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The problem of pseudo-imbecility has not so far been worked out analytically; a paper of Landauer's ('On the psycho-sexual genesis of stupidity') is framed in general terms and contains no clinical matter, whilst Berta Bornstein (in a paper entitled 'The psychogenesis of pseudo-imbecility') merely concludes with the conjecture that 'the solution of the problem depended on certain obscure disturbances of the oral phase'. The first analyst to assume a connection between intellectual disturbances and orality was Abraham.
In the present paper the writer gives a detailed account of the analysis of a patient aged twenty-three and a half, who suffered from conflicts in his intellectual, sexual and family life and in his work. He was manager of a provision business owned by his mother and, according to her, he 'played the idiot', only performing subordinate jobs, damaging her interests whenever he could and giving the impression of a mentally undeveloped person. With 'respectable girls' he was impotent, while with prostitutes he behaved like a masochistic pervert. He made them strike him, force him to cunnilingus and urinate over him. His attitude to his mother was one of perfect passivity: he constantly provoked punishments, which mortified him greatly, but he was always ready to do her a kindness, provided that she did not know it. At the same time he was full of resentment and impulses of revenge against her.
The sole method employed in training him as a child had been that of beating and intimidating; he could win the love neither of his mother, who perpetually scolded him, nor of his father, who rebuffed him. As a punishment for his 'stupidity' he was sent away from home. He had the following recollection of this period—his seventh year. He used often to watch women suckling their babies, which excited him sexually. He staged a 'urine-game', which consisted in his taking a long straw, inserting it into his penis and then putting the end to his lips, so that he