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The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 1950, Vol. XIX, No. 2, p. 170.
A study of the mental symptoms of nine hospitalized patients with various diseases of the nervous system indicated that the mental symptoms which they showed were related to the disability or suffering imposed upon them by their illnesses. It was concluded that one could best understand why such a disability was or was not psychologically traumatic (pathogenic) to any one patient in terms of the patient's unconscious conflicts. The illness was traumatic precisely because of the existence of such conflicts, even though at the time of the onset of the illness the conflict was symptomless.
It was Ferenczi's hypothesis that the first psychic consequence of physical illness was a withdrawal of libido from object relationships and a concentration of the increased narcissistic libido on the psychic representative of the diseased part. It is suggested that this should be reformulated to read, '… on the psychic representative of the part whose function was disturbed' regardless of the anatomic localization of the pathological process.
Author's Abstract.