Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/36

This page needs to be proofread.

^K-


28


S. FERENCZI


narcissistic sexual activity from which the transition to normal satis- faction in a foreign object would be just as possible as also the regression to auto-erotism.

I will here touch upon some reflections that I shall refer to later in another connection. To mr genital sexuality appears as the sum of auto-erotism displaced upon the genitalia, which in this "displacement downwards" carries with it not only its qualities but the "innervation-characters" in addition ("Amphimyxis of Auto- erotism"). The chief quantity of genitality is furnished by urethral- and anal-erotism. In pathological "displacement upwards" geni- tality appears to some extent to divide itself up into its component parts, which must lead to the strengthening of certain urethral- or anal-erotic features. The strengthening concerns not only the organ- erotism itself, but also its derivatives, the so-called anal- or urethral- character traits. As urethral characteristics I mention (in Tic and Catatonia) the incapacity to endure strain, the urge to discharge at once every increased stimulus, every affect, by a motor-reaction and uncontrollable speech impulses. The following are probably anal characteristics ; the tendency to rigidity, negativism, and muteness, viz. the "phonator" tics.

I also draw attention to what Sadger terms "muscle-erotism" and the constitutional reinforcement of the pleasure of movement (which Abraham has pointed out), which can fundamentally encourage the appearance of motor phenomena in Tic and in Catatonia.


It cannot but occur to me that the "genitalisation of auto- erotism", to the consequences of which 1 attribute the motor ex- pressions of Tic and Catatonia, I have already described in earlier works as the origin of the hysterical "materialisation phenomena' (in conversion hysteria). I cannot shirk this knotty problem any longer, but must endeavour to substantiate the differences that in spite of many similarities divide these conditions from each other. I have already mentioned the essential difference between an hysterical conversion symptom and the localised physical symptom of a narcis- sistic neurosis (Tic, Catatonia). In hysteria, which is a transference neurosis, the repressed pathogenic material belongs to the