The Feeling of a Deficit in Learning: A Contribution to Ego Psychology

In the course of analytic treatment some patients express an intense feeling of inadequacy in some particular intellectual endeavor. They have explained this deficiency as being based on the circumstance that at a critical time, while they were absent from school, something basic had been taught, thus leaving a permanent deficiency in their understanding or performance in a particular subject. For example, one patient felt that he could never draw or sketch well because the basic rules for holding a pencil were taught in the first grade which he never attended. Another felt the same way about a reading difficulty. In these instances there is the concomitant feeling that nothing can be done or learned later in life to alter the deficit, like baking a cake with one essential ingredient missing. Discussions with colleagues have confirmed the frequency of such feelings in some of their patients, indicating that such feelings are present in compulsive individuals where there is a great need for completeness and perfection. Situations of disorganization or deficiency of performance, real or fancied, elicit anxiety in these cases, as in the 'examination dream' described by Freud. In reality no deficiency in that particular dream subject existed. The dreamer was usually quite proficient in the subject matter with which he had so much difficulty or in which he failed in the dream.

The examination dreams and the missing-the-train dreams which Freud1 linked together are germane to the present thesis. In regard to the examination dream, the dreamer is reassured about a problem to be faced the next day: 'Don't be afraid; this