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3 March 1908, Vienna, IX. Berggasse 19
Dear friend,
Starting from obsessional neurosis I am approaching the choice-of-neurosis problem in the following way: the obsessional neurosis cases are transparent; they hinge on only three (or, if you will, two) basic instincts, the instinct to see and to know and the possessive instinct (sadistic). Hence they can be classified according to predominance of obsessional thinking, i.e., rumination on the one hand, or of obsessional impulses (actions) on the other. It is interesting to note, however, that these are the only non-autoerotic components of the sexual instinct, the only components which from the start are directed towards an object. Hysteria, on the other hand, hinges on erogenous zones, it usually involves direct repression of genital impulses. In line with my idea of tracing the neuroses back to developmental disturbances of the libidinal vicissitudes, hysteria arises through disturbances (fixations and repressions) in the sphere of the erogenous components, while obsessional neurosis arises through disturbances in the sphere of the object components (which should probably be regarded as “anaclitic” instincts); in this context a predisposition to paranoia is created solely by a defect in the other part of the development, in the transition