uses of the disease. The hysterical
character evinces a part of sexual repression which reaches beyond the
normal limits, an exaggeration of the resistances against the sexual
impulse which we know as shame and loathing. It is an instinctive flight
from intellectual occupation with the sexual problem, the consequence of
which in pronounced cases is a complete sexual ignorance, which is
preserved till the age of sexual maturity is attained.[24]

This feature, so characteristic of hysteria, is not seldom concealed in
crude observation by the existence of the second constitutional factor
of hysteria, namely, the enormous development of the sexual craving. But
the psychological analysis will always reveal it and solves the very
contradictory enigma of hysteria by proving the existence of the
contrasting pair, an immense sexual desire and a very exaggerated sexual
rejection.

The provocation of the disease in hysterically predisposed persons is
brought about if in consequence of their progressive maturity or
external conditions of life they are earnestly confronted with the real
sexual demand. Between the pressure of the craving and the opposition of
the sexual rejection an outlet for the disease results, which does not
remove the conflict but seeks to elude it by transforming the libidinous
strivings into symptoms. It is an exception only in appearance if a
hysterical person, say a man, becomes subject to some banal emotional
disturbance, to a conflict in the center of which there is no sexual
interest. Psychoanalysis will regularly show that it is the sexual
components of the conflict which make the disease possible by
withdrawing the psychic processes from normal adjustment.

*Neurosis and Perversion.*--A great part of the opposition to my
assertion is explained by the fact that the sexuality from which I
deduce the psychoneurotic symptoms is thought of as coincident with the
normal sexual impulse. But psychoanalysis teaches us better than this.
It shows that the symptoms do not by any means result at the expense
only of the so called normal sexual impulse (at least not exclusively or
preponderately), but they represent the converted expression of impulses
which in a broader sense might be designated as _perverse_ if they could
manifest themselves directly in phantasies and acts without deviating
from consciousness. The symptoms are therefore partially formed at the
cost of abnormal sexuality. _The neurosis is, so to sa