On a Particular Neurotic Equivalent of Necrophilia

Calef and Weinshel (1972) have described neurotic equivalents of necrophilia in patients who complain that their spouses go to sleep before they do and before sexual activity can be initiated. The complaint hides the patient's fascination and attraction for the sleeping sexual object and the wish to make love to that object. This is related to the theme of the Sleeping Beauty, which has many variants, all containing the element of the dead person being brought back to life by sexual activity. The complexities of the phenomenon, its relation to an ambivalent wish for union with the mother, its transference manifestations, and its frequency are aptly dealt with by Calef and Weinshel.

I wish to call attention to one variant of the clinical syndrome as it appears in physicians who seduce or are seduced by frigid women. It is illustrated by a gross story which was a bit in vogue a decade ago. A man has intercourse with his dying wife. The next morning she awakens healthy and free of illness. He muses to himself, 'To think that I could have saved Mrs. Roosevelt!'

The omnipotent rescue fantasies have come to the fore in the therapy of a few physicians, psychiatrists, and gynecologists who acted out their fantasies by having sexual intercourse with women whose chief complaint was frigidity. The acted out their therapeutic zeal in making the 'dead ass come to life' by their magical potency. The fantasy was not conscious and gained verbal expression only after investigation of the need to act out the impulse. In one such physician, the activity related to a marital problem in which he had fear for his own potency with his wife. In another this factor was coupled with resentment against his wife, displaced onto the patient, associated with fear of inability to please her financially and socially. In other instances the factors were quite complex, involving sibling rivalry and other factors mentioned by Calef and Weinshel.