ABSTRACT
A great number of nervous, but also many otherwise quite normal, people suffer from a superstitious compulsion; if they touch one part of the body by accident or purposely they are compelled to touch also the symmetrically corresponding part in the same way. For instance, if they have reached up to the right ear with the right hand, they must immediately catch hold of the left ear with the left hand in an identical fashion. Should they omit to do this they feel restless, as is usually the case when an obsessional manifestation is checked. This chapter shows that the symmetrical ‘compulsion to touch’ is considered simply as a sort of ‘post-hypnotic command automatism’ that might have been maintained so many years after the admonition was received. The compulsion to touch symmetrical parts of the body is the over-compensation for the doubt whether it were not better to touch a certain part of the body situated in the median plane.
