You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
A sixty-year-old, white, unmarried waiter was admitted to the Winter Veterans Hospital where clinical examination and psychological tests revealed a chronic paranoid schizophrenia in an extremely narcissistic character. There
was a strong overt homosexual component, but with it came anxiety and guilt at the thought of being completely submissive to a man. In the third week of hospitalization a new piece of behavior came to light which had heretofore not been revealed either in clinical examinations or in psychological tests: the patient behaved and acted as though he were pregnant. Physical examination led to the discovery of a large, soft mass in the left hypochondrium which was eventually surgically removed and found to be a papillary carcinoma of the left kidney. Following surgery the pregnancy delusion disappeared.
Aronson then discusses the role and purpose of the delusion of pregnancy in the psychic economy of a male homosexual with an abdominal cancer. He stresses in particular three aspects of the problem: 1, the role of the abdominal sensations in the instinctual conflicts; 2, the structural changes in the body image; 3, the disturbance in the synthetic function of the ego.