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Déjàvu and allied phenomena are interpreted by the author as defense reactions against an impending danger through decreasing the anxiety associated with the memory of an unresolved experience originally responsible for the anxiety. This is accomplished by a reassurance that the patient is not venturing into an entirely new field but one which he has survived.
He revises his previous theory of depersonalization, namely, erotization of thinking and the suppression of the superego (masculine or feminine) as inharmonious with the body gender. Erotization of thinking is now regarded as the first step in the defense against anxiety which in turn facilitates the depersonalization. Earlier it was postulated that depersonalization phenomena replaced anxiety. Subsequent investigation led to the conclusion that depersonalization merely acted as a defense which masked anxiety by sequestering and immobilizing it without in any way effectively diminishing its quantum or intensity.
The immobilization of anxiety in depersonalization bears a certain similarity to the apparent absence of anxiety observed after surgical operations which interrupt pathways between the midbrain and the cortex. An attempt is made to correlate the apparent diminution in anxiety through surgical intervention and in depersonalization with Freud's original diagram of the ego and the id in which he states that the human auditory sphere, as modified in the direction of a capacity for language, is to be regarded as a nucleus of the superego.
AUTHOR'S ABSTRACT