“Let us suppose I have in analysis a patient who suffers from severe sexual impotence whenever he wants to make love. Once my patient's fantasy is brought to consciousness, we see that all women who interest him sexually unconsciously represent his mother. Immediately the woman in question becomes forbidden as an object of desire, and the men in the vicinity will be feared as potential castrators. It becomes understandable in these fantasied circumstances that he "needs" his impotence as a protective device. The patient, so to speak, castrates himself in advance. We might well consider such a symptom as an hysterical solution to neurotic conflict associated with the oedipal complex and its attendant castration anxiety.”