AGGRESSION, GUILT AND CATAPLEXY

Cataplexy may be evoked by impulses of aggression associated with guilt. The aggression may be naked and undisguised, as in hunting and fishing, and in boxing, where the object is to hurt and paralyse one's opponent. Or it may be symbolic, as in those sports where the object is to defeat the opponent, not to hurt him. Finally, it may only be that benign aggression that is expressed in practical jokes and some kinds of play. Cataplexy, in all these cases, is a manifestation of conditioned inhibition, a response to the guilt that attends aggression even when it is only unconscious.