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.
In this paper, Mahony explicates the notes that Freud made while analyzing the “Rat Man,” Ernst Lanzer. We find that the notes provide a different clinical picture than the published history of the case. As background, Mahony observes that at the time of this treatment, Freud had yet to understand transference as a global phenomenon, and had yet to see obsessional neurosis as related to the anal-sadistic phase. The author also reports that Freud's tendency to indoctrinate seems to have impeded the free-associative process.
Despite this, Mahony states, Freud demonstrated how the obsessional uses a “twofold defensive function of isolation” (p. 96), in which there is both isolation of “affect from representation” (p. 96) and the use of a time interval to isolate the obsession from the situation to which it relates. Mahony calls this a “disorder of contiguity” (p. 96). Overall, Mahony notes, Freud demonstrated that obsessions could be understood and that he could survive this patient's destructive transference to paternal figures.
After this brief mention of some of Freud's achievements with this case, Mahony focuses on what “Freud overlooked in his analysis of Ernst” (p. 97). Mahony looks at three areas: (1) Ernst's language, (2) the issue of womanhood and motherhood in the treatment, and (3) Ernst's body image.
Using Freud's notes from the second session with Ernst on the couch, Mahony shows how the patient's disorder of contiguity is present in the anal gaps in language and in his getting up off the couch. Mahony demonstrates how Freud “acted in” during the session by filling in the gaps rather than working with them. In this way, Freud became “the