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The term “psychoanalytic diagnosis”1 has been used only once or twice, and this without significance, in psychoanalytical literature. There is no reason, however, why the term may not be employed in a specific sense where it would be of some assistance in practical clinical work. The material of the unconscious gained from first sessions can be made to serve in the construction of a “diagnosis” of the formation of the neurosis in regard to fixations, regressive tendencies and characteristics of resistance and transference. Such a procedure would, naturally, have to be based upon numerous cases and be entirely empirical. A desire to make a preliminary attempt in this direction led me to examine notes on a number of discharged cases in order to observe the relation between the material of early sessions and of complete analyses. To indicate the nature of the relation of “psychoanalytic diagnosis” to the whole course of analysis, one of these cases, a case of Anxiety Hysteria,2 may be given.
The case was noteworthy insofar as it represented an outstanding variation of locomotor anxiety, the mechanism of which has been observed in a number of psychoanalytical studies.3
Mrs. B., in her thirties, married eleven years, mother of a ten-year-old
girl, suffered from phobia which incapacitated her from