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The Disposition to Compulsion Neurosis. A Contribution to the Problem of the Choice of a Neurosis. Sigm. Freud.
The Psychopathology of a Case of Phobia. Prof. Morton Prince.
Stuttering,—A Psychoneurosis and its Treatment by Psychoanalysis. Dr. M. D. Eder.
The Disposition to Compulsion Neurosis.1—Before the problem of why anybody has a neurosis can be settled, the more special problem of why anybody has just the special neurosis he does have must probably be solved. We distinguish in this connection what one brings with him and what happens to him, i. e., constitutional and accidental causes. The first thesis maintains that the ground for the determining of the choice of neurosis lies wholly in the disposition and is independent of the pathologically acting experience. If we seek an origin of this disposition our attention is turned to the development of the psychical functions, above all the sexual function, but also different important ego functions, and we have to acknowledge that this development is not always so perfect that the whole function progresses without any hitches. Where a part of this function stops at any stage we have a so-called “fixation point” to which the function can regress in case of disease due to any outer disturbance.
Paper read before the psychoanalytic congress in Munich, 1913.
Our dispositions are hence inhibitors of development.
The order in which the principal forms of psychoneuroses are the time at which these diseases appear in life. Hysteria can be observed in earliest childhood; the Compulsion Neurosis manifests itself usually given: Hysteria, Compulsion Neurosis, Paranoia, Dementia Præcox, corresponds (on the whole, if not absolutely exactly) with usually in the second period of childhood (6 to 8, on); the two others come first after puberty and up to maturity. These two last affections have for the first time proved accessible since our investigations. The characteristics peculiar to both, megalomania, the turning fr