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This is an attempt to formulate the effect of thyroid secretion on the various functions of the psyche. Rascovsky draws his conclusions from the study of
several patients with hyperthyrodism, one of which he treated psychoanalytically for four hundred hours achieving a symptomatic cure and another—in whom exophathalmia persisted following thyroidectomy—which he treated for a shorter time.
Rascovsky's conclusions from these observations may be summarized as follows: thyroid secretion suppresses pregenital libidinal drives and stimulates genital tendencies. 'The thyroid discharges on the endocrine level the functions ascribable to the superego.' He further generalizes to say that in hyperthyroidism there is a strong superego combined with 'insufficiently repressed pregenital activity', while in hypothyroidism the opposite is true so that a weak superego tolerates direct expressions of pregenital wishes. Finally, he says, 'the antagonal action of both tendencies, thyroid and estherol, (suprarenal and estrogens) finds its equivalent in the theory of instincts in the antagonism existing between the erotic and the aggressive tendencies…'