From pre-psychoanalytic texts to The rat man: continuity and transformation of the conception of obsessional neurosis

Abstract

This article aims to demonstrate that, even with changes in the foundations of Freudian theory, much of what was formulated about obsessional neurosis in pre-psychoanalytic texts remained, even if modified to a certain extent, part of the definition of obsessional neurosis in the first topic. For this, we examine how this condition was defined in the first pre-psychoanalytic texts, when it was considered a defense neuropsychosis and its etiology was identified in the experience of seduction. Therefore, it is noticed that the clinic of obsessions played an important role in the renouncement of the theory of seduction and foundation of the first topic by providing evidence of the existence and potency of Oedipal desires in the psyche. Based on an analysis of the case The Rat Man, several notions that were anticipated in pre-psychoanalytic texts on obsessions are identified. Among them, the displacement mechanism stands out; the conception of the symptom as a return of the repressed and as a compromise-formation; obsessive symptoms as transformed self-reproaches related to sexuality.