ABSTRACT
The hearing of an obscene word in the treatment often produces in the patient the same agitation that on some earlier occasion had been produced by accidentally overhearing a conversation between the parents, in which some coarse expression had slipped out. An obscene word has a peculiar power of compelling the hearer to imagine the object it denotes, the sexual organ or function, in substantial actuality. When uttering an obscene word one has the feeling that it is almost equivalent to a sexual aggression: "uncovering of the individual who interests one personally." The young homosexual who had displayed such strong opposition to uttering the obscene word for "flatus" developed in infancy an extraordinary love of odour and coprophilia, and his over-lenient father did not prevent him from indulging these inclinations even on his own body. The true neurotic turns his attention away from obscene words, either completely or almost completely.
