Whereas the melancholic exhibits a state of general inhibition, in the manic patient even normal inhibitions of the instincts are partly or wholly abolished.
Karl AbrahamWhen the depressive psychosis has become manifest, its cardinal feature seems to be a mental inhibition which renders a rapport between the patient and the external world more difficult.
Karl AbrahamPsychoanalytic investigation has shown that in mental patients excessive affection often turns to violent hostility.
Karl AbrahamAnyone who is interested in the psychology of children will have observed that whereas one child will resist temptation or seduction, another will easily yield to it. There are children who will hardly oppose any resistance to the invitation of an unknown person to follow him; others who react in an opposite way in the same circumstances.
Karl AbrahamThe onset of mania occurs when repression is no longer able to resist the assaults of the repressed instincts.
Karl AbrahamPsychoanalysts have been occupied for a long time with the difficult question of what the psychological conditions are which determine the form of the neurotic disease to which the individual will succumb. It is as though he had a choice between different illnesses and led by unknown impulses selected one or other of them.
Karl Abraham