PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL OBSERVATIONS ON TIC 15
portant business" and before "occupation with things of profound
interest". ¹
That tics cease entirely during sleep is intelligible from the absolute supremacy of the narcissistic sleep wish and the complete emptying of all other systems of the charge, but it is inessential for the resolution of the question of whether tics are psychogenic or somatogenic. The fact that concurrent illnesses, pregnancy and parturition, increase tics is evidently no argument against their narcissistic genesis.
III
I should now like to subject the chief phenomena of tics — the
motor symptom and the dyspraxias (echolalia, coprolalia, imitation
mania) — to a somewhat more searching inquiry, relying on the few
observations of my own and the wider information of Meige
and Feindel.
These authors desire to confine the designation "Tic" to those
conditions which show two essentia! elements : the psychic and
the motor (that is the psycho-motor). There is no objection to
this restriction of the conception of "Tic", but we consider it
would promote the better understanding of the matter if one did
not restrict oneself solely to the typical conditions, but also
reckoned the purely psychical and even sensory disturbances as
of this illness when they correspond essentially to typical cases.
We have already mentioned that sensory disturbances are of
importance as motives for tic-like twitchings and actions. We must
now provide ourselves with a clear understanding of the nature
of this operation. I will here refer to an important work by Freud
on "Repression" (Samml. kl. Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, Bd. IV.,
S. 28) where he states as follows : "When an external stimulus
becomes internal, for instance, through harassing and destroying
an organ, so that there results a fresh source of continuous
excitement and increase of tension, ... it acquires.... a far-
reaching similarity to an instinct. We know that this condition
is experienced in pain."
What is here mentioned of actual pain, must be extended in the case of Tic to the memory of pain. That is to say, in over- sensitive persons (of narcissistic constitution) on the injury of a
¹ Idem., Op. cit., p. 12.
