Early Writings by Wilhelm Reich

Author:Wilhelm Reich
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Psychogenic Tic as a Masturbation Equivalent*

A.F. was an embroidery worker, forty-seven years old. Previous diagnosis by the Wagner-Jauregg neurological clinic: psychogenic diaphragmatic tic. Her symptoms were sudden convulsive exhalation accompanied by violent spasms of the entire body, especially the neck and head, and a cramping of the shoulders. At times there were only slight clearing of the throat and a sudden forward and upward jerking of the head. Aside from these agonizing symptoms, the patient suffered from extreme depression, compulsive brooding, insomnia, inability to work, and a succession of secondary symptoms, such as a drawing sensation in the limbs, headaches, shooting pains down her back, and other psychosomatic sensations. There were no neurological findings other than a diffuse hypersensitivity and hyperalgesia.

CASE HISTORY

The patient was raised in a middle-class family, the youngest of three sisters. The others were ten and eleven years older than she. There were no male siblings. Her mother, who ruled the household, loved her youngest child very much, spoiled her, but also raised her very strictly. Above all, her entire independence was undermined, and every self-initiated undertaking was represented as a dangerous venture. There were often scenes where the mother and the oldest sister joined forces against her. This led to shouting, and occasionally she had been struck. As a rule, reconciliation followed, the patient avowing her remorse.

Both her sisters married while the patient was still very young. Thereafter, the mother became even stricter with her. When, as a young girl, she reported that a man had spoken to her on the street, she was told that this was the most dreadful offense. Finally, she no longer dared tell her mother anything at all, but she also dared not lead her own life behind the mother’s back. She rather agreed with her mother’s views; for example, her mail had been censored for years even after she reached adulthood, and when resentment arose because of this treatment, she considered herself an ungrateful sinner. Her relationship with her older sister—who was also strict—was similar to the one with her mother.

When the patient was twenty the oldest sister contracted meningitis. The doctor considered her case hopeless, and when her husband heard this, he took his own life. The sister recovered, but she lost her sight as an aftereffect of the illness. The whole affair shocked our patient, and (as she herself once mentioned) she somehow perceived her sister’s blindness to be the result of the husband’s death.

At age twenty-two the patient contracted pleurisy. The tormenting cough lasted long after her recovery. Her father, who was ill at the same time, shared her room. An extremely nervous person himself, he found her coughing unbearable. He often screamed at her, especially at night, to be considerate and to try to suppress the cough. Every attempt she made to do so had just the opposite effect. One day her mother gave her a substantial dose of morphine to ease her cough, upon which it became convulsive and assumed the form of “whooping” (as the patient called her tic).

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