ABSTRACT
Psycho-analysis has done very little so far towards investigating that very common neurotic symptom which, following French nomenclature, goes under the general term of tic or tic convulsif. 2 In the notes appended to the account of ‘Technical Difficulties in the Analysis of Hysteria’ 3 in a case I had for treatment, I gave a short digression on this subject and expressed the opinion that many tics may turn out to be stereotyped equivalents of onanism, and that the remarkable connection of tics with coprolalia, when all motor expression is suppressed, might be nothing else than the uttered expression of the same erotic emotion usually abreacted in symbolic movements. On the same occasion I drew attention to the close relation between stereotypies and symptomatic acts (in sickness and in health) on the one hand and the tics, or rather onanism, on the other. For instance, in the case cited above, these muscular actions and skin irritations carried out apparently without thought and believed to be without meaning were able to seize the whole of the genital libido; they were at times accompanied by regular orgasm.
