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. Bodily Pain and Mental Pain. Pp. 1-13.
Folie à Deux. Pp. 14-24.
Mona Lisa and Feminine Beauty. Pp. 25-40.
The Treatment of Bewitchment in a Puritan Community. Pp. 41-58.
Early Human and Animal Sexuality. Pp. 59-65.
Abstracts, Reviews, Bulletin.
Weiss, E. Bodily and Mental Pain. Psychoanalytic experience has shown that “bodily” pain can be transformed unconsciously into mental pain. This indicates that the purely anatomical concept of pain is incomplete. It is to this aspect the author turns. Freud's conception of the psychical barrier to stimuli is dwelt upon. When narcissistic libido is concentrated an ego barrier is formed. What part does this ego boundary play when there is bodily pain? In dreams—one is quoted—bodily pain as such rarely appears; mental distress takes its place (uterine contractions). This is related to the withdrawal of cathexes from the bodily ego-boundary; only the psychical ego-feeling is left. Hence in all bodily pain the ego-boundary must be broken through. Such a phenomenon needs study. In certain dreams bodily pain is felt and sometimes merely dreamt. A frequent way of elaborating bodily pain in dreams is by projection. Illustrations are given; in one there being both projection and displacement. Conversion pains are the bodily expression of mental conflicts. The mechanisms bringing these about are not always clear. Weiss would turn to these. Dreams are given which cannot be abstracted. The characteristic sensation of usual bodily pain occurs as the psychic reaction to a breach of the somatic libidinally cathected barrier against stimuli, while that of neurotic bodily pain or dreamt pain arises when a breach is made in the wall of anti-cathexes which is set up as a defense against what is repressed. The somatic barrier against stimuli, if the libidinal cathexis is sufficient, separates the ego in its bodily aspect from the outside world; similarly the inne