ABSTRACT
An important feature of obsessional behaviour is the confusion that it implies. In obsessional illness the confusion is an organised defence. A degree of confusion is unconsciously maintained in order to hide a very simple fact: triumph of bad over good, hate over love and aggression over capacity for preservation. Confusion as a defence, organised, only altered by analysis of the oral sadism, which in turn alters the balance of forces within, so that there is less of the simple fact of hopelessness which must be hidden by confusion. There is a relationship between depression and obsession of the following kind: Depressed and obsessed persons are intolerant of each other, One patient moves to and fro from depression to obsession. Confusion as an organised defence must be analysed if the patient is to get to that which is always at the centre of the individual, a primary chaos, out of which samples of individual self-expression organise themselves.
