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In a paper read before the XV International Psychoanalytic Convention in Paris, August, 1938 (1), I pointed out that poor analytic successes with pathologic blushing can be ascribed less to the tenacity of the neurotic involvement on the patient's part than to poor understanding of the dynamics on the analyst's part. At that time I singled out four errors in the interpretation:
The symptom is typically interpreted as hysterical conversion (2), whereas the shifted and symbolic penis-exhibitionism is a late defense covering pre-Oedipal vicissitudes centering around mother's breast;
The exhibitionism in the symptom is not genuine, but is a defense against more deeply repressed voyeuristic tendencies;
The pseudo-paranoiac ideas of these patients, frequently adduced to explain therapeutic failures, correspond to an inner defense: “Other people peep; I don't.” Thus, voyeur-pleasure finds a surreptitious satisfaction with a moral alibi, while at the same time the erythrophobe “makes use of others as a mirror in order to look at himself with a clear conscience”;
The spiteful, defensive aggression unconsciously included in the defensive exhibitionism is masochistically elaborated and therefore cannot be taken at face value. An example is to be found in a detailed case history included in the original publication; here the pronounced exhibitionism of the female patient also evidenced an unconscious allusion to an ironic caricature and imitation of the patient's coquettish mother. The caricature symbolized a masochistic-whining reproach: “You show yourself to strange men without restraint, but not to your own child.”
Eighteen years have passed since the date of this first communication, and in that time the author has observed a series of other cases. Time and again the original findings have been confirmed, notably the scopophiliac defense: “I do not want to peep; on the contrary, I want to show myself.” Moreover, the pre-Oedipal substructure (breasts and cheeks) of the whole conf