ABSTRACT

An analysis—which could almost be called still a physiological one—of the phenomenon of ejaculation formed quite innocuous point of departure. In connection, however, with the fuller elucidation of this phenomenon, this chapter made use without scruple of an understanding gained from a quite different sphere of knowledge, the psychological. The conception of the applicability of psychological knowledge to the solution of biological problems requires modification in a certain regard. As effecting the transition to our assumption of organic displacement and condensation the psychoanalytic investigation of hysteria was of service, in that it demonstrated the displacement of ideational energy upon organic activity and function and its retransference back into the psychic sphere. Even psychoanalysis was not so long since committed to the view that it was a prerogative of the psychic sphere alone that its elements, indeed one and the same element, could be inserted simultaneously into several genetically different causal series.