ABSTRACT
On several occasions patients have brought material which showed quite clearly some connections between visual shuck, headache, and the development of a halo. The emotion is felt with great force, as if an explosion or a stab had occurred within the head. There is usually at first a feeling of unreality, or of confusion. The shocking stimulus arouses an erotized aggression which demands subsequent mastery. Headaches occur later when new situations reactivate the original trauma. Mastery is attempted by successive repetition in fantasy, partial repression, or by the development of severely binding superego reaction-formations of goodness which are supplemented by or converted into lofty ideals. Figuratively, the child develops a halo to which, if it remains too burdensome, he reacts by throwing it defiantly away —conspicuously in some psychopathic and psychotic states—or by endowing someone else with it.
