About the psychic mechanism of conversion

Although the concept of conversion has a long history,the mechanism of conv ersion is still not adequately understood. The,leap from the psychic to the somatic innervation" (Freud 1919a) remains as mysterious as it ever was. F reud's (1915) presumption that the first stage in conversion is the condens ation of a conflictuous idea with a psychic representation of a part of the body associated with the idea is undoubtedly correct. What is not fully un derstood is how such a condensed idea-can be transformed into actual percep tion or into motions of the body. The author examines the second stage of c onversion mechanism in the light of Freud's and also more recent conception s. It can be shown that the " leap" is the result of an intricate interplay between regressive and progressive processes, i.e. of specific combination s of the primary and the secondary process. Finally the author exemplifies the conversion mechanism with a short case history.