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The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 1950, Vol. XIX, No. 2, p. 145.
Observations from the analysis of a group of five patients with idiopathic convulsive seizures led to the conclusion that passive dependence was the psychodynamic substratum from which secondary mechanisms emanated. The clinical psychopathological variations corresponded with the patient's early and later experiences and served as defences against, or as reactions to, the original dependence. The epilepsy appeared as a sign of physiologic disintegration of one or several impulses at a critical moment, when rising emotional tensions overwhelmed the available countercathexes, or when the waning forces of the ego offered too little resistance to the pressure of the repressed.
Clinical epileptic manifestations occurred only in the presence of pathological brain waves, whereas normal tracings were obtained from one patient who had suffered his last grand mal seizure eight years prior to analysis and who had remained free from any clinical epileptic symptoms ever since.
Author's Abstract.