Telepathy in a Dream

The patient, whose case leads to certain hypothetical views regarding the unconscious meaning of telepathy and magic, is a girl aged twenty-six suffering from anxiety hysteria and from a generally arrested development of her personality. She came into analysis because of an unfortunate love affair and because of a staté of general depression from which she had not been free since her friend abandoned her. She could not talk to people, was afraid of everybody, began to cry when in society, and feared she would become a prostitute.

At the beginning of the love affair, the young man was in the position of a hopeless and romantic adorer. She was ashamed of being seen in his company because he was shabbily dressed and did not know how to behave in society. But she admired him as a scientist of reputation and pitied him because he was a consumptive. Finally she yielded to his entreaties and went with him to a room. She explains that she did not know what she was doing, and that she thought it was her duty to do everything he desired because he was sick and she could cure him. The liaison lasted several years. Its chief features were the perversions imposed by her lover which he compelled her to endure and her crying spells whenever their rendezvous ended. Her behavior was extremely passive and timorous from the beginning, and must have provoked bullying from anybody who was sadistically inclined. He used to beat her whenever he failed to get an erection, or when she cried after their assignations or if she followed him in the street. To produce an erection he would masturbate or tell her smutty stories in which homosexuality and other perversions figured conspicuously. Another important incident in their liaison was when he made her confess the whole story with all its humiliating details to a married woman with whom he was seriously in love, while he continued to have intercourse