ABSTRACT
The temptation to tacitly accept a simplified cause and effect sequence is great: the early trauma "caused" the later symptom, somewhat like the "imprinting" of the ethologists. To state a paradox: perhaps it was fortunate that E. L. Freud, in 1911, had no access to this material, or that he did not know of it. The chapter explains the illustrations from Dr. Schreber's books, and in a flash the incomprehensible Kopfzusammenschnurungswunder. Schreber's fanatical activities, too, although lived out on the body of the son, belong to a hidden narcissistic delusional system. The son, in other words, is felt as part of the father's narcissistic system, and not as separate. To be stimulated and oppressed while included in the hidden narcissistic-delusional system of the stimulating and oppressing adult does not further the child's elaboration of object-libidinal sexual fantasy or of vengeful fantasies directed against the object; it predisposes to a narcissistic distribution of the sexual and aggressive drives.
