ABSTRACT
A young merchant was under my care for a prolonged period on account of obsessional and anxiety conditions, I could not pursue the case to an end, for the improvement that set in was, as so often, used by the resistance as a motive for breaking off the treatment. As the analysis soon showed, the actual cause of his illness was his relationship to his wife. I had to explain to the patient on the strength of very clear indications that he was coming to grief over the conflict between his love of money (anal erotism) and the rest of his sexuality. He married a more than well-to-do woman with whom he was not in love, while his unconscious dreamt of disinterested devotion; amongst other things he often thought consciously about a quite penniless but most charming woman, by whose side he had perhaps found the happiness for which he longed. I had, of course, to make clear to the patient that this happiness, too, would not have been unclouded, since his other no less powerful passion, the love of money, would have been unsatisfied.
