[Choice of symptoms in neuroses. Hysterical and obsessive-phobic neuroses]

This publication is a first attempt to verify our hypothesis that symptom choice in the classical neuroses depends on a disequilibrium between assimilation and accommodation, in the Piagetian sense, of reflective thinking. Results of tests derived from classical paradoxes of Western thought, from genetic psychology and from a neuropsychological test of the habituation of the alpha-blocking response support the following hypothesis; the reflective thinking of hysterical patients appears dominated by a primacy of assimilation and that of obsessional patients by a primacy of accommodation.