Psychoneurotic symptoms

Freudian Dictionary

Psychoneurotic Symptoms, Formation of

The theory of the psychoneuroses asserts with absolute certainty that it can only be sexual wish-impulses from the infantile life, which have undergone repression (affect-conversion) during the developmental period of childhood, which are capable of renewal at later periods of development (whether as a result of our sexual constitution, which has, of course, grown out of an original bi-sexuality, or in consequence of unfavorable influences in our sexual life); and which therefore supply the motive-power for all psychoneurotic symptom-formation.

Psychoneurotic Symptoms as Wish-Fulfillments

The theory of all psychoneurotic symptoms culminates in the one proposition that they, too, must be conceived as wish-fulfillments of the unconscious. (Expressed more exactly: One portion of the symptom correspends to the unconscious wish-fulfillment, while the other corresponds to the reaction-formation opposed to it.)

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