Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

past life, particularly of her sexual life. Already in her delusion that clergymen were announcing from the pulpit the fact of this impurity, and were urging her to take up a better life, this complex revealed itself. Other manifestations of the same idea were: the belief that she had some unclean contagious disease, and that on account of this the nurses refused to touch various vessels she had used and even feared contamination by touching her; also that her body, especially her vagina, emitted an evil odor. The following flight referred to this: "I haven't a single cent; no one has sent me anything; oh, here is that scent again; shall I never get rid of it?" (indicating the genital region).

This "impurity complex" arose from more than one source. In the first place she had masturbated to an unusual extent, and suffered much remorse in consequence. Many of her association reactions already indicated this fact. Thus 10% of her responses on November 28, contained the word "habit," which was always linked in her mind with the idea of masturbation. Free association from the word "dress" gave "riding-habit, I was fond of riding as a child, it started in me the habit of self-abuse." On another occasion the word "can" gave the association "candle, can't."

Another root of this complex lay in the idea that she had contracted some "filthy" complaint from her husband. About seventeen years ago she had suffered from a vaginal discharge, to which she attributed the septic complications that followed the miscarriage. The medical practitioner in attendance developed a finger infection which he said he had contracted from her. This may have been one of the grounds for believing that the nurses were now afraid of being contaminated by contact with her, for her pride had naturally been much hurt by the occurrence in question. That the memory was still rankling in her mind was illustrated by a free association, taken on December 1; " run-fastdrop to a walk-tap till the sap runs-running tree-root-penis -running sore." The idea that her husband had made her unclean became associated with similar ones about him that we shall later discuss.

The external source of her uncleanness, and the relation of it to sexual matters, was probably the cause of her delusion that she was being poisoned by someone, particularly by her husband (she

once accused him of putting a powder in her drink). She also maintained that there were men in the cellar who kept rapping on the pipes, drugged her with gas, and then had sexual intercourse with her. The gas was sometimes coal gas, sometimes sewer gas. It had a cloudy appearance. In the morning everything was sticky from the stuff deposited by it. It was on account of this gas that she would rush to the window to avoid suffocation (an action misinterpreted as a suicidal attempt). The tap water would start running and then stop for a moment while someone put poison in it. The sound of running water, and even the patter of rain drops, did in fact always evoke sexual sensations, probably from its association with micturition.

Another curious symptom in connection with the same complex was the following: During the examination she bent down and insisted on inspecting the heel of my boot. The result appeared to be satisfactory, for she exclaimed; "I see you polish the heel as well as the toe (see association test for "heel "), you must be pure. All parts that one can't see ought to be clean. If the heel is clean, the sole (soul) must be clean. I am a heeler, a healer (spelt), heal-err. To err is human, love is divine. One cannot heal and err at the same time. Thou shalt bruise his heel. I once healed an impotent man, simply by touching his hand." (The subject of impotence will concern us later, as also that of personal cleanliness.) Other manifestations of the same train of ideas were her constant habit of picking up anything she considered clean, pieces of paper, pins, etc., and her exaggerated personal ablutions, teeth-cleaning, etc. The latter symptom is a very common one, especially in the " Zwang " neurosis, where it always indicates a reaction against sexual "impurity," particularly masturbation.

We must now further pursue the relation of the patient to her husband. She often maintained that she was not legally married to him. One day she burst into tears at the sight of a photograph of her son, and called him an orphan because he had no father. "Our marriage was not a real one. We were giggling before the clergyman. Mr. T. didn't know which finger to put the ring on, and I had to put it on myself. That hurt me dreadfully." The seizing at trumpery pretexts to prove that her marriage was not binding of course indicates the presence of some deeper reason for

wishing this. Two other pretexts, though less trumpery, served the same purpose. The first of these was that she was already two months pregnant when she married her husband, and would never have married him had it not been for that. She seriously thought of evading the marriage, and her brother had offered to help her in that event. The marriage ceremony was in some respects therefore a farce in her eyes. The second pretext was that she had before marriage already had sexual relations, at the age of sixteen, with her music master. This affair had lasted three months, and he had made her swear that she would never marry anyone else. The notion that her "second" marriage was not holy in the sight of heaven had for years haunted her, and only recently she had taken the advice of a clergyman on the question whether it was lawful for her to continue her relations with her husband. Some

four years ago she put a stop for some months to conjugal relations, because she thought they were "wicked."

There were, however, deeper reasons why she was unconsciously striving against the idea of a binding marriage. Her sexual needs had apparently only increased as she grew older, and indeed were approaching a stage when they might almost be called nymphomanic, so that the demands made upon her husband in this respect were exceeding his capacity. She stated this quite unequivocally, and contrasted him in this respect with her first lover, who had on several occasions had sexual intercourse with her over a dozen times in one night. We find here a second cause of her refusal to take food. She said "I nearly died of starvation, and yet I wasn't trying to commit suicide. However much I ate I couldn't get satisfied. Satisfied has two meanings, hasn't it?"

Further, although, as was above mentioned, her husband had taken a very lenient attitude towards her sexual irregularities, still she naturally felt her impulses in this direction restrained. An instance of how this powerful wish for freedom caused her to read obscure meanings into simple actions might here be given. Her husband brought one day to the asylum a watch which she had left behind at home, and handed it to her with the words, "This is yours, my dear." She felt convinced that his words contained an inner meaning, namely that the "watch" stood for the female genital organs, and that his giving it to her indicated his agreement that these organs were her own, to do with as she

willed. I asked her why a watch should represent the female genital organs, although I knew that the association between the two is not a rare one in dream processes, etc., and she answered I suppose because it has works inside that keep regular time(s), or else because it needs a 'key' to wind it up." (See association to "wind" on November 28.) It is not without significance that the particular watch in question had been given to her by her first lover, the music master.

Her love, that could not adequately be gratified by her husband, had, therefore, to seek another direction. Several causes combined to make this a religious one. Ministers appealed to her from the pulpit to forsake her evil ways and follow the true path. She interpreted this very literally as referring to her sexual life, and meaning that she had previously been indulging in sexual gratification in the wrong way, and that she must now find the right way. One minister publicly made to her in veiled language the great revelation of what was the right way. Before eliciting this I had already noticed the plainest signs indicating the nature of her discovery. When speaking of religious observances, particularly of holy communion, she broke off, and slowly and reverentially went through a perfect pantomime of the whole ceremony. This culminated in her taking a glass of water, which she had placed on a Bible, and gradually raising it to her lips where she beatifically sucked the rim, slowly revolving the glass as she did so. During the latter part of the performance a complete and exhausting sexual orgasm took place. I pointed to the glass and asked her if it was the communion cup; she answered, "Do you call it a cup? It has another name," and later remarked, "This is the Way, the Truth and the Life." (See associations to "way," October 28 and November 28.) Again, "I prayed earnestly to God to let me have what I most wanted with Mr. X. (the minister). He refused, and I had to submit to His will, and drink the cup of sorrow (communion) alone.”

It was manifest that the act of partaking of holy communion, performed in a very sensual way, had for the patient replaced that of normal sexual intercourse. There was ample evidence to support this conclusion. I asked her at what age she had first taken communion. She answered "At sixteen (referring to her first sexual relations; she had partaken of communion two years be

fore this). Oh, do you mean the outward and visible sign of true communion? That was two years before." The religious ceremony was thus to the patient an outer symbol of some actual physical mode of sexual gratification. On another occasion she told me how puzzled she had been at a statement of her minister's to the effect that no one should partake of holy communion until after having two weeks' preparation; later she "discovered" that he had referred to the necessity for previous purification-by thoroughly washing the genitals with soap and water.

After this revelation it now became plain to her that all her life she had been enjoying sexual pleasures in the wrong way, and that the true way was to admit the male organ not into the vagina but into the mouth (fellatorism). The seed was in this way to enter into the body-had not Christ said "Take and drink "?where it would perform its function of creating and nourishing the child. She would thus be able to bear another child to replace the one she had lost, in spite of the ruin of her internal genital organs. Perhaps her deepest grudge against her husband was the fact that his "uncleanness" had put an end to her child-bearing at the early age of twenty-two. Her belief that "the new way" would bring to fruition her maternal desires, and secure both the creation and nourishment of the child, was confirmed by a piece of advice given to her by her doctor to the effect that "she ought to swallow as much milk as possible."

One naturally next enquired into the source of the patient's knowledge of the perverse pleasure just described. She had on a few occasions performed cunnilingus with her husband, but never actually fellatorism. "He was not clean enough; he did not bathe so often as Mr. X" (the music teacher). She had, however, on several occasions performed the act in question with another man. There were further evidences to show that the patient was one of that frequent type to whom the excitation of the lips and mouth is capable of yielding as intense sexual pleasure as that of the genital regions. In these people one might say that in a certain respect the cavity of the mouth is an equivalent of that of the vagina, and can in fact replace it (Freud's Verlegung von Unten nach Oben). This is of course, as a rule, accompanied by marked sucking movements, and the earliest source of this abnormality has been clearly traced by Freud to the sucking movements of the

« ÎnapoiContinuă »