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The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 1950, Vol. XIX, No. 2, p. 164.
According to the law of talion, 'the punishment fits the crime'. In addition to this an unconscious mental mechanism is often seen in which 'the punishment fits the motive for the crime'. This can be carried further to cases in which 'the punishment fits the source of the motive'. A person whose hostility is revenge for frustrated needs for love or for prestige punishes himself by frustrating these very needs. The central pathway may be an organ system, such as the gastrointestinal tract, or on a higher, more sublimated psychological level. Each person has, or tends to have, a particular pathway or combination of pathways for satisfying his needs over which his major emotional interplay is expressed—his frustrations, his fight-flight reactions and the reactions of his superego. This mechanism casts light upon various symptoms such as paranoid jealousy and castration anxiety and upon their choice.
Author's Abstract.