You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
A common characteristic for the majority of obsessional neuroses is the ritual which gets established around the ordinary and routine acts of daily life. These acts, like dressing or undressing, washing, going to bed or using the toilet, touching or avoiding to touch certain objects, e.g., door-knobs or lamp-posts, have to be performed in an exactly prescribed manner, so that these simple acts absorb a disproportionate amount of time and attention. This amount becomes yet more excessive by the interference of the typical doubt which makes it necessary to repeat every one of these acts several times in order to make sure that they have been performed correctly. Anxiety, produced by any attempt to resist the compulsion, enforces obedience to the mysterious command.
The intensity of the force by which the performance of an insignificant act imposes itself on the Ego and the displeasure which is felt when this act cannot be achieved, is very similar to the situation arising when the urge for an instinctual satisfaction (wish-fulfillment) manifests itself in full strength and gets frustrated. The obvious difference lies in the fact that the urge of an instinct originates in the Id, whereas the obsession does not serve for the satisfaction of any recognizable Id-tendencies. There must be another motivating force at work which, if it does not entirely replace the Id, is at least strong enough to deflect its derivatives from their original aim. The ritual starts when the Ego becomes subservient to this other power.
There is a group of obsessional phenomena which here attract our attention by traits which distinguish them from the obsessional ritual. Freud describes them in his “Notes to a Case of Obsessional Neurosis.”* Their first appearance usually precedes the establishment of the obsessional ritual, sometimes by several years.