The Psychoanalytic Quarterly: Melitta Sperling. 'Food Allergies and Conversion Hysteria.'

Sperling uses the analysis of a patient showing both food allergies and hysterical conversion symptoms to support three propositions.

• 1Food allergies may be the product of specific unconscious fantasies about specific items of food. Such specificity has been little stressed in psycho-analytic literature and is contrary to the usual emphasis in psychosomatic medicine on physiological responses and conscious attitudes.

• 2The outcome of a conflict in conversion is

• influenced by the relation between ego strength, adequacy of repression, and the possibility of conscious control of the threatening impulse. Sperling illustrates this from the following series of reactions in the patient: (a) Before analysis, the immediate conversion of impulses into somatic symptoms without anxiety. (b) During analysis, when repressed impulses were about to emerge into consciousness, the experience of anxiety but no conversion. (c) In later analysis the patient experienced only disgust with neither anxiety nor conversion. The author suggests that the immediate somatic expression of an impulse prevents it from being acted out, and this saves the patient from the feared 'break' with reality.

• 3Anal eroticism is a specific genetic and dynamic factor in allergic conditions. The anal meaning of food was clear in this patient whose pseudo-genital satisfactions depended in fact on unconscious pregenital fantasies. Though the importance of anal eroticism in pregenital conversions has been emphasized by other writers, Sperling is doubtful if the distinction between hysterical and pregenital conversion has not been over-emphasized. She suggests that early genital stimulation and seduction may play a role in a confusion of genital objects and aims with pregenital ones.