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On several occasions patients have brought material which showed quite clearly some connections between visual shock, headache and the development of a halo. Schematically the sequence is as follows. The child receives a stunning psychic blow, usually an overwhelming visual experience which has the effect of dazing and bewildering it. There is generally the sensation of lights, flashes of lightning, bright colors or of some sort of aurora. This may seem to invest the object, or objects seen, or it may be felt as occurring in the subject's own head experienced literally as seeing lights or seeing red. This is depicted in comic strips as seeing stars. The initial experience always produces the most intense emotions, whether of awe, fear, rage or horror. Extremely severe lancinating pain may be part of the disturbing experience.
The emotion is felt with great force, as if an explosion or a stab had occurred within the head. There is usually at first a feeling of unreality, or of confusion. The shocking stimulus arouses an erotized aggression which demands subsequent mastery. Sometimes the little voyeur feels impelled to repeat the experience as though to test its reality. Peeping or fantasies of peeping are accompanied by sensations of tension and strain in the eyes or across the frontal region. Headaches occur later when new situations reactivate the original trauma. Mastery is attempted by successive repetition in fantasy (reality testing), partial repression, or by the development of severely binding superego reaction-formations of goodness which are supplemented by or converted into lofty ideals. As the tense