Some Freudian Contributions to the Paranoia Problem

One of the most recent analyses of paranoid conditions appeared in the Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen, Vol. IV, Part I, 1912, under the title, “Psychological Analysis of a Paranoid Patient,”1 by sch. grebelskaja. The patient was a man of thirty-one years when he suffered his first attack. As a boy, he had been somewhat irritable; in school, he complained to his teachers that the pupils laughed at him, especially in gymnastics. He had no comrades, kept apart from others and played little. At the age of sixteen, he apprenticed himself to a mechanic, but became so homesick that after two weeks he gave up the job and went back to his father. He next became a waiter and worked in various cities of Switzerland, France and England but finding no pleasure in this occupation, he forsook jt and returned again to his father, this time to engage in the manufacture of hats, which was his father's business. For a time, he got along well. When twenty-eight years of age, he became engaged to a girl but soon suspected her of being untrue and broke the engagement. He now felt himself annoyed by everybody and became very nervous. Next, he took up the sport of shooting very zealously. In the meantime, he was always out of humor, mistrustful, often troubled with insomnia and lack of appetite. When thirty-one, as he was going home one evening, he was assaulted and pounded; in this encounter, he cried out for help. In the darkness, he did not recognize his assailant but was convinced that it was a former schoolmate named D. who had excelled him in athletics. After this