A Psychoanalytic Study of a Severe Case of Compulsion Neurosis

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But the obsession probably corresponded to the imaginary fulfillment of still another wish, namely, a wish for pregnancy. I have already stated that Stella's menstruation had always been irregular. During the period of her father's nocturnal ministrations, and on such occasions as she did not become unwell when she expected, she was always terrified by the thought that she was pregnant by him. (It should be added that this fear, which, of course, can be readily translated as the fulfillment of a wish, is not as absurd as it seems, for her knowledge of how impregnation is effected was at that time very vague.) A wish to be pregnant by her father as well as by others had even entered her consciousness at times, for she well remembered that she had frequently indulged in day phantasies having that as a theme and content. That the wish to be pregnant was uppermost in Stella's mind on that particular night can hardly be doubted, for Mrs. Denzer had two children the possession of which Stella greatly envied her and which she at times took pleasure in imagining were her own. An additional fact which I learned much later was that Stella was expecting to be unwell on the night the obsession appeared. But, since she had this expectation on the fateful night, her bandaging herself on retiring was not so entirely without reasonable motivation as it at first seemed. This act was in part prompted by the reflection that the flow was due to appear, and when on the morrow it had not done so, she had a sort of confirmation of the idea she had been assaulted; that is, she found herself displaying one of the symptoms of pregnancy.8

To sum up, then, our present knowledge of the obsession, it formed an imaginary fulfillment to two wishes, one to be assaulted