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Fritz, a fifteen-year-old school boy was found by a neurologist to have an unusual organic brain disease—a torsion dystonia from a congenital anomaly or a degenerative process in the corpora striata. It was observed in addition that this illness was complicated by a progressively severe neurosis.
He lived with his mother, the father having died when Fritz was ten years old. Three brothers, nine, twelve, and thirteen years older, were seldom at home. Great shyness and inability to concentrate were the most conspicious neurotic symptoms. Despite a good intelligence, he felt himself to be stupid, and he had indeed recently failed to achieve the standard of his class at school.
The need both for psychotherapy and a change of environment brought him into the home of the writer where he was treated for three months in 1934, and for two months in 1935. On his arrival, the impression he gave led at once to the conjecture that his motor disturbances were also an expression of his neurosis, and the decision was made to psychoanalyze him. That he was living as a member of the analyst's family presented a technical obstacle which had to be accepted.
Fritz had been a healthy and intelligent infant, developing normally until he was three years old when clumsiness in his gait and fear of walking became noticeable, and a pediatrician who saw him at that time made note of "choreiform movements". Throughout childhood, motor disturbances persisted in varying degrees and were regarded by the parents as bad habits to be corrected. He was not weaned from bottle feeding until the age of three, and subsequently he was a feeding problem. He