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June II, 1922: Meeting in Amsterdam.
a.Dr. August Stärcke: A symptom in depressive states which has not hitherto been described.
In two patients suffering from depression and anxiety the lecturer noticed, as an objective accompaniment of their complaining of a sensation of oppression, that a condition of considerable flatulence was present, while the patients made incessant gulping movements. He regards this symptom as a return to the aerophagy of the sucking infant. It confirms Abraham's ingenious thesis that in manic-depressive psychosis the fixation-point of the libido is to be found in the first pregenital, i.e. in the oral-erotic or cannibalistic, phase. Stärcke found that in the history of these patients there was a remarkable number of abnormal experiences connected with sucking in the first year of life.
Regarded from the point of view of the libido, this symptom of gulping air is a regression to oral-erotism; from the point of view of the ego-instincts, it is a regression to the phase of rhythmic repetition.
b.Dr. August Stärcke: A Bridal Song.
A well-known author composed a bridal song for the wedding of a girl of good education and family. In this song, under the disguise of apparently nonsensical neologisms there was an obvious genital symbolism. The song was sung with special delight by the girls who were present at the wedding and they appeared only partly to fail to appreciate its significance. This behaviour provides food for reflection from several points of view.
c.Dr. August Stärcke: Classicism.
Freud and Rank have shown that, in Romanticism, artistic composition is inspired by powerful object-erotic motives, especially of a positive and negative incestuous nature. Classicism, on the other hand, has been but little investigated. Stärcke found in it, side by side with a primitive religious nucleus, auto-eroticism derived from various erotogenic zones. The anal-erotic side is particularly strongly developed and is transmuted into the tendency