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A peculiar and ambiguous connotation is attached to the word “stroke” in the English language: used as a noun, the word indicates a blow; used as a verb, it means to caress. Philologists cannot explain the duality; they merely register the contradiction. They quote, for example, Isaiah XXX, 26: “Healeth the stroke of their wound,” and with no apparent uneasiness continue, a few lines later, with a Chaucer epigram: “Ye mote with the plat sword again/ Stroke him in the wound, and it will close.”
Thus, to hurt and to soothe stand in close proximity, although in meaning they are exact opposites. The most which can be coaxed (off the record) from a lover of semantics is the tentative suspicion that “perhaps” caresses developed from blows, a theory in line with the European peasants' joke in which a wife complains of her husband's indifference — “He hasn't beaten me for a whole week.”
Jokes and semantics aside, there exists a group of neurotics whose whole psychic development can be summarized “from stroke to stroke,” the first used as a noun, the second as a verb. They progress from the noun to the verb — at the point of “stroke.” Inwardly, one could say, they cling to a curious economy in words, which can be compared to Hamlet's sarcastic comment on his mother's hasty marriage after his father's death:
“Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.”
Leaving semantics and poetry to their respective adherents, let us concentrate on clinical material.
Mrs. A. was a woman in the middle twenties, in analysis because of personality conflicts. With a few rare exceptions, she was able to achieve orgasm only after the performance of a preparatory routine