Sergei Pankejeff’s case made history as “The Werewolf. “It appeared as a report in a text by Sigmund Freud entitled “History of Childhood Neurosis”.
It corresponds to one of the most pragmatic and important cases of psychoanalysis, because it supports many of Freud’s thesis.
- Sergei Pankejeff.
- The werewolf.
- Made an appointment with Freud at the age of 23.
- The father of psychoanalysis cared for him for four years.
- From 1910 to 1914.
The patient had just had Russie, the son of a woman too concerned about her physical health and a man with alternate stages of hyperactivity and depression.
One of his paternal uncles suffered from paranoia and lived like a savage among the animals; another had played in a scandal that his son’s wife would for force marry him; one of his cousins also suffered from illusions of persecution.
In short, in the context of the werewolf’s life, there were many signs of instability.
“Since I started studying the unconscious, I have found myself very interesting. ” – Sigmund Freud–
By the time the werewolf was 15, his only sister, two years older, committed suicide, a year earlier he had already shown several symptoms of depression, a few years later Sergei’s father also committed suicide.
When he was about 17 years old he contracted gonorrhea through contact with a prostitute, has since had several depressive episodes and has been admitted to several clinics, was diagnosed with manic-depressive disorder, bipolar disorder.
Therefore, he developed serious health problems. In particular, he suffered from chronic constipation and unbearable gastrointestinal disorders. When he got to the consultation with Freud, he was very weak.
At first, he was quite skeptical. It was as if psychoanalysis itself didn’t matter to him, even if he followed all Freud’s instructions.
To get him out of his passivity and give him back his initiative, Sigmund Freud decided to announce the end of the intervention in the coming months.
The two had already established a bond, and it was at the perception of a possible end that the werewolf began to open himself to analysis, bringing very useful content for the next sessions, which allowed his case to begin to walk.
The case was named as the werewolf because it was a dream about wolves that allowed the patient to begin to elucicide all his unconscious dynamics with Freud.
In fact, the dream had occurred when Sergei was only four and a half years old, but had impressed him greatly throughout his life.
In the dream, Sergei saw that the window of her room opened on her own. It was winter. On the branches of a huge walnut tree, six or seven completely white wolves looked, had large tails, like foxes, and their ears moved like a dog.
They were calm, but they looked at him insistently. The boy was very frightened and awoke a few screams, feeling that the dream had been a very real thing. Sergei drew his dream for Freud.
In psychoanalysis, dreams are like hieroglyphics that need to be deciphered, the elements that appear in sleep are symbolic and from the experiences surrounding the subject, it is possible to establish associations that give meaning to the content of the dream.
This is what Freud did in the following years with the werewolf
From the aforementioned dream, Freud began his journey to various experiences of his patient’s childhood, discovering that a year and a half he sees his parents having sex.
From this, Freud derived the concept of “primary scene”. He also found Wolfman’s childhood sexual experiences with his sister, and a subsequent attempt at seduction and rejection by his nanny.
He also discovered that he had an obsessive experience with a religion, he prayed several hours a day and kissed the characters of the saints before going to bed, but at the same time, he could not help but feel very bad about what he was going through. he was doing and what he believed.
After reviewing this constellation of experiments in detail, Freud concluded that the werewolf actually had a case of repressed homosexuality. According to him, Sergei had cured himself with psychoanalysis.
After World War I, however, the patient returned to the analysis with another psychoanalyst and subsequently published an autobiography in which he said that the dream of wolves had been his invention.
Whether that’s the case or not, we’ll never know, but the case has been reinterpreted hundreds of times throughout history and remains highly controversial.