Note 190 — LECTURE XIII TWO TYPES OF PHOBIA (Obsessions Continued)

Some, I have no doubt, will insist upon seeing in towers with bells a sexual symbol, and in the self-reproach a reaction to a repressed infantile or other sexual wish. But I cannot accede to this view first, because a tower was not only not the real object of the phobia, but not even the alleged object, which was the ringing of bells; secondly, because it is an unnecessary postulate unsupported by evidence, and, thirdly, because in fact, the associative memories of early life were conspicuously free from sex knowledge, wishes, curiosity, episodes and imaginings, nor was there any evidence of the so-called “mother complex” or “father-complex,” or any other sexual complex that I could find after a most exhaustive probing. The impulses of instincts other than sexual are sufficient to induce psychical trauma, insistent ideas, and emotion. To hold otherwise is to substitute dogma for the evidence of experience.