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Psychoanalysts know no greater pleasure than to reread Freud over and over again. Each time he grants us new insights, new discoveries, new food for thought, and new enjoyment. Recently a certain coincidence caused me to read once more, and with greatest delight, Freud's brief discussion of "The 'Exceptions'" in his study on "Some Character-Types Met with in Psycho-Analytic Work" (1915). The reason for my interest in the "exceptions" was a visit from a former patient who had been afflicted with a poliomyelitis in early childhood. Moreover, it so happened that I had just received a letter from another former patient, also a severely handicapped woman, whose life had likewise been ruled by this condition, but in quite a different, indeed an opposite manner. Both patients had been successfully treated more than ten years ago; and both since then had developed astoundingly well, in fact, beyond my expectations.
The more I thought about "The 'Exceptions'" and about my own case material, the more I felt that in this study, written forty-three years ago, Freud had sketched out a story which waited for completion.
This is the gist of the ideas expressed in Freud's study: In some patients with either a congenital injury or a physical affliction acquired in early childhood, he found a conspicuous resistance to accept the reality principle. They rebelled against the frustrations which analysis imposed upon them, claimed they had suffered enough, and behaved as if they were exceptions to whom such rules did not apply.