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CHAPTER II

In a predisposed person if there is no adaptation for conversion and still for the purpose of defense a separation of the unbearable idea from its affect is undertaken, the affect must then remain in the psychic sphere. The weakened idea remains apart from all association in consciousness, but its freed affect attaches itself to other not in themselves unbearable ideas, which on account of this "false" connection become obsessions. This is in brief the psychological theory of the obsessions and phobias concerning which I have spoken above.

I will now state what parts demanded in this theory can be directly demonstrated and what parts I have supplemented. Besides the end product of the process, the obsession, we can in the first place directly demonstrate the source from which the affect in the false connection originates. In all cases that I have analyzed it was the sexual life that has furnished a painful affect of precisely the same character as the one attached to the obsession. It is not theoretically excluded that this affect could not occasionally originate in other spheres, but I must say that thus far I have found no other origin. Moreover, one can readily understand that it is precisely the sexual life which furnishes the most manifold occasions for the appearance of unbearable ideas.