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CHAPTER III

In both cases thus far considered the defense of the unbearable idea was brought about by the separation of the same from its affect; the idea though weakened and isolated remained in consciousness. There exists, however, a far more energetic and more successful form of defense wherein the ego misplaces the unbearable idea with its affect, and behaves as though the unbearable idea had never approached the ego. But at the moment when this is brought about the person suffers from a psychosis which can only be classified as an "hallucinatory confusion. " A single example will explain this assertion, A young girl gives her first impulsive love to a man who she firmly believed reciprocated her love. As a matter of fact she was mistaken; the young man had other motives for visiting her.

It was not long before she was disappointed; at first she defended herself against it by converting hysterically the corresponding experience, and thus came to believe that he would come some day to ask her in marriage; but in consequence of the imperfect conversion and the constant pressure of new painful impressions, she felt unhappy and ill. She finally expects him with the greatest tension on a definite day, it is the day of a family reunion. The day passes but he does not come. After all the trains on which he could have come have passed she suddenly merged into an hallucinatory confusion. She thought that he did come, she heard his voice in the garden, and hastened down in her night gown to receive him. For two months after she lived in a happy dream, the content of which was that he was there, that he was always with her, and that everything was as before (before the time of the painfully defended disappointment).