ABSTRACT
The correctness of the comparison of the analyst’s observational method with laboratory technique is especially clear in cases in which the process of transformation of psychical energies during treatment leads to the appearance of new symptoms. The patient, a young man of twenty, whose career and personality were par excellence of a narcissistic type, came to analysis because of difficulties that stood in the way of his very ambitious artistic aspirations. The organ cathected with the guilt feelings of the Oedipus complex was avoided, and it seems to the author that the preference for the upper parts of the body shown in the tic was connected with this flight from the threatened genital organ. The genetic origin of the tic in an obsessive action confirms Abraham's view that the tic is a conversion symptom at the anal-sadistic level.
