Internationale Zeitschrift für Aertzliche Psychoanalyse

A Case of Paranoia Seeming to Contradict the Psychoanalytic Theory of This Disease. sigmund freud.

Fatherhood and Narcissism. dr. theodor reik.

Concerning the Erroneous Belief of Having Made a Mistake. dr. S. ferenczi.

A Case of Paranoia Seeming to Contradict the Psychoanalytic Theory of This Disease.—Peculiar persecutory delusions of paranoid type in a young woman client having aroused the suspicions of a lawyer to whom she applied for protection, the lawyer referred the case to Freud for the latter's opinion concerning the sanity of the young woman. The case proved to be of more than diagnostic interest; it seemed to contradict the fundamental theories of psychoanalysis concerning the genesis of paranoia, in such definite manner, indeed, that the author at first hesitated to make the diagnosis of insanity, and was inclined to believe that the young woman might be the victim of a real persecutor. It is maintained in psychoanalytic literature that the paranoiac is engaged in a conflict against homosexuality based on a foundation of narcissism, and that the person regarded by the patient as persecutor is the one who has been the loved object. Combining these two principles, it is apparent that the persecutor must be of the same sex as the person persecuted. Under these circumstances, however, causal significance could only be attributed to homosexuality if it were found to be at the foundation of all cases of paranoia without exception. Cases have been described where the patients believed themselves persecuted by persons of the opposite sex, but a glance beneath the surface reveals the true persecutor, stripped of disguises, to be of the same sex. Neither the author nor any of his friends had ever before encountered difficulty in establishing the relationship of paranoia to homosexuality. In the author's present case, however, the girl seemed simply to have rejected the love of a man and then to have ascribed to him the role of persecutor. The ma