The Psychoanalytic Quarterly

1. Benedek, Therese. Mental Processes in Thyrotxic States.

2. Menninger, Karl. Polysurgery and Polysurgical Addiction.

3. Ferenczi, Sándor. Thalassa: A Theory of Genitality. (Concluded.)

4. Fenichel, Otto. Outline of Clinical Psychoanalysis. (Concluded.)

5. Winterstein, Alfred. Contributions to the Problem of Humor.

1. Benedek, T. Mental Processes in Thyrotoxic States.—The author studies the psychogenic factors associated with Graves' disease, usually of a manic-depressive type. Case 1 was a woman who had identified herself with a suicide, which was an alteration of the relation between ego and super-ego. Repression of suicidal thoughts and isolation of sense of guilt were defensive measures used by her ego to combat aggression.

Case 2 suffered guilt and anxiety and was occupied with murder cases. Her symptoms were related to her menstrual cycles, which showed “male periodicity”. Her father had been subject to depression and drank; her mother was suspicious, strict, stubborn. The patient's early pain in coitus, begun before marriage, has been treated as cystitis; anxiety had succeeded it. During pregnancy she had found her husband sexually unfaithful and after that arose her frigidity and obsessive fear about the orgasm, loss of appetite and other symptoms. Her thyroid disorder had disturbed her bisexual equilibrium. Hormone and psychotherapeutic treatment were given. Hatred toward her husband was the source of depressive self-accusation, really accusation of the introjected object. Treatment caused the shift of her agitation to the time after the periods, erotic appetite increased and her fear of pregnancy disappeared. In the next phase paranoid fear was nascent when the super-ego was replaced by a love object. The anxiety, increased by altered libidinal situation, dealt with a fortified ego, using the object relationship as a projection. Insulin helped to reduce the paranoid ideas. Identification, projection and displacement had played their parts.

When ego cathexis was