 neuroses the fiction stimulates all these predispositions where- 
 upon they comport themselves as independent final purposes. 
 Anxiety, which formerly sought to furnish assurance against 
 being alone, against underestimation, against the feeling of 
 insignificance, is hypostasized ; the compulsion, originally in the 
 sense of the fiction to preserve a manly behavior, becomes 
 independent ; in fainting, in paralysis, in the hysterical pains and 
 functional disturbances, the pseudo-masochistic method of the 
 patient is symbolically represented, in which he seeks to attract 
 attention or to avoid a decision which is feared. The important 
 role played by the neurotic uncertainty, as I have recognized and 
 described it, leads to that sort of strengthening of the predis- 
 position and its consequences which makes the originally 
 unimportant phenomena of a functional nature assume the most 
 astonishing exaggeration as soon as the inner exigency demands 
 it. 
 
 The gaze of the neurotic, on account of this feeling of 
 uncertainty, is directed far into the future. All present existence 
 is to him only a preparation. Moreover this circumstance is 
 largely responsible for encouraging his dreaming proclivities and 
 estranging him from the world of reality. As with religious 
 persons his kingdom is not of this world and like them he 
 cannot free himself from his self-created deity, the exaltation of 
 his ego-consciousness. A host of general traits of character of 
 necessity develop in an individual thus turned away from reality.
 
 THE FEELING OF INFERIORITY n 
 
 First of all must be mentioned the deep reverence in which are 
 held the expedients which subserve the fiction. An individual of 
 this type will as a rule manifest a carefully adjusted mode of 
 behavior, exactness and pedantry, first of all, in order not to 
 increase the great difficulties of life and secondly and principally, 
 in order to distinguish himself from others in dress, in work, in 
 morals, and thus acquire for himself a feeling of superiority. This 
 exaggerated trait of character usually serves also to bring him 
 face to face with the enemy, to furnish the opportunity tor a 
 maturing of such situations as will bring him into conflict with 
 his environment so that he finds occasion for giving vent to 
 reproaches. At the same time these constant reproaches serve 
 to keep alive his feeling, his attention, to the fact that people are 
 neglecting him, that they are not taking him into account. This 
 trait may be found even in the childhood of certain neurotics 
 where it serves the purpose of putting some one at their service, 
 say the mother, who must take care of their clothes every 
 evening for a considerable length of time in a definitely prescribed 
 manner. In a similarly remarkable manner, anxiety and timidity 
 gain expression and I must adhere to the opinion, in spite of all 
 other attempts at explanation, that the psychic phenomena of 
 anxiety originate from an hallucinatory excitation of a pre- 
 disposition which in childhood developed automatically from 
 small beginnings as soon as a bodily injury was threatened, and 
 which in later life, especially in the neuroses, is conditioned by 
 the final goal, namely, to escape a lowering of ego-consciousness 
 and to make oneself of service to others. It is easy to understand 
 how all wish-phantasies may attain an enormous degree, just as 
 attainment seldom brings with it satisfaction. One may assume 
 without fear of contradiction that a neurotic " wishes to have 
 everything." This desire coincides with his " guiding fiction 
 to become potent. If he draws back in horror before under- 
 takings which promise advantage, as he usually does before 
 crimes and immoral acts, it is because he entertains fears for the 
 safety of his ego-consciousness. For this reason he recoils in 
 horror from lying, but in order to proceed with certainty and in 
 order to preserve steadfastness he may harbor the thought that 
 he is capable of great evils and crimes. That this obstinate 
 pursuit of the fiction implies a social injury is obvious. 
 
 The egoism of neurotics, their envy, their greed, frequently 
 unconscious, their tendency to undervalue men and things, 
 originate in their feeling of uncertainty and serve the purpose of 
 assuring them, of guiding them and of spurring them on. As 
 they are enveloped in phantasy and live in the future, their 
 preoccupation is not to be wondered at. The variability of 
 temper depends on the play of the phantasy which at one time
 
 12 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 awakens painful memories, at another fills with the enthusiasm of 
 an expected triumph, analogous to the vacillations and doubts of 
 the neurotic. In the same way special traits of character which 
 are not foreign to the normal psyche appear to be directed by the 
 hypnotizing goal and strengthened in this direction. Sexual 
 precocity and falling in love are forms of expression for the 
 heightened tendency to captivate. Masturbation, impotence and 
 perverse excitements lie in the direction of the guiding line of 
 fear of a partner and fear of separation, along with which sadism 
 represents the desire to play the " wild man " in order to over- 
 come the feeling of inferiority. As the driving force and goal of 
 the neurosis developing out of a constitutional inferiority, we 
 have up to this point regarded the accentuation of ego-conscious- 
 ness which constantly strives for expression with especial force. 
 In doing so we have not ignored the fact that this is only a mode 
 of expression of a striving and yearning whose beginnings are 
 deeply rooted in human nature. The form of expression itself 
 and the accentuation of this guiding thought, which may also be 
 expressed by Nietzsche's " will to power," teaches us that there 
 is an especial compensatory force at play, whose object it is to 
 put an end to the inner uncertainty. By means of an unyielding 
 formula, which usually presses to the surface of consciousness, 
 the neurotic seeks to obtain the fulcrum whereby to lift the 
 world off its hinges. It matters but little how much of this driving 
 force becomes consciously known to the neurotic. The mechanism 
 itself he never understands, neither is he able to explain and 
 break down unaided his mode of apperception by means of 
 analogy and the conduct resulting therefrom. This can only 
 succeed by means of an analytic process which permits us to 
 divine and understand his infantile analogy by means of 
 abstraction, reduction and simplification. In this way one finds 
 regularly apparent that the neurotic always apperceives after 
 the analogy of a contrast, indeed, that usually he only recognizes 
 and gives value to relations of contrast. This primitive mode of 
 orientation in life which corresponds to the antithesis as set 
 forth in the categories of Aristotle and to opposites in the 
 Pythagorean table originates also in the feeling of uncertainty 
 and illustrates a simple device of logic. What I have described 
 as polar, hermaphroditic opposites, Lombroso as bipolar, 
 Bleuler as ambivalent, leads to this same method of apperception 
 which works according to the principal of opposites. One should 
 not fall into the common error of regarding this as an essence of 
 things, but must recognize in it the primitive method ot 
 procedure which measures a thing, a force, or an event, by an 
 opposite which is fitted to it. 
 
 The further the analysis proceeds the more distinct appears
 
 THE FEELING OF INFERIORITY 13 
 
 one of these opposites, the original form of which we have 
 established as the feeling of inferiority and the maximation of 
 the ego-consciousness. This only agrees with the primitive 
 efforts of the child to orient himself in the world and to obtain 
 certainty when tangible antitheses are encountered. Among 
 these I have regularly found the following : (i). Above beneath. 
 (2). Masculine feminine. One furthermore always finds an 
 arrangement of memories, feelings and actions according to this 
 type of antitheses in the sense the patient takes them (not always 
 in the generally accepted sense), i.e., inferior beneath, 
 feminine ; powerful above, masculine. This grouping is 
 important for it renders possible, because it can be conserved or 
 falsified at will, the distortion of the cosmic picture, whereby the 
 neurotic can always hold fast to his standpoint, namely, that of 
 a neglected person, by rearrangement, by accentuation or by 
 arbitrary changes. It lies in the nature of things that in this 
 process his constitutional inferiority comes to his assistance as 
 well as his constantly increasing aggressive environment which 
 is continually set into activity by the neurotic conduct of the 
 patient., 
 
 At times the neurotic is not fully conscious of his supposed or 
 real defeat. It is then always found that it is his pride which 
 prevents him from recognizing it. Nevertheless he acts s if he 
 had appreciated the new degradation and the riddle of a nervous 
 attack is often only solved when this fact is understood. The 
 revelation of such repressed feelings is not of much therapeutic 
 value, at least, it can only be of value when by means of it the 
 connection with the infantile mechanism which is responsible for 
 the predisposition to the attack becomes apparent to the patient. 
 At times there results even a seeming relapse which may be 
 explained by the fact that the patient directs his predispositions 
 against the physician because the latter has injured his feelings 
 of personal worth. 
 
 There still remains to be answered one important question. 
 On what does the patient base his feeling of inferiority? 
 Inasmuch as the patient is only able to detect the possibility of 
 relationship between disease predispositions and those organ- 
 inferiorities which force themselves upon his attention he is 
 constantly in the path of conjecture. He will for example not 
 seek the reason for his inferiorities in the disturbances of the 
 secretions of the glands, but will blame in a general way his 
 weakness, his stunted growth, his sham education, the small size 
 or anomalies of his genitals, lack of complete virility, his 
 effeminacy, the feminine traits of a physical or psychic nature, 
 his parents, his heredity ; at times only lack of love, bad training, 
 deprivation in childhood, etc. And what about his neurosis, the
 
 14 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 neurosis in the sense we understand it ? We shall find that the 
 accentuation of his predispositions on an analogic, childish basis, 
 that his symbolized thoughts, his preparations for feelings, and 
 results used by him as means of expression will spring into action 
 as soon as the patient fears or experiences a set-back. Being 
 from a certain situation, so to speak, inoculated with the feelings 
 of inferiority, he exhibits an anaphylactic reaction against 
 depreciation of his ego-consciousness and finds in irresolution, 
 in vacillation, in doubt and in skepticism, as well as in the 
 breaking out of a neurosis or a psychosis, a refuge and security 
 against the greatest evil that could befall him, namely, the 
 conjuring up of a distinct realization of his inferiority. In line 
 with this the typical causes of the onset of a neurosis and 
 psychosis are easy to divine and to prove : 
 
 1. The desire for knowledge of sex differences, the uncertainty 
 concerning his own sexual role, may be looked upon as causes 
 of the arousing of the feeling of inferiority. Likewise the 
 realization and grouping of traits believed to be feminine, the 
 vacillating, doubting, hermaphrodistic apperception and 
 hermaphrodistic predisposition. Predisposition to and psychic 
 gestures of the feminine role always entail greater passivity, 
 anxious anticipation, etc., but call forth the masculine protest, 
 stronger emotivity. (Heymanns) 
 
 2. Onset of menstruation. 
 
 3. Epoch of menstrual activity. 
 
 4. Epoch of sexual activity. 
 
 5. The stage of fitness for marriage. 
 
 6. Pregnancy. 
 
 7. Puerperium. 
 
 8. Climacteric, reduction of potency. 
 Examinations, choice of profession. 
 Danger of death. 
 
 All these epochs call forth heightening of or changes in the 
 preparatory attitude toward life. The bond common to them all 
 which holds them together is the expectation of new events 
 which imply for the neurotic new struggles, new dangers of a set- 
 back. He proceeds therefore immediately to intensive protective 
 measures, the most extreme of which is suicide. Outbreaks of 
 neuroses and psychoses represent accentuations of his neurotic 
 preparedness, predispositions in which are always found 
 prominent traits of character, calculated to guarantee this sort of 
 security, such as exaggeration of hypersensitiveness, greater 
 carefulness, irritability, pedantry, obstinacy, stinginess, dis- 
 content, impatience, and many others. As these traits are easily 
 demonstrable, they are especially suitable for determining the 
 existence of a psychogenic disorder.
 
 THE FEELING OF INFERIORITY 15 
 
 We arrived at the conclusion in the foregoing that it is the 
 feeling of uncertainty which forces the neurotic to a stronger 
 attachment to fictions, guiding principles, ideals, dogmas. These 
 guiding principles float before the normal person also. Buttohim 
 they are a figure of speech, a device for distinguishing above from 
 below, left from right, right from wrong, and he is not so involved 
 in prejudice that when called upon to make a decision he cannot 
 free himself from the abstract and reckon with reality. Just as 
 little do the phenomena of life resolve themselves for him into 
 strict antitheses, but on the contrary he is striving constantly to 
 keep his thoughts and actions detached from this unreal principle 
 and to bring them into harmony with reality. That he uses 
 artifices at all as a means to an end arises from the usefulness of 
 the fiction in casting up the accounts of life. The neurotic, 
 however, like the child devoid of contact with life and like the 
 primitive understanding of early man catches at the straw of his 
 fiction, hypostasizes it, arbitrarily ascribes to it a real value and 
 seeks to realize it in the world. For this the fiction is unfitted, 
 still more unfitted when, as in the psychoses, it is elevated to a 
 dogma or anthropomorphosed. The symbol as a " modus 
 dicendi " dominates our speech and thought. The neurotic takes 
 it literally and in the psychosis the realization is attempted. In 
 my contributions to the theory of the neuroses this point is 
 constantly emphasized and maintained. A fortunate circumstance 
 made me acquainted with Vaihinger's ingenious " Philosophy 
 of ,the ' As If ' ' (Berlin, 1911), a work in which I found the 
 trains of thought suggested to me by the neurosis set forth as 
 valid for general scientific thought. 
 
 After we have established that the fictitious guiding goal of the 
 neurotic consists of an unlimited heightening of the ego- 
 consciousness which deteriorates into the " will to seem 
 (Nietzsche) we may proceed to a consideration of the abstract 
 conception of these problems of life. Inasmuch as in seeking the 
 sex differentiation the role of the male is given a decided 
 preference, the formal changes agreeing with the antithesis, 
 man-woman, begin at an early period and for the neurotic arises 
 the formula ' ' I must act as though I were a complete man (or 
 would become one)." The feeling of inferiority and its conse- 
 quences become identified with the feeling of effeminacy, the 
 compensatory pressure in the psychic superstructure impels 
 toward obtaining a guarantee that the manly r61e will be 
 preserved and the meaning of the neurosis assumes the form of 
 the antithetical, fundamental thought, " I am a woman and will 
 be a man." 
 
 This guiding final purpose supplies the psychic gestures and 
 predispositions necessary for this thought, but is expressed like-
 
 16 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 wise in the attitudes of the body and in mimicry. And with these 
 prepared gestures, of which the neurotic traits of character are 
 to be considered a heralding, the neurotic confronts persons and 
 life, anxiously and with strained attention asking if he will prove 
 himself a man. Sham combats play a great role ; they are begun 
 so that the neurotic may exercise himself, that lie may gain 
 experience from other or similar conditions, so that he may 
 become more cautious, and in order to obtain proof from example 
 that he dare not venture upon the main battle. How much in this 
 he rearranges, exaggerates, depreciates, which is possible to 
 him from a certain arbitrariness (Meyerhoff), how he falsely 
 classifies and how he seeks to put his fiction on firm foundation, 
 demand a separate consideration, such as I have tentatively 
 furnished in the preliminary work for this book. That in this 
 masculine protest, however, there lies for the neurotic the more 
 fundamentally compensating "will to power" which may change 
 the value of feelings and even transform pleasure into pain is 
 proved by the frequent cases where the direct effort to act like a 
 man meets with obstacles and avails itself of a circuitous route, in 
 which event the role of the woman is overvalued, passive traits 
 are strengthened, masochistic, and in men, passive homosexual 
 traits emerge, by means of which the patient hopes to gain power 
 over men and women : in short, the masculine protest makes use 
 of the feminine role in order to attain its purpose. 
 
 That this device is likewise dictated by the ct will to power 
 is proved by the further neurotic traits which strive for mastery 
 and superiority in the most extreme form. This apperception, 
 however, brings the sexual jargon into the neurosis which must 
 be regarded as symbolic and requires interpretation. 
 
 Side by side with or dominating it is found in neurotics the 
 method of apperception which arranges perception according to 
 the spatial antithesis, above-beneath. Also, for this primitive 
 attempt at orientation, which the neurotic emphasizes very 
 strongly, one finds analogies in primitive people. However, 
 while it is easy to understand that the masculine principle is 
 identified with perfection, we are forced to guesses in regard to 
 the valuation of "above" as the equal of the principle. A certain 
 probability seems to give color to the opinion that the value 
 and significance of the upper part of the body in comparison with 
 the feet furnishes the explanation. Still more important it seems 
 to me that the valuation of the word above and its covaluation 
 with perfection originates in the longing of man to lift himself, 
 to fly, to do that which is impossible for man. The universal 
 flying dreams and the efforts of man in the same direction seem 
 to confirm this opinion. That in the congressus sexualis the
 
 THE FEELING OF INFERIORITY 17 
 
 " above " is confluent with the masculine principle does not 
 seem without significance. 
 
 The reenforcement of the fiction in the neurosis causes a 
 concentration of the attention on those points of view regarded 
 by the neurotic as important. Therefrom results the narrowing 
 of the field of vision and the psychic preparation as motor and 
 psychic predispositions. Simultaneously, the more accentuated 
 neurotic character comes into force, which maintains the 
 assurance of the fiction, comes in touch with inimical forces and, 
 spreading itself out far over the boundaries of personality, into 
 the realms of space and time, furnishes, in the form of a 
 secondary guiding line, an impetus to the will to power. The 
 neurotic attack, finally, like the strife for power, has for its 
 purpose the protection of the ego-consciousness from 
 degradation. 
 
 Therefore from constitutional inferiority there arises a feeling 
 of inferiority which demands a compensation in the sense of a 
 maximation of the ego-consciousness. From this circumstance 
 the fiction which serves as a final purpose acquires an astonishing 
 influence and draws all the psychic forces in its direction. Itself 
 an outgrowth of the striving for security, it organizes psychic 
 preparatory measures for the purpose of guaranteeing security, 
 among which the neurotic character as well as the functional 
 neurosis are noticeable as prominent devices. 
 
 The guiding fiction has a simple, infantile scheme, and 
 influences the apperception and the mechanism of memory.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 PSYCHIC COMPENSATION AND ITS SYNTHESIS 
 
 OUR examination of the facts has led us to understand how out 
 of the absolute inferiority of the child (especially the one 
 constitutionally burdened), there is evolved a kind of self 
 estimation which calls forth a' feeling of inferiority. 
 
 Analogously to the 809 TTOV a-rw the child seeks to gain a 
 standpoint which will enable him to get a perspective in the 
 problems of life. From this point of departure, which is taken as 
 a fixed pole in the flux of phenomena, the child psyche projects 
 its thoughts towards the goal which it longs to reach. These 
 thoughts, too, are apprehended as fixed points by the abstract 
 conceptions of human understanding and are then concretely 
 interpreted. The aim to be great, to be strong, to be a man, to 
 be " above " is symbolized in the person of the father, the 
 mother, the teacher, the coachman, the locomotive engineer, 
 etc., and the conduct, the attitude, the imitative gestures, the 
 play of children and their wishes, the day dreams and favorite 
 stories, ideas about their future vocation show us that the 
 compensatory tendency is at work and is making preparations 
 for the future role. The feeling which the individual has of his 
 own inferiority, incompetency, the realization of his smallness, 
 of his weakness, of his uncertainty, thus becomes an appropriate 
 working basis which, because of the intrinsically associated 
 feelings of pleasure and pain, furnishes the inner impulse to 
 advance towards an imaginary goal. The scheme of which the 
 child avails himself in order to enable him to act and orient 
 himself is one common to and in accordance with the tendency 
 of the human understanding to reduce that which is chaotic, fluid 
 and intangible in life to measurable entities by means of the 
 assumption of fictions. We proceed in the same way when we 
 divide the globe by means of meridianal and parallel lines, for 
 thus only do we preserve fixed points which we can place in 
 relation with each other. In all similar attempts (and the human 
 psyche is full of them) it is the question of an introduction of an 
 unreal and abstract scheme into actual life, and I consider the 
 presentation of this conception as I have gathered it from the 
 psychological observation of neuroses and psychoses and which, 
 according to the proofs furnished by Vaihinger, manifests itself 
 in all scientific concepts, to be the main object of this book. No 
 matter from what angle we observe the psychic development of 
 
 iS
 
 PSYCHIC COMPENSATION 19. 
 
 a normal or neurotic person he is always found ensnared in the 
 meshes of his particular fiction ; a fiction from which the neurotic 
 is unable to find his way back to reality and in which he believes 
 while the normal person utilizes it for the purpose of reaching a 
 definite goal. However, that which gives such irresistible 
 impulse to the utilization of this scheme is always the uncertainty 
 in childhood, the great distance which separates the child from 
 the potency of man, from the distinctions and privileges of man- 
 hood, forebodings and knowledge of which the child possesses. 
 And in regard to this point I beg leave to supplement these 
 statements of the learned writer, Vaihinger, namely, that the 
 thing which impels us all and especially the neurotic and the 
 child to abandon the direct path of induction and deduction and 
 to use such devices as the schematic fiction originates in the 
 feeling of uncertainty and is the craving for security, the final 
 purpose of which is to escape from the feeling of inferiority in 
 order to ascend to the full height of the ego-consciousness, to 
 complete manliness, to attain the ideal of being " above." The 
 greater the distance to this ideal, the more distinctly the guiding 
 fiction asserts itself so that the feeling of being " under " may 
 be just as much a determining factor as the deification of the 
 father and mother who are the ideals of strength. 
 
 We thus see exertions put forth far beyond those which we 
 would expect in the most violent bodily performances which 
 might arise from instincts, or in the strongest desire for 
 gratification of organic longings. Goethe among others also 
 refers to this fact that while perception is connected with the 
 practical satisfaction of necessities, yet man carries on a life 
 beyond this in feeling and imagination. In this thought the 
 compulsion to the elevation of the ego-consciousness is aptly 
 expressed, as well as in a passage occurring in one of Goethe's 
 letters to Lavater in which he says, " This longing to elevate as 
 high as possible the apex of the pyramid of my existence, the 
 base of which is placed in my possession, outweighs all else and 
 is scarcely a moment absent from thought." 
 
 It can readily be understood how such a tense psychic situation 
 and every artist, every genius, fights the same battle against 
 the feeling of uncertainty ; with him, however, it is the valuable 
 cultural medium of his art which is capable of reenforcing and 
 bringing to light a host of traits of character which help to 
 construct the neuroses. Thus, first of all, ambition. This is the 
 strongest of the secondary guiding principles which strive 
 towards the imaginary goal. And it generates a number of 
 psychic predispositions whose purpose it is to secure to the 
 neurotic superiority in all situations of life, but which on the other 
 hand makes his aggressiveness, his affectivity, appear to be in a 
 state of constant irritation. Thus the neurotic individual seems-
 
 20 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 always to be proud, dogmatic, envious and miserly, seeks always 
 to make an impression, wishes to be first, but always trembles for 
 the result and gladly postpones decisions. Hence the hesitating, 
 cautious behavior of neurotics, their mistrust, vacillation and 
 doubt. As if for practice in the sense of a preliminary process 
 he carries on these psychic preparations in small things in order 
 io attain to fixed points and safeguarding directing principles for 
 greater aims which hold him under their charm. This is also the 
 meaning of Freud's displacement mechanism, i.e., the patient is 
 impelled by his craving for security to collect proof 
 experimentally, in corpore vili, which justifies and will continue 
 to justify his entire psychic attitude. As a rule the result is always 
 the thought, " I must be cautious, if I wish to attain my goal." 
 And not infrequently the patient commits audaciously 
 reckless acts in order to assure himself through an emphasis of 
 the lesson of his recklessness the attainment of his main point, 
 namely, the masculine ideal. Often hallucinations and dreams 
 assume with neurotics and psychotics the function of these 
 warning voices and depict how it has already been once before, 
 how it has been with others, or how the thing might turn out, 
 in order to hold the patient to the guiding principle in which he 
 finds security. 
 
 At other times the strongly emphasized traits of eagerness for 
 strife, obstinacy and activity, which are to " elevate " the apex 
 of the pyramid as far as possible are strongly accentuated by 
 pedantry which strives to keep them from changing their 
 direction. That the eagerness for knowledge, as a mighty 
 promoter towards attaining the high goal, is greatly overstrained, 
 is not astonishing. With equal distinctness impatience, fear of 
 being too late, fear of attaining nothing, manifest themselves as 
 a particularly strong impulse to neglect no means, to do rather 
 too much than not enough towards the attainment of the goal. 
 These traits always lie within the field of the developed neurosis, 
 where the feeling of ' ' craving for security ' ' obtrudes itself more 
 and drives to the dangerous expedients by means of which the 
 feeling of inferiority is rendered more profound, and the patient 
 acts as if he were restrained, cut off from success and without 
 hope, or he plunges to a greater or less degree into passivity, 
 displays effeminate traits, conducts himself in a masochistic or 
 perverse manner and finally greatly reduces his sphere of activity 
 so that it is more shaken and more strongly dominated by the 
 symptoms of the disease. In a similar manner arises the arrange- 
 ment of indolence, laziness, fatigue, impotence of every sort 
 which furnish a pretext to escape from decisions which could 
 affect the pride of the neurotic, an excuse for withdrawing from 
 study, from a vocation, from marriage. At times this develop-
 
 PSYCHIC COMPENSATION 21 
 
 mental phase terminates in suicide which is then always felt as a 
 successful revenge on fate or on his relatives. 
 
 Consciousness of guilt also asserts itself. Here we find one of 
 the most difficult points in the analysis of neuroses and psychoses. 
 Consciousness of guilt and conscience are fictitious guiding 
 principles of caution, like religiosity and subserve the craving for 
 security. 1 Their object is to prevent a lowering of the ego- 
 consciousness when the irritated aggressiveness impels 
 immoderately to selfish deeds. In the consciousness of guilt the 
 glance is directed backwards, conscience operates through fore- 
 sight. The love of truth, too, is sustained by the craving for 
 security and belongs really within the sphere of our personal 
 ideal, while the neurotic lie represents a feeble attempt to- 
 preserve appearances and to effect compensation. 
 
 All these attempts towards elevation, efforts of the " will to 
 power," must naturally be understood as a form of the striving 
 towards masculinity and become identified with the masculine 
 protest, because this represents a fundamental form of the 
 psychical impulse to become of value, in accordance with which 
 all experiences, perceptions and directions of will are grouped. 
 Apperception is guided in accordance with this most significant 
 scheme, namely, the goal, especially in neurotics, is the erection 
 of the masculine protest against an effeminate self-estimation. 
 Thus are guided also attention, foresight, doubt, as well as all 
 traits of character and other psychic and physical inclinations, 
 but in the highest degree and above all the evaluation of all 
 experiences in line with this masculine goal, so that all these 
 phenomena contain a dynamic which is betrayed to the 
 experienced, and which tends from that which is below to that 
 which is above, from that which is feminine to that which is 
 masculine. The creation of all these lines of force, the fixation 
 of this remote goal, the emphasis and occasional protection of 
 inferior effeminate traits for the purpose of combating them more 
 forcibly by the masculine protest takes place by means of the 
 same factor which also created the organic compensation, i.e., 
 the tendency towards adjustment by constant attempt to supplant 
 an injurious, inferior performance by an increase of effort and 
 which in the psychic sphere finds expression in the craving for 
 security which takes as a guiding line (directrix) the will to 
 power, to be manly, in order to escape the feeling of uncertainty. 
 
 The greatest difficulty which stands in the way of an under- 
 standing of the neurosis arises from the striking protection 
 afforded these inferior, effeminate traits and their acknow- 
 ledgment by the patients. Here belong all the phenomena of the 
 disease generally, but also the passive, masochistic traits, the 
 effeminate characteristics, the passive homosexuality, impotence, 
 
 1 See Fortmuller, " Psychoanalysis and Ethics," Miinchen, E. Eeinhardt, 1912.
 
 22 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 suggestibility, accessibility to and inclination for hypnosis, or, 
 finally, the apparent surrender to effeminacy and to effeminate 
 behavior. The final object, however, always remains the same, 
 the domination over others which is felt and appreciated as a 
 masculine triumph. Neither are the above described 
 compensatory features ever absent in the makeup of these 
 patients, as they might be expected to be in individuals who 
 assume as a ground for action a feeling of inadequacy and who 
 then strive to secure by every possible means a substitute for 
 their shortcomings, to supply that which they feel to be lacking 
 in their exaggerated ego-consciousness. And also in the psychic 
 situation the sexual element as a symbol asserts itself, inasmuch 
 as such patients frequently form their apperceptions in 
 accordance with a scheme in which their genital organs are 
 regarded as if they were effeminized, restricted, castrated, and 
 as if they were therefore constantly forced to seek a substitute. 
 One form of this substitution they find in the depreciation and 
 emasculation of all other persons. From this tendency to 
 deprive others of worth originates the considerable reenforcement 
 of certain traits of character, which set forth further inclinations 
 and which have the quality of injuring others, as sadism, hate, 
 contentiousness, intolerance, envy, etc. Active homosexuality, 
 also, as well as perversions which degrade the partner, also 
 Lustmord, arise from the neurotic tendency to depreciate, a 
 tendency which can hardly be pictured too strongly. They all 
 represent a rationalization of the symbolism of subjection in line 
 with the concept which asserts the " sexual dominance of the 
 male." In short, the neurotic may also elevate the feeling of 
 his own worth by degrading others. 
 
 We have mentioned above the protection of the effeminate 
 traits in the neurosis for the purpose of better carrying on the 
 combat, for the purpose of a better surveillance over self. These 
 accentuations along with the distinct tendency to give preference 
 to the will to masculinity create the appearance of a rent in the 
 psyche of the neurotic which is familiar to writers as double 
 personality, dissociation, and which is frequently seen in the 
 changing humors of neurotics, but also in the succession of 
 depression and mania, of ideas of persecution and grandeur in 
 the psychoses. I have always found as an internal connecting 
 bond in these antithetical conditions the tendency to maximate 
 the ego-consciousness, whereby the " inferior " situation is 
 associated with a degradation, but is circumscribed and arranged 
 as a ground for operation. It is then that the masculine protest 
 asserts itself, which is often carried to the length of asserting a 
 resemblance to God or an intimate connection with Him. For 
 the " splitting of consciousness " the severely schematic and 
 "very abstract process of apperception is also responsible, a form
 
 PSYCHIC COMPENSATION 23 
 
 of apperception which groups the internal and external 
 experiences according to a scheme which has the form of an 
 absolute antithesis, something like the debits and credits in 
 book-keeping, where there are no transitions possible. This fault 
 of the neurotic mode of thinking, which is identical with a too 
 far-fetched abstraction, is likewise caused by his craving for 
 security, a tendency which requires for the purpose of making 
 decisions, for anticipations and actions, sharply defined guiding 
 lines, idols, false deities in which the neurotic believes. In this 
 way he becomes estranged from concrete reality. For to find 
 one's bearings in the world of reality an elasticity of the psyche 
 and not a rigidity is required, a utilization of abstraction, but 
 not an adoration, an idolizing of the same as the final purpose of 
 existence. 
 
 Accordingly we shall find in the mental life of the neurotic, 
 just as is the case in primitive poetry, in mythology, in legends, 
 in cosmogony, in theogony and in the beginnings of philosophy 
 a most pronounced tendency to give a symbolic style to himself, 
 his experiences and to persons about him. Thus naturally the 
 phenomena which do not belong together must be sharply 
 separated from each other by an abstracting fiction. The impulse 
 to this expedient arises from the longing for an orientation "and 
 has its roots in the neurotic's craving for security. This impulse 
 is often so intense that it demands the splitting of unity, of the 
 category, of the unity of the ego into two or more of its 
 antithetical parts. 
 
 From the above described self-estimation of the child, who is 
 induced by inferiority of constitution and the evils arising there- 
 from to strive after special securities, up to the complete develop- 
 ment of the neurotic technique of thinking and its coadjuvant 
 lines, of the neurotic character, a host of psychic phenomena 
 make their appearance which according to Karl Groos" may be 
 regarded as a training, according to our interpretation as a 
 preparation for the imaginary goal. They are manifested at an 
 early age, are indicated even in early infancy and are constantly 
 at the foundation of the influences of conscious and unconscious 
 education. The whole development of the child shows that it 
 proceeds in the direction of an idea, which naturally takes a 
 primitive form and quite regularly seeks concrete embodiment 
 in the form of a person. Under this compulsion, the psychic 
 mechanism of which is for the most part unconscious and only 
 partly conscious, the psyche in the process of formation comes 
 to more distinct expression, and the mental as well as the 
 physical life of a human being taken at any given point of its 
 development is to be understood as the answer which that 
 individual gives to the question of life. 
 
 * See Karl Groos, " Die Spiele der Menschen, Die Spiele der Thiere."
 
 24 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 This answer, in reality the manner in which life is accepted, 
 is according to all the knowledge thereof furnished by experience, 
 to be considered as identical with the effort to put an end fo 
 uncertainty, to the chaos which prevails in impressions and 
 feelings, with the effort to obtain a firm hold in order to overcome 
 the difficulties of life. Reflection, observation, thought and fore- 
 thought, attention, calculation and valuation are all efforts put 
 forth by this craving for security. And inasmuch as the realization 
 of one's own inferiority is taken as an abstract standard for 
 inequality among human beings, the greater, the stronger and 
 his measure are taken for the fictitious goal so that it may be a 
 guarantee against this uncertainty and fright. Thus it is that the 
 soul of the child constructs a guiding line which impels towards 
 an elevation of the ego-consciousness in order to escape from 
 uncertainty, the influence of which is still stronger in neurotics 
 who have felt their inferiority more keenly. Mythographers, the 
 human race, poets, philosophers, founders of religions have 
 taken the material from their contemporaneous periods for the 
 transformation of the guiding lines so that immortality, virtue, 
 piety, riches, knowledge, social consciousness of the upper 
 classes or self-perfection were available as goals and were utilized 
 according to the receptive peculiarities of the individual who 
 longed for perfection. At this point the living energies of the 
 child become transferred into the self-created sphere of his 
 subjective world which henceforth as a guiding fiction transmutes, 
 falsifies and changes the values of all feelings and emotions, 
 pleasures and pains, even the struggle for self-preservation, for 
 his benefit, in order to attain the goal ; a transformation which 
 utilizes all the experiences of the neurotic in such a way as to 
 bring about preparations which will ensure the triumph. 
 
 These preparatory acts with their tendency to change values 
 may be most clearly observed in the play of nervous children, 
 in their deliberations over the choice of a future vocation and 
 their physical and psychical attitudes. These phenomena will be 
 further discussed in connection with the dominating craving for 
 security which controls them. Concerning the nervous habitus 
 it may be stated that as a rule it is noticeable at an early age, 
 that it takes the form of a pantomimic representation of some 
 trait of character, either as an anxious, waiting, distrustful, 
 uncertain, cautious, bashful attitude or as a hostile, obstinate, 
 self-certain, self-complacent, forward attitude. Blushing is 
 noticeable or the glance is peculiarly fixed, cast down or hostile. 
 It is easy to correlate one of these attitudes or gestures, or a 
 mimic trait, with the prototype. In nervous children imitation 
 of the male principle, the, father, is often found ; the mother only 
 becomes a model for imitation after a formal change in the 
 guiding principle has taken place, or when from the beginning
 
 PSYCHIC COMPENSATION 25 
 
 the moral superiority of the mother is beyond question. Usually 
 these phenomena are insignificant and such as are not as a rule 
 subjected to the observation of the physician. Crossing the legs, 
 the arms, a peculiar manner of gait, preference for certain foods, 
 borrowing of certain traits of character, etc., or in the presence 
 of more strongly emphasized obstinacy opposite forms of 
 expression. The retained bad habits of childhood, such as 
 eneuresis, biting the nails, sucking, stuttering, winking the eyes, 
 masturbation, etc., can always be traced to these beginnings of 
 obstinacy. They are the expedients of the weak to diminish the 
 pathos of the distance and thereby do away with the feeling of 
 inferiority, and strive in the last analysis to a transformation ot 
 authority and at the same time to gain an excuse for avoiding a 
 decision, for postponing it. 
 
 All considerable phenomena of this sort are themselves 
 neurotic traits of character or show that they are permeated by 
 the neurotic character and like it itself are a form of expression 
 of the craving for security, preparatory processes and preliminary 
 provisions of the compensatory force which is produced by the 
 feeling of inferiority. 
 
 D
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE ACCENTUATED FICTION AS THE GUIDING IDEA IN 
 THE NEUROSIS 
 
 The most important task of thinking is to anticipate actions or 
 events ; to seize upon an objective and ways and means and to 
 influence them as far as possible. By means of this process of 
 forethought, our influence over space and time is assured to a 
 certain degree. Accordingly our psyche is first of all an organ 
 of aggression born out of the distress of the too restricted 
 limitation which from the first renders difficult the gratification 
 of natural appetites. This organically determined goal of 
 gratification of appetites will only endure so long as the suitable 
 means are at hand for its stabilization ; for rendering it secure 
 against the strongest attacks. Toward the end of the nursing 
 period, when the child acquires ability to carry out independent, 
 purposeful actions which are not merely directed toward the 
 gratification of appetite, when he takes his place in the family 
 and begins to adapt himself to his environment, he already 
 possesses abilities, psychic gestures and preparations. Besides 
 this his conduct has acquired a certain uniformity and is seen to 
 be on the road toward acquiring his place in the world. Such a 
 uniformity of conduct can only be comprehended by the 
 assumption that the child has discovered some specific fixed 
 point outside of his own personality towards which he strives 
 with his developmental energies. The child must, therefore, 
 have constructed for himself a guiding principle, a guiding model, 
 obviously in the hope of thus orienting himself in the best 
 possible manner in his environment and of obtaining gratification 
 of his necessities of avoiding pain and of obtaining pleasure. 1 
 From this guiding ideal arises the very beginning of the child's 
 craving for tenderness, that quality which (Paulsen) originally 
 determines the tractability of the child. Soon there become 
 associated with this first quality, efforts to gain the praise, help 
 and love of the parents, stirrings of independence, of obstinacy 
 and of opposition. The child has found a meaning in life 
 towards which he strives and whose still indistinct outlines he is 
 forming, and starting from which he derives that quality of 
 prevision which is calculated to direct and give worth to his 
 actions and impulses. It is the child's helplessness, clumsiness 
 and uncertainty which necessitates the establishment of the 
 
 1 Adler, " Trotz und Gehorsamkeit." * 
 
 26
 
 THE ACCENTUATED FICTION 27 
 
 tentative tests of possibility, the acquisition of experience, the 
 creation of memories for the purpose of constructing a bridge 
 leading to that future where there are to be found greatness, 
 power and satisfaction of all sorts. The construction of this 
 bridge is the most important work the child is called upon to 
 perform because without it he would find himself in the midst of 
 the inpouring impressions without order, without counsel, with- 
 out guide. It is scarcely possible to define the limits of this first 
 stadium, of this awakening subjective world, to describe it in 
 words. But it may, however, be said that the guiding model of 
 the child must be so constructed as if it were able to bring to the 
 child greater certainty and orientation by influencing the direction 
 of his will. 
 
 But he can only obtain security by striving towards a fixed 
 point where he sees himself greater and stronger, where he finds 
 himself rid of the helplessness of infancy. The symbolic and 
 logical nature of our process of thinking permits the construction 
 of this future changed personality in the image of the father, the 
 mother,, of an elder brother or sister, or teacher or some^ 
 professional man, or hero, or animal, or God. The qualities of 
 greatness, power, knowledge and ability are features common 
 to all these guiding images and thus they are one and all symbols 
 for imaginative abstractions. And thus like idols made of clay 
 they receive from the imagination of man, force and life, and 
 react upon the psyche which has created them. 
 
 This artifice of thinking would have the stamp of paranoia and 
 of dementia precox conditions, which create for themselves 
 hostile forces for the purpose of securing ego-consciousness, were 
 not the child able at all times to free himself from the bonds of his 
 fiction, to eliminate his projections (Kant) from his calculations, 
 and to make use only of the impetus which is given him by this 
 guiding line. His uncertainty is sufficient to make him set up a 
 fantastic goal for the purpose of orientation in the world, but it 
 is not so great as to make him deprive reality of its value and to 
 assert dogmatically the reality of this guiding model, as is the 
 case in the psychoses. One must, however, call attention to the 
 similarity, the significance of this uncertainty and the device of 
 a fiction in normal persons, neurotics and the insane. 
 
 The part of this process which is common to all humanity, 
 normal and abnormal, is that the apperceiving memory is under 
 the sway of the guiding fiction. It is because of this that there 
 exists within certain limits in all mankind a uniformity concern- 
 ing a cosmic conception. The child in its insignificance and 
 helplessness will constantly strive to enlarge his field of power 
 and will mark this field off after the pattern of that which seems 
 to possess the greatest strength. And now it becomes evident in 
 the course of psychic development that that which was at first
 
 28 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 only an imaginary expedient, important only in its relations, only 
 a means for gaining ground to stand upon, for finding one's 
 bearings, for gaining a foothold, has become a goal in itself, 
 obviously because the child can only in this way obtain self- 
 assurance in acting and not directly through the gratification of 
 desires/ 
 
 Thus the effective point is found outside the corporeal sphere 
 according to which the psyche adjusts itself, a point which forms 
 the centre of gravity of human thought, feeling and volition. And 
 the mechanism of apperceiving memory with its host of 
 experiences, transforms itself from an objectively operating 
 system into a subjectively active, fictitiously modified scheme of 
 an imagined future personality. It becomes the task of this 
 scheme to bring about such connections with the outside world 
 as will serve to maximate his feeling of ego-consciousness, such 
 associations as will hint at the preparing activities and thought 
 indicators and bring these in contact with the already existing 
 state of preparedness. One is here reminded of the apt 
 expression of Charcot who has emphasized for science that " one 
 only discovers that which one knows," an observation which 
 when directed to practical experience tends to show that our 
 whole sphere of perception is limited by a number of pre- 
 determined psychical mechanisms and predispositions as Kant's 
 theory * of "a priori " forms of perception teaches us. In a 
 similar manner our actions are determined by the content of 
 experiences, which are given birth to. and are determined by the 
 guiding fiction. Even our judgments concerning the value of 
 things are determined according to the standard of the imaginary 
 goal, not according to "real" feelings or pleasurable sensations. 
 
 And conduct follows as James expresses it in consequence of 
 a sort of approbation depends as it were on a fiat, command or 
 acquiescence. The guiding fiction is therefore first of all the 
 expedient, the device by means of which the child seeks to free 
 himself from his feeling of inferiority. It initiates compensation 
 and stands at the service of the craving for security. The greater 
 the feeling of inferiority, the more imperative and stronger will 
 be the necessity for a steadying, guiding principle and indeed the 
 more distinctly it manifests itself, and like compensation in the 
 organic sphere, the effectiveness of psychic compensation is 
 linked with a functional increase and brings about novel and 
 many-sided manifestations in the mental life. One of the forms 
 of expression of this compensatory mechanism, intended to assure 
 
 3 As may be seen from Karl Groos' " Play of Animals " the understanding 
 of the animal psyche is likewise based upon the fact that we see. it act as 
 though it were following the direction of a fictitious guiding line. 
 
 s I have to call attention here to Bergson's fundamental teachings, without 
 being able to give room here for his important view-point;*.
 
 THE ACCENTUATED FICTION 29 
 
 the sense of ego-consciousness is exemplified by the neurosis and 
 psychosis. 
 
 The constitutionally inferior child with his host of dis- 
 advantages and uncertainties will construct his goal in a more 
 definite and clearer manner, will outline more distinctly the 
 guiding principle and will adhere to it more anxiously or 
 dogmatically. In fact the principal impression which one gains 
 from the observation of a neurotically disposed child is usually 
 that the child is guided in the choice of a weapon by his somatic 
 inferiority which he utilizes in his dealings with his relatives or 
 which he emphasizes in his obstinacy. 
 
 Often his illness is borrowed from his environment either by 
 simulation or exaggeration of actual ailments, all this in^order to 
 strengthen his position. Should such means not have the desired 
 effect upon his environment, the child endeavors to rid himself of 
 his complaints through the exercise of superior efforts, as result 
 of which there develop not infrequently qualified and artistic 
 performances in the event of the experiencing of an over- 
 compensation on the part of the functional anomalies of the eye, * 
 ear, speech or musculature. Associated with this are also stirrings 
 of independence. Or the remedy is sought, on the other hand, in 
 a greater dependence, for the attainment of which, anxiety, a 
 feeling of insignificance, weakness, awkwardness, incapacity, 
 sense of guilt and remorse serve as strongholds. The same 
 tendency may be seen in the adherence to the bad habits of 
 childhood, in the retention of a psychic infantilism in so far as 
 this is not exclusively or partially the result of obstinacy, of the 
 infantile negativism. 
 
 A number of the complaints of psychopathic children are of a 
 subjective nature, and correspond to a complete or partial error 
 of judgment as it takes place in the effort of children to find a 
 reason for their feeling of inferiority and to comprehend it. 
 Frequently these logical interpretations are already intermixed 
 with the compensating ambition or with the child's aggressive- 
 ness towards its parents. ' The fault lies with my parents, with 
 my lot, because I'm the youngest, because I was born too late, 
 because I am a Cinderella, because I'm perhaps not the child of 
 these parents, of this father, of this mother, because I am too 
 small, too weak, have too small a head, am too homely, because 
 I have an impediment of speech, a defect of hearing, am cross- 
 eyed, near-sighted, because I have imperfect genitals, because 
 I'm not manly, because I am a girl, because Fm bad by nature, 
 dull and awkward, because I have masturbated, because I'm too 
 sensuous, too covetous and naturally perverted, because I submit 
 easily, am too dependent and obey, because I cry easily, am easily 
 affected, because I am a criminal, a thief, an incendiary, and 
 could murder some one. My ancestry, my education,
 
 30 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 circumcision are to blame, because I have too long a nose, too 
 much hair, too little hair, because I am a cripple." Thus and 
 similarly sound the child's attempts to unburden himself by blam- 
 ing fate just as in the Greek fate tragedies, these are attempts 
 to preserve the ego-consciousness and hold others responsible 
 for his inferiority. These attempts are regularly met with in the 
 psychic treatment of the neuroses and they can always be referred 
 back to the relationship between an existing feeling of inferiority 
 and an assumed ideal. The significance and value of these 
 thought processes which are as a thorn in the side of the neurotic 
 are noted also in the uses to which they are put by himself, first 
 for the stimulation of his efforts in the direction of his ideal 
 (grandiose ideas) and second, the utilization of them as a refuge 
 and excuse when forced to a decision which threatens a lowering 
 of the ego-consciousness (depreciatory ideas). The second 
 applicability and application naturally occupies the foreground 
 in the neuroses because the goal toward which the neurotic 
 strives is set too high to be reached in a direct line. The 
 utilization of this ideal is only rendered possible by an admixture 
 of aggression or in blaming fate as well as heredity. By means 
 of this the neurotic gains a permanent base of operation on the 
 strength of which he unfolds, thrusts forward and stabilizes 
 certain traits of character which serve the same hostile purpose, 
 such as obstinacy, a dominating, grumbling nature, pedantry, 
 because thereby he always succeeds in gaining mastery over his 
 environment principally by calling attention to his terrible 
 suffering. All of these traits and predispositions associated 
 with bad habits retained from childhood which have become 
 markedly exaggerated, as well as with disease symptoms of a 
 self-created and self-modeled nature stand in the closest inter- 
 relation, are inseparable one from another and show their 
 dependence on a factor outside their own sphere, i.e., they 
 depend upon the guiding fiction which has evolved from the 
 craving for security or from the longing for the maximation of 
 the ego-consciousness. In the imaginary basis of this feeling 
 of inferiority which because of the craving for security is always 
 thought of in an exaggerated manner and felt too keenly, I see 
 the chief therapeutic hope. The question whether the feeling 
 of uncertainty is conscious or unconscious is of secondary 
 importance. At times pride carries things so far that "memory 
 gives way" (Nietzsche). Naturally the above described 
 connection is not realized by the patient. It is for this reason 
 that he remains the plaything of his emotions and affects until 
 such time as the mechanism becomes revealed to him and set 
 to rights, until such time as the predispositions and neurotic 
 plan of life are shattered ; a plaything of emotions and effects 
 the interaction of which becomes further complicated because of
 
 THE ACCENTUATED FICTION 31 
 
 a constant admixture of traits of character intended to negate his 
 sense of inferiority, such as pride, envy, greed, cruelty, courage, 
 revengefulness, irritability, etc., traits of character which are 
 constantly being excited through his craving for security. 
 
 The tendency to exaggerate and emphasize existing defects 
 plays an important role in the psychology of the neuroses. An 
 appearance of weakness, suffering, incapacity and uselessness 
 results from this manner of presenting actual defects because 
 the neurotic is compelled by the mechanism which controls him 
 to conduct himself unwaveringly in such a manner as to feel 
 as though he were sick, as though he were effeminate, inferior, 
 neglected, injured, sexually over-excited, impotent or perverted. 
 The cautious approach to problems of life which constantly 
 accompanies these impulses, the exaggerated striving upwards, 
 the desire to play the role of man in some way or other, to be 
 superior to everybody else, the neurotic's stronghold with its 
 prime object of avoiding decisions and setbacks and thus to 
 escape a lowering of his ego-consciousness, all of this reveals^ 
 to us the true state of affairs, namely, that the low self-estimation 
 of the neurotic is in itself an expedient by means of which he 
 strives the more powerfully to attain that guiding goal which 
 will bring about a maximation of his ego-consciousness. He may 
 conduct himself according to the motto " half and half," he 
 may cede certain strongholds in the contest, but he does so 
 solely in order to fortify himself against an ultimate feeling of 
 inferiority and in order to be the better able to utilize others 
 in his service. 
 
 The sexual feature of the psychology of the neuroses which 
 Freud looks upon as a cardinal point is in this wise explained 
 as the effect of a fiction. There is no objective standard of the 
 " libido. Tl The exaltation and diminution of the same is always 
 in accord with the imaginary goal. It is easy for the neurotic 
 to convince himself that he is the subject of a high sexual 
 tension by means of a more or less purposeful arrangement, 
 and especially by means of a concentration of the attention in 
 this direction the moment he begins to seek proof of how much 
 injury sexualfty works to his feeling of security and how much 
 his ego-consciousness is threatened from this source. The 
 weakening of libidinous impulses even to the point of psychic 
 impotence is to be regarded as purposeful checks on aggression, 
 as disorders of natural predispositions, as a construction of an 
 "as if" for the purpose of assuring himself against marriage, 
 against a swerving from the goal, against a degradation at the 
 hands of the sexual partner, against poverty or culpability. 
 Repressed or conscious perverse tendencies, as well as the 
 compulsion to masturbation are always looked upon as detours, 
 as symbols of an imaginary plan of life whose purpose is self-
 
 32 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 assurance. They are called into being by the guiding fiction as 
 soon as the feeling of inferiority finds expression in the fear 
 of the sexual partner as happens regularly where there 
 exist sexual anomalies. The fiction may then also repress the 
 incentive to perversion into the subconscious or make the fear 
 of the partner unrecognizable to consciousness so that it only 
 becomes apparent from a survey of the whole situation. It 
 resorts to the first alternative when it depends on pride for the 
 fulfillment of its purpose, to the latter when it makes a virtue 
 of the defect and seeks the degradation of the partner. 
 Incestuous tendences too, to which Freud ascribes such an 
 important role in the production of neuroses and psychoses 
 reveal themselves in the psychology of the neuroses as 
 purposeful edifices and symbols, which derive their usually 
 harmless material out of childhood life with its preparatory 
 processes. A proper insight for instance into the " CEdipus 
 complex " shows us that it is nothing more nor less than a 
 figurative, sexually clothed conception of what constitutes 
 masculine self-consciousness, superiority over woman, but at 
 the same time betrays the cause which leads to this phenomenon, 
 namely as if the mother were the only one that one could 
 subjugate, on whom one could depend or as though sexual desire 
 (already in childhood) were to be carried through in spite of 
 everything and always by a struggle with stronger forces (the 
 father, dragons, danger of death). As may be inferred from 
 this interpretation, close inquiry into the sexual neuroses always 
 leads to the discovery of a guiding fiction which reveals itself in 
 a sexual form or can be revealed by therapeutists, as well as to 
 the laying bare of a mode of apperception evolved according to 
 a sexual scheme in consequence of which the neurotic and often 
 also the normal person attempt to apprehend and understand 
 the world and all its phenomena in sexual terms, in a sexual 
 picture as it were. Our further investigations reveal that this 
 sexual scheme which is often carried out in speech, in custom, 
 and manners, is only a variation of that all-embracing scheme 
 of more fundamental origin, i.e., the antithetical mode of 
 apperception as " male-female " " up-down." The later 
 psychic perverse tendencies derive their material and impulse 
 from the harmless bodily sensations and misjudgments of 
 childhood which when occasion arises are given an extra- 
 ordinarily high value or some chance pleasurable sensations are 
 perceived as analogues of sexual sensations. The psychologist 
 
 * See the dream of Tippias, Herodotus VI., 107; " he dreamt that he was 
 sleeping with his mother." This he dreamed as he was about to conquer his 
 maternal city, as he had already done once before as the companion of his 
 father. Thus the CEdipns complex as the symbol of the desire to dominate. 
 With the Komans too Beisehlaf (sexual congress) symbolized conquest, victory. 
 Compare the double meaning of the word " subigere."
 
 THE ACCENTUATED FICTION 33 
 
 must not assume the same point of view, must not maintain such 
 a mode of apperception as valid, not substitute real sexual 
 components for a fiction as the patient does. His task on the 
 contrary consists in revealing to the patient the superficiality of 
 his attempts at orientation, to tear it apart as a mere product of 
 the imagination, and to weaken the feeling of inferiority which 
 drives the patient in a convulsive manner towards these guiding 
 principles which would necessitate the carrying 'out of the 
 " masculine protest in a circuitous manner. 
 
 Apperceiving memory which influences our cosmic picture to 
 such a great extent works also with a fiction as it were, with a 
 schematic fiction, in accordance with which we choose and model 
 our perceptions, our experiences, as well as the training of our 
 connate tendencies and capacities until they are changed into 
 the appropriate psychical and technical skilfulness and 
 preparedness. The modus operandi of our conscious and 
 unconscious memory and its individualization obey the personal 
 ideal and its standards. From this we are able to deduce that as 
 a guiding fiction its purpose is to confront the problems of life 
 so soon as the feeling of inferiority and uncertainty impels 
 toward compensation. This fixed guiding point of our efforts, 
 which in no sense possesses reality, is absolutely decisive for 
 the psychic development, for it enables us to make steps in the 
 chaos of the world, as does the child when learning to walk and 
 keeping in his eye a goal which he strives to reach. Far more 
 unwaveringly, the neurotic keeps before his eye his God, his 
 idol, his ideal of personality and clings to his guiding principle, 
 losing sight in the meanwhile of reality, whereas the normal 
 person is always ready to dispense with this crutch, this aid, 
 and reckon unhampered with reality. In this instance, the 
 neurotic resembles a person who looks up to God, commends 
 himself to the Lord and then and there awaits credulously for 
 his guidance ; he is nailed to the cross of his fiction. The 
 normal individual too may and does create his deity, feels 
 drawn upward but never loses sight of reality, and always takes 
 it into account as soon as he is called upon to act. Accordingly 
 the neurotic lives under the hypnotic influence of an imaginary 
 plan of life. 
 
 That this imaginary mark of the personal ideal situated as it 
 is beyond space and time is never without effect, may be seen 
 from the trends of the attention ; interests and tendencies of 
 these individuals, which always lead to points of view of an a 
 priori nature. The exquisite purposefulness of our psychic 
 processes and the predisposition determined thereby is 
 responsible for the fact that our actions have definite beginnings 
 and terminations, that, as Ziehen emphasizes, voluntary and 
 involuntary actions are constantly aimed at attaining a definite
 
 34 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 result, that we must assume with Pawlow a decided intelligence 
 in the functioning of the organs. All these phenomena are so 
 convincing that philosophers and psychologists have from the 
 earliest times taken as a teleologic dogma everything which 
 premeditatively attempted an orientation according to an 
 assumed fixed point as the goal. 
 
 The concept of natural selection is entirely too inadequate to 
 explain results which are able to take on new and changing 
 forms as occasion demands. Experience compels us to consider 
 all these phenomena as dependent upon an unconsciously active 
 fiction, the faint conscious irradiations of which furnish us goals, 
 according to which in the last analysis our apperception of all 
 our experiences and activities is shaped. It is less difficult to 
 prove the details of this guiding fiction, than the fiction itself, 
 than the fictitious goal itself. Psychological research has called 
 attention to various such goals. For our purpose it will suffice 
 to consider critically just two of these. Most authorities content 
 themselves with the view that all human activity, all volition is 
 dominated by feelings of pleasure and pain. Upon superficial 
 consideration these authors seem to be correct in their 
 assumptions, because as a matter of fact the human psyche does 
 tend to seek pleasure and avoid pain. But the foundation of this 
 theory is unstable. There is no standard for feelings of pleasure, 
 indeed no standard for feeling at all. There exists furthermore 
 no perception, no action, the effect of which may not vary in 
 accordance with place and time, under some circumstances 
 causing pleasure ; under others pain. And even the primitive 
 sensations resulting from satisfaction of organic desires have 
 their gradations and vary with the degree of satiability and in 
 accordance with cultural guiding principles, so that for 
 satisfaction in itself to serve as the goal, it requires extreme 
 denial, and abstinence. Now granting that satisfaction has 
 actually been attained, does the psyche really lose its directing" 
 principle ? The psyche's iron necessity for orientation and 
 security requires for their establishment and their functions a 
 more stable standpoint than the vacillating and uncertain 
 principle of gratification of desire, and a more stable point of 
 view than the obiect of attaining gratification. The impossibility 
 of orienting one's self and one's actions according to such a 
 goal forces even the child to abandon efforts in this direction. 
 Finally it is a misuse of an abstraction to single out and 
 emphasize by means of a petitio principii, out of the various 
 complex psychic activities, the quest of pleasure, as the motive 
 force, after every isolated impulse has already been explained 
 as pleasure seeking, as libidinous. Shiller with a keenness of 
 vision trained in the school of Kant saw much further when he 
 made a place in the coming " philosophy " for the directing 1
 
 THE ACCENTUATED FICTION 55 
 
 influence of earthly events, and even went so far as to consider 
 it (philosophy) dependent on " hunger and love." 
 
 To ascribe, however, the whole directing force to sexuality 
 as Freud does, or what is for him the same thing, to the libido, 
 to ascribe this whole influence to nothing but love is a violation 
 of logical thinking itself, a fiction of a bad sort, which when 
 accepted as a dogma must lead to great contradictions and 
 confusion of concepts because it contrasts altogether too much 
 with reality. 
 
 The disapproval of the principle of " self-preservation " is 
 more difficult, especially as that principle is supported on the 
 one hand by arguments of a teleological significance, on the 
 other hand by the import of Darwin's theory of natural selection. 
 But we see constantly that we undertake courses of action 
 contrary to the principles of self-preservation or to the 
 preservation of the species, yes, that a certain arbitrariness 
 (Fres-Meyerhof) permits us, in regard to self-preservation as 
 well as in regard to pleasure, to raise or lower our valuations, 
 that we often wholly lose sight of self-preservation when pleasure 
 or pain enter into the question, and that on the other hand we 
 often sacrifice pleasure when an injury is threatened to the ego. 
 In what manner do these two incentives which are certainly not 
 without influence, range themselves under the main guiding 
 principle which impels to the elevation of the ego-consciousness ? 
 The two points of view correspond to two types of individuals 
 (to which it is possible to add still others) one of which is least 
 able to dispense with pleasure in his ego-consciousness, while 
 the other places first importance on the feeling of life, on the 
 feeling of immortality. Therefore, there arise modified modes 
 of perception which produce antitheses in thought in the sense 
 of " pleasure pain " or " life death." The former are 
 unable to deprive pleasure of value, the latter life. In the sense 
 of procreation which is again thought of in the manner of the 
 antithetical scheme " male-female," these two types approach 
 each other and seek expression in the direction of the masculine 
 protest. As far as neurotics are concerned the one type has 
 always sought to compensate the painful feeling of his somatic 
 inferiority, the other type has grown up in the fear of death, 
 of dying early. Their view of the world furnishes them only 
 fragments, their soul is partially color-blind, but, notwithstanding 
 this, often more keen-sighted than the Daltonists in their under- 
 standing of color. 
 
 We close this critical observation with a reference to the 
 absolute principle of the " will to power " a guiding fiction 
 vrhich sets in more forcibly and earlier, and is precipitated and 
 matured, in proportion to the prominence assumed by the 
 consciousness of inferiority in the physically inferior child. The
 
 36 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 ideal of personal importance as a point toward which all efforts 
 are directed is created by the craving for security and contains 
 as imaginary qualities all the powers and natural gifts of which 
 the child believes himself deprived. This fiction, more 
 exaggerated than under normal conditions, molds the mentality, 
 the traits of character and predispositions in its own image. 
 The neurotic apperception proceeds according to a figurative 
 scheme containing sharply opposed antitheses, and the grouping 
 of the impressions and emotions takes place according to 
 correspondingly false and imaginary values. 
 
 It lies in the nature of the neurotic fiction, of the exaggerated 
 idea of personal worth, to reveal itself under two forms, some- 
 times as an " abstract mechanism " sometimes as a concrete 
 picture, or as a phantasy, as an idea. In the first case the 
 connection of what is symbolic in the representation with the 
 compensated feeling of inferiority should not be lost sight of, 
 and in the second case one must above all take into consideration 
 the decisive share in the process taken by the psychic dynamic 
 which impels " upwards." In the analysis of a psychogenic 
 disease so long as the guiding tendency " upwards " does not 
 reveal itself, the nature of the disease remains hidden to us, for 
 no matter how valuable the insights of the psycho-therapeutists 
 have been, so long as the secondary guiding principle of 
 attaining pleasure, of affectivity (Bleuler) and those which 
 originate as result of physical inferiority (Adler) are not referred 
 back to the ideal of personality our understanding remains 
 imperfect, " there is still unfortunately lacking the psychic 
 bond." It is also not astonishing that in different cases different 
 characteristics are given to this ideal of personality and usually 
 various characteristics at one and the same time as these are 
 derived from various sorts of organ defects, usually from several 
 at the same time. A preliminary, decidedly incomplete diagram 
 which would correspond more to the " abstract psyche " of the 
 neurotic than to that of the normal individual would be the 
 following : 
 
 4 Of the later authors who have especially emphasized this point of view, I 
 must especially mention H. Silberer.
 
 THE ACCENTUATED FICTION 37 
 
 In this outline the most varied combinations must be imagined, 
 if it is to serve its purpose as a model for the purpose of 
 superficial orientation. Instead of discussing these combinations 
 and the multitudinous components we will discuss some 
 distinguishing phenomena which seem important for the under- 
 standing of the neuroses and the neurotic character. 
 
 Each of the abstract guiding lines of the neurosis and of its 
 underlying psychic mechanism may become accessible to 
 consciousness by means of a memory-picture or may be rendered 
 accessible to it. This picture may originate from the remnants 
 of a childhood experience, or it is a product of phantasy, a 
 species of the craving for security. It may represent a symbol, 
 a trade-mark as it were, for a certain mode of reaction, now 
 and then reaching development or being reformed only at a later 
 period often when the neurosis is already fully developed. Being 
 obviously the effect of a sort of economy of thought, which is 
 furnished by the principle of least resistance (Avenarius), it i% 
 never of consequence as far as its content is concerned, but 
 only as an abstract scheme or as the remnant of a psychic 
 experience in which the will to power once, filled its destiny. 
 This schematic fiction, no matter how concretely it may manifest 
 itself, is never to be understood otherwise than in an allegorical 
 sense. In it is reflected an actual constituent part of experience 
 together with a " moral " both of which are retained by 
 memory in the interest of the self-assurance that is aimed at, 
 either as a memento, to adhere more tenaciously to the guiding 
 principle or as a fore-judgment not to abandon it. None of these 
 memory pictures has ever had pathogenic significance, like a 
 psychic trauma for instance, and it is only when the neurosis 
 supervenes, when the feeling of degradation of the ego- 
 consciousness leads to the masculine protest and because of this 
 to a closer attachment to the already long established 
 compensatory guiding principles are these memory pictures 
 hunted out from material belonging to a remote past and come 
 to light because of their usefulness, partly in order to make 
 possible the neurotic's conduct and partly to give it meaning. 
 Here belong above all pain, anxiety and affect predispositions 
 which are based upon such reminiscences which may become 
 actualized in an hallucinatory manner, and which may be likened 
 to visual and auditory hallucinations. Naturally those 
 reminiscences will be typical which stand in the closest possible 
 relation to the guiding principle because they represent or 
 simulate for the neurotic, clinging as he does to the guiding 
 principle, both the greater and smaller detours of which he has 
 to avail himself in order to elevate his ego consciousness. The 
 characteristic of the neurotic psyche is only its tenacious 
 adherence to the guiding principle. It is the contradictions
 
 38 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 with reality, the conflicts which arise from them and the urgency 
 to acquire social importance and power, which bring form the 
 symptoms. This is even more obvious in such psychoses where 
 the guiding principle appears most subtly. Misinterpretations 
 of reality are undertaken, and demonstrations result, merely, 
 so to speak, for the sake of proof. In both instances, the patient 
 behaves as though he had the goal constantly before his eyes. 
 In the case of the neuroses he exaggerates and combats the real 
 obstacles to the maximation of his ego-consciousness or seeks 
 to avoid them by the construction of excuses. The psychotic 
 individual clinging as he does to his idea (fixe idee) seeks to 
 ignore reality or to transform it in such a way as to make it 
 correspond with his unreal standpoint. Freud, who has done 
 so much toward the discovery of symbolism in the neurosis and 
 psychosis, has called attention to the galaxy of symbols. 
 Unfortunately he has carried his investigations only to the point 
 of discovering the actual or possible sexual formulae in these 
 symbols, and has not pursued their further elucidation into the 
 dynamic eventuality of the masculine protest, of striving 
 " upward." Thus it happened that for him the meaning of the 
 neurosis became exhausted in the conversion of libidinous stimuli 
 whereas, in reality that which lies behind the symbolism is 
 the appearance of or the actual impulsion toward a maximation 
 of the masculine ego-consciousness. 
 
 We have described the guiding ideal of the ego as a fiction, 
 thus denying its reality, but we must nevertheless assert that 
 although unreal it is of the greatest importance for the process 
 of life, and for the psychic development. Vaihinger in his 
 " Philosophy of As If " has given a brilliant elucidation of this 
 apparent contradiction, and recognized the fiction as an 
 opposition to reality but as indispensable for the development 
 of science. Reference to this singular relationship in the 
 psychology of the neuroses was first made by me and I was 
 considerably assisted and confirmed in my view by Vaihinger 's 
 work. I am thus in a position to say something concerning the 
 fiction of ego-consciousness, and to throw some light on its 
 significance as well as on its mode of appearance in the psyche. 
 It is first of all an abstraction and must in itself be regarded as 
 the indication of an anticipation. It is, so to speak, the 
 marshall's staff * in the wallet of the insignificant soldier, and 
 may be looked upon as " payment on account " demanded by 
 
 * For the benefit of psychologists of a keener insight, I note here that the 
 prevalence of examples which have been taken from military life have been 
 chosen by me with an especial object in view. In military training the starting 
 point and fictive purpose are brought into closer relation, can be more readily 
 noted, and every movement of the training soldier becomes a dexterity which 
 has for its purpose the transformation of a primary feeling of weakness into a 
 feeling of superiority.
 
 THE ACCENTUATED FICTION 39 
 
 the primitive feeling of uncertainty. The construction of the 
 fiction takes place by setting aside disquieting inferiorities and 
 burdensome realities in the idea, as always happens when the 
 psyche seeks certainty and escape from its restraint. The painful 
 uncertainty is reduced to its lowest possible, albeit apparently 
 casual amount, and this is transformed into its very antithesis 
 which is in turn made into the fictive goal of every wish-phantasy 
 and desire. It is then that this goal may be made concrete for 
 the sake of becoming self-evident. For instance, the restriction 
 of food in childhood is felt as an abstract " nothing," as want, 
 in contrast to this feeling the child comes to long for " all," for 
 superfluity until it brings this goal much nearer to the under- 
 standing in the person of the father, in the form of a traditionally 
 rich person, of a mighty Kaiser. The more intensely the 
 deprivation was felt the more forcible is this imaginary abstract 
 ideal constructed and starting therefrom begins the formation 
 and classification of the given psychical forces to preparatory 
 attitudes, facilities and traits of character. The individual then 
 carries these traits of character demanded by the fictive goal just 
 as the mask of the ancient actor persona was required to 
 fit to the denouement of the tragedy. Should there stir in a boy 
 doubt concerning his manliness, as happens in constitutionally 
 inferior children, feeling as they do to be kindred to girls, he 
 chooses a goal of such a nature as will give him mastery over 
 women (usually also over all men). Through this his attitude 
 toward women is determined at an early age. He will constantly 
 show a tendency to bring about his superiority over women, 
 will undervalue and degrade the feminine sex, will figuratively 
 speaking raise the hand against his mother, which in 
 neurotically disposed children often finds expression in a gesture 
 or in their psychic attitude, and will in a playful manner take 
 his model from the mother in order to test himself in the manly 
 role before it. The development of this sort of infantile attitude 
 of readiness where a rigid pedantic behavior becomes manifest, 
 where the child's excited desire for mastery seeks a confirmation, 
 and an assurance of his ego-consciousness, similar to the one 
 he has experienced from his mother, that is, conditions in which 
 he is able in the same manner to satisfy his craving for security 
 is already to be looked upon as a neurotic trait. It is only to 
 this neurotic fixity of the uncertainty that Nietzsche's assertion 
 is applicable, namely that " every one carries within him a 
 portrait of womankind which he has derived from his mother, 
 and which makes him honor woman or despise her or entertain a 
 total indifference toward her." Yet we must concede that these 
 individuals are in the majority. Among them are many who 
 were disdained by their mother, since which time they fear a
 
 4o THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 like setback from every woman, or demand from her an extra- 
 ordinary measure of surrender. 
 
 In the life and development of man there is nothing that set:s 
 to work with greater secrecy than the construction of the ideal 
 of personality. If we inquire into the cause of this secrecy v 
 it seems that the most important basis lies in the combative, 
 not to say hostile character of this fiction. It has originated 
 through a constant measuring and weighing of the advantages 
 of others and must therefore bring about, according to the 
 principle of antithesis which lies at the root of this process, the 
 injury to others. The psychological analysis of the neurotic 
 shows always the presence of the tendency to depreciation, which 
 is summarily directed toward every one. The combative 
 tendencies ' become regularly manifest in greed, in envy, in 
 longing for superiority. But the fiction of gaining the mastery 
 over others can only be used, be taken into account if it does 
 not disturb the combination of relations from the beginning. 
 And therefore, this fiction must early become unrecognizable, 
 must assume a disguise, or it destroys itself. This disguise 
 takes place by the positing of an anti-fiction, which first of all 
 directs visible conduct, and under the stress of which reality is 
 approached, and the recognition of its effective forces is 
 accomplished. This contrary fiction, always of the nature of 
 current, corrective instances, brings about the formal change of 
 the guiding fiction by pressing its own claim to consideration, 
 by presenting for recognition social and ethical demands at their 
 true value and thus assuring the reasonableness of thinking and 
 acting. It is the security coefficient of the guiding line to power 
 and the harmony of the two fictions, their mutual compatibility 
 which is the sign of mental health. In the contrary fiction are 
 active experience and education, social and cultural formulas, 
 and the traditions of society. In times of good humor, of 
 security, of normal conditions, of peace, this is the prevailing 
 form, which causes a restraint of the combative predispositions 
 and effects an adaptation of the traits of character to the 
 environment. Should the insecurity increase and the conscious- 
 ness of inferiority emerge, then the contrary-fiction is deprived 
 of value because of an increasing abstraction from reality, the 
 dexterities become mobilized, the nervous dogmatic character 
 asserts itself and with it the exaggerated sense of ego-ideal. It 
 is one of the triumphs of human wit to put through the guiding 
 fiction by adapting it to the antifiction, to shine through 
 modesty, to conquer by humility and submissiveness, to humiliate 
 others by one's virtues, to attack others by one's own passivity, 
 to cause pain to others by one's own suffering, to strive to attain 
 the goal of manly force by effeminate means, to make oneself 
 
 7 S. " Der Aggreesionstrieb im iJeben und in her Neurose."
 
 THE ACCENTUATED FICTION 41 
 
 small in order to appear great. Of such sort, however, are often 
 the expedients of neurotics. 
 
 Concerning the significance of the most primitive perception 
 and emotion as an abstraction I need waste no words. Just as 
 abstract is the positing of an imaginary guiding point and of 
 this life plan which is now spun out between these two points. 
 With reference to the neurotic psyche we have repeatedly 
 emphasized that it is the greater insecurity which alone tends 
 to withdraw the guiding point still further from reality, to set 
 it higher. In addition to this the inferior sense organs yield 
 qualitatively and quantitatively changed sensations, and the 
 organs of execution a changed technique usually in the sense of 
 greater limitation, so that the self-esteem, the ideal guiding 
 representation, the representation of the world and the life plan 
 must be formed differently from normal representations of this 
 sort, in that they are more abstract, less in conformity with 
 reality. In this process it is true the compensation and over- 
 compensation may sometimes bring the conception of the world 
 and the line of reality nearer together as in the great 
 performances of the neurotic psyche. The overtense personal 
 ideal, however, which acquires absolute rigidity, which assumes 
 nearly an identity with God, often lends to the nature and 
 behavior of the neurotic and psychotic a pronounced hypomanic 
 character, if the preparations therefore, the feeling of 
 insignificance, the ideas of persecution did not counteract this 
 character by causing a sort of inner certainty without which the 
 positing of the goal would be impossible, by causing a feeling 
 of predestination. In the phases of greater insecurity this 
 characteristic is considerably stronger and its significance as 
 anticipation of the guiding fiction, as payment on account 
 becomes distinctly obvious. 
 
 Gustave Freytag in his "Reminiscences of my Life" describes 
 the usefulness of the compensatory performance in the following 
 manner : 
 
 ' But too the bull's-eye-shot on the target is difficult to me. 
 For at Oels I had noticed during the instruction that I was very 
 near sighted. When I complained of this during the vacation 
 to my father, he advised me to make my way through the world 
 without glasses and told me a story illustrating the helplessness 
 of a theologist who had made him get up out of bed one morning 
 to hunt his spectacles so that he could find his trousers. I 
 followed this advice and have accustomed myself to the use of 
 spectacles only at the theatre and in looking at pictures. I 
 sought to overcome the disadvantages under which I labored in 
 society from this defect and overlooked much unsuspectedly 
 which would have disgusted a sharper observer. I was often 
 obliged to forego the enjoyment of flowers, beauty in dress, of 
 
 E
 
 42 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 remarkable countenances and beauty in women from which others 
 derived pleasure. But as the same adjusted itself adroitly to this 
 defect of sense, there was soon developed in me a good under- 
 standing of those expressions of life which came within my range 
 of vision and a quick divination of much which was not clear 
 to me ; the smaller number of the perceptions permitted me to 
 elaborate those which were perceived with greater ease and 
 perhaps more profoundly. At any rate the loss was greater than 
 the gain. But my father was thus far right, my eyes preserved 
 unchanged throughout my entire life their keenness of vision 
 at close distances." 
 
 If one imagines the development of a visual phantasy of this 
 sort which constantly draws away from reality goaded by the 
 pressure of the craving for security, there results for the same 
 purpose of obtaining security as in the above cited example, an 
 ability to produce visual hallucinations which can manifest itself 
 even outside of dream states, for the purpose of presenting 
 warnings to preserve personal security and encouraging 
 consolations. The abstractions and also the anticipations have 
 even gone farther and may lead to the well known remarkable 
 pathological expressions of the " telepaths " or Cassandra 
 natures. The disquieting consciousness of inferiority gives a 
 terrible incentive to this reaching out beyond the limits of human 
 possibilities here as in other instances, and this consciousness 
 rinding refuge in weakness ascribes to others a greater power 
 of vision, as though they could see what was hidden, could read 
 the thoughts. The child in his craving for security with his 
 natural secrecy may early incline to just this point in order to 
 gain security, and act under the imaginary assumption that others 
 can " see into his heart," can divine his most hidden thoughts, 
 an assumption which often makes its appearance as an expedient 
 in the neurosis and psychosis and has the same value as the 
 exaggerated feeling of guilt, perhaps, and neurotic conscientious- 
 ness, and whose purpose is to avoid a degradation of self-esteem, 
 shame, punishment, mockery, humiliation, the feminine r61e, 
 death. 
 
 The increased capacity of the neurotic for abstractions for 
 anticipations is not only at the root of his hallucinatory character, 
 of his fantasies and his dreams but also of the over-exertion of 
 organ functioning of which he makes use in purposeful efforts as 
 preparations for the combat. Thus the neurotic makes for 
 himself a place by more abstract prevision and premeditation, 
 and constructs thereof, that neurotic foresight which is regularly 
 present in this disease, by means of which the patient holds the 
 possibilities of experience constantly before him arranged 
 dogmatically and in sharply antithetical groups according to the 
 Scheme " Triumph Defeat." Or he places his environment
 
 THE ACCENTUATED FICTION 43 
 
 under ban by heightening the sensibility of his organs (which 
 is the first step towards hallucinations) snowing hypersensibility 
 to smells, sounds, touch, temperature, tastes and pains, and 
 this brings his undertakings constantly into harmony with his 
 imaginary masculine guiding principle. Foolishness and 
 superstitious convictions of a hopeless destiny, the firm seated 
 belief in one's own ill luck serve the same purpose of satisfying 
 the craving for security by constructing the proof that caution 
 is necessary. The hallucinatory awakening of anxiety works 
 in the same direction, of which the neurotic makes extensive 
 use. 
 
 That the traits of character as well as the emotional pre- 
 dispositions serve the guiding fiction, it is the purpose of this 
 book to prove to the fullest degree. The guiding line of the 
 neurotic leading in a directly perpendicular line upwards demand's 
 peculiar expedients and forms of life which are included under 
 the little uniform concept of the neurotic symptoms. Now one 
 finds safety-devices at remote places, prohibitory arrangements, 
 protective combats, for the purpose of assuring success to the 
 central impulse, the will to power, then again there are, and 
 these are often difficult to understand, circuitous ways 
 comparable to secret paths, taken so as not to lose the guiding 
 line when the direct way to the masculine triumph is barred. 
 Often a change of nervous phenomena is observed which 
 resembles tentative experiments, until the more severe symptom 
 guarantees a concordance with the guiding idea. 
 
 I believe too that I have presented in the present work these 
 symptoms and their psycho-genesis coherently and to a sufficient 
 extent. They all rest on dexterity acquired by long practice and 
 preparation whose hypervalency is supported through the 
 medium of and is founded on the fitness for the combat to 
 preserve the ideal self-esteem. The preparations themselves 
 commence in the beginning of the neurosis, accompany the 
 development of the idea of personal worth and are adapted to 
 it. They are most clearly recognized in the reminiscences of 
 childhood which have been presented in the oft returning dreams, 
 in the mimic, the habitus, in the play of children, in their 
 phantasies, concerning future vocations, concerning the future. 
 
 It lies in the nature of the too elevated guiding idea that it 
 should estrange the person who entertains it, that is the neurotic, 
 from reality. Not infrequently this condition manifests itself in 
 a " feeling of strangeness " which is again over-estimated and 
 used with a view to a certain effect, i.e., to recommend a cautious 
 retreat in an insecure situation. Apparently opposite to this 
 " back " an unjustified feeling of confidence in a situation, the 
 feeling of " deja vu " sometimes becomes manifest, often in 
 the form of a concealed analogy for the purpose of warning or
 
 44 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 encouraging. 8 In neurotic students I have sometimes observed 
 that, led by the feeling of their predestination, scholars have 
 sought a hearing on subjects with which they were wholly 
 unfamiliar with the result of total failure. Such experiences 
 may cause the neurotic to be suspicious of his emphasized feeling 
 of " self-confidence " which may emerge, as though he preserved 
 a bad after-taste. The security through the exaggerated idea 
 of self-esteem and the adherence to it determines often the 
 feeling of or even a real condition of estrangement from the 
 world, which indeed is usually exaggerated with a definite 
 purpose. Fear for everything now, ponderousness, awkward- 
 ness, bashfulness, then accompany the neurotic who avoids 
 reality and reveals his efforts to reinterpret, reconstruct and 
 remodel it. This deficiency also seeks its compensation and in 
 less severe cases finds it in the antifiction leading to reality, 
 which again in an abstract, usually urgent form seeks to over- 
 estimate the significance of the reality from exaggerated fear 
 of it in order to raise up preparations against error and defect at 
 all times. The vacillation between the ideal and the real 
 manifests itself in an extremeway in the neurotic psyche, in 
 which the passion for doubting assumes the form of a paradigm 
 for the real " truth," as the final goal of power which the 
 neurotic is to attain. Or the outer forms are pedantically held 
 to and over-estimated as is a fetish, and as though they 
 guaranteed security. The following sentence from Rebel's 
 letters * seems to me to indicate this feature. 
 
 " One can never pay sufficient honor to the outer forms which 
 in youth are so thoughtlessly ridiculed, for they are the only 
 lines which assist in making decisions in the restlessly changing 
 world without law or order " In small things as in great this 
 craving for security is always manifested and humanity is always 
 seeking it by analogies, and by abstract dogmatic methods. 
 
 The frequency of sexual guiding lines in the neuroses is 
 explained in unprejudiced analyses upon the following grounds : 
 
 1. Because they furnish a suitable form of expression for the 
 masculine protest. 
 
 2. Because it lies within the option of the patient to feel 
 them as real. 
 
 Therefore, the adaptation of the sexual imaginary guiding line 
 depends also on its value in procuring security for the feeling of 
 self-esteem, on its significance as an abstraction and quality of 
 exciting hallucinations, and on its quality of easily receiving a 
 concrete form and because it admits of anticipations. 
 
 * The feeling of strangeness and the feeling 1 of familiarity in the neurosis 
 are analogous to the image of warning and exhortation of an inner voice in 
 the dream, the hallucination and the attitude in the psychosis. 
 
 9 E. W. Werner, from Hebel's youth, Oesterreichische Kundschau, 1911.
 
 THE ACCENTUATED FICTION 45 
 
 According to this the hallucinatory character of the neurotic 
 is a peculiar instance of the mechanism of security. It makes 
 use, as does thinking and speech, of the primitive recollections 
 reduced to the smallest dynamic measure to which he is drawn 
 by means of the abstracting power of the craving for security. 
 Its function and office is to calculate the way to the desired 
 heights by use of analogy from experiences which have their 
 place in childhood in emphasizing set-backs that have been 
 endured or comforting memories of evils that have been over- 
 come. 
 
 The hallucinatory power represents a completed preparation 
 accomplished by the overstrained craving for security, and takes 
 its material, as does also the function of thought and pre- 
 meditation from the cast-iron element of the neurotically directed 
 memory. That which is called regression in dream and in 
 hallucinations by other writers is the every-day process of 
 thought which gropes back to experience, and can only refer to 
 the material of the dreams and hallucinations, but never to their 
 dynamics. 
 
 The psychic dynamic of an hallucination consist therefore in 
 this, that in a situation of uncertainty, a guiding line is sought 
 with might and is hypostasized by means of an abstraction, per 
 analogium with the evaluation of experience, by means of 
 anticipation and by means of a fictitious rendition of something 
 closely related to a sensory perception. This latter ability as 
 the most effective means of expression may, by reason of the 
 anti-fiction which inclines to reality, be felt as in conscious 
 opposition to reality as in dreams, or in the craving for security 
 dissolves the anti-fiction and permits the hallucination to be felt 
 as real. 
 
 Jodl defined civilization as " the increased effort of man 
 under certain circumstances and with special intensity to secure 
 his person and life against hostile powers of nature as well as 
 from the antagonism of his fellow men, to satisfy his needs 
 both real and ideal in a greater measure and to bring his nature 
 without obstacle to development." 
 
 The neurotic individual holds the guiding line much more 
 constantly in view, but may accordingly need to bring to 
 expression schematically and dogmatically the guiding line 
 which leads to the transcendental or the anti-fiction which tends 
 to culture, the latter in the sense of a neurotic circuitous way, 
 in which, for example, he seems to submit to an extreme degree 
 to the " antagonism of his fellow men " for the purpose of 
 triumphing over them. 
 
 The evolution of the effort to bring his nature to the fullest 
 development, to attain the pinnacle of that which the neurotic 
 individual may call his culture leads us back again to the already
 
 46 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 mentioned preparations so important from a psychological point 
 of view, to the tentative efforts which are supposed to be 
 introduced by the original consciousness of inferiority. 
 
 All the imperfect organs in a state of infantile development 
 strive with all their connate capacities and possibilities of 
 development to form purposeful, so to speak, intelligent 
 preparatory arrangements. In the efforts of the constitutionally 
 inferior organs with their numerous abortive performances 
 arises, as a consequence of the greater tension in the presence 
 of the requirements of the external world, the impression of 
 uncertainty, the self-esteem of the child brings forward a 
 permanent consciousness of inferiority. Thus it happens that 
 already in early childhood the mastery of the situation according 
 to an example taken as a model or to dominate the situation 
 even far beyond the power indicated in the model is taken as the 
 guiding motive and a permanent impulse of will is founded which 
 hands over the permanent guidance to a directing idea " the 
 will to power." The positing of a goal in the neurotic character 
 is a phase of the same tendency. This goal corresponds 
 consciously or unconsciously to the formula : ' I must act in 
 such a way that in the end I become the master of the situation." 
 Long continuation of the child in the phase of consciousness of 
 inferiority leads to a heightening and strengthening of the 
 intensity of that formula, so that from the unusual intensity of 
 all efforts, the preparatory actions and the predispositions, the 
 traits of character of any period of development may be inferred 
 as original consciousness of inferiority. Also in organs falling 
 below the normal standard the tentative efforts are manifested, 
 which produce preparations and expedients in walking, seeing, 
 eating, hearing. Exner emphasizes that these tentative efforts 
 are like those which precede the grasping of the sound 
 combinations when children are learning to speak. Much more 
 convulsive in form are the preliminary processes in the defective 
 organ, whose preparations and methods of functioning in 
 favorable examples of over-compensation, are in height, light 
 artistic performances and perfection, but which often as in the 
 neurosis because of the close guard kept and the cautiousness, 
 rarely attain full development. The child seeks to learn his 
 faults in the way offered him by the craving for security, and seeks 
 to remedy them or to gain advantage from them in using them as 
 an expedient. As he does not know the real reason for his 
 inferiority, often from pride does not wish to know them, he is 
 easily misled to ascribe them to external reasons, to blame the 
 " spits of objects " or usually, his relatives, and assumes then 
 an aggressive, hostile attitude to the real objective world. 
 Usually he retains a foreboding, a presentiment of ill-luck as 
 an abstract reminder of his feelings of inferiority, which he is
 
 THE ACCENTUATED FICTION 47 
 
 likely to exaggerate, often develops to a feeling of guilt, if 
 circumstances admit of this, in order to unfold his pre-vision, 
 his foresight with good reason. The neurotic endeavors are 
 above all directed towards enlarging and securing the boundaries 
 of self-esteem by constantly estimating and testing the powers 
 in the difficulties of the objective world. 
 
 To over-exertion in this effort may be traced many of the traits 
 of the neurotic his inclination to play with fire, to make 
 dangerous situations and hunt for them, his pleasure in the 
 gruesome and the diabolical (Michel). The inclination to crime, 
 like the sadistic inclination lies in the masculine guiding line, 
 but is often neutralized by the contradictory idea which develops 
 and is more often exaggerated in memory, with the purpose of 
 warning from execution. , 
 
 Nervousness, by preference, utilizes organic defectiveness, 
 the infantile defects, the sense of ill-health in general, on the ofie 
 hand for the purpose of securing the ego-consciousness against 
 the requirements of parental authority, usually by means of a 
 stubborn revolt, on the other hand for the purpose of postponing 
 by a sort of artificial obstruction decisions and collisions which 
 might be dangerous to the masculine fiction, that is to say, the 
 relinquishing of certain positions of advantage in order to retain 
 more important ones. Indeed the neurotic individual often 
 seeks minor defeats, even brings them about artificially, or 
 assumes dangerous outlooks in order thereby ,to justify his 
 neurotic acts and caution. In neurotically retained childhood 
 defects a special refractoriness and strong aggression against the 
 father and mother may be expected. 
 
 Thus a compulsory striving toward the understanding of 
 objective difficulties, efforts to overcome them, to gain the 
 mastery, to combat them, undervaluation and depreciation of 
 life and its joys or flight from them characterize a phase of the 
 neurosis. Along with this the fact very frequently comes to 
 light that the patient is very enthusiastic for life, for work, for 
 love and marriage, but platonically, while secretly he bars the 
 access to them through the neurosis, in order to make sure of his 
 domination in the more limited field of the family with the 
 father and mother. 
 
 This outwardly directed anxious and cautious glance of the 
 neurotic which is intended to preserve the guiding fiction is 
 regularly accompanied by a self-observation of a higher 
 intensity. Sometimes in a situation of psychic uncertainty the 
 personified, deified guiding idea is met with as a second self, as 
 an inner voice like the Daemon of Socrates which warns, 
 encourages, punishes, accuses. And that which the neurasthenics 
 and hypochondriacs relate to us concerning the manner in which 
 they inwardly rage, how keenly they examine and follow every
 
 48 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 act of their lives is true of neurotics generally. The self- 
 observation may lead to a limitation of the field of combat, 
 through it it utilizes expressions of fear of sickness, by means of 
 which the neurotic individual is always in a position to beat a 
 retreat for the sake of security. It must be thought of as 
 effective, when the primitive expedients for gaining security, 
 such as anxiety, shame, bashfulness, or the more complex ones, 
 as modesty, conscientiousness, nervous attacks, accompany the 
 presentiment of a defeat, in order not to allow the self-esteem 
 to sink below the required level. Self-observation and self- 
 esteem always excited and reenforced by the guiding fiction so 
 that a base of operation is offered and the aggressions introduced 
 produce immediately the neurotic, dogmatic traits of character, 
 of envy, greed, tyranny, etc. The exaggerated introspection 
 plays a constant role in the continuous measuring and wrestling 
 of the neurotic individual to test his own worth against that of 
 others, it gives hints to premeditation and phantasy and announces 
 its presence when the patient avoids making a decision or when 
 for the same purpose he gives himself up permanently to doubt. 
 That all these introspections originate from the feeling of 
 Insufficiency and are influenced by it is just as easy to under- 
 stand, as that they finally reach the goal to which they in reality 
 tend, i.e., caution. Thus introspection is at once hesitation, 
 egotism, megalomania, doubt, self-depreciatory psychosis, and 
 stands in connection with all other phenomena which are caused 
 by the consciousness of inferiority. It serves especially for the 
 reenforcement and testing of the masculine protest, of 
 characteristics such as courage, pride, ambition, etc., as well 
 as the purpose of increasing all those tendencies whose acme is 
 security, such as economy, exactness, industry, cleanliness. It 
 influences the attention and serves also to dominate it, so that 
 it occupies a prominent position in that mesh of traits whose 
 object it is to gain security. The results, however, at which it 
 arrives are purposely falsified. It would be very erroneous to 
 regard it as libidinous or as pleasure producing. Its function 
 is rather to group all the impressions of the objective world and 
 to bring them under a single test, in such a way, so to speak, 
 that the primary uncertainty of the individual shall be assured 
 from being unmasked by a mathematical or statistical guarantee 
 according to the standard of probability, i.e., that the individual 
 shall escape a defeat. I first called attention to the dynamic of 
 the neurosis in the " Neurotic Disposition " and the object of 
 the present work is to present it in a more profound and 
 extended form. The purposeful and profound introspection, 
 therefore, is in line with the neurosis, even though in 
 philosophy, psychology and in self-knowledge it has produced 
 excellent fruit. It is the private philosophy of the neurotic
 
 THE ACCENTUATED FICTION 49 
 
 which fails to hit the mark of reality, and whose mania, corrigible 
 by analysis, has its analogy in the " know thyself " of the 
 sublime philosophers. The largely incorrigible delirium of the 
 psychotics brooding and phantastic introspection, which is so 
 much easier to comprehend as a systematized illusion with the 
 object of assuring self-esteem, teaches us to understand the 
 delirium of the introspection of the neurotic. 
 
 The neurotic's striving for security, his very stronghold, can 
 therefore only be understood when the original, contrary factor 
 of his uncertainties is likewise taken into consideration. Both 
 are the result of an antithetically grouped judgment which has 
 come to depend on the fictitious egotistic ideal, which furnishes 
 to this judgrpent biased " subjective " values. The feeling of 
 " security " and its opposite pole of ;< insecurity " arranged 
 according to the antithesis of "feeling inferiority" and "egotistic 
 ideal" are like these latter a fictitious pair of values, a psychic 
 formation of which Vaihinger says " that the real in them is 
 artificially placed there, that only when taken together have 
 they meaning and value, taken singly, however, they lead through 
 their isolation to nonsense, contradictions and illusionary 
 problems." In the analysis of psychoneuroses it always becomes 
 obvious that this antithesis resolves itself in accordance with 
 the only real " antithesis " of " man woman," so that the 
 feeling of inferiority, uncertainty, lowliness, effeminacy, falls 
 on one side of the table, the antithesis of certainty, superiority, 
 self-esteem, manliness, on the other. The dynamics of the 
 neurosis can therefore be regarded (and is often so understood 
 by the neurotic because of its irradiation upon his psyche) as if 
 the patient wished to change from a woman to a man. This 
 effect yields in its most highly colored form the picture of that 
 which I have called the " masculine protest." 
 
 The strength of the manly element in the idea of cultural 
 perfection as well as more particularly in the artificial guiding 
 lines of neurotics as we find it in the wishes and actions, thoughts 
 and feelings of our patients, in their attitude toward the objective 
 world, in their preparations for life, in every trait of character, 
 in every physical and psychical gesture, which gives the impulse 
 to the upward movement and directs the line of life upward, 
 permits us to divine that in the beginning of psychical develop- 
 ment a deficiency of such manly power was felt, and that the 
 original feeling of inferiority realized by the constitutionally 
 defective child was estimated as feminine in conformity with 
 this antithesis. No matter what was at the foundation of the 
 feeling of inferiority, when the strong neurotic stronghold is 
 introduced through the setting up of the masculine fiction, the 
 supposed basis of the childish uncertainty and the uncertainty 
 itself fall under the phenomena which are considered as
 
 50 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 effeminate as a consequence of the neurotic, antithetical 
 grouping. The feeling of insignificance, of weakness, of anxiety 
 and helplessness, of ill health, of deficiency, of pain, etc., 
 produces in the neurotic actions of such a nature that he seems 
 to be compelled to set up a defence against effeminacy, that is 
 to say, to be obliged to act in a manly and forceful manner. la 
 the same manner this answer follows, the affect-possibilities of 
 the masculine protest react against every degradation, against 
 the feeling of uncertainty, of being injured, of inferiority, and 
 the neurotic individual draws constantly effective guiding lines 
 for his volition, action and thoughts in the lorm of traits of 
 character in the broad chaotic field of his soul, in order not to 
 miss the way to the heights, in order to make his security 
 complete. Usually the traits of character tend in a direct line 
 of the masculine ideal in both the male and the female patients, 
 but the neurotic circuitous ways, attacks and predispositions to 
 attack especially following the decisive defeat whose analysis 
 and arrangements in the ensemble reveals the same tendency to 
 the heightening of the masculine ego-consciousness, manifest 
 themselves as in accordance with the above given expositions, 
 even though from an outside view and superficially considered 
 they may appear to be timidity, anxiety, effeminacy, and may 
 be regarded as flight or retreat from the world. The simple 
 question concerning the stability of the far fetched expedient in 
 the form of a neurotic symptom enables us to understand that 
 in these latter cases it is not because a decision has been reached, 
 but because the originally constructed imaginary masculine goal 
 is effective now as it was before and that a cultural adaptation, 
 peace and contentment, cannot be maintained, because the goal 
 is set too high. 
 
 Through certain uncertainties of the child concerning his 
 own sex-role the masculine element in the guiding fiction is 
 considerably reenforced. In fact one observes that children 
 retain a remarkable interest for differences of sexuality in a 
 hidden form. The similarity of dress in children in the first 
 years, the feminine features in small boys, and masculine in girls r 
 certain threats of the parents as " a boy will change himself 
 into a girl " reproaches to the boy that he is like a girl, to a 
 girl that she is like a boy, may still increase this uncertainty, as 
 long as the differences in the genital organs are unknown. But 
 even where there is the fullest explanation, doubt may awaken 
 through anomalies of the genital organs in erroneous judgments, 
 which may be retained and emerge constantly in later life in the 
 antithetical picture of " masculine-feminine " so that our 
 original statement li that the doubt of his own sex-role is at the 
 
 10 " Psvrhic Hertnnphrodism in Life and in the Neurosis." 1. c. and the 
 later publications.
 
 THE ACCENTUATED FICTION SF 
 
 foundation of the neurotic doubt needs extension only in one 
 direction, i.e., that the neurosis holds fast to this condition of 
 doubt in the patient subsequently as a security against the 
 necessity of decadency, in order to construct the " hesitating 
 attitude." 
 
 The longer the uncertainty as to the sex-role exists, the more 
 urgent becomes the effort and tentative preparation to attain 
 the masculine role. Thus originates the original picture of the 
 
 masculine protest ' ' which has as aim to force the one in whom 
 it exists under all circumstances into the seemingly most 
 masculine attitude, or, as is the case with girls and boys, who 
 early become neurotic, to prevent set-backs in all forms by 
 neurotic expedients, simultaneously, however, to build up 
 directly masculine traits of character and strong affect- 
 predisposition. 
 
 The fore-stage of the knowledge of the sex-role, that is the 
 period of psychic hermaphroditism of the child exists generally. 
 Attention has been called to its importance by Dessoir and 
 myself. That this stadium with its strong endeavors in the- 
 direction of the masculine guiding line is of the greatest 
 significance for the development of the neurosis with its too- 
 elevated manly goal and its expedients for gaining security was 
 demonstrated to me by the analysis of the psychoneurosis. 
 Goethe proves himself to be a good observer and connoisseur of 
 nature when he says in Wilhelm Meister's Theatrical Consign- 
 ment, " Just as at certain periods in their life, children begin 
 to pay attention to the differences in the sex of their parents, 
 and their glances through the envelopes which conceal these 
 secrets bring forth very wonderful emotions in their nature, so* 
 it was with Wilhelm in this discovery ; he was more quiet and 
 less quiet than before, thought he had learned something and 
 just from this perceived that he knew nothing." 
 
 In fact one finds as the first expression of this inexperience 
 and its depressing reaction upon the psyche an enormous amount 
 of curiosity and craving for knowledge and in order to find 
 orientation in life notwithstanding this the child comes 
 under the influence of the guiding line which impels him to act 
 as though he must know everything. Should he happen to find 
 out the superiority of the manly principle in our society, the 
 guiding model becomes masculine, especially if a man, the father 
 appears to him to be the person with knowledge. 
 
 In the case of little girls peculiar traits of character which 
 become especially prominent in the neurosis develop when they 
 try to hold fast to the masculine guiding line. The feeling of 
 having suffered an injury has just as much weight with them as 
 for boys who consider themselves female, so that they put alF
 
 52 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 their interest into collecting proof of their injury and building up 
 their aggression against their environment. 
 
 Imaginary pictures of castration, of man changed to woman, 
 woman to man, of masculine forms of life, emerge in the analysis 
 as indicators of the neurotic psyche, point to the craving for 
 equality with man and permit the masculine fiction to reemerge 
 constantly in the later changes of form of the guiding line. These 
 neurotics regularly assume an attitude toward life as though they 
 had suffered an injury, or as though they were constantly seeking 
 witti the greatest caution, to avoid a loss. 
 
 E. H. Meyer says in the " Indo-Germanic Myths" (I. S. 16), 
 " According to the Atharva Veda the Gandharvs (phallic 
 Daemons) consume the testicles of boys and thus transform the 
 boys into girls." The ideas of many neurotics in childhood 
 seem to have assumed this and similar forms concerning the 
 origination of the two sexes, as if from thoughts concerning a 
 degradation which has been suffered and which assumes the 
 form of a sexual transformation with the woman. The immediate 
 psychical result is then as a rule more acute aggression against 
 the parents, to whom is ascribed the blame for this shortcoming. 
 
 Flies, Halban, Weininger, and before them, among others, 
 Schopenhauer and Krafft-Ebing, founded the psychic 
 Tiermaphroditism on the presence of a hypothetical male and 
 female substance in the individual. Our concept supposes only 
 ihe antithesis in the valuation of male and female as it actually 
 exists, takes into account the universality of the antithetical 
 figurative apperception-scheme " male-female " and deduces 
 from the pressure of the neurotically reenforced and heightened 
 egotistic ideal the masculine factor which is so easily discover- 
 able. The latter conditions also the emphasis of the feeling of 
 inferiority of the individual by comprehending it in a picture 
 which belongs to the feminine role in order to react against it 
 with the character traits, the impulses, and preparations of the 
 masculine protest. The findings published by me have been 
 taken up in a series of the latest works from the Freudian school. 
 A further pursuance of the matter leads irrevocably to a 
 realization of the untenableness of the libido-theory, to a doing 
 away with the sexual etiology and to an understanding of the 
 neurotic sexual conduct as a fiction. 
 
 If the masculine protest has thus become clear to us as an 
 expedient of the psyche by means of which it attains full security, 
 and strives to bring itself in conformity with the guiding egotistic 
 idea, it still remains to present to view the formal change of this 
 guiding line as it takes place every time contradictions become 
 apparent in it and the purpose of neurotic efforts to maintain 
 superiority is jeopardized. This is the case when reality threatens 
 "the egotistic ideal with degradation. The neurotic in this case
 
 THE ACCENTUATED FICTION 53. 
 
 will cling more tenaciously to his idea than the normal person. 
 The more deeply, however, he becomes entangled in the 
 reassuring neurosis, the more likely is he, being assisted by 
 memories and warnings, to anticipate an injury, to construct 
 new neurotic circuitous ways, to apply further neurotic expedients 
 for security which for a problem under consideration contain 
 neither a fiat nor a negation, or more likely both at once. 
 
 His psychic hermaphroditic character will also manifest itself 
 in the circumstance that he yields, becomes submissive, 
 effeminate, while his efforts at the same time reveal a pressure 
 towards a tendency to dominate, toward manliness, with the 
 result that he makes no progress, because for every step he takes 
 forward he takes one backward, and sometimes even expresses 
 this procedure in pantomime. In the same way the fear of 
 blame, of punishment, of shame, in short of being " down " may 
 alter his straightforward manly traits. The construction of the 
 neurotic feelings of guilt, of congenital criminal instincts, of 
 roughness, of cruelty, and egotism bear fear-inspiring signs in 
 the same ways as the feelings of bashfulness, cowardice, dullness 
 and laziness when these latter are brought neurotically to 
 expression. The bad, intractable child, the years of wild oats, 
 and certain forms of psychoses, frequently the fore-stage of the 
 "developed neurosis," show us the masculine protest in a high, 
 rectilinear development. Their performances are produced 
 directly by the surge of the masculine protest which has become 
 an end in itself and which represents wholly and entirely the 
 reenforced guiding fiction. 
 
 Our theoretical presentation of the neurotic psyche would be 
 incomplete, if it did riot also enter upon the subject of the nature 
 and significance of dreams. I can in this .place advance no well 
 founded theory of dreams, to say nothing of a complete one. 
 But for various reasons I am obliged to communicate all the 
 observations and findings which have rendered possible the 
 study of dreams in the practical part of the work. 
 
 Freud's interpretation of dreams was perhaps the greatest step 
 in advance which has been made in our understanding of the 
 psychology of the neuroses. And yet I cannot regard it as the 
 final step in our knowledge of dreams. In the course of an 
 observation of dreams extending over many years of healthy and 
 unhealthy persons I have arrived at the following result : 
 
 i. The dream is a sketch-like reflection of psychic attitudes 
 and indicates for the investigator the characteristic manner in 
 which the dreamer takes his attitude in regard to a certain 
 problem. It coincides, therefore, with the form of the fictitious 
 guiding line, yields only efforts of premeditation, tentative 
 preparations of an aggressive attitude and can therefore be 
 utilized to great advantage for the purpose of understanding
 
 ,54 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 these individual preparations, predispositions, and the guiding 
 fiction itself. 
 
 2. In the same way there comes to light in the dream, in a 
 more or less abstract manner, the dreamer's attitude towards the 
 world about him as well as his traits of character " and their 
 neurotic abnormalities. The abstraction in dream-thought is 
 necessitated by the craving for security, which seeks to solve a 
 problem by simplifying it and by referring it to a less complete 
 infantile stage. This it accomplishes in a manner which is true 
 of thinking generally, except that it is more profound. It makes 
 use too of memory, and in a figurative analogical manner, 
 through the hallucinatory awakening of memories of a fear- 
 inspiring or energy-exciting sort. The exclusion of reality by 
 sleep favors the abstract thinking in dreams, as correction is to 
 a great part prevented by the insensibility of the sense organs. 
 To this circumstance as well as to the absence of a conscious 
 positing of purpose in dream thought is due the incompre- 
 hensibility of the contents of dreams, which only receive meaning 
 when taken as symbols of life, as an "as if " for which the 
 interpretation has to supply the real aggression. 
 
 3. These facts which still remain to be proved as well as the 
 form of expression of the dream in an " as if " (" It seemed to 
 me as if ") reveal to us the nature of the dream as a factor in 
 which those tentative efforts and tasks become manifest by which 
 caution seeks to gain the mastery of a situation in the future. 
 In the dreams of neurotic persons it is possible, therefore, to 
 observe more distinctly than in others the neurotic methods of 
 apperception which work according to the principle of an 
 antithesis, the emphasized feeling of inferiority and the guiding 
 egotistic idea, or to divine them in connection with the mental 
 life of these persons. 
 
 4. The tendency of the neurotically reenforced guiding idea 
 will be revealed regularly in the dreams of a neurotic person, 
 usually in the form of a striving to attain a position " above " 
 or the masculine protest. The feminine or " under " base of 
 operation is always indicated. 
 
 5. Repeated dreams of the same content and dreams of 
 childhood reveal the fictitious guiding line most distinctly. 
 Because they construct themselves upon a completed scheme or 
 one that is in a condition to be used which is erected and sustained 
 by the neurotic final purpose. The various dreams of a night 
 indicate this attempt at various solutions and are a characteristic 
 of the feeling of extreme uncertainty. The so-called censor of 
 dreams by means of which is accomplished a concealment or 
 
 11 G-. Chr. Lichtenberg already wrote If people were to relate accurately 
 their dreams, their character could be read from them sooner than from the 
 /ace.
 
 THE ACCENTUATED FICTION 55 
 
 disguising of actual facts by distortion, reveals itself as the 
 craving for security which accomplishes the formal change of the 
 fiction in the neurosis as well as in the dream, and seeks to avoid 
 by a circuitous way a contradiction in the masculine guiding line. 
 Other disfigurations are inherent in the nature of the more 
 abstract dream thinking and in its character as a mere reflection. 
 
 6. The symbolisms and expedients of analogy in dreams 
 are radiations containing forms and contents of dynamic affect 
 reinforcements, their word-pictures, so to speak. They are a 
 psychic superstructure over a compromise between a psychic 
 situation and a biased, usually falsified, sophistically applied 
 souvenir which must supply the resonance required by the idea. 
 
 The fulfillment of infantile wishes in dreams asserted by 
 Freud is solved by me by regarding it as the effect of 
 premeditation to attain security, whereby memories grouped 
 together with a view to a certain effect are taken as helps in the 
 form of mementoes, a psychic expedient which also dominates all 
 logical thinking, and which is not the libidinous or sexual wish 
 of childhood. 
 
 The only difference between the neurosis and normality with 
 its dreams and its delusions is the heightened tendency brought 
 about by the reenforced fiction, to choose those memories which 
 have been made effective, in short the neurotic perspective, 
 the neurotic does not suffer from reminiscences, he makes them. 
 
 If this point of comparison, and absolutely necessary one for 
 orientation and certainty in action, becomes once fixed, a point 
 which is in proportion to the degree with which the feeling of 
 inferiority weighs upon the child, this point must for the above 
 given reasons, from the necessity of making comparisons, and 
 on account of the adjustments which take place in childhood, 
 become stable, hypostasized and regarded as holy, as divine. On 
 the one hand are the real conditions and activities of the subject ; 
 on the other hand are the compensatory result of the feeling of 
 inferiority, the Deity, the guiding idea apperceived in the form 
 of a person or an event. This latter ideal point operates now 
 as though all directing forces were contained in it. Thus first 
 arises from an organic, objective life that which we call soul life, 
 the psyche. 
 
 Every step the child takes directs itself according to this 
 system and is in turn directed by it. There is a continuous 
 weighing, feeling, preparation, formation of predispositions and 
 measuring on the ideal which brings the child forward in his 
 development. He measures himself with men as well as with 
 women, whereby the contrast between the sexes furnishes a 
 guide and produces a psychic adjustment in accordance with a 
 contrast in a certain sense in a hostile, evasive direction in the 
 masculine line. In the neurotically disposed child, the
 
 56 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 compensatory craving for security heightened by the feeling of 
 uncertainty is responsible, through the over-stimulation of 
 attention in this direction for the abstract, neurotically 
 reenforced directing lines to the high-flown goal of the masculine 
 protest. And the more sharply defined understanding of the 
 contrast of the sexes produces earlier and more profoundly the 
 preparatory attitudes toward the opposite sex, the more so 
 when, as is the case with neurotics, the exclusively masculine 
 appraisal of the ideal reflects upon his feeling of inferiority 
 causing it to appear feminine. 
 
 The nature of home training carries with it the result that in 
 his first attempts at formulating an ideal of personality, the child 
 pictures to himself traits belonging to the most important 
 member of the family, usually the father. Neurotically disposed 
 children who in contrasting themselves with the father 
 experience an accentuation of their feeling of inferiority, 
 immediately hit upon preparatory expedients and construct 
 devices for combat as though they were obliged to demonstrate 
 their superiority to the father. In these preparatory efforts is 
 contained also the attitude to the opposite sex, in so far as the 
 intellect of the child does not make a mistake in regard to his 
 own sexual role, and many of his predispositions which are to 
 come into effectiveness later in life are tentatively practiced in 
 a playful manner upon members of the family of the opposite 
 sex, in the waking state or in hallucinations, or in his dreams. 
 
 That along with this the mother serves in a certain sense as 
 a model for the boy has long been known and has been 
 mentioned by Nietzsche. The boundary itself which the child 
 sets for himself is also a matter of experiment for him. His 
 wishes are, if he be neurotically disposed, boundless. 
 Discontented because of the too great distance to his egotistic 
 ideal, he even goes so far as to entertain sexual wishes in regard 
 to the mother, a proof of how boundless is the " will to power." 
 A fixation of a sexual relation, however, must have other 
 grounds than chance wishes in the field of boundless aspirations. 
 The desire of the boy extends to other female persons with 
 whom he is brought into contact. The picture if then again 
 similar to that of possession " to wish to possess the mother " 
 becomes a sign of his discontent, a symbol of his boundless 
 aspirations, of his obstinacy and his fear of other women. Now 
 in later life a " fixation " on the mother from similar 
 constellations may result, not however, because the wish was 
 heretofore libidinous. For it is a matter of indifference of what 
 nature the real relation to the mother was the psyche of the 
 neurotic will always utilize it in some way for the purpose of 
 furnishing him security. 
 
 The motive of the discontent interests us here above all. It
 
 THE ACCENTUATED FICTION 57 
 
 originates from the feeling of having suffered an injury and it is 
 obvious that the child waits fulfillment of every aspiration in his 
 " growing up." According to the psychology of the " as if " 
 he may expect his cure from the development of his hair, his 
 teeth, his genital organs. His experience with his teeth serves 
 to give him the impression that a thing may grow again. The 
 tooth-motive plays a frequent role in the dreams and phantasies 
 with girls in order to enable them to cling to their hope of 
 becoming a man, with boys to give hope to their longing for a 
 more complete manhood. If a tooth is pulled, a milk tooth, a 
 new, stronger one forms. The pulling out of teeth, therefore, 
 symbolizes in the dream the wish to become a man , 
 
 Neurotic men like women are full of the feeling of having 
 suffered an injury and their whole life is spent in the effort at 
 enlarging their spheres of influence. In order to attain this, 
 indeed, in order even to assume their attitude toward this 
 effort, they are obliged to keep up constantly their discontent, 
 so that they will find nourishment for it and proof of their neglect 
 in every situation by examining it, rearranging it or arbitrarily 
 changing it, but always keeping in mind the fictitious guiding 
 goal. With great regularity, I found in them the apperception 
 according to the antithetical scheme " male-female " by means 
 of which they sought and classified all their experiences. This 
 scheme according to which they wish to arrange the cosmic 
 picture is usually overlayed by an antithetical picture of the large 
 and small masculine genitalia. It is a frequent and characteristic 
 discovery that a finer sensibility develops at points of the body 
 which by nature are inferior, whose excitability sometimes takes 
 the character of pleasurable sensations. I have described this 
 phenomenon in the " Studie uber Organmin derwertigheit " 
 (1907, Wien und Berlin) and refer them to the compensatory 
 adjustment which has come into play during the individual's 
 experience in his struggle for existence where the organs or 
 parts of organs in question were menaced. These compensatory, 
 now higher valued portions of an inferior organ inferior after 
 they had suffered an injury in their ascendancy are really in 
 a certain sense protective adjustments, although frequently 
 they do not prove of worth. Because, however, their technique 
 has become different and no longer keeps pace with the nearly 
 normal organ, the psychic phenomena connected with these 
 organs are striking and deviate from normality. This is the 
 same albeit more minute variation based upon somatic inferiority 
 of which I have spoken in the biology, i.e.', explanation of 
 variation, refinement and decline of an organ." 
 
 " Thus the " value of an organ " likewise becomes a&yrnbol in life's current 
 in which are reflected the past, present, future a.s vi6\\ as the fictive goal in 
 like manner as is the case with the individual's maj&-up or with the neurotic 
 symptoms. The idea of the " symbolic in a person's appearance " is not a new 
 one. It has been expressed by Port a, Gall and Carus. 
 
 F
 
 58 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 In this way, for instance, the serise of taste has evolved as a 
 security-serving apparatus, in the realm of the nutritive organ, 
 but along with this also the pleasure sense apparatus which 
 must now guarantee the continuance of nutrition as well as the 
 proper choice of food. 
 
 The variation from the type is brought about by the 
 " compensation tendency " which is already introduced in the 
 germ plasm. 
 
 The environment (in a broader sense the milieu) dominates 
 the "germ plasm " and in this manner is explained the prompt 
 uniformity of reaction, viz., "inferiority plus compensatory 
 security," through a change in the conditions of life in the 
 broadest sense, that is to say, all particular members of a single 
 species vary in the same way when the same change in their 
 mode of life takes place. In regard to human society one must 
 keep constantly in mind, more so than in the animal and 
 vegetable kingdoms that the demands on the single individual 
 vary to a considerable degree one from the other, both 
 quantitatively and qualitatively, so that their somatic inferiorities 
 and the compensatory adjustments resulting therefrom differ 
 very widely. And their variations would be still more striking 
 were it not for the fact that the human psyche has thrust itself 
 into the circle of correlations and compensations with such 
 preponderance as the principal organ of adjustive security. 1 ' 
 Now the standard tendencies to security are no longer variations 
 in the organs themselves, but psychic peculiarities. There 
 always continues to exist a connection which can be sufficiently 
 proved, and we are able to infer from somatic variations stigmata 
 and signs of degeneration of the same, that there has taken 
 place an increased compensatory adjustment of the brain and 
 more accentuated tendencies to obtain security. The nature 
 and tendency of all psychic processes are full of the efforts of 
 precaution and defensive preparations for gaining superiority 
 so that one cannot avoid the conclusion that what we term soul, 
 spirit, reason and understanding are for us abstractions of those 
 effective guiding lines, to which human beings reach out beyond 
 the sphere of bodily sensations, striving to overstep their 
 limitations in order to gain the mastery of a portion of the world 
 and to secure themselves against threatened dangers. The 
 imperfection of the independently acting organ is thus magically 
 
 13 The psychic adjustment of man with its preparations and peculiar character- 
 istics simulates so very closely the adjustive variations in the animal sphere, 
 that children, neurotics, poets and even speech itself utilize this analogy for the 
 purpose of elucidating by way of comparison a psychic gesture, a trait of 
 character, a type of preparedness by means of a representation of an animal, 
 as is the case for instance in the designing of escutcheons, in poetic similes, 
 >nt fables and parable. See also Erckmafrm's Chatrain, the famous Dr. Malthieu, 
 Goethe's Reinecke Fox, painting and caricatures.
 
 THE ACCENTUATED FICTION 59 
 
 elevated to that security which is furnished by knowledge, 
 understanding and foresight. 
 
 In the animal kingdom the function performed in men by the 
 understanding; is performed by a finely adjusted technical 
 apparatus. The fine scent of the dog becomes superfluous or 
 is brought under man's service, the highly specialized sense of 
 taste, which teaches cattle to avoid poisonous plants, is supplied 
 in man by the understanding eye. 
 
 But it is the same tendency which continues through eternity 
 the struggle of the ancestors to facilitate the preservation of 
 life by more finely graded, sharply differentiated organs, as well 
 as by more refined expedients of the psyche. 
 
 And thus it is permitted to us, to regard this sort of more 
 sensitive peripheral apparatus, its special physiognomy and 
 mimic as a sign of an imperfection of some organ, as a trace 
 which betrays a transmitted somatic defect. This is also true 
 of the extraordinary development of the organs of taste in man, 
 for the greater sensibility to stimuli of the lips and mucous 
 membrane of the mouth, with which there is usually associated 
 a more exacting state of the gums, alimentary canal and 
 stomach. 
 
 Physiognomically the picture of the more inferior mouth is 
 represented in the form of more mobile, thicker or thinner lips, 
 usually associated with slight deformities of the lips, of the 
 tongue (lingua scrotallis Schmidt), of the gums, with which are 
 often associated signs of degeneration of these parts, enlarged 
 tonsils or of the whole status lymphaticus. At times, it is true, 
 all higher development in the sense of a tendency to compensation 
 is wanting in the presence of an inferiority, even the hyper- 
 asthesia. Reflex anomalies are quite common, sometimes 
 exaggeration, sometimes diminution of the pharyngeal reflex ; 
 along with defects of childhood, one observes a greater 
 occupation with the mouth, as touching of the mouth, thumb, 
 sucking, tendencies to put everything into the mouth, vomiting. 
 Along with this, good digestion is usually present in so far as 
 this is not prevented by other coexisting somatic defects. 
 
 But the evil, the deprivation and the pain which from the 
 cradle on are the fate of the child with an inferior alimentary 
 tract, awake in him at the same time a feeling of inferiority, of 
 having suffered an injury and of uncertainty and force the 
 constitutionally predisposed child to a resort to fictive 
 expedients. The over-stron^ly developed, precocious, egotistic 
 ideal includes within itself also fictitious goals of over- 
 gratifications which reality can never satisfy. The attention of 
 such children is directed after the manner of a compulsory idea 
 to all problems of nutrition and their sublimation (Nietzsche). 
 The deprivation of a delicacy releases in them entirely different
 
 60 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 emotions and actions than we would expect. Their sense turns 
 to the kitchen, their play and the infantile choice of vocation 
 turn on the phantasy of procuring nutrition, to be cook or 
 candy-maker. The importance of money as a means to power 
 dawns upon them earlier and more forcibly, as well as the sense 
 of greed and economy. Stereotypies and pedantries in eating 
 are often revealed, courses of action according to a principle 
 such as the best is to be put into the mouth first or last, the 
 impatient preferring the first practice, the cautious and 
 avaricious the latter. Idiosyncrasies against certain foods, 
 refusal of food, hasty swallowing, are often adhered to as traits 
 of obstinacy and show the application of the problem of nutrition 
 as an aggression against the parents. Aside from the organic 
 diseases of later life which go with an inferior alimentary 
 apparatus, and among which I have emphasized ulcer of the 
 stomach, appendicitis, cancer, diabetes, liver and gall bladder 
 disease, there is manifested in the neurosis a stronger 
 participation and frequent employment of functional disturbances 
 of the digestive tract. Its intimate relation to the psyche is 
 reflected in many neurotic and psychotic symptoms. I believe 
 I am on the track of a special expedient of this sort, without 
 being able to present conclusive facts. A number of neurotic 
 symptoms, such as erythrophobia, neurotic obstipation and colic, 
 asthma, probably also vertigo, vomiting, headache, and 
 migraine stand in some sort of relation, which is as yet not 
 entirely clear to me, with a voluntary but unconsciously 
 cooperating activity of anus-contraction (" cramp " of the other 
 authors) (spasms of sigmoid flexure, Holzknecht, Singer) and 
 that of abdominal pressure, symbolic acts which are 
 accomplished through the domination of the reenforced fiction. 
 Acquisitiveness and greed for gold and power I found 
 strikingly in the foreground and as essential factors in the 
 egotistic ideal of these individuals.
 
 PRACTICAL PART 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 AVARICE, SUSPICIOUSNESS, ENVY, CRUELTY, THE DEROGATORY 
 CRITIQUE OF THE NEUROTIC, NEUROTIC APPERCEPTION, 
 SENILE NEUROSES, CHANGES IN THE FORM AND INTENSITY OF 
 THE FICTION. SOMATIC JARGON (ORGAN-JARGON) 
 
 I wish to speak first of those traits of character which may 
 be demonstrated with a certain regularity in all neurotics, and 
 which reach expression in the patient's striving with great 
 eagerness, directly or circuitously, consciously or unconsciously, 
 by means of purposive thinking and acting, or through an 
 especial arrangement of symptoms, towards greater possession, 
 towards a heightening of his power and influence, towards a 
 degradation and belittling of others. All these forms of self- 
 interest are most often found to coexist, and it is only after a 
 better insight that one recognizes the mighty preponderance of 
 those evasions by means of which the patient deceives himself 
 and his environment. He even deceives also science. 
 
 While playing, for instance, the role of unselfishness, one 
 finds again and again in his attacks, in his neurosis, moreover 
 in the end result gained by means of the latter, that exaggerated 
 eagerness of which we have spoken in the beginning : 
 He thus arouses the impression of a double-ego, of one suffering 
 from a splitting of consciousness, and whereas a fictitious goal 
 permits him to observe secretly more rigidly than does the 
 normal person the scheme of avarice, envy, desire for mastery, 
 malice, disputatiousness, and desire to please (coquetry), he is 
 compelled in the open (perhaps also on account of his desire to 
 please) to play the role of the benefactor and patron, of the 
 pacifier and unselfish saint. Not that this play is usually with- 
 out disastrous results, somewhat like Gregor Werles' truth 
 fanaticism in Ibsen's " Wild Duck." One cannot estimate 
 strongly enough the neurotic's mania to desire possession of 
 everything, his eagerness to wish to be the first one cannot 
 be over-stated even though the obvious traits of character 
 furnish the most contradictory picture. What really drives the 
 patient onward is the overweening desire for absolute power ; 
 and inasmuch as his ego-consciousness takes offence at many of 
 his means inasmuch as the power of others may prevent his 
 
 61
 
 62 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 triumph, he conceals the hindering traits of character from 
 himself and others, and having full insight into his hostile 
 impulses and their unpopularity, he allows himself to be guided 
 in the open in his conscious activities by the ideal of virtue. 
 Notwithstanding this, however, his heightened aggressive 
 tendency betrays itself namely in the dreams in uncontrolled 
 acts, in his attitude, mimicry and gesture and in that psychic 
 being (" Geschehen ") the expression for which is the neurosis. 
 
 Concerning the question of transmissibility of such 
 characteristics, yes, also their antagonistic arrangement, there 
 as a rule develops that they have been acquired as secondary 
 guiding principles after the pattern of the father, the mother, 
 or representative persons and are in nowise inherited. The 
 neurotic psyche finds it in its own or in some representative 
 material, for the purpose of which the " double play " the 
 cleft consciousness of society is utilized in many cases. It is 
 then, however, the device of the neurosis, to conceal and change 
 those hostile aggressive traits which are frequently unsuitable 
 for the fictitious purpose of obtaining a heightening of the 
 ego-consciousness and to obtain the latter goal through a more 
 intensive utilization of artifices often by means of contrasting 
 characteristics and neurotic symptoms. One readily becomes 
 convinced that the generosity of such patients obeys the same 
 goal of the " will to power " which the patient strives to 
 approach also through the heightening of his aggressive 
 tendency, his avarice and thriftiness. 
 
 One of my patients who came under my observation on 
 account of stammering and depressive states, permitted to 
 appear in his environment a detection only of his generosity. 
 One day he made a voluntary bequest to a certain institute, 
 and told 'me this story with an apparently directly associated 
 statement that he felt unusually depressed that day. Along 
 with this his stammering likewise became more pronounced. 
 The exaggerated state of his neurosis showed itself to be a 
 result of his generosity as result of which he feels himself 
 degraded and one is justified in expecting a revelation of the 
 real working of this individual in further acts, thoughts and 
 dreams as running with the developing neurotic symptoms 
 not because he has repressed his avariciousness or a 
 corresponding sexual impulse but because he has deviated 
 too far from his goal namely, to increase his possessions. He 
 must therefore do something which will bring him back to it. 
 He tells me further, " It was already far after the dinner hour. 
 I felt very hungry, and besides a friend awaited me in a 
 restaurant where we were to dine together. I had to walk 
 therefore the (long) distance to that place. My friend still 
 waited. After dinner I felt somewhat better." This means
 
 AVARICE, SUSPICIOUSNESS, ENVY, ETC. 63 
 
 that he began at once to save again and made the journey on 
 foot, notwithstanding hunger, depression and rendezvous. 
 Incidentally, he was able to let the friend wait, which is with 
 many neurotics the concealed mode of asserting their desire 
 for dominancy. 
 
 The very first manifestation, actions and communications of 
 the patient in the presence of the physician, frequently contain 
 the most important of the disease mechanism and character 
 development. This is so because the patient is as yet not in 
 possession of cautiousness in the presence of the physician. As 
 the above quoted patient introduced himself to me, he told me 
 casually, that his father was not well to do, and that he was 
 unable to make great sacrifices for the treatment. After a 
 certain time, there came of necessity to ligKt that he deceived 
 me in this respect in order to obtain a smaller charge. He 
 showed himself to be avaricious also in many other respects, 
 but at the same time he endeavored to deceive both himself 
 and others in this respect. Both of these traits were also 
 possessed by the father, and our patient was taught stinginess 
 by the latter with special stress. He was often told " money 
 is might, for money everything can be had." Thus it could 
 not be avoided that our patient, who was already in childhood 
 very ambitious and tyrannical, having later fallen into an 
 uncertain situation and believing that he could not reach the 
 paternal standard, through direct means, took refuge under the 
 pressure of his ambitiousness, in the device to convince the 
 father of his utter helplessness and of the other failures of his 
 educational plans, by retaining this childhood defect, 
 stammering. Through his stammering, he spoiled his father's 
 play because he was not able to be the first one, because he 
 was not able to surpass the latter. 
 
 Our culture, however, agrees with those children who see in 
 the amassing of fortune the road to power. Similarly led on, 
 this " will to power " assumed the external form of stinginess 
 and avarice in so far as he further developed these tendencies. 
 It was only the contradiction between a vulgar avariciousness 
 and the ego-ideal which forced him to a concealment of the 
 impulse to avarice by means of which he wished to dominate 
 his father, and forced him to the substitution of the stammering. 
 In the further course of the analysis the origin of his desire for 
 possession became evident. He suffered practically constantly 
 in his infancy from stomach and intestinal disorders, which were 
 the expression of a hereditary inferiority of the gastro-intestinal 
 tract. In the family, stomach and intestinal disorders played 
 an important role. The patient recalled very distinctly how 
 he frequently had to deny himself appetizing food in spite of 
 hunger and desire, whereas his parents and brothers and sisters
 
 64 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 consumed them with pleasure. Whenever he could he gathered 
 foods, bonbons and fruits to be feasted upon later. In this 
 tendency to gather, we already see the influence of the 
 developing craving for security, which is constantly endeavoring 
 to adjust in some way or other the feeling of degradation. 
 
 How far, however, this may reach may be shown by a 
 constructed example which I am able to verify with analogies 
 from our case. The eagerness for power, and through it for 
 possession, may be stirred up by the feeling of inferiority to 
 such a point that one finds it at phases of the psychic develop- 
 ment when one would least expect it. 
 
 A small patient of this sort will at first, it is true, only desire 
 to have the apple which is forbidden him, in seeing his father 
 and brother eating the same.. Envy will begin to stir itself, and 
 after a brief period such a child may have reached the stage 
 in his deliberateness and contemplation when out of the striving 
 for equality he will attempt to prevent others from having 
 anything before he has it. It will soon have reached so far in 
 the elaboration of this albeit only slightly important idea, as to 
 have at his disposal all sorts of preparations and facilities, it 
 will, especially in the presence of an originally inferior muscular 
 system, train itself for the whole year by climbing and jumping 
 in order to be able to climb a tree as a master in the fall. The 
 human psyche is not able to account always for fictitious goals, 
 and thus the child may apparently free himself from his goal, 
 employ his dexterity in sports and gymnastics in the service of 
 other tendencies, which serve in a different manner his ego- 
 consciousness somewhat like our modern States conduct our 
 war preparations without even knowing the future enemy. 
 
 The father of our patient may have easily been taken by the 
 boy as an incidental example because he excelled his 
 environment in greatness, power, wealth and social standing. 
 If the boy is to emerge out of his insecurity into which he has 
 been plunged by his constitutional inferiority he must arrange 
 his preparations for life in accordance with a set point of view 
 as after a plan (blue print). A marked exhibition of the guiding 
 principle toward the paternal ideal (Vaterideal) is in itself quite 
 a neurotic trait, because in it we may comprehend the entire 
 misery of the child who endeavors to emerge from his insecurity. 
 The craving for security (Sicherungstendenz) of the neurosis 
 leads the patient in this way out of the sphere of his own power 
 and forces him into a path which leads away from reality, first 
 because he takes for his object his fiction to be equal to his 
 father or even to excel him and is therefore forced to formulate, 
 arrange and influence his apperception of life under its? 
 compulsion, and second because one can never succeed in 
 carrying out such a fiction in real life except in a psychosis.
 
 AVARICE, SUSPICIOUSNESS, ENVY, ETC. 65 
 
 In this way, there develops in the psyche of the child an 
 intensive searching, weighing, and measuring tendency of 
 which I shall have to say something more. That which is 
 according to my experience primarily responsible for the too 
 rigid assumption of the paternal guiding principles, may be 
 discovered in an investigation into the sexual roles. The 
 neurotically predisposed child, or as I may say, the child 
 laboring under the pressure of a feeling of inferiority, desires 
 to become a man, as soon as the neurosis develops, to be a man. 
 In both instances he can only conduct himself in such a manner 
 as if he were a man or shall become one. The exaggerated 
 craving for security drives also in this instance the attitude of 
 the developing neurotic into the ban of the fiction, so that in 
 some instances even conscious simulation may come into play, 
 and a girl for instance in order to escape a feeling of inferiority 
 may in the beginning borrow in conscious imitation masculine 
 gestures of her father. There is no reason for the assumption 
 that because of this she must be in love with her father. The 
 mere over-valuation of the masculine principle suffices for this, 
 may nevertheless at' times be taken as infatuation by the girl 
 herself as well as by her environment, should the preparations 
 for the future playfully demand a hinting of love or a marriage. 
 In our case the guiding line to the compensatory ego-ideal, 
 transformed itself through a change of form and content into a 
 craving to excel the father in wealth, esteem, and along with 
 this, in manliness. The inquiry into his own sexual role, sets in 
 intensively and typically as sexual curiosity, whereby the 
 patient in his feeling of inferiority, apperceives the smallness 
 of his infantile genitals as compared with the largeness of the 
 paternal ones, as a bitter set-back, as a want of masculinity. 
 His ambitiousness which shall enable him to rise out of his 
 state of inferiority, compelled him to a heightening of his sense 
 of shame, in order that his genitals may not be seen in the event 
 of an exposure (in case he is nude). To this may be added that 
 lie was of Jewish descent. He had heard certain things about 
 circumcision and harbored the idea that he was also (Verkiirzt) 
 belittled through the operation. His masculine protest drove 
 him to a degradation of woman, as if he had to give proof to 
 liis superiority in this wise, and came into the most abominable 
 relationship with his mother. 
 
 But also with respect to his father, whose preference for 
 "himself he gained through diplomatic adjustment, he harbored 
 "hostile thoughts which became especially prominent when the 
 father over-emphasized his own superiority to do which he had 
 a marked inclination. In this chaos of feelings the patient 
 sought orientation, and found it only in the thought to become 
 superior to his father, to become more mar.ly than he.
 
 66 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 He had, too, as often happens in such cases, undertaken 
 attempts at enlarging his genitals or bringing about erection. 
 This route, which leads to sexual precocity and masturbation, 
 was soon abandoned by him, because his father warned him 
 against it on numerous occasions. Thus there remained as a 
 substitution for his masculine protest, only efforts to become 
 richer, more honored and wiser than his father, and to degrade 
 his environment. 
 
 His father placed great hopes in the patient's oratorical 
 talents, which had shown themselves already in childhood, did 
 not allow himself to be deceived by the mild stammering of 
 the boy, and hoped he would make a law career. In this respect 
 the patient was able to strike at the father's most vulnerable 
 point, and thus he sank into a more pronounced stammering, a 
 neurotic manifestation of the insurance against the superiority 
 of the father, a manifestation whose inception was given him by 
 a stammering home teacher. In the course of time, this symptom 
 gained many other uses, for example, the one that through his 
 stammering he always gained time in which to weigh his 
 words, to avoid demands of the family, to utilize the confession 
 of others as well as that prejudice because of which, only little 
 was expected of him, which he then managed to fulfil easily. 
 It is interesting that his quite apparent stammering was no 
 obstacle to his courtship, that it even expedited matters, a fact 
 which becomes quite comprehensible from our standpoint, 
 according to which we assume the existence of a quite prevalent 
 type of girl which cannot omit from the conditions of their love 
 that the man of their choice must be beneath them, so that they 
 may with certainty rule over him. Especially hostile feelings 
 against his parents, brothers and sisters and the servants he 
 put a stop to, through the development of a new guiding 
 principle which was to make of him a benevolent man. This 
 new evolution took place under a nightly confession through 
 which he reproached himself for his wickedness and arranged 
 qualms of conscience. His growing knowledge thus showed 
 him the way, through a cultural subterfuge to a heightening of 
 his ego-consciousness. 
 
 The want of a direct aggressiveness showed itself in thoughts 
 and phantasies, albeit also in his good progress at school, so that 
 he was victorious over all his classmates. A growing tendency 
 towards sarcasm and exasperation of others was at this time the 
 only manifest expression of his former often violent aggressive- 
 ness which gained for him the nickname of "blood-leech." His 
 combative attitude played an important r61e in the cause 
 of Judaism, which was reflected in an act of compulsion at the 
 age of twelve. Whenever he entered a swimming pool he had 
 to cover his genitals with his hands and immediately submerge
 
 AVARICE, SUSPICIOUSNESS, ENVY, ETC. 67 
 
 his head under the water, where he kept it until he counted 49. 
 so that he often came to the surface gasping for air and 
 exhausted. The analysis revealed the mental content to be a 
 striving of his phantasy to bring about an equality of genitalia. 
 The forty-ninth year is, according to the old Jewish laws, with 
 which he had become acquainted shortly before, the year of the 
 jubilee, in which all acres were again made equal. Ideas of this 
 sort, and the simultaneous concealment of the genitalia showed 
 the way to the interpretation. One may almost draw the 
 conclusion that also his stammering was intended to make him 
 quits with a superiority of his father, of all people, inasmuch as 
 his stuttering was an obstacle to them, was even painful to them. 
 
 His avarice, his stinginess, were accordingly active in" the 
 same direction, namely, to clear the field of superiorities of 
 others, to insure him against further degradation and belittling 
 through poverty, thus he was compelled markedly to expand 
 these secondary directions and to formulate and evaluate his 
 experiences according to them in order to reach the heightening 
 of his ego-consciousness, his masculine protest. It was only 
 under such circumstances where through revelation of these traits 
 of character a lowering of his ego might arise that he suppressed 
 their apparent activity. 
 
 It were an absurdity to wish to assume a normal standpoint in 
 a medico-psychological question, to consider people like the 
 above as morally inferior. Those who have an inclination in this 
 direction I wish to remind of the very strong, compensatory 
 traits of character, of a worthy nature, for the rest I wish to 
 remind them of Rochefoucauld's wise sentence viz : " I have 
 never investigated the soul of a wicked man, but I once became 
 acquainted with the soul of a good man : I was shocked." 
 
 In another case, the nature of the avarice showed itself not 
 as a safety device for the compensation of a feeling of 
 degradation, but above all as an artifice in the service of the 
 craving for security. A forty-five year old patient who suffered 
 throughout life from psychic impotency, and was pursued by 
 suicidal ideas, showed an especially marked tendency to degrade 
 others. 
 
 We know this trait of character from the description of the 
 previous case where it served as it always does to do away with 
 one's own feeling of inferiority. With this tendency there is 
 usually associated exaggerated mistrust and envy, which have 
 for their object as neurotic-psychic dexterities, the falsification 
 of the search and valuation of experiences. A tendency, too, to 
 cause others bodily and psychic pain, will likewise know how to 
 assert itself in an accentuated manner. The abstract, guiding 
 point of view of the patient, to assure his dominating position, 
 to be above, appeared to be obviously threatened, and compelled
 
 68 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 a strengthening of fictitious guiding principles. Reminiscences 
 out of his infantile period were utilized in the neurosis, as result 
 of which he came near being the victim of a homosexualist. He 
 was raised as an only boy among his sisters, a situation which, 
 according to my experience, frequently narrows the understand- 
 ing of one's own sexual role. 
 
 Of importance was his attitude toward his father, because it 
 likewise drove him to strengthened security devices. The father, 
 namely, was brutal, egotistical, tyrannical, so that it was difficult 
 for the boy to assert his own value in his presence. Several 
 love adventures had thrown the father into quite difficult 
 situations which our patient utilized as mementoes in his 
 developed psychosis. This mistrust was directed against all 
 women. Throughout life he remained ready to make sacrifices 
 for his sisters, but he had already apperceived this fact with an 
 unusual amount of feeling, and readily developed from this trains 
 of thought which were to show how readily he gave in to 
 women. Incidentally, he was able to advance quite considerably 
 in this direction in order to be able to emphasize sharply this 
 impression for himself. It was then that he was prepared to 
 withdraw himself from women. 
 
 He transformed into a sexual image, feelings of inferiority 
 which were present in his childhood. The reason for his unmanly 
 bearing for the homosexualist wanted to take him for a girl 
 he sought for and found in an incidental Cryptorchism caused by 
 a patent canal. At the age of eight he watched a boy in the 
 act of masturbation. Hie puef ei semen efacularit in os which 
 he looked upon as a further sign of his feminine role. So long 
 as he took his father as his guiding principle, he exhibited the 
 ordinary dexterities intended to make him equal to his father. 
 He secretly consumed his father's whiskey, endeavored to bring 
 his mother over to his side, and already early in life had chosen 
 his father's trade, by means of which he was also able to satisfy 
 his sadistic tendencies which were excited by his feeling of 
 inferiority and his striving toward the paternal guiding line to 
 choose the trade of a butcher. He was also fond of bringing his 
 vulgar tendencies into execution upon girls and women he was 
 in the habit of biting them, beating them, and took part one 
 time in a sexual assault, when he carried out coitus per anum in 
 order to avoid a possibility of alimony. His experience, however, 
 which showed him in the complete brutal character of his father, 
 drove him, because of the threatening of a lawsuit, and the 
 degradation associated with it, to a neurotic subterfuge. He 
 utilized his already accentuated mistrust in women for the 
 purpose of torturing them with fits of jealousy, of bringing them 
 entirely under his influence and to insure in this manner the 
 appearance of dominancy.
 
 AVARICE, SUSPICIOUSNESS, ENVY, ETC. 69 
 
 His ejaculatio prascox and the associated impotency served 
 his need for security in the same manner as did his animosity 
 towards women. He showed preference for the seduction of 
 married women in order to cause them disappointments through 
 his impotency, at the same time, however, to gain in a sportive 
 manner a substantiation of his belief that all women were bad. 
 Also in his compulsory ideas this tendency to cause pain 
 manifested itself. Thus even during his treatment he 
 experienced sudden impulsions to bite and beat a language 
 teacher while taking a lesson from her, because he developed 
 ideas that she had a lover whom she preferred to the patient. 
 This sadistic reaction to a feeling of subordinacy, as a masculine' 
 protest against a feeling of being unmanly, effeminate, had its 
 origin in childhood and runs through his entire neurosis. It was 
 not difficult to prove, that his impotency similarly obeyed the 
 goal to find a means whereby to escape the call of love, the 
 subordination to a wife, a tendency, however, which found its 
 continuation in a further degradation of women. 
 
 As he saw no prospect of dominating his teacher, he 
 immediately left her, because he knew that she was dependent 
 upon giving him lessons. Before, however, having done this he 
 undertook a critical estimation of the expense of taking lessons, 
 found them beyond his means which could be readily seen to be 
 a false purposive valuation of the very well-to-do individual. In 
 the same manner he made use of the occasionally recurring 
 reminiscences of incestuous thoughts, in order to become 
 apprehensively conscious of his inferiority, of his criminal 
 tendencies as soon as women came into play. Thus he 
 established his base of operation, by means of which he must 
 insure himself against the feminine gender, as a result of which 
 he seemed to be assured of lasting superiority throughout life. 
 
 The essence of his compulsion towards an insurance against 
 women lay in the fear that he might experience in marriage or 
 love disappointment which he might attribute to his unmanliness. 
 Inasmuch as he sought his remote goal in the proof of his might 
 he was bound to become inclined toward caution and neurotic 
 subterfuges. In this patient also there were present early 
 gastro-intestinal disturbances, and as a peripheral sign of 
 inferiority the fatal inguinal hernia. In his sort of love-activity, 
 exaggerated avarice lent itself as the most useful means for an 
 insurance against a too far-reaching surrender. In order, how- 
 ever, that this avarice may be of use, it must embrace the whole 
 sphere of his life's relations and must be omnipresent. It must 
 in turn be supported, it must be assisted by all sorts of by-traits. 
 This took place among other things in the arrangement of 
 compulsory ideas. Whenever he used an automobile, the thought 
 that a collision might take place came to his mind. A further
 
 70 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 analysis of this compulsory idea revealed that he was farthest 
 away from a belief in such an eventuality, but that he always 
 avoided all expensive means of travel. Yes, even when he used 
 the tram cars for an extended trip, the thought occurred to him, 
 upon reaching the point where the cheap fare terminated and the 
 more expensive one began, that a collision might take place, 
 or that the bridge which had to be crossed might collapse, so 
 that he would always pay the cheaper fare, save a few pennies 
 and cover the rest of the distance on foot. He was on the road 
 where he felt bitterly every expenditure. 
 
 Thus it also came to pass that he sought to degrade man, in 
 order to gain a uniformity of behavior. This already became 
 distinctly manifest in the hunt after married women, and the 
 dismay and disappointment of the seduced women as well as the 
 abusive language which he used toward them afterwards pleased 
 him no less than the satisfaction of once again having shown 
 himself to be the stronger. This was in line with the content of 
 his life, with the change of form in which his original fiction 
 to be the manliest came closest to realization. 
 
 Only the fear of women which synchronously with the 
 realization of his own femininity originally led him to his 
 exaggerated masculine protest, found itself again in the unduly 
 accentuated insurance against the domination of women and 
 allowed him to strengthen beyond measure like a safety-dam 
 his mistrust and avarice, both of which offered good arguments. 
 Swept away by this craving for security, he furthermore attached 
 4 to it his psychic impotency, with which he became acquainted 
 during his first attempts at coitus. A servant girl whom he 
 wanted to seduce as a youngster, offered resistance and escaped 
 him by tightening her limbs. He was at that time inexperienced 
 and considered himself impotent. Later, as he became more 
 experienced in these matters, he felt his inexperience in such a 
 way, as if women were an insoluble puzzle to him. In the 
 original impotency, however, as well as in his helplessness in 
 the presence of woman, he found the neurotic subterfuges by 
 means of which to escape a depreciatory defeat, a decision 
 adverse to his masculinity. The comparing of himself with other 
 men set in vehemently now. He would surprise himself for 
 instance, when sitting at the table in company, in a psychic 
 situation, where before any one even had spoken a word, he was 
 already planning a repartee, already figuring how he might 
 prove the speaker wrong, no matter whether he was speaking of 
 a book or a theatrical performance, or society or place, his 
 derogatory criticism always pushed itself to the front in a most 
 pronounced form. And so it was to be expected that after a brief 
 introductory period his traits of mistrust, avarice, and 
 depreciation of others would become evident every time he under-
 
 AVARICE, SUSPICIOUSNESS, ENVY, ETC. 71 
 
 went medical treatment, often quite artfully linked one with the 
 other. This phenomenon, not at all in the Freudian sense of a 
 transference, but because his rigidly fixed psychic gesture, his 
 attitude of attack, his tendency to degrade others, actually did, 
 and upon closer acquaintance, was obliged to come to the surface. 
 To this was added another accentuating moment. His object 
 when seeking the advice of a physician, could not have been 
 simply to become rid of his impotency, laecause in such an event 
 he would have been cast into the chaos of his apprehensions. 
 He was much more anxious to find proof of his incurability, or 
 to find a means of ridding himself of his impotency without the . 
 fear of a defeat. In order to bring about the first, a depreciation 
 of the physician's ability was a preliminary condition. The 
 proper means of ridding himself of his impotency, however, he 
 could only find after following up his fear of women to its source, 
 to the feeling of his unmanliness, in which his feeling of 
 inferiority became concrete. One of his dreams which occurred 
 at the period preceding the termination of the treatment showed 
 this state of affairs very distinctly. 
 
 I must first of all briefly state that I make use of certain 
 important parts of the Breuer-Freud technique of dream inter- 
 pretation, but that I see in the dream an abstracting, simplifying 
 endeavor to find, by means of a premeditation and testing of 
 difficulties carried on in accordance with the patient's own 
 peculiar scheme a protective way for the ego-consciousness 
 out of a situation which threatens a defeat. 
 
 One will therefore always discover in the dream, that 
 significant scheme of the antithetical mode of apperception : 
 " masculine-feminine," "above beneath" as existing originally 
 in everybody, but especially marked in the neurotic. The various 
 notions and recollections which come to the surface in the dream, 
 must be brought within this scheme before they can be of any 
 aid in the interpretation of same, whose object it is not or at 
 least not principally the fulfilment of infantile wishes but rather 
 to accompany those introductory endeavors, to bring about a 
 balance in favor of the ego-consciousness, through balancing the 
 patient's debit-credit account in a peculiarly neurotic manner. 
 His dream was as follows : 
 
 ' I dealt in second-hand goods in Vienna, or in Germany, or 
 in France. I had to buy, however, new goods and wash them, 
 because this would then be cheaper. Then they were again old 
 (second-hand) goods." 
 
 The new goods meant new potent genitalia in contrast to the 
 " (second-hand) old goods," his impotency which as yet 
 nobody had cured. Here the idea of a new life, of a possibility of 
 attaining potency, shines through. The words, " because they 
 would be cheaper " correspond to the previously elucidated
 
 72 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 ideas, his fear of money expenditures in case he does not 
 become potent. This idea, however, can only be accepted under 
 one condition, to wit if the patient is saturated with the 
 conviction that he is boundless in his love-impulse, that he knows 
 no limits and senselessly hunts after women. This conviction 
 he purposely takes for himself out of his childhood reminiscences, 
 out of his period of puberty and adolescence. In doing so he 
 also assists in the shaping of his infantile incest-stirrings should 
 these serve his purpose in a form, as if he had coveted his 
 mother or sisters with a sexual object. This means that he 
 works, with a fiction which arose from the assumed goal, through 
 gaining security for himself, similarly as Sophocles developed 
 and shaped the (Edipus legend in order to stabilize the holy 
 commands of the gods. Our patient became a willing victim of 
 his limited understanding of dialectic and of the antithetical 
 manner of primitive thinking. The guiding idea of his ego-ideal 
 " I must not covet blood relations," embraces dialectically the 
 antithetical thought of an incestuous possibility. Inasmuch as 
 the neurotic desires to insure himself, he clings to this antithetical 
 thought, plays with it, emphasizes it and utilizes it in the neurosis 
 in the same way as all other frightening reminiscences which 
 appear to him to be useful for his security. In the life of our 
 patient, and in the lives of all neurotics, there are very many 
 more experiences, which might have been able to carry with them 
 the conviction that they were free from incestuous stimuli, that 
 they were always especially temperate, careful and timorous. 
 
 Inasmuch, however, as he desires to reassure himself, his 
 neurotic and falsifying mode of apperception push these traits 
 of character purposely aside. He has many more impressions 
 to that effect, that he does not covet his mother and sister, but 
 he is, however, unable to utilize them in the service of his 
 craving for security. Thus there remains for them only a 
 memory rest of a playful preparatory venture, and because this 
 may serve as a warning to him, he makes of it a bugbear, with 
 which to frighten himself. Exactly in the same manner, develop 
 neurotic anxiety, fear of places, hypochondriasis, pessimism and 
 constant doubting, inasmuch as these patients only avail them- 
 selves of those impressions and experiences which serve the 
 purpose of bringing about security, which strengthens their 
 affective state while they depreciate all others especially those 
 of an antithetical nature. The sophist's ability "in utram-que 
 part em dicer e" of everything is also possessed by the neurotic 
 as well as by the psychotic, and they utilize it as they need it. 
 
 The thoroughly polished, purposefully strengthened dexterities 
 of neurotics, and the neurotic traits of character which go with 
 them are impossible for the fact that every new situation brings 
 about havoc. (Lombroso's misoneismus.) More than anything
 
 AVARICE, SUSPICIOUSNESS, ENVY, ETC. 73 
 
 else, our patient feared the, to him unknown, situation of sexual 
 gratification and successful coitus, because in presentiments of 
 this situation, he gave himself for reasons of safety the role of 
 the underlying (unterliegenden). Now this fear, which is 
 apperceived as a fear of impotency, furnishes a further security 
 against the possibility of being restrained, restricted in freedom 
 or deceived by his wife, against a possibility of not being equal 
 to her, against a role which is contrary to his masculine ideal, 
 and which he therefore evaluates as effeminate. 
 
 Out of the harmless, ubiquitous traits of selfishness, avarice 
 and stinginess, he puts together a far-reaching, apparently- 
 imminent, but in reality fictitious guiding principle of "avarice," 
 because the retention of this appears to him to be lost. Should 
 he become endowed, as was the case in the dream with that 
 which he had desired already in childhood, namely, new genitals, 
 a healthy potency, then he must defend himself against it. He 
 takes hold then of a means, with which he has been long 
 acquainted, which has often been highly recommended to him, 
 which after all enfeebles his erections instead of strengthening 
 them, he turns to cold washes. This according to his 
 experiences, inadequate remedy, he considers equal to my 
 treatment. The remedy shall bring about the opposite to what 
 it is aimed to do, and this physician shall have just as little 
 success as the former ones. Thus the dream shows him the way 
 out of the situation, it tells him how to safeguard himself against 
 the treatment and thus get the upper hand of the physician. 
 ' Then they are second-hand goods again." 
 
 In other cases of psychic impotency a cure readily results, 
 and as we know, as result of the most diverse kinds of remedies. 
 Often it concerns neurotic patients who by the mere fact of 
 going to consult a physician give one to understand that they 
 would be inclined to give up this form of security. In that case 
 all manner of medication, cold douches, electricity, hydrotheragy, 
 and especially every form of suggestion, even the one resulting 
 from an incomplete analysis are of value, occasionally the 
 authoritative command of the physician suffices to bring about 
 definite consequences. In severe cases, it is necessary to bring 
 about a transformation of the all too absorbing, concentrated 
 psyche upon the idea of security. 
 
 Age often intensely stimulates envy and avarice. Psycho- 
 logically this is not difficult to understand. No matter how 
 beautifully poets and philosophers endeavor to picture age, it 
 is nevertheless only given to the select souls, to maintain their 
 equilibrium, when they see looming up in the distance the gate 
 which leads to death. Then again the denials and restrictions, 
 which the senium naturally carries with it, and the perceptible 
 dominancy of the younger folks, of one's own relations, which 
 
 G
 
 74 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 often furnish the occasion, quite innocently or apparently so 
 for a degradation of old people will almost always lead to a 
 depression of the ego-consciousness. The sunshiny preparedness 
 as it is refreshingly expressed in Goethe's " Father Time " 
 is a quite unattainable illusion for most people, and fortunate 
 indeed may be considered those who survive their best time of 
 life without a severe depression of the spirits. 
 
 According to our thesis, it must naturally follow that the period 
 of aging brings forth similarly to a severe setback, a feeling of 
 inferiority. Especially affected by this will be all those who are 
 neurotically predisposed. At times it is age, in women, the 
 climacteric, feelings of insufficiency of a psychic or physical 
 nature, indications of impotency, a breaking up of the family, 
 marriage of a son or daughter, as well as financial losses, the 
 loss of a position or post of honor which first causes the break- 
 down. In most instances one may already find in the previous 
 history indications of actual attacks of a neurotic character. 
 
 Age with its losses has the same effect as other degradations 
 of the ego-consciousness. The aggressive tendency seeks other 
 means whereby an adjustment may be brought about, other, 
 means which unfortunately are not easily to be had in these 
 cases. Renunciation would come easier, if along with the sinking 
 of bodily and mental power there would also take place a 
 narrowing of the emotional life. This seldom happens, and in 
 order to find a substitute for the loss}, the aggressive tendency 
 which has been stimulated by the insecurity again whips up all 
 stimuli of desire. The universal decree frequently stands all too 
 firm against all these endeavors. The bearing, the life, the 
 desires, the dress, the work and accomplishments of aging people 
 are subject to criticism in a great measure. Those who are 
 predisposed to a neurosis will readily take this criticism as a 
 barricade and will already shrink from those situations which 
 still offer possibility of gratification. Such an individual will 
 force himself into submission, will want to annihilate his feelings 
 and desires, without being able to set himself to rights with them. 
 Yes, still more intensely will these flare up when a renunciation 
 without adjustment is demanded. 
 
 Thus it happens that the active hostile traits of character 
 develop, that envy, ill-will, avarice, the craving for dominancy, 
 sadistic impulses of all sorts, experience accentuations, and 
 never satisfied, bring about a restlessness which unremittingly 
 strives for remedies, substitutions, securities, " Where you are 
 not there is happiness " because the real position of aging 
 people is seriously endangered in our state of society, inasmuch 
 as it is the productive value, which is almost exclusively the test 
 of the worth of the personality. The neurotic's sustenance (Brod) 
 on the other hand is the appearance of power, prestige, even
 
 AVARICE, SUSPICIOUSNESS, ENVY, ETC. 75 
 
 suicide has already come within our experience as the last 
 expression of masculine protest. 
 
 The advent of senility has even a stronger effect upon women 
 than upon men. Even the significance of the climacteric is 
 usually phantastically exaggerated. Youth and beauty meant 
 power for woman, and more so than for man. Her charms were 
 able to give her dominancy, victories and triumphs, for which 
 the neurotic greediness constantly longs. 
 
 Age to them is like a stain. Besides their value sinks more 
 decidedly than is the case with the aging man, and as far as it 
 concerns aging woman, prevailing psychology may be designated 
 point blank as actually hostile. 
 
 This deplorable feature has its origin in the well known 
 tendency of man to depreciate woman, coupled with the psychic 
 defeat which they experience from our social life, a neurotic 
 germ, which manifests itself, implacably and ineradicably even 
 unto the grave. Consciously or unconsciously, often unavoidably 
 from the nature of things, this derogatory tendency has its 
 injurious effect upon the ego-consciousness of these aging 
 women, who after all have a right to live. Children's love and 
 respect for the aged as aids and guiding points of view in man's 
 relations with his fellow men, furnish only the very minutest 
 relief and can never suffice to gratify the stimulated desires of 
 people whose powers are waning. It is then that the neurotic 
 bent sets in for the purpose of strengthening the guiding 
 principle. "I am deprimed I had too little out of life I shall 
 realize nothing more," this one regularly hears in the complaints 
 of aging neurotics, and they accentuate this manner of viewing 
 life to such an extent, that they suspiciously and distrustfully sink 
 into a repulsive egoism, the like of which they had never before 
 experienced so vividly. Through this, however, the vacillations 
 and doubts become stabilized. 
 
 " Act as though you were still obliged to attain worth," thus 
 approximately rings a newly constructed guiding principle, and 
 along with this the neurotic's sharpening of avarice becomes 
 more acute, the avaricious, envious, domineering impulses come 
 violently to the foreground, almost, however, restrained by the 
 previously mentioned guiding principles in accordance with 
 which these patients shrink with apprehension from every desire 
 and beginning. Thus there lie unmistakably under cover, 
 separated with difficulty from consciousness, those impulses 
 which lastingly support dissatisfaction, impatience, mistrust, and 
 uninterruptedly direct the attention to the unattained and often 
 unattainable. In the last instance, to the success of which the 
 marked adaptability of the sexual symbols contributes in a way, 
 but furthermore also the fact that a proof of a lack of sexual 
 gratification is readily to be had by every one, it therefore
 
 76 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 happens, that all desire becomes sexualized. It is readily 
 understood that these people apperceive on a sexual basis. But 
 one must avoid taking this sexual fiction, this, so to speak, 
 "modus dicendi," or as I have called it, the sexual jargon, for 
 an original experience. In the theoretical part I have discussed 
 the reasons for the marked prominence of the sexual guiding 
 principle in neurotics, first, because it, like all other guiding 
 principles is considerably accentuated in the neurotic, and so to 
 speak, felt as real instead of what it was intended for namely, 
 as a protective guiding line and second, because it (the sexual 
 guiding principle) leads in the direction of the masculine protest. 
 
 Thus it happens that every desire of the aging neurotic 
 woman may be referred not only by herself, but with a little 
 effort by the physician to a sexual analogy. Likewise, that the 
 physician may be able to fill the neurotic's want of a protective 
 analogy, by means of a premature offering of a sexual guiding 
 principle in the sense of the orthodox Freudian school, may 
 unquestionably be inferred from the foregoing considerations. 
 
 There is no gain so long as one does not succeed in ridding 
 the patient of his fiction, which becomes possible when he 
 becomes more certain of himself, and is able to recognize his 
 presumably libidinous impulse as a falsifying fiction. 
 
 Such a fiction for instance is the so-called climacteric of the 
 male, of former authors, described by Freud and Kurt Mendel. 
 The climacteric of woman has its psychic effect irrespective of 
 the metabolic phenomena, because of the heightening of the 
 feeling of inferiority. Concomitant disturbances of metabolism 
 are only able to change or intensify the neurotic's aspect, the 
 moment it makes itself specifically felt through an intensification 
 of the insecurity. Basedow's neurosis in climacteric women ) 
 furnishes an example of such a mixed and intensified picture. 7 
 The neurosis of the climacteric in man, is likewise only indirectly-' 
 influenced by atrophy of the genitals, may, however, experience 
 an intensification through the aggravating abstraction, " I am 
 no longer a man I am a woman." Inasmuch as the masculine 
 guiding principle becomes intensified and hypostasized through 
 carefulness and appropriate stimuli as a result of this ideologic 
 standpoint those wonderful manifestations of the Johannistrieb 
 take place, the frequent occurrence of which in women Karin 
 Michaelis has aply explained in her " Dangerous Age." 
 
 Only that the sexual guiding principle is not the exclusive or 
 even most essential one as it is attempted to infer from a biologic 
 point of view, but must be looked upon as a form of expression 
 similar to other forms of desire if one is to face the facts squarely. 
 
 The climacteric neurosis shows us accordingly only a different 
 phase of the neurosis caused by the masculine protest, and 
 the traits of character demonstrable in it resemble the
 
 AVARICE, SUSPICIOUSNESS, ENVY, ETC. 77 
 
 hypostasizations already familiar to us. I have never seen a case 
 where the neurosis became first manifested at the climacterium. 
 And it is to be expected according to our thesis that the 
 " climacteric " neurosis had already shown its face in former 
 days, at times, in a mild manner, especially when favorable 
 circumstances or cultural activity were able to lessen the attack 
 through a partial gratification of the craving for power. Mostly 
 one finds a gradually progressive intensification and spreading 
 of the neurotic symptoms of some years' duration, which an 
 antecedently necessitated intensification of the craving for 
 security permits of detection. An example of this would be the 
 transformation of headache and occasional migraine into a 
 trifacial neuralgia. On the intensification of a neurotic 
 cautiousness into anxiety and occasionally through the 
 discounting of an anticipated disaster, into melancholy. For 
 these three steps of protection one must consult the schema 
 contained in the theoretical part. 
 
 CAUTION : for instance, as if I may lose my money, I may 
 be beneath. 
 
 ANXIETY : as if I shall lose my money, I shall be beneath. 
 
 In other words, the stronger the feeling of inferiority, the 
 more intensified the fiction becomes and the more closely it 
 approaches a dogma, through an increasing abstraction from 
 reality. And the patient approximates and handles everything 
 which brings him nearer to his guiding principle. Reality is 
 along with this depreciated in various degrees, and the corrective 
 routes become more and more inadequate. 
 
 One not infrequently sees cases in which there come to light 
 neurotic phenomena in the pathogenic periods already known 
 to us something on the order of an experiment. Kisch and others 
 have called attention to this anamnestic data of neurotic 
 complaints formed at the onset of puberty. More frequently one 
 finds in the anamnesis neurotic molimina menstrualia, or neuroses 
 before entering the marriage state, in the puerperium, or even 
 continuously. 
 
 After these considerations, we shall have to let the various 
 guiding principles described by us coordinate themselves with 
 the prime guiding principle. The neurosis of aged people is 
 only a different phase, an adaptive psychic superstructure built 
 up upon the one elementary directive principle I wish to be a 
 man. And this directive principle, which has been outrightly 
 condemned to destruction, avails itself of all manner of disguise, 
 without ever finding a satisfactory one. Frequently the 
 impression they make is one of great helplessness of resignation, 
 as though the patient wanted to say he knew not how to go 
 about the thing. In all their plans doubt is prominent vacillation
 
 78 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 never leaves them, along with this, however, one sees 
 exaggerated explanations as if the patients wished to convince 
 themselves that they are too old, or that they are still young. 
 The tendency is toward the gaining of power, influence, worth. 
 But the feeling, that they want the unattainable, never leaves 
 them. In the dreams one regularly finds the endeavor to assist 
 the masculine protest towards expression, to be young, to obtain 
 sexual gratification, to show itself in a nude state, always, how- 
 ever, albeit at times well masked, the desire to be a man. Also 
 the traits of character, the secondary guiding principles, show 
 the influence of the craving for security. 
 
 Pedantry, avarice, envy, craving for dominancy, and the desire 
 to be popular, manifest themselves often in this disguised 
 manner. Anxiety is frequently found, it seems, as proof that 
 they cannot be alone. And in consummation, the neurotic 
 symptoms force the entire household under the regime of the 
 patient. Often the attempt is made in a more or less timorous 
 concealed manner to realize a certain wish, as though in that 
 event the masculine protest w r ere assured. 
 
 Frequently this wish manifests itself in a desire for divorce. 
 or to move to a large city, or to humiliate the sons-in-law or the 
 daughters-in-law as if tranquillity might be hoped for in that 
 event. 
 
 Difficulties in taking food, or in emptying the bowels, or 
 fragmentary manifestations of imaginary pregnancies and child- 
 births are not rare. Along with this they bring into use 
 forgetfulness, tremulousness, here and there an occasional 
 traumatic incident, all for the purpose of bringing to the attention 
 of themselves and others their growing helplessness. 
 
 Complaints constantly recur, every unpleasant incident serves 
 a special significance, and their thoughts are constantly directed 
 toward an approaching evil. The demonstrative emphasizing of 
 their suffering and their hesitating attitude serve on the one 
 hand to throttle their social circle, while on the other hand it is 
 useful for the initiation of their withdrawal from society in the 
 event of a painful anticipation of a setback. Psychologically this 
 complaint may also be looked upon as a form of the revolt, of 
 the masculine protest against a feeling of inferiority, it is 
 intended to soften and weaken those about them. 
 
 Treatment meets with considerable difficulties, inasmuch as 
 the attainment of independence is much more difficult in advanced 
 age, and promising predictions cannot be so plausibly made. As 
 always is the case, the personality of the psychotherapeutist as 
 well as any actual or possible successes of his are utilized to spur 
 on envy, and thus it frequently happens that improvements serve 
 to give rise to relapses. Then, too, the readily attainable 
 authority over them serves to disturb the equilibrium of these
 
 AVARICE, SUSPICIOUSNESS, ENVY, ETC. 79 
 
 patients, inasmuch as never in their life were they able to adjust 
 themselves readily or what is more, subordinate themselves. As 
 a last refuge in severe cases, the self-sacrifice of the physician 
 following a thorough analysis recommends itself, so that one is 
 obliged to own up to an apparent failure of his part of the 
 treatment, and offer the laurels to some other therapeutic 
 method. In two of my cases, this expedient justified itself :-in 
 the one case the patient, a female, was cured through the medium / 
 of correspondence by a Bosnian country physician ; in the other, \ 
 a case of trifacial neuralgia of long standing which I had been 
 treating for two years with varying success, recovered following I 
 suggestions given against me in the wakeful state. In most of { 
 these cases, considerable improvement, remissions, or even/ 
 complete recoveries set in of their own accord following the 
 termination of the treatment. 
 
 One of my patients, a fifty-six-year-old lady, had been 
 suffering for eighteen years from anxiety states, dizziness, 
 nausea, abdominal pains and severe obstipation. A considerable 
 portion of this period was spent either in bed or lying on a sofa, 
 especially during the last eight years, when severe pains in the 
 back and limbs added to her complaints. The patient had been 
 previously a robust woman, but at the age of eighteen had 
 apparently suffered for months from joint rheumatism. 
 
 Her present condition appeared to be psychogenetic in nature, 
 inasmuch as there was an absence of corresponding organic 
 changes, and the protective traits of character l discovered by 
 me were easily demonstrable. 
 
 The advice of a Hysterectomy by a prominent gynecologist 
 because of some perimetritic adhesions I did not take into 
 account since I have learned to understand from other cases, the 
 etiologic significance of such maiming procedures in the neuroses 
 influencing as they do the psyche indirectly. 
 
 Changes, manifestations of arrests of development, 
 deformities and disease of the genitals are frequently found in 
 neurotics. A. Bossi certainly is correct in emphasizing this 
 relationship as I had already done before in my " Studie 
 (1907). This relationship, however, lies either in the adjustment 
 of a special feeling of inferiority which in the presence of a 
 neurotic predisposition gives occasion for the development of 
 a neurosis or because the neurosis, developed as result of other 
 causes, requires a protective allusion to an organic change, in 
 order to start upon the road the fixed goal of the masculine 
 protest. 
 
 1 The differential-diagnostic significance of these is beyond doubt. Only 
 one must regularly take into account the simultaneous existence of an organic 
 affection.
 
 8o THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 Sexual inferiority becomes, so to speak, the vehicle which 
 especially forces itself upon one's attention when slight changes 
 or even wholly imagined fictitious ones such as a supposed loss 
 of the clitoris, enlargement of the labia-majora, moistening of 
 the apertures, telling evidences of masturbation or anomalies of 
 the hairy growth, phimoses, paraurethral passages and 
 asymmetric posture of the penis or testicles, or cryptorchism are 
 taken as an occasion for a symbol of the feeling of inferiority. 
 
 This patient's disease began during a game of tennis. One 
 year before this one of her daughters died, and her husband, a 
 great lover of children, wished to have more children. The 
 patient who from her earliest childhood had bewailed her lot, 
 and wished to be a man, was not at all inclined to gratify this 
 wish of her husband. The pain which was probably caused by 
 a twist gave her new food for this indistinctly conscious 
 resistance, since that time she could not stand any pressure on 
 the abdomen, her abdomen became for her a dainty part and by 
 means of a further bringing into use of insomnia and nausea, the 
 latter as a memento of pregnancy, she brought matters to a 
 point where the husband, upon the advice of physicians, 
 abandoned sexual concourse with her, and used a separate bed- 
 room. 
 
 Already her recital with reference to the rheumatism was 
 characteristic. She blamed her dead mother for everything. 
 The latter, she complained, forced her to wash and iron in the 
 paternal home, always slighted her before the other sisters, and 
 even in later years she was treated in the same hard-hearted 
 manner. This woman's greediness brought her into some 
 difficulties. But her troubles, however, she attributed to her 
 father, so that the latter also received his share of the blame. 
 
 Such reproaches against the parents regularly draw attention 
 according to my experience to another kind of reproach which 
 the child is secretly making against the parents, when it finds 
 itself incomplete, or what's more, unmanly. Such reproaches 
 become abstract later on, as I have shown it to be likewise true 
 of the feeling of guilt, and in later life serve the purpose, so to 
 speak, of shells to be filled up with different content. Thus it 
 later on sounds as if the parents were not affectionate enough, 
 or that they pampered the child, or that especially during the 
 masturbation period they did not supervise him sufficiently. In 
 short, we observe in these formulations of an attitude towards 
 the parents and later on towards the world, formal changes such 
 as are in line with guiding principles which are to serve a 
 practical purpose, and we frequently see a different guise cut 
 according to the pattern of the actual situation. It is then 
 necessary to retrace the steps covered by the formal change. 
 Here the analvtical method makes use of the medium of reduction,
 
 AVARICE, SUSPICIOUSNESS, ENVY, ETC. 81 
 
 of simplification (Nietzsche) of abstraction. Along with the 
 formal change accentuations or attenuations of the guiding fiction 
 play an important role. The more insecure the patient feels 
 himself, the more he is driven by an unconscious tendency 
 towards an intensification of his guiding principle, to make 
 himself dependent upon it. I readily follow here the worthy 
 views of Vaihinger, who maintains for the history of ideas, that 
 historically considered they show a tendency to grow from a 
 fiction (an unreal but practically useful safety-device) to 
 hypotheses and later to dogmas. This change of intensity 
 characterizes in a general way individual psychology, the 
 thinking of the normal individual (fiction as an expedient) of the 
 neurotic (attempt to realize the fiction) and of the insane 
 (incomplete but protective anthropomorphism and realization of 
 the fiction : dogmatization). 
 
 The stronger inner need seeks adjustment through an inten- 
 sification of the assuring guiding principles. We shall therefore 
 regularly find equivalents of the neurotics' and psychotics' 
 guiding principles and characteristics in the normal individual, 
 which in the latter may become corrected in order that they may 
 be able to approach reality without contradiction. If we were 
 to reduce the manifest guiding principles of this patient, and free 
 them of the various changes of form and intensity which they 
 have undergone, so that we may take them in the original, not 
 in the form developed later on, it would read, " I am a woman 
 and want to be a man." The normal individual, too, adjusts 
 himself throughout life in accordance with this formula. It aids 
 him in attaching himself to our masculine culture, yes, it furnishes 
 the latter with a steady impetus towards masculization 
 (Vermannlichung). But here it plays a role similar to the 
 Hilfslinie in a geometric construction. So soon as the object, a 
 higher manly niveau is attained, it is lost from consideration 
 (Vaihinger). Concerning the myth, a guiding principle of the 
 race, Nietzsche laments its transformation into the fairy tale and 
 demands a transformation into the manly (Mannliche). The 
 neurotic emphasizes this fiction, takes it altogether too literally, 
 and endeavors to bring about its realization. 
 
 His object is not the dovetailing, the adjustment of his 
 masculine prestige, but to give it value, which is mostly unattain- 
 able in its overstrained form or because of intrinsic contradictions 
 in the masculine protest, or is hindered in its attainment because 
 of the fear of a threatening defeat, the patient still remaining 
 ignorant of the significance and scope of his largely unconscious? 
 fiction. But his more intense feeling of uncertainty and inferiority 
 also hinders him in the proper estimation of his fiction. The 
 insane man conducts himself as if his fiction were a reality. He 
 acts under the most intense urgency and delivers himself unto
 
 82 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 his self-created deity, which he apperceives as real. In a similar 
 manner he simultaneously feels himself to be woman and 
 superman, the latter as a reaction of the exaggerated masculine 
 protest. The splitting of the personality corresponds to the 
 psychic hermaphroditism, the formal change being a manifold 
 one, manifests itself for the instant in the combination of ideas 
 of persecution and grandeur, of depression and mania, whereas 
 fixation as self -protection, is made facile through a relative 
 insufficiency or absolute weakness of the corrective paths. If 
 one were to remove from Freud's equation of dementia 
 ("Yearbook," Bleuler-Freud, 1911) the introduced sexualization, 
 if one were to shorten it on both sides of the superfluous libido 
 factor, our much more profound formula of the psychic herma- 
 phroditism with the masculine protest comes to the surface, 
 against which, missing entirely its true significance, Freud 
 argues in his work. 
 
 To come back to the case history, it still remains to be 
 mentioned that our patient in her feeling of insufficiency brought 
 forth various forms of the masculine protest. Thus she was 
 unable to bring herself to remain tolerant of men's accomplish- 
 ments. In this regard, she could be quite critical, especially 
 when some one tried to overestimate himself. In these cases it 
 not infrequently happens that physicians with a self-confident 
 demeanor, which appears to be an essential to some in the 
 treatment of disease, are antagonized by the patient with neurotic 
 impetuousness and with the same means. In this case, she was, 
 aside from this, naturally guided by a sort of instinct which 
 forbade her to adopt the physician's instructions, out of respect 
 to the purpose of her disease. But at times matters reached 
 a point where a harmless gain of influence over her by the 
 physician was responded to by vomiting and nausea, in connection 
 with which the patient never missed a chance to call attention 
 to the unsuccessful effort of the physician. One need not lose 
 one's tranquillity on account of this sort of manifestation, one 
 must rather see in them a part of the entire whole, a formal 
 change of the original envy of man and later of every one believed 
 to be superior. 
 
 Along with this our patient made extensive use of certain 
 privileges given her by her illness. First of all she was able 
 to withdraw herself as much as she wished to from the social 
 duties imposed upon her by the role of housewife and important 
 personage of a provincial city. 
 
 'Tis true she received visitors, to whom she complained of 
 her sufferings, but only exceptionally returned a call, thus 
 assuring herself as is the case regularly with neurotics, of a 
 favored and privileged position. Along with this it was possible 
 to avoid comparisons and musterings, in one sense also trials.
 
 AVARICE, SUSPICIOUSNESS, ENVY, ETC. 83 
 
 occasions for which social activities furnish as a rule. Of late 
 years she has besides been frightened by the idea that she was 
 being robbed as a result of her growing age, of the possibilities 
 of wielding influence over men. A lady friend demonstrated 
 to her very intimately how ridiculously society looks upon 
 youthful conduct in an aging woman. Thus she decided by her 
 way of dressing to lay special emphasis on her age, but at the 
 same time the bitter thought crowded itself to the surface of 
 her consciousness that men of her age are by no means pushed 
 into the corner. . 
 
 At all times she felt bitterly the fact that she had to spend her 
 life in a provincial city. Instinctively she strove in many, ways 
 for a removal to Vienna. However, this was not to be attained 
 in an open battle with her husband, who was many years her 
 senior, because he disarmed her with his inexhaustible affection 
 and his compliance in all other matters. She quarrelled most 
 bitterly with her brother and affected an unbelievable anxiety 
 at meeting this brother in this small town. When this did not 
 suffice to bring about her object, she developed a most obstinate 
 insomnia, as the most important cause of which she blamed the 
 nightly rattling of wagons before the windows of her bedroom. 
 Thus she brought about a temporary removal to Vienna, acquired 
 a home in the neighbourhood of her daughter, the heavenly 
 peacefulness of which she constantly emphasized, and where she 
 likewise regained her sleep. 
 
 Ever since her daughter had lived in Vienna, the small pro- 
 vincial city had become progressively more obnoxious to her. 
 The analysis revealed in accordance with the other directive 
 principles that she intensely envied her daughter's prestige 
 with which there was also associated an aristocratic predicate. 
 
 She, too, wanted to live in Vienna, and would have brought 
 this about long ago, had not a new danger threatened her in 
 Vienna, namely, to have to cover her daughter's expenses with 
 her own means. 
 
 The rivalry with this Viennese daughter was wholly contained 
 in her unconscious, and corresponded with an infantile guiding 
 line, the wish to surpass her pampered older sister. This guiding 
 principle, too, was found to be an equivalent of the basic one, 
 which strove toward the attainment of greater worth, as if she 
 were a man. 
 
 On account of the heavy expenditures which her residence in 
 Vienna imposed upon her there arose a contradiction in her 
 masculine protest. The neurotic with his torturing feeling of 
 inadequacy does not allow anything to be taken from him without 
 suffering for it. 
 
 He apprehends a further belittling (Verkurzung) as a lowering 
 of his ego-consciousness and along with his guiding principle in
 
 #4 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 such a way as if this were a castration, an effeminization, a sexual 
 assault at times also in the image of a pregnancy or birth." 
 
 In our case the analogous sensations of pregnancy came 
 especially to the surface, nausea, abdominal cramps and fixed 
 ideas of an existing pregnancy made themselves felt, pains in 
 the limbs represented a phlegmasia alba dolens, whereas an 
 obstinate obstipation symbolized in part a vaginismus in the anal 
 language, in part attempting to prevent expenditures 
 symbolically, and thirdly attempted to express the impossibility 
 of an independent conduct. 
 
 A more profound understanding of the mode of expression of 
 the neurosis appears to me to be impossible without the 
 knowledge of the " organ-jargon " discovered by me. Folklore 
 takes cognizance of this in the expression of popular speech and 
 custom. Freud misunderstood this jargon, and has created out 
 of its constructions the mainstay of his libido-theory, namely the - 
 theory of the erogenous zones. Especially his work on the anal 
 character and analerotic is full of a strained and overworked 
 phantasy. The point of outset is the relative inferiority of certain 
 organs, the attitude of the environment towards the 
 manifestations of these organs as well as the mass- 
 impressions of the two upon the soul of the child. 
 Neurotically predisposed children will endeavour to associate 
 with suitable manifestations of their organ-inferiority especially 
 with defects of childhood, those traits of character which 
 have their origin in their protesting ego-consciousness, 
 such as obstinacy, greater need of affection, exaggerated 
 cleanliness, pedantry, anxiousness, ambition, envy, revenge- 
 fulness, etc., in order to gain an especially effective 
 representation. One of my psychogenic epileptics utilized for 
 the purpose of strengthening his masculine protest such a 
 device, an interlacing, so to speak, inasmuch as he managed to 
 have most of his attacks preceded by an attack of obstipation in 
 order to arouse anxious forebodings in his relatives and thus bring 
 himself to their notice in the event of a degradation. 
 
 Obstinacy and infantile negativism may already be well 
 developed towards the end of the nursing period. It is the 
 association of these anomalies of urination, defecation, and eating, 
 which gives rise to the heightened " reasoning." The child 
 who abstains from emptying his bowels derives his pleasurable 
 sensations not from an irritation of the rectum, but from the 
 satisfaction of his obstinacy which avails itself of this unaesthetic 
 
 2 Thus it is that the thought process takes place not along reality, but 
 depends on analogous symbols, whose falsifying affective accompaniment 
 heightens the aggressive preparedness of the neurotic. The latter, however, 
 corresponds to the unconscious, guiding "opinion." This disguise, the symbol, 
 the analogy are as a device in the service of the aggressiveness to which the 
 ego-ideal of the neurotic compels. 
 
 The woman as a Sphinx, the man as a murderer, etc.
 
 AVARICE, SUSPICIOUSNESS, ENVY, ETC. 85 
 
 means, but may, however, attribute a pleasure-quality to rectal 
 sensations for years, up to the curing of his obstinacy. 
 
 The mother of a nearly two-year-old girl who was still suffering 
 from bed-wetting told me that she had frequently observed that 
 when- awakened from her sleep her child would attend properly 
 to the emptying of the bladder, providing she was still in a half- 
 wakeful state only, but no sooner did she become fully awake 
 than she refused to do so. If the child became fully awake 
 towards the end of the urination, she upset the urinal and cried 
 a long time out of rage at being thus taken unawares ; if, on the* 
 other hand, she still continued half asleep she turned over and 
 went fast asleep. Thus we may find in every case that from the 
 very earliest^period of existence the ego-consciousness of the 
 child finds itself in a manifest and latent contrast with its 
 environment, that it assumes a most pronounced attitude of 
 hostility and belligerency until it finally brings about a uniform 
 termination of all these aggressive stimuli, until it constructs 
 these into the masculine protest which it brings in opposition 
 to the stimuli of tenderness, subordinacy, and weakness, as well 
 as to the manifestations of inferiority, all of which it collectively 
 apperceives and combats as symptoms of femininity. Only that 
 at times an interlacing and intertwining takes place, where the 
 masculine protest lays stress upon feminine symptoms in order 
 to utilize them as a bugbear, or where he obstinately retains 
 feminine symptoms and this makes possible the development of 
 hermaphrodistic constructions which likewise exert their influence 
 in the direction of the masculine protest. For example, tears, 
 indispositions, simulations and exaggerations of childhood 
 defects. The overaccentuated guiding principle, namely, " I 
 wish to be a man," enlists then within its ranks all utilizable 
 bodily symptoms, particularly those manifestations of inferiority 
 upon which the attention of the patient as well as that of the 
 environment is especially directed. 
 
 Thus it happens that the masculine protest makes use of a 
 somatic language " for the purpose of gaining expression. A 
 beautiful example, one which frequently recurs in neurotic 
 phantasies, is that of Leonardo da Vinci's childhood phantasy : 
 "A vulture repeatedly shoved its tail into his mouth." This 
 phantasy carries the artist's psychic constellation to a most 
 accurate abstraction. Mouth phantasies are regularly related to 
 manifestations of inferiority in the child's gastro-intestinal tract. 
 Leonardo's inclinations to a science of nutrition were most likely 
 the fruits of the attention directed to these channels. 
 
 The tail of the vulture is a phallic symbol. A summing up of 
 these two trends brings forth the characteristic basic idea, " I 
 will experience the lot of the woman." But this rigid adherence 
 to a symbolic guiding principle already draws our attention to 
 the fact that these and similar trends of thought do not signify
 
 S6 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 a psychic settlement but serve, under the pressure of our 
 masculine culture, for a heightened impetus in the opposite 
 direction, must lead to an over compensation toward the 
 masculine side, where they evolve the masculine guiding principle 
 the more distinctly, " therefore I must act in such a manner as 
 if I were a complete man." 
 
 That these two guiding principles contradict one another, aside 
 from the fact that each individually is a contradiction to reality, 
 ir. so far as they are taken literally and not as something useful 
 and corrigible, I have already set forth in my contribution on 
 the " Psychic hermaphroditism in life and in the neurosis " 
 (" Fortschritte der Medizin," Leipzig, 1908). 
 
 This contradiction is reflected in doubt, in indecision, and in 
 fear of making decisions, the analysis of which reveals more or 
 less the fact that there existed in early childhood an uncertainty 
 as to the future sexual role, in the psychic superstructure of 
 which all later sensations, feelings and stimuli were grouped in 
 a certain sense as doubtful, " I don't know whether I am a man 
 or a woman " (see " Predispositions to Neurosis," Year Book, 
 Bleuler-Freud, 1909). 
 
 Our patient expressed in the anal language that she had 
 
 closed up an opening. A distinctly feminine thought. One 
 
 may picture to himself a group of men and women dressed in 
 
 women's clothes gathered in a room into which a mouse was 
 
 suddenly let loose. The women will at once betray their sex 
 
 in that they will draw their clothes around their legs, as if they 
 
 tried to prevent the mouse from entering. In the same manner, 
 
 the feminine frightening guiding principle is betrayed by a fear 
 
 of holes, of being bitten, stabbed, ideas of persecution by men, 
 
 t>y bulls, the position of the back, the being pulled to the right, 
 
 backwards, to be pressed upon, to fall, etc., a guiding principle 
 
 which is readily reacted on with an insuring anxiety.* 
 
 ( Obstipation as a neurotic symptom takes its origin in a 
 
 \ hereditary defect of the intestines, which leads to a neurotic 
 
 /closure of the sphincter through ideas concerning anal birth and 
 
 / sexual relation. As a matter of fact this patient suffered in her 
 
 ( childhood from intestinal catarrh and occasional intestinal 
 
 V incontinence, later from obstipation and a recto-vaginal fistula. 
 
 That the closure of the anus was under the domination of a 
 guiding idea of closing of cavities is likewise seen from the fact 
 that the patient suffered for a considerable length of time 
 following her marriage from vaginismus. The obstipation of 
 this aging woman expresses in a dual way the same desire as 
 did her erstwhile vaginismus, namely, " I don't want to be a 
 woman, I want to be a man." 
 
 At this point I must for practical, as well as for theoretical 
 
 3 The same masculine protest leads in the neurosis to trismus, blepharos- 
 pasmus, vaginismus, spasm of the sphincter, globus and spasm of vocal cords.
 
 AVARICE, SUSPICIOUSNESS, ENVY, ETC. 87 
 
 reasons go considerably beyond the scope of a mere character 
 delineation, as one is for that matter usually compelled to take 
 into account the psyche as a whole in every discussion of psycho- 
 logical questions. Besides this so minutely analyzed case 
 furnishes a clearer insight than it is possible to gain in other 
 cases, especially where, because of a dependence upon the 
 physician or upon extraneous circumstances, a cure or 
 discontinuance of the treatment takes place before the scheme, 
 according to which the patient built his psychosis, becomes 
 completely revealed. Thus I will attempt to set forth in this 
 case, this scheme, by arranging according to this analytically 
 disclosed scheme all her symptoms, the sentinels opposite the 
 outer world, and show the synthetic relationship of the traits of 
 character with it. 
 
 According to this scheme (p. 184-6) the patient arranged all 
 her experiences, and wherever they fitted at all, occasion for 
 which is amply furnished in the life of every individual by his 
 symbolic as well as purposive apperceptions, she reacted to them 
 with the appropriate disease manifestations. The protective 
 traits of character were pushed to the fore, like outposts, were 
 ever ready for defense, and explained situations in accordance 
 with guiding thoughts, and whenever the occasion arose, 
 borrowed support from the sum total of the appropriate 
 symptoms. Her manifestations of independence were consider- 
 ably interfered with by the intelligent and tender attitude of her 
 husband and by certain benevolent guiding principles of the 
 patient. Thus it happened that the basic scheme, "I'm only a 
 woman," derived its influence from intentionally retained 
 impressions of the feminine role, in connection with which the 
 unconscious mechanism of the masculine guiding thoughts 
 furnished the protecting memento. The healthy woman is 
 characterized by a more conscious attitude toward the feminine 
 role by a purposive dovetailing and corrective approximation of 
 the scheme to reality. The psychosis produced an accentuation 
 of the imaginary scheme for protective purposes, and an 
 incorrigible attitude within this scheme ; such a patient will 
 conduct herself as if she really were pregnant. In all three cases 
 the fiction of pregnancy and the greater circle of its 
 manifestations, a symbol of the inferior feminine role, a con- 
 vincing expression for the feeling of degradation, but at the same 
 time looked upon from the standpoint of the masculine protest, an 
 artifice for the purpose of avoiding further degradation, as was 
 shown above.* 
 
 4 The transformation of the masculine fiction may reach a point where 
 under its direction maternity, pregnancy, may be striven for, quite frequently 
 in such cases where obstacles of a very gross nature exist. The cry for a baby 
 is then regularly directed against the man. Phantom pregnancies frequently 
 represent such an arrangement.
 
 88 
 
 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 SCHEME 
 
 Fear of society- 
 
 SYMPTOMS 
 
 The leaning from the 
 feminine 
 
 r61e, the masculine 
 protest. 
 
 Protective dexterities. 
 
 Mistrust (credulity 
 with subsequent 
 protest) . 
 
 Compulsive blushing 
 Fear of being alone. 
 Palpitation of the heart- 
 Fear of falling, dizziness 
 when in high places- 
 
 Feeling of pressure in 
 the stomach. (Csecum.) 
 
 Frigidity. Overacuity 
 of hearing of hus- 
 band's snoring. 
 
 Vaginismus, pressure 
 sensations over the 
 breasts. 
 
 -/ Inability to stand any 
 kind of pressure, the 
 struggle against the 
 corset. 
 
 \A feeling of being drawn 
 to the right and down- 
 ward (towards the 
 feminine side) . 
 Noises in the ears. (The 
 noise of the moving 
 sea, which swells and 
 falls.) 
 
 Protection against 
 courting. 
 
 Protection against 
 coitus. 
 
 Protection against 
 coitus. 
 
 Belittling of man. 
 
 Anxiousness. 
 
 Bashfulness (timidity). 
 
 Virtuous morality. 
 
 Desire to dominate 
 (submission with 
 subsequent protest) . 
 
 Willfulness. 
 Obstinacy. 
 
 Disputatiousness . 
 Tendencies hostile to 
 the husband. 
 
 Abdominal pains. 
 
 Shortness of breath. 
 
 Palpitation of the heart. 
 
 Nausea. 
 
 Vomiting. 
 
 Compulsory ideas of 
 
 pregnancy. 
 Fatigue. 
 Craving for certain 
 
 foods. 
 
 Protection against 
 pregnancy. 
 
 Somatic over- 
 sensitiveness. 
 
 Hypochondriacally to 
 pamper oneself. 
 
 Abdominal cramps. 
 
 Difficult evacuation of 
 the bowels, signifying 
 difficult labour. 
 
 Occasional polyuria. (Pass- 
 ing of the waters.) 
 
 Protection against 
 parturition.
 
 AVARICE, SUSPICIOUSNESS, ENVY, ETC. 89 
 
 Objection to lying on 
 bed. 
 
 Pain in legs. 
 
 Tendency to pro- 
 long invalidism. 
 
 1 A fiction of I Protection 
 I a throrabo- I against 
 ) phlebitis J puerperium 
 
 Form of action of a 
 complex type for the 
 purpose of doing 
 away with the 
 inferiority and 
 
 degradation. 
 
 Weakness in limbs, re- 
 minding one of astasia 
 and abasia. 
 
 Staggering gait. 
 
 Easy fatiguibility in 
 walking. 
 
 A hostile, at times 
 sadistic behaviour 
 
 towards children. 
 
 Eapid fatiguing, tiring 
 and impatience in the 
 care of children. 
 
 Insomnia. 
 
 Finickiness in matters 
 of cleanliness. 
 
 Over-acuteness of hear- 
 ing at night. 
 
 Light sleeping. 
 
 A memento of 
 leaving the child- 
 bed. 
 
 Protection 
 against 
 maternal 
 duties. 
 
 Avarice, thriftiness, 
 envy, desire to dom- 
 inate, impatience, 
 fear of attaining 
 nothing, of com- 
 pleting nothing, all 
 sorts of exertions, 
 as if the distance 
 toward equality' 
 
 with men were to 
 be diminished in 
 any possible way. 
 
 A dream which took place towards the end of the treatment 
 shows us the original guiding thought of the patient in 
 connection with her actual inner conflicts. She dreamed : 
 " As if she were sitting on a bench in a park near the residence 
 of her parents, ill and weak. She wore on her head two bathing 
 caps. Two girls then approached from behind her and one of 
 them tore one of the caps from her head. She grabbed hold of 
 the girl and held her while the other one disappeared and 
 threatened to report her to the police. A poor, badly clothed 
 woman passed by and told her that the girl's name was Velicka. 
 At this point she went to her mother in order to complain. Her 
 mother gave her a basket full of eggs and said they cost 5 guldens. 
 She took two of the eggs in her hand and saw that they 
 were pretty." 
 
 The situation on the bench ; her fatigue and the bathing caps 
 referred to a hydropathic treatment which she had undertaken 
 especially for the removal of an insomnia prior to coming under 
 my care. On the day preceding the dream she reprimanded her 
 daughter because the latter used her bath linen for her own use ; 
 she also possessed two bathing caps, as in the dream, 
 which the daughter likewise often used. Velicka is 
 
 H
 
 90 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 a Slavic word signifying big. The daughter had a 
 Slavic " Adelspiraedikat." The poorly-dressed woman is a 
 noblewoman by the name of Grandvenire. Opposed to the two 
 is she, the plebeian, degraded one. She was dissatisfied because 
 her husband was not knighted, but on account of her pride she 
 did not acknowledge this envy. She was afraid that her daughter 
 might be able to take everything away from her. She had two 
 daughters, one died, disappeared. She often complained to me 
 that her daughter cost her much money. She has already given 
 her all her jewelry. From her very childhood she has always 
 been degraded before others. Even her mother always humbled 
 her and demanded payment from her for every little thing after 
 the patient had become married. She, on the other hand, 
 supplied her daughter regularly with eggs, venison, milk, butter, 
 etc., and still she needed so much money. Before she left for 
 Vienna she forgot to settle a debt of 5 guldens. The day previous 
 she wrote to her husband that he should pay this at once. In 
 fact she always had to pay at once for everything she bought.* 
 
 The mother treated her badly. In the dream she recalled a 
 forgotten obligation. She always saved at her expense. In the 
 dream she received from her mother the masculine attribute 
 (testicles) which the mother kept from her at the time of birth. 
 We see again how out of the feeling of femininity (degradation) 
 the masculine protest is in the dream directed against further 
 insults. This dream shows us the attempt of the patient to evade 
 in her thoughts further degradation and to accuse her daughter 
 that like her mother she kept everything from her. 
 
 Similarly, this lust to possess everything is found in the 
 following case history which shows still more clearly than the 
 preceding case how the patient on account of his pride seeks to 
 remove this lust from his field of vision, to repress it. We shall 
 see how a decided change takes place through the revelation of 
 this repression and through the elucidation of the CEdipus 
 complex. In the same manner it appears from all these cases 
 that this lust to have everything pursues the most senseless 
 goals. Such patients have eyes for everything which others in 
 their circle possess in so far as they are excluded from the 
 possession of the same. They may possess more than the others 
 and yet they will envy them. They may gain everything which 
 they formerly begrudged others and will then unceremoniously 
 set it aside in order to furnish new goals for their desires and 
 possessions. And their lust for possession ever remains attached 
 
 8 The fear to become humiliated through further expenses is closely 
 allied to the utilization of the character-type of greed and parsimony. These 
 maternal, and according to her way of looking, feminine traits, she avoided 
 through a compulsion to pay beforehand and showed herself to be superior to 
 her mother through her liberality.
 
 AVARICE, SUSPICIOUSNESS, ENVY, ETC. 91 
 
 to those goals which they have not attained. It is readily under- 
 stood that they are incapacitated for love and friendship. Often 
 they acquire a general ability to misrepresent and set out to 
 captivate souls because others also dominate. They constantly 
 fear degradation and always seek to assure themselves long 
 beforehand. The love of the parents enjoyed by the brother, 
 their jewelry, the marriage of a brother or of a sister, a book, 
 an accomplishment of an acquaintance or even of a total stranger, 
 fill them with rage. 6 
 
 The superiority of another, a successfully passed examination, 
 possession or worth of brothers and sisters throw them into 
 excitements, cause them headache, insomnia and more 
 pronounced neurotic symptoms. Their constant fear not to 
 become equal of an older or younger brother may render them 
 unfit for work. It is then that they attempt to avoid all decisions 
 and tests, it is then that they reach the stage of loss or initiative, 
 approach often in any possible way the withdrawal from life and 
 support themselves in the meanwhile on their ad hoc created 
 symptoms among which there came to my attention frequently 
 compulsory blushing, migraine, all sorts of headaches, palpitation 
 of the heart, stuttering, agoraphobia and claustrophobia, tremor, 
 sleepiness, depression, weakness of memory, excessive thirst 
 and psychogenic epilepsy. 
 
 I have especially emphasized above the case of the younger 
 brother because I met with him oftenest and because he is most 
 apt to be driven to rivalry. 7 This case is not an exception. One 
 also finds in this role older siblings or only children, naturally 
 also girls. The rivalry may also be directed primarily against 
 the father or mother in whose picture the desired superiority 
 appears to be concretely represented. It is then that the CEdipus- 
 complex develops out of the longing of the predisposed child, as 
 a guiding model, a guiding fiction to gain satisfaction for his 
 craving, and this takes place at a time when sexual craving is 
 still out of the question, but it is also the desire to possess a 
 person or an object which belongs to another. A belief in 
 predestination and ideas of identification with God frequently 
 develop as manifestations of the masculine protest. Kleptomania 
 is frequently revealed in the anamneses of these patients. At 
 times the patient is unconscious of his guiding principle. 
 Occasionally he is seen at work trying to conceal this guiding 
 principle and to make it unrecognizable through a manifestation 
 of opposed tendencies such as liberality. 
 
 * Thus an approaching marriage of a girl may lead to the development of 
 a neurosis in the brother or father when the latter are neurotically disposed. 
 Thus the arrangement of affection may then give the impression of incest 
 stirrings. 
 
 7 Frisoliauf. " Psvchology of the Younger Brother." Munich, A. 
 Keinhardt, 1912.
 
 92 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 The wish, which for instance, draws him to his mother, 
 changes nothing after it has become conscious in the disease- 
 picture, no matter how frankly sexual it may be shown to be. It 
 is only after the patient understands and controls his desire for 
 the unattainable, for that which in the nature of things belongs 
 to another, that recovery may take place. 
 
 The boundless pride which one detects in some of these cases 
 does not readily permit the patient to gain insight into his envy 
 and jealousy. The tendency to belittle others is, on the other 
 hand, quite markedly developed and readily comes to the surface. 
 Malice, revengefulness, desire for intrigue (and in those of lower 
 intelligence), more crudely aggressive tendencies, even sadistic 
 and murder-instincts reveal themselves as attempts to insure 
 oneself against a degradation in this eternal rivalry. The fear 
 of the consequences, such as a lively concern about the needs of 
 relatives, the picturing to oneself of punishments, arrest and 
 misery are appertaining assurances against the ebullitions of the 
 masculine protest. Even epileptic seizures may serve as security 
 devices, thus, for instance, as in our case, where a psycho- 
 epileptic insult associated itself with patricidal and fratricidal 
 dream-stirrings. 
 
 It is possible that the motive of a " scorned love " regularly 
 plays a r61e in these cases, and brings about the most intense 
 hate against the unattained person. One may justly doubt 
 whether love in a normal person is capable of such a trans- 
 formation. It requires the sum-total of power-instincts, the over- 
 heated ego-consciousness of these individuals to desire to bring 
 about the spiritual possession of another person against that 
 person's will. Inasmuch as the neurotic desires to possess every- 
 thing, he is blind to all natural restrictions, and experiences in 
 the scorn of his love a thrust at his most sensitive principle. Now 
 he turns to revenge : Achevonia movebo. 
 
 When one is in doubt as to which of two persons the patient 
 has selected for his affections, whether the father or mother, it 
 is safe to assume that it is the opposite to the one the patient 
 mentions. It would be too painful, as a rule, to acknowledge 
 scorned love. An exact solution seems to me to be furnished by 
 the following simple experiment : 
 
 One places the patient exactly between the two persons in 
 question, and soon one observes that he has moved nearer the 
 preferred one. 
 
 Thus I was able to discover in the case which I am about to 
 discuss in detail that the patient showed decided preference for 
 his mother, though when he was alone he always gave preference 
 to his father. He not infrequently scolded his mother, and not 
 a day passed but what they quarrelled.
 
 AVARICE, SUSPICIOUSNESS, ENVY, ETC. 93 
 
 A certain manifestation which one frequently observes in the 
 neuroses was likewise present here, and in an especially 
 accentuated form, namely, the strong emphasis of a pedantic 
 character trait, which, not unlike the " crack regiment " in 
 war time, took over the task of coming in touch with the enemy. 
 The enemy was first of all the mother, and the daily battles 
 regularly developed because the latter was unable to do full 
 justice to the patient's pedantic demands in eating, in dressing, 
 in the preparation of his bath or bed. Our patient thus gained 
 a base of operation from which emanated the various subter- 
 fuges by means of which he endeavored to place his mother, after 
 all, completely at his service. In this is seen again a neurotic 
 trait of character as a device, by means of which the patient seeks 
 to be true to his inner fiction, to dominate his mother in the same 
 manner as he believed to have observed his father dominate her. 
 " And should you be unwilling, I'll use force." This train of 
 thought gained stability from the patient in his youth, and thus 
 he at once assumed towards his mother an attitude of mistrust, 
 constantly on the alert for setbacks, for the preferring of others ; 
 full of tense energy and gloomy expectation whether he will yet 
 succeed in gaining her for himself. Not because he really loved 
 her, or really desired to possess her, but because his desire for 
 possession of her was similar to the desire which he had for many 
 other things, jewelry, bonbons, which he valued not at all highly, 
 but left lying in a drawer, forgotten, once he could call them his 
 own. Thus the possession of the mother was not an end in itself, 
 his desire was not at all a libidinous or sexual one, but the mother 
 and his distance from her became a symbol for him, an estimate 
 of his own inferiority. And because he apperceived the cosmic 
 picture, every new acquaintance, every relation to the opposite 
 sex with the same traits of character, suspiciously, full ot 
 sensitiveness, with a similar expectation of a disappointment, all 
 success fled from him, all satisfaction in life was lost to him. He 
 had eyes only for everything which spoke against him, against 
 his success, and whatever he did attain lost all charm for him. 
 He settled the problem of his life with the arrangement of his 
 neurosis. He considered himself deficient by a whole lot and 
 this deficiency was represented in the symbolic loss of the mother. 
 
 Does one suppose that this patient who had been suffering 
 from anxiety-states, migraine and depressions, could have been 
 cured if his mother were returned to him ? Such an attempt 
 would have been fruitless at the time the patient came to the 
 physician. Even the most compliant mother and many of them 
 are lastingly estranged from their sons could not have shown 
 that measure of patience and sacrifice which the patient 
 demanded in his boundless mistrust and desire for dominancy. 
 The past, and the thought of former privations, were ever ready
 
 94 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 to furnish motives for new outbreaks and oppressions. It is 
 possible that the attempt at cure might have been a successful 
 one in the patient's childhood, a pedagogic solution of this special 
 neurotic problem in a gradual orientation and independence of 
 the child, and an appropriate tranquilizing of the child concerning 
 his future. It is the uncertainty which mars the outlook for the 
 future in these children, an uncertainty whose organic and 
 psychic roots we already know. In our case it was the fact that 
 the patient, already as a child, even during the suckling period 
 showed a tendency to become easily frightened and panicky. 
 This fright of sucklings which is frequently taken as nervousness 
 is obviously an organic inheritance and is associated, according 
 to my observations, with an hereditary sensitiveness, inferiority 
 of the auditory apparatus, so that children already become 
 panicky in the presence of noises and tones to which other 
 children pay no unusual attention. From our standpoint this 
 striking tendency to fright signifies a sign of an hereditary, 
 auditory oversensitiveness, a manifestation of a somatic 
 inferiority of the familiar ear diseases, but likewise corresponds 
 to a heightened refinement of hearing in the musical sense. The 
 fact that our patient suffered at the age of 6 years from a 
 protracted middle ear disease which necessitated paracentesis of 
 the ear drum, is in accord with our views concerning somatic 
 inferiority ; similarly, his development of an excellent musical 
 ear and of a strikingly refined sensitiveness in hearing which 
 especially qualified him for eavesdropping. This somatic refine- 
 ment brings with it that the child is driven to a development of 
 a tendency towards a lurking curiosity, even though he may feel 
 more marked uncertainties from other causes. The roots of this 
 uncertainty from which he endeavors to escape by means of his 
 curiosity, laid in the patient's weaker intellect, compared with 
 an older brother who as it often happens to the detriment of 
 bringing up made of the patient the plaything of his railleries 
 and often made a fool of him. 
 
 The patient also recalled that he had suffered from that form 
 of cryptorchism in which a testicle occasionally disappears into 
 the abdominal cavity through the patent canal. This fact, that 
 is, the better sexual development of his brother, the earlier 
 maturity of the latter, brought to his mind quite early the thought 
 that he was perhaps a girl after all. Up to the fourth year of his 
 life he was dressed in girl's clothes, and during this period he 
 developed the fear that he never perhaps would reach the mature 
 state of his father or his older brother, that is, never become a 
 complete man. The marked development of his breasts lent 
 considerable weight to his uncertainty. That he unconsciously 
 gave considerable thought to the question of the difference of 
 the sexes, one may glean from an occurrence which remained
 
 AVARICE, SUSPICIOUSNESS, ENVY, ETC. 95 
 
 fixed in his memory, because at the time he told it every one 
 laughed at him. One day while in a public park he watched a 
 girl urinate and upon reaching home related how he had seen a 
 boy urinate from behind." 
 
 This early period in his life was of marked significance in 
 shaping his attitude towards his family and in a broader sense 
 to the world at large. He saw himself belittled, and his feeling 
 of inferiority found no adjustment in the family. His covetous- 
 ness, his craving to become the equal of his brother, of his father, 
 of anyone whom he considered strong, able, powerful, gained in 
 intensity and directed him upon paths in which he came into 
 serious conflicts with his parents. He became a bad, unmanage- 
 able child, which made a tender attitude of his parents towards 
 him still more difficult. His desires assumed measureless 
 proportions, he began to insure himself against every setback 
 suspiciously and with a growing choler, and this at a time when 
 his maturing genitalia, his strikingly hairy body, his improved 
 insight into matters sexual, should have had their tranquilizing 
 effect upon him. But by this time his position in the family 
 became such an unfavorable one, owing to the development of his 
 traits of character, which likewise unfavorably influenced his 
 school work, that with his over-sensitive nature he had good 
 reason to feel himself slighted and belittled. Thus he was no 
 longer able to find the road to normality. That he, however, 
 continued to apperceive this slight in the manner of an analogy 
 with the feminine role became already evident from the first 
 dream which he recited during the treatment. The dream was 
 " I felt as if I were witnessing an ape nursing a child." 
 
 His brother often called him an ape because of his excessive 
 hairy growth, which he nevertheless exhibited with pride. The 
 ape, which is nursing the child, a female ape, is he himself that 
 is, he sees himself, he feels himself in a feminine role, along with 
 which the nursing is to be considered a gynecomastia (" Gyna- 
 komastie ") which came up during the dream analysis. This 
 is the feminine principle emphasized by me for all dreams 
 against which the stressing of the excessive hairy growth is to 
 be understood as pointing in the direction of the masculine 
 protest. Thus the patient enters upon the treatment with the 
 disclosure that he feels himself belittled and permits us to 
 divine from the choice of his figure of speech, that he evaluates 
 this inferiority as feminine. 
 
 I wish to draw attention, in this connection, to the fact that 
 the dreamer often chooses pictures and forms of expression which 
 
 1 The original uncertainty of the sexual r61e, as I have been emphasizing for 
 y'ars, plays one of the chief parts in the development of the neurotic psvche, 
 which is later on vitalized as a symbol and base of operation in the struggle for 
 dominancy. It is only of late that many authorities are beginning to agree 
 vith me on this point.
 
 96 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 show a simultaneous coloring of feminine and masculine traits. 
 Here it was an ape, whose nursing was a feminine characteristic, 
 while the hairy growth is to be apperceived as a masculine 
 characteristic. Such forms of expression which I have recognized 
 as belonging to the psychic hermaphroditism may be referred to 
 two simplifying circumstances. First, they correspond to the 
 infantile indefiniteness of sex-cognition. Second, because the 
 element of time, as in other cases, the element of space, is during 
 the marked abstraction of the dream state wholly or almost 
 wholly eliminated, so that his thoughts which may be separated 
 spatially or temporally, become united in one case the thoughts 
 were " I feel myself a woman and wish to be a man." Stekel, 
 in his further elaboration of my conception of psychic herma- 
 phroditism, assumes a double sexual meaning for every dream 
 symbol, which I think is a certain exaggeration, nevertheless he 
 comes closer to the truth than does Freud who denies the regular 
 manifestation in the dream of psychic hermaphroditism and the 
 masculine protest. 
 
 The distinctness with which this first dream of our patient 
 points to his feeling of inferiority, so to speak, in the form of a 
 reaction to the beginning of the treatment, is naturally also to 
 be understood as an omen for the benefit of the physician : 
 " My disease has its origin in my feeling of inferiority." " My 
 disease," fainting attacks and business incapacity are security 
 devices against a defeat in the fifth act. " I am impotent and 
 inefficient as a child and long for love, ape-love, as I see it in 
 the dream." We fill out : impotent for reason, in order to be 
 pampered like a child, which he succeeds in attaining more 
 readily after his attacks ; and inefficient, in order that he may 
 always be supplied with maintenance, in order that it may not 
 be forgotten that he must be made secure for life through affection 
 and legacy. His marked tendency to be frightened by sudden 
 noises, his hyperacusis was especially fitted to aid him in gaining 
 his point. The finale which he set before him, a desired over- 
 compensation for a feeling of inferiority, consisted in not more 
 nor less than the desire to gain the love of his parents, especially 
 that difficult of attainment, mother's love. Thus he utilizes, 
 with the object of influencing his mother's heart, the already- 
 mentioned experiences, such as becoming frightened upon hear- 
 ing a shot, as he often manifested upon hearing the firing at a 
 military funeral, upon hearing the puffing and shrill whistling of 
 a locomotive, and during a sudden assault by his brother or 
 playmates. The finale which constantly stands before his eyes, 
 drew upon itself a fixation of this hyperacusis, which dominated 
 him up to the present. This purposeful hypersensitiveness 
 serves, as do similar phenomena in hysteria, to show us that the 
 patient's uncertainty forces him to stretch forth his antennae as
 
 AVARICE, SUSPICIOUSNESS, ENVY, ETC. 97 
 
 far as possible, as he is actually doing with over-tense traits of 
 character. Aside from this his tendency to fear pressed upon 
 his masculine feeling and gave him the sense of feminine stimuli. 
 He endeavored, therefore, to bring forth in all other relations, 
 courage and fearless behavior, in which he too succeeded. 
 
 The laying bare of his desire for the love of the mother brought 
 forth no particular result. His attacks occurred at about the 
 same intervals, but now he had them in bed, in order to protect 
 himself in this way from the possible inroads of the treatment, 
 which, at this stage, was encountering more difficulty in" 
 endeavoring to uncover the causes of his attacks. Prior to this 
 the attacks occurred always in connection with experiences which 
 threatened him with a set-back, but now I was compelled to 
 reconstruct these experiences from his thoughts and dreams. 
 Naturally the patient made a virtue of this necessity, and spoke 
 of this change as an improvement due to my treatment, thus 
 expecting to gain in this way my sympathy, an experience which 
 he always apperceived as a feeling of power. To this craving 
 after this feeling of power he owes his success in passing as a 
 very sociable and pleasant fellow in his intercourse with strangers. 
 
 It may be said here that because of my different conception 
 of these matters, the CEdipus-complex does not come very clearly 
 to the surface, here, at any rate not so clearly as Freud has 
 demonstrated this complex. To this I would have to object 
 energetically. It was this case particularly, as so few of them 
 do, which brought to view regardless of consequence, the 
 striving for the mother in a sexual manner, and the patient 
 at no time hesitated to elaborate the frequently unconcealed 
 CEdipus dreams as proof of his sexual striving after his mother. 
 He had many such dreams. He dreamed : ' I'm walking with 
 a lady from our rendezvous towards the street." 
 
 The lady represented his mother, as the various details 
 showed. The " street " referred to prostitution. The " rendez- 
 vous ' ' on the other hand was a memory-remnant from his 
 waking life and referred to a girl who refused him another 
 meeting, thus by her refusal simulating his mother. He was 
 unable to wield any influence over girls, and was thus, according 
 to his own understanding, driven to the masculine feeling of 
 power and in his protest degraded to the level of a prostitute 
 his mother as well the girl, and for that matter all women, whom 
 he naturally feared. 
 
 Just as clearly the CEdipus-complex came to light in other 
 dreams, where too the sexual, as a jargon, as a mode of speech, 
 was only recognized after a penetration into the psychic 
 constellation. Thus he dreamed :" I'm sitting at a smooth table 
 made of brown wood. A girl brings me a large vessel of beer." 
 The table reminded him of a subterranean cellar at Nuremberg,
 
 98 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 where he went to attend a scientific gathering which led him 
 to the German museum. His thoughts drifted in the same 
 general direction of Germanism in connection with the large 
 vessel of beer. It is quite comprehensible that this unusually 
 musical patient should in the analysis come upon Wagner's 
 " Meistersinger." As he mentioned this he began to search 
 for a scene in Wagner's operas, wherein some one takes a drink. 
 At first he thought of Tristan, then of Siegfried's arrival at 
 Gunter's palace v In both scenes the hero drinks a love potion. 
 Thus our patient apperceives his enigmatical attraction for his 
 mother as something provoked by the mother's magical powers. 
 At last he thought of Siegmund to whom his sister Sieglinde 
 compassionately gives a horn of meal. 
 
 Thus the dream reads : The voice of blood (relation) hath 
 spoken, the mother compassionately takes his part, he is the 
 hero, who is the man (father) of his wife. An incestuous 
 prospect, as in Wagner, the patient, as if intoxicated, longs 
 after his mother. 
 
 The psychic situation of the patient had experienced an 
 " effeminization." His older brother had returned from a journey 
 and was welcomed at home with much love. How different 
 were matters upon his own return from his travels in Germany. 
 The thought, I am belittled, became accentuated through the 
 reception accorded his brother, and in the dream he seeks to 
 save himself through a masculine guiding line. It was an attempt 
 which was bound to fail. The same night he had a seizure. 
 
 The seizure had for its purpose the direction of the mother's 
 tenderness towards the patient. This was quite successful 
 with the father. But even the mother would forget his jealous, 
 frequently vulgar outbreaks of temper, as soon as he lay 
 unconscious, and for a time would sit on his bed. Thus he satisfies 
 his wish, his wish to possess everything, like the brother, like 
 the father. The change of form of his original fiction, namely 
 I have imperfect genitalia, I shall not be a complete man 
 had reached the thought, I too wish to possess my mother as my 
 father and brother possess her. In order to comport himself in 
 this matter with the appropriate amount of energy, it required a 
 deeply-felt conviction of his longing for his mother, which he 
 proceeded to create. 
 
 The most essential reason for his ardent attitude towards his 
 mother was revealed in the further analysis, which revealed as 
 the decisive point his feeling of uncertainty. As the mother 
 isolated herself more and more from him during his childhood, 
 he developed the idea, as is the case not infrequently with such 
 children, that he did not belong to his family. The fairy tales 
 of " Snow White " and " Cinderella " frequently furnish these 
 children with leading thoughts. When his brother was ill once
 
 AVARICE, SUSPICIOUSNESS, ENVY, ETC. 99 
 
 the mother did not leave him for a second. After that the 
 patient was uninterruptedly stimulated to test, by means of his 
 severe seizures, the family, especially the mother, and see if the 
 " voice of blood " would speak. These tests he carried out with 
 a genuine neurotic insatiability, and thus we see also in this case 
 that the CEdipus-complex is of the nature of an especially 
 arranged fiction, utilized as a means of expression for the 
 masculine protest against a feeling of uncertainty and inferiority, 
 and dependent upon the neurotic craving for security, the desire 
 to possess everything. 
 
 The inner contradiction which frequently comes into being in 
 this form of masculine protest, the moral condemnation of a 
 conduct corresponding to the basic thought " to possess every- 
 thing," but also the greater insight into the impossibility of 
 attainment or the fear of a decision which may assail the patient 
 often necessitate a compromise. This may best be expressed by 
 the words " half and half." The patient seeks a way out of this 
 dilemma and thus reaches the point of " divide et imp era." At 
 times this solution is tenable, because of the possibility of a 
 gratification of the desire for dominancy. 
 
 At times this leads to a marked cultural but also Utopian 
 development of feeling of equality and love for justice.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE NEUROTIC EXTENSION OF LIMITS THROUGH ASCETICISM, 
 LOVE, DESIRE TO TRAVEL, CRIME. SIMULATION AND 
 NEUROSIS. FEELING OF INFERIORITY OF THE FEMALE SEX. 
 PURPOSE OF AN IDEAL. DOUBT AS AN EXPRESSION OF 
 PSYCHIC HERMAPHRODITISM. MASTURBATION AND NEUROSIS. 
 THE INCEST-COMPLEX AS A SYMBOL OF CRAVING FOR 
 DOMINANCY. THE NATURE OF THE DELIRIUM. (Delirium 
 used in the sense of the French : UNE DELIRE.) 
 
 A CONSIDERATION which should align itself here endeavors 
 to show how the compensating guiding idea, " to possess 
 everything " may deviate from its straight course in order to 
 stimulate in a roundabout way or by means of an artifice, 
 accomplishments of a strangely neurotic, criminal, but also of a 
 creative kind, in order to reach its ultimate good eventually and 
 bring about in some way a maximation of the ego-consciousness 
 or at least and to this extent the neurosis remains productive 
 to prevent a degradation. 
 
 The parsimony, penury and asceticism of certain neurotics 
 already shows us such a detour upon which the patient permits 
 himself to be driven as if he were able to avoid danger only in 
 this way. He then behaves strictly according to these guiding 
 ideas, believes in them and accentuates his abnormal being in 
 moments of especial uncertainty to the point of a psychosis. In 
 melancholic states when poverty phantasies predominate, as well 
 as in hypochondriacs 1 the patient in order to avoid the real 
 danger, anticipates the feared state, endeavors to realize a 
 fiction, emphasizes his feeling of inferiority and utilizes his 
 disease for the safeguarding of his ego-consciousness. Cases 
 -exhibiting the lying-mania, fetichism, neurotic mania for gather- 
 ing up things and kleptomania, also illustrate this craving to 
 possess everything. Another evident trait exists, namely, to 
 t>reak through the boundaries laid down by reality in the direction 
 of a fictitious guiding principle, in order to escape a feeling of 
 degradation. Apperception always comes to light according to 
 the rigidly formal antithesis of "manly- womanly" and frequently 
 leads the patient to undertake accentuations by means of which 
 it may be proved that he is a man. Sexual symbolism lends 
 itself very well as a means of expression for this purpose, the 
 solution of which is at times furnished by the exaggerated 
 Ttiasculine trend through peculiar detours. Here belongs the
 
 ASCETICISM, LOVE, ETC. . 101 
 
 neurotic lying, braggardism, as well as attempts to play with fire 
 and love and thus extend as far as possible the established limits. 
 Less harmful manifestations are pathological wanderlust, the 
 expression of which is to be seen in the running away, in the 
 fugues of neurotic and psychotic subjects. As a rule there exists 
 in the guiding picture of these neurotics an ideal of personality, 
 the apex of which it is attempted to reach through imitation or 
 obstinate, negativistic behavior. The same trend, namely, to 
 extend masculine cognition, to its very limits, is at the bottom 
 also of the constant tendency to read about, listen to, see and' 
 commit acts of a disgusting nature. 
 
 The more pronounced this striving for worthless possession, 
 the more normal tendencies and values are falsified, similarly to 
 the manner in which love for nature is only a deception, but 
 exhibited in an exaggerated manner, when a tourist wants to 
 have every peak noted upon his mountain staff. 
 
 The Leporelist shows us this desire with reference to love, 
 and the Messalina is to be compared with Don Juan, a nympho- 
 maniac who always imagines herself unsatiated and belittled 
 because in this neurotic form real possibilities for gratification 
 are unattainable. The fettering and degradation of the partner 
 are of course taken into consideration in this relation. 
 
 "Dear soul, what place can you think of where I have not 
 been ? ' Immermann's Munchausen answers to the question, 
 whether he knew a certain distant place. The real satisfaction 
 in active games, riding, driving, racing and aviation originate 
 from the desire for possession, for conquest. For this reason 
 every child aspires to be a coachman, a conductor, a locomotive 
 engineer or an aviator, but to no less an extent he wishes to be 
 emperor or teacher in order to command his companions and to 
 find a visible expression for his superiority, or a physician in 
 order to conquer death and to extend the limits of life, or a 
 general in order to lead an army or an admiral in order to 
 command the sea. Lies, thefts and other crimes committed by 
 children are manifestly attempts to extend the limits of power 
 in this way. For the most part these attempts assume no more 
 real form than that of day dreams or phantasies. An inquiry 
 instituted by me in a girls' high school showed that all of the 
 twenty-five girls remembered having committed trivial thefts. 
 I was able to include even the teacher. On closer examination 
 the motive for this striving for attainment is the intolerable 
 stimulus arising from the child's feeling of inferiority. Frequently 
 the child under this pressure is curious, eager to learn, seeks to 
 recognize his faults and to make for himself a place for unfolding 
 his personality. Defects, misfortunes, the feeling of uncertainty 
 and inferiority often force a strong development of the higher 
 psychic faculties, analogous to the compensatory stress in the
 
 \ 
 
 102 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 organic compensatory tendency. Jatgeir says in Ibsen's 
 " Pretender to the Crown," " I received the gift of pain arid 
 became a skald." It is easy to prove in a number of cases that 
 a particularly strong feeling of inferiority sets into activity the 
 impulse to investigation, or that the " vocation " to the life of an 
 artist which later presents the example of a harmonious accord 
 of art and life " began with a crude dissonance " (B. Litzmann, 
 Clara Schumann). 
 
 Another way in which children often show themselves 
 superior to their parents has been described by me in the 
 ' Psychic Treatment of Trigeminal Neuralgia." This may 
 consist in the following : From memory of earlier defects in 
 imitation of others, a state of apparent stupidity, blindness, 
 d/eafness, limping, stuttering, enuresis, untidiness, awkwardness, 
 lack of appetite, nausea, etc., is retained. The psyche gradually 
 forms out of these already prepared psychic habits which the 
 child holds fast to as a protest against the feeling of being 
 neglected, psychic aptitudes which in the neurosis following a 
 given direction, constitute a symptom picture which may be 
 stated as follows : Act as if you were obliged to shift for your- 
 self by means of one of these faults, of these deficiencies, to gain 
 through it a feeling of superiority. The difference between this 
 and malingering often consists only in this, that in every case it 
 is not always reflection which first calls up the phenomenon, but 
 that the already existing preparedness for the symptom becomes 
 embodied in the web and woof of memory as an insuring agent 
 against the fear of being under-estimated or neglected, just as 
 the technical skill in the fingers of a virtuoso is always ready to 
 respond in the proper reaction to any demand. The whole army 
 of neurotic symptoms, blushing, headache, migraine, fainting, 
 pains, tremor, depression, exaltation, etc., may be traced to 
 these ready-for-use psychic attitudes. One of the facts which, 
 thanks to my method of viewing the subject, I was able to explain, 
 concerns the less well known feeling of inferiority common to 
 all girls and women which is due to their feminine role in 
 contrast to the masculine. Their soul life is thereby so altered 
 that they constantly betray traits of the " masculine protest 
 and in truth, usually in a circuitous form, in apparently feminine 
 inferior traits such as are described in the previously cited group. 
 Education as well as the necessary preparations for the future 
 force them to bring their superiority to expression, their 
 " masculine protest " in insidious ways, mostly having tha 
 character of resignation. The features of ' Emotion " 
 (Heyman's) are always sufficiently distinct, greed for power, 
 envy, desire to please, inclination to cruelty are so apparent that 
 they may be regarded as compensatory masculine traits, as 
 directed towards a masculine goal. Parkes Weber (Lancet, 191 1)
 
 ASCETICISM, LOVE, ETC. 103 
 
 has, following me, discovered the foundation of hysterical 
 phenomena in this sort of provision against under-estimation. 
 
 Preparedness for crime is also to be regarded as an outcome 
 of the masculine protest in persons whose compensatory ideal 
 necessitates a fictitious guiding line which demands that the life, 
 health, and possessions of his fellow man should be stripped of 
 worth. In cases of extreme uncertainty where the deprivations, 
 under-estimations, threaten loss of the feeling of ego-conscious- 
 ness as well as where there is strained effort to " reach the top," 
 to secure supremacy, such persons (whose feeling of inferiority 
 has sought compensation in emotional preparedness, in essential 
 pursuit of the guiding line, by processes of abstraction from 
 reality) will seek to come nearer to their ideal by a crime. D. 
 A. Jassny, has given an excellent analysis of this mechanism 
 which is manifested most clearly in emotional crimes, habitual 
 crimes and crimes of negligence in women, in Gross' Archiv. f. 
 Kriminalanthropologie, 1911. 
 
 The great importance of the relations of love in human life 
 has as a result that the neurotic greed to possess everything 
 enters regularly into the relations of man and wife, and there 
 develops a disturbing tendency by introducing an inclination to 
 disregard reality and causing the undertaking of enterprises with 
 a view to the maximation of the feeling of personal worth. It 
 lies in the nature of a neurotic to wish to diminish the feeling of 
 inferiority by constant proofs of his superiority. For this reason, 
 the person loved is forced to sacrifice his personality, to exist 
 entirely through the neurotic who makes this demand, to become 
 a means for augmenting the feeling of personal worth of the 
 neurotic. A good proof of a real love without neurotic tendency 
 would be that the person loved was encouraged to preserve 
 his or her personal worth or when this personal worth even 
 received support. Such cases are rare. In the relation of the 
 sexes there arises nearly always an obstinate and selfish feature, 
 a tendency to put to test, towards suspicion which constantly 
 disturbs the peaceful marital relations. Arbitrary demands are 
 the order of the day. One situation explains the other, so that 
 the gist of the situation can always be easily recognized. It is as 
 if both parties were confronted by an enigma which they 
 endeavor to solve by every possible means. Analysis always 
 reveals a fear of the sexual partner resulting from a feeling of 
 inferiority and thereby striving toward superiority. 
 
 We have already become acquainted to some extent with the 
 strivings by circuitous ways where there is an accentuated feeling 
 of inferiority in congenital defectives. This striving results in a 
 number of neurotically acquired adaptations and certain traits of 
 character assume prominence, so that the individual remains in 
 close touch with the enemy. Perhaps the really most important
 
 104 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 features are distrust and jealousy, with which desire for mastery 
 and disputatiousness are concurrent. According to the previous 
 history of the patient and to the previous available practices as 
 well as the neurosis which he can apply to his purpose, the one 
 feature or the other declares itself with more or less distinctness. 
 They all stand under the pressure of the fictitious final purpose 
 and break forth when reduction of the feeling of personal worth 
 is threatened, or show that they are still effective when pride 
 represses them into the unconscious. In all cases these individuals 
 have at their disposal the neurotic adaptations, which now in the 
 form of depression, again as anxiety at being left alone, as fear 
 of places, as insomnia, and in a hundred and one other symptoms 
 by means of which they seek to force " the opponent " to lay 
 down his arms. The strongest moral principles have the same 
 value as, for instance, coquetry and adultery as a revenge when 
 the feeling of being under-estimated demands the reinstatement 
 in equality or the gaining of the upper hand of the other party. 
 The husband expresses protesting revengefulness where there is 
 a lack of the feeling of superiority by playing the wild man, in 
 side leaps, in rejection, sometimes, however, in impotence, in 
 remarkable protection of the children or doubts about their 
 legitimacy, ;frequently in shunning domesticity, in increased 
 alcoholism or in the pursuit of pleasure. The purpose of this 
 line of conduct is usually so obvious that it is generally under- 
 stood. For it only then reaches its goal when the wife feels 
 herself thereby degraded. The frequent delirium of jealousy of 
 alcoholics is not based on the resulting impotence, but alcoholism, 
 impotence and the increased jealousy as a trait of character are 
 neurotic forms of expression of those predisposed and whose 
 feeling of inferiority experiences an aggravation. Like all other 
 neurotics such an individual suffers from the neurotic apper- 
 ception, by means of which he measures the distance of reality 
 from an ideal which has been strengthened in the direction of 
 his tendency. It is, however, one of the most effective attitudes 
 of neurotic individuals to measure pollice verso so to speak, 
 real human beings by an ideal, so that their value may be reduced 
 to any desired extent. The revengefulness of the rejected wife 
 manifests itself preferably in those neurotic symptoms in which 
 frigidity plays the principal role. The purpose of this is to 
 contest with the husband, the male force, to show him, even 
 where there is perfect accord, limits of his power and thus to 
 secure a considerable superiority. 
 
 That this powerful construction is the result cf an original 
 feeling of deficiency which demands compensation becomes 
 apparent from more thorough analysis. Ordinarily the apper- 
 ception of an under-estimation of an analogous fear or of a wish 
 of this nature takes place after the picture of the antithesis of
 
 ASCETICISM, LOVE, ETC. 105 
 
 " man woman," in accordance with which the maximation of 
 the ego-consciousnesss is felt and valued as " masculine," the 
 lowering as " feminine." Or instead of the feeling of being 
 under-estimated, in a phantasy or dream of a castration (feminine) 
 a loss of the penis arises as a symbol. Very often the masculine 
 guiding line which had already played an important role in the 
 previous history penetrates into the neurosis as an essential or 
 accessory component and accentuates the manly traits as soon as 
 the ego-consciousness enters into the question, a circumstance 
 which as a rule is very striking in women. 
 
 Aside from the predisposition to jealousy a large number of 
 other symptoms are manifested in female neurotics, which 
 originate from the adherence to the masculine guiding line. 
 These symptoms usually have reference to love or to the sexual 
 relation and claim may be made to many causes as their 
 foundation, instead of the only right one, the desire to be a man, 
 which as far as possible seeks realization. This inclination to 
 love and ' ' manage ' ' then continues throughout the entire life 
 or this form of the masculine guiding line develops in advanced 
 years an inner contradiction, a fear of not being able to hold the 
 husband, touches the ego-consciousness and causes constantly 
 varying neurotic, erotic disturbances. These variations are 
 dependent on the fact that the new guiding line, to win a 
 husband, in order thereby to elevate the feeling of personal 
 worth, contains within itself a contradiction : the lowering of the 
 feeling of personality by assuming the feminine r61e. In such 
 cases often the neurotic system of indecision awakens and 
 extends to the most banal relations of life, until the real situation 
 is understood to depend upon the hermaphroditic attitude of the 
 subject from which the impulse of indecision and doubt takes its 
 source. Every decision calls up an antithetical reaction in the 
 opposing consciousness which is then felt and valued after the 
 antithesis of " man woman " so that the patient either 
 simultaneously or in immediate sequence plays a feminine and 
 then a masculine role. The following case may be considered 
 as a visible example of such a condition : 
 
 A girl 30 years of age, who earned her living by teaching, 
 complained of uneasiness, constant doubt, insomnia and thoughts 
 of suicide. Since the death of the father she had taken care of 
 the whole family, thus taking the place of the man, the provider, 
 and in her phantasies and dreams is a beast of burden, a horse 
 that must draw all the load. She works until she is exhausted 
 and sacrifices everything to her brother and to her sister. As far 
 back as she can remember, she has always wished she had been 
 a man. As a child, she had sturdy boyish traits and at 15 years 
 of age was still mistaken for a boy at bathing places. 
 
 I
 
 io6 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 Von Neusser has called attention to these bodily traits of the 
 opposite sex where constitutional anomaly could be shown in his 
 work on the status thymico-lymphaticus. Also in my work on 
 neurology, I have emphasized the rinding of bodily traits of the 
 opposite sex and could prove concerning them that they are often 
 made use of by neurotics, either for giving prominence to the 
 inferiority in cases where the femininity is accentuated or for 
 expressing the " masculine protest." The previous observations 
 of Flies who as well as Halvan directed my attention to this field, 
 do not take into consideration the psychic mechanisms as I 
 understand them. 
 
 In one variety, this female patient revealed the masculine 
 protest on the very first day by refusing sharply, gratuitous 
 treatment. She would receive no gifts, she repeated emphatically 
 several times in succession and she subsequently explained to me 
 in the manner with which I was already acquainted that it was 
 unmanly to receive gifts. Therefore she had always refused 
 them. On the other hand, she herself gave willingly, something 
 she often practiced in the family in her role of father. 
 
 From her history, I emphasize one incident as of importance. 
 An uncle had attempted to violate her in her eighth year. In her 
 terror, she had remained passive, but had never mentioned the 
 attack. After her neurosis had made some progress, she had 
 forced herself to the idea that as a child she was already a sinful 
 creature and capable of yielding to any one, and that she had 
 always remained the same. Thus we have the application of a 
 souvenir for the purpose of re-assurance with which we are 
 already acquainted, for the course of this train of thought was that 
 up to her thirtieth year of life she had yielded to all men. 
 
 From her tenth year to the twenty-fifth year she asserted that 
 she had practiced masturbation excessively. She developed 
 therefrom a strong feeling of guilt, augmented the conviction of 
 her sinfulness, and arrived at the conclusion that she had 
 rendered herself eternally unworthy to enter into matrimony. 
 This conviction was bound to have an extensive influence on her 
 attitude toward men. 
 
 The usual role of masturbation in neuroses is as follows, that 
 in consequence thereof, a sensation of a feeling of guilt 
 arises, but at the same time from the possibility of dispensing 
 with a partner, the feeling of security from being under the 
 influence of a partner. The analogy with those cases where the 
 same security is sought by strengthening the defects of childhood, 
 enuresis, stuttering or other neurotic symptoms is obvious. The 
 original feeling of inferiority remains behind as an echo, fills 
 itself with phantasies of feminine deficiencies and feelings of 
 guilt and forces the individual to strive for the manly guiding 
 point. The conduct of our female patient is constructed accord-
 
 ASCETICISM, LOVE, ETC. 107 
 
 ing to the guiding line which may be expressed in the words, " I 
 wish to be a man." 
 
 A few years ago, a compulsory idea took hold of her \\hich 
 clearly reflects our idea of the neurosis. The patient believed 
 that she had lost through masturbation a part of the genital region 
 which extended forward and which according to her description 
 seemed to her to be a penis. Now she had become wholly unfit 
 for marriage, because she could not live through it if her husband 
 should hear of her sins. The security seems to be thus entirely 
 assured and it is easy to understand how she brings her fictitious 
 masculine guiding principle as an ideal in contrast with her real 
 femininity, emphasizes the latter and feels inferior, yet by this 
 very expedient seeks to exempt herself from a feminine role in 
 reality. 
 
 But even this assurance, however strong it might seem, became 
 in time insufficient to satisfy the ideal of personal value of our 
 patient. Her female friends deserted her in order to marry, and 
 when finally her younger sister married, her guiding line became 
 no longer tenable because her ambition strove also for " mastery 
 over men." She decided arbitrarily, as nervous girls with 
 extreme indecision usually do, to take the first best. She went 
 to a masquerade where she became acquainted with a worthy 
 man who wished to marry her after a short acquaintance. During 
 a trip she yielded to him because, as she said, she feared that by 
 contact he might become aware of the defect of her genital 
 organs and leave her disgraced and she would rather have any- 
 thing else happen to her. When later the man in a friendly way 
 insisted on her telling him if he were her first lover and why she 
 had become so cold she threw him overboard with the untruthful 
 explanation that she had had relations with other men. There- 
 upon the man broke off the affair. 
 
 It is easy to imagine what now followed. The patient who 
 was already constantly grieving over another loss than that of her 
 masculinity, beheld herself thwarted and deprived of her new 
 masculine triumph. She recalled her lie which, as she sought to 
 explain to me later, she had told in order to punish the man for 
 having conquered her, in order to deprive him of worth. She 
 explained to him the facts, but he withdrew entirely, for the most 
 part from fear of further discords in a marriage with this neurotic 
 girl. Thereupon our patient became passionately in love with 
 him, made a god of him, passed sleepless nights in thoughts of 
 him, and took an oath to have him or no other husband, for this 
 one was in all human probability lost to her. Thus by means of 
 various expedients of her neurosis she had returned to her original 
 guiding line, and had gained a fictitious ideal and up to the time 
 of her treatment, had succeeded in avoiding the feminine r61e.
 
 io8 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 In psychotherapeutic treatment, special attention should be 
 given to prevent this blindly working tendency to depreciation of 
 the patient from making the physician himself a victim, as the 
 condition of disease is regularly used as a means of depriving the 
 psychotherapeutist of his worth. The patient may do this by 
 following the ordinary direction which his disease takes only with 
 a sharper tone, because he strengthens the symptoms, or 
 originates new ones, and tries to supply tense relations, 
 frequently also situations of love and friendship, but always with 
 the intention (which is the result of his neurotic tendency, of 
 the masculine protest) of becoming master of the physician, of 
 giving him a setback, of making him play a "feminine" part, of 
 annihilating his worth. The tactical and pedagogic expedients to 
 which one is obliged to resort in order to weaken this struggle 
 of the patient against the physician, in order to render it compre- 
 hensible and in order to demonstrate in this way the neurotic 
 conduct or attitude of the patient in life generally, become an 
 important factor in the therapeusis. The silent protest of the 
 neurotic should not however be undervalued, and one should be 
 on the lookout for it to the very end of the treatment, laying 
 special stress upon it towards its termination. It should be 
 viewed with quiet, objective composure, as the matter-of-fact 
 aggressiveness of the patient and as having the same value as has 
 the neurosis, inasmuch as it furnishes the neurotic predispositions 
 and traits. Freud's hypothesis of transference will be referred 
 to again later. It is nothing more than an expedient of the 
 patient who seeks to rob the physician of superiority. Bezzola 
 and others have described the circuitous ways in which the 
 neurotic patient seeks to deprive physicians of their value. It is 
 always the masculine guiding line which is revealed, the purpose 
 of which is to assure the patient's superiority. The most usual 
 manner of enhancing his tendency to aggression, the neurotic 
 finds by holding fast to his symptoms, because these in themselves 
 present a phase of his aggressive tendency. 
 
 An extract from a history of a patient shortly before the end of 
 her treatment reveals (in the form of an unfriendly impulse) this 
 effort to deprive the physician of value as a psychic predisposition 
 of her " masculine protest." The patient was placed under 
 treatment because of an anxiety and was crying out at night. She 
 was a virgin, 36 years of age. I will begin the description of this 
 neurotic picture with the following dream : 
 
 "7 was lying at your feet and reached upward with my hand 
 trying to grasp your clothes which were silk. You made a 
 lascivious gesture, whereupon I said laughingly, ' You are then 
 no better than the other men!' You confirmed this with a 
 nod."
 
 ASCETICISM, LOVE, ETC. 109 
 
 Those who, following Freud's interpretation of dreams, place 
 the sexual wish-motive in the foreground, will not be at a loss 
 for an interpretation ; the requirements for a sexual basis for the 
 dream were fully supplied. The requirements could also be 
 complied with, as the patient had already done, by bringing 
 forward a reminiscence from childhood, when she solicited her 
 father in a similar manner ; her neurotic tendency to attain 
 security had indeed carefully collected all admonitory experiences, 
 in order to use the man in an " anaphylactic " manner against 
 repetitions. Indeed, one could easily get the assent of the patient 
 to ascribe to repressed impulses of the will the emergence of 
 souvenirs of like tendency and the present experiences. For her 
 neurotic psyche sees such exaggerations as real remembrances 
 and makes them her basis of operation, which she does by affirm- 
 ing her conviction of inferiority, of her fault, of her sin, of her 
 too feminine nature, in order to defend with greater vehemence 
 her superiority, her manliness and to increase her foresight. 
 This increased masculine protest, however, which has its source 
 in the defective perspective of the patient who is overfearful, can 
 not but naturally increase the neurosis. The destruction of this 
 false perspective first (the foundation of the neurotic apper- 
 ception), and the damming up of the fictitious influx in the 
 direction of the masculine protest, and finally a right under- 
 standing of the superstitious faith in an abstract guiding line and 
 the apotheosis of the same are the levers which must be used to 
 remove neurosis. 
 
 Our patient had begun a liaison with a married man about the 
 time of this dream. When he pressed himself upon her and 
 invited her to his .house during his wife's absence at a watering 
 place, she was troubled with all sorts of scruples, which I 
 strengthened considerably. Nevertheless, she justified the 
 relation and "played with the fire" because she said the 
 impatient writhing of the man amused her. Incidentally, her way 
 of regarding the subject was an inimical act directed against her 
 relatives and against me her monitor. Her own understanding 
 could be interpreted as a reasonable excuse. But the previous 
 history of the patient, and her conduct during her illness which 
 lasted twenty years, and during her treatment, showed plainly 
 that she was strongly under the influence of the masculine 
 protest, and that she could have demanded the subjugation of 
 the man, but that she must have refused to play a feminine role 
 (she suffered from anxiety states and crying out in terror at 
 night). The central point of her psychic attitude consisted in 
 fear of the man to whom she believed she was not equal, a fear 
 which she sought to compensate by her own masculine bearing 
 and by the lower estimation of men. 
 
 After this information concerning the patient, we could venture
 
 no THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 to interpret the dream. She exaggerated her physical dependence 
 on me and gave this conviction form by clothing it in a dream 
 image which is admirably suited for this purpose. " As though 
 I lay at your feet." This being " below " was taken as a basis 
 of operation and we could rightly expect that the manly impetus 
 would follow the construction of a fictitious feminine role. She 
 reached upwards with the hands. The contamination contained 
 my deprivation of masculinity. I wore a silk dress. The same 
 psychic mechanism hovers in the remaining part of the dream. 
 I had admonished the patient in the dream I made a lascivious 
 
 festure of which the seducer had been guilty, that is to say that. 
 am on the same level, " I also am not better than the other 
 men." Besides this to carry out the idea further, I was silent 
 and showed assent by a gesture in the dream. The opposite 
 thought that I could be better is insupportable to the patient ; 
 from it, which gives me a sort of superiority, originates the 
 preventative dream fiction constructed after the neurotic 
 perspective. The patient only felt secure when all men were alike 
 bad. Then she is following her old guiding line and feels 
 superior. Her superiority is reflected by her laughing in the 
 dream as well as by my silence. 
 
 The circumstance that she began this first dangerous liasion 
 with a married man is worthy of attention. In all similar cases, 
 such a relation may be recognized as an effort to obtain security 
 from marriage, usually also from sexual relations. The masculine 
 guiding line is preserved, but reality asserts itself by feminine 
 excitements and emotions. It is as I have frequently pointed out, 
 a masculine protest made with feminine means which recalls to 
 me the fact of psychic hermaphroditism. Finally, too, the 
 superiority over the lawful wife asserts itself in the three-cornered 
 arrangement, something which in all analogous cases strengthens 
 to an unusual degree the motive force. 
 
 If we now proceed as it were to a comparative psychology and 
 wish to bring to conscious expression the component parts of the 
 foundation of the apperception of this patient and put the question 
 before us, whence these psychic preparations which lead to the 
 attempt of unmanning the man by feminine means in order to 
 enhance thereby her feeling of worth in a masculine direction and 
 to surpass a woman's, the answer is : From her relation to her 
 father and mother. There she derived the preparation to 
 approach the father with love and esteem as a guiding ideal, 
 learned to master him and had thus shown herself superior to the 
 mother. If one abstracts the masculine protest of the neurotic 
 child and if one apperceives these conditions (as neurotics often 
 do) in a sexual scheme the " incest complex " remains. One can 
 now, as I have shown in former works, take out of the incest 
 complex again what the masculine guiding line has placed in it,
 
 ASCETICISM, LOVE, ETC. in 
 
 namely, the assurance of the feeling of personal worth under the 
 title of an amative condition. In the literature on psycho-analysis, 
 the assertion emerges constantly that the libido of the neurotic 
 is fixed on the father or on the mother, on which account he seeks 
 similar amative conditions which are in reality that which was 
 loved in the parents. The " will to power and to seem " 
 constitutes the only amative condition and this guiding point the 
 neurotic seeks with all caution, but invariably, with all his 
 practiced preventive precautions which have originated from and 
 have exclusive value from the craving for security and which 
 resist any change. The significance of the amative feeling is no 
 other than the assurance of the ego-consciousness, and with this 
 the exclusive influence of the same further betrays that the motive 
 force there is to be found in the masculine protest which has 
 already constructed the incest constellation. Where, as in many 
 cases, the attachment to one of the parents is clearly obvious, it 
 is contracted with a purpose, 1 arranged in order to escape 
 decisions concerning other partners, to escape marriage. Then 
 usually the neurotic has destroyed the tendency to love and 
 marriage as inconsistent with the masculine final purpose, or has 
 not developed it. 
 
 The original of the " three-cornered situation," the incest 
 situation, resolves itself on closer examination into an affair 
 caused by the megalomania of the child who already reveals all 
 the characteristics of one predisposed to neurosis, i.e., envy, 
 obstinacy, insatiableness, precocity. Without the sexual appetite 
 really taking part therein, thoughts and reflections of the child 
 may come to light which are later valued and represented as 
 sexual when the neurotic tendency to gain security seeks to make 
 such a connection. " I was already as a child, so beyond bounds, 
 so culpable, my sexual appetite was so strong, I have such a 
 criminal tendency, I am so much the slave of love," these are the 
 echoes in the soul of the adult neurotic. ' Therefore I must be 
 careful." The impulse to hold certain appropriate memories, 
 to falsifications of memory, to exaggerating traces of memories 
 arises from a fear of a defeat in lire. And where the sexual 
 appetite has really been revealed, where the possibility of incest 
 really existed, the memory is preserved as an admonitory sign. 
 That which diverts the neurotic psyche is not memory or 
 reminiscence, but the fictitious final purpose which has derived 
 profitable situations therefrom. It is nearly the same if these 
 reminiscences have been repressed by the conscious ego, thrust 
 back into the unconscious. The neurotic character and the other 
 psychic gestures with their unconscious mechanism are none the 
 less opposed to disposition in proper order in reality. 
 
 1 In accordance with the life-plan, the finale.
 
 1 12 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 Thus it was in the case of our female patient. She related, 
 for example, that she always wished to win the father to her side 
 and that she accomplished this by carefully falling in with his 
 train of thought and his wishes. It was not difficult to leave her 
 mother. From the age of fourteen, she began to refuse to kiss 
 him because she began to feel a peculiar erotic emotion. In 
 explanation of this, I might add that the patient had from her 
 twelfth year manifested unmistakable signs of a neurosis. Her 
 situation at that time permits us to understand the significance 
 of this attempt at security through the construction of erotic 
 preparations. She had always been a,n unruly, boyish creature 
 who had already learned to feel the force of the sexual appetite 
 and for some time had already practiced masturbation. About 
 this time also, men began to make advances to her to which she 
 reacted with extreme anxiety. Her craving for security had 
 progressed so far that the patient had strengthened the anxiety 
 preparedness which had been constructed out of real emotions 
 of anxiety which she had originally felt, and now she was able, 
 whenever she feared a defeat in the sense of being obliged to play 
 a feminine role, any possible cause of which she was on the alert 
 to anticipate, to develop in a hallucinatory manner, a condition 
 of anxiety, so to speak, to discount it, such as would have corre- 
 sponded for example to the eventuality of pregnancy. This 
 anticipation and hallucinatory awakening of sensations which 
 correspond to a fear of defeat which might arise in the future are 
 the work of the preventive craving for security and constitute, as 
 I have already emphasized, 2 the essential part of hypochondria, 
 of phobia and of numerous neurasthenic and hysterical symptoms. 
 I will only state briefly here that the essential part of a psychosis, 
 too, depends upon a similar dogmatic anticipatory representation 
 of a fear or a wish, which the craving for security offers for the 
 better testimony in a phase of great insecurity, in strong 
 dependence on the fictitious guiding line for the conservation of 
 the ego-consciousness. When our patient foresaw a loss of 
 prestige and provided against it by a condition of anxiety in a 
 hallucinatory manner she felt most secure against it. At times, 
 the hallucinatory emotion needed a further strengthening, then 
 the patient arrived at the compulsory idea that she had killed 
 a new born child. In the analysis this idea in regard to the man, 
 at times a place anxiety, was shown to be connected with an 
 admonition of her mother's. This signifies that the patient 
 rescued from her memories even the words of her mother whom 
 she constantly fought against, in so far as these words were 
 adapted to her tendency to seek security. 5 
 
 3 " Siphilidophobia," loc. cit. 
 
 8 Along with this the mother should also be at fault with her apodictic 
 threats.
 
 ASCETICISM, LOVE, ETC. 113 
 
 Among these preparatory conditions an event occurred which 
 favored greatly the hardy construction of these preparations for 
 security. One of her cousins gave birth to a child out of wedlock, 
 a fact which, in a family of respectable middle-class people, 
 caused the greatest excitement, especially as the seducer shook 
 the dust of the place from his feet. Our growing understanding 
 for the development of this girl permits us to understand why 
 this event must have accelerated the development of the neurosis 
 and how it came that the words of the mother to whom she 
 ordinarily showed little attention were given such importance. 
 The patient was from her early childhood wild and boyish and of 
 great strength, preferred boys' games and avoided every 
 feminine emotion. She can still remember with what vehemence 
 she refused to play with dolls or to engage in needlework. The 
 personality of the father preponderated over that of the mother 
 to a remarkable degree. An unmarried aunt who lived with the 
 family of our patient took pleasure in her masculine manners, 
 had a beardlike growth of hair and a masculine voice. To this 
 strong and constantly recurring memory was associated another 
 event of later occurrence and which furnished the necessary 
 resonance to the dominating tendency of the patient to wish to 
 become a man. She remembered that one of her fellow scholars 
 with whom she had long been associated a pseudo herma- 
 phrodite was changed into a man. These and similar 
 communications for example, the special interest for herma- 
 phroditism, are sufficient according to my experience for the 
 preliminary assumption that patients of this sort wish to divest 
 themselves of the appearance of femininity, and wish to assume 
 masculine characteristics, as though they fully believed in the 
 possibility of a metamorphosis and that they invariably make an 
 attempt to push forward to the manly role which is considered 
 by them to be the higher. Among these attempts to change fate 
 two interest us particularly the formation of the neurotic 
 character and the neurotic preparations in the form of the 
 neuroses and their symptoms. 
 
 As a trait of character which is not rare with such patients, I 
 may cite the tendency to expose nakedness, and indeed in 
 childhood or in later years, in dreams, in phantasy or in neurotic 
 attacks during which they tear the clothes from the body as 
 though they would divest themselves of the modesty which they 
 regard as feminine, as though they wished to make a parade of 
 fictitious large masculine genital organs and thus belittle others. 
 It may be seen from these cases how one perversion, that of 
 exhibitionism, does not originate from a congenital sexual 
 constitution, but that the neurosis which seeks to secure the ego- 
 consciousness is impelled to suppress the feeling of inferiority, 
 to overcome it because in this neurosis the lively desire to be a
 
 1 14 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 complete man, to be of great account, finds expression. The 
 sexual jargon is there in merely a form of expression an " as- 
 if " of the sexual content of the thought or want, only a symbol 
 of the scheme of life. Also the feminine, exaggerated modesty 
 of such patients is an expedient in the opposite direction for the 
 purpose of deceiving concerning the lack of masculinity/ The 
 absence of modesty in such cases answers for the desired 
 masculinity, is the masculine protest, and more marked 
 immodesty points invariably to disquieting dreams or thoughts 
 concerning curtailed genital organs and hence releases feelings 
 of protest of a masculine nature which considerably strengthen 
 the line of ambition, of the desire to be first, to possess every- 
 thing, of obstinacy. In the further development of the neurosis 
 the desire for mastery and for conquest as well as the tendency 
 to deprive others of worth may assert itself in the form of 
 castration phantasies and their rationalization (Jones). The 
 inclination to disarm the partner, to constantly feel the assurance 
 of superiority which regularly constitutes the content of 
 exhibitionism are often met with. At times, the lack of neatness 
 and indecency in girls may be interpreted as a trace of the 
 desire for masculinity. 
 
 All of these traits of character although they at times seemed 
 contradictory were all active in one direction toward the fictitious 
 final goal in this patient. It was not difficult to discover a period 
 of uncertainty in her early childhood as preliminary to her 
 affectation of masculine traits, where she, because of lack of 
 insight, misled by boyish traits and her compensatory ambition, 
 cherished the hope of metamorphosing herself at some future 
 time into a man. This final purpose of developing from a 
 hermaphroditic condition to a male is easy to perceive if her 
 boyish characteristics are understood as preparations for her 
 fictitious final goal. Here also belongs her inclination to put 
 on boys' clothes, a phenomenon which as with Hirschfeld's 
 ' Transvertiter " flows from the psychic dynamic just described. 
 Her ideal was _ particularly distinct in the phantasies and day 
 dreams of her childhood. Influenced by fairy stories and myths 
 (" Dwarf Nose," " Thousand and One Nights," etc.) she 
 imagined the most varied changes went on in her, sometimes 
 believed herself changed into a Nix or mermaid, in which form a 
 fish tail terminated the lower parts of the body, which is 
 indicative of the peculiar sense. At this time a distinct neurotic 
 symptom set in, in this connection ; she could not walk at time?, 
 as if, instead of legs, she had a fish tail. Also a shoe fetichism 
 in this connection showed the masculine tendency and developed 
 in the form that she insisted on wearing large shoes, we might 
 say masculine shoes, because her feet hurt. From Ovid's 
 
 4 Atller The masculine attitude in female, neurotics, etc.
 
 ASCETICISM, LOVE, ETC. 115 
 
 Metamorphosis which in her rage for reading soon fell into her 
 hands, she borrowed another fiction which emerged during her 
 treatment in her dreams ; she imagined she had been 
 metamorphosed in such a way that the lower part of her body 
 became a firmly rooted trunk. In this and in similar ways, she 
 gave to herself the answer to the question concerning her future 
 sexual role. 
 
 We shall not be surprised to find that in this and similar cases,, 
 the attitude towards woman was also influenced by the masculine 
 final goal. In the preparations for the future the amative and 
 sexual relations must have had a place and therefore we soon 
 find our patient assuming the ideal masculine role of protector 
 to a younger and weaker sister. Furthermore, there were 
 sadistic acts towards little girls and servants, but also towards 
 little, girlish boys. Thus we find in the masculine guiding line 
 of the patient an intermixture of secondary features, auxiliary 
 traits of homosexuality 5 and masculine sadism, whose arrange- 
 ment resulted from the construction of the masculine 
 predispositions and which is the only possible substitute if 
 masculine sexuality were selected by her neurotic apperception 
 from the impressions of life. As will be shown, both of these 
 perversions are circuitous ways and expedients, secondary 
 guiding lines which grow out of the exaggerated masculine 
 protest. The question concerning a constitutional tendency to 
 perversions is wholly irrelevant, because the neurosis seeking 
 assurance and choosing its material in conformity with this 
 tendency can fasten upon the most harmless relations, lend to 
 them proportions and value which may become immeasurable in 
 so far as the neurosis requires this by exaggerating them and 
 lending them high values. 
 
 One day as the patient, now fourteen years of age, was 
 accosted by a man on the stairs who made advances to her, an 
 insane idea developed on this foundation which is easy to see 
 through. She imagined herself for many months the murderer 
 of domestic servants (Hugo Schenk) and thus" by means of 
 extreme abstractions which were introduced for the purpose of 
 security, she effected an interlacing of her masculine, her homo- 
 sexual and her sadistic fiction, while she brought them to more 
 distinct expression and at the same time held herself in 
 anticipation of an event which she feared. These three conditions, 
 mere abstractions from reality, strengthening of guiding lines 
 leading to masculinity and upwards, and anticipation of the 
 directing ideal mostly in a disguised form, are the fundamental 
 components of the psychotic construction. The role of indigenous 
 
 8 Moll has emphasized sharply the frequent association of homosexuality 
 with exhibitionism. Our discussion reveals the inner relationship. Both per- 
 verse tendencies are expressions of the. masculine protest.
 
 u6 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 and exogenous poisons consists in many cases in the circumstance 
 that these call up a feeling of heightened insecurity which can 
 also result from psychic experiences. But the neurotic tendency 
 toward security, which is strengthened in cases of increased 
 uncertainty, is always the effective cause of the psychotic 
 construction. It then draws more forcibly into its powers the 
 neurotic method of apperception and thus causes a " barring off " 
 (abspewung). The use of female domestic servants in the 
 psychic construction of our patient brings to expression the 
 tendency to depreciation of females. In her insane system anxiety 
 is strongly manifested and is distinctly recognizable as a means 
 to obtain security against the male and thus coordinated to the 
 purpose of her insanity, constituting a second expression of her 
 aggravated masculine protest.* 
 
 A further perversion of our patient of which she was dimly 
 conscious consisted in a fellatio phantasy. The realities 
 connected therewith and which found application in the 
 neurotic tendency of her phantasy were well known to the 
 patient. She had always been very dainty and as a child had 
 always been a slave to this tendency. Even to-day this character- 
 istic often asserts itself. But it happened not infrequently that 
 she took loathsome things into her mouth without disgust. In 
 her avoidance of the feminine role this patient tried, because 
 parturition seemed to her unacceptable and especially feminine, 
 to imagine this perverse situation temporarily possible. The 
 suggestion originated from a conversation which she had over- 
 heard. This perversion was asserted of a female neighbor living 
 independently and in pleasant relations. Early forced away 
 from the partner, she nevertheless sought to keep in touch with 
 reality and found in the avoidance of labor, supported by her 
 exaggerated leaning to disgusting procedures the way to this, 
 perverse phantasy. But her masculine protest opposed even this. 
 Her crying out at night was as a rule over dream situations of 
 this sort, arranged tentatively, and with this masculine protest, 
 she answered to the femininely perverse role which she imputed 
 to herself. 
 
 The psychic attitude of the patient described at the beginning 
 shows the essential difference. At least a part of her fear of the 
 man and of the masculine protest was present which after a 
 short time made room for a normal attitude. What could make 
 one apprehensive was the disposition to a difficult, socially 
 inferior situation which could only be obviated by further inroads. 
 
 6 The accentuation of the fictitious guiding line in the neurotic who becomes 
 insecure ie responsible for the fact that he has to utilize stronger measures for 
 the purpose of gaining security. Anxiety where another merely visualizes, 
 hypochondriasis where another employs caution. Our patient had both the 
 anxiety and the delusion where for other girla morality and caution were still 
 sufficient Thus also in place of caution, hallucinations, and fears.
 
 ASCETICISM, LOVE, ETC. 117 
 
 Could there, however, be expected a much more favorable 
 solution of the problem of this patient who has declined and who 
 has been robbed of all social connections by the long duration 
 s* of the neurosis, and is destitute ? 
 
 With all the solidity and obstinacy which cling to neurotic 
 symptoms and the neurotic character there is often a change- 
 ableness and instability which has attracted the attention of many 
 writers. The character of capriciousness, of uncertainty of 
 temper, of suggestibility and of susceptibility to influence (Janet, 
 Striimpell, Raimann and others) was wrongly given, as an 
 important sign of a psychogenic affection. But attention must, 
 however, be called to the fact that in psychic phenomena which, 
 as we have shown, only present means, modes of expression and 
 purposeful dispositions, variability must often be preserved 
 among the other characteristics, because it may also occur as an 
 auxiliary line and serve the fictitious final goal, the maximating of 
 the ego-consciousness. The neurotic self-valuation will at any 
 rate take those variations as a point of departure for a way of 
 thinking, will exaggerate the judgment of weakness by 
 strengthening the suggestibility, will support it with selected 
 neuroses for the most part falsely estimated in order to gain in 
 a neurosis a strengthened impetus. As the following case 
 teaches for example. A short time ago, a Viennese physician 
 brought forward in a public session, examples of making waking 
 suggestions which indeed succeeded with a certain lady on a few 
 evenings. When the same lady was expected to offer herself 
 again for a demonstration on a subsequent evening she responded 
 with an hysterical attack of such nature that the further 
 demonstrations were forbidden by the police. In the psycho- 
 therapeutic treatment, one must always be prepared for the 
 circumstance that the introduction of the patient into the 
 experiment heightens the masculine protest and the disposition 
 to attacks and is above all forced to prevent this reaction. Every 
 improvement in the condition is felt by the patient as compulsion 
 and conquest and a relapse often follows from no other reason 
 than that an improvement had preceded. The many ambivalent 
 traits of neurotics and psychotic patients arranged according tc 
 a polar principle (Bleuler) are constructed on the hermaphroditic 
 splitting of the neurotic psyche and obey exclusively the ideal of 
 personal worth reassured by hypersensibility and great caution.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 NEUROTIC PRINCIPLES : SYMPATHY, COQUETRY, NARCISSISM, 
 PSYCHIC HERMAPHRODITISM, HALLUCINATORY SECURITY, 
 VIRTUE, CONSCIENCE, PEDANTRY, FANATIC ATTACHMENT TO 
 TRUTH 
 
 IN our preceding observations we were able to follow the various 
 attempts, preparations and dispositions of a patient which were 
 conditioned by the setting in of the masculine tendency. The 
 resulting fear of the man was so great that every amative relation 
 was prevented until treatment made it possible. In very many 
 cases the masculine protest manifests itself in an apparently 
 opposite direction. The patients constantly begin new relations 
 which, however, easily languish and are menaced by peculiar 
 turns of fortune. On the other hand, they are capable of con- 
 tracting marriage one or more times and also of dissolving the 
 marriage again. Very often the deepest passions of love are 
 shown which are strong enough to overcome all obstacles and are 
 usually only augmented by them. The same phenomena are 
 observed in male neurotics. Upon closer observation the well 
 known traits of the neurotic subject are again found (first of all 
 the desire for mastery) which make use of the relations of life as 
 a vehicle for realizing themselves demonstrably in the same 
 manner as do his other characteristics. The desire to possess 
 everything finds expression in such a way that all men, at times, 
 all human beings, become an object for conquest and in pursuing 
 this object, coquetry, necessity for tenderness, and discontent 
 with the lot assigned by fate, play an important part. The 
 preference for difficulties is often remarkable. A little girl pre- 
 fers only big men, or love first declares itself when the parents 
 forbid it, while the attainable is treated with open disdain. In 
 the conversation and deliberation of such girls the limiting word 
 -emerges constantly. They wish only a cultured, only a broad, 
 only a masculine man, only a platonic love, only a marriage with- 
 out children, only a husband who will permit their entire liberty, 
 etc. The tendency toward detraction is often so obvious in this 
 process that hardly a man remains who would fit the require- 
 ments. Usually they have a completed, often unconscious ideal, 
 in whom are mingled the features of the father, the brother, an 
 imaginary personage, or a literary or historical character. The 
 more we become acquainted with these ideals, the more are we 
 convinced that they are advanced as a fictitious standard in order 
 to detract from reality by comparison with them. The psychic 
 
 118
 
 NEUROTIC PRINCIPLES 119 
 
 tendency with the accompanying features of an "unwomanly" 
 nature, which frequently gives rise to sexual liberty, unfaithful- 
 ness and unchastity, reveals obviously a striving after the 
 masculine ideal. Analysis often shows original organic 
 inferiority, an exaggerated feeling of inferiority, a remarkable 
 original higher estimation of the male which follows on the heels 
 of detraction as a means of assurance. Other assurances 
 strengthen the opinion we have formed. Such ideas as, all men 
 are rough, tyrannical, have a bad odor, are infected, etc., reveal 
 the influence upon apperception of this trend. In male neurotics 
 are observed ideas of a suspicious nature which make the 
 accusation that all women are sinful, unstable, frivolous, 
 psychologically weak-minded, abandoned unrestrainedly to their 
 sexuality. 
 
 Our teachers, philosophers and poets, who form the ideal of 
 our time, the Secret Emperor (" heimichen Kaiser") (Simmel), 
 are also not infrequently under the sway of the same fictions. 
 The neurotic is therefore likely to seize upon them in order to 
 gain a firm guiding line in the unrest of life. For the above 
 neurotic tendency, Schopenhauer, Strindberg, Moebius, and 
 Weininger, besides the religious teachers and fathers of the 
 church, have produced the most pleasing cleiche. The malleus 
 malificarium and the disgrace of the burning of witches followed 
 the learned disputes of the clerics over the question whether 
 woman has a soul, whether she is a human being. The 
 reassuring schematic fictions of neurotic girls are derived from a 
 childish view of the world, because art is still, nearly exclusively, 
 masculine territory and the apperception offers a material less 
 suited to it, and therefore these fictions of neurotic girls are 
 brought into harmony with reality with greater difficulty. 
 
 Where reality, however, is able to influence the neurotic fiction 
 of the girl it usually causes traits of character and tendencies 
 which reveal clearly enough the masculine inclination to conquer 
 man, or where there is the strongest tendency to gain security 
 in a homosexual way to conquer woman, but which make these 
 neurotics nevertheless seek, as a lover or as a husband, the man 
 to whom they deny value and who is only fitted in a small degree 
 for conflict. The expression of sympathy can in such cases 
 often disguise the state of affairs, and love is then free if thef 
 man is powerless, enfeebled, a cripple, aged. In phantasies, 
 dreams and hallucinations in which the man is castrated or 
 changed into a woman, or corpse, is "below," and especially 
 in the tendency to see the man without weapons, small, abased ; 
 is revealed the compulsion of the masculine guiding fiction and 
 finds in necrophilia its highest expression. 1 Anotner road, as 
 
 1 Eulenburg emphasized in the same manner the relationship between 
 active algolagnia (v. Schrenck-Notzing) and necrophilia.
 
 120 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 we have already stated, leads over the line of the desire to 
 possess everything, towards neurotic coquetry. The masculine 
 protest is therein revealed, first in the tendency to compensate 
 a feeling of inferiority, of deficiency apperceived through the 
 picture of the lost masculine member by means of domination of 
 many or of all men. Secondly, by the refusal of a feminine role 
 in sexual relations, in marriage. In place of this despised 
 role, expedients are resorted to which are dictated by the manly 
 guiding line, such as sexual anesthesia and perversions of all 
 sorts, among which the sadistic predominates. Bloch has 
 emphasized in a fine manner the desire for domination by the 
 
 coquette when he says: (" Beitrage zur Atiologie der 
 Psychopathia sex," 1903) " Coquetry, which may be defined as 
 the effort of women to attach men to them, makes use, to a 
 considerable extent, of purely sexual means to attain its object, 
 and is, in this respect, an efflux of the true gynecokratic 
 instinct." We can only add that these "gynecokratic 
 instincts " are constructed according to the picture of the resem- 
 blance to men and thus prove themselves to be dependent on a 
 masculine ideal, although in the attainment thereof feminine 
 means are resorted to as expedients because they are the only 
 ones at hand. The attention and interest of these neurotics 
 (among whom the masculine coquettes are remarkable, because 
 they seek to carry through their triumph valued as masculine by 
 feminine means) is directed towards making an impression and 
 to force others into their service. A result of this trait of 
 character is that the neurotic strengthening of these secondary 
 guiding lines leads to overestimation of self and there- 
 fore also to exaggeration of the desire for mastery, of 
 pride, and of the tendency to detract from the worth of others. 
 Hence we need not be surprised that the object of the desire, as 
 a rule, appears to be overvalued through the narcissism (Naecke) 
 of the patient. This overestimation is rather an a priori 
 condition in the construction of the relation and in it is reflected 
 the exaggerated ego of the female patient. 2 
 
 In the psychotherapeutic treatment these cases produce 
 especially the appearance of " being in love with the physician." 
 It may, however, be easily seen that this "transfer of love" 
 corresponds to one of the numerous preparations for conflict 
 used for overcoming the obstacle, and thus to get the better of 
 the superiority of the man, of the masculine physician; and it 
 may be easily seen that the feeling of deficiency which calls forth 
 this peculiar obscure form of the masculine protest springs from 
 their femininity which they feel as inferiority. In no case, 
 however, no matter how far the neurotic may carry coquetry, 
 
 a The belief in personal magic is so strong that every resistance leads to 
 new endeavours-
 
 NEUROTIC PRINCIPLES 121 
 
 does it reach far enough to include subjection to the man. 
 Sooner or later the man is threatened with defeat which carries 
 with it loss of dignity, and in fact, always when the neurotic 
 patient feels the situation to be too feminine. This moment 
 may arrive at different stages, but it is as a rule, contact, a kiss, 
 expectation of sexual relations, fear of pregnancy or of childbirth 
 which releases the heightened tendency to gain reassurance and 
 causes the outbreak of that which is ordinarily termed a neurosis 
 or psychosis. Then the stronger abstraction of reality comes 
 into its right, the fictions assert themselves with ' greater 
 distinctness, the tendency to detract from the value of the man 
 leads to actions and deeds which apparently have lost all mean- 
 ing, and the inimical dispositions of the aggressiveness, and with 
 these the neurotic traits of character come to light. 
 
 Every neurotic possesses to some degree this coquetry which 
 has its origin in narcissism. They originate indeed from his 
 hypostasized idea of personal value, are founded like this upon 
 an original feeling of inferiority. The fact that neurotics, 
 especially the species just described, find it so hard to separate 
 themselves from persons or things is in harmony with this. 
 The parting from a person, seemingly not in close relations with 
 the neurotic, to say nothing of a seemingly loved person, is 
 capable of producing the most severe neurotic symptoms, 
 neuralgic attacks, depression, loss of sleep, attacks of weeping, 
 etc. On the other hand, threats of desertion or separation are 
 not rare, and are used to bring forth proof of the influence over 
 the person threatened. That the masculine protest is dominant 
 in this coquetry is proved from various phenomena. The strong 
 disinclination for a distinctly feminine role has already been 
 emphasized ; it is capable in these cases of calling forth a 
 remarkable picture, the appearance of a double life a splitting 
 of consciousness, an ambivalence (Bleuler). Analysis constantly 
 furnishes greater proof for the striving toward masculinity. 
 Dreams, phantasies, hallucinations, onset of psychosis show in 
 a most distinct manner the striving to become a man, or one of 
 the equivalents, as fear of a feminine lot. The strong tendency 
 toward detraction of men originates from the effort to attain an 
 equal value with the male and gives rise in sexual events to the 
 masculine role, which is revealed in frigidity, in desire to be 
 first and in those perversions which force the man to take a 
 slavish and debasing position. 
 
 Often the onset of the neurosis may be assumed to have set in 
 when such symptoms as fear of a decision, of a test, of marriage, 
 public appearance, of place (Platzangst), require medical treat- 
 ment. These anxieties arise at the emerging of a contradiction 
 in the masculine protest, if in pursuing the same a set-back, a 
 feminine lot, a defeat is threatened and hence the forced 
 admission of femininity. 
 
 K
 
 122 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 This was the case with one of my patients who, several years 
 ago, just before her first public appearance, became ill with 
 piano-player's cramp. This neurosis furnished a good excuse 
 for escaping from a dreaded failure. The closer examination 
 into the conditions of this illness showed a neurotic illusion in 
 which the patient at the sight of notes was reminded of male 
 genital organs. The first explanation to suggest itself was that 
 of an exaggerated or repressed sexuality whose reflection in the 
 piano-player's cramp was to be sought in the repression of the 
 inclination to masturbation. The result furnished an entirely 
 different explanation. The triumph before the public was 
 supposed to signify an equality with the man, masculinity. This 
 fiction was in contradiction with reality, with her femininity, so 
 that a public appearance equalled a final balancing of the facts 
 (many talented girls and women are wrecked for the same 
 reason). The sense of reality of the patient placed instead of 
 the facts, would not admit this condition of things, and when; 
 arranged by a symbolic interpretation of the heads of the notes, 
 works a fictitious abstraction which recalled the femininity and 
 became a regressive signal. The contradiction in the masculine 
 protest of this patient is manifested, as is nearly always the case 
 in the neurosis, in the unrealizability of the fiction just when, 
 before the decision, the possibility ol a failure estimated as 
 "feminine" in character emerged a common phenomenon 
 which needs no explanation. Now the traits of anxiety, of shy- 
 ness, of stage-fright are strengthened, and they either themselves 
 furnish excuses or preparations and predispositions (in our case 
 pains and inability to move the hands) and divert the attention 
 from the menace to the masculine protest. But in this case also 
 the force of the masculine protest is astonishing, it forms a 
 preparedness for conflict in the direction of the masculine pro- 
 test even out of the illness in which the patient takes refuge. 
 This girl had entered upon the career of a virtuoso against her 
 will, forced thereto by her unyielding mother. The wrecking of 
 her mother's ambitious plans meant for the daughter a victory 
 which recompensed her in part. That which her obstinacy, her 
 masculine tendency was not able to accomplish, was successful 
 through her illness as soon as note-stems called up to her the 
 menacing souvenir "you are a woman, take care, do not allow 
 yourself to be forced to a feminine obedient role by your mother 
 conquer her." A further construction, an excuse which 
 yielded a foundation for the attitude toward her mother, lay in 
 the heightened feeling that her younger sister was given 
 preference. This train of thought, as well as her efforts to gain 
 exclusive control over every one, her mother, all the members 
 of the family, all human beings in the environment, even of a 
 dog, was reflected in the heightened characteristics of her 
 coquetry and found expression, for example, in one of her latest
 
 NEUROTIC PRINCIPLES 123 
 
 dreams concerning the physician. The dream was as follows : 
 " / sit opposite you and ask if you like all the patients as well 
 as you like me ? You answered, ' Yes, all, and my four children, 
 too.' All at once you changed into a woman and went to sleep. 
 A woman was looking at the black notes." 
 
 The amative disposition of this patient could endure no rival. 
 She made use of the certainty of her conquest in order to 
 support her feeling of security. The physician who gave her to 
 understand that he treated all patients with the same interest, 
 and who loved his children besides, becomes forthwith the point 
 of attack of her striving for domination, as was formerly, the 
 mother, the man whom she married, as were all persons in her 
 environment, domestic servants, trades-people, teachers, etc. 
 Her self-centered nature did not need to "transfer," as she 
 came to the treatment with rigid predispositions and put them 
 in play from the first moment of her meeting with the physician. 
 Only the new situation was surrounded with difficulties and 
 obstacles which prevented the will to domination through love 
 from fully developing. Naturally my wife was left out of the 
 dream. Just this omission is the corner stone of the situation ; 
 my wife is definitely set aside. Up to this point the feminine 
 means extend and characterize the feminine line to which the 
 patient holds. Now the masculine protest emerges more 
 distinctly. I become unmanned, the reassuring illusion of the 
 patient, namely, the notes as a protecting symbol of the male 
 genitals, asserts its right. She, herself, ' takes care," secures 
 herself in order not to sink in her feeling of masculine ego- 
 consciousness, to suffer no defeat. 
 
 That 1 go to sleep in the dream, assigns to me a place similar 
 to that which her husband occupies. The patient feels it as a 
 great neglect that her husband, an overworked manufacturer, 
 often goes to sleep before she does. The unmanning of the 
 husband is the answer thereto, as well as a prolonged insomnia 
 whose constructive significance lies in the fact that it permits 
 the patient to operate against her husband. Now she could 
 refuse him his right as a husband and turned him, at first in the 
 middle of the night, later permanently, out of her bedroom ; 
 because he "snored and disturbed her so much." Our patient 
 would have easily found another argument if this one 
 had not presented itself, and it would be erroneous to 
 exclude the neurotic construction as a cause because in 
 this case the neurotic happened to be right. In order 
 to prove that she is right the patient will often argue 
 aptly ; the neurotic stigma in fact consists in the ten- 
 dency to render the superiority visible by all possible means. 
 Litigious paranoia for example reveals this mechanism to us 
 with greater clearness. Besides, the neurosis of our patient 
 continues in its construction of assurances. To her insomnia
 
 124 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 is added, in order to place this on a firmer basis, a sensitiveness 
 of hearing, whose mechanism consists In an overcharging of the 
 attention for the purpose of serving the neurotic tendency, so 
 that we were also able to say, by this overcharging, the patient 
 is awakened by the slightest noise as soon as she falls asleep. 
 Thus she can, still awake when morning comes, sleep far into 
 the day and thus avoid the feminine tasks of the household, in 
 the same manner as she had escaped the mother's domination by 
 stage fright and cramps in the fingers. An auditory 
 hallucination, a sawing noise, constitutes a final security which 
 may be pursued analytically in two directions. The one inter- 
 pretation is furnished by a warning souvenir, which at the same 
 time is an incentive to her coquetry once, when eight years old, 
 she overheard an intimate scene at her married sister's, she felt 
 shut out, neglected she gave a similar value to her husband's 
 "indifference" when he fell asleep before she did, in order to 
 be able to take a sharply aggressive attitude toward him. A 
 second interpretation led in another direction. The noise 
 recalled the sawing off of a stem and symbolized, acoustically,* 
 the unmanning, the detraction from the worth of the man. As 
 is also so frequently the case this symptom proved to be (just as 
 I have maintained of the dream, of symptoms, and of the 
 neurosis) a representative instance of the ascension from the 
 feminine to the masculine line, as a masculine protest against a 
 situation usually previously felt as feminine, against an 
 anticipated feeling of defeat and as a symbol of the life scheme 
 of this neurotic patient. 
 
 This, and similar cases, explained to me in what manner 
 suggestibility became an auxiliary of the tendency to attain 
 security, either because therefrom the patient gained in small 
 things the conviction of her weakness in order to provide herself 
 with proper protection at critical times, or because the patient 
 yields with surprisingpliability in order to gain ascendancy over 
 the other person.* The more direct efforts of her tendency to 
 domination stand so sharply in contrast with this yielding that 
 when only superficially observed the phenomenon resembles a 
 splitting of consciousness. In the same manner, vanity, pride, 
 and self-admiration will guide the patient in many cases to the 
 same goal, while she at times, conducts herself with modesty, 
 simplicity, and carelessness, using these qualities as expedients. 
 Usually externals and attitudes are carefully studied. Very 
 often fetichism is manifested, whose essential and constructive 
 
 3 One is reminded here of the somatic-jargon of which we have already 
 spoken- Thus the words, " schrill " and " grell," bring to expression sen- 
 serially in their transformed meaning, analogies which are felt at one time 
 through the eye, at another, through the ear- 
 
 * The latter mechanism seems to be at the root of passive homosexuality 
 while both attitudes may be taken as the structure of masochism, still better, 
 pseudomasochism.
 
 NEUROTIC PRINCIPLES 125 
 
 foundation represents efforts to prove equality with men in 
 circuitous ways, hence to compensate for a feeling of deficiency. 
 Literature furnishes us with representations of all these efforts in 
 a most refined form in the memoirs of Baschkirzewa and Helen 
 Rakowiza. Analyses of a series of cases where the memories of 
 these remarkable impressions from childhood had been preserved 
 more vividly than usual furnished me with interesting 
 verifications at a time when I was already far advanced in my 
 exposition of the doubts about the future sexual role on the part 
 of the neurotic child and the masculine protest which n'ecessarily 
 springs therefrom. Some remembered very distinctly having 
 been in doubt up to the twelfth or thirteenth year whether they 
 were male or female. It may not be a matter of chance that 
 these were male patients. At times the doubt emerged whether 
 they were not hermaphrodites, so that I am inclined to think 
 that in other cases where the thought of hermaphrodites was 
 distinctly and importunately present in the memory of the patient 
 and was spontaneously brought forward, it is the last impression 
 of a doubt about the patient's own sex. And in literature, too, 
 I have frequently run across this significant trace in the histories 
 of neurotics and psychotics without the significance of this doubt 
 concerning the sexual role being clear to the writers. Meschede 
 described an interesting case of question-compulsion (Fragez- 
 wang), and Freud one of dementia after Schreber's biography. 
 I disregard whether or not this interest of the patient 
 was explained by illustrations, or placards, in the lexicon, by 
 readings, by spectacles, by occurrences, as well as the scientific 
 interpretation which seemed to concentrate its attention to the 
 male periods, the male climacteric, to the examination of the 
 male or female share in the individual, etc. For me, the 
 permanent impression which asserted itself in an obvious 
 emphasis of the relation and the reciprocal relation of the 
 antithesis male-female, was the important factor. 
 
 In recent years since I have hit upon these fundamental 
 phenomena of the neurosis, I have often asked myself if I, too, 
 in the course of my development from childhood was not 
 dominated by a similar doubt notwithstanding the fact that the 
 question of hermaphroditism only attracted me at a very late 
 period and from the standpoint of a critic, and hence in a 
 secondary manner. Also my rejection of the biological 
 hermaphroditism as a cause of the neurosis (Flies) I would use 
 as an argument against such doubts in my early youth, if I were 
 not familiar with the fact that often the negation is the assertion 
 of an old interest which has become unconscious. But my view 
 of life shows me that I must have become master of old childish 
 contrary tendencies, without the exaggerated masculine protest 
 having been developed. Because I have in life, as well as iri 
 science, after a first abstract valuation of the masculine principle
 
 126 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 over the feminine, rejected the flood of arguments to prove the 
 original deficiencies of women, with pertinent calmness. 
 
 I believe, however, concerning the former critics of the 
 "masculine protest," from the manner in which they have 
 undertaken the contest, and from their stubborn failure to under- 
 stand it, that the exaggerated savageness of their attack in a 
 strictly scientific question is referable nearly as much as is their 
 fear of the concept " hermaphroditism " to a childhood 
 impression which alarmingly presented to them an accentuated 
 effeminacy or hermaphroditism, with which, however, it is not 
 my intention to deter anyone from a scientific criticism. 
 
 Besides, there is no better way of judging the reaction of the 
 neurotic psyche than from the answers to questions showing 
 estimation of the opposite sex. It will become apparent that 
 every stronger denial of the equality of the sexes, every 
 detraction or overvaluation of the opposite sex is invariably 
 connected with a neurotic disposition and neurotic traits. They 
 are all dependent on the neurotic tendency to obtain security, 
 and all manifest distinct traces of the masculine protest and are 
 evidence of the essential, more abstract adherence to a guiding 
 fiction. They> are one and all, expedients of human thought to 
 enhance the feeling of personal worth. 
 
 It follows from the exposition of my psychology of the 
 neuroses that children with male as well as those with female 
 tendencies, look forward with fear to the lot of a woman, to be 
 subject to a man, to be deprived of virginity, injured, to be 
 obliged to bear children, to play a subordinate role in life, to 
 obey, to be backward in knowledge, in skill, in strength, wisdom, 
 to be weak, to have periods, to become a sacrifice to husband 
 and children, to become at last an old and neglected woman. 
 How this fear of the future gives rise to egoistic traits of 
 character has been described above. I have described a typical 
 case of a little girl in the " Disposition zur Neurose " (I.e.). 
 
 I am able to show in the case of a patient suffering from a 
 gastric neurosis a line of conduct which is regularly observed in 
 the psychic development of neurotic patients. This is the 
 anticipation in thought and emotion of all disadvantages which 
 could be expected to occur. This tendency is observed in early 
 childhood when, where there is organic inferiority and the evils 
 arising therefrom, it is of excessive growth. Very often this 
 feelings occurs at the time immediately preceding the falling 
 asleep, and it is then not remarkable that a dream fiction spurs 
 further this effort of anticipation in a form to cause fear. Only 
 the dream, in resemblance to the hallucination, brings with it a 
 condition of feeling, of emotion, which has the significance as 
 anticipation of emotion, parallel to anticipation in thought, in a 
 waking condition. The hallucinatory excitability is, as I have 
 already emphasized in the " Studie fiber Mindwertigkeit von
 
 NEUROTIC PRINCIPLES 127 
 
 Organ," an extended capacity of the brain which is overstrained 
 in compensatory directions, serves the neurotic tendency to gain 
 security and owes its representative faculty in consciousness to 
 the memory which follows a certain tendency to the neurotic, 
 cautious apperception. The childish undeveloped psyche shows 
 at most, traces of tendencies toward hallucinatory feelings which 
 are to be understood as the fictitious preparations for a goal, as 
 anticipation in time of uncertainty. 
 
 Thus laughing in sleep, or pleasant sensations in the 
 anticipatory quest of organic satisfaction, or of security. The 
 hallucinatory excitement in the neuroses and psychoses always, 
 and without exception, serves the guiding fiction of the ideal of 
 personality. The significance of the hallucinations of pain and 
 anxiety for the fiction of nervous diseases should also be taken 
 into account. A further examination of the mechanism of the 
 hallucination teaches us unequivocally that it is composed ot 
 tendencies to abstraction and to anticipation, and that it gains 
 significance as a strengthened fiction or as a warning souvenir, 
 because it acts as a spur to the assurance of the feeling of 
 personal worth. That they are connected with traces of 
 memory has no essential significance. The psyche works with- 
 out exception with the content of consciousness and with 
 sensations that are given by experience and originate in the 
 corporal substratum. The significance of the psyche, and 
 especially of the neurotic psyche, lies in the special choice of 
 these memory traces and in their connection with the neurotic 
 apperception which gives them their trend. Therefore the 
 nervously exalted tendency to gain security makes use of a 
 specially developed function of prevision, of hallucination, in 
 which abstractly and imaginatively a scene unrolls, an 
 anticipated denouement, a foreseen finale, with eagerness, so 
 that the hallucinated individual builds the bridges to it, or they 
 have an admonitory quality warning them to choose another way. 
 Hallucinations as well as dreams are, like other tentatives of the 
 psyche, fitted for finding the way which leads to the maximation 
 or preservation of the ego-consciousness. In it are reflected the 
 faiths, the hopes or the fears of the patient. 
 
 The above patient was on the eve of marriage when her 
 gastric neurosis began. She suffered from pains in the region of 
 the stomach, belching, vomiting, loss of appetite and obstipation. 
 One evening, shortly before going to sleep she heard the word 
 " Eskadambra " distinctly. The formation of apparently 
 meaningless words are often among the performances of 
 neurotics. Usually they prove to be put together according to 
 a plan, just as children invent languages by means of which they 
 attain a feeling of superiority. Pfister was able to make inter- 
 pretations of the word pictures which originated from fascination 
 in the cases of those having the "gift of tongues."
 
 128 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 In a previous chapter I have given a solution of an 
 hallucinatory " sawing" in the ears, in two other cases I found 
 the roaring serving as an admonitory memory of the roaring of 
 the sea and its dangers as a sense-picture of life, just as Homer 
 compares the ayopa to the roaring sea. 6 
 
 In paranoia and dementia praecox the emotions leading to the 
 masculine protest disguise themselves in the form of hallucina- 
 tions and assure the psychotic scheme through their acoustic or 
 visual complement. Likewise concerning the above mentioned 
 rounding off of a psychic move into a hallucination of hearing, 
 we may assume that a strong inner necessity has led to a greater 
 tension of the tendency to gain security, for which the word 
 " eskadambra," though without value or significance for the 
 patient, can represent a signal or sign. 6 One is justified in 
 thinking, however, that a thorough understanding of this word 
 would show a meaning which would reveal to us the mental 
 condition of this girl. As a rule it is easy to obtain an under- 
 standing of hallucinations of this sort, at least not more difficult 
 than for short fragments of dreams. Asked concerning the 
 impression of the new-word formation, the patient answered, 
 she recalled " alhambra " by this word. For this she had 
 evidently always had a great interest ; once it stood proudly, but 
 it was now fallen into decay, a ruin. The beginning of the word 
 " Esk " was to be found in the word "Eskimo," in 
 " E(tru)skan " too, these letters are found. The race of 
 ' Baskes ' ' occurred also to her ; in this word the greater part 
 of "Esk" appears. The patient thus indicates the way she 
 has followed in the construction of the new word, she has joined 
 a fragment of the names of ancient tribes and the name of a 
 ruined city. Finally the word "alhambra" had for her also 
 only the significance of a fragment, and hence we are justified 
 in assuming the thought of being broken, made small, made 
 short, would emerge in the interpretation of the hallucination. 
 The letters " skad " belong, as the patient easily discovered, 
 to the word "kaskade." She said she was certain of this 
 because she had used the expression " ganze kaskaden " in 
 connection with the period, the menstrual period just passed. 
 
 When it is taken into consideration that this patient was about 
 to be married, the connection of this construction of new words 
 with the psychic condition can be understood without anything 
 further. That she is disinclined to marry one can see from her 
 
 * On another occasion I found roaring in the ears to he a reminder of the 
 tones of telegraph "wires- These tones reminded him of his isolation in child- 
 hood where alone he often embraced the world as does the telegraph, with liis 
 hopes for the future- 
 
 * As one has to assume also concerning the dream which represents the 
 image of a psychic movement in the state of consciousness-
 
 NEUROTIC PRINCIPLES 129 
 
 neurosis, which formed a ready obstacle. 7 In the hallucination 
 there is a disconnected sketch of the following train of thought : 
 the glory of my virginity will be destroyed I shall bear a new 
 race I shall be forced to sacrifice whole cascades of blood. When 
 I had brought the interpretation up to this point, the patient 
 helped me further by relating that when she was eight years old 
 she had heard that a woman of her acquaintance had died from 
 loss of blood at the birth of a child. Since then she had always 
 been afraid of childbirth. What now is the meaning^ of this 
 hallucination ? Can it be defined, even remotely, by the word 
 "wish-fulfillment"? The meaning of this new formation of 
 words is the anticipatory interpretation in the direction of a 
 danger to be feared, of being humiliated, or the fear of becoming 
 a ruin, as she had often called her mother, of dying like the 
 woman she remembered in her childhood. This feeling against 
 female functions (and the patient indeed strove also consciously 
 against marriage) is of older date, originated in early childhood, 
 and was at that time embodied in the wish to be ahead, healthy, 
 strong like her father. It became then a fictitious guiding line 
 and was filled with a logical content, which was grouped about 
 a masculine ideal of personality, and was filled also with a fear 
 in the same direction against a feminine role. Now I was able 
 also to make clear to the patient the meaning of her stomach 
 neurosis. It was a hallucinatory excitement which reflected the 
 hardships of pregnancy, warning the patient to avoid the same. 
 In the waking condition, in the dream and in hallucinations and in 
 the neurosis there was a harmony of the tendency towards 
 security do not be a woman, do not submit, be a man ! 
 
 This girl manifested in her demeanor rough, resolute traits, 
 and could get along with no one. Her ambition flamed blazingly 
 and made her intolerant. She required unconditional submission 
 from her fiance whom she treated very badly and with whom she 
 often dissolved all relations. Once, however, when he turned 
 his attention to another girl, she offered everything in order to 
 hold him. One of the day dreams of her childhood consisted in 
 the phantasy that the whole human race was going to destruction 
 and that she alone would remain, an analogy with the myth of 
 the flood in which the ego-centric, inimical nature of the patient 
 is clearly manifested. 
 
 In the cases of many patients who show signs of the tendency 
 to " have everything " as in the case of the girl just described, 
 traits of character of an opposite nature are found. They are 
 often of such importunate honorableness, modesty and contented- 
 
 7 As has already been mentioned, the anticipation of marriage furnishes one 
 of the most potent moments for the accentuation of a neurosis or for the 
 development of a psychosis- The contrary expressions of these patients, such, 
 for instance, as " I would like to be married," always prove themselves to be 
 platonic-
 
 130 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 ness that the peculiar accentuation of these qualities awakens the 
 suspicion of a special arrangement. Their conscience always 
 makes itself heard and their feeling of being at fault is always 
 ready to react on the slightest occasion." 
 
 The solution of this enigma which has puzzled humanity for a 
 long time, is furnished by an understanding of the craving for 
 security which breaks through the direct aggressive guiding 
 line, and which puts an end to greed and immoderation as soon 
 as the egoistic ideal is threatened by them. Conscience then con- 
 stitutes, so to speak, an intermediate guiding fiction, as does also 
 its anticipatory exaltation, the abstract self-accusation of guilt. 
 These are instances in which all actions planned and anticipatory 
 preparations are changed around in such a way that they are 
 not injurious, that they permit the feeling of personal worth to 
 be preserved. We perceive on this point the opposition in the 
 original feeling of inferiority as a compensation for the feeling 
 of uncertainty which has come to moral expression. Now the 
 neurotic can exclude a number of possibilities which could 
 degrade him. In other relations, also', the effect of the craving- 
 for security is recognizable, in morals, in religion, in super- 
 stition, in stirrings of conscience and in the feeling of guilt. 
 They all form themselves into rigid formulae and principles such 
 as the uncertain neurotic loves. And he can prepare himselt 
 by practice in small things, test his moral strength on mere 
 nothings and especially principiis obsta I secures himself from 
 a moral fall which he exaggerates in anticipation by feeling the 
 moral defeat beforehand. This last hallucinatory expedient 
 resembles the security through neurotic anxiety, and indeed 
 conscientiousness, self-accusation, and anxiety often complement 
 each other, or alternate with each other, in the neurosis. The 
 knowledge of this fact is of great importance to the psycho- 
 therapeutist for the understanding of the connection between 
 masturbation and neurosis and from which may be comprehended 
 the significance as a security of the feeling of self-accusation 
 constructed from the fact of onanism. If this feeling of guilt 
 is brought into junction with the masturbation for the purpose of 
 working as a brake against the force of sexuality, both 
 constitute, later, a base of operation from which the patient 
 augments his neurotic disposition in order to guard against a 
 reduction of his ego-consciousness. As a rule, both with the 
 assistance of anticipated results, as impotence, tabes, paralysis, 
 loss of memory are used as an excuse in order to avoid making 
 decisions, and always also for deepening the fear of the sexual 
 partner. I have often described connections of this sort in this 
 and in previous works. In the neurosis, honorableness and con- 
 scientiousness border on pedantry, therefore we shall not be 
 
 * Adler, " Ueber nenrotische Disposition," 1. c., and Fortmfiller, 1. c.
 
 NEUROTIC PRINCIPLES 13 r 
 
 surprised to find how often these qualities draw their real value 
 from the fact that thereby the neurotic is placed in a position to 
 humiliate others, to come into conflict with them, to raise him- 
 self above others and press them into his service. It is just the 
 neurotic whose tendency to dominate contains the scheme " to* 
 possess everything" and who not rarely preserves memories of 
 sins, who will usually take care not to betray a secret which 
 would certainly result in his humiliation. He will rather seek 
 to preserve appearances even with great pains and anxiety ;: 
 will blush anxiously when he lifts his own pocketbook from the 
 floor, and will avoid being alone in a strange room in order not 
 to fall under suspicion of theft, if something should be missed. 
 In like manner I found an obstinate wish to pay in advance, to 
 owe nothing, in patients to whom every expenditure seemed a 
 reduction of their ego-consciousness. They preferred under- 
 going an evil and making an end of it to enduring one without 
 end, but had at the same time a feeling of superiority in doing 
 this, over the one who received the money. 
 
 In the same manner the fanatic adherence to truth in many 
 neurotics proves itself to be, as a rule, a reaction of the weaker 
 against the superior power (in this connection the original 
 picture of the same may called, the " enfant terrible"). 
 
 I learned from the previous history of a catatonic that he was 
 oppressed and humiliated by his wife. One night he broke out 
 in sobs and told her that he had deceived her by an affair with 
 a servant girl. His masculine protest made use of this expedient, 
 adultery, in order to connect with it an open confession. Again, 
 in the form of the neurotic conjunction with which we are already 
 acquainted, it became apparent that the wife not only had the 
 stronger will, but had, also, the command of the purse. The 
 patient, himself a weak man, was obliged to live upon her 
 money, which the wife and her family made the source of 
 much unpleasantness, though they had known all about it before- 
 hand. In order to protect himself from the superiority of his 
 wife and not to submit entirely to her influence, he, already 
 engaged in conflict over the male domination, arrived at 
 an arrangement of a psychic impotence. The wife, on the other 
 hand, overcame this impotence and humiliated the husband 
 openly. His flirtation with the nurse girl was the beginning of 
 his revenge. This could only be effective in a way to elevate 
 him if he confessed his adultery in a manly way ; therefore he 
 had recourse to the love of truth, which had already served him 
 as a vehicle for all sorts of rascality. The fact that he confessed 
 his fault with tears was in keeping with his cowardice before a 
 decision, but on the other hand, made it easier for him to com- 
 municate the painful intelligence to his wife. The further 
 course turned out against the masculine triumph of the psychic 
 hermaphrodite ; the wife went further in her aggression an$
 
 132 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 complained to her relatives, who in turn reproached him in the 
 most severe manner. Now he fell into an apathy with an 
 augmented craving for security, wished to undo his transgression 
 as it had not assisted him to the masculine triumph and found the 
 solution in a fiction of a purifying miracle which God had 
 wrought in him. He was again on the heights, his pre- 
 destination phantasy broke out, he stood in communication with 
 God, received orders and commands from Him, and built up a 
 psychotic system in which he wandered on the earth as a prophet. 
 The masturbation, too, which he practiced openly, he designated 
 as a miracle, in order thus to escape the feeling of humiliation. 
 Stereotypies were manifested, among other >vays, by an 
 occasional upright position of the body and by holding the head 
 high, a motion which I was able to interpret as symbolic, as a 
 phantasy of the erection of the male organ. 
 
 'To tell some one a bitter truth " This expression con- 
 tains the kernel for the comprehension of the case just described. 
 The neurotic often makes use of the truth in order to cause pain 
 to others. One never hears agreeable truths from neurotic 
 patients without a reaction immediately becoming visible, 
 usually in the form of an aggravation of the suffering. To every 
 emotion of love, which is regarded as feminine, as a submission, 
 there follows an emotion of hate, as masculine protest, the latter 
 in the garments of truth honor bright ! Also in this case of 
 dementia praecox we find a stage where the doubt of the neurotic 
 concerning his own masculinity is bridged over by means of 
 expedients and by a tightening of the guiding fiction where the 
 compensatory craving for security gives the impulse to take a 
 guiding symbol verbally and to construct the fiction (as if the 
 neurotic were a teacher, the Emperor, Savior). Other traits, 
 such as moodiness and unsociability, are likewise to be 
 recognized as neurotic anticipatory preparations, as always fitted 
 io annihilate the superiority of others and to prevent them from 
 carrying out their will. 
 
 The neurotic individual is the typical kill-joy and peace 
 destroyer. He is misled by his megalomaniac ideal in conditions 
 of greatest uncertainty and is always busy trying to hypostasize 
 and deify his own guiding line, and to cross those of others. These 
 traits are also capable of a more extended application. The 
 neurotic regards his inability to get along with others, his dis- 
 turbing attacks, as proofs that others wish to injure him, and 
 erects, as a protection, the wall of his principles within which 
 his spirit of mastery is able to develop. Here emerge 
 tendencies such as the desire to be alone, sometimes the desire 
 to be buried ; or pictures, such as being buried alive or concealed 
 in the mother's body (Gruner). At times I have discovered as 
 a fulfillment of this wish to dominate in solitude, the habit of 
 remaining a long time on the stool. Wholly in the same
 
 NEUROTIC PRINCIPLES 133 
 
 direction, i.e., of gaining the upper hand, the neurotic carries 
 out his exaggerated yielding and adaptability, but the patient 
 is in this always on the watch, although he tries, too, in this way 
 to captivate those who are stronger, to deviate toward the more 
 manly line and to enjoy his open triumph. 
 
 The inclination to daintiness furnishes the neurotic with the 
 same readiness for conflict. By this means he can decry every- 
 thing, secure himself against decisions and lay claim to his pre- 
 rogative. He will be finicky in such instances as harmonize 
 best with his tendencies and where he can gain the most 
 advantages. In eating, in the choice of friends, in amorous 
 relations, he secures to himself thereby a troublesome 
 superiority. Every one is obliged to make allowances for him 
 because he is sick, nervous. This trait of character 
 rises to great performances as soon as the fear of the sexual 
 partner, of marriage, makes use of it. No girl, no man, then 
 amounts to anything, and a twisted ideal furnishes the neurotic 
 with a point of support for the disparagement of every one. At 
 other times and in other relations, this trait manifests itself as 
 an arrangement, as the foresight of an individual who has not as 
 yet conquered the weak point of his feeling of inferiority. He- 
 can also be moderate "when the wind blows from the north- 
 west," when his will to power requires it. One of the universal 
 methods of quieting children when they show discontent is by 
 comforting them with a prospect of the future, when they will 
 be big, grown up. One often hears children themselves say, 
 ' When I am grown up, I will. . ." The problem of growth- 
 engages the attention of children to an extraordinary extent and 
 in the course of their development they are constantly reminded 
 of it. It is thus in regard to the size of his body, the growth of 
 his hair, of the teeth, and as soon as he comes to speculations 
 concerning the sexual organs by the growth of the pubes and the 
 genital organs. The entrance of the child upon his masculine 
 role, of which we have often spoken, requires a distinct large- 
 ness of the person of the individual and of the parts of his body. 
 Where this is denied him and here we encounter again the 
 basis of somatic inferiority, especially the causal rickets (thymus 
 anomalies ?), anomalies of the thyroid, of the sperm glands, 
 hypophysis, etc. the child has recourse on account of its desire 
 for masculine value to the positing of the masculine protest. 
 Then it acquires the heightened impulse to covetousness, envy, 
 bragging, greed, activity, together with the acute feeling of 
 contrast and begins to measure himself constantly with others, 
 especially with the persons of importance in his environment, 
 and finally with the heroes from tales and stories. Thus the 
 individual comes to a wishful contemplation of the future and the 
 phantasy incited by the craving for security fills all wishes.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE DEROGATORY TENDENCY TO DISPARAGE OTHERS ; OBSTINACY 
 AND WILDNESS ; THE SEXUAL RELATIONS OF NEUROTICS AS 
 A MEANS OF COMPARISON ; SYMBOLIC EMASCULATION ; FEEL- 
 ING OF BEING BELITTLED ; EQUALITY TO MAN AS A LIFE-PLAN ; 
 SIMULATION AND NEUROSIS ; SUBSTITUTE FOR MASCULINITY ; 
 IMPATIENCE ; DISCONTENT ; INACCESSIBILITY 
 
 THE compulsive craving of the neurotic to fill his egoistic ideal 
 with the overvalued masculine traits impels him, especially 
 because of the obstacles of reality, to a change in the formula of 
 his guiding line, so that he attempts to attain the goal which he 
 values as equal to the masculine goal by means of circuitous 
 paths. What drives him to a psychosis is his longing to realize 
 an unattainable ideal. Should he suffer a defeat in the main line 
 of his masculine protest, or should he even anticipate such a 
 -defeat, he seeks a substitute which he temporarily considers as of 
 equal value through an arrangement of intensified reassuring 
 expedients. At this point there begins as a rule that process of 
 psychic transformation which we designate as neurosis, in so far 
 as the guiding fiction does not lead to a violation of reality, the 
 patient only feeling it as a disturbing element, as is the case in 
 neurasthenia, hypochondriasis, anxiety and compulsion neuroses 
 and in hysteria. In the psychosis the guiding masculine fiction 
 appears disguised in pictures and symbols of infantile origin. 
 The patient then conducts himself no longer as if he wished to 
 TDC masculine, above, and as if he sought to attain this end by 
 every possible means, but through the medium of anticipation 
 as though he already had attained all these ends and only 
 indicates at first, incidentally and in the manner of a foundation 
 (depression, persecutory and self-accusatory ideas, ideas of 
 poverty), that he is underneath, unmanly, feminine. 
 
 For the sake of clarity, I will now proceed to the description 
 of some neurotic character traits which tend in a direct line to the 
 masculine egoistic ideal, or are so closely connected therewith 
 that they force themselves upon the understanding as only slight 
 deviations of the masculine protest. They have been generally 
 regarded as active, masculine traits and the neurotic can thus 
 appeal to this general opinion in which there is agreement. But 
 we have already endeavored to show in previous chapters that 
 in the construction of masculine traits the choice of the fictitious 
 goal is dependent upon and guided only within circumscribed 
 limits by the conscious understanding of the neurotic or even of
 
 TENDENCY TO DISPARAGE OTHERS, ETC. 135 
 
 the critical observer. He also makes use of such guiding lines 
 which to general logic do not always seem masculine, or at least 
 only in part so, such for example as coquetry, deception, etc. 
 As the direct traits of character in line with the masculine protest 
 may be emphasized, the frequently displayed tendency to be a 
 man through and through, courageous, ready for attack, open, 
 hard-hearted, cruel, to excel everyone in strength, influence, 
 power, wisdom, etc. When the fundamental feeling of inferiority 
 demands stronger reassuring compensations because "of an 
 expected defeat or the suspicion of one, this compensation ensues 
 by a strengthening of the readiness for conflict which now strives 
 toward the masculine feeling of superiority, often by circuitous 
 and more abstract ways, revealing simultaneous and often con- 
 tradictory traits after the manner of tricks and artifices. It is 
 then that the neurotic may manifest pliancy instead of obstinacy, 
 or side by side with it, or as the occasion may require it, traits 
 of exorbitant arrogance and modesty, roughness and mildness, 
 courage and cowardice, lust for power and submissiveness. 
 masculinity and femininity, all of which are used to gain security 
 from defeat or in order to permit him by circuitous ways to 
 enhance his own egoistic ideal or disparage that of others. That 
 it is possible to conquer by weakness, submissiveness and 
 modesty is shown in the example of women and by many 
 examples in the history of the world. 
 
 The dominancy of the self-created deities, of the guiding fiction 
 is always easily discernible and is revealed in the psychosis with 
 unmistakable clarity. I will endeavor to show by means of a 
 dream of a 22-year-old girl who was suffering from enuresis 
 nocturna and in the daytime from frequent outbreaks of rage 
 and ill-humor, who could get along with no one but rae, and who 
 often had suicidal ideas, that all of these phenomena, together 
 with other traits of lust for power, of obstinacy or of anxiety 
 were under the guidance of the masculine protest, and that this 
 protest was dependent in turn upon a constitutional inferiority 
 of the urinary organ, which in combination with ugliness and 
 mental retardation gave the impulse to the compensatory 
 exhibition of an exaggerated masculine guiding line. In order 
 to make the case brief and comprehensible, I preface the remark 
 that the patient had applied the realities of her childhood to a 
 reassuring neurosis, had constructed the enuresis as an ever- 
 ready expedient and always had recourse to this symptom when 
 her egoistic feeling suffered a humiliation. In this case, too, 
 there was manifested the colossal power of the tendency to dis- 
 paragement in the arrangement of the seizures which drove the 
 mother to a powerless despair, while at the same time the patient 
 disparaged her mother in the usual form of an allusion by excusing
 
 i 3 6 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 herself from all fault and throwing the blame on another. The 
 following dream shows this in a specially clear manner. 
 
 " My mother showed my friend the dirty cover of the bed. 
 We began to quarrel. I say the cover is yours and begin to cry 
 bitterly. I awake flooded in tears." 
 
 A short time before she related to me that she often awoke 
 weeping from sleep without knowing the cause of her weeping. 
 From the connection of the genesis of the disease which was 
 apparent even at that time, the weeping w ; as of significance in 
 relation to the mother, it represented one of the most usual 
 childish procedures for diminishing the mother's superiority. 
 After the communication of the dream she remarked, " You will 
 certainly believe that you are right in your opinion concerning 
 my weeping." One hears such remarks during a psycho- 
 therapeutic treatment as a regular thing, and must not overlook 
 the concealed criticism therein as a device of the tendency to 
 disparage, which is directed against everybody. The moderate 
 expression of the same on this occasion led me to suspect that 
 the cure of the neurosis was in progress, as the more lively 
 reactions were absent. Formerly under similar circumstances 
 she would have asserted sharply and passionately that I was 
 wrong, or she would have omitted to mention or would have 
 forgotten those dreams which confirmed my view. I was further 
 confirmed in my assumption by the information that the patient 
 after the dream immediately took off the slightly soiled bed 
 linen and washed it in secret which was never the case before 
 because the sight of the soiled linen was intended for her mother. 
 
 For the explanation of the dream she related the following. 
 She was firmly convinced that her mother told all her acquaint- 
 ances about her enuresis. All her relatives seemed to know of 
 her weakness. Once an uncle, obviously in order to comfort 
 her, had informed her that both he and another brother had for 
 a long time been in the habit of wetting the bed. In her dreams 
 she reproached her mother, telling her, " The weakness is in 
 your family, you are to blame if I soil the bed, the soiled cover 
 is yours." 
 
 She related further that in changing she often took a bed-slip 
 instead of a cover ; the one was closed, the other open ; adding, 
 " And it is easy to mistake them in the closet." 
 
 Behind this thought lies the problem of open and shut which 
 is clearly recognizable as an expression for the oppositeness of 
 the sexes. She blames her mother for the disease, but at the 
 same time casts, so to speak, a furtive glance at its source and 
 spring, that is, the femininity for which she blames her mother 
 and betrays to us in the masculine protest of her dreams how 
 slightly she estimates the difference between man and woman. 
 Similarly George Sand declared that there was only one sex. The
 
 TENDENCY TO DISPARAGE OTHERS, ETC. 137 
 
 quarrelling and weeping is the most important attitude of her 
 aggression against her mother whose superiority she tried to 
 destroy in this way as well as by her adherence to the enuresis. 
 The fact that at the present time she operates against men by 
 her enuritic device and thereby avoids marriage and " the 
 tyranny of man," is a natural result to be inferred from other 
 perspectives of her neurotic psyche. 
 
 An example of the change of formula of the guiding masculine 
 fiction which originally was " I will be a man," in the above 
 described stage of the treatment was, " I will be superior to my 
 mother like a man," and later on was expressed in the words, 
 
 I will humiliate my mother by feminine means." In a dream, 
 therefore, in a tentative, anticipatory test, this guiding line as 
 we have maintained it to be comes to stronger expression. The 
 dream is as follows : 
 
 " / lie in a burning bed. All weep about me. I laugh aloud." 
 
 A discussion of free love had preceded the dream. The 
 burning bed, according to the patient's interpretation represented 
 amorous pleasure. We translate according to our understanding 
 of the dream. " How would it be if I should embrace free love ? 
 Then my mother would be humiliated but I would laugh at her, 
 would be superior to her." Attention must also be called to 
 the expression " burning," which arises so frequently in psychic 
 constructions which spring from the urinary functions in antithesis 
 to water (enuresis). 1 
 
 The laughing in this dream is equivalent to the weeping in 
 the first dream. Both show the aggressive tendency which 
 seeks the mother's defeat. In this case, too, the untenability of 
 the assumption of a splitting of personality is readily perceivable. 
 Just as erroneous would be the assumption of a real sexual wish. 
 This means would only serve the purpose of the patient if the 
 mother were set back and she could play the part of man in 
 regard to her. 
 
 The guiding fiction of the equality to man comes to expression 
 in some way or other in all women and girls. As I was able to 
 show in the foregoing case, it is the change of formula 
 necessitated by reality which disguises the masculine protest. 
 Hence it is essential in the analysis of neurotic female patients 
 to discover at what point they protest against their femininity. 
 This point can always be found, for the pressure toward the 
 maximation of the ego-consciousness necessitates the construction 
 of a reassuring guiding line which is erected as an antithesis to 
 the idea " feminine." Cultural or uncultural ideas of 
 emancipation, of militancy directed against men and their 
 
 *Adler, " Stndie," 1. c., Addendum. Freud has already touched upon 
 the relationship between fire and water in the dream, and the allegorical 
 representation based on this. 
 
 L
 
 138 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 privileges are usually found in normal women and girls. They 
 seek to diminish the distance as much as possible in dress, 
 attitude, customs, laws, views of Jife. The masculine protest 
 of neurotics is exaggerated in all these directions. In dress 
 glaring but at the same time mannish fashions are affected, as 
 the lengthening of single parts of dress and the wearing of strong 
 high shoes. Or they avoid all fashions in dress which are 
 distinctly feminine. Often there is a lively fight against the 
 corset, a fight directed against the confinement, but which can 
 also serve other purposes and is often brought into play to avoid 
 seeing company and is most usually directed against the husband. 
 The attitude and habits of neurotic women are often so masculine 
 that it is noticeable from the first moment. Crossed legs and 
 arms, and at times only indications which betray this tendency, 
 as well as the tendency to take the left side as a man does or 
 to allow no one to stand in front of them, etc., as in the dream. 
 In the neurotic's view of life the usual ideal over-estimation of 
 the masculine qualities is compensated for in a practical manner 
 by the disparagement of men. In sexual relations anasthesia is 
 the rule. Masculine variants, or those which disparage man are 
 given preference. 
 
 The neurotic psyche of men offers the same characteristics. 
 It derives its artifices from an imaginary consciousness of 
 femininity in order to arrive at a feeling of complete manliness. 
 One of my patients who was suffering from asthma nervosum 
 presented a very clear example of this dynamic. He had been 
 a weak child and had suffered from the exudative diathesis, a 
 relation to which Striimpell has called attention. His early 
 catarrh permitted him already in childhood to press his mother 
 into his service. She took him to her, cared for him in her 
 bedroom and yielded to all his wishes. He was early placed 
 under the care of a strict governess of whom he could not get the 
 better, notwithstanding his rage and intractability. He felt weak 
 before her and thus became acquainted with childish deceptions 
 by means of which he was able to escape the governess, that is, 
 he simulated and exaggerated the catarrhal affection by an 
 arrangement of coughing and excitation of the bronchial tubes 
 and larynx and by asthmatic phenomena which he produced after 
 the manner of straining at difficult defecation, by tension of the 
 abdomen and closing of the anus. He soon learned to know that 
 these phenomena gained him a place in his mother's room, and 
 in the course of years produced an asthmatic device which he 
 set unconsciously into activity whenever he felt compelled 
 on account of his overtense fictitious guiding goal to rise to the 
 position of the lord of the house, and incidentally, of the 
 governess. He soon gained the victory so that the governess was 
 forbidden to treat him severely or to beat him.
 
 TENDENCY TO DISPARAGE OTHERS, ETC. 139 
 
 We see how his egotistic ideal had at its disposal from now 
 on a neurotic weapon which placed him in a position to escape a 
 defeat or to prevent the emergence of the feeling of his original 
 inferiority in a circuitous way, that is, no longer by obstinacy, 
 rage, courage, manliness, but that he sought to get ahead by a 
 sort of treachery, craft, unmanly conduct, cowardice, a leaning 
 on the mother. This subterfuge, hypostasized. and elaborated 
 to an unconsciously working mechanism, furnished him the 
 necessary security for his whole life. His neurotic symptom 
 which was constantly defended and laid claim to by further 
 auxiliary lines of his trait of character, i.e., "to possess every- 
 thing " by his lust for power, by his obstinacy and disputatious- 
 ness, and at the same time by his cowardice, fear of new 
 undertakings, fear of men and women and by the tendency to 
 disparagement which always evolves from these traits and which 
 played such an important role in his aggressive devices furnished 
 him a new organ, a means of making himself important in a 
 special way, to dominate his world, inasmuch as he could always 
 demand the protection of his mother. He felt safer with his 
 mother than with his wife, and thus he was driven by necessity 
 to fall in love with his mother, a love which upon closer analysis 
 proved to be a sort of tyranny. Pregnancy phantasies reflected for 
 him the feelings of humiliation connected with a feminine role 
 and alternated with thoughts about castration and with phantasies 
 about being a woman. His impulse to masturbation revealed the 
 attempt to emancipate himself victoriously from women, to avoid 
 a defeat, to conduct himself in a manly fashion, and was continued 
 in similarly directed phantasies of greatness, both of which were 
 forms of expression of his masculine protest. The imagined 
 smallness of his genital organs, a thought which made a marked 
 impression upon him, served him as a figure and perceptional 
 form for his inferiority and feminine nature. From his childhood 
 he sought to attribute all his unsuccessful efforts and defeats to 
 his small penis, apperceived and grouped his experiences in this 
 direction and according to related antithetical forms of apper- 
 ception of " Manly-womanly." The small penis represented to 
 him the figurative marginal concept between masculinity and 
 femininity and was manifestly constructed as was the attitude 
 of the patient on the idea of a corporal and psychic herma- 
 phroditism and its tragedy. It is no wonder that in the psycho- 
 analysis of these cases with the male-female manner of 
 apperception which belongs to the foundation of the neurotic 
 psyche, one hits only upon sexual relations. They are all to be 
 understood as a modus dicendi, as a jargon, and figurative 
 modes of expression and are to be resolved into forms, whereby 
 strength, victory, triumph come to expression in male sexual 
 symbols, defeat in female and the neurotic artifices in both
 
 140 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 together, usually also in a perverse or hermaphroditic symbolism. 
 It was easy to detect in our patient that besides the sexual 
 mode of expression he had another fashion of apperception 
 based upon the antithetical formula of inspiration-expiration 
 which had been set in operation by the inferiority of his. 
 respiratory organ inclusive of the nose. Even the speech used 
 for our mutual understanding likewise made use of such formulae 
 and a sigh of relief from an oppressed breast could very well 
 be clothed in the figure of " having air again." The patient 
 was also able to represent, in pantomime form, memories of his 
 boyhood race, a wild race to get to first place, the desire to be 
 the first at the goal by means of breathless efforts. In a dream 
 during the latter part of the treatment he made use of his ability 
 to whistle (which is to be understood figuratively) in order to 
 accentuate his manliness by respiration. The dream was as 
 follows : 
 
 " It seemed to me that four people were whistling. I remark 
 that I can do it just as well as they." 
 
 A short time before he had begun a relation with the governess 
 in the family of his married brother and had asked her the 
 question if his brother often visited his wife at night. The girl 
 answered in the negative. Being able to whistle is the ideal of 
 all small boys and some girls make efforts to acquire this manly 
 attitude. In his dream he made a tentative comparison to see 
 if he was the equal of his male relatives and thus arrived from this 
 line, which originated in his feeling of effeminacy, to the 
 masculine protest. He is the equal of all four. 
 
 In this case too I found my observation confirmed that the 
 neurotic feels his sexual libido, and manifests the same only in 
 accordance with the manner and degree that is required by his 
 fictive goal, so that every psychological opinion which perceives 
 in the libido a constitutionally acquired factor, in its alterations 
 and fortunes the essence of the neurosis, becomes untenable. It 
 is especially easy to arrange sexual excitations and they are 
 always in some way subordinated to the masculine protest. The 
 indentification of masculinity with sexuality takes place in the 
 neurosis by means of abstraction, symbolization and a figurative- 
 somatic-jargon, and it is this false artifice of the neurotic which 
 fills his thought content with sexual pictures. 
 
 The contentiousness and hidden querulousness which stand in 
 the closest relation to the "tendency to disparagement present 
 difficult tactical and pedagogic problems to the psychothera- 
 peutist. They betray in every case the weak point, the feeling 
 of inferiority of the patient which drives him to compensation. 
 It is easy to uncover this neurotic aggressiveness by a very simple 
 mode of approach. Let it be imagined that the neurotic feels 
 that he has entirely lost his masculinity and feels himself
 
 TENDENCY TO DISPARAGE OTHERS, ETC. 141 
 
 humiliated and now let it be noted through what artifice he seeks 
 to carry out the completion of his character or his over- 
 compensation. One will then find a number of preparatory 
 devices, characteristics, syndromes and symptoms which have for 
 their aim the representation of an ideal organ, but one must 
 however be prepared to view this as a riddle, which requires 
 solution. For this " ideal organ," namely the neurosis or 
 psychosis is of masculine origin and has for its purpose the 
 prevention of a lowering of the patient's ego-consciousness, and 
 to bring him closer to his masculine goal. Cruel reality, however, 
 impedes the development of this fiction to such an extent that 
 the most peculiar circuitous ways must be resorted to so that 
 partial and apparent results are striven after without bringing 
 the patient nearer to his goal. Without the help of the 
 psychotherapeutist who in rare cases may prove to be a substitute 
 for the fortunes of life, this " will to seem " becomes more and 
 more accentuated in case of failure, and constantly strengthens 
 the abstract, main line of the old guiding fiction. One of the 
 principal circuitous ways along which this ideal organ i.e., the 
 masculine protest, works, is the tendency to disparagement. 
 That is the reason that it has been mentioned so often because 
 it attracts the attention of the physician and is an expression 
 of the strength of the neurotic impulse. It likewise furnishes 
 an ever-present point of contact by means of which it may be 
 possible to instil some insight into the patient and it is at the 
 bottom of those phenomena which Freud has described as 
 resistance and has falsely viewed as the result of repressed 
 sexual excitations. With this tendency the neurotic comes to the 
 physician and he carries it with him, as does also the normal 
 person, when he returns home. Only that then his increased 
 insight stands as a guard, warning him against giving expression 
 to this tendency and thus the patient is forced to show his desire 
 to be " first " in other ways. 
 
 One should never hesitate to guard all expressions of doubt, 
 of critique, of forgetfulness, of tardiness, all demands of the 
 patient, relapses after improvements, continued silence, as well 
 as adherence to symptoms as effective means of the, tendency 
 toward disparagement directed against the psychotherapeutist. 
 One will rarely err in proceeding thus and usually be justified 
 in this opinion by the comparison of coincident phenomena of 
 a similar trend. The expressions of these tendencies are often 
 of the most subtle nature. Shall I add that the most extensive 
 experience and knowledge in regard to this " tendency to 
 disparage " is barely sufficient to prevent being taken by surprise, 
 and that a great deal of tact, renouncement of authority, and 
 even friendliness, watchful interest and the consciousness of 
 "being in the presence of a sick person with whom it is out of
 
 142 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 place to engage in strife are indispensable to good results ? 
 
 I found it necessary once to explain to a stuttering patient 
 the position of the larynx, by means of a drawing. Instead of 
 taking the drawing home with him as he had intended in order 
 to give it further consideration, he left it with me on the table. 
 The next day he was a quarter of an hour late, first went to the 
 toilet, related something of another patient who had complained 
 of me, and after some silence related a dream which ran as 
 follows : 
 
 " It seemed to me that I had been looking at a drawing. A 
 cylinder extended out from a circle; it did not run straight but 
 sideways." 
 
 The interpretation showed that this dream had reference to 
 the drawing of the larynx on which the larynx was drawn straight 
 downwards. The patient argued with me in the dream as 
 though he would say " How would it be if my physician were 
 wrong ? ' ' and thus revealed to me his distrustful attitude the 
 fear of being deceived and at the same time the tendency to 
 disparagement directed against me, which had been revealed by 
 the subconscious measures of the forgetfulness, the delay, the 
 recital of the complaint, the silence, and finally by the tentative 
 endeavor in the dream to put me in the wrong. One may justly 
 expect that the patient applies his stuttering for the same 
 purpose against me and will continue thus to use it. In spite 
 of many contradictions he forced me into the role of a former 
 teacher whom he often corrected, so that he could continue to 
 use against me his former artifices. 3 This was revealed by his 
 remarks concerning his dreams and further from the fact that 
 his disease was assumed and adhered to in order to decry his 
 father and gain superiority over him. 
 
 A female patient who was assigned to me for treatment 
 because of depression, suicidal ideas, weeping fits and "lesbischen 
 Neigungen " was sent by me after a brief course of treatment, 
 because of the suspicion of a genital affection, to a gynecologist 
 who removed a large myoma and prognosticated a cure of the 
 neurosis from the operation. After the operation the patient 
 journeyed to her home and from there wrote me that the 
 gynecologist was right in his prognosis. Of course she added 
 it was to be expected that the operation succeeded better in the 
 case of a countess upon whom the same surgeon had operated, 
 and of whom she had read in the papers, than it had in her case. 
 Soon afterwards she visited me, argued against one of my 
 contributions which she had in some way procured, declared her 
 extreme interest in my method of treatment, said her condition 
 was the same as before the operation and vanished. From the 
 
 3 An artifice which had for its purpose a tendencious, derogatory, affective 
 expression.
 
 TENDENCY TO DISPARAGE OTHERS, ETC. 143 
 
 portion of her history which she communicated to me during 
 the treatment it became apparent among other things that she 
 lived at sword 's-point with her whole environment, that she 
 dominated her husband entirely, that she hated the village and 
 played the man psychically and sexually to one of her friends. 
 Her fear of the blessing of children was astounding, -sexual 
 relations unbearable because her husband seemed too heavy. 
 When the latter visited her once during the treatment, she had 
 the day before his visit the following dream : 
 
 " It seemed to me (that the whole room was enveloped by fire. 
 
 She gave the information spontaneously that this was a typical 
 dream, and that it always returned at the time of her menstrual 
 period. This time it occurred a long time before her period. The 
 dream could be easily recognized as an attempt to use a feminine 
 situation, menstruation, for the purpose of the masculine protest 
 that is to avoid sexual relations. A deeper penetration into 
 the meaning which would certainly have revealed an enuresis in 
 childhood (fire-myoma, see " Studie," Appendix) was prevented 
 by the interruption of the treatment. I received another letter 
 which contained the assurance that the patient from now on 
 would try to find peace in her environment in my sense of the 
 word. I think that this must have been still difficult for her. 
 
 Obstinacy, wildness and unruliness may in the same way serve 
 as the proof which female patients seek in order to show how 
 little they are fitted for the feminine role. These preparations 
 begin already in the earliest childhood and lead gradually to 
 physical and psychic aptitudes in gestures, facial expression, 
 emotional predispositions and mimicry, while the character 
 develops in the direction of the ideal guiding line and cautiously 
 introduces the patients' attitude of life. In many cases these 
 characteristics are manifested in a direct manner and serve with- 
 out deviation for the expression of the masculine protest. Or 
 there takes place a change of formula in the guiding fiction, 
 either because of the emergence of contradictions in the guiding 
 line, in the event of a real or threatened defeat, or because of 
 something that usually coincides therewith, namely, an obstacle 
 of reality which is estimated as unsurmountable. Under the 
 construction of a security-giving anxiety or feeling of guilt, or 
 security-giving antithetical traits (dissociation of other writers), 
 the deviations in neurotic circuitous ways follow. But the 
 preparatory devices persist. It is only that the neurotic cautious- 
 ness introduces the devia under these new forms of security, 
 anxiety, feeling of guilt, seizures, when the patient would other- 
 wise have had to answer with the originally developed emotions 
 such as, anger, rage, aggression. Frequently there come to light 
 purposefully grouped memory pictures of a certain "boundless- 
 ness," thoughts, memories, illusions as though one were
 
 144 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 boundlessly desirous, sensuous, demoniac, criminal, are 
 manifested, at times obviously arranged oversights and accidents 
 which are nothing else than admonitions to be cautious. Or the 
 sudden termination of the direct masculine aggressiveness takes 
 place always just before a decision, a peculiarity which 
 characterizes many neurotic love affairs. The deviation in such 
 cases from the direct guiding line may follow in a perverse 
 manner under the influence of the craving for security, or the 
 guiding line leads him to seek the protection of the father, 
 mother, God, alcoholism or an idea. Attempts to reach the top 
 through feminine means, or to surpass at least, all women, leads 
 to excessive cleanliness, to the " cleaning mania," to a 
 masochistic subjection or coquetry, to a desire to please and in 
 female patients to a constant fretting. Along with this there will 
 always be found character-traits and tell-tale traces which betray 
 that the masculine fiction is all-powerful and seeks to arrive at 
 its purpose by these circuitous ways. The excessive eroticism 
 in many of these cases is not to be understood as real, that is to 
 say, as depending upon a constitutional basis, but shows itself 
 to be associated with the fiction, and to be due to an 
 uninterrupted attentiveness which has taken an erotic direction. 
 The same is true of perversions and an apparently weakened 
 libido, which are constructed from neurotic subterfuges. All 
 sexual relations in the neurosis are only a simile. 
 
 The fear of the superiority of the male and the depreciatory 
 struggle directed against it is often clothed, as result of the 
 neurotic antithetical perspective, in phantasies of emasculation 
 which have for their object the deprivation of the male of worth. 
 In the dreams of these female neurotic patients this comes 
 clearly to light and can be readily proved by coexistent 
 derogatory tendencies. One of these dreams is here given. The 
 patient came under my care shortly after she had undergone an 
 operation for a fistula, because of a compulsory thought and 
 excitement. The compulsory thought ran, " I shall never be 
 able to attain anything." At our very first meeting she 
 expressed the thought whether I would be able to attain any- 
 thing. The same line of disparagement illuminated her dream. 
 She dreamed, "I cried out in my dream, Marie, the 
 fistula is there again." The surgeon had promised her 
 complete recovery and kept his word. He is under obligations 
 to her in many ways and did not wish to take a fee. The patient 
 became very excited over this and regarded it as an humiliation. 
 For some time after she tortured herself with plans for paying 
 the debt. Her servant was called Marie, and she had never 
 spoken to her about the operation. If there should take place a 
 new breaking out of the fistula her first trip would be to the 
 surgeon to whom she would express her opinion Marie, a
 
 TENDENCY TO DISPARAGE OTHERS, ETC. 145 
 
 female servant, becomes the surgeon. The patient imagines the 
 circumstances demanded by her masculine egoistic feeling, the 
 surgeon has operated poorly, has not kept his promise, is a 
 woman and a servant at the same time This expresses the way 
 in which she could attain everything if she were only a man. 
 
 When one examines the published analyses of no matter what 
 psychological school the mechanism of the neurotic masculine 
 protest will always be found therein. I shall again emphasize 
 this in connection with the analysis of a case of migraine. 
 
 The patient related immediately from the reminiscences of 
 her childhood that she had constantly lived in conflict with her 
 elder brothers because they wished to dominate her. This sort 
 of reminiscences led, as soon as they were voluntarily related, 
 to a hidden contest against male domination, and one will never 
 be deceived in the assumption that other character-traits also 
 point to this strife to become equal to the male. Uninfluenced, 
 our patient continued to relate that she played almost exclusively 
 with boys and was treated by them as one of their kind. This 
 method of expression betrayed very clearly the high estimation 
 in which the male sex was held, which brought this girl nearer 
 to her father something which may easily be interpreted as 
 sexual love for the father and as the " incest complex." 
 
 The development of our patient took the same course. She 
 took her father wholly as her ideal ; especially as she once caught 
 her mother in a lie she was anxious to imitate her father's 
 example of truthfulness and punctuality/ She remembered also 
 that her father had often regretted that she was not' a boy, and 
 that it was his wish that she should study. In this situation an 
 egoistic feeling was naturally developed in which ambitious 
 efforts could not be absent. On the other hand her bashfulness 
 which wrecked many of her principles was very noticeable to 
 herself and others. This bashfulness is found with extraordinary 
 frequency in the histories of neurotics. It is identical with the 
 feeling of uncertainty, as soon as this is manifested in relations 
 with others. Blushing, stuttering, downcast looks, avoidance of 
 the society of adults, excitement before examinations and stage 
 fright often accompany the attempts at approaches to other 
 people or at the establishment of relations with them. Analysis 
 shows that the feeling of inferiority is the source of this sort of 
 uncertainty, usually accompanied by a strong feeling of shame. 
 The feeling of inferiority is conditioned by somatic inferiority 
 which makes itself felt psychically, by faults of childhood and 
 strong psychic pressure on the part of parents and relatives, 
 and finally by real or imagined femininity which develops early 
 
 'What other authors term imitativeness, identification, is always to be 
 Jo!ced upon ns the assumption of a model for the purpose of a heightening of 
 the ego-consciousness.
 
 146 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 in strong contrast to a male member of the family (father 01 
 brother). The analogy according to which the most diverse 
 emotions of being belittled, of humiliation, of inferiority are 
 apperceived by the child is then usually the analogy of " the 
 smallness of the penis," which is to be understood symbolically, 
 and thoughts of castration develop, of a feminine role in sexual 
 relations, of conception and pregnancy or of persecution, of 
 being stabbed or wounded, of falling and being " beneath." All 
 these fictions are revealed in day-dreams, hallucinations, 
 dreams, in so far as they are not wholly supplanted by the fiction 
 of the masculine protest and express a feeling of being belittled, 
 which breaks forth in the thought, " I am a woman," against 
 which the egoistic feeling presses forward and the masculine 
 protest struggles. 
 
 Of our patient we hear that she had some knowledge of sexual 
 relations at a time when from lack of experience she was unable 
 to take into account its results and purposes. In such cases we 
 may always expect to find bashfulness, shame and doubt, and in 
 later years fear of tests and decisions in every form, traits of 
 character which resolve themselves analytically into the idea 
 that others might be able to discover on the person of the patient 
 genital defects or omissions. The characteristics which display 
 an effort to attain equality with the male sex are usually 
 manifested at an early age, and this effort occupies the 
 foreground, while in many cases because of a tinge of hopeless- 
 ness " the innate coloring of the decision " is affected. Because 
 the direct route to masculinity is closed or seems to be so, 
 circuitous and deviating ways are sought out. On one of these 
 circuitous ways lies the socially valuable effort of woman toward 
 emancipation, on another, the private expression of the 
 masculine protest, the neurosis of woman, the construction of the 
 ideal male organ. 
 
 It was easy to see in the case of this patient that in her child- 
 hood she had sought to attain the domination of man, of her 
 brothers and her father, as she apparently had made very short 
 work of her mother. Her father fell entirely under her authority. 
 After a little experience the conclusion is easily arrived at 
 concerning the direction of her neurotic symptoms, that her 
 headache and migraine represent since her marriage a means for 
 gaining the mastery over her husband. And in this mastery she 
 sought a substitute for her masculine power which she believed 
 she had lost. 
 
 I know the objection which might be raised at this point. How 
 shall the severe suffering of a neurosis, the terrible pain of 
 trigeminal neuralgia, insomnia, unconsciousness, paralysis, 
 migraine all be thrown into the bargain merely as a means to an 
 end, because of the failure to attain equality with man ? I have
 
 TENDENCY TO DISPARAGE OTHERS, ETC. 147 
 
 myself struggled against this conviction which thrust itself upon 
 me. Is the case very much different when human beings endure 
 all sorts of hardships for a whole life time in order to attain 
 some other worthless bubble ? Furthermore, as I have already 
 shown, on these neurotic circuitous paths to masculinity are. found 
 also crime, prostitution, the psychosis, suicide. This in addition 
 to the mystery which shrouds human psychic mechanisms may be 
 cited in support of my understanding of the matter. The psychic 
 therapy of the neuroses is certainly based upon an 
 understanding of the exaggerated valuation of the male 
 destiny. And I draw from this objection the advantage 
 in regard to my patients inasmuch as I endeavor to show them 
 how they, placed before a choice between a natural role in the 
 neurotic masculine goal, choose the greater of the two evils. 
 
 From the previous history of our patient the further facts may 
 be emphasized that she always had a disinclination to play with 
 dolls, furthermore that until her marriage she took the greatest 
 pleasure in gymnastics and sports. That these efforts, too, 
 served as a substitute for masculinity is manifested more from 
 their connection with other masculine traits than from their own 
 nature, more especially from a sort of importunity with which 
 the patient spoke of them. She was also passionately fond of 
 extensive touring, of which inclination since the birth of her 
 child, whom she wished and expected to be male, only the desire 
 to make occasional journeys remained. 
 
 The error must be avoided, however, of assuming that the 
 traits of character here described and emphasized by the patient 
 herself formed isolated islands in the extensive soul-life of a 
 woman. On the contrary, it must be assumed that these 
 masculine traits came to expression under the pressure of a 
 dominating tendency, had their origin in a distinct life-plan and 
 became conspicuous phenomena only because they had the power 
 to do so, while all around these phenomena there existed an 
 indistinct, only occasionally manifested masculine craving which 
 was principally occupied with the prevention and transformation 
 of feminine emotions until such time as it shall have reached an 
 independent existence. In this conflict of masculine against 
 feminine emotions the egoistic feeling is thrown entirely on the 
 side of masculinity and makes use even of persistently emerging 
 feminine emotions, among others also of the female sexual 
 appetite in order to collect them as humiliating and dangerous,* 
 to group them, to exaggerate, to emphasize them and at the 
 same time to surround them with sentinels so that they may be 
 robbed of their influence. These sentinels, securities, usually 
 extend beyond the sphere of feminine emotions. One always 
 
 4 This affective accentuation is always derived from a purposeful device. 
 Feminine r61e and abyss, drowning, death, being run over, or strangled.
 
 148 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 finds that these reassurances and protective devices, among 
 which should be placed our symptoms of disease, do not stop at 
 the mere fulfillment of their destiny, that is, the avoidance of 
 defeat, but that they permeate these patients with a sort of 
 cautiousness which finally renders them unfit for anything. It is 
 only then that the primary insecurity which may be likened to 
 a fear of a feminine role is at an end, but by this time it has 
 permeated the entire life-relation of the individual and forces 
 him outside the realm of all social relationship. We find all our 
 patients in the midst of this retreat and their symptoms are for 
 them assurances that they will not be forced back into the tumult 
 of life. From this there develops a neurotic picture which often 
 reveals a reversion to simpler, more child-like relations, either 
 because these are developed after maturity, or for the reason that 
 maturity was generally impeded. Thus many act as though they 
 were in the nursery. Family relations become accentuated to an 
 extraordinary degree, or instead of childish love for the parents 
 the old childish obstinacy develops and both factors are used 
 as guiding symbols, as though the patient sought to discover in 
 .all persons the father or mother. Notwithstanding the fact that 
 he comes in conflict with reality on account of this fiction, the 
 patient holds fast to it because he found security in the relations 
 existing in the nursery. Kipling relates of a person lying in the 
 death struggle, whom he observed until the expected cry for the 
 mother came from his lips. One has only to listen to the street- 
 Arabs, who, when hard pressed, immediately cry out for their 
 mother, in order to comprehend this longing for security. The 
 same longing for security has crept into the worshipping of the 
 Mother of God. In girls, the longing for security is as a rule 
 in more pronounced analogy to the relation to the father. The 
 " uterine phantasy " which is placed in the foreground by G. 
 Griiner I have also found employed by neurotics only when they 
 wish to express that peace can be found only with the mother 
 or when they have thoughts of suicide, that is, the wish to return 
 io the same state in which they were before birth. (The herma- 
 phroditic progression backward.) 
 
 Our patient, too, as child and girl sought this leaning on her 
 father who spoiled her not a little. The mother, as is often the 
 case, was more attracted to her brothers. This trait also shows 
 itself to be conditioned by the exaggerated estimation of the 
 masculine principle, which the father, being a man, would more 
 Teadily renounce in her favor. Our patient soon noticed that her 
 father's care for her increased whenever she was ill. Thus she 
 came to have a special preference for being sick, which procured 
 for her further petting, love, and sweetmeats. She must have 
 regarded as the most appropriate substitute for that manliness 
 -which she believed to be lost to her, that condition of sickness
 
 TENDENCY TO DISPARAGE OTHERS, ETC. 149 
 
 which gained for her the command of the whole house, the 
 gratification of all her wishes and permitted her to escape all 
 unpleasant encounters in school and society. Yes, it meant for 
 her the highest attainable potency, her feeling of security, as 
 soon as her father believed that she was ill. And she sometimes 
 pretended to be ill, that is, she simulated or exaggerated. 
 
 This fact of simulation in childhood is often found in the 
 anamneses of neurotics. I have called attention to this 
 phenomenon in the " Psychischen Behandlung der Trigeminus 
 Neuralgic," and have mentioned that children often pretend to 
 be deaf, blind, dumb, etc. E. Jones mentions this fact in his 
 " Hamletstudie," and calls attention to the resemblance of 
 Hamlet's pretense to that of children. There are many historical 
 examples such as Saul, Claudius and others, and they show us the 
 problem in its pure culture. The accompanying thought is 
 always how can I secure myself from a danger, how can I 
 avoid a defeat ? It is clear that the neurotic who 
 apperceives according to the analogy man-woman perceives 
 in the domination of a position a masculine equivalent, a 
 substitute and protection for the threatened loss of manliness. 
 And the technique of simulation consists in the fact that the 
 individual sets forth a fiction and acts in accordance therewith 
 as though he had the defect which would require such action, 
 while he knows and maintains that he has no such defect. We 
 maintain that the psychically conditioned neurotic symptom 
 arises in the same way only with this difference that- the fiction 
 is not recognized as a fiction, but is held as true.* 
 
 As is frequently the case, we can obtain the best insight into 
 this condition not from a neurotic symptom, but from a borderline 
 case. We mean the psychology of sympathy. We are in a 
 position to feel the suffering of another person as if it affected 
 our own corporal sphere. Yes, we can even feel the suffering of 
 another in anticipation before its occurrence. Well known 
 examples of this are the anxious feelings which many persons 
 experience when they see others, servant girls, roof workers or 
 circus actors in dangerous situations, or even when they only 
 think of such situations. These symptoms are usually felt by, 
 those who suffer from dizziness when in high places and they act 
 when others are in danger exactly as though they themselves 
 stood at a window or on a rock. They withdraw under the feeling 
 of anxiety, placing a safe distance between themselves and the 
 usually not dangerous position, in short, they have a feeling akin 
 to that which they would have were they themselves in a 
 dangerous position. Here the exaggerated cautiousness becomes 
 apparent which in neurotics is so strong that they will not cross 
 
 3 See theoretical part, Chapter III., "The accentuated fiction."
 
 J5Q THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 a bridge for fear that they might fall into the water or throw 
 themselves into it. I have found similar mechanisms of cautious- 
 ness in all cases of fear of places and they reveal to us that we 
 have a patient who wishes to avoid decisions, who fears whether 
 he is equal to a certain situation, usually the sexual partner. In 
 all other phobias, too, as I have shown in my description of 
 syphilidophobia, (Zeitschr. f. Psych., Bd. I, Heft 9, 1911), this 
 "sympathy" in a situation which has not as yet been realized, 
 but which may be expected with probability, constitutes the 
 characteristic symptom (Lipps). It reveals itself as a very 
 efficient tool of the craving for security, takes the place in many 
 cases of a morality which is not invincible in character. Careful 
 examination of this character-trait reveals that it has its 
 foundation in that sort of feeling-participation for purposes of 
 security, which is clearly set forth in Kant's categorical 
 imperatives for the expression of the whole character, when this 
 philosopher wishes each single individual to be influenced in his 
 action by a point of view which permits of being regarded as if 
 it were elevated to a universal maxim. 6 
 
 Fictions, maxims, guiding principles then similar to the 
 reassuring fictions of the simulator form part of the mental 
 character of all persons, especially of neurotically inclined 
 children. And reduced to their nucleus all of these formulae are 
 as follows : Act as though you were a complete man, or wished 
 to be one. The content of this procedure which usually turns 
 out to be in the nature of a substitute is determined beforehand 
 by the experience of the child and by the special type of somatic 
 inferiority from which he suffers, but is subject to special 
 alterations which must be regarded as formal changes arising 
 from special circumstances connected with experiences to whicn 
 "he gives neurotic valuations. 
 
 Somatic inferiority determines through the accompanying 
 psychic phenomena of repugnance the direction of the ideas of 
 pleasure and thus conducts the compensatory processes into the 
 psychic regions. Here, too, we behold the craving for security 
 at work and usually in such a purposeful manner that it works 
 coefficients which offer security and thus gives rise to an over- 
 compensation. 7 In the development, for instance of the stuttering 
 Demosthenes to the greatest orator of Greece, of Clara 
 Schumann (who was deaf) to an accomplished musician, of the 
 near-sighted G. Freitag, of many poets and painters with 
 anomalies of the eye to visually talented persons, and of the 
 numerous physicians with anomalies of hearing, we perceive the 
 result of the craving for security. We likewise see the result 
 in every weak child who wishes to be a hero, in the clumsy child 
 
 6 Vaihinger, " The Philosophy of As If." 
 
 7 J. Reich, " Art and the Eye," 5st, Rundschau, 1909.
 
 TENDENCY TO DISPARAGE OTHERS, ETC. 151 
 
 with thyroid affection who wishes to be an athletic racer and later 
 in life always tries to be the first. 
 
 But the direction of the craving for security in order to have 
 its objective point must depend upon an example. And here the 
 man offers more attraction to the egoistic feeling of childhood 
 than does the woman. Indeed it seems that a female example 
 can only be imitated after an initiatory conflict and only when 
 this feminine example permits the attainment of mastery along 
 the lines of least resistance. 
 
 This was the case with our patient as it often is with cases 
 of migraine. Numerous writers have emphasized the circum- 
 stance that it is so often possible to trace the inheritance of 
 
 . migraine from the mother. We must give up the idea of the 
 inheritance of migraine in the same manner as we were obliged 
 to abandon the view of its organic etiology. I have already 
 explained the nature of this question 8 in the case of a seven-f 
 year-old girl, and had before that been convinced that a feeling 
 of uncertainty and humiliation precedes the attack of migraine, 
 and that the attacks serve to place the whole household at the 
 service of the sufferer, for which reason the example of the 
 mother is imitated. The husband, the father, other relatives 
 suffer no less from the attack than does the patient. Thus 
 migraine is to be placed in the series of neurotic affections 
 which serve to secure the mastery in the household and in the 
 family. That this tyranny has a masculine significance and can 
 be reduced to the wish to be a man becomes obvious from further 
 analysis. But a brief consideration of the migraine which occurs 
 at the time of menstruation teaches us to understand in this 
 case also the dissatisfaction with the feminine role. I have in 
 various instances learned to recognize this connection with 
 
 __je,pilepsy, sciatica, trigeminal neuralgia. I have proved that 
 these latter concfftibns in the cases mentioned by me were 
 psychogenic in nature and originated whenever stronger 
 securities were demanded. 
 
 The only sphere of influence which remained for our patient 
 was her, tyranny over her father, over whom she had complete 
 power, and this did not entirely satisfy her lust for power. 
 Hence, a "still, still more" declared itself, as is often the casein 
 neurotic affections, and she sought a more obvious grasp of the 
 subjugation of the father. Her mother suffered from migraine 
 and the time of her attacks was, as is usual with patients 
 suffering from migraine, a time of absolute power. Therefore 
 our patient also who comprehended the value of the disease 
 pretended to be suffering from it." And our patient succeeded 
 ' " Neurotische Disposition," Jahrbuch Bleuler- Freud, 1908. 
 *In my work on " The Neurotic Disposition," I have already emphasized 
 what must likewise be mentioned here, that an original somatic inferiority deter- 
 mines the choice of a symptom. In the neurosis the mechanism becomes the 
 property of the psyche in the form of a disease-preparedness.
 
 152 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 in doing what aboriginal man succeeded in doing when he made 
 himself gods who filled him with terror, in creating for herself 
 the migraine. This " as if " creation, this fiction became 
 substantially independent, so that the pain and suffering could 
 awaken whenever the patient needed them. The dramatic 
 performance became so successful that the patient, because of 
 its value in the direction of her tendencies, no longer saw 
 through the fiction. Indeed she won by means of the same a 
 superiority over and security against the husband just as she had 
 previously done in regard to her father when she made use of 
 this weapon to attain security. She strove to attain a masculine 
 part in the marriage relation, directing all her activities 
 towards gaining the mastery over her husband, but as there 
 always remained an "and yet" it was necessary to obtain still 
 further substitutes as evidences of power. And the most 
 important of these substitute formations was the resolution not 
 to have any more children. It had become a general principle 
 in the household of this patient as in many others (one of which 
 I described in the :< Mannliche Einstellung Weiblicher 
 Neurotiker," Zeitsch., f. Psychoanalyse, Heft 4, 1910) that a 
 woman who suffered from such headaches should have no more 
 children. Insomnia, impossibility of going to sleep again after 
 having been disturbed, references to the difficulties concerning 
 the place of residence, various protective arrangements and the 
 spoiling of the only child completed the security. 
 
 That these phenomena are merely a new view of the old wish 
 for masculinity is proved by her first dream. 
 
 "7 was at the depot with my mother. We wished to -visit my 
 father who was ill. I was afraid of missing the train. Then 
 suddenly my father appeared. Then I was at a watch maker's 
 and wanted to buy a substitute for the one I had lost." 
 
 She felt superior to her mother who was greatly respected by 
 her, and also to her father who humored her slightest wish. 
 Sick means weak. The father had died a short time previously. 
 Shortly after his death she had one of her dreadful attacks of 
 migraine. In the dream he came to life again and his person 
 signified for her a maximating of her ego-consciousness. She 
 had always been impatient, afraid of being late. Her brother 
 came before she did and became a man. She felt spurred on 
 to hasten (a man does it with one bound, a woman with a 
 hundred), in order to arrive at the summit of her ego-conscious- 
 ness. The day before the dream she was hastening to a concert 
 and was held back by her mother. Women are often late and she 
 did not wish to follow their example. 
 
 Reality reminded her nevertheless that she was a woman like 
 her mother. The thought lies in the picture of being together 
 with her mother at the dep6t. Her aggressive affect which is
 
 TENDENCY TO DISPARAGE OTHERS, ETC. 153 
 
 identical with the masculine protest is directed against her 
 husband, against her father. In the further analysis of the 
 dream the disparaging thoughts come to light, such as that .the 
 wife is stronger, more vigorous and healthier than the man. 
 Then as a further incentive to conflict, the father (the man) 
 suddenly emerges. This simile is taken from swimming and 
 signifies in the neurotic perspective the " being above " in 
 opposition to being " beneath." While the patient was afraid 
 of missing the train, of being left behind in comparison with 
 another, that is to say in comparison with the man, which can 
 be supplied from the connection to submit to him, she notices 
 as her experience increases that the man is first, is above. The 
 application of a picture, of an abstract idea in space for the 
 purpose of illustrating the feeling of being belittled is often 
 found in the neurosis, (See Syphilidophobia, 1. c.) because it is 
 adapted to prepare the disposition to conflict in the most 
 extensive manner by means of the fictitious, abstract antithesis 
 " nothing or all." In the same manner the artifice is made use 
 of in painting, of representing the power of woman and the fear 
 she inspires by giving her a higher position in space. In 
 religious and cosmological phantasies this representation of 
 superiority is the elevation of the position assigned. That in 
 her dream the patient came through the spatially antithetical 
 scheme according to the analogy of " man-woman," is indicated 
 in the position of the patient beside her mother, that is, with 
 her mother. 
 
 Thus the first dream which the patient had during the course 
 of the treatment begins with considerations of masculine and 
 feminine roles. One should never neglect to take into consider- 
 ation unprejudicially the possibility of the continuation of the 
 dream and to await and compare new confirmatory data, even 
 though the psycho-therapeutist may have the most firm 
 convictions concerning the significance of the problem for the 
 neurosis. The further explanation of the patient was in regard 
 to a watch chain which had been lost through the fault of her 
 husband. She cannot remember having lost a watch. Interro- 
 gated concerning the significance in the dream of the watch 
 which was substituted for the chain, the patient answered with 
 considerable affect but evasively, that it was not the loss of the 
 chain but of a charm attached to it that disturbed her. In 
 short the watch hanging to a lady's chain is identical with the 
 lost watch charm for which the patient grieves and for which 
 she seeks a substitute. 
 
 The dream began with a symbolic contrast represented in 
 space of an inferior femininity with a superior masculinity and 
 ends with the logically following conclusion of the striving for 
 a substitute for the lost masculinity. In this fictitious guiding 
 
 M
 
 154 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 line thus constructed the character, the affect reaction, the 
 predispositions and neurotic symptoms must be represented, the 
 correctness of which assumption the result of the case substan- 
 tiated. The character-traits of impatience, discontent, obstinacy 
 and reticence proved therefore to be, as did all the rest, auxiliary 
 lines which stood in a dependent relation to the guiding fiction, 
 that of attaining a masculine elevation.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 CRUELTY. CONSCIENCE. PERVERSION AND NEUROSIS 
 
 THE discovery of traits of a cruel nature in very earliest 
 childhood is unusually frequent in the course of an analysis of 
 neuroses and psychoses. It would be wrong to apply our moral 
 standards to the first two years of life, and to regard the 
 activities of such children, who in reality are still incapable of 
 either good or evil, as sadistic or brutal as it often happens when 
 parents or guardians relate the histories of psychopaths. For these 
 manifestations become psychic, or in our sense neurotic only 
 when they begin to serve a definite end and are constructed as an 
 abstraction which has some future tendency in view. 1 The fact 
 that they are always created out of possibilities and capabilities 
 of experience does not justify the assumption of a constitutional 
 factor. As a matter of fact one only finds the character-trait of 
 cruelty as a compensatory psychic construction in those children 
 who, apart from this, are forced by their feeling of inferiority to 
 an early and hasty development of their ideal of personality. 
 The accompanying traits of obstinacy, rage, sexual precocity, 
 ambition, envy, greed, malice and delight in doing harm as they 
 are regularly evoked by the guiding fiction, and which the strife 
 and emotional predispositions help to form and mobilize, furnish 
 the highly colored kaleidoscopic picture of the refractory child. 
 The lust for power of such children is regularly manifested in 
 the family life and play, but most of all in their bearing, attitude 
 and glance. In the play and early thoughts concerning the 
 choice of a vocation, the tendency to cruelty is often betrayed in 
 a veiled manner and makes them regard as ideal types, the 
 hangman, the butcher, the policeman, the grave digger, the 
 savage or coachman, "because they can whip the horses," or 
 the teacher, "because they can whip the children," the 
 physician "because they cut," or the soldier, "because they 
 shoot," the judge, etc. 3 The spirit of investigation is also often 
 associated with this, and the torturing of animals and children, 
 speculations and phantasies concerning possible misfortunes, 
 often of those which might befall near relatives, an interest in 
 funerals and church-yards and in horrible sadistic stories, are 
 begun. 
 
 1 See also Wagner v. Janreg. " Ueber krankhaftc Triebhandlungen," 
 Wiener klin. Wochenschrift, 1912. 
 
 'Adler, " Aggreasionstneb," 1. c. 
 
 155
 
 156 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 The first purpose of these exaggerated tendencies to cruelty, 
 is to prevent the emergence and the becoming effective of the 
 ever present possibility of weakness and pity, because these 
 stand in opposition to the masculine guiding line. The general 
 spreading of this craving to be manly which is thought to lead 
 to superiority over others, is nowhere so clearly shown as in the 
 disinterested pleasure in injuries. In neurotics this may be 
 especially strongly emphasized and may be utilized in the most 
 unreasonable manner for the purpose of exalting the ego- 
 consciousness. La Rochefoucauld expresses this in his quaint 
 manner as follows, "There is something in the misfortunes of 
 our friends which is not quite displeasing." 
 
 I heard a patient laugh aloud when told of the Messina earth- 
 , quake. He suffered from severe masochistic attacks. Com- 
 pulsory laughter often possessed this patient when he was in 
 the presence of a superior person, his teacher for instance, or 
 someone who had some claim of authority over him. One 
 finds in such patients a strong inclination to dominate over or 
 torment others, at times sadistic phantasies, until one discovers 
 that the compulsion to laughter, the lust for power and the 
 sadism are erected over the weak point of the feeling of 
 inferiority, in order to compensate for it. Pyromania, the 
 delight in fire-brands and the almost irresistible compulsion to 
 think of fire, or to cry out " fire " in the theatre or church seem 
 to be referable, according to certain of my findings, to defects 
 of the sensitive bladder or to eyes oversensitive to light, or at 
 any rate to preparations for the compensation of these defects. 
 But this guiding line of masculine cruelty is threatened with 
 great danger and accident in a society where there exist ethical 
 imperatives, it can, therefore, be only followed in a disguised 
 form. Usually one sees deviations and circuitous paths in 
 following which the sadistic trait seems wholly or in part lost. 
 In this way the neurotic succeeds in gaining superiority over the 
 weak, or he operates on this new line so skillfully as to manage 
 to set up an aggression which enables him to dominate and 
 torture others. In the compulsion neuroses one frequently finds 
 that these patients have abandoned their sadistic guiding line 
 and have turned to penance and reassuring measures, which 
 have the same compulsory character and are not less oppressive 
 for the environment than were the previous emotional predis- 
 positions of the patient, and hence are fitted in the same 
 manner as prime characteristics to render obvious the superiority 
 of the neurotic. In the major attacks of so-called affective 
 epilepsy, of hysteria, of trigeminal neuralgia, of migraine, etc., 
 the masculine lust for power turns in the direction of the 
 neurotic " readiness for a paroxysm," but the helplessness of 
 the environment and its suffering is not less but rather greater 
 than in the rages and enmity which were active ways oi the
 
 CRUELTY, CONSCIENCE, ETC. 157 
 
 neurotic. An inclination for antivivisectionism, vegetarianism, 
 prevention of cruelty to animals, charity, often distinguishes 
 these connoisseurs of the sufferings of others, they cannot endure 
 to see a goose bleed, but clap their hands gleefully when their 
 opponent leaves the Exchange a bankrupt. Their inclination 
 to sectarianism forms an inimical antisocial trait, as does their 
 severe criticism of the valuation of others which they exhibit 
 before they even form an opinion of their own. Tolerance is 
 unknown to them, unless they cry out for it for themselves. 
 
 If I sketch here traits which are to be encountered on all sides, 
 they are nevertheless traits of a very prevalent neuroticism and 
 signs of a deeply grounded uncertainty. They are by no means 
 inherent in human nature, but are rather unsuccessful forms of 
 the masculine protest which failed to bring assurance to the ego- 
 consciousness. Should failure result in following the main 
 guiding line, neurotic circuitous ways are entered upon and the 
 "outbreak" of the neurosis or psychosis follows as a result of 
 a change of form and accentuation of the guiding fiction. 
 
 I must also disagree with the theory of congenital criminality 
 of children and criminals promulgated by Lombroso and Ferrari, 
 as well as with Stekel's theory of the universal criminality of 
 neurotics. (Aggressionstrieb, 1. c.). They are nothing but 
 forms of the aggressive impulse become accentuated through 
 the feeling of inferiority, and which makes use of the masculine 
 guiding line. The transformation into a clearly obvious neurosis 
 follows the abandonment of this straightforward aggression. 
 Where the fear of a decision is absent, an early result of the 
 security-giving neurosis, and where there develops a strong 
 tendency to deprive others of life, honor and property, 
 criminality is the result.' 
 
 In the developed neurosis, on the other hand, one finds 
 memory-traces of cruelty, criminality as well as those of sexuality 
 purposefully exaggerated, falsely grouped and retained. 
 Through the imagining of an accentuated conscience and 
 exaggerated feeling of guilt, the masculine protest is diverted 
 from the straight path of aggression and becomes inclined 
 towards routes of softheartedness. It is only in the affect which 
 occasionally comes to the surface, in the analysis of the seizures, 
 in the traits of character which become manifest now and then 
 as is the case frequently at the onset of a psychosis and the 
 nature of the goal of the neurotic subterfuges and traits of 
 character which have become diverted from the straight course, 
 in the fact that a tyranny is erected in spite of all defeats, in the 
 torture of others through self-torture, and finally in the inter- 
 mixture of occasionally emerging original and direct traits of 
 aggression, that one discovers the fact that the old over-tense 
 
 3 A. Jassny, " Da-ss "Weib als Verbrecher," Arch. f. Kriminal-peych., 
 1911, H. 19.
 
 158 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 goal still exists and that a change in the form of the fiction has 
 only diverted the direction of the original tendency into other, 
 often apparently opposite channels. 
 
 Thus it happens that following a decidedly aggressive period, 
 the greedy, brutal or violent traits of the psychopath, in 
 anticipation of a defeat or after such has actually been 
 experienced, may be made to approach more closely or even too 
 eagerly general moral ideals, through the construction of a 
 fictitious factor, " conscience," in the same manner as the path 
 of egocentric evil desire was entered upon from a feeling of 
 inferiority. ' Then I am destined to be bad," in this and 
 similar ways the fictitious life-plan of many neurotics is uncon- 
 sciously formed, unfil a glance into the abyss tears the giddy 
 subject from his perilous position and forces him to seek a 
 stronger security than is actually needed. Conscience develops 
 out of the simpler forms of prevision and self-evaluation under 
 the pressure of the craving for security, is endowed with the 
 attributes of power and raised to a divinity, so that the individual 
 may construct his ideal without objection from any side, so that 
 he may be able better to orient himself in the uncertainty of 
 events and have his choice in attacks and methods of combat to 
 which his will to power guides him. 
 
 But the neurotic brings about a reconstruction of his traits of 
 character even for the sole purpose of being enabled to initiate 
 the struggle to better advantage. Such is the case when he 
 ascribes to the sexual partner of whom he stands in fear, traits 
 of an egotistic, cruel and deceptive nature. He is then likely 
 to hunt out and exaggerate from his memories and emotions, 
 those which confirm his own character as affectionate, mild and 
 open. For the purpose of proving these characteristics he will 
 often act as though his virtues had the reality of innate and in- 
 destructible qualities. 
 
 One important question must still be touched upon. Nearly 
 all of our neurotic patients come to us in the " stadium of virtue," 
 after having experienced a defeat, and we must therefore expect 
 to discover their masculine protest less in direct traits of 
 character and emotional predispositions than in neurotic 
 circuitous ways, accentuated security devices, which may be 
 detected only with difficulty through the analysis of their dreams 
 and symptoms. One will discover that the infantile, fictive 
 guiding line has only become more effective, and in so far as 
 it concerns the cases just spoken of, that their neurotic symptoms 
 lead to a more intense degradation of others than did their 
 original cruelty and desire to torture. For all these guiding 
 lines are tensely stretched between the insecurity of the con- 
 stitutionally or subjectively defective individual and his unattain- 
 able ego-ideal. However far back into childhood sadism, 
 perversions of various sorts, sexual-libido, in short the masculine
 
 CRUELTY, CONSCIENCE, ETC. 159 
 
 protest may extend, they are always constructed according to a 
 life-plan and reveal their dependence thereon. The liberation 
 of the sadism from the neurotic predisposition, and in the sense 
 of Freud, from the unconscious and from repression, is to be 
 likened to a carrying back of the neurosis to an earlier stadium, 
 to a time before the defeat. Freud's scientific work, important 
 and full of results as it was for the understanding of the 
 neurosis, did not give a correct picture of the neurotic psyche. 
 The neurotic predispositions of heightened affectivity, the 
 exaggerated aggressiveness, the hypersensibility, and the direct, 
 compensatory character-peculiarities require a liberation from 
 their overtense state ; as do also the inclinations to neurotic 
 perversions which are often constructed at a very early age, and 
 which are to come to the aid of the general fear of decisions 
 through a compromise formation. For this reason the effort 
 should be made to conquer this feeling of inferiority and the 
 tendency to disparage which results therefrom, these two 
 important poles of every neurotic state, by means of insight and 
 contemplation on the part of the patient, for they like their 
 sexual analogies (sadism, masochism, fetichism, homosexuality, 
 incest-phantasies, apparent heightening or weakening of the 
 sexual impulse), already form the foundation of the neurosis.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE ANTITHESIS ABOVE-BENEATH, CHOICE OF A PROFESSION, 
 SOMNAMBULISM, ANTITHESIS IN THOUGHT, ELEVATION OF 
 THE PERSONALITY THROUGH THE DISPARAGEMENT OF 
 OTHERS, JEALOUSY, NEUROTIC AUXILIARIES, AUTHOR- 
 ITATIVE, THINKING IN ANTITHESES AND THE MASCULINE PRO- 
 TEST, DILATORY ATTITUDE AND MARRIAGE, THE TENDENCY 
 UPWARD AS A SYMBOL OF LIFE, COMPULSION TO MASTUR- 
 BATION, THE NEUROTIC STRIVING FOR KNOWLEDGE 
 
 THE abstraction of the concept, "above-beneath," obviously 
 plays an extremely important role in the civilization of mankind, 
 and is probably even connected with the beginning of the upright 
 carriage of human beings. As every child repeats this process in 
 the course of his development when he arises from the floor and 
 as training also teaches him a disgust for clinging to the floor 
 and creeping on it from hygienic reasons, for being "down" ; 
 this higher development in childhood may contribute not a little 
 to the tendency to value "up" more highly; a certain proof is 
 to be found in the conduct of small children who throw themselves 
 on the floor angrily and thus try to make themselves dirty in 
 order to attract the attention of their parents, but betray thereby 
 that the idea of " being down " as a fiction of what is forbidden, 
 dirty, sinful, is developing in them. In this psychic gesture of 
 small children may also be detected the model for strongly 
 developed later neurotic traits. 
 
 Further notions may be gathered from the impressions of 
 heavenly bodies, as may be seen from a psychological under- 
 standing of the various religions and of civilization. The 
 aboriginal races, like the child, regarded the sun, the day, joy, 
 elevation, being " up," as resembling each other and frequently 
 associated " being down " with sin, death, dirt, sickness and 
 night. 
 
 The antithesis of " up-down " is not less distinct than in 
 ancient religions. From a work by K. Th. Preuss on " Die 
 Feuergotter als Ausgangspunkt zum Verstandniss der 
 Mexicanischen Religion," Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen 
 Gesellschaft in Wien, 1903, we are able to infer the deeply 
 rooted character of this antithesis and the association of " up- 
 down." The fire god is also the god of the dead who live with 
 him at the place of descent. 
 
 Overturned vessels, people who fell, were regarded as 
 
 1 60
 
 ANTITHETICAL MODE OF THINKING 161 
 
 presentations of " up-downs," that is to say of falling into the 
 realm of the dead, and thoughts of preservation and destructive 
 activities were given this form of spatial antithesis.' 
 
 Further, sensations and impressions from childhood tend to 
 give form to the spatial notion of " up-down " and to define 
 the contrast more sharply. Falling, tailing down, is painful, 
 blamable, dishonorable, at times, punishable. Not rarely it is 
 the result of inattention, lack of foresight, and the child ma^ 
 therefore assume these sensory traces as an admonition, so that 
 being "down" may be felt as a forceful expression for " fallen," 
 for inattention, for unskillfulness, for defeat, not without releasing 
 or at least stimulating the protest which is directed against the 
 approaching feeling of inferiority. In this category ot " down- 
 up," one of which cannot be thought of without the other, is 
 further found intermingled trains of thought (in both neurotics 
 and normal persons), which express the antitheses of conquest 
 and defeat, of triumph and inferiority. In individual cases, upon 
 analysis, memory traces emerge of riding, swimming, flying, 
 mountain climbing, climbing up and of climbing staircases, the 
 antitheses of which reveal themselves as carrying a rider, incubus, 
 sinking in water, falling down, tumbling down, a check in an 
 upward or forward movement. The more abstract and figurative 
 the memory is in dreams, in hallucinations, in separate neurotic 
 symptoms, the more perceptible are the transitions which show a 
 sexual factor. In this connection the masculine principle is only 
 represented by the feeling of greater power, as being " up," 
 and the feminine by the feeling of being " down." It is easy 
 to see that scuffling and its results support this valuation. 
 
 In the games of children which are preparatory for the conflicts 
 of life (Karl Groos) this striving " upwards" is regularly found. 
 Also in the thoughts of children concerning a vocation. In the 
 progress of the psychic development reality is seen working as 
 a brake, so that the abstraction " upwards " has a tendency to 
 assume a concrete form in some. Very often in this connection 
 caution in the form of fear of being in elevated positions is at 
 work and changes the wish to be a roof maker into that of being 
 a master builder, makes of the aviator a builder of flying 
 machines, changes the wish of the little girl to be like her father 
 into the more attainable wish of being able to command like her 
 mother. 
 
 The striving for security and the masculine protest make the 
 greatest possible use of the resulting guiding lines of the " will 
 to be up." Under the pressure of the fiction the neurotic is 
 sometimes forced to decisions, to conflict and strife, to passionate 
 haste, sometimes to cautious, hesitating, doubting behavior. 
 Thus he is placed in a position to make an estimate of his worth in 
 
 1 I am especially indebted to Prof. Dr. S. Oppenbeim for some important 
 historical data for my work.
 
 162 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 life and that through instances which escape the notice of others. 
 He must scent out, hold fast, exaggerate or arrange situations 
 which seem to us of very little value. Let us follow this conduct 
 in detail. 
 
 A girl, 25 years old, came to us with complaints of frequent 
 headache, emotional attacks, disinclination for life and work. 
 Traces of rickets were perceptible. The history of childhood 
 revealed an extreme feeling of inferiority which was kept at a 
 strained tension because of the mother's preference for a 
 younger brother and because of his intellectual superiority. The 
 most cherished wish of this patient had always been to be big, 
 very wise, and a man. She took the preparatory attitudes for 
 the attainment of this masculine ego-consciousness as far as was 
 possible from her father. When this was not possible for her, 
 a small, stupid girl, she had secured the imaginary ego- 
 consciousness through emotional expedients of rage and anger 
 against her relatives and especially in obstinacy toward her 
 mother, in the simulation of stupidity, of awkwardness and sick- 
 ness, and finally in the arrangement of laziness. I omit here the 
 lines constructed by her of manliness, of malice, of obstinacy, 
 and refrain also from analyzing her overweening ambition, her 
 inclination to lying and ostentation, and will content myself with 
 showing how all these habits are combined in the impulse to be 
 "up" and serve the tendency to depreciate others. For this 
 purpose I will refer to one of her dreams, which contains a 
 modest reference to the psychology of somnambulism. The 
 dream is as follows : 
 
 " / became a sleepwalker and climbed on to the head of 
 everybody." 
 
 The patient had heard sleepwalkers spoken of a few days 
 previous to this dream. In her attempt at explanation of this 
 dream a series of ambitious thoughts emerged which takes the 
 form among others of a sexual picture of domination over her 
 future husband. She remembered dreams of earlier times which 
 represented her as riding on a man, on a horse.* I have never 
 treated a real sleepwalker, but one finds this neurotic symptom 
 sometimes indicated in onsets. It is manifested as is the dream 
 of flying, of climbing stairs, etc., as a dynamic expression of the 
 " will to be up " in the sense of the manly aggression. In a 
 patient who showed strong masochistic traits, I once discovered 
 strenuous attempts to reach the ceiling of the room by putting 
 his legs out on the wall during the night. The interpretation 
 showed that the patient rescued himself from a real or an 
 imagined situation which was regarded as feminine by turning 
 
 3 Women riding on a man one frequently finds as the subject of paintings. 
 I wish to call attention to Burgkmair, Hans Baldung, Grien, Diirer, and to 
 tell of the many prints which show Alexander's paramours riding on Aristotle.
 
 ANTITHETICAL MODE OF THINKING 163 
 
 around to the masculine protest and at the same time gave 
 expression to this symbolic modus dicendi through his striving 
 upwards. 
 
 The second thought of the dream, " I climbed on to the heads 
 of everybody," reveals the same meaning. The patient makes 
 use here of a form of speech to express that she is superior to 
 all others. Her striving upwards is only to be understood 
 dialectically in an antithesis, for the thoughts of insecure 
 neurotics generally move in strongly antithetical directions, in 
 an " either-or, " in an abstraction understood according to the 
 scheme of the opposites, masculine-feminine. The innumerable 
 middle ways are not chosen because the two neurotic poles, the 
 feeling of inferiority on the one hand and the overtense ego- 
 consciousness on the other only permit the antithetical values to 
 reach consciousness. 3 
 
 The train of thought of this dream permits us to divine the 
 neurotic predispositions of the patient. In reality her masculine 
 protest, her inclination to belittle others, her ambition, her 
 sensitiveness, defiance, unyieldingness, obstinacy, is sufficiently 
 remarkable. The psychic significance of her headache is 
 revealed in this dream. Previous analysis showed in fact that 
 the symptom always made its appearance when there was a 
 feeling of defeat, of belittlement, of emasculation to speak in 
 the words of the dream, when one " mounted her head." In the 
 phases of the headache, therefore, through the construction of 
 these " expedients of pain " with consequent hallucinations of 
 pain she strove to dominate all persons, especially her mother, 
 and was able to enhance her ego-consciousness thereby in the 
 same manner as she was able to do it through defiance, laziness, 
 and obstinacy, only to a greater degree, in short, had thus 
 mounted on the heads of others. 
 
 In children the tendency to be up is unmistakable and coincides 
 with the wish to be big. They wish to be lifted up and like to 
 climb on sofas, tables, boxes, and usually connect with this 
 striving the idea of showing themselves unconquerably 
 courageous, manly. How closely bordering on this is the 
 tendency to depreciate others is shown by their joy when they 
 succeed in being "bigger" than grown people. The heightening 
 of the aggressive tendency is manifested in children who show 
 neurotic symptoms at an early age by this exhibition. Thus it 
 sometimes happens that children in the consulting room of the 
 
 That tho tentative, insecurely begun, beginnings in philosophy have 
 likewise hypotasized this antithetical mode of thinking we have already 
 emphasized. 
 
 Karl Joel speaks of this problem in the " Geechichte der Zahlprinzipien 
 in der griechischen Philosophic " (Zeitechr. f. Philosophic und philoe. Kritik. 
 Bd. 97). and states in this study, " The real root of ' antithesis ' lies in the 
 instinctive, peculiar fixity of thought which only recognizes absolutes."
 
 164 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 physician constantly climb on tables and benches and thus reveal 
 their contempt. 
 
 The danger of falling, of accidents in striving upwards as well 
 as the customary training to cowardice, force the majority of 
 children to a change of form of the guiding line, or to neurotic, 
 circuitous ways, whereby the fear of elevated positions and 
 heights opposes itself as an admonition usually in a symbolical 
 form to undertakings and ventures of all sorts, and thus becomes 
 the foundation of a predisposition which has the appearance of 
 a neurotic check on aggression. At times the desire to be up 
 is transposed for the most part to a tendency to depreciate 
 others. The tendency of those suffering from dementia praecox 
 to change the furniture stands regularly in such close connection 
 with the depreciation of the surroundings that the suspicion is 
 justified, that this is one of the fictitious, abstract, circuitous 
 ways by which the psychotic enhances his ego-consciousness. 
 In a transferred form this placing of others in an inferior 
 position is expressed in the tendency to calumny, especially, 
 however, in neurotic jealousy and delirium of jealousy. I 
 discovered further an interesting sort of derogation in nervous 
 subjects in their care, their anxious behavior, in their fears for 
 the fate of other people. They act as if others were incapable 
 of caring for themselves without their help. They are constantly 
 giving advice, wish to do everything themselves, are always 
 finding new dangers and are never contented until others confide 
 themselves entirely to their care. Neurotic parents are thus the 
 cause of much harm, and in love and marriage much friction is 
 caused in .this manner. One of my patients, who was run over 
 twice in his childhood, associated his feeling of injured personality 
 with this memory and whenever he crossed the street with 
 another person he led that person anxiously over by the arm as 
 though without his help, his companion could not have crossed. 
 Many persons are filled with fears when their relatives travel 
 by rail, go swimming or canoeing, give their nurses constant 
 instructions and continue their tendency to depreciation in 
 exaggerated criticisms and corrections. In schools and in offices 
 this nagging depreciation is always found in neurotic teachers 
 and superiors. In the practice of psychotherapy it is one of the 
 main requirements to obviate predispositions of this sort, even 
 when the patient provokes them. This requirement often 
 amounts to a renunciation of authority. Every one who has 
 become acquainted with the hypersensitiveness of neurotic 
 subjects knows with what slight cause they feel themselves to be 
 undervalued. One of my patients who suffered from hystero- 
 epilepsy and always conducted himself as if he wished to place 
 himself in an entirely subordinate position fell on one occasion 
 unconscious before my door. In such "accidents" the tendency
 
 ANTITHETICAL MODE OF THINKING 165 
 
 to undervaluation is clearly recognizable. While still in a 
 confused condition he addressed me as " Teacher," and 
 stammered that he would bring a note. After the attack he told 
 me that he had come unwillingly on that occasion. The analysis 
 showed that he had come to regard me as a teacher in order 
 to obtain the distance necessary for the conflict, in order to be 
 able to act as though he were obliged to come to the school 
 and to bring a written excuse for his absence. After he had 
 placed himself as far as his feelings were concerned in this 
 situation of inferiority he could allow the compensatory 
 expedients derived therefrom to come into play in order to belittle 
 me. 
 
 A girl 20 years old suffered from the compulsory idea that 
 she could not ride in a street-car because when she got in the 
 thought always emerged that a man might get out at the same 
 time and fall under the wheels. Analysis showed that this 
 compulsory neurosis represented the masculine protest of the 
 patient in the figure of being " above " corresponding with which 
 the man must be " under," deprived of value, and should bear 
 the injuries which he imposes on women, ki addition the 
 exaggerated striving for security constructed the protection of 
 anxiety which was intended to satisfy further the fear of the 
 male. Even then when her superiority was assured she could 
 not bring herself to decide on marriage, for her future husband 
 would have a hard time with her from this point of view one 
 is able to understand the often incomprehensible striving of many 
 neurotic girls and women to exact from their partners the 
 greatest sacrifices and put them to the most severe tests, in so 
 far as they hope to attain thereby an enhancement of their ego- 
 consciousness to the point of an appearance of manliness. 
 
 Thinking in crude antitheses is therefore in itself a sign of 
 uncertainty and adheres to the sole genuine antithesis, that 
 between male* and female. In this a judgment of worth is 
 already given, which infuses itself unnoticed in every "antithesis" 
 (Joel) because this antithesis is always made in the figure of a 
 dissection of the hermaphroditic form into a male and female 
 half. Plato has perhaps expressed this idea most purely. And 
 human perception was unable until the time of Kant to 
 disentangle itself from this self-made fiction. But the 
 neurotically disposed child adheres to the oppositeness of the 
 sexes and to the higher valuation of the male principle therewith 
 connected in order to escape from uncertainty and in order to 
 find a guiding line for his idea of egoistic worth. Thus it 
 happens that this guiding fiction contains a manly aspect, and 
 that in all the experiences and strivings of neurotic individuals 
 the masculine protest is revealed as the ordering principle and 
 motive force. The antithesis of the sexes is admirably expressed 
 in the above given symbol of the spatial opposites of "up-down."
 
 1 66 
 
 And thus it becomes comprehensible that in every one of our 
 psychological analyses this expression of a sharp antithetical 
 schema must somehow or other come to light. It is still an open 
 question whether reinforcements of the antithesis have been 
 acquired from the events of early childhood and the resulting 
 impressions, from the observations of sexual relations in human 
 beings and animals, or whether the consciousness of the higher 
 position of the male has been fixed by the normal situations of 
 sexual relations. 
 
 The " will to be above " of the neurotic woman is produced 
 by her manly guiding idea and represents an attempt to identify 
 herself with the man. The importunity and rigidity with which 
 this takes place even in neurotic, circuitous ways testifies to the 
 original uncertainty and fear of being " below," undervalued, 
 female. Thus the transcendental egoistic idea attains its 
 powerful dominancy because it promises compensation, the 
 overcoming of the feeling of inferiority, in the opposite direction. 
 Every gesture then says, " 1 will be above, I will be a man 
 because I am afraid as a woman of being oppressed and 
 misused." Ambition and envy are hereby strengthened and an 
 unusually lively mistrust is awakened against every possibility of 
 belittlement. Where there is real undervaluation, however, the 
 masculine protest flashes forth and leads from slight and often 
 from no cause to the well known, unpleasant frictions of the 
 neurotic individual with his environment, in which the principle 
 weapons of attack used to confirm the feeling of power are 
 disputatiousness, love for justice, obstinate adherence to opinion 
 and trust in penetration. And in this connection the tendency 
 to " look beneath " will never be absent, especially in times 
 of uncertainty, the acute perception of affronts, neglects, under- 
 valuations, and further than this arrangements of depression, 
 anxiety, remorse, feeling of guilt and pangs of conscience. 
 Stronger measures for security are applied and new neurotic 
 symptoms and deviations are constructed, the neurotic traits of 
 character become more deeply seated and more abstract and 
 the fully developed picture of the neurosis arises. 4 Thus the 
 4 While writing this book I discovered in Alfred v. Berger's " Hofrat 
 Eysenhardt " an excellent example of the type just described in whom the 
 striving to be above was especially well marked and whose lectures I would 
 recommend to every psychotherapeutist. One will find in this description a 
 repetition of all we have said concerning this type of individual from a poet's 
 standpoint. The all too powerful elan of the father, the feeling of inferiority 
 of the boy along with the compensatory masculine protest. The accentuation 
 of sexual desire, of the will to power, the preparation for the patricide, 
 fetichism, contentious tendency, the exaggerated assurance in the case of 
 threatening defeat. The construction of remorse, self-reproach, hallucinations, 
 and compulsory ideas as a revengeful annihilation of the authority of the 
 State. The loss of a tooth and the exaggerated fear of woman as the result 
 of a further accentuated masculine protest, and along with this the repeated 
 arrangement of an exaggerated sexual desire, all of which is very impressive 
 and obvious, a description of the neurotic subterfuge which reminds one of 
 Dostoyeff sky's descriptions and which requires no further elucidation.
 
 ANTITHETICAL MODE OF THINKING 167 
 
 revolt for attaining a heightened ego-consciousness is fairly 
 contrived, the introduction thereof is formed by the disease itself 
 and by the predispositions to disease which in some way or 
 other are made use of as means for attaining power in the 
 environment. 
 
 A patient, 21 years old, came under treatment because of 
 extreme depression, loss of sleep and compulsory thoughts. It 
 was ascertained that she had always had neurotic traits of 
 character. The compulsory neurosis broke out as her relations 
 with a man whom she wanted to marry became serious. The 
 typical pathogenic situation brings the neurotic "no" to light, 
 and while the patient was making her preparations for marriage, 
 and did not hesitate with the affirmative answer, she arranged 
 for the neurosis and conducted herself as if she did not wish to 
 marry. In all these very numerous cases the next step ?s a 
 condition which therefore takes the form, " If I were well, if 
 I should overcome my present condition," etc. (in men, often : 
 "HI were potent "), "I would marry." By this condition, 
 which is equivalent to a vacillation, a doubt, to a special attitude 
 of caution, the patient escapes all responsibility, has drawn the 
 bolt in secret until something further happens, but may act as 
 if he wishes to open the door. The traits of mistrust, of 
 disputatiousness, of tyranny, and of wishing to be "above" are 
 clearly revealed in the analysis, and one can easily comprehend 
 that the fear of not being equal to the partner, the menace of 
 feeling another superior in love or marriage necessitates the 
 secret retreat and constructs the neurotic symptom. Not rarely 
 one finds a purposeful valuation of the person's own sexuality 
 from which without proof or with the assistance of memories 
 which everyone has at command, or by evoking unconscious 
 falsifications the impression is sought that it is too little or too 
 great to permit a marriage to be ventured on. 
 
 The further communication of the patient explained that she 
 could undertake nothing because whenever she began anything 
 the thought emerged that it was useless because every one must 
 die. As one sees, a nonsensical thought, which at the same time 
 has sense, but above all brings time and development to a stand- 
 still and renders the entrance of the patient upon marriage 
 impossible. In accordance with this the conviction that the 
 patient only came to the physician because she was forced to, 
 that she had no hope of cure and only desired proof of her 
 incurability followed as a matter of course. One of her dreams 
 showed much of this constellation. It was as follows : 
 
 " A physician came to me, who said I should jump and sing 
 when thoughts of death came to me, then the thoughts would 
 vanish. Then a child (hesitatingly), a large one was brought. 
 It was given medicine so that it should become quiet and sleep."
 
 1 68 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 The physician in the dream had once treated her as a child 
 when she had scarlet fever. In the dream he uses the words 
 which she during her present illness had constantly heard from 
 her relatives and from physicians. He gives her advice of a kind 
 which amounts to nothing. These thoughts are aimed at me and 
 express the conviction that all my measures will be useless. Of 
 course this dream was dreamed during a night when she slept 
 for the first time after a period of insomnia. As the patient, 
 however, saw in this fact a partial success of the treatment she 
 realized with strong aggression my measures too were useless. 
 The hesitation in emphasizing the "largeness" of the child shows 
 on what the thoughts of the dreamer are dwelling, on a small, 
 a newborn child. The expression, "a child is brought" (supply : 
 into the world), is taken from the idea of giving birth and 
 coincides with this in the outlined representation of the dream. 
 The powder which is given to the child is the sleeping powder 
 of the patient in a former treatment, an indication that pains 
 also belong to the patient, to giving birth. In other words the 
 patient here expresses : I cannot sleep because I think of giving 
 birth with its pains. Giving birth, pains, dying, in these she 
 sees her fate and hence she thinks of dying in order to avoid 
 giving birth. 
 
 The exaggerated security against childbirth is a change of 
 form and intensity of her masculine protest. In order to secure 
 herself against the feminine role she enters upon the neurotic 
 deviation, fixes her thought upon an anticipatory tendency on 
 childbirth and death as admonitions and prefers to become a 
 child, to take a powder rather than to be cured psycho- 
 therapeutically. Because her cure signifies her fitting herself 
 into the feminine role. Now the conflict is turned more acutely 
 against the physician who wishes to cure her insomnia. She 
 must remain superior to him, must permit him to talk absurdities, 
 and dictate to him, that he should treat her with medicines as 
 she had been treated when a child. The compulsory neurosis 
 represents her reassuring philosophy of the vanity of everything 
 under the sun. 
 
 In our sort of neuropsychology one always gains the impression 
 that the visible neurotic conduct is directed straight to the final 
 purpose, to the fictitious goal, as if one were examining one of 
 the intermediary pictures in a cinematographic film. The 
 problem consists in recognizing this conduct, that is, the 
 symptoms, predispositions, and traits of character, and to learn 
 to comprehend their object. In every neurotic attitude the 
 beginning and final purpose is concealed in its significance.* 
 
 5 Bergson justly emphasizes the same thing for every move of life. One 
 who possesses sufficient insight and experience is able to see, in every psychic 
 phenomenon the past, present, and future, but aleo the desired finale. Thus
 
 ANTITHETICAL MODE OF THINKING 169 
 
 These facts form the foundation of every individualistic psycho- 
 logical method and coincide with our other findings. Therefore 
 in the analysis of a symptom or of a dream the feeling of 
 effeminacy, of inferiority, of being " down," and the masculine 
 protest, the fictitious manly goal, the feeling of being " above," 
 will always be found indicated, in the form of an upwardly 
 directed psychic attitude, in a hermaphroditic picture which is 
 apperceived in a strongly antithetical manner, in neurotic, 
 circuitous ways, which as such characterize the tendency to meet 
 obstacles with expedients, or when analyzed reveal at one time 
 the tendency upwards, at another the tendency downwards in the 
 alterations and vacillations of the psychic phenomena. 
 Frequently this " will to be up " is expressed in a strongly 
 figurative manner, especially in dreams, but also in symptoms, 
 and takes the symbolic form of a race, of soaring, of climbing 
 mountains, of emerging from water, etc., while the "down" 
 is represented by falling, in short by a motion downwards. Just 
 as frequently the figure or the fact of the sexual act is 
 symbolically employed for the same expression. I will here 
 give an account of the dreams of a patient who had fears for 
 his future as a man on account of his weakness and noticeably 
 effeminate conduct. In a dream of his early childhood which for 
 a long time filled him with fears he saw himself pursued by a 
 bull. As a farmer's son he understood at that early age that the 
 male pursuer represented a race for a cow, that is, for the 
 patient himself. When he was to enter school he directed his 
 steps straight to the girls' school and had to be taken to the 
 boys' school by force. He unconsciously regarded his life as a 
 race, for which he constantly found preparations. When he 
 was courting a girl his friend cut him out. When he contem- 
 plated marriage, he became afraid of the superiority of his wife, 
 fell into the habit of compulsory masturbation, suffered from 
 frequent pollutions, and fell victim to a tremor, which hindered 
 his work and advancement in office. Naturally he set up the 
 condition that he would only marry when he was cured, a 
 thought which seemed to be wise and justified, but which 
 permitted the patient to operate secretly against his marriage 
 as behind a veil because he feared therefrom a reduction of his 
 ego-consciousness. The tremor represented to him the pre- 
 monitions of a paralysis which he feared on account of his 
 excessive masturbation. After he had secured himself in this 
 manner he still felt the need of confirmation of his incurability 
 and went weeping to physicians. Our conversation revealed to 
 me the picture of a restless, ambitious individual who wished 
 
 every psychic phenomenon and every trait of character, similarly to the 
 inferior somatic organ, is to be looked upon as a symbol of life, as an attempt 
 at an ascendancy of the masculine protest. 
 
 N
 
 170 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 constantly to detract from others, but who recoiled in fear from 
 a serious decision. Amorous relations were also with him 
 principally a means of assuring himself of his superior manliness. 
 No matter how eagerly he courted a girl, the moment she met 
 his addresses, she lost all charm for him. Besides as soon as 
 he approached an engagement he entered into other relations 
 without prospect, or gave them a prospectless form and thus ran 
 after his rejections in order to be able through the feeling of 
 his lack of influence even vis-a-vis his future bride, to be able 
 to regard himself as inferior. From this he constantly regained 
 the impulse to work secretly against the apparently desired 
 marriage. One of his dreams is as follows : 
 
 "I was with my old friend and was speaking with him about 
 a, mutual friend. He said, ' Of what use is his money to him, he 
 has learned nothing? ' 
 
 The old friend, who had cut our patient out in the courtship 
 of a girl, had failed in the Technical school and had given up 
 study. The patient was superior to him for he had finished the 
 course. He embraced the sublime principle, " Knowledge is 
 more than money," especially as this profession served his 
 fiction to be "above" and comforted him. The mutual 
 acquaintance is placed here instead of the rich girl who was 
 courted by both. The contest begins anew. Our patient is 
 declared victor by his rival. 
 
 A second dream which occurred the same night makes this 
 clearer. The patient dreamed : 
 
 "As if I had caused the fall of a girl of lower standing and 
 had dishonored her." 
 
 The fiction of this dream says a shade more clearly that he is 
 above." The girl who was formerly courted is thus in the 
 sense of the patient brought down, made poor, and recognizes 
 him as her master. 
 
 I will here briefly mention that the occurrence of several 
 dreams in a night signifies that various attempts at preliminary 
 arrangements of tentative solutions of a problem are undertaken. 
 It becomes regularly apparent that a single way is not sufficient 
 for the guiding, egoistic idea of caution, a fact which is easily 
 comprehended in the case of neurotics. The dream then, under 
 the influence of the more intensive craving for security becomes 
 more abstract, more figurative, and one thus obtains in inter- 
 preting all the dreams of a night several psychic attitudes, from 
 the comparison of which the dynamic of the neurosis becomes 
 much clearer. In the above cited case the rival surrenders and 
 the wealth of the girl her power is deprived of worth for 
 him. The second dream deprives the girl also of power and 
 places her in the position a woman that is "under" occupies, 
 and this is done in the most far-fetched and abstract manner,
 
 ANTITHETICAL MODE OF THINKING 171 
 
 so that nothing personal is left to th.e girl under consideration 
 except her subordinate position. The patient also expresses 
 the thought that only an uneducated girl from the country 
 will serve his purpose, as he can always remain her master. The 
 
 firl whom he wishes to make his wife frightens him because of 
 er intelligence. 6 This is the tendency of many neurotics, which 
 causes them always to choose below their social level, and thus 
 thoughts and facts come to pass such as choosing a prostitute 
 or a little girl for love and marriage, necrophilic tenc encies, etc. 
 In all similar cases the tendency to detract from the partner is 
 perceptible, which seeks to degrade the wife by the conjtruction 
 of mistrust, jealousy, tyranny, ethical principles and require- 
 ments. 
 
 A further idea shown in a dream represents a race graphically : 
 
 " / was riding in a railway car and looked out of the window 
 to see if the dog was still running with the train. I thought that 
 he had run himself to death, had fallen under the wheels. I 
 felt sorry for him. Then the idea struck me that I had another 
 dog, but a clumsy one." 
 
 He had often ridden bicycle races with his old friend and 
 rival and was usually left behind. Now as his friend occupies 
 a position socially inferior to him, his friend " can run after 
 him," as one says in Vienna when a person gives himself airs. 
 The metamorphosis into a dog is a product of the tendency to 
 derogation and is quite frequently met with. In a case of 
 dementia precox I observed that the patient gave all dogs the 
 names of women of importance. The dog also represented his 
 future bride who also brought his superiority into question. Her 
 death, moreover, would free him of his fear, just as he would 
 also be free if she should listen to another suitor, as his suspicion 
 often whispered to him was the case. " If she should fall under 
 the wheels." " If this should occur, it would cause him sorrow." 
 In the dream he regards this as having already happened and 
 anticipates his sorrow. The " clumsy dog " is a girl who about 
 this time had disgusted him by meeting his advances and for 
 whom he no longer cared. 
 
 His dislike for those above him is boundless and deep-seated. 
 One night he dreamed : 
 
 " Our singing society gave a concert. The director's place 
 was empty." 
 
 The society to which he belonged was on one occasion obliged 
 to sing without a director because the latter had missed the 1 
 train. The situation appeared to him better than any other. 
 " We need no director," he thought. This is his usual attitude 
 in all situations in which he himself is not the director. 
 
 * Another dream of the same night may have dealt with the violation of 
 a Jtirl.
 
 172 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 The impulse to masturbation in male neurotics corresponds in 
 female neurotics to the tendency to avoid a decision and thereby 
 to remain " up." In the masturbation phantasies of girls the 
 woman is often found to take the role of a man. Also the 
 position which is taken therein is at times that of the man. In 
 men masturbation serves, first, as proof that one can live alone, 
 second, as a protection against and hindrance to sexual relations 
 which on account of the superiority of the wife are feared and 
 hence arises from the craving for security. If the situation 
 necessitates stronger securities, impotence or the developed 
 neurosis makes its appearance, not as a consequence of 
 renunciation of masturbation, but as a reenforced security. The 
 masturbation phantasies in neurotics have often a masochistic 
 or sadistic feature, according to the phase of the masculine 
 protest which they aim to represent. 
 
 Among the preparatory actions and neurotic expedients which 
 are intended to serve to secure the position of being " up," 
 curiosity, impulse to investigation, the desire to see everything, 
 the " voyeur " impulse mentioned by writers occupies a 
 prominent place. These impulses are always a proof of a 
 primary uncertainty for the compensation of which the guiding 
 lines of investigation are brought in. They serve especially in 
 developed neuroses secondarily the purposes of dilatoriness to 
 avoid a plan and a decision and are in life, especially in the 
 erotic, very often changed from a means to an end on which all 
 the psychic activities are based. Investigation, the search for 
 truth, the wish to understand everything, the well known neurotic 
 thoroughness, these are then the traits which the ego-conscious- 
 ness erects and must elevate or protect.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 PUNCTUALITY, THE WILL TO BE FIRST, HOMOSEXUALITY AND 
 PERVERSION AS A SYMBOL, MODESTY AND EXHIBITIONISM, 
 CONSTANCY AND INCONSTANCY, JEALOUSY 
 
 A phenomenon often noted in neurotics is their attitude 
 towards the question of punctuality. In accordance with our 
 analysis of neurotic pedantry the expectation is justified that a 
 large number of punctual individuals will be found among 
 neurotics. This is in fact the case. But it is easy to perceive 
 that these patients play with the thought, how would it be if they 
 should let others wait, a train of thought which indicates their 
 opposition to others. There always remains in this attitude of 
 punctuality so much of aggression that these patients exact the 
 greatest punctuality from everybody without exception and in 
 consequence are often in a position to put their expedients and 
 neurotic preparedness to attacks into operation at the tardiness 
 of others. In other cases it is found that pride compels them 
 to come late regularly, and when others are obliged to wait and 
 a flood of excuses is offered, this is felt as an enhancement of 
 the ego-consciousness. This tardiness is well fitted to form a 
 substitute for the fear of decisions. The social fitness is greatly 
 menaced and professional duties as well as relations with friends 
 and loved ones are soon eliminated. Admonitions are entirely 
 fruitless, because the obstinate attitude is only confirmed by 
 them. The neurotic is able to master the situation by his eternal 
 tardiness and thus place before his relatives an insoluble problem. 
 The choice of this line of character often follows in conformity 
 with an analogy : " as I came into the world too late among 
 my brothers and sisters," " because I did not arrive later like 
 my younger brother or sister." It may be seen from this how, 
 by this neurotic arrangement the feeling of inferiority and the 
 order of birth of the brothers and sisters a broad and permanent 
 basis of operation for the battle for superiority is gained 
 Patients who always come too early show also at other times 
 the trait of impatience. Through a feeling of inferiority they 
 are constantly in fear of other new losses and reassure themselves 
 by believing in their " unlucky star." In cases of these 
 neurotics, too, the elder brother is often found as an opponent 
 with whom they are engaged, as it were, in a race, an analogical 
 fiction, but by no manner of means the casual factor of their 
 conduct. 
 
 '73
 
 174 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 Fictive rights of primogeniture become often for younger 
 children the impetus for the enhancement of the egoistic idea, 
 and in my experience second and later children show greater 
 tendency to neuroses and psychoses, and certainly show greater 
 ambition. 1 In their neurotic conduct the figurative analogy of 
 the story of Jacob and Esau comes to light, proving that the 
 wish to be first is at the foundation of the situation. Their 
 preparations and predispositions will always have as object to 
 permit no one to have merit, to transform every relation by 
 means of love and hate so that their superiority shall become 
 apparent. The tendency to derogation exceeds all bounds. 
 The individual of this type does not hesitate at harming himself 
 if he can only harm others at the same time. In the formal 
 change of the guiding line a view such as Csesar took is often 
 arrived at, " Better first in a village than second in Rome," 
 better to play the leading role with the mother or father than 
 to draw an unknown lottery ticket in marriage, etc. Hatred is 
 frequently felt for superiors, teachers and physicians. They are 
 usually kill-joys in social gatherings, as soon as their superiority 
 is not recognized, and they often break off every relation of 
 friendship and love after a short time, if the other parties to 
 these relationships do not acknowledge themselves inferior. Very 
 often their conduct is brusque and inimical from the start, because 
 they are already at strife before the other person suspects it. 
 They cannot endure to have any one stand or walk before them, 
 and avoid every school examination, because the superiority of 
 the person conducting the examination is unendurable to them. 
 That all these phenomena may finally be directed against the 
 family environment, and take the form of the view that the 
 family must care for the patient is a further step towards the 
 proof of the significance and importance of the egoistic idea for 
 the patient. At times they operate with their neuroses as others 
 carry on fortune hunting. 
 
 Frequently the wish to be first, with the wife, is hidden in the 
 neurotic efforts of a male patient and he hunts through her 
 previous life with jealousy and suspicion and constantly believes 
 himself deceived, or he eagerly keeps watch lest his wife should 
 prefer another, the fear of the wife as the expression of the 
 feeling of incomplete manliness. The neurotic only wants 
 certainty in regard to this point and even goes so far as to put 
 the wife to all sorts of tests. In the burning jealousy which from 
 this point on possesses the neurotic the expedients by which the 
 wife is degraded follow of themselves and the egoistic feeling of 
 the jealous neurotic is thereby so greatly elevated that he is 
 often not in a condition to separate from the justly or unjustly 
 
 1 Compare Frischauf, " The Psychology of the Younger Brother," B. 
 Reinhardt, Munich (in preparation).
 
 PUNCTUALITY, THE WILL TO BE FIRST 175 
 
 accused person. This latter fact which is often met with is wholly 
 dependent on the masculine guiding idea of the patient. He 
 cannot endure the thought that one could abandon him and 
 reconstructs the facts in such a way that he is hindered, by love, 
 by pity, by fear of misfortune which might come to wife or 
 children from taking the final step. 
 
 Perhaps the striving to be 'first, to be master of all, is 
 constructed on a feeling of inferiority based with justification 
 or without it on smallness of stature or of the genital organs. In 
 the developed neurosis the patient through the arrangement of a 
 neurotic symptom fails at a distance from the opportunity in 
 which he was to have given proof. As a frequent symptom of 
 this sort I was able to observe compulsory blushing. 
 
 In a less marked degree the tendency to be first is a universal 
 human characteristic and concomitant therewith is regularly 
 found an inclination to conflict in all human beings. The 
 competitive race begins even in earliest childhood and creates 
 its psychic organs and reassuring traits of character. Thus one 
 often finds in children the trait of character that they wish to 
 be the first to eat or drink or that they like to run ahead in order 
 to reach a place before others. Not rarely at five years of age 
 they carry on the play of trying to outrun every wagon and many 
 child's games owe their origin to the idea of competitive races. 
 Many persons preserve this inclination throughout their entire 
 life in the form of an unconscious gesture, always wish to walk 
 at the head in a company or hasten their steps when any one 
 attempts to pass them on the street. In a transferred sense this 
 tendency makes itself noticeable by the fact that those who 
 possess it are given to hero-worship whereby the more profound 
 sense comes to light of being himself, also Heros, Achilles, 
 Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Napoleon or Archimedes, and thus 
 betraying at the same time the guiding fiction and the original 
 feeling of inferiority. The likeness to God also reveals itself 
 as an active fiction and is manifested at times in fairy tales, in 
 phantasy, and in the psychoses. We have emphasized that in 
 this state of the predispositions and traits of character all bonds 
 of friendship and love are threatened and when the stronger 
 uncertainty requires it, forces the patient into doubt, makes 
 him represent scarecrows or ideal forms by means of which he 
 secures himself permanently from reality. A caricature of 
 Caesar, he now seeks his mother, the small city, the lower 
 relations, wanders at times restlessly from one place of residence 
 to another as if the external relations were the cause of his 
 dissatisfaction. In this developed neurosis the sexual appetite 
 is frequently directed to children, persons of low station, maids ; 
 homosexuality, perverse inclinations or inclinations to mastur- 
 bation are constructed and adhered to because the patient hopes
 
 176 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 thus more easily to master the situation. For the fear of a 
 woman hinders a natural sexual relation to such an extent that 
 the neurotic in order to avoid the defeat of which he stands in 
 fear, arrives at the expedient of ejaculatio precox, of pollutions, 
 and of impotence. 
 
 The circumstances are similar in neurotic women of this type, 
 in whom frequently rivalry in society with friends in the large 
 city, with sisters, with a daughter and a daughter-in-law is 
 secretly brewing, and forces to neurotic securities and this causes 
 illness. In male neurotics the social position leads to the 
 development of a neurosis as soon as precedence in society, in 
 science or in amusement is called into question and contested. 
 
 Where the feeling of inferiority of the younger child forms the 
 fictitious guiding ideal according to the pattern of the first born 
 or the earliest born the most varied real and apparent advantages 
 incite the desire and envy of the younger child. Nearly always 
 teachers will notice traits such as envy of the size of the older 
 brother, of his growth of hair, of the size of his genital organs. 
 That fictitious values are thereto given I was able to infer from 
 the psychotherapeutic treatment of two brothers, of whom each 
 had envied the other in childhood on account of the development 
 of the genital organs. In the same manner the real preference 
 for the older brother or such as arises naturally from the situation 
 becomes the point of attack. The fact that he is taken to the 
 theatre and on journeys, that he has more experience in the 
 sexual problem, is sexually active, that he is preferred by girls 
 and by the servants may fill the younger child, where there is a 
 feeling of inferiority, with the most profound bitterness. For 
 this melancholy, at times a hopeless emotional condition, arose 
 at a very early age in our patient and attained an incredible 
 degree. At times there seems no prospect of victory in the 
 competition. His manly tendency turns around toward the 
 pseudomasochistic side 2 and seeks now to attain the manly goal 
 by emphasizing the feelings of sickness and weakness, by yielding 
 and submitting to an extreme degree in the hope of thus winning 
 the protection of parents and those with more strength and to 
 gain in this manner the desired security in life. I have seen 
 cases where protracted catarrh in childhood (Czerny's exudative 
 diathesis) was sustained by a combination of the clearing of the 
 throat and panting and led to sneezing fits and asthma (see 
 Strumpell's Asthma-theory) and in connection with which at the 
 same time fictions of pregnancy and castration and exaggerated 
 anal sensitiveness effected a homosexual factor which was to be 
 understood symbolically. In one of these cases the fictitious 
 
 * According to our conception, every perversion arid inversion is & simile, 
 a symbol. For pseudomasochism see " The Psychic Treatment of Trigeminal 
 Neuralgia," 1. c.
 
 PUNCTUALITY, THE WILL TO BE FIRST 177 
 
 feminine presentation went so far that the patient came to identify 
 himself with his younger sister by a change of form of the 
 guiding line. And as the mother showed a noticeable inclination 
 always to be late, he took this fact and the wish that he had 
 been born later in place of his younger sister as a guiding motive 
 always to arrive late wherever he went, even when he came to me 
 for treatment, a phenomenon which did not vanish when it was 
 revealed, but only after a cure had been effected. In these 
 feminine presentations the masculine protest is striven after by 
 a circuitous route, by following the feminine guiding line and is 
 regularly accompanied by day dreams, sensitiveness, disputatious- 
 ness, discontent, and is also as a rule forced into side paths by 
 fear of tests, of decisions, of the sexual partner, so that perverse 
 tendencies, onanism and pollutions are frequently found. The 
 initial phenomena of inferiority of organs may disappear or only 
 remain as a trace. Smallness and anomalies of the exterior 
 genital organs may sometimes be discovered, but as a rule only 
 reveal themselves psychically in the fear of not being able to 
 dominate the sexual partner. This emotional condition often 
 leads to jealousy, tendency to torment and sadistic inclinations, 
 by which it is sought to establish the proof of potency and of 
 being loved. 
 
 Often the pride of the patient is so great that he is himself 
 not conscious of his jealousy. According to our experience the 
 solution of this psychic constellation is that the masculine protest 
 in addition to other effects has also the effect of repressing 
 jealousy in order to prevent a diminution of personal worth. The 
 consequence of this repression is not great, at most that the 
 patient finds himself in ambiguous situations. Generally he acts 
 as if he were jealous and often so plainly that every one else 
 except the patient knows it. At times, however, the jealousy 
 is masked by depression, headache, refuge in solitude, etc. 
 
 I will give yet another dream of a patient who came under 
 my treatment because of depression and anxiety in society, 
 because in the partial interpretations undertaken by the patient 
 this dream reveals many of the points just described of the 
 competition of a neurotic with his older brother : 
 
 "It seemed to me that I had made a bet with my brother 
 Joseph to beat him to a certain place which was not distinguish- 
 able in the dream. 
 
 " I saw myself now suddenly in a little three-wheeled automo- 
 bile on the road, and tried to direct the automobile as well as 
 possible by means of a small apparatus similar to a key which I 
 was only able to take between the thumb and index finger. I 
 rode -very insecurely and felt uncomfortable. I got into by-paths 
 on which I could go no farther. The people whom I met were 
 astonished and laughed. I was forced to take the auto on my
 
 178 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 back and turn back to the road. There I rode farther in the 
 same manner. 
 
 " Suddenly I saw myself with my three-wheeled vehicle in the 
 room of an inn which was well known to me and was situated on 
 a mountain near my native place. I now shoved my automobile 
 into a corner and troubled myself no more about it. My brother 
 had arrived before me at the same inn and alongside him there 
 was sitting a well-known family who were deeply in debt, con- 
 sisting of Mr. and Mrs. M and their two daughters. My 
 
 brother and I paid no attention to them. Then Mr. M 
 
 came to our table, spoke to us, and finally we went to their table 
 which, however, was unpleasant to me. 
 
 "The thought of a bet came up in the course of a conversation 
 with my brother. He advised me not to bind myself at an early 
 age to the flighty girl that I wished to marry and told me from 
 his own experiences what ill results this can have to a man 
 striving for success. I comprehended this and promised to act 
 according to his advice. He took little stock of such promises. 
 That incited me to a bet. In early years before I knew what lay 
 buried in the depths of his nature he seemed to be a model to me 
 and I strove to become like him in character, mode of thought, 
 and bearing. Now I see, that I must not copy him in many 
 things, if I do not wish to follow in his footsteps. 
 
 "It is easier to reach one's destination with an automobile 
 than on foot. This auto, however, obviously represented the 
 wife, to whom I had tied myself. A three-wheeled auto is less 
 perfect than a four-wheeled one, the former lacks something. 
 Thus it is with a woman. Man is perfect. For that reason the 
 antithesis, the small handle. In my earliest youth I was 
 constantly seeking after something in girls. There was some- 
 thing I could not understand about them. Frequently we 
 walked under a bridge and yet we did not know what we 
 expected to see through the cracks above. At that time I was 
 perhaps five years old I had not the slightest idea of sexual 
 procedures (' uncertainty ') and had also come upon no sexual 
 aberration. I can, however, say that even at that time something- 
 drew me to girls, ' the small handle on the auto' indicated at the 
 same time that I possessed a too small penis or none at all, for 
 which reason the girl must be superior to me. 
 
 " I came into by-paths with my car, that is, through the 
 woman, through which I could not pass and which brought me 
 no nearer to the goal which I wished to attain, that is, no nearer 
 to the summit of my efforts. 
 
 "I took the car on my back the woman was thus more 
 than ever above me. 
 
 " The inn in which I finally found myself with my brother 
 stood on the top of a mountain, this signified my burning desire
 
 PUNCTUALITY, THE WILL TO BE FIRST 179. 
 
 for success in life, as I had expected it of my brother. 
 
 " That I met with a family which was deeply in debt indicates 
 that I had often had exaggerated thoughts concerning the cost 
 of a wife to her husband and that the wife is too often the cause 
 of running into debt. 
 
 " It is clear to me also that trains of thought on masturbation 
 (by-paths, being in debt) run through the dream, as well as the 
 false connection of masturbation and the stunting of the genitals. 
 The latter I ascribe to my uncertainty in regard to my bride. 
 Without knowing it I hit upon all sorts of expedients for getting 
 rid of her (in the corner). My condition of depression serves 
 the same purpose, to be liberated from my wife, to prove my 
 superiority in life." 
 
 In our physiognomic of the soul we understand the theory of 
 character to be this, we have already frequently spoken of those 
 obvious and deep-seated wants which seek to support and 
 maximate the ego-consciousness as an obtrusive proof of 
 manliness, as if there were a constant fear of becoming " de- 
 classed," of the revelation of a feminine role. Tnus the 
 exaggerated modesty of many neurotics, who can visit no public 
 toilet, who suffer from inhibition of the flow of urine in the 
 presence of others, who withdraw from female society on account 
 of blushing or anxiety and palpitation of the heart, reveals to us 
 the strained manly ambition, which supports itself against the 
 original feeling of inferiority. The masculine protest of these 
 patients, insecure to the core, forces them to this arrangement 
 whose boundaries pass over into those of bashfulness and 
 awkwardness : or there is a concordance of these and other traits 
 which may on occasion supplant each other. Often in neurotic 
 persons of both sexes one finds an inability to go to the toilet in 
 cases of great necessity before others. The greater modesty of 
 women, especially of neurotic women, in all relations of life 
 originates from the fear which is implanted in them from earliest 
 childhood that attention might be directed to their sex. I have 
 often convinced myself that the performances of girls and women 
 suffer considerably from this more or less unconscious impression, 
 indeed that the progress in the mental development just as is 
 the case in male patients, who feel unmanly the formation of 
 social and professional relations and relations of love are 
 immediately checked as soon as the patient comes into a 
 " feminine " or subordinate role or presupposes this expectation 
 in others. 
 
 This fact is in no manner affected when expressed or 
 repressed sexual stimuli come to light as the apparent source of 
 the checks of aggression. They are similarly arranged, have 
 the purpose of enhancing the fear of the partner and of permitting 
 the retreat decided upon in the plan of life to be entered upon;
 
 i8o THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 with certainty, are there also acts of foresight. The neurotic 
 had already in childhood laid the foundation of this foresight 
 and in it is reflected the feeling of shame as the guiding line 
 of reassuring modesty and the prudery of civilization. The 
 previous history of the patient reveals the exaggerated modesty 
 and this is true at times of those who in other respects show a 
 boyish nature, and the anxiety of nervous children on being 
 exposed may be observed in their conduct. They exclude 
 ^everyone from the room and will lock the doors when they are 
 going to undress. This conduct is also often observed in boys 
 who have grown up among girls. The masculine protest of the 
 latter is expressed in these cases in the derogation of the boy, 
 either purposely or unthinkingly, until he goes so far as to hide 
 his sex. For the development of the neuroses this expedient 
 of cowardice has an unfavorable significance. It is equal to 
 later castration thoughts and wishes to the neurotic, wishes to be 
 a woman, as soon as the fear of the wife seems actual, or as 
 soon as he wishes to escape a decision. And it arises never- 
 theless originally from the compulsion of an exaggerated 
 masculine protest, which is easily perceptible from the 
 accompanying, often continuing traits of character, such as 
 tyranny, burning ambition, the desire to have everything, to be 
 first everywhere ; from the emotional predispositions to rage and 
 anger and finally from the tendency to derogate and to too great 
 foresight. 
 
 If therefore neurotic modesty should be considered equal to 
 ihe secret attempt to play the man, this "consciousness of role" 
 (Groos) is more clearly manifested in the apparently antithetical 
 trait of character of shamelessness. In reality this latter line 
 proves to be a reenforcement and continuation of the former, as 
 an obtrusive reminder to the environment that one is a man. 
 "The guiding idea, which causes the predisposition to, or habit 
 of exhibitionistic gestures, hence often insulting or tactless 
 -obtrusion in respect to the environment, betrays in detail the 
 strong masculine factor. Thus it is when in nervous boys and 
 men sexual exhibitionism breaks through or is expressed 
 habitually in certain faults of toilette. In all similar cases one 
 finds the belief in the power of the phallus constructed as in the 
 antique religious cults as consciousness of power. Narcissistic 
 traits are also regularly intermingled so that in these cases the 
 attitude of conquest, accompanied by coquetry, by the inability 
 to believe in a refusal, attracts the attention. In shameless girls 
 the trait is even more noticeable because it is unusual. In 
 conversation, in dress, in behavior, at times only in small things, 
 at times obscurely or in coprology they demonstrate their inability 
 to adapt themselves to or to satisfy themselves with their 
 feminine role. The basis of operation for both sexes is
 
 PUNCTUALITY, THE WILL TO BE FIRST 181 
 
 manifested then in such a way that each demands from the other 
 recognition or an extreme submission. In the analysis of such 
 neurotic girls, at times only in their dreams and symptoms is 
 observed the childish expectation of a metamorphosis into a male 
 and in other cases always as an attempted substitute for the will 
 to power, the wish to be above. If two persons of this sort 
 meet, the result is not rarely that the reenforced masculine 
 guiding line of the one affects the other preliminarily as a sort 
 of miracle, a talisman, because in her guiding ideal the belief in 
 the miraculousness and wonder working power of manliness is 
 also contained. Thus there is often for both what seems a chance 
 fulfilling of destiny, but which is really brought about by the 
 power of their idea of personality. One often finds immodest 
 conduct in neurotic girls as an anticipation of their fictitious 
 expectation ; they conduct themselves as if they were really a 
 boy or a man, expose themselves naked or live out in neurotic 
 symptoms, dreams and phantasies, their masculine reincarnation. 
 Often in such patients the attempt is observed to ascribe the 
 miraculous power of the phallus by means of an alteration of 
 form of the fiction to other parts of the body, for example to the 
 hands, feet, breasts, which thus altered into male members are 
 taken into especial favor as fetiches and enjoy a Narcissus-form 
 worship, as often also the genital organs or the whole body. This 
 fetichism is nearly always transferred to the articles of clothing 
 and constitutes a large part of the charm of fashion, from which 
 we therefore must assume that this, like the fetichism itself, 
 must be regarded as a substitute of manliness with its larger 
 sphere of usefulness, which has been lost but which is always to 
 be sought. 
 
 Like immodesty the deep-seated neurotic infidelity of many 
 sick patients is an imitation of the exaggerated, apperceived 
 masculine image. It indicates to us one of the ways which the 
 masculine goal is forced to take. It is, like many of the neurotic 
 traits of character, often only ideal, a maker of humor or of the 
 view of life (Marczinowsky) or extends only to the boundary 
 where the reality of the female role begins. Much oftener the 
 virtue of fidelity is chosen as the means of security in the fear of 
 the man. Phantasies of infidelity, at times to the degree of 
 hallucinations or dreams, often result where there is real or 
 imagined subjection exacted by the husband. Phantasies of 
 prostitution indicate in these cases the neurotic, exaggerated 
 perspective concerning the power of the sexual appetite and serve 
 the same purpose of gaining security. In general in patients who 
 are prone to speak of their sexuality the suspicion is justified 
 that they paint their bugbear with great exaggeration. The 
 reality is always in their favor. In girls often the holy conviction 
 of their infidelity occupies the foreground entirely. It may be-
 
 i8a THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 therefrom inferred that for them even a single man would be too 
 much and that they wish to protect themselves from love and 
 especially from marriage : " for where does my passion drive 
 me? ' The real infidelity of many persons, too, both men and 
 women, is the result of the fear of the partner of whose 
 superiority they are afraid. The understanding of the 
 accompanying symptoms, fear of solitude, fear of places, fear 
 of society, etc., unsocial conduct, fixation of faults of childhood 
 and derogation of the opposite sex are other signs by which the 
 masculine purpose of these traits of character is revealed. Often 
 despised love gives rise to a feeling of a reduction of the egoistic 
 sense to such a degree that hate, indifference or infidelity are 
 the forms which the masculine protest assumes. 
 
 In this place a few educational observations may be added, 
 which I was in a position to make in regard to neurotics suffering 
 from jealousy. They all have reference to the search for proofs 
 of the influence of the individual over the partner and every 
 situation which is even half-way fitted for this purpose is made 
 use of. The insatiableness with which the neurotic tests his 
 partner is an indication of the want of self-confidence, of his lack 
 of self-esteem, of his uncertainty, so that it is easy to be seerv 
 how his jealous efforts serve to bring him more into notice, to 
 attract more attention to himself and thus to secure his self- 
 esteem. The old feeling of being disregarded and neglected is 
 seen to be revived upon the slightest occasion together with the 
 childish attitude of wishing to have everything, to obtain a 
 proof of superiority from the partner. A glance, a word in 
 company, an acknowledgment of a favor, a show of sympathy 
 for a picture, for an author, for a relative, even a protective 
 attitude towards servants may be taken as the cause of the 
 operation. In severe cases the impression is distinctly given that 
 the jealous individual cannot rest because he has no confidence 
 in peaceful happiness on account of his misfortune. Now the 
 neurosis develops in which the effort is made to bend the partner 
 by an arrangement of attacks, to arouse the sympathy of the 
 partner, or the attack is intended as a punishment. Headaches, 
 weeping fits, conditions of weakness, paralysis, attacks of 
 anxiety and depression, silence, etc., have the same value as 
 abandoment to alcoholism, masturbation, perversion and 
 lewdness. The lines of distrust and doubt often about the 
 legitimacy of the children become more pronounced, outbreaks 
 of wrath and scolding, mistrust of the entire opposite sex are 
 regular phenomena and reveal the other side of jealousy as a 
 preparation for the derogation of the other. Often pride 
 prevents consciousness of jealousy ; the conduct is the same. The 
 situation is not rarely made worse by the circumstance that the 
 other party meets the helplessness of the jealous person with ati
 
 PUNCTUALITY, THE WILL TO BE FIRST 183 
 
 unconscious satisfaction, thereby giving foundation to his feeling 
 of superiority and does not therefore find the right tone, the 
 proper attitude to hold the jealousy at least within limits, 
 jealousy of children often leads to grave faults of education. The 
 belief in miracles as a threat to the sexual organs through births 
 or aging nearly always causes jealous excitement to be more 
 strongly manifested in neurotically disposed persons.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 FEAR OF THE PARTNER ; THE IDEAL IN THE NEUROSIS ; INSOMNIA 
 AND COMPULSION TO SLEEP ; NEUROTIC COMPARISON OF MAN 
 AND WOMAN ; FORMS OF THE FEAR OF THE WIFE 
 
 IN this striving of the neurotic for the attainment of the 
 masculine guiding goal, one never misses the fact, as has already 
 been emphasized, that the fear of a decision resolves itself into 
 a fear of the opposite sex, that touchstone of the individual's 
 own power, the fulfiller of the guiding idea. One finds in the 
 family life of boys and girls, in their play and phantasy, in their 
 assortment of experiences of all kinds, in their day dreams and 
 poems and in their living out of actual experiences preparations 
 for the struggle for supremacy so early, with such abundance and 
 such unity of purpose that in arriving at puberty secure deter- 
 minants for love and marriage already exist and by these alone 
 the choice and direction of their eroticism is defined within 
 narrow limits. Let us consider now of what nature these 
 determinants of love objects may be in neurotics. Among these 
 should be mentioned tyranny, hypersensitiveness, ambition, 
 discontent and all the principal neurotic character-traits already 
 described, the security-giving devices of mistrust, caution, 
 jealousy and derogatory tendency which is everywhere seeking 
 faults, the neurotic digressions and subterfuges which are at first 
 directed against members of their own family, and which are 
 intended, with this as a basis, to prove their own superiority or 
 to facilitate the escape of the superiority of others. The neurotic 
 device has its part in this and demands for love some quality 
 which is difficult of attainment or entirely out of reach, or that 
 the sexual partner " shall supply that which is lacking " (Plato 
 and many modern sexologists), which is paramount to saying that 
 the partner must fulfil or represent the " ego-ideal " which the 
 other party to the contract has constructed as a compensation. 
 The normal child, too, expects from his future, and especially 
 from the one chosen in love the fulfillment of his ideals. But in 
 due course of time, after he has permitted himself to be driven 
 by his " ideal " as a means to an end he is able to detach 
 himself from it, descend to reality and reckon with the demands 
 of reality. Not so with the neurotic. He is unable to change his 
 neurotic perspectives through his own power, he cannot dispense 
 with his principles which have by now become fixed and rigid, 
 he has no longer control over his traits of character. Chained 
 
 184
 
 THE FEAR OF THE PARTNER, ETC. 185 
 
 to his " idea" he brings his old prejudices into his love-relations 
 and behaves as though they ought to procure for him not reality 
 but the security of his " idea," the triumph of his strained 
 maculine protest. And soon disillusion makes its appearance. 
 For it is introduced by the neurotic himself as a protective 
 measure, as a security against the prospective derogatory effect 
 of his fictive finale. The disillusionment furnishes the adequate 
 basis for a continuance of the strife against the partner, for a 
 recognition of every opportunity for the degradation of the latter. 
 For these were, after all, the most immediate goals of the old 
 preparatory training. 
 
 Unconsciously, the fear of the sexual partner hovers in the soul 
 of the growing neurotic as though he anticipated in the approach 
 of that event the end of his masculine fiction and with it the 
 annihilation of his ego-consciousness, of his guiding star, of his 
 security in the chaos of life. He creates for himself ideals in 
 order to detract from reality. He screws his ego-consciousness, 
 often in a narcissistic manner, as high as possible in order to 
 make every partner appear small by contrast. He surrounds 
 himself with a wall of the most crass egotism in order to furnish 
 the proof of his unfitness to himself and others. He arranges 
 in a neurotic manner doubt, uncertainty, awkwardness, adheres 
 to old faults of childhood and constructs new deficiencies in order 
 to keep himself at a distance. He invents weaknesses, sub- 
 missiveness, masochistic impulses in order to alarm himself. The 
 power of the sex instinct becomes for him an " overvalued idea " 
 (Wernicke), because he feels its need and apperceives his sexual 
 desire as the superiority of the opposite sex. The neurotic is 
 incapable of love, not because he has repressed his sexuality, 
 but because his rigid predispositions lie in the direction 
 of his fiction, in the line towards power. The neurotic 
 caricatures of Don Juan and Messalina are, notwithstanding 
 their sexuality, neurotic. Those who become inverts and 
 perverts have already escaped the threatening cliffs and seek 
 henceforth to make a virtue of necessity. And where thoughts 
 of incest apparently effect a check on the erotic life, it can be 
 shown that to the neurotic, who constantly fears a decision, this 
 represents a secure refuge, that is, the secure way to the mother 
 or father clothed in a sexual simile. 
 
 The flight from the partner, especially the flight from the 
 wife, succeeds better in those neurotics who have early 
 succeeded in finding their way to a profession or who have turned 
 to an artistic vocation. It is true that should they be threatened 
 with a feminine r61e, with defeat, the fear of a decision, of their 
 future, of life, of death may overtake them in the midst of their 
 labors. Frequently, however, some sort of tranquilizing 
 occupation furnishes the neurotic the means securing his ego- 
 
 O
 
 186 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 consciousness, or his talents, in effecting a formal change in his 
 fiction, furnish him the opportunity to contest for the palm of 
 masculinity in art. It is then not rare that the motive and 
 content of his artistic creations reflect that which has driven him 
 into the security-giving sphere of art, namely, the power of 
 woman and his fear of the wife. 
 
 The wonderfully effective charm which many myths, many 
 creations of art and philosophy possess for us, is in line with this ; 
 the fault of the woman, the banal " cherchez la femme," in all 
 evils. The thought is expressed in a bizarre manner by 
 Baudelaire, " I can form no idea of a beautiful woman without at 
 the same time imagining misfortune connected with her;" 
 mythically and sublimely, in the story of Eve, traces of which 
 have never been missing from poetry. "The Iliad" is built 
 upon this foundation, as well as the "Thousand and One 
 Nights," and if one examines more closely, every great and 
 small artistic creation. What is its leading thought ? Nothing 
 less than to win a standpoint in the uncertainties of life, in the 
 conflict with love, in the fear of woman. 
 
 Woman as a sphynx, as a demon, as a vampire, as a witch, 
 as a man-murdering horror, as benefactress, in all these pictures 
 is reflected the sexual impulse which has become over-excited by 
 the masculine protest and which has its counterpart in the 
 caricature of woman, in the obscene outpourings of gall, in 
 anecdotes and degrading comparisons. In the same manner 
 the neurotic, philistine male-consciousness and the desire for 
 superiority forces to those firm convictions which would deny 
 woman equal rights, sometimes even the right to existence. 
 
 Another turn which neurotic trains of thought may take in 
 seeking security from woman leads as a natural consequence away 
 from reality and life. In line with this Schopenhauer was led 
 to a denial of life, the present, all time. (The preparations for 
 this attitude originated in his unfriendly attitude towards his 
 mother.) Many patients flee in a somewhat less consistent and 
 methodical manner in their fear of woman, but they constantly 
 hanker after the fulfillment of their fiction in phantasies and 
 dreams which they weave about the future. Every neurotic shows 
 this trait, wishes to illuminate and investigate the future in order 
 to secure himself in good time. His cautious and anxious 
 expectation gives the fundamental tone to future events, gray, 
 sombre, full of danger. For they must seem thus to him in order 
 to be effective as incentives. Now he is able to keep the greatest 
 danger in sight, draw the lines of his character-traits and pre- 
 dispositions to the fineness of a hair in order to secure himself 
 adequately. Now he believes to have discovered the road to his 
 goal, and instead of ambition, longing after victory and triumph, 
 honor, elevation, power and admiration, he allows his symptoms
 
 THE FEAR OF THE PARTNER, ETC. 187 
 
 to become effective. He experiences under the compulsion of 
 his guiding principle, as a prophetic gift, what sober individuals 
 experience through their foresight and estimation of reality. But 
 with neurotic strivings of " anticipatory thinking," attention 
 approaches problems and arranges them in accordance with the 
 neurotic's antithetical mode of apperception, which values a 
 defeat as death, as inferiority, as effeminacy, and victory as im- 
 mortality, higher values, masculine triumph, while the hundreds 
 of other possibilities of life are annihilated by withdrawing them 
 from attention. In the same manner the way is entered upon 
 to the anticipation of future triumph and terror as well as an 
 hallucinatory reinforcement for the sake of security. The 
 psychoses show this trend in a pure manner, melancholia and 
 mania as anticipations of the pure antithesis " above-beneath," 
 dementia prsecox, paranoia and cyclothyemia as a mixture. 
 
 The recognition and construction of traits of character now 
 follow essentially in strict conformity with the goal-idea. The 
 accentuation of the traits of greed and economy is intended to 
 prevent the abjectness of poverty, pedantry, to assure against 
 difficulties, ethical traits of character, against shame, and all of 
 these against relations of love and marriage, against a subjection 
 to the partner, and at the same time furnish the possibility of an 
 attack upon the partner, an ever ready excuse for his own 
 depreciation of others. The device of the " principle of exclu- 
 sion," is held in the highest esteem, becomes a religious or pro- 
 verbial principle of life, of the highest wisdom. The uncertain- 
 ties of our social system, ethical points of view and the diffi- 
 culties attendant upon the rearing of children, furnish a welcome 
 excuse for the construction of the boundaries of a natural and 
 reasonable attitude towards life as narrowly as possible, while 
 the obscurity and insolubility of the problems of heredity are 
 distorted in a similar manner in order to justify an unwedded 
 life. Many take refuge in religion, surrender their present life, 
 excite their moral and ascetic instincts in order to become par- 
 takers in the happiness, in the triumph in the "beyond." An 
 asexual role is arranged and everything becomes a means for 
 the attainment of the heightened ego-consciousness which is 
 rendered possible by the neurotic perspective of life and its 
 experiences. At times security is attained through a want of 
 satisfaction in sexual relations, through a heightening of the 
 disillusionment to a marked degree, a device to which the 
 patient plainly lends his assistance. 
 
 It is only another phase of the fear of the partner when the 
 patient brings his predispositions into play against the 
 psychotherapeutist. The neurotic female patient combats the 
 man in the physician at the same time, and seeks to escape his 
 masculine influence which she often apperceives as most terrify-
 
 i88 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 ing, looking at it as she does from a sexual point of view. The 
 male neurotic secretly seeks to undermine the influence of the 
 psychotherapeutist, which influence he apperceives as sexual 
 superiority, and both conduct themselves during the course of 
 the treatment as they had always conducted themselves when- 
 ever compelled to take an active part in life, or whenever con- 
 fronted by a decision. 
 
 At times patients are found whose flight from woman is into 
 the past. It is then that their interest for antiquities, heraldry, 
 dead languages, etc., becomes very acute, and they often be- 
 come quite skillful in this direction. This skill is absent in 
 those patients who instead turn their attention to grave-yards, 
 death-notices and funerals. 
 
 I have already mentioned that the ' ' motive of the fear of 
 woman" is the strongest incentive to art and phantasy. Permit 
 me to quote an abstract from Grillparzer's autobiography, which 
 illuminates much of our thesis. 
 
 " Like every well-made man I felt myself attracted by the 
 beautiful half of mankind. I was, however, far too little 
 satisfied with myself to believe myself capable of making deep 
 impressions in a short time. Could it have been the vague con- 
 ception of the poet or of poetry, or was it the reverse of my 
 nature, which when it does not repel, attracts, because of the 
 spirit of contradiction ? I would find myself deeply entangled 
 while I still believed myself to be only at the first advances. This 
 promised both pleasure and pain near at hand, though mostly 
 the latter, because my real efforts had always been to preserve 
 myself in that tranquil state which would not render difficult, or 
 even entirely prevent the approach of my real goddess, art." 
 
 When both, artist and neurotic, regard the attraction of 
 woman as menacing, as dangerous, as a compulsion on account 
 of the uncertainty of their triumph, when both regard amorous 
 emotions as a subjection, it is only in conformity with the funda- 
 mental disposition that animates both. By which I do not at 
 all intend to deny the realities of these relations. An 
 examination of love, be it ever so sober, reveals a mutual adapta- 
 tion, a subjection of our will. To put forth, however, special 
 efforts to unearth these, to think of them as something significant 
 and to renounce, for this reason, the pleasurable yielding there- 
 to, reveals unequivocally an unconquerable craving for self- 
 assertion on the part of the person in question, which we have 
 frequently shown to be the neurotic's overcompensation for his 
 neurotic feeling of inferiority. The guiding goal forbids the 
 formation of fitting predispositions, or presents them only in the 
 form of an unmeasurable masochistic exaggeration which is in 
 turn itself used as a protective measure.
 
 THE FEAR OF THE PARTNER, ETC. 189 
 
 At times this craving for self-assertion seeks other channels as 
 soon as it feels its own libidinous tension as the superior power 
 of the partner. Wishes and efforts then emerge to escape this 
 power through t satiety, through orgies. Even castration wishes 
 and intents, and similarly ascetic and repentant practices make 
 their appearance, such as flagellation, etc., incited by the 
 unconquerable craving for security, all in order to win peace 
 from the demon, love. Active, constantly recurring perversions, 
 especially masochistic manifestations, can be explained in no 
 other way. They are an expression of the necessity of con- 
 vincing one's-self in detail of the sinister strength of the partner, 
 in order to be able to construct out of this conviction of the 
 strength of the other and of one's own weakness an admonishing 
 bugbear. The real result of this, the neurotic's rectification of 
 boundaries, is a strong deviation from the normal path, which 
 path he fears most of all. The self-degradation thus arranged 
 now furnishes a stronger stimulus for the masculine protest and 
 enhances it in line with the goal-idea. "It must be night, 
 where Friedland's stars shine." Now, after these detours, his 
 efforts are again directed along the paths of his neurotic goal, 
 reveal sadistic admixtures and a strong purification fanaticism in 
 case facts or fancies of a coprophilic nature play a role. Or the 
 patient contents himself to create an appearance of justification 
 for his neurotic detours by means of a struggle against the judg- 
 ment of others, against the law, or often by having recourse to 
 an unheard of logic, and in this way seeks again to prove his 
 superiority. Thus it is in the arguments of inverts who in the 
 same manner owe their neurotic deviation from normality to 
 their fear of the opposite sex. 
 
 The prestige which it is sought to maintain, the masculine 
 protest is always shoved into the foreground, until the enlighten- 
 ing analysis arrives at that point where in the memories of man 
 the neurotically grouped thoughts come to light, i.e., that it is 
 his inferiority, his underdeveloped genitalia which will hinder 
 him from obtaining victory over woman ; in the memories of 
 female patients this place is occupied by the feeling of inferiority, 
 by the neurotic terror of the feminine role. Along with these 
 rediscovered trains of thought, which have their origin in the 
 earliest years of childhood, one detects megalomanic ideas often 
 in the shape of narcissism and exhibitionism. They are to be 
 readily understood as preparatory attempts at compensation for 
 the feeling of inferiority, such as are produced by the compulsion 
 of the guiding fiction, as secondary neurotic formations which 
 say, " I want to be a complete man." The change of formula 
 which this thought experiences in girls into the ideal, "I will 
 excel all women " has already been mentioned. 
 
 I am able to present some of these relationships in the case of 
 the following female patient. A ig-year-old girl came under my
 
 i go THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 care for depression, suicidal ideas, insomnia and incapacity for 
 work. She had become an artist in order to have a profession. 
 With the exception of indications of hereditary tuberculosis and 
 myopia there were no discoverable bodily symptoms. The 
 relatives described her as formerly an obstinate child who left 
 home because she wished to be self-supporting. Her mother 
 and her only older brother died of tuberculosis. 
 
 The commencement of the treatment was very difficult 
 because the patient sat before me showing great indifference and 
 answered none of my questions. Only at times did she express 
 herself with a negative gesture, or answered with " No." 
 
 I began to work cautiously, I explained to her that her in- 
 difference is identical with her general derogatory tendency, the 
 same being true of her continued silence in my presence, her 
 negativism, her "No," all of which are part of this derogatory 
 tendency now directed against me. I then endeavor to shov* 
 her that her conduct indicates her discontent with her feminine 
 role against which she seeks to secure herself in this manner. 
 She answers me constantly with " No," which I disregard as 
 something to be expected and which is directed against me, the 
 male, and proceed. Her depression began during her sojourn 
 at a bathing resort. I now maintain with certainty that some- 
 thing must have happened there which had released this <: No," 
 that is to say, something which had brusquely brought to her 
 attention her feminine role. Thereupon she related that more 
 than a year ago she had been at another resort where she made 
 the acquaintance of a young man, who was agreeable to her, 
 and that tenderness and kisses had followed. One evening the 
 young man had fallen upon her as though he were insane and 
 tried to approach her in an indecent manner. Whereupon she 
 immediately left the place. I call her attention to the fact that 
 she tore herself away at the moment when the young man 
 wished definitely to force her by his behaviour into a feminine 
 role and added the remark that she must have undergone a 
 similar experience during the present summer. She thereupon 
 related to me that a guest at the resort, whose acquaintance 
 she had made a short time previously, had conducted himself 
 towards her in the same manner as the afore-mentioned young 
 man. She left the place just as she had done the previous year. 
 
 The " return of the identical " (Nietzsche) leads to the belief 
 that the patient must have had her part in the play since both 
 times she helped herself out of the situation by a neurotic 
 arrangement so as to break off at the same moment. In this 
 connection the patient furnished valuable support in the state- 
 ment that the kisses exchanged had not irritated her. I showed 
 her that she acquiesced as long as the feminine role did not enter 
 the question. I explained to her that her initial courage was the
 
 THE FEAR OF THE PARTNER, ETC. 191 
 
 masculine idea of conquest in harmony with her masculine aim. 
 At this stage her insomnia vanished. She communicated this 
 remarkable improvement in her condition with the detracting 
 remark, that now she would like to sleep day and night. Those 
 who, like myself, have learned to recognize the tense aggressive- 
 ness of patients during the progress of a psychotherapeutic course 
 of treatment, an aggressiveness which is directed against all 
 superiors, in this instance against the masculine physician, and 
 who have thus sharpened their perception for the manner in 
 which neurotics express themselves, will not misunderstand the 
 expression of our patient. The expression shows distinctly that 
 she has detected the result of the treatment, but that she takes 
 the trouble to detract with a light touch from this result and 
 hence from me. She insinuatingly calls my attention to the 
 fact that one evil has only been replaced by another. 
 
 More closely questioned the patient stated that during her four 
 weeks of insomnia she had constantly thought during her wake- 
 ful nights how worthless life was. We understand that she did 
 not merely think of it, but had worked at it. Now when the 
 male enemy in the form of the physician, whom she subjects to 
 the same valuation as man generally, confronts her and lays bare 
 her craving for security and thus undermines her effort to gain 
 security by means of her wakefulness, she tries, when forced to 
 sleep, to belittle him by asserting a superfluity of sleep. 
 
 Neurotic insomnia is a symbolic attempt to escape from the 
 defenselessness of sleep and to keep in mind the securities 
 against beneath, underneath. The dream is another form of this 
 effort, equal to a compromise, inasmuch as it covers as in sleep, 
 the defenselessness and consequent feeling of inferiority by the 
 masculine protest. The dream, according to my observation, 
 always drives towards security and has therefore the function of 
 forethought. That this is accomplished through the medium 
 of facts trom experience is easily comprehensible, and thus it is 
 that in the dream content and dream thoughts the defeats which 
 one has experienced come to light, a circumstance which has led 
 Freud to the formation of his heuristically valuable but other- 
 wise imperfect and one-sided theory of dreams. 
 
 After a prolonged hesitation and after having her attention 
 called to the negative significance of her hesitation, the patient 
 brought a few days later the following dream : "/ was in front 
 of the ' Steinhoff ' (Vienna's great insane asylum). I hurry 
 fast, as I see a dark form within." 
 
 In order to avoid all artificial influencing of the patient, 
 especially in the interpretation of the dream, I avoid all 
 explanations of my dream theory and only refer to the fact that 
 the dream rouses trains of thoughts which betray again how the 
 patient tries to secure herself against sleep which is felt by her
 
 192 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 to be a defenseless condition, and which recalls to her her 
 defenselessness in regards to life. In cases such as the one just 
 given, who where the wish above all is to discuss the fear of the 
 feminine role, I indicate that sleep may be felt as a feminine 
 situation. 
 
 The figure of speech, " lying in the arms of Morpheus," the 
 frequent sensation of being paralyzed, of being crushed, the 
 analysis of nightmares, etc., and the feminine trends which I am 
 able to discover in all dreams, trends out of which the dream 
 raises itself to the masculine protest, and where furthermore the 
 advent of sleep-banishing consciousness awakens an individual 
 thought-association suggesting a feminine situation, prove with 
 certainty the fact that every dream must reveal a progression 
 from femininity to masculinity. That not every dream is of such 
 a nature as to convince the beginner of the correctness of my 
 conception, I have already emphasized. This arises from the fact 
 that in a sketch, and we must regard the dream as such, the 
 sense and meaning of mere traces of ideas must be ferreted out 
 and completed, a thing which is never difficult for the 
 experienced. I teach the patient that he must regard the dream 
 as he would the sketch of a painting, the details of which he is 
 obliged to fill in according to his impressions. 
 
 After this explanation the intelligent patient proceeded 
 unassisted. " Steinhoff means insane. This point indicates that 
 I am on the verge of insanity. But I hasten away. Then what 
 you always tell me occurs to me, I am running away from my 
 feminine role. Hence becoming insane and the feminine 
 role are the same thing." I now lead her on to endeavor to force 
 a meaning into the dream, and for this purpose make use of the 
 patient's spirit of rivalry which is known to me, in order to excite 
 her zeal when difficulties present themselves by saying, " But 
 one certainly ought to be able to understand something under 
 that idea." 
 
 Patient : " Perhaps that it would be insane to play a feminine 
 role? " 
 
 I : " That would be an answer to a question. What then must 
 the question have been ? " 
 
 Patient : " You told me yesterday, I should not be afraid of 
 my feminine role." 
 
 I : " Therefore an answer directed against me, in line with 
 our conversations, a conflict against the man. And the black 
 figure?" 
 
 Patient : " Perhaps death ? " 
 
 I : " Try now to fit death into the situation." 
 
 This was difficult for the patient, although it is wholly clear 
 that she has taken the fear of death as a figure for her flight 
 from the feminine role, in order to present it in a sufficiently
 
 THE FEAR OF THE PARTNER, ETC. 193 
 
 strong manner. The connection of sexuality and death is often 
 spoken of in philosophy and poetry. The analysis of neurotics 
 often indicate this connection in the sense of an affect- 
 accentuating " conditional proposition." 
 
 The sense of the dream is now shown to be an expedient 
 directed against the physician, which with our knowledge of the 
 patient's phantasy-life should be made to read : "It would be 
 insane to submit to a man, equal to death." But according to 
 her estimation, she had already submitted by the fact that she 
 had slept since the beginning of the treatment. This dream 
 therefore revolts against sleep, and her derogatory remark that 
 she would now like to sleep day and night, is in line with this. 
 Therefore the neurotic predispositions of this patient against the 
 possibility of a man winning influence over her is laid bare, and 
 it is shown that the patient acted and dreamed as though she 
 were conscious of her guiding purpose. 1 
 
 This essential predisposition, her tendency to detract, her 
 longing for victory over men and her neurotic craving for 
 security, which stands menacing in the background with the 
 terror of death and insanity, had also caused the development 
 of the neurosis as a strengthened security. Through it the 
 patient is unfitted for life. The neurotic apperception, whicR 
 conjures up a connection between love, insanity and death has 
 something of the ring of poetry. How firmly fixed this is in the 
 thoughts of the patient is shown in her first account : the young 
 man had fallen upon her as though he were insane. 
 
 It is often learned from the anamneses of male neurotics that 
 they had been under the influence of a strong woman, mother, 
 teacher, sister, who therefore, instead of their feminine role or 
 in addition thereto, played a masculine one, were above, and to 
 whom the environment did not deny recognition, sometimes even 
 disapprobation, showing that they were really regarded as men. 
 This circumstance also often tends to strengthen the uncertainty 
 of the neurotically disposed child, who tries to arrive at a 
 conviction of his manliness by understanding the sexual 
 differences. Especially when one endeavors to gain security 
 through knowledge a certain sex inquisitiveness forces him to 
 constantly seek visual confirmation of his sexual superiority, a 
 necessity of obtaining definite knowledge and full comprehension 
 of the female organs which approaches the masculine guiding line 
 more nearly, in proportion as it is created out of preparations 
 for the future. 
 
 His pathological uncertainty adheres to the neurotic as a 
 pretext and confirmation of his fear of woman even after he is 
 married, so that the expression is often heard, that the feminine 
 
 1 Richard Warner's genius-like intuition in the song of Erda. " My life 
 is dreaming, my dreaming is thinking, my thinking the control of knowledge."
 
 194 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 / 
 
 sexual apparatus, the condition of virginity, legitimacy of 
 children, fatherhood, is a mystery just as a woman herself is. 
 Along with this desire to obtain satisfaction through visual 
 perception of the female organs, there is at times associated in, 
 neurotically disposed children a sort of sinister feeling of danger, 
 as though obscure thoughts arose in the mind of the boy, that his 
 future life, his victory or defeat were dependent upon the solution 
 he has reached concerning the sexual question. It is in the 
 nature of things, that frequently the opportunity for this sort 
 of visual confirmation is only offered when the woman occupies 
 a position above the boy. Even this small circumstance forms, as 
 I have repeatedly stated, a figurative representation of the 
 feminine superiority in the phantasy of the neurotic individual 
 who stands in fear of woman. Ganghofer and Stendhal give 
 accounts in the history of their childhood of these terrifying 
 experiences which, it is thought, left behind permanent traces. 
 The terror was in itself already a security of the injured masculine 
 prestige, and the exciting scene remained as an admonition, to 
 be understood figuratively, of caution in regard to women. 
 Frequently the derogatory tendency sets in at the point where 
 the superiority of woman assumes a threatening aspect and leads 
 to a comparison of male and female advantages and 
 disadvantages. The abstract and figurative representation of 
 the inferiority of woman, in dreams, phantasies, wit and science, 
 frequently resorts to the mode of expression of a lost member, 
 of supernumerary cavities. One of my patients who suffered 
 from vertigo had a dream one time following an unusually stormy 
 scene with his wife which summarily and essentially brought 
 about a degradation of his domineering wife. 
 
 " The picture of a birch trunk emerged. At one point there 
 was a branch with a round swelling. There a twig had fallen 
 off and I had the impression as though this was a female genital 
 organ." 
 
 I have already discussed such dreams, as have others also. 
 To me such dreams represent figuratively the question 
 concerning the differences of sex, which is answered after the 
 manner of children that the girl is a boy who has been deprived 
 of the male organ. The above dream fits into the psychic 
 situation of the dreamer, inasmuch as it reveals the thought, ' ' I 
 am a man who has been deprived of manliness, who is weak and 
 ill, who is in danger of being under, of falling beneath." Now 
 he has the basis of operation, he beholds his prestige diminished 
 and takes breath, for the effort again to regain power. The 
 masculine protest now sets in in waking hours as tyranny, out- 
 breaks of rage and acts of infidelity. 
 
 It might be mentioned in this connection that one often hears 
 from neurotics that in moments of personal danger or when they
 
 THE FEAR OF THE PARTNER, ETC. 195 
 
 are threatened with defeat, they perceive a shortening or 
 contraction of the genitals, at times also a feeling of pain which 
 forcibly impels them to a termination of the situation. 3 These 
 phenomena most frequently accompany states of anxiety in high 
 places where there is fear of falling. The shortening of the 
 genitals in the bath nearly always causes a reaction in the 
 neurotic individual. He feels out of sorts and at times experiences 
 pressure in the head. 
 
 I have already emphasized that homosexuality as a tendency 
 and behavior is the result of the fear of the opposite sex. In 
 addition it may be briefly mentioned that the over-valuation of 
 the homosexual partner serves also to raise the neurotic invert 
 in his own estimation. In neuroses homosexuality even when 
 carried into practice is always found to be a symbol by means of 
 which it is sought to place the individual's own superiority 
 beyond question. This mechanism is similar to that of a 
 religious psychosis in which the nearness of God has the signi- 
 ficance of an elevation. 
 
 One of the forms which the fear of woman is especially likely 
 to take is syphilophobia. The train of thought of such phobists 
 (Adler, syphilidophobia, 1. c.) is usually the following : They 
 fear that they will not be able to play a dominating part in regard 
 to woman because of some feeling of inferiority, for which they 
 have ready all sorts of foundations, at times without conscious 
 motivation. In this manner, following the increasing trend to 
 belittle woman, they arrive at suspicious trains of thought which 
 are to secure them against sexual relations. Sometimes woman is 
 a riddle, sometimes a criminal being, always thinking of adorn- 
 ment and expense and sexually insatiable. The suspicions 
 constantly arise that a girl is only hunting for support, is bent on 
 capturing the man, is crafty and cunning and always bent on 
 evil. These trains of thought are universal and are found at all 
 periods of history. They emerge in the most sublime and the 
 lowest creations of art, have ,a place in the thoughts and efforts 
 of the wisest, and create in man and in society a constant 
 predisposition which develops suspicious and cautious traits, in 
 order to always keep in touch with the enemy and to be in good 
 time for the defense against knavish attacks. It is an error to 
 think that it is only the man who harbors distrust of his sexual 
 partner. The same trait is found also in the woman, often less 
 distinct in character, when fictions of her own strength put a 
 check to the doubt of her own value, but flashing up most 
 strongly, when the feeling of degradation becomes overpowering. 
 
 In the disputes of pious savants of the middle ages, questions 
 
 a At times this feeling of pressure extends to the abdomen, to the oretist 
 and Ihe cardiac region or affects only these regions, at times pollutions take 
 place as reactive symbols of the masculine goal.
 
 196 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 arose as to whether woman had a soul, whether she was a human 
 being, and the general prevalence of similar thoughts is reflected 
 in the insane burning of witches in the centuries following to 
 which government, church and the blinded populace lent a hand. 
 This detraction from women in hate as well as in love which 
 recurs constantly in Christian, Jewish and Mohammedan religious 
 usages, break out irresistibly in the timorous, uncertain man 
 and so completely fills the world of thought of the neurotic, that 
 the most accentuated trait of character in the neurotic psyche is 
 found to be the tendency to detract from the sexual partner. 
 Thus the outposts which offer security to the ego-consciousness 
 become established and the peculiar play of the neurotic traits 
 of character begins. Continuous testing, feeling, attempts to 
 subjugate, to find fault with and to degrade the partner set in, 
 always favored by the fact that attention and interest is directed 
 to a single purpose, to keep in touch with the enemy and to 
 prevent a surprise. As long as the tendency to detraction with 
 its outward expressions, distrust, fear, jealousy, tyranny exists 
 there is no hope of a cure of the neurotic. As we have seen 
 worthy creations of art and literature which have received 
 recognition on all sides owe their origin to this tendency. From 
 the " Lysistrata " to the " kreuzel writers " leads the same path 
 as from the Gorgo Medusa to the Syphilis fad, which arose before 
 the eyes of Lenans or Ganghofer. The guiding line which 
 prevails in Tolstoi's Kreutzer Sonata and which strives after the 
 degradation of woman was perceptible even in his boyhood when 
 he shoved his future bride out of the window. An old guiding 
 line which is revealed in the myth of the poison-girl ' of antiquity, 
 in the middle ages and in the beginning of modern times in the 
 fear of witches, demons, vampires and sprites has undergone a 
 change of form and has become the syphilophobia of to-day. 
 Poggio relates of a man who had violated a girl. The girl 
 changed into a devil and vanished with a stench. 
 
 All these trains of thought returning in the same manner as 
 they do in the dream and in the psyche of the neurotic, reveal 
 the cautious man, doubtful of his manliness, who seeks to secure 
 himself from real life just as much by the setting up of scarecrows 
 as by the fear he has of this life itself, because of the veneration 
 of an ideal. 
 
 The bantering note in such an attitude toward woman is of 
 little significance in so far as our view is concerned. It shows 
 moreover an effort to be guilty of no exaggeration, to preserve 
 decorum and to save one's self from ridicule by a spirit of wit. 
 The case is similar to that of Gogol whose strong craving for 
 security is perceptible in every vein of his poetry. In his 
 
 3 Wilhelm Hertz, "The Myth of the Poison-girl." Abh. d. bayer 
 Akademic der WissenBchaften, 1897.
 
 THE FEAR OF THE PARTNER, ETC. 197 
 
 ' Jahrmarkt von Sorotschinsk * he makes a character say, 
 "Lord in heaven, why dost thou punish us poor sinners so? 
 There is already so much trouble, why didst thou also send 
 women into the world? " In the " Dead Souls" of this great 
 poet, who was neurotic during his entire life, suffered from 
 compulsory masturbation and died in a mad house, he makes his 
 hero reflect on seeing a young girl : 
 
 " A superb little woman ! The best about her is that she 
 seems to have just come out of a boarding school or institute and 
 as yet has none of those special feminine traits that disfigure 
 the whole sex. She is still a pure child, everything about her 
 is straightforward and simple ; she speaks from her heart and 
 laughs when she feels like it. All possibilities lie in her nature ; 
 she may become a superb creature but she may become a stunted 
 being and that will probably be the result when the aunts and 
 mammas set themselves to educate her. They will stuff her so 
 full of their woman's nonsense in a year that her own father 
 would no longer recognize her. She will acquire a pompous and 
 affected nature, will turn and move and courtesy according to 
 rules learned by heart, rack her brains over the questions, what 
 to say, how much to say, and with whom to speak, and how she 
 shall look at her cavalier, etc., she will constantly be in the 
 greatest anxiety lest she may have spoken some superfluous 
 word, and finally will no longer know what she ought to do and 
 will go wandering through life, a great lie. Fie ! the devil ! 
 For the rest I would like to know, of what sort she is !" 
 
 4 From O. Kaus, "The Case of Gogol," Munchen, Reinhardt, 1912.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 SELF-REPROACHES, SELF-TORTURE, CONTRITION AND ASCETICISM, 
 FLAGELLATION, NEUROSES IN CHILDREN ; SUICIDE AND 
 SUICIDAL IDEAS 
 
 UNDER the forms of the neurotic lines of conduct for the purpose 
 of securing the masculine protest, trends of self-execration, self- 
 reproach, self-torture and suicide appear in marked accentuation. 
 Our astonishment loses in force as soon as we see that the whole 
 arrangement of the neurosis follows the trait of self-torture, that 
 the neurosis is a self-torturing expedient whose purpose it is to 
 enhance the feeling of personal esteem. In fact, the first stirrings 
 of the aggressive tendency which is directed against the 
 individual's own person, originate in the child from a situation 
 in which the child through disease, death, shame and all sorts 
 of constructed deficiencies seeks to prepare pain for the parents 
 or to keep himself in their mind. This trait already characterizes 
 the neurotically disposed child who has formed expedients out of 
 the reminiscences of the phenomena of somatic inferiority and 
 out of their significance for the maximation of the ego-conscious- 
 ness, for the purpose of increasing the tenderness and interest of 
 the parents. The developed neurosis builds up these expedients 
 and introduces their activity through a reinforcement of the 
 fiction, as soon as this is demanded by the growing feeling of 
 insecurity. It is well known how strong exacerbations take a 
 hand in this, how the hallucinatory character, the anticipatory 
 force of the neurotic assists in this and how the situation of the 
 attack and the disturbances of health with the resultant 
 dominancy over the environment takes place. Paradoxical as 
 it may seem at first glance the neurotic is only at peace when 
 he has an attack behind him. Janet has already called attention 
 to this fact ; I can only add as the basis for it that it is because 
 he has then gained the security of his superiority, if only for a 
 short time. 
 
 The trait of character of wishing to excel all others is also 
 contained in the feeling to which the neurotic constantly gives 
 expression, that he excels all others in pain. He uses this 
 conviction because it furnishes him with a basis of operation for 
 feeling himself in opposition to others, for avoiding a decision or 
 for making an attack. Thus it happens also that attacks, pains, 
 or a disease are wished for, when the situation demands it. 
 Sometimes the wish alone serves the purpose of an attack, when 
 
 198
 
 SELF-REPROACHES, SELF-TORTURE, ETC. 199 
 
 as a reminder it already terrifies the environment. For the 
 patient's own psyche it is at times sufficient, as a female patient 
 once told me, if a phantasy is formed as result of which the 
 neurotic suffers pain through the acts of another. This brings 
 about the feeling of suppression or mistreatment, awakens the 
 craving for security and introduces the masculine protest. 
 
 The significance of the feeling of guilt, of the conscience and 
 self-reproaches as forms of security-giving fictions has already 
 been described. Not rarely one finds in the psychology of 
 masturbation an admixture of traits of atonement and of a desire 
 to harm, the latter to be likened to an obstinate revolt against 
 the parents, the former as a cheap pretext or sanctimonious act. 
 
 The injuring of others through atonement is one of the most 
 subtle expedients of the neurotic, for example when he launches 
 forth in self-curses. Ideas of suicide often reveal the same 
 mechanism, which is clearly seen in joint suicides. When one 
 of my patients was treated by another physician with cold douches 
 for impotence, he expressed the wish ' ' that the physician might 
 tear, injure his genitals." When two years before he had suffered 
 great losses in business he wished to commit suicide, although he 
 was still a rich man. The motive force of these execrations 
 (v. Shylock) is neurotic avarice. The analysis offers a complete 
 explanation. In order to protect himself from expenses for girls 
 he execrates himself also when he is obliged to pay physicians' 
 fees. This is certainly accompanied by a half conscious feeling 
 that his wishes need not be absolutely fulfilled. He execrates 
 especially his levfty, for this is the meaning of his self- 
 reproaches and execrations, when he has paid a large account 
 or ought to pay one. Then every small expense disturbs him. 
 
 He fears the charm of sexuality. Even his own sister he would 
 like to throw into misfortune, or his sister's daughter, both of 
 whom lived with him. At the same time he must have estimated 
 his execrations as of very little importance or perhaps even 
 expected the opposite. This is shown by the great number of his 
 measures for security, among which the self-execrations only 
 played an insignificant part. He secures himself to a much 
 greater extent through the arrangement of impotence. Self- 
 detraction and self-torture our patient constructed in the same 
 manner as hypochondria, in order to hold before his eyes the 
 feeling of his own inferiority, to feel himself too weak, too small, 
 too unworthy. They appear as hindrances and in this way take 
 the place of doubts. Neurotic girls who fear the man, who do 
 not wish to play a feminine r61e, worry constantly over their 
 growth of hair, their birth marks and fear their children might be 
 similarly deformed. In many cases they were homely children 
 or were slighted for a preferred brother when they were small 
 girls. In one of my female patients with a compulsion neurosis,
 
 200 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 her compulsory thought was revealed as belief in an enlargement 
 of the pores of her skin, to be understood symbolically as a 
 security against the feminine role. Another form of self-torture 
 is manifested in the tendency to atonements. They may be 
 recognized as simple cravings for security when it is taken into 
 consideration that these patients seek just as little as those with 
 the allied feeling of remorse for the past, to change or better 
 things in the future. 
 
 The symptom clearly aims at the future, and this just as much 
 when it reveals itself as of personal emotion in individual form and 
 conduct as when it is revealed socially in religious performances. 
 As in all forms of craving for security, in this case too, it is not 
 at all excluded that recently experienced evil thoughts and acts 
 come to light. Its purpose is to become effective as a restraining 
 admonition and to serve as proof of the worthy intentions of the 
 one concerned. Not last of all in this self-inspection is the 
 impulse to atonement and the emphasis of inner good qualities 
 wherein the contrast to other people is always thought of, so 
 much so, that the tendency to atonement and remorse at times 
 betrays a strongly antagonistic, intractable, inimical note. The 
 epidemic character of acts of atonement is scarcely ever without 
 this pomp, people vie with each other in crying out, weeping, 
 in self-torture and contrition. 
 
 The possibility therefore of gaining a feeling of superiority by 
 means of fasting and praying, wearing of sackcloth and ashes, 
 etc., will have a charm for weak souls as soon as they have the 
 inclination to appear pious and good, religious and sublime. And 
 asceticism will lead to an elevation when it is felt as a triumph, 
 in my sense, as a masculine protest. That in all this there is 
 only an arbitrary valuation, in which frequently the contrast to 
 otherwise superior people is taken as the point of departure, is 
 revealed in the counterparts to the God-fearing type, in atheists, 
 militant freethinkers and iconoclasts who seek to demonstrate 
 their superiority in the same manner as the former. Lichtenberg's 
 expression is to be understood in this sense when he remarks, 
 how rare are the people who live up to the principles of their 
 religion, and how numerous those who fight for them. The 
 conversion from militant freethinking to orthodoxy is not rare 
 as is also not rare the conversion from Epicurianism to 
 Asceticism. 
 
 Along with this craving for security by means of atonement the 
 masculine protest plays a role as a guide which should not be 
 underestimated. But one must still keep in sight the building 
 material, the possibilities dormant in the psyche, of which it 
 makes use in order to reach expression. There is no doubt that 
 along with this, acts and thoughts of self-subjection come to light, 
 that is, masochistic elements, which according to our way of
 
 SELF-REPROACHES, SELF-TORTURE, ETC. 201 
 
 looking at the subject are estimated as feminine elements of the 
 masculine psyche. How incompatible these are with the 
 consciousness of mankind and the fact that they constantly 
 demand a change of direction in the masculine protest, that 
 therefore, they are pseudo-masochistic phenomena, is seen from 
 the fact that this subjection is connected with a soaring, an 
 elevation. The lines of force also in this case were from below 
 upwards because the person who has made atonement feels him- 
 self elevated or cleansed, he speaks with his God, he comes nearer 
 to him than others, than at other times, and " joy in the kingdom 
 of heaven awaits him." 
 
 One of my patients "punished herself" after the death of her 
 mother, 72 years of age, with whom she had always lived at 
 strife and to whom she would have been justified in making 
 reproaches, by deep feelings of remorse because of her 
 indifference for her mother, and by sleeplessness. Her feelings 
 of remorse had the character of compulsory thoughts and 
 compulsory acts. The analysis showed that she wished to prove 
 her normal superiority over a sister. The sister was married, 
 while our patient was tempted to enter into a liaison with a 
 married man which experience she felt as a degradation. She 
 was, therefore, according to her own opinion degraded in contrast 
 to her sister. On the occasion of the death of her mother the 
 masculine protest gave rise to a situation which again brought 
 her uppermost, namely, her stronger grief for the sad event. 
 
 In the history of civilization as in the neurosis, the tendency to 
 atonement not rarely degenerates in scourging, flagellation, etc. 
 From the confessions of Rousseau and from private communi- 
 cations of healthy as well as neurotic individuals, and furthermore 
 from good observations of the behavior of children, as for example 
 B. Asnaurow's, we know that in certain individuals blows are 
 capable of arousing sexual excitations. This is the real, 
 somatically perceptible moment which exists in the makeup of 
 these individuals and which determines the choice of .a particular 
 form of atonement. Patients have told me that in their childhood 
 they experienced pleasure from blows on their buttocks, though 
 it was terrible to them to be beaten. In the later life of these 
 neurotics flagellation analogously with masturbation and all other 
 forms of perversions is the visible expression of the fear of the 
 opposite partner. I am indebted to a patient for the following 
 communication. She had come under my care for severe 
 migraine. Several years before the onset of the treatment she 
 was subject to day-phantasies in which she saw herself detected 
 in an act of infidelity and punished by a man to whom she thought 
 herself married but who did not resemble her real husband. As 
 a sequel to this phantasy there followed a severe self-scourging 
 
 P
 
 202 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 until she fell exhausted. This flagellation brought about intense 
 sexual emotions. The analysis revealed that this woman hated 
 her husband, a neurotic hatred, and in this hatred would have 
 readily committed an act of infidelity in order to humiliate him 
 thereby. Now she has gotten to be too old to be of any worth in 
 sex matters, while in former years she was hindered by the 
 masculine protest. For a short time before she thought of 
 flagellation, she played with phantasies of infidelity, but not 
 without securing herself against a realization. The detection by 
 the husband, the flagellation and consequent auto-erotic 
 gratification, all of this had its origin in the anticipatory craving 
 for security and is but a play of phantasy which emphasizes in 
 an especially strong manner the fear of the man. The substitution 
 of her husband by another is the result of her derogatory tendency 
 and equivalent to her wishes of infidelity, her husband is to be 
 humiliated, another would be preferred in his stead. Continuing, 
 she disavows this plausible assumption through an act of infidelity 
 to this other one. In the course of years she gave up this 
 flagellation. The derogatory tendency, however, is directed 
 more vehemently against her husband as well as against all man- 
 kind. She developed migraine as soon as she feared that she 
 was losing hold of her domineering role over anyone. Her 
 disease succeeded too in enabling her to withdraw completely 
 from society. Within her family circle she was absolute mistress 
 as a result of her illness. She succeeded also in degrading in a 
 large measure her various family physicians, inasmuch as her 
 migraine remained unimproved in spite of all their treatment. 
 Even morphine failed in its effect, and I might recommend that 
 a perverse reaction to this remedy in any case should receive 
 special attention. I mention incidentally, as a supplement to the 
 termination of the treatment, that she also placed great obstacles 
 in the way of my form of therapy and for a long time sought to 
 expose me by retaining her pain even when openly flattering 
 me. Patients recover as soon as they understand that this motive 
 of adhering to their disease is for the purpose of humiliating the 
 physician. 
 
 Incidentally, I will refer to the fact that according to my 
 experience, " religious insanity," phantasies and hallucinations 
 of God, heaven and the saints, as well as the feeling of being 
 crushed are to be understood as infantile megalomanic ideas of 
 these patients and as an expression of their feeling of superiority 
 over their environment. There is often connected with this a 
 hostile feeling against the environment, as is the case when a 
 catatonic permits himself to be commanded by God to give his 
 attendant a box on the ear or to overturn a bed or a table, or 
 when he tries to compel his Jewish relatives to submit to 
 baptism. The soaring in maniacs, the dements' grandiose ideas
 
 SELF-REPROACHES, SELF-TORTURE, ETC. 203 
 
 are parallel phenomena and indicate the buried feeling of 
 humiliation which demands over-compensation in the psychosis. 1 
 
 In practice physicians often come across children who 
 aggravate symptoms and simulate in order to escape oppression 
 at the hands of their parents. How closely these phenomena 
 border on unfaithfulness without entirely coinciding with it is 
 self-apparent. Remarkable, however, is the concomitant 
 manifestation of signs of somatic inferiority, as well as the 
 emergence of the neurotic character-development, and hence the 
 neurotic disposition. As examples, three cases of observations 
 of neurotic children are given. 
 
 A seven years old girl came under my care for periodical 
 attacks of gastric pain and nausea. We found a frail, poorly 
 developed child who suffered from struma cystica, adenoids and 
 enlarged tonsils. Her voice had a hoarse intonation. Upon 
 inquiry her mother stated that the child often suffered from 
 catarrhal troubles accompanied by a cough, which were unusually 
 protracted, as well as from protracted attacks of dyspepsia. Her 
 present complaint had existed about a half year, without any 
 demonstrable organic affection. Along with this her appetite 
 and bowel functions remained normal. The gastric pains had 
 developed since the girl began attending school. Her progress 
 in school was an excellent one, but the teacher had repeatedly 
 expressed wonder over the striking ambitiousness of the child. 
 She was very sensitive about admonitions and felt herself slighted 
 for a sister who was three and one-half years her junior. What 
 especially attracted her mother's attention was a definite 
 lengthening of the clitoris, one of the genital anomalies, the 
 importance of which as a sign of inferiority I have already 
 emphasized here, and which was later on discovered by Bartel 
 and Kyrle and emphasized by them as very characteristic. Her 
 skin was everywhere hypersensitive, and the tickling reflex 
 noticeably accentuated. The child frequently asked to be tickled. 
 The child's anxiousness exceeded the normal. The irregularity 
 of the incisors is to be looked upon as a further indication of a 
 somatic inferiority, which points to a defect of the gastro- 
 intestinal tract. The pharyngeal reflex was definitely exaggerated. 
 
 One gains the impression from this ensemble of phenomena, 
 that the reflex activity of the alimentary canal was likewise 
 exaggerated. As a matter of fact the child had vomited frequently 
 during the first three years of her life. The frequent dyspeptic 
 attacks likewise indicate an inferiority of the gastro-intestinal 
 tract. Along with this she had suffered for about a year from 
 
 1 Paul Bjerre (" Zur Kadicalbehandlurig der chronischen Paranoia," Wien 
 und Liepzig, Deuticke, 1912) was the first to describe in a convincing manner 
 the sisniificance of the masculine protest and of the craving for security in the 
 psychosis .
 
 204 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 eczema of the buttocks, at the termination of the inferior 
 alimentary canal, with itching which lasted for several months 
 and which was cured by the family physician by means of 
 suggestion and with the assistance of a neutral salve. 
 
 The painful pressure in the stomach proved to be a psychic 
 reflex which set in whenever the child feared a humiliation at 
 school or at home.* 
 
 The purpose of this reflex which had been constructed on the 
 basis of somatic inferiority lay in the effort to avoid punishment 
 and to direct the attention of the somewhat harsh mother who 
 preferred the younger girl. After the inner perception of this 
 heightened reflex activity, there was obviously fixation and 
 aggravation as soon as the child sought a guiding idea which she 
 could use for the purpose of maximating her ego-consciousness. 
 On account of the brevity of the treatment I was able to discover 
 no spontaneous expressions of traces of ideas concerning a future 
 gravidity, as the anticipated destiny of a feminine role. The 
 attacks vanished after a short time, after I had explained the 
 connection to the child. A dream after one of these attacks 
 points in the above described direction. She dreamed : 
 
 "My friend was below. Then we played with each other." 
 
 Her friend was a preferred rival in the school. Conflicts often 
 resulted, without blows however. She lived on the floor above 
 and they always played in the apartment of the patient. But the 
 form of expression in the dream she related was sufficiently 
 remarkable. WEen I asked this intelligent child if one would say 
 " her friend was below " when the person who related the story 
 was playing with her, she corrected herself immediately, and 
 said " she was with me." But we will assume that the form of 
 expression is right and the accent is on the "below," then 
 behind this is concealed the thought that the rival was under the 
 ambitious patient as in a conflict. " The friend was below " 
 then means " I was above," a conception as result of which we 
 are able to define the standpoint of the patient. The "then" 
 also points in the same direction. It only has meaning when we 
 assume that there is an interval between the two dream pictures, 
 such as perhaps : "I must first be superior to my friend, then 
 I will play with her." 
 
 The history which preceded the attack which followed 
 furnished a confirmation of our conception. The game of the two 
 girls was as a rule playing "father and mother" or "playing 
 doctor." In the first game there was a quarrel between the two 
 
 - E. Stern has described similar phenomena, of which we have already 
 spoken frequently in this book, as preactive tensions (practive Spannungen). 
 According to my conception we are dealing with a planful, albeit unconscious 
 utilization of reflex irritability of inferior organs, with intelligent reflexes 
 (" Intelligente Beflexe.")
 
 SELF-REPROACHES, SELF-TORTURE, ETC. 205 
 
 girls as to whom should be "father" until the father finally took 
 a hand and reproached the patient that her companion was always 
 more yielding than she, which was the truth. The friend there- 
 upon received the part of father. When the family shortly 
 afterwards seated themselves at the table, the child was seized 
 with an attack. She ate nothing and was put to bed and in fact 
 in her parents' room, where at other times her other rival slept, 
 her little sister. The dream now expresses a continuation of the 
 same tendency which was served by the attack and furnishes us 
 a hint concerning the patient's equal valuation of her desire for 
 masculinity and her craving to assert her worth. The repre- 
 sentation of the feminine part as that of the subordinate or the 
 one who is beneath in the word, " under," strengthens this 
 view greatly, but not without giving rise to the suspicion that 
 the patient knows the position during coitus. She slept before 
 the arrival of her younger sister in her parents' room and even 
 later whenever she was ill. This suspicion expressed in the 
 presence of the mother remained uncontradicted, but had as 
 result that both the children were kept permanently out of the 
 parents' room. But here we see again how the character-traits 
 of this child were active in the direction of the masculine protest, 
 functionating as distantly placed outposts whose object it was 
 to secure her at a distance against every analogy, every symbolic 
 experiencing of a female destiny, degradation, minimizing of 
 the ego-consciousness, and furthermore, to protect her from all 
 future misfortune. 
 
 A similar affection well known to physicians is the school- 
 nausea and nausea at table or shortly after eating which resembles 
 the above described disease in its psychic constitution in that it 
 represents an unconscious expedient or one which has become 
 unconscious for the purpose of avoiding a threatened humiliation 
 and for the purpose of asserting one's own worth. 
 
 A 13 years old boy had shown for the past three years a 
 remarkable indolence, which prevented his progress at school, 
 notwithstanding his indisputable intelligence. For several 
 months past he had been manifesting a sort of lamenting habitus 
 which would especially come to light whenever he was 
 admonished for any cause whatever. His father and mother had 
 probably always been a little too harsh with him, but as far as I 
 could obtain information their admonitions only referred to his 
 slowness in eating and dressing and to his eagerness for reading. 
 Lately things had come to such a pass that the boy began to cry 
 whenever he was reminded of anything or when anyone hurried 
 him. The result of this condition was a more cautious attitude 
 on the part of the parents, though they thought they could not 
 dispense with admonitions entirely on account of the sluggish- 
 ness of the boy.
 
 206 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 An inquiry concerning his last fit of weeping showed that he 
 had been admonished to hurry to school, after he had been 
 striving for half an hour before the glass to brush his stubborn 
 hair smooth. The analysis showed that he saw himself nearing 
 difficulty and wished to secure himself against painful 
 humiliations by careful measures. He reproached himself 
 severely with childish sex indiscretions which he had committed 
 in company with other boys and girls. Above all he feared 
 discovery by his parents and this fear reached an extraordinary 
 degree when one night during a somnambulistic experience he 
 entered the servant's room and to his great surprise found him- 
 self in the morning in the cook's empty bed. This sleep-walking 
 was, as in all other cases which I have been able to penetrate, 
 the result of the masculine protest against the feeling of 
 humiliation. The day before he was transferred from the inter- 
 mediary to the elementary school because of poor progress. The 
 impression which this scene made upon him was so great, the 
 fear that he might betray during his somnambulistic experiences, 
 the secrets between him and his friends, because like all other 
 somnambulists he talked in his sleep, was so terrifying that it led 
 him to very strong measures of security. The thoughts were first 
 in regard to his erections which he sought to conceal carefully 
 from his parents. This he accomplished by a downward stroking 
 of his erected penis with his hand. By this time the craving for 
 security had taken possession of him to such an extent that he 
 treated the hair which stubbornly persisted in standing up as if 
 it were a sexual organ, as in fact the craving for security always 
 reaches beyond what is absolutely necessary. In this case we 
 see the modest beginning of a compulsory act whose mechanism 
 regularly consists in a representation of the masculine protest 
 or in the craving for security directed towards it. The latter 
 becomes the content and motive force of the compulsion neuroses 
 when the masculine protest goes too far and is threatened to fall 
 into femininity through inner contradictions, because the 
 consequences would be a punishment, a degradation or 
 embarrassment. It is then that the safety device itself seems to 
 be the more masculine, although the alluring feeling of triumph 
 may not be produced. Under certain circumstances however the 
 same results may be attained by a fighting against desire in every 
 form, so that a powerful asceticism is valued as a triumph. 
 
 As a matter of fact, ascetic leanings as varieties of self torture, 
 found a place in this boy's craving for security, and this 
 disinclination to eat had for its object analogously to abstinence 
 the checking of his outcropping sexual instincts. The boy who, 
 apart from this, was weak, became so reduced that the parents 
 were obliged to interfere. Thus they came upon his craving for 
 security which he had gratified with so much difficulty. Then the
 
 SELF-REPROACHES, SELF-TORTURE, ETC. 207 
 
 psychomotor familiarity with the attacks of the parents led to 
 security through crime as a result of which his value again 
 became enhanced. 
 
 His eagerness to read also originated from his craving for 
 security. The insecurity which had seized him at puberty 
 compelled him to seek comfort, instruction and a reassuring fear 
 of disease in the encyclopaedia. He was incredibly well read on 
 the problems in question. Once fairly on the way to seek security 
 in books, he overdid the thing because the elder brothers and 
 sisters whom he emulated were remarkable readers, also because 
 he acted against his parents, his oppressors in doing this ; and 
 thirdly because he was able to satisfy his original masculine 
 protest in this way and follow the heroes of his books in danger 
 and conflict, which was shown by his choice of reading matter- 
 he preferred Karl May. 
 
 The third case was that of an eleven years old boy who suffered 
 from a psychically determined protracted pertussis and who at 
 that time still suffered from enuresis. He was an intractable 
 child who wished to attach his father to himself while he tried 
 to avoid his step-mother as a cruel persecutor. The receptive 
 disposition of the father was manifested -in his extreme solicitude 
 during attacks of whooping cough. One morning as the mother 
 again reproached the boy because he had wet his bed, he jumped 
 laughingly out of bed and ran about the room undressed until 
 the solicitous father with an indignant remark to the mother 
 carried the breathless boy back to bed. A severe fit of coughing 
 which resembled whooping cough, from which he had just 
 recovered, closed this scene and caused a quarrel between the 
 married couple. When the boy again went to bed in the evening, 
 he sprang up in an excited manner and galloped back and forth 
 so that he again became breathless. The meaning of the attack 
 was quite obvious. The boy wished to again provoke reproaches 
 against the step-mother and to draw the father to his side. A 
 suggestive treatment and an explanation of the purpose of the 
 attack brought about a cessation of same, but the pertussis still 
 dragged on for half a year longer. 
 
 Analogous mechanisms are at the foundation of the idea of 
 suicide. The deed itself is usually wrecked on the knowledge 
 of the inner contradictions of this form of the masculine protest. 
 The psychic change results from the thought of death, of non- 
 existence, the humiliating feeling of being about to become dust, 
 of wholly losing one's personality. Where there are checks of 
 a religious nature, they are merely the husks, a recoil as though 
 this action too were a punishment. Hamlet, up to our time the 
 model of a person who doubts of his manliness, of the psychic 
 hermaphrodite, who consciously represents to himself in 
 reassuring forethought the limitations of his manly protest, who
 
 208 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 rebels against his feminine line, and not without evading the 
 dialectical change to the manly line, protects himself from 
 suicide by conjuring up the dreams, " To sleep, perchance to 
 dream, ay there's the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams 
 may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil." In the 
 graveyard scene a real horror was manifested because Yorick's 
 skull was of no more value than the others'. 
 
 I have for some time defended the view that suicide is one of 
 the strongest forms of masculine protest and represents a security 
 from humiliation by withdrawal. The cases accessible to me of 
 attempts at suicide have always revealed the neurotic structure 
 in their psyche. Signs of somatic inferiority, feelings of 
 uncertainty and inferiority from childhood, a psychic structure 
 which is felt to be effeminate, and the overtense masculine 
 protest answering to this feeling of effeminacy were manifested 
 in the same manner as in every neurotic. A nearer or more 
 remote example shows the trend. The most powerful psychic 
 hold originates from the thoughts of death in childhood which 
 produce a constant predisposition to suicide by shaping the 
 psychic physiognomy under the influence of the egotistic idea. 
 In the previous history of would-be suicides the same tendencies 
 are found of trying to attain influence by illness, by attempting 
 or by dwelling on the thoughts of death, dreaming of the 
 mourning of relatives, to obtain satisfaction in a situation of 
 humiliation or when there are feelings of despised love. And the 
 idea becomes deed in a similar situation of the reduction of the 
 feeling of self-esteem, as soon as this loss leads to a strong 
 reduction of the worth of life and is able to cause the dialectical 
 change of the masculine idea of suicide to be overlooked in the 
 case of a recent humiliation. Thus we must concede that those 
 writers are correct who see in suicide a process allied to the 
 insane constructions. My studies and those of Bartel's on the 
 inferiority of organ, especially the inferiority of the sexual 
 apparatus, are in harmony with this. 
 
 In the neuroses the probability of a correction is stronger, if 
 it does not always prevent suicide. It seems that the profound 
 consideration of the problem of suicide which with the neurotic 
 usually lasts for years is in itself a sign and at the same time a 
 contributory cause of the correction. And in fact the deeds and 
 thoughts of neurotics are full of thoughts of death. Here is the 
 dream of a neurotic who was under treatment on account of 
 stuttering and psychic impotence, during a night after he had 
 waited in vain for a letter from his bride : 
 
 " 7 thought I -was dead. My relatives stood about the coffin 
 and conducted themselves as though they were in despair." 
 
 The patient remembered having often had thoughts in child- 
 hood that he would like to die because his parents preferred his
 
 SELF-REPROACHES, SELF-TORTURE, ETC. 209 
 
 younger brother. He had always been persecuted by the 
 thought that because of hydrocele and because of smallness of 
 the genital organs he was inferior and would have no children. 
 Later he thought to protect himself by humiliation of women 
 and great distrust of them to protect himself against them and 
 unhappiness in marriage. In reality he felt too weak and was 
 afraid of women. Just as he feared this test in marriage he 
 avoided all decisions through a factor which had become motor. 
 His impotence set in when he received a favorable answer from 
 his bride, as an excuse, an expedient to postpone marriage. In 
 the dream, the thought that his bride might prefer another is 
 reflected. With this was connected an attempt at a solution by 
 means of which he could divert her whole love to himself, in 
 which, as in the arrangement of his impotence, the possibility of 
 marriage was eliminated.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE NEUROTIC'S ESPRIT DE FAMILLE, REFRACTORINESS AND OBED- 
 IENCE, SILENCE AND LOQUACIOUNESS, THE TENDENCY TO 
 CONTRARINESS. 
 
 IN this chapter I will refer to another series of character-traits 
 displayed by neurotics, such as are often found in the foreground 
 of psychoanalytic observations where they merely influence the 
 external picture of the neurosis. They merely assist in 
 constructing the neurotic individuality, but just on this account 
 may lend to the special neurosis a particular direction, or may 
 provoke a definite fate in the conflict with the environment. 
 Thus it may happen that the neurotic's esprit de famille may 
 be revealed in an especially obtrusive manner, that genealogical 
 investigations may fill a part of the neurotic's thinking, wnich 
 conceals more deeply seated traits, often of the nature of an 
 unjustifiable pride of ancestry, which is then utilized as a striving 
 against the social obligations which go with sexual relations and 
 marriage, similarly as the hunting out of heredity of disease is 
 utilized. This readily succeeds through an arrangement of 
 extreme affection for certain members of the family, or for the 
 entire family. This affection originates from the compulsion of 
 the same guiding fiction with its internal contradiction upon 
 which the fear of decisions and of the sexual partner rests. This 
 expedient then serves the purpose of gaining mastery over the 
 family circle, for which purpose the family bond is taken as 
 something holy. In neurotics the break with the family borders 
 on the esprit de famille, as soon as the craving for security 
 makes itself felt more strongly and requires proof that it is 
 impossible to depend even on blood relations. Misanthropy as 
 an abstract guiding line and refuge in solitude are then not rare 
 occurrences and are plainly revealed in the psychosis. 
 
 The subordination of the character-traits to the guiding fiction 
 may be seen especially clearly in the antithetical traits of 
 refractoriness and obedience, 1 which singly or intermingled in 
 varying degrees contribute much to the coloring of the neurotic 
 psyche. Insight into the construction of these character-traits, 
 which have been abstracted from neutral, actual impressions of 
 the pre-neurotic period and have then been neurotically grouped 
 
 1 Adler, Trotz und Gehorsam, 1. c. 
 
 210
 
 THE NEUROTIC'S ESPRIT DE FAMILLE 211 
 
 and worked over into guiding lines, teaches us much concerning 
 the origin, the meaning and purpose of a given character. 
 
 The idea of a congenital origin of " character," is untenable 
 because the real substratum for the formation of psychic 
 character and whatever part thereof may be congenital, is meta- 
 morphosed under the influence of the guiding idea until this 
 idea is satisfied. Both refractoriness and obedience are only 
 attitudes which reveal to us the jump from the uncertain past 
 into the protecting future, as are all other character-traits. 
 
 Timidity as an attitude of the fear of decisions is often 
 accompanied in neurotics by the trait of uncommunicability. 
 These devices work in the manner of an isolation which has for 
 its purpose the withdrawal from the environment of the points 
 of contact. The neurotic who persists in silence sometimes 
 shows his superiority and derogatory tendency also in the role of 
 kill-joy, or he arranges through his silence and apparent want 
 of ideas the proof that he is not the equal of others, especially 
 when these are in the majority, and that he is especially unfit for 
 marriage. In the taking up and accentuating the antithesis of 
 the above, loquaciousness, I have at times discovered the proof 
 for the conviction that the individual cannot keep a secret. 
 Another form of attack and detraction is found in the loud, 
 impatient manner which many neurotics have of interrupting 
 others. The object is often more obvious from the circumstance 
 that he introduces every remark with a "No" or a "But" or an 
 " On the contrary." 
 
 A trait of character to which the neurosis owes much of its 
 definiteness and significance, which is always present and which, 
 together with refractoriness and negativism, belongs to the 
 strongest forms of expression of the masculine protest, is the 
 tendency to desire to have everything different or turned around. 
 This trait is found in the compensatory efforts as well as in the 
 striving after neurotic expedients, it exists in the disputatious- 
 ness and in the neurotic derogatory tendency and possesses an. 
 enormous applicability for the conflict with the environment. 
 It is the counterpart of the frequently observed conservative, 
 pedantic nature of the neurotic and like it permits him to confirm 
 his thirst for mastery. The striving for change and revolution 
 is found at the root of the masculine protest, when the latter is 
 constructed according to an antithesis. ' The essential of alt 
 feminine dialectic is said to be : to wish everything different," 
 announces E. Fuchs in " Die Frau in der Karikatur." In dress, 
 morals, attitude, and movement, something bizarre is always 
 revealed, usually with some pretext. One of my patients often 
 turned herself around in sleep in such a way that when she awoke 
 she found herself lying in the opposite direction. In waking 
 hours also she sought to turn everything upside down. One of
 
 1212 THE NEUROTIC CONSTITUTION 
 
 her favorite phrases was, " On the contrary," as an objection 
 to the opinion of others. The wish to be above, to ride, to wear 
 the pants is often found to be expressed in patients of this sort 
 in an extraordinarily clear manner. In the psychotherapeutic 
 treatment this trait is manifested from beginning to end, as is 
 the case with negativism in catatonics, may be always anticipated 
 and extends to the most trivial things. Very often these neurotic 
 tendencies to contrariness are manifested in the form of a notion 
 that the physician could come to the patient, not the patient to 
 the physician. Predictions should as a rule be avoided in the 
 treatment of neurotics, but where there is a strong tendency to 
 turn things around the physician will always be put in the wrong. 
 
 The effort is constantly made to make up-down ; right-left ; 
 before-behind, because the guiding fiction demands symbolically 
 the turning around, that is, the changing from feminine to 
 masculine. Words and writing are turned around (mirror 
 writing), morality, sexual conduct, dreams are turned into 
 opposites and follow in reverse sequence and sometimes play- 
 fully, but at other times offensively, thoughts are turned around. 
 The expedient which is to preserve a masculine line of conduct 
 lias accordingly something of the nature of fury. 
 
 The application of this " On the contrary " (Umgekehrt) in 
 superstition, perhaps for the purpose of cheating fate by 
 expecting the opposite of what one would like, is a frequent trait 
 in neurotics, reveals their complete insecurity, takes us back to 
 the neurotic cautiousness and permits the recognition of the 
 tremendous significance and wide scope which this attains in the 
 psyche of the neurotic. 2 
 
 About this nucleus of cautiousness may be grouped, according 
 to the exactions of the guiding ideal, traits of truthfulness or 
 untruthfulness as the particular situation may demand. They 
 always express the striving after full masculinity, sometimes 
 directly, at other times by circuitous ways. Closely related to 
 these are traits of deception and frankness, the first character- 
 istic originating clearly in a feeling of inferiority, of being under. 
 A strong anticipatory craving for security is revealed by the traits 
 of hypersensitiveness to pain and suffering which keeps the 
 Individual as well as the environment reminded that he can only 
 choose those situations in life which can be endured without pain. 
 It goes without saying that the anticipation of labor pains often 
 enters into the construction of this guiding line. The neurotic's 
 phenomena of doubt, of vacillation and of lack of decision which 
 have been so frequently emphasized in this book are related to 
 cautiousness. They always set in when reality influences the 
 guiding fiction in such a manner that contradictions constantly 
 emerge in the latter, when the danger of a defeat, of a loss of 
 a See also Adler, " Syphilidophohia." 1. c.
 
 THE NEUROTIC'S ESPRIT DE FAMILLE 213, 
 
 prestige, is threatened by reality. There are then, generally 
 speaking, three ways open to the neurotic, which depend upon 
 the strength of the fictitious guiding goal, so that the developed 
 neurosis assumes an aspect in correspondence with one of these. 
 The first way is by fixing the doubt and vacillation as a basis of 
 operation, as is most frequently found in neurasthenics and 
 psychasthenics, the tendency to doubt. The second way leads to 
 the psychosis by means of which under the construction of a 
 feeling of truth, 3 the fiction is hypostasized, deified. The third 
 way leads to a formal change of the fiction under an arrangement 
 of anxiety, weakness, pain, etc., in short to a neurotic, circuitous 
 way in which feminine means are employed to attain the purposes, 
 of the masculine protest. 
 
 3 Kanabich, " Zur Pathologie der Intellectuellen Emotionen " (" Psych o- 
 therapia," edited by v. N. Wiroboff, Moskau, 1911), approached this thought- 
 very closely.
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 Our study has shown that man's character-traits and their 
 principal function in the life of the individual are manifested as 
 expedients, in the nature of guiding lines for the thinking, 
 feeling, willing, and acting of the human psyche, and that they 
 are brought into stronger relief so soon as the individual strives 
 to escape from the phase of uncertainty to the fulfillment of his 
 fictitious guiding idea. The material for the construction of the 
 character-traits is contained in the psychic totality and congenital 
 differences vanish before the uniform effect of the guiding fiction. 
 Goal and direction, the fictitious purpose of the traits of character 
 may be best recognized in the original, direct, aggressive lines. 
 Want and difficulties of life lead to alterations of character, so 
 that only such constructions find favor as stand in harmony with 
 the individual's ego-idea. In this manner are formed the more 
 cautious, the more hesitating character-traits which show a 
 deviation from the direct line, but examination of which reveals 
 their dependence upon the guiding fiction. 
 
 The neuroses and psychoses are attempts at compensation, 
 constructive creations of the psyche which result from the 
 accentuated and too highly placed guiding ideal of the inferior 
 child. The uncertainty of these children in regard to their future 
 and their success in life forces them to stronger efforts and 
 reassurances in their fictitious life plan. The more fixed and 
 rigid their guiding picture, their individual categorical imperative, 
 the more dogmatically they draw the guiding lines of their lives. 
 The more cautiously they proceed in this, the further they weave 
 these threads of thought beyond their own person out into the 
 future and organize on their peripheral ends where contact with 
 the external world is to take place, those traits of character which 
 are required to serve as outposts for their psychic predispositions. 
 With its extraordinary sensitiveness the neurotic trait of 
 character fastens itself to reality in order to change it according 
 to the egoistic ideal, or in order to subject it to the same. Should 
 defeat threaten, the neurotic predispositions and symptoms come 
 into force. 
 
 The slight significance of the congenital substratum as far as 
 the formation of character is concerned arises also from the fact 
 that the guiding fiction only collects and unites into a group those 
 psychic elements of which it can make use. It only collects those 
 faculties and memories in which results are promised for the 
 attainment of the final goal. In the neurotic reformation of the 
 
 214
 
 CONCLUSION 215 
 
 jpsyche the guiding fiction has absolute dominion and makes use 
 of experience according to its own bent, as if the psyche were 
 a motionless, concrete mass. It is only when the neurotic 
 perspective becomes effective, when the neurotic character and 
 predispositions are fully developed and the way to the guiding 
 goal is assured that we recognize the individual as neurotic. It 
 is then that the neurotic psyche teaches us more clearly than 
 does the normal that, ' Through the great being which 
 surrounds and penetrates us, there is a great becoming which 
 strives toward a completed being." (Durch das grosse Sein, 
 das uns umgibt und weit in uns hineinreicht, zieht sich ein 
 grosses Werden, das dem vollendeten Sein zustrebt.) Thus we 
 find that " character," which has found its utility through the 
 
 f aiding ideal is something like an intelligent pattern (intelligente 
 chablone) which is made use of by the craving for security as 
 well as by the affect and disease predispositions. It is the task 
 of comparative individualistic psychology to comprehend the 
 meaning of these models, as Breuer has begun to understand 
 them in their genetic, and in our sense, analogical construction, 
 to regard them as a symbol of a life plan, as a simile. For 
 through the analysis of character by means of which the line 
 which ever soars toward the guiding ideal may always be 
 followed, we find compressed in one point the past, present, 
 future, and the desired goal. 
 
 One will always find that neurotics cling tenaciously to their 
 reassuring ideals. The defense of them becomes accentuated 
 because the patient in abandoning his ideal as well as by a change 
 in direction of his life plan brought about by another anxiously 
 anticipates a defeat, a subordination, an emasculation. The next 
 step in the therapeutic procedure will, according to this, have 
 to be the removal of this strongly antithetical attitude, the 
 resistance of the patient to the physician, and its revelation as a 
 form of the old neurotic ideal, as the exaggerated masculine 
 protest. 
 
 Thus as a final word and as an explanation of our standpoint 
 we may sum up as follows : Inferior organs and neurotic 
 phenomena are symbols of formative forces which strive to 
 realize a self-constructed life plan by means of intense efforts 
 and expedients.
 
 AUTHORS' CONTRIBUTIONS REFERRED TO 
 IN THIS BOOK 
 
 Studie iiber Minderwertigkeit von Organen. Urban u. 
 Schwarzenberg. Wien u. Berlin, 1907. 
 
 Uber neurotische Disposition. Jahrbuch, Bleuler-Freud, 
 1909. 
 
 Der Aggressionstrieb im Leben und in der Neurose. 
 Fortschritte der Medizin. Leipzig, 1908. 
 
 Die Bedeutung der Organminderwertigkeitslehre fur Philo- 
 sophic und Psychologic. Vortrag in der Gesellschaft fur 
 Philosophic an der Universitat in Wien, 1908. 
 
 Myelodysplasie oder Organminderwertigkeit ? Wiener med. 
 Wochenschrift, 1909. 
 
 Der psychische Hermaphroditismus im Leben und in der 
 Neurose. Fortschr. d. Medizin, 1910. Leipzig. 
 
 Trotz und Gehorsam. Monatschefte fur Padagogik. Wien, 
 1910. 
 
 Die psyche Behandlung der Trigeminusneuralgie. Zentralblatt 
 fur Psychoanalyse. Wiesbaden. Bergman, 1910. 
 
 Einerlogener Traum. Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse. Wies- 
 baden. Bergman, 1910. 
 
 Uber mannliche Einstellung bei weiblichen Neurotikern. 
 Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse. Wiesbaden. Bergman, 1910. 
 
 Beitrag zur Lehre vom Widerstand. Zentralblatt fur Psycho- 
 analyse. Wiesbaden. Bergman, 1910. 
 
 Syphilidophobie. Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse. Wiesbaden. 
 Bergman, 1910. 
 
 Zur Determination des Charakters. Vortrag, gehalten in der 
 Gesellschaft fur Psychologic an der Universitat in Wien, 1909. 
 
 THE END.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Accusation, self-, 130 
 
 Acquisitiveness, 6 
 
 Activity, 20, 133 
 
 Adenoids, 4 
 
 Adler, bibliography, 216 
 
 Adultery, 104, 131 
 
 Affectivity, 5 
 
 Agresaionstrieb, 1, 8, 40, 155, 157 
 
 Agoraphobia, 91 
 
 Alcoholism, 182 
 
 Alexander, 162 
 
 Algolagnia, 120 
 
 Ambition, 19, 48, 155, 166, 184 
 
 case, 163 
 Ambivalency, 117 
 Angio-neurotic diathesis, Krei- 
 
 bich, 2 
 Anorexia, 102 
 Anticipatory thinking, 187 
 Antithesis, the neurotic, 12-13, 15, 
 
 16, 32, 42-43, 49, 52, 57, 72, 100, 
 
 104, 140, 160, 163, 165, 187, 212 
 Antivivisectionism, 157 
 Anton, 2 
 Anxiety, 48, 72, 77, 78, 88, 116, 
 
 130, 166, 179, 182 
 
 cases, 79, 93, 108, 135, 142 
 Apperception, neurotic mode of, 
 
 16, 21, 61, 109 
 Aprosexia, 4 
 Aristotle, 12, 162 
 Arrogance, 135 
 
 Asceticism, 100, 198, 200, 206 
 As If, Philosophy of the, 15 
 Asthma, 60, 176 
 Authoritativeness, 160 
 Author's bibliography, 216 
 Avarice, 61, 73, 78, 89 
 
 cases, 63 
 Avenarius, 37 
 Awkwardness, 102, 186 
 
 Baldung, 162 
 
 Bartel, 3, 5, 208 
 
 Baschkirzewa, 125 
 
 Basedow, 76 
 
 Bashfulness, 47-48, 53, 88, 145 
 
 Baudelaire, 186 
 
 Berger, Alfred, 166 
 
 Bergson, 28, 168 
 
 Bezzola, 108 
 
 Bibliography, Adler, 216 
 
 Bickel, 6 
 
 Birks, Thiemich-, 5 
 
 Biting of nails, 25 
 
 Bjerre, 203 
 
 Blepharospasm, 86 
 
 Bleuler, 12, 36, 82, 86, 117, 121 
 
 Blindness, 102 
 
 Bloch, 120 
 
 Blushing, 24, 91, 102, 145, 175, 179 
 
 Boastfulness, 100, 133 
 
 Bossi, 79 
 
 Bouchard, 2 
 
 Bradytrophy, 2 
 
 Breuer, viii., 71 
 
 Brod, 74 
 
 Burgkmair, 162 
 
 Capriciousness, 117 
 
 Carelessness, 124 
 
 Carus, 67 
 
 Cases, 62, 79, 85, 92, 105, 106, 
 108, 122, 126, 131, 135, 138, 142, 
 144, 162, 164, 177, 189, 201, 203, 
 205, 207 
 
 Castration phantasies, 180, 189 
 
 Catarrh, 176 
 
 Catatonia, case, 131 
 
 Caution, 21, 77, 149, 184, 212 
 
 Charcot, 28 
 
 Chatrain, 68 
 
 Chvostek, 5 
 
 Claustrophobia, 91 
 
 Cleanliness, 48 
 
 Climacteric, 14, 74 
 
 Clumsiness, 4, 26 
 
 Colic, 60 
 
 Comby, 2 
 
 Compensation, Anton's theory, 2 
 
 psychic, 18 
 
 through the central nervous 
 system, 1, 9 
 
 Compulsory ideas, 107, 184 
 
 cases, 165, 167 
 Conscience, 118, 155, 158, 166 
 Conscientiousness, 48, 130 
 Constancy, 173 
 Constipation, 60, 84 
 
 case, 79 
 
 Constitutional inferiority, 4, 17, 29 
 Contentiousness, 20, 22, 140, 166 
 Contrariness, 210 
 Contrition, 198 
 Convulsions, tetsnoid, 6 
 
 217
 
 218 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Coprology, 180 
 Coprophilic phantasies, 189 
 Coquetry, 61, 104, 118, 120 
 Courage, 31, 48, 135 
 Covetousness, 133 
 Cowardice, 53, 135, 139, 164 
 Craving for security, xiii., 20, 21, 
 
 28, 47, 49, 64, 78, 115, 132, 168, 
 
 172, 176, 188, 200, 207 
 Criminality, 53, 100, 103, 157 
 Critique, 61, 141 
 Cruelty, 31, 53, 61, 155, 157 
 Cryptorchism , 68, 94 
 Cyclothymia, 187 
 Czerny, 2, 5, 176 
 
 Darwin, 35 
 
 Deaf- mutism, 4 
 
 Deafness, 102 
 
 Death, danger of, 14 
 
 Deception, 135 
 
 Defiance, case, 163 
 
 Degeneracy, 4-5 
 
 Deja vu, 43 
 
 Delirium, 100 
 
 Dementia precox, 128, 171, 187, 
 
 364 
 
 Demosthenes, 150 
 Depreciation, of others, 22 
 
 self-, 29 
 
 Depression, 91, 102, 166, 177, 182 
 
 cases, 93, 167 
 
 Derogation, 61, 70, 134, 136, 141, 
 160, 164, 174, 184, 190, 202 
 
 of man, 88 
 Desire to dominate, 89 
 Dessoir, 51 
 Dexterities, 72, 88 
 
 Diagram, of neurotic psyche, 36 
 
 Difficulty of hearing, 4, 5 
 
 Discontent, 134, 177, 184 
 
 Disparagement, see Derogation 
 
 Disposition zur Neurose, 126 
 
 Disputatiousness, 88, 167, 177, 211 
 
 Distractibility, 6 
 
 Distrust, 104 
 
 Dogs, symbolic significance, 171 
 
 Dostoyeffsky. 166 
 
 Doubt, 48, 72, 77, 100, 125, 142 
 
 cases, 105, 167 
 
 Dream theory, x. 
 
 Dreams, 20, 42, 53, 71, 78, 89, 95, 
 97, 108, 121, 122, 136, 137, 140, 
 142, 143, 144, 152, 162, 167, 169, 
 171, 177, 191, 194, 204, 208 
 
 of a single night, 170 
 
 day, 176 
 
 exhibition, 78, 113 
 
 flying, 16, 162 
 
 of climbing stairs, 162 
 
 of riding, 162 
 
 sexual, 78 
 
 Diirer, 162 
 Dyspnoea, 88 
 
 Eavesdropping, 94 
 
 Economy, 48 
 
 Effeminacy, 15, 20-21, 30-31 
 
 Ego-consciousness, 11, 13, 19, 28, 
 31, 32, 38, 66, 137, 162, 163, 
 169, 173, 179, 186-187, 204 
 
 Egotism, 48, 53, 125 
 
 Ejaculatio precox, 69, 176 
 
 Emasculation, 134, 163 
 
 Eneuresis, 5, 25, 102 
 
 cases, 85, 135, 207 
 
 Envy, 22, 31, 48, 61, 78, 89, 111, 
 
 133, 155, 166 
 Epicureanism, 200 
 Epilepsy, 91, 92, 156 
 
 case, 84 
 
 hystero-, case, 164 
 
 Epochs, causative of neuroses and 
 
 psychoses, 14 
 Eppinger, 2 
 Erckmann, 55 
 Erythrophobia, 60 
 Escherich, 2, 5 
 Esprit do famille, 210 
 Exactness, 48, 102 
 Exaltation, 102 
 Examinations, 14 
 Exhibitionism, 113, 173, 180, 181, 
 
 198 
 
 Exner, 46 
 Exudative diathesis, 2, 138, 176 
 
 Fainting, 102 
 Fantasy, 42, 169 
 Fatigue, 20, 88 
 Fear, 88, 164 
 
 of being alone, 88 
 
 of decision, 184, 211 
 
 of falling, 88 
 
 of partner, 184, 185, 187, 188 
 
 of places, 182, 195 
 
 of reality, 44 
 
 of society, 88, 189 
 
 of solitude, 183 
 
 of wife, 184 
 Feeble-mindedness, 5 
 
 Feeling of inferiority, 1, 6, 9, 13, 
 29, 30, 31, 42, 45-46, 49, 78, 100, 
 101, 106, 121, 140, 146, 158, 161, 
 162, 169. 176, 179, 195 
 
 case, 164 
 
 Feeling of superiority, 11, 18. 110, 
 
 152, 174, 200 
 Fellatio, 116 
 Fere", ix. 
 Ferrari, 157 
 Fetichism, 100, 115, 124, 159, 16. 
 
 181 
 Finickiness, 89, 183
 
 INDEX 
 
 219 
 
 Flagellation, 189, 198, 201 
 
 Flies, 52, 102, 106 
 
 Forgetf uln,ess, 141 
 
 Fortmuller* 130 
 
 Fres-Meyerhof, 35 
 
 Freud, viii., ix., x., xi., 3, 35, 38, 
 52, 53, 55, 70, 71, 76, 82, 86, 97, 
 108, 109, 125, 137, 141, 159 
 
 Freytag, 41, 150 
 
 Frigidity, 88, 104, 121 
 
 Frischauf, 91 
 
 Fuchs, E-, 211 
 
 Fugues, 5 
 
 Gall, 57 
 
 Gandharvs, 52 
 
 Ganghofer, 194 
 
 Genitals, malformation of, 5 
 
 Genu valgus, 5 
 
 Genu varus, 5 
 
 Globus hystericus, 86 
 
 Goethe, 19, 51, 58, 74 
 
 Gogol, 196 
 
 Gott, 5 
 
 Gourmandism, 6 
 
 Greed, 6, 31, 48, 155 
 
 Grien, 162 
 
 Grillparzer, 188 
 
 Groos, 23, 28, 161, 180 
 
 Gross, Otto, 2, 103 
 
 Griiner, 132, 148 
 
 Guiding fiction, 11, 18, 27 
 
 Guiding line, 21 
 
 Guiding principle, 9, 15 
 
 Habitus, torpid, 5 
 Halban, 52 
 
 Hallucinations, 20, 42, 45, 121, 
 124, 126 
 
 of pain, 163 
 Halvan, 106 
 Hamburger, 6 
 Hate, 22 
 
 Headache, 60, 91, 102, 177, 182 
 cases, 162 
 Hebel, 44 
 Hermaphrodism, 113 
 
 psychic, 50, 52, 100, 118, 131, 
 165 
 
 Herodotus, 32 
 Hero-worship, 175 
 Hertz, 196 
 Hesitation, 48 
 Hess, 2 
 Heubner, 2 
 Hey man, 102 
 
 Hilfs constructionen , see Safety- 
 devices 
 
 Hirschfeld, 114 
 Hochwert, Frankl, v., 5 
 Holtzknecht, 60 
 Homer, 128 
 
 Homosexuality, 16, 21, 115, 124 
 
 159, 173, 195 
 Hydrocephalus , 4 
 Hyperacusis, 96 
 Hyper sensitiveness, 164 
 Hypochondriasis, 72, 116 
 Hypophysis cerebri, 135 
 Hysteria, 156 
 Hystero-epilepsy, 164 
 
 Ibsen, 61, 102 
 Ideal, ego, 184 
 
 neurotic, 184 
 Immermann, 101 
 
 Immodesty, 114, 181, see also 
 
 Exhibitionism 
 Impatience, 20, 89, 134 
 Impotence, 12, 20, 21, 31,70, 172, 176 
 
 cases, 208 
 Inaccessibility, 134 
 Incest-complex, 100, 110, 145 
 
 phantasies, 159, 185 
 Inconstancy, 173 
 Incontinence, of faeces, 5 
 
 of urine, 5 
 Indolence, 5, 20 
 Industry, 48 
 
 Infantile arthritism, Comby, 2 
 Infantilism, 5 
 Inferiority, literature of, 2 
 Infidelity, 194 
 
 phantasies of, 181 
 Insatiableness, 111 
 
 Insomnia, 89, 91, 104, 146, 152, 184 
 
 cases, 105, 123, 167, 169, 189 
 Intolerance, 22 
 Introduction, vii. 
 Introspection, 48 
 Irritability, 5 
 
 James, 28 
 
 Janet, vii., viii., ix., 117, 198 
 
 Jassny, 103 
 
 Jaureg, Wagner von, 155 
 
 Jealousy, 104, 160, 171, 173, 174, 
 
 177, 182, 184 
 Jodl, 45 
 
 Joel, Karl, 163, 165 
 Johannistrieb, 76 
 Jones, B., 114, 149 
 
 Kanabich, 213 
 
 Kant, 27, 28, 34, 150, 173 
 
 Kipling, 148 
 
 Kisch, 77 
 
 Kleptomania, 91, 101 
 
 Krafft-Ebing, 52 
 
 Kreibich, 2 
 
 Kyrle, 3, 203 
 
 Laziness, 20, 53, 163 
 cases, 205
 
 220 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Leonardo da Vinci, 86 
 Leporelist, 101 
 Lewdness, 182 
 Libido, 31 
 Lichtenberg, 54, 200 
 Limping, 102 
 Lingua scrotallis, 59 
 Lippa, 160 
 Litzmann, 102 
 Liveliness, 5 
 
 Lombroso, 9, 12, 72, 167 
 Love, 100, 103 
 Lying, pathological, 6 
 
 mania, 100 
 
 cases, 107 
 Lymphatism, Heubner's, 2 
 
 Malice, 92, 155 
 
 Malthieu, Dr., 58 
 
 Mannliche Einstellung Weiblicher 
 
 Neurotikes, 152 
 Marczinowsky, 181 
 Marriage, 14, 20 
 Martius, 3 
 Masculine goal, 7 
 
 protest, 49, 61, 53, 78, 85, 88, 
 102, 105, 108, 118, 141, 160, 169, 
 176, 179, 185, 189 
 
 Masochism, 20, 124, 159, 172, 185 
 cases, 156, 162 
 Masturbation, 12, 25, 100, 107, 130, 
 160, 172, 182 
 
 cases, 106, 112, 132, 139, 169, 
 176, 178 
 
 Megalomania, 48 
 
 Meister, 51 
 
 Melancholy, 77, 187 
 
 Mendel, 76 
 
 Menstruation, 14 
 
 Meschede, 125 
 
 Meyer, E. H., 52 
 
 Meyerhoff, 16, 35 
 
 Michaelis, 76 
 
 Michel, 47 
 
 Migraine, 60, 77, 91, 102, 146, 
 
 151, 156 
 cases, 93, 201 
 Minus- variants, 2 
 Misoneism, Lombroso 's, 9, 72 
 Mistrust, 88, 171 
 Modesty, 48, 113, 124, 135, 173, 
 
 179, 180 
 Moebius, 119 
 Moll, 115 
 Moodiness, 5 
 Morel, 6 
 Moro, 2 
 Moroseness, 5 
 Morphine, failure of, 202 
 Mother fixation, 56 
 Myopathy, 6 
 Myths, charm of, 186 
 
 Naecke, 120 
 
 Naevi, 4 
 
 Narcissism, 118, 121, 180, 185, 189 
 
 Nausea, 88, 102 
 
 cases, 79 
 
 school, 205 
 Necrophilia, 119 
 Negativism, infantile, 84 
 Neologisms, cases, 127 
 Netslitzky, 5 
 Neuralgia, 156 
 
 cases, 147 
 
 Neurotischen Disposition, 1, 151 
 
 Neusser, von, 106 
 
 Nietzsche, ix., 9, 12, 15, 30, 39, 
 
 56,81 
 
 No, the neurotic, 167 
 Nymphomania, 101 
 
 Obedience, 210 
 
 Obstinacy, 20, 30, 88, 111, 134, 143 
 
 cases, 135, 163 
 Obstipation, see Constipation 
 Oedipus complex, 32, 72, 90, 91, 97 
 Onanism, see Masturbation 
 Openheim, 161 
 Organ-inferiority, 4 
 Organ-jargon, see Somatic jargon 
 Overcompensation, peychic, 1, 6 
 Ovid, 114 
 
 Palpitation of heart, 88, 31, 179 
 Paralysis, 146, 182 
 Paranoia, 127, 187 
 
 litigious 123 
 Parsimony, 100 
 Passivity, 20, 21 
 Patricide, 166 
 Paulsen, 26 
 Pavor nocturnus, 5 
 Pawlow, 34 
 
 Pedantry, 30, 78, 118 * 
 
 Penury, 100 
 
 Personlichkeitsgefiihl, see Ego- 
 consciousness 
 
 Pertussis, cases, 207 
 
 Perverse sexuality, 12 
 
 Perversion, 155, 158, 173, 177, 182, 
 189 
 
 Pessimism, 72 
 
 Pfaundler, 5 
 
 Phantasy, see Fantasy 
 
 Phantom pregnancy, 87 
 
 Philosophy of the As If, Vaihinger, 
 16 
 
 Phlegmatism, 5 
 
 Phobias, see Fear 
 
 Photophobia, 4 
 
 Pineles, 5 
 
 Plato, 165, 184 
 
 Pliancy, 134 
 
 Poggio, 196
 
 INDEX 
 
 321 
 
 Pollution, 169, 176, 177, 196 
 Poltauf, 2 
 Polyuria, 88 
 Ponflick, 2 
 Porta, 57 
 Potpeschnigg, 5 
 Practical Part, 61 
 Precocity, 4, 6, 111 
 
 sexual, 12 
 Preface, Author's, v. 
 Pregnancy, 14 
 
 phantom, 87 
 
 compulsory ideas, 88 
 Preparation, psychic, 20, 24, 45-46, 
 
 56 
 
 Preuss, K. Th., 160 
 Pride, 31, 48, 177, 182 
 Profession, choice of, 160 
 Prostitution, 147 
 
 phantasies, 181 
 Protection, against coitus, 88 
 
 against courting, 88 
 
 against maternal duties, 89 
 
 against parturition, 88 
 
 against pregnancy, 88 
 
 against puerperium, 89 
 Pseudomasochism, 124, 176 
 Psychic hermaphrodism in life and 
 
 the neuroses, 50, 86 
 Psychischen Behandlung des Tri- 
 
 geminus Neuralgic, 1, 102, 149, 
 
 176 
 
 Psychischen Hermaphroditiemus, 1 
 Puerperium, 14 
 Punctuality, 173 
 Pyromania, 156 
 Pythagoras, 12 
 
 Querulousness, 140 
 
 Rage, paroxysms of, 5 
 Raimann, 117 
 Rakowiza, Helen, 125 
 Recurrence of the identical, 
 
 Nietzsche, 9 
 Reflexes, exaggerated, 5 
 
 conditioned, 6 
 Refraction, anomalies of, 4 
 Refractoriness, 210 
 Reich, J., 150 
 Religiosity, 21, 202 
 Remorse, 166 
 Restlessness, 5 
 
 Return of the identical, Nietzsche, 
 
 190 
 
 Revengefulness, 31, 92 
 Rickets, 4, 133, 162 
 Rochefoucauld. 67, 156 
 Roughness, 68-69, 129 
 Round shoulders, 5 
 Sadism, 12, 22, 69, 89, 92, 115, 
 
 155, 159, 172 
 
 Safety-devices, xii., 43, 58 
 Sand, George, 136 
 Scheme, neurotic, 88 
 Schmidt, 4, 59 
 Schopenhauer, 52, 119, 186 
 Schreber, case of, 125 
 Schrenck-Notzing, 119 
 Schumann, Clara, 102, 150 
 Scoliosis, 5 
 
 Self-accusation, 130, 198 
 Self-confidence, 44 
 Self-preservation, 35 
 Self-reproach, 166 
 ' Self-torture, 198 
 
 Senile neuroses, 61, 74 
 Sensitiveness, 177 
 
 cases, 163 
 
 Sentiment d'incompldtude, of Janet, 
 
 vii. 
 
 Sexual guiding lines, 44 
 Sexual perversions, 68, 115, 121 
 
 inferiority, 79 
 ! precocity, 12 
 
 activity, 14 
 
 anomalies, 13, 81 
 Sexuality and death, 198 
 
 as a jargon, 32, 75, 97, 114, 
 140, 161, 169, 177 
 
 Shame, 48 
 
 Shamelessness, 180, see also Exhi- 
 bitionism 
 
 Shiller, 34 
 
 Sicherungstendenz, eee Craving for 
 security 
 
 Silberer, 36 
 
 Silence, 182, 210 
 
 Simmel, 119 
 
 Simplicity, 124 
 
 Simulation, 100, 134 
 
 Singer, 60 
 
 Siphilidophobia, 112, 150, 153, 195, 
 212 
 
 Sleep, disturbances of, 5 
 
 Sleepiness, 5, 91 
 
 Socrates, 47 
 
 Somatic inferiority, 1, 198 
 
 Somatic jargon, 61, 84, 85, 124 
 
 Somnambulism, 5, 160 
 
 Spasmophilia, Escherich, 2 
 
 Spasms, sphincters, 86 
 
 vocal cords, 86 
 Speech-defect, 4, 5 
 
 Sperm glands, anomalies of, 133 
 
 Splitting of consciousness, 61, 124 
 
 Squints, 5 
 
 Staggering gait, 89 
 
 Stammering, cases, 62 
 
 Stature, anomalies of, 4 
 
 Status thymico-lympbaticus, 106 
 
 in suicide, 5; Poltauf , 2 ; Bartel, 
 3 
 
 Stekel, 96, 157
 
 222 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Stendhal, 194 
 
 Stern, E., 204 
 
 Stinginess, 6 
 
 Strabismus, 4 
 
 Stransky, 6 
 
 Strindberg, 119 
 
 Strumpell, 2, 117, 138, 176 
 
 Studie iiber Mindwertigkeit von 
 
 Organen, iii., 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 36, 57, 
 
 79, 126-127, 137, 143 
 Stupidity, 5 
 Stuttering, 4, 25, 91, 102, 145 
 
 cases, 142 
 Submissiveness, 135, 185 
 Sucking, 25 
 
 thumb, 59 
 Suggestibility, 22, 117 
 Suicides, 14, 148, 198, 207 
 
 status-lymphaticus in, 5 
 
 juvenile, 5 
 
 cases, 105, 135, 190 
 Suspiciousness, 61 
 
 Symbols, as a jargon, x., 15, 60, 
 
 163 
 Sympathy, 118, 149 
 
 Tardinese, 141 
 
 Telepathy, 42 
 
 Tetanoid convulsions, 5 
 
 Theoretical part, 1 
 
 Thiemich-Birks, 5 
 
 Thirst, excessive, 91 
 
 Thriftiness, 89 
 
 Thymus-anomalies, 133 
 
 Thyroid anomalies, 133 
 
 Ties, 6 
 
 Timidity, 5 
 
 Tolstoi, 195 
 
 Tooth-motive, 57 
 
 Tremor, 102, 169 
 
 Trotz und Gehorsam, 8, 26, 210 
 
 Truancy, 5 
 
 Tyranny, 48, 167, 171, 194 
 
 Ueber neurotieche Disposition, 130 
 Uncertainty, 50, 94, 185, 193 
 Unchastity, 119 
 
 Unfaithfulness, 119 
 Ungainliuess, 4 
 Unrulincss, 143 
 Unsociability, 5 
 
 Vaginismns, 86, 88 
 Vagotonia, Hess-Eppinger, 2 
 Vaihinger, 15, 18, 19, 38, 49, 81, 
 
 150 
 
 Valgus, genu, 5 
 Varus, genu, 5 
 Vegetarianism, 157 
 Vertigo, 60 
 cases, 79, 194 
 Vinci, Leonardo da, 85 
 Virchow, iv., 5 
 Vomiting, 59, 60, 88 
 Von Neusser, 106 
 Voyeur, 172 
 
 Wagner, Eichard, 98, 198 
 
 Wagner v. Jaureg, 155 
 
 Wanderlust, 101 
 
 Weakness, 182, 185 
 
 Weber, Parkes, 102 
 
 Weeping fits, 182 
 
 Weininger, 52, 119 
 
 Werles, Gregor, 61 
 
 Wernicke, 185 
 
 Wild duck, 61 
 
 Wild oats, 53 
 
 Wildness, 134, 143 
 
 Will to be above, Nietzsche, 166 
 
 Will to be up, Nietzsche, 161, 162, 
 
 169 
 Will to power, Nietzsche, 12, 16, 
 
 21, 35, 46, 62, 63, 111, 166 
 Will to seem, 15, 141 
 Willfulness, 88 
 Winking, 25 
 Woman, 186, 196 
 
 Yauregg, Wagner, 5 
 Younger brother, 91 
 
 Ziehen, 88 
 
 Printed in Great Britain by 
 St. Stephen's Printing Works, Bristol.
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 oe v 
 
 1979 
 
 
 
 JAN 2 
 
 1974 
 
 
 
 MOJ 1 1 
 
 
 
 
 fVrcJt LI! 
 
 RARf 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 GAYLORD 
 
 
 
 PRINTED IN U.S.A. 

 
 3 1970 00604 5386 
 
 A 000507918 1