THE WAY OF ALL FLESH
We have already learned that all these phantasies
revert to a youthful concern with the problem of
death.
When the patient was a little girl her fully
developed obsessional neurosis had consisted mainly
in inhibitory reactions to death wishes which had
her mother for object. These partly repressed
obsessions, in a later stage of development, did not
stop at death. They led to brooding on the state
of man after death. All the while, the hate ten-
dencies struggle against the love tendencies. In
these psychic conflicts the idea of the progressive
dissolution of loved persons became paramount.
Again and again there rose in her mind terrible
visions of the decomposition of the body. Analysis
showed that these obsessions, which the patient
fought with all her might, recurred constantly in
spite of the repression ; they bore all the marks of
the battle of ambivalence. The ego took flight from
these terrifying obsessions in manifold conceptions
of the immortality of the soul and the body. We
see these reactions to be the expression of love for
the mother and also of the unconscious fear of
death, a fear which has animated the first phan-
tasies, turning against the ego in a form of self-
castigation. This terror of dissolution is later
replaced by the strengthened conviction that death
cannot be the end. The ego needs to picture the
beloved mother as immortal and indestructible;
and it must also protect itself against complete
annihilation. After the death of another beloved
person, the woman turns to far-reaching meta-
physical speculations, which are constantly stimu-
lated anew by the reading of various scientific
works.
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