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In Miss Freud's view, obsessional neurosis varies from mild to bordering on the schizophrenic. The id impulses are from the anal-sadistic stage. The ego devices are repression, regression, reaction-formation, isolation, undoing, magical thinking, doubting, indecision, intellectualization, and rationalization—all except regression operating strictly within the area of thought processes. Preconditions for the neurosis are: the ego's maturing more rapidly than the drives, id but not ego and superego regression, constitutional increase in the anal-sadistic impulses, failure of fusion within the id of love-hate, passivityactivity and femininity-masculinity, and, finally, varying factors such as prominence of either anal or sadistic tendencies, excessive use of some defenses, prominence of mother or father in the child's death wishes, and interactions between inter- and intrasystemic conflicts.
Topics of discussions by members of the Congress were outlined. 1. Matrix of the Neurosis: Much interest was concentrated on the first year of life; however, distinction was not made between specific and nonspecific causes. 2. Instinctual Background: Some rejected warding-off anal-sadistic impulses in favor of oral incorporation of the object, voyeurism, or even purely ego mechanisms as the source of symptomatology. 3. Link between Matrix and Anal-Sadism: Miss Freud reported a boy in his anal phase (two to three years) who persistently soiled himself until it was learned he had suffered traumatic separations from his mother in his first year. His libido had withdrawn from the object world and turned to body products. 4. The Ego: According to current trends, the contributions here were numerous and left few ares unexplored. A concept of ego style attempting to embrace conflict as well as conflict-free functioning was elaborated by a number of authors and claimed to be more relevant to the obsessional neurosis than various defenses in the usual sense. No new defense mec