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The author discusses the problem of localization of somatic symptoms in a patient who suffered from headache and backache during analysis. Trembling had been a complaint before treatment began. The author believes it not enough to dismiss these symptoms as defense mechanisms; he examines the manner in which they evolved. 'Research should be directed to the reasons for the localization.'
The headaches began when the patient's fantasies of an erotic attack against the mother were interpreted by the analyst. The blocking at their source of these fantasies of action, in response to the interpretation, produced the headache. This means that in this patient the head had previously been erotized. Backaches were caused by muscular hypertonicity in an individual incapable of controlling his motor reactions in an area which is predisposed to motor weakness and is considered a genital zone (the muscles in this region serve in a quasi automatic fashion during sexual intercourse). The head is the seat of representations and the low back is the area of erotic motor discharge. This patient's somatic symptoms were regressions to a preoedipal period when the objects of oral-sadistic incorporation were dominant and, by provoking a massive erotization of the musculature, forced him to erect the defenses in the form of the symptoms.
This study is a thoughtful analytic approach to psychosomatic localization.