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Psychiatrists whose basic tenet is the concept of the dynamic unconscious are familiar with the phenomenon called “over-determination,” which was originally described by Freud as “Ueberdeterminierung.” The term has been unhappily translated; in German, it denotes “consisting of many determinants, many layers,” while in English the linguistic vicinity of the word “determination” has tended to confuse its meaning. “Over-determination,” as technically used, merely describes the construction of psychic phenomena: each psychic phenomenon has a specific center, surrounded by successive coats; it can be compared in structure to a snow ball rolled down from the top of a mountain. In short, every symptom has many meanings. The therapist's job is to separate the wheat from the chaff, the meaningful from the secondary camouflage. The worst that can happen is to confuse the essentials with the “also present.” The result, applied to a different sphere, was wittily summed up by Elbert Hubbard, who defined an editor as “a person employed on a newspaper to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.”
Moreover, identical symptoms may have completely different meanings. This is inevitable, because of the paucity of the organs and symptoms at the individual's disposal, and the infinite variety of unconscious defenses. To reduce the problem to simple terms, there is only one penis, only one vagina. The psychogenic misuse of either can lead to literally hundreds of specific meanings, exemplified in the hundreds of forms and sub-forms of impotence and frigidity, recently summarized in my triple monograph on impotence, frigidity, homosexuality, Neurotic Counterfeit-Sex. (Grune & Statton, New York, 1951.)
Here, at least, finer differentiations and “pointers” can be distinguished. “Oral,” “anal” and “phallic” forms of potency disturbances can be diagnosed through the use of these finer differentiations, even though the identical symptom —impotence—is present in al