Summary Of Freud's Obsessional Neurosis

Sigmund Freud’s thoughts about obsessional neurosis was firstly seen in his book named “The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence” that was originally published in 1894, which was dominated with his theories on hysteria (Freud, 2014). Throughout the book, he proposed new ideas, which were the alternatives to the ongoing psychiatric stance, and argued that the cause of the obsessional neurosis was based on the sexual conflicts that are repressed, thus changed. He gave explanations and characteristics of hysteria, in which he defines as a splitting of consciousness, and then compares it with obsessional neurosis. Freud argues that hysteria and obsessional neurosis has a traumatic etiology, meaning a sexual event that occurs before puberty. However, contrary

According to him, in both of these pathologies, the new idea that the affect is attached is strongly related to the original idea that provokes the anxiety. In order to explain this mechanism, he gives examples on phobias: the anxiety finds an idea, that seems more acceptable, in order not to remember the sexual idea, that is originally the source of the affect, such as spiders, thunderstorms or dirt. Freud also goes further, and proposes that this three types of neurosis can be found in the same person. Furthermore, he states that this mechanism between affect and idea is at an unconscious level, stating, “The separation of the sexual idea from its affect and the attachment of the latter to another, suitable but not incompatible idea – these are processes which occur without consciousness” (Freud,

He argues them in detail in his work named “The Disposition to Obsessional Neurosis: A Contribution to the Problem of Choice of Neurosis” (1911). He also argued the role of being fixated or regressed to the anal-sadistic stage with this specific neurosis. He describes as "the possibility that a chronological outstripping of libidinal development by ego development should be included in the disposition to obsessional neurosis. A precocity of this kind would necessitate the choice of an object under the influence of the ego-instincts, at a time when the sexual instincts had not yet assumed their final shape, and a fixation at the stage of the pregenital sexual organization would thus be left” (1911). So, when we look at the relation between the person and the object, we see that hate is more dominant than love. In order to cope with that, the person develops a super-morality and tries to protect the object from its hostility. Feeling both love and hate to the same object is one of the characteristics of obsessional neurosis, and is successfully represented in his case of “Rat