Full text of "Stamering And Cognate Defects Of Speech Vol - Ii"
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PSYCHOLOGICAL METHODS 241 The repressed wish, according to Freud, is invari- ably of a sexual nature:1 "Psychoanalytic investigations trace back the symptoms of disease with really surprising regularity to impressions from the sexual life, show us that the pathogenic wishes are of the na- ture of erotic impulse-components (Triebkomponente), and neces- sitate the assumption that to disturbances of the erotic sphere must be ascribed the greatest significance among the etiologi- cal factors of the disease. This holds of both sexes, * . . "The conduct of the patients does not make it any easier to convince one's self of the correctness of the view which I have expressed. Instead of willingly giving us information concern- ing their sexual life, they try to conceal it by every means, in their power. Men generally are not candid in sexual matters. They do not show their sexuality freely, but they wear a thick over- coat —• a fabric of lies — to conceal it, as though it were bad weather in the world of sex. And they are not wrong; sun and wind are not favorable in our civilized society to any demon- stration of sex life. In truth no one can freely disclose Ms erotic life to his neighbor. But when your patients see that in your treatment they may disregard the conventional restraints, they lay aside this veil of lies, and then only are you in a position to formulate a judgment on the question in dispute. Unfortu- nately physicians art' not favored above the rest of the children of men in their personal relationship to the questions of the sex life. Many of them are under the ban of that mixture of prudery and lasdviousness which determines the behavior of most Kulturmenschen in affairs of sex. , . . "It is true that in another series of cases psychoanalysis at first traces the symptoms back not to the sexual, but to banal traumatic experiences. But the distinction loses its significance Lt pp, 26 L