Altered Body-Ego Experiences—A Contribution to the Study of Regression, Perception, and Early Development

From the topographical point of view the unconscious roots of and the connections between the altered body-ego experiences, the perversions, his instinctual drives, and his parental relationships became conscious with the recovery of the primal-scene dream memory for which the Arizona trip and the first wet dream had stood as screen memories—after the problem of curiosity had been worked through in the transference-countertransference dimension.

From the structural point of view the patient had a superego lacuna with respect to his pervert activities. Initially guilt and shame were attached to masturbation and his normal sexual activities, and anxiety was not experienced as such. His altered body-ego experiences and perversions were attempts to obtain instinctual gratification through someone else's ego suggesting an ego defect also. The ego and superego defects were traced to a symbiotic relationship with his mother relived and resolved in the transference. Through identification with the analyst the patient repaired his ego by learning to recognize his drives and obtain gratification for them—and his superego by shifting guilt and