The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis by Otto Fenichel

Author:Otto Fenichel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2013-12-08T16:00:00+00:00

In girls an identification with the penis is even more frequent. Here the fantasy “I am a penis” is an escape from the conflict between the two contradictory tendencies “I should like to have a penis” and “I should like to love a man.” The fantasy of being a man’s penis, and in this way of being connected with the man in inseparable harmony, serves the overcompensating repression of the opposite idea: “I want to rob a man of his penis and am therefore afraid of his revenge.”

The dangers denied by means of this fantasy may be of a different nature. Either the penis with which the patients are identified represents “mother’s penis,” and thus denies the existence of beings without penises, or it represents “father’s penis,” and thus denies anxiety by an “identification with the aggressor.”

Wherever the relations to the penis are governed by fantasies of introjection, they are based on a pregenital history. The penis, with which submissive persons identify themselves, also represents child, feces (the contents of mother’s womb), or milk. The penis is only the last link in a long chain of introjects (593).

An extreme submissiveness is likewise found in some forms of hero worship which are based on the unconscious fantasy of being a part of the hero. It is characteristic for one type of religiosity, in which devotion to God is connected with the fantasy that God without oneself would be as incomplete as oneself without God. The fantasy is developed that one is not only weak, helpless, and nothing but a part of the powerful partner, but also that one represents the partner’s most important and powerful part. Whereas one is actually dependent on the partner, the partner in turn is thought to be magically dependent on oneself.

RILKE

“Was wirst Du tun, Gott, wenn ich sterbe?

Ich bin Dein Trank, wenn ich verderbe,

bin Dein Gewand und Dein Gewerbe,

Ich bin Dein Krug; wenn ich zerscherbe,

mit mir verlierst Du Deinen Sinn.”

ANGELUS SILESIUS

“Ich bin so gross als Gott: er ist als ich so klein:

er kann nicht über mich, ich unter ihm nicht sein.”—

“Ich weiss, dass ohne mich Gott nicht ein Nu kann leben,

werd’ ich zu nicht, er muss vor Not den Geist aufgeben.”

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